ExtraBITS for 02-Mar-09
Exporting 720p from iMovie ’09 — Macworld’s Chris Breen spent the weekend crunching pixels to come up with a way to export deinterlaced 720p video from iMovie ’09, a process that seems strangely difficult (and made more difficult by an unresolved bug in the way iMovie handles interlaced video). (Posted 2009-03-02)
Dan Frakes Examines Safari 4’s Tabs — The beta of Safari 4 offers some notable changes to how tabs work, and while some of those changes are useful, others have provoked criticism. Macworld’s Dan Frakes runs down the good, the bad, and the ugly. (Posted 2009-03-02)
MacOS iPhone Project Puts System 7 on an iPhone — We thought running the classic Atari game Adventure on an iPhone was the epitome of retro geekiness, but a fully functional version of System 7 on an iPhone? Wow! It’s not available yet, but it’s worth checking out for the screenshots alone. (Posted 2009-03-02)
MobileMe Receives Various Improvements — None of this stuff is earth-shattering, but Apple has improved MobileMe’s performance in various areas, fixed some user interface annoyances, and made other small improvements. (Posted 2009-02-27)
iPhone Becomes Credit Card Terminal — People who sell at farmers’ markets or street festivals can now use an iPhone to process credit card transactions via ProcessAway. Now if only there could be direct iPhone-to-iPhone transactions, or the capability to use an iPhone to make payments more generally, as is increasingly common with mobile phones in Japan. (Posted 2009-02-27)
Hidden Preferences in Safari 4 Beta — Liking the beta of Safari 4’s speed, but ambivalent or truly annoyed by changes such as the top-mounted tabs and new toolbar? The Random Genius blog found hidden preferences to control these and other settings. (Posted 2009-02-26)
The Photographic Dictionary — Thanks to Photojojo for turning us on to The Photographic Dictionary, a Web site that defines words both textually and with a carefully chosen photograph. Particularly interesting are conceptual words, such as “unknown.” (Posted 2009-02-26)