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Adam Engst No comments

Use iPods Cautiously While Driving

A recently published study by Dario D. Salvucci, Daniel Markley, Mark Zuber, and Duncan P. Brumby in the Department of Computer Science at Drexel University has been making the rounds, since it's the first bit of research to confirm what everybody knows: that manipulating an iPod while driving isn't the safest of ideas

Joe Kissell No comments

Google Desktop Comes to the Mac

Google has released the first public beta version of Google Desktop for the Mac, an application that rapidly searches files on your computer, messages in your Gmail account, and Google's existing index of Web pages, all in a single interface

Joe Kissell No comments

VMware Fusion Beta 3 Draws New Parallels

Last week VMware released Beta 3 of its Fusion virtualization software for running Windows on an Intel-based Mac. Among several new features are two that are obvious attempts to overcome advantages offered by competitor Parallels Desktop: support for booting from a copy of Windows installed under Boot Camp and an Easy Install option to automate the process of running the Windows installer

Adam Engst No comments

Take Control News/09-Apr-07

New Ebook Covers AirPort Networking with 802.11n -- 802.11n is a newcomer in the world of wireless networking standards, and it's also new in the version of the AirPort Extreme Base Station that Apple began shipping in February

Adam Engst No comments

DealBITS Winners: BeLight Software’s Art Text

Congratulations to Dan Kerkman of appns.com, John Allan of mac.com, Neal Pann of mac.com, and Ron Gillmore of victoria.tc.ca, whose entries were chosen randomly in last week's DealBITS drawing and who received a copy of BeLight Software's Art Text, worth $29.95

rmovin No comments

Switching My Mother to the Mac

It was the call we all dread. "Hi Mom." "Hi," she replied tersely. "Is something wrong?" "It's my email. It won't work. And the Internet is really slow." "Crud." I may be an executive in the world of information technology, one who works with some of the largest technology companies in the business, but to my extended family I just "work in computers." Which means, of course, that I, like many of you, am expected to keep their email running and figure out where those pesky digital photos are hiding after being deleted accidentally

Adam Engst No comments

Blogosphere Uproar

There's a line between abusive comments and criminal speech. I read very few blogs on a regular basis, and I've never become enmeshed in the "blogosphere," the entire collection of blogs and bloggers that link to and quote one another

Glenn Fleishman No comments

Best Buy Buys Speakeasy: Doom, Despair?

My Internet service provider (ISP) Speakeasy Networks was just purchased by Best Buy. I was hoping the press release carried an April 1st dateline, but no such luck

Glenn Fleishman No comments

Adobe Announces Creative Suite 3 Plans, Pricing, Dates

Ladies and gentleman, start your rendering engines! Adobe has at last announced shipping dates, product details, and pricing for its massive collection of updates to existing products under the rubric Creative Suite 3 (CS3)

Joe Kissell No comments

Apple Sends Vista to Boot Camp

Apple last week released Boot Camp 1.2 beta, the latest version of its software for enabling Intel-based Macs to boot into Microsoft Windows. This is likely to be the final update to Boot Camp before the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which according to Apple will include a release version of Boot Camp (though there's still much speculation about what form Boot Camp will take in Leopard)

Jeff Carlson No comments

iTunes, You Complete Me

One of the great things about the iTunes Store has been the way it lets you buy single songs without having to purchase an entire album. I own too many CDs that contain only one or two songs I like; the rest of the selections just don't hold my interest

TidBITS Staff No comments

April Foolishness 2007

Whew! We want to thank everyone who came together yesterday for what was truly our most inspired April Fools issue ever. Joe Kissell's remote-controlled, animatronic monkey was definitely the highlight, and we hope that his landlord will be understanding about all the damage - who would have suspected that the folks at MacUser.com were so adept at remote AppleScript programming? What? Oh

TidBITS Staff No comments

Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/02-Apr-07

Increasing font sizes everywhere -- A reader points out that you can change the text size in Finder windows easily. (1 message) UK versus United Kingdom -- A copyediting question leads to a spirited discussion of how people in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland refer to themselves: United Kingdom, Great Britain, just Britain? And that, in turn, brings up questions of American versus British English usage

Adam Engst No comments

Apple and EMI Offer DRM-Free Music via iTunes

In a press conference today in London, Apple and EMI Music announced that starting in May 2007, EMI Music's entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase in DRM-free versions from the iTunes Store worldwide

Adam Engst No comments

Add a DJ to iTunes with SpotDJ

"There goes the last DJ, who plays what he wants to play, who says what he wants to say." -Tom Petty in "The Last DJ" I've never been sufficiently involved with radio to quite understand Tom Petty's lament about the passing of the independent disc jockey as "the last human voice." But even if I missed hearing Wolfman Jack live in his prime, there are times when I'm listening to my favorite music in iTunes or on my iPod that it feels, well, a little repetitive