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Apple offering credit for strike-shortened seasons

The Hollywood writers' strike might have shortened the television season, but iTunes customers will get some compensation for their losses.

iLounge noticed that Apple has started sending notices to iTunes Store season pass subscribers with good news: they'll be getting a two-episode credit from Apple to make up for the writers' strike.

Apple is also promising to provide partial refunds for shows that won't be delivered as a result of the strike. For example, if 20 episodes were promised when the season pass was purchased, but only 17 wind up getting made this year, it sounds like Apple … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 683: Will you marry me?

EPISODE 683

Apple snags 14 percent of U.S.-based PC retail sales in February http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/17/ apple_snags_14_percent_of_us_based_pc_retail_sales_in_february.html

Yahoo: We’ll double our cash flow http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9896609-7.html http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/ releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=300145

Justices turn down Microsoft appeal http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/S/ SCOTUS_MICROSOFT?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Amazon: Vista SP1 to ship Wednesday http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9896597-7.html

Online oligarchy: Old guard dominates Net news coverage http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080317-online-oligarchy-old-guard-dominates-net-news-coverage.html

Returns, technical problems … Read more

Web code locks up iPhones and iPod Touch

A new exploit will either lock up your iPhone or iPod Touch or crash your Safari browser on your PC or Mac OS desktop if you simply visit a maliciously coded Web site. Unlike an earlier exploit that required users to click to become infected, the new code published by iPhoneWorld requires no user interaction.

So far, Apple has had no comment.

The code was first reported in January and exhausts the memory in Safari, which in turn will cause your iPhone or iPod Touch to freeze, or your desktop Safari to crash. "Given the nature of this issue,&… Read more

Veodia favoring Flash over Quicktime for streaming; HD to come in 2009

While controversy surrounds the lack of Flash on the iPhone, and rips on Flash Lite from Apple CEO Steve Jobs, some developers have avoided the war of sound bites and embraced Adobe's flagship Web technology.

Starting today Veodia, a service we've covered several times, and even attempted to use when livestreaming the Facebook platform launch (unsuccessfully) is ditching competing Web media player Quicktime. Coming in the next few months Veodia will switch over to Flash entirely for its livestreaming needs as well. For now it's stuck with Quicktime until the next spec of Flash, which is due in June. The changover should bring out higher resolutions at lower file sizes, which is far better for re-watching recorded content that was streamed to begin with.

CEO Guillaume Cohen said one of the major motives was simply the saturation of Flash, and that despite the prominence of iTunes, a lot of people don't feel the need to install Quicktime since popular video sharing sites don't use it.

In the future Cohen says Veodia will offer HD video as part of its services, although he doesn't believe the consumer hardware or network infrastructure is there yet--especially for livestreaming. He says the company is a year or longer away from adding it to the services despite what's being done in the consumer space of video hosting--a market that Cohen says doesn't offer the kind of security or platform possibilities Veodia offers for its enterprise and education clients.

I've embedded an example of the new player for streaming after the break.

Read more

Apple rolls out Safari 3.1 browser

Apple on Tuesday announced that version 3.1 of its Safari browser is available for both Mac and Windows users.

The Web browser now supports a number of new Web standards: HTML 5's latest audio and video tags, as well as CSS Animations. Apple claims that page load times in Safari 3.1 are 1.9 times faster than Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 and 1.7 times faster than Mozilla's Firefox 2, and that JavaScript runs as much as six times faster in the new Safari than in other browsers.

Apple offers Safari as a free download. … Read more

TiVo adds Web video--but there's a catch

TiVo has added the ability to view downloadable Web videos on the company's DVRs, making good on its announcement at January's Consumer Electronics Show. The update will allow Web videos such as video podcasts to be downloaded with the same Season Pass functionality used by TiVo viewers to record their favorite TV shows. But don't expect to just punch in a URL or an RSS feed into the TiVo remote. Videos must first be downloaded to your PC's hard drive, after which they'll be transferred to your TiVo via your home network. That's a … Read more

NPD: Apple enjoys huge Mac growth in February

Mac shipments were up dramatically in the fourth quarter of last year, and if recent NPD data is any indication, Apple's doing pretty well again this quarter.

AppleInsider spotted a research note from Pacific Crest Securities citing NPD Group data that Apple's Mac shipments grew 60 percent in February compared with the same period last year, while the entire market grew just 9 percent. NPD's data tracks computer purchases made at U.S. retail stores, which means it excludes much of Dell and all online purchases in general, but it does serve as a weather vane for … Read more

Apple considering clamshell iPhone?

Apple could be embracing the clamshell aesthetic for a future iPhone.

Unwiredview.com found an Apple patent application for a "dual-sided trackpad device," which resembles the current iPhone redesigned into the clamshell format so popular with many mobile phones. The key to this design is having touch-screen capabilities on both the top and bottom of the phone when it's open.

This design goes a step further, as well, in that the closed cover of the iPhone could also have trackpad capability. PC makers have experimented with this, adding some basic buttons and capabilities to the covers of … Read more

Apple's AirPort Express gets extra juice with 802.11n upgrade

Apple has updated its AirPort Express portable wireless base station to make it compatible with the speedy 802.11n wireless standard, the company announced Monday.

802.11n, the latest iteration of the wireless networking standard, more than quadruples wireless-data rates to 248 megabits per second from the current 54 megabits per second offered by the 802.11g wireless standard; there are also some security improvements over 802.11g.

Apple's current lineup of laptops, iMac desktops, Apple TV set-top boxes, and Time Capsule backup devices already come with 802.11n.

An AirPort Express allows up to 10 Wi-Fi users to … Read more

MacBook Air rivals, past and present

The MacBook Air focused global attention--for the first time with prolonged intensity--on a small, thin notebook. Until now, this kind of design simply wasn't on many users' shopping lists. (Particularly Americans who choose performance over portability.) Here's a brief look at this notebook category, both past and present.

A few prefatory notes: Because I use a MacBook Air, the topic of ultraportables has taken on more importance for me. But the impact of this category of notebooks goes much further than personal interest. Ultraportables now contain fast Core 2 Duo processors, snappy solid state drives (SSDs), and better … Read more