New RAID enclosures, dual-channel FW800 bridgeboard

New RAID enclosures, dual-channel FW800 bridgeboard

FireWire Depot today introduced its FireWire 800 dual-channel bridgeboard and two new RAID 1 enclosure. Wow!

Apple plans special event at NAB 2004

In an invitation sent to select media today, Apple announced a special event to be held Sunday, April 18 as part of this year's National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show, which will take place in Las Vegas, Nevada next month.

Starbucks to add double shot of digital music

Starbucks to add double shot of digital music

BusinessWeek reports that on March 16, Seattle-based coffee giant Starbucks will launch an in-store music service allowing customers to browse and sample digital songs—using HP tablet computers—then order the ones they like on a custom burned CD. I guess everyone wants to be a iTunes Store! Kind Of!

MacSoft updates Age of Mythology

MacSoft updates Age of Mythology

MacSoft has released a patch for the Mac version of Microsoft Game Studios' best-selling real-time strategy game, Age of Mythology.Fix problems and bugs for certain G4 DP config.

iPod advertising takes over Toronto subway

Apple's iPod marketing team has transformed the St. George subway station in downtown Toronto into an "Apple dreamland," local resident Jonathan Ta-Min told MacMinute. He noted that iPod ads adorn nearly every object of the station—posts, walls, stairs, and even newspaper recycle bins. It is something to be seen.

DockFun! 4.2 Available

DockFun! is an application launcher that allows you to run an infinite number of Mac OS X Docks. Imagine having a different dock for each specific work activity you do; an internet dock, one for graphics, etc.

10,000 songs on your website. iTunes Catalog 1.6

KavaSoft has announced iTunes Catalog 1.6 for Mac OS X. iTunes Catalog creates web catalogs of your iTunes music library, displays the cover artwork for each album, and copies album artwork into iTunes.

Apple in legal spat with Chinese trademark committee

China Daily reports that Apple has filed an action against China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce trademark appraisal committee following a dispute over the company's logo.

Diskology Adds FireWire Depot as a Disk Jockey Reseller

Diskology proudly announced today that FireWire Depot
has signed up as a reseller of the Disk Jockey, the Swiss Army Knife of hard
disk cloning, backup and diagnostic tools. FireWire Depot has been providing
high-end products to the Macintosh and Windows marketplace since 1999 and
features a vast lineup of 1394a and 1394b products.

“FireWire Depot is a great partner for us, we couldn't’t be happier,” said
Tony Overbay, Diskology CEO. “The people at FireWire Depot know the storage
market like the back of their hand and have an extremely broad, loyal
customer base that understands that they will only offer quality products
for sale.”

The Disk Jockey is a veritable Swiss army knife of disk diagnostic tools as
it includes 7 functions in one hardware product. In addition to the
high-speed data copies, the Disk Jockey also mirrors data between two hard
disk drives, spans two hard disks to look like one logical volume to the
computer, tests hard disk drives at the block level and verifies data that
has been copied between drives is intact. The Disk Jockey can also mount
hard disk drives to the desktop of your Windows or Macintosh computer to be
used as standard desktop storage. The Disk Jockey can also erase hard disk
drives quickly and securely using either a one-pass or three-pass erase per
the National Security Administration (NSA) guidelines.

French artist group demands Apple pay fees on iPod

The Associated Press reports that Apple may face legal action against The Society of Music Creators, Composers and Publishers, or Sacem.

Hitachi boasts 400GB hard drive

Hitachi Ltd. has continued its my-hard-disk's-bigger-than-yours fight with Fujitsu Software Technology Corp. with the announcement of a 400GB, 3.5 inch drive. The Deskstar 7K400 is the highest-capacity 3.5 inch ATA drive and spins at 7,200rpm. The 400GB drive announcement comes just a fortnight after HGST announced a five-platter 300GB drive, which it proudly stated was the highest-ever capacity, enterprise-class hard drive ever built.

eBay and Microsoft Office Extend Opportunity for Developers To Create Solutions That Enhance Trading on eBay

eBay Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today invited third-party developers to tap into the Web services capabilities of both the eBay platform and the Microsoft(r) Office System to enhance trading
on eBay. With the combined power of the two platforms, developers now have
the opportunity to build innovative solutions that can greatly benefit
buyers and sellers on eBay by giving users more control and flexibility in
managing their transactions.

Using the enhanced capabilities of Microsoft Office Excel 2003 and Microsoft
Office FrontPage(r) 2003, developers can create a variety of solutions that
will help users increase their productivity on eBay. For example, solutions
could enable eBay users to utilize Excel to manage dynamic listing data on
eBay -- such as pricing and bids -- and update the data automatically as
changes occur. Solutions also could enable users to list multiple items on
eBay simultaneously or create a Web site that displays their eBay item
listings.

"Using the Microsoft Office System with eBay enables developers to help eBay
sellers more effectively manage inventory, access the most up-to-date
pricing data, and quickly and easily build a customized Web site to showcase
products to eBay buyers," said Debbie Brackeen, director for the eBay
Developers Program. "We are excited about extending the eBay platform and
anticipate that these capabilities will foster innovation in our developer
community."

"We're giving developers the tools they need to enhance the trading
experience for eBay users," said Gytis Barzdukas, director of Office System
Product Management at Microsoft. "With the combination of Excel 2003 and
FrontPage 2003, developers can provide users with powerful tools to analyze
their sales and inventory in real time and build sophisticated and dynamic
Web sites. The Microsoft Office System and eBay together are a great
combination."

Developers and eBay's buyers and sellers can use the powerful and familiar
tools in FrontPage 2003 with the Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based
application programming interfaces (APIs) provided by the eBay Developers
Program to easily create professional-looking Web sites that display
customized information on items for sale on eBay.

The FrontPage 2003 Web package includes these features:

Web design and maintenance tools

A data view built to display multiple item listings from eBay
Customization of data views using what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG)
editing tools such as the ability to use bold, italic and colored fonts.

Rich sorting, filtering and grouping features to present only desired data
A "New!" icon for specific items listed on the last day (24 hours) of the
auction.

Using Excel 2003, developers can seamlessly integrate with the eBay API via
XML, allowing them to take advantage of the latest capabilities in Office
2003 to customize list views, graphs and charts; catalog bulk items online
or offline; and submit item listings on eBay. The Excel-based solution now
allows eBay buyers and sellers to create an offline historical record of
their transactions, analyze their buying or selling history, and use Excel's
automated bulk uploading processes to submit item listings, instead of
having to manually enter the same items each time.

The Excel 2003 customized package includes these features:

An inventory-staging component that allows manual entry or automated input
via XML imports from any XML-compliant database.

An automated listing section that enables bulk uploading of listings and
real-time pricing of listed inventory
Offline capabilities.

A persistent historical sales page, which lets users review and analyze
sales while managing invoicing.

Ad hoc data analysis in the familiar environment of Excel
Seamless integration with any system the user may have (via XML) for
inventory import.

Sample code demonstrating the eBay listing management capabilities within
the Microsoft Office System is available for download from the eBay
Developer site at http://developer.ebay.com/devzone/docs/samplecode.asp,
along with detailed technical instructions for developers. The sample code
solutions were developed in cooperation with Allin Consulting
(http://www.allinconsulting.com/), an information technology consulting
company that provides integration and development services. Allin is a
registered member of the eBay Developers Program. Bill Gates, chairman and
chief software architect of Microsoft, presented a demo of this solution at
the Microsoft Office System launch in October 2003. The demo can be viewed
at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=25105.

About the eBay Developers Program

The eBay Developers Program enables third-party developers to create
innovative solutions that tap into the power of eBay, The World's Online
Marketplace(r). Members of the program gain access to eBay's application
programming interface to create a wide variety of solutions that meet the
diverse needs of the nearly 95 million registered users on eBay. For more
information about the eBay Developers Program, visit
http://www.developer.ebay.com/.

Ubisoft Confirmation: New Apple Game in the Process

Rejoice!
Ages Beyond Myst is currently being ported on Mac.


 

Stone Design Ships TrueBlue 2.0 - The Free Font Convertor

Stone Design Ships TrueBlue 2.0 - The Free Font Convertor

Stone Design, veteran Macintosh OS X software house and makers of Stone Studio(tm), today announced immediate availability of TrueBlue(tm) 2.0. TrueBlue is a free application to quickly convert TrueType and OpenType fonts to PostScript(tm) fonts and install them into Stone Design's PStill(tm). PStill is Stone's PostScript to PDF (Portable Document Format) distillery which converts PS/EPS/any image format into PDF, as well as repurposing PDF, tiling posters, chaining documents or flattening PS.

TrueBlue installs TrueType and PS-flavored OpenType fonts into PStill as well as providing an expert interface for detailed font conversion. Stone Design's founder and CEO, Andrew Stone, notes, "TrueBlue lets users take full advantage of PStill, even if they don't have any PostScript Type 1 fonts. Continuing our tradition of offering utility programs for free, the application costs you nothing, and adds great value to the Stone Studio."

TrueBlue can convert most TrueType fonts, such as the ones provided by Apple in Mac OS X's /System/Library/Fonts folder or in Mac OS 9's System Folder/Fonts folder. The TrueBlue engine is based on ttf2pt by Mark Heath, ttf2pfa by Andrew Weeks, with special tweaks by Frank M. Siegert and fixes from Sergey Babkin and Thomas Henlich. Better support for dfonts comes from fondu by George Williams, and the ability to read OpenType fonts from Eddie Kohler's ccttot1. See "About TrueBlue" for complete information on the engine.

TrueBlue 2.0 is available as a free download:
http://homepage.mac.com/stone_design/.cv/stone_design/Public/TrueBlue-2004-02-24.dmg-link.dmg

For more information, please visit the TrueBlue home page:
http://www.stone.com/TrueBlue/

Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.3 build 7F38

Apple released another pre-release seed of Mac OS X 10.3.3 this week, posting build 7F38 late Thursday, sources said. In a seed note, Apple listed the same areas of change and testing suggestions, suggesting the update is nearing release...

Apple refuses French MP3 tax

France taxes MP3 players, as does Canada, to the tune of €10 (€15 for players larger than 40GB. French-language Mac site MacGeneration is reporting that Apple will not and has not paid this tax to date. The tax law was implemented in July 2002. Apple was unavailable for comment.

Pinnacle debuts CineWave 4.5

Pinnacle debuts CineWave 4.5

Pinnacle Systems today announced the immediate availability of CineWave 4.5, a new version of its standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD) solution for Final Cut Pro 4

iPod mini sells out

USA Today reports that Apple's new iPod mini is "a smash hit." Retailers are having trouble keeping the devices in stock, according to the report. When Apple announced the devices were shipping in February, the company said they already had 100,000 iPods on pre-order.

Apple stock rallies to highest price since '02

Apple's stock price has rallied to its highest price in two years, on dramatically higher volume than usual. The stock closed at 25.16 on Thursday, up 5 percent for the day and the highest it had closed at since May of 2002.

Virgin Digital to compete with iTunes

Virgin Group's new Virgin Digital business is set to compete with iTunes, Napster and others when it launches its own online music store. The company has partnered with MusicNet to create the service.

Xserve G5 delayed

Xserve G5 delayed

Apple Computer Inc. confirmed on Monday that the recently announced Xserve G5 has been delayed and will not ship until sometime this month. Announced at Macworld Conference & Expo in January, the Xserve G5 was originally scheduled to ship in February.

Xserve G5 delayed

Xserve G5 delayed

Apple Computer Inc. confirmed on Monday that the recently announced Xserve G5 has been delayed and will not ship until sometime this month. Announced at Macworld Conference & Expo in January, the Xserve G5 was originally scheduled to ship in February.

FileMaker Pro 7 enhances relational features

Just Released: FileMaker Pro 7 and FileMaker Developer 7. The most significant change in this release is FileMaker's transition to a new relational database engine architecture, although that's only one of more than 100 new features in this new release.