The T-Mobile G1 running the Android OS can't keep applications from downloading data even when a user has turned off the data roaming option, useful for avoiding heavy charges when traveling outside one's home country. Individual applications can override this setting without warning; you're only informed of this when a program is downloaded from the Android Market. Engadget has more.
Veteran Mac expert Rick LePage reviews the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 at his site Printerville. If you're a photographer who prints his or her own photos (rather than sending them to a print service), the 3800 is an impressive inkjet printer. Equally impressive these days is a site like Printerville that takes the time to thoroughly review these types of expensive niche products that professionals rely on to make their livings.
Watch TidBITS editor Glenn Fleishman talk to the folks at AshMUG (Ashland, Oregon, Mac Users Group) at 7 pm Pacific. The event is streamed live. The main meeting starts at 6 pm Pacific.
John Chaffee of BusyMac has posted a detailed comparison of how Google's official CalDAV support for syncing events with iCal compares with his company's BusySync utility. BusySync isn't free, but as with so many things, you get what you pay for.
John Gruber reviews Deep Green, a chess program for the iPhone and iPod touch that started life a decade ago on the Newton. The new version was rewritten from scratch by its developer, Joachim Bondo, but Gruber writes it has "the same attention to detail, graphics, simplicity, and fun that marked the Newton version."
iPhone developer Craig Hockenberry (Twitterrific and Frenzic) works through the math of why it's a problem that developers need to lower prices to get favorable placement in the App Store. One possible solution: trial versions.
Employees at Walmart have slipped the news to reporters that the economy-dominating chain of stores will sell the iPhone. Earlier rumors suggested Walmart might have a less-expensive model containing only 4 GB of memory. Sales might start before Christmas.
In an amusing thought experiment, Robert X. Cringley opines at PBS on what it would be like if Steve Jobs applied the kind of thinking that revived Apple to one of the Big Three U.S. auto companies.
Objective Development has opened a public beta for version 5 of LaunchBar, one of our favorite Mac utilities of all time. New features include clipboard history tracking, clipboard merging, a radically enhanced calculator, iCal event creation, Quick Look support, many new actions, and lots more.
Occasionally, we get angry. Or, more often, we think we're being funny. Either way, we try to use our iPhone to employ a certain Anglo-Saxon expletive, and are thwarted by spelling correction. Tim Luoma figured out that by creating a fictitious contact with the air of barnyard epithet about it, he'd save a cancel strike in his exuberant style.
Yet another reason Firefox 2.0 users should update to version 3.0: At Google's request, Mozilla will remove anti-phishing protection from the forthcoming Firefox 2.0.0.19, the final update to that version, due later this month.
Mike Bombich of Bombich Software has announced that he is retiring the popular NetRestore deployment tool, instead recommending the freeware Deploy Studio for restoring public Macs to a predetermined state. His Carbon Copy Cloner disk duplication and backup tool remains in active development.
Macworld reports that Netflix has emailed its Mac customers informing them that anyone with an Intel-based Mac can now stream movies that are available for instant watching. Netflix has previously given beta access to only a limited group of Mac customers.
The Wall Street Journal reports that IBM is offering a system that delivers open-source business applications to thin clients - computers without hard drives or powerful innards. Like with Google applications, central servers at a company handle the heavy lifting. Cost savings could be $500 to $800 per year, plus a reduction in IT support costs. This has been tried before, but IBM says Microsoft Office alternatives are now good enough to compete.
Ars Technica is reporting that Apple has finally eliminated one of the top developer complaints about the iPhone App Store by making it possible for iPhone developers to give reviewers (or friends and family) a free copy of an app.