Archive - Mar 2008

The FastIcon.com has released a new freeware'icon set: FastIcon'Smashing Feeds, with 8 flashy and illustrative feed icons for use in your website, blog, software or desktop.

The FastIcon Smashing Feed Icons is available as standard Mac or Windows icons as well as a handy PNG files.

Montreal, Canada - The WebObjects Community Association, BoxOffice Tickets and OS communications informatiques are delighted to announce WOWODC 2008, the annual conference dedicated to Apple's WebObjects Web development framework. WebObjects is a powerful, elegant, and proven web application framework that doesn't trade agility for scalability, or elegance for capability. Think of WebObjects as Cocoa and CoreData for the web.

Adelaide, Australia - Lava Software is now shipping Kenbushi Pro v7.3, free home server software containing a powerful media entertainment center (like AppleTV), file sharing and data backup functions. New features in this version include a complete Internet TV (video podcast) management system, 30 new Internet TV channels, additional methods to sort and filter Internet TV programs, an expanded setup wizard, stability improvements and a range of bug fixes. Versions are available for Windows and MacOS X.

Mireth Technology Corp. has released a new version of Music Man, its Mac OS X ripper, converter, burner, player digital music software. Version 2.7 of Music Man adds enhanced WMA Support, DVD-Audio burning capability and OS X 10.5 compatibility.

Appletell reports that the iPhone is to be released in Mexico later this year. Although the iPhone is already available in several European countries, Apple still hasn't announced a release in Canada. Much of the blame can be placed on Canadian carriers such as Rogers that don't offer flat rate data plans and charge a lot more than US carriers.

Update: a petition has been launched requesting Apple & Rogers to bring the iPhone to Canada.

A group of iPhone developers will be releasing a new software tool today that will enable users to fully customize and control their iPhones. A Youtube video details what is possible with the tool.

The tool known as "Pwnage Tool" is currently a Mac OS X application that allows users to modify their iPhone's bootloader to allow it to boot any software. In its native state, the iPhone bootloader is what prevents it from booting unauthorized (non Apple) firmware.

Apple quietly issued a new update to the Apple TV tonight. The 2.0.1 update is the first update since the Take 2 update that Apple announced at Macworld this year.

'Take 2' introduced Movie rentals, and revamped the entire Apple TV interface.

With such a small version increase, it may simply represent a bug fix release, but we will post a list of changes as we find them. Current Apple TV owners can download the update through their Apple TV "Settings" menu.

Apple issued the first Mac OS X 10.5.3 seed (9d10) to developers yesterday. The latest update to Apple's Mac OS X Leopard addresses dozens of outstanding issues.

Fixes range from Dashboard, Parental Controls, iCal Synchronization, memory leaks and stability issues. All in all, 75 distinct bug fixes are listed in the accompanying seed notes.

A few known issues remain, and Apple typically seeds a number of developer builds for testing before releasing the final update to customers. While these point releases generally provide bug and stability fixes only, the 10.5.2 seed also addressed some user interface complaints. The current version of Mac OS X (10.5.2) was released in February 2008.

[via MacRumors]

There's been so much talk about the possibility of the "3G" iPhone, it can be hard to keep up with all the rumors. First of all, "3G" technology promises broadband-like speeds over wireless cellular networks. At present, the iPhone only offers 2.5G (EDGE) speeds, which means your web pages and email download at relatively slower speeds.

It's been no secret that the iPhone will eventually adopt 3G technology. When Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone in January 2007, he specifically said (video clip) that Apple plans on making "3G phones and all sorts of amazing things in the future". The major issue that prevented Apple from incorporating 3G into the first iPhone was excessive power consumption from 3G chipsets:

Outspring, Inc. has released Outspring Mail, an innovative new email application. Outspring Mail has several unique automative features, including learning ability and Deferment. It can import your mailboxes and accounts from Apple Mail, and supports all Mac OS X services including spell checking, addressbook, and iCal integration.