Microsoft Edges Into ITunes' Turf

The new Windows Media Player 10 works with a wide range of portable devices and digital music subscription services. But the real power move comes later this year, when Microsoft launches its own online music store. Someone should tell microsoft that copying is a form of flatery!.

Book announcement of the week: Degunking your Mac

Paraglyph Press Announces Newest Book in Bestselling Degunking Series:
"Degunking Your Mac"

Adding to its #1 bestselling Degunking series, Paraglyph
Press announced today that it has published "Degunking Your Mac" (ISBN 1-932111-94-8).
Written by bestselling author and Mac expert Joli Ballew, "Degunking Your Mac" shows Mac users where
operational slow-downs happen and why, and it covers all the glitches in Apple's Panther operating system, OS X 10.3.3, as well as prior versions going back to OS 9.
A true must for process and performance lovers.

G5 named 'Ultimate Photoshop Machine'

Photoshop User has named the dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 as the "Ultimate Photoshop Machine.

MindVision releases Installer VISE 8.4

MindVision Software today announced the immediate availability of Installer VISE 8.4, an upgrade to its product for creating full-featured installers for both Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X

Sony's RAW Image Data Converter ready for Mac OS X

Sony has developed a new RAW Image Data Converter software CD-ROM that includes support for Mac OS X (10.1.5 and higher

Optibase completes Media 100 acquisition

Optibase Ltd. announced Wednesday that it has completed its US$2.5 million acquisition of "substantially all the assets" of Media 100, following a favorable judgment from the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Massachusetts. As a result, Media 100 will continue to operate as a separate business unit of Optibase, continuing to focus on digital video editing products. Media 100 manufactures hardware-based digital video editing systems aimed at professionals including the 844/X and forthcoming Mac-compatible Media 100 HD. It also develops Media 100i, Mac-compatible digital video editing software.

Computex: Apple lines up for Toshiba's new 60GB drive

Toshiba Corp. is planning to launch a 60GB version of its 1.8-inch hard disk drive in the coming months and has already found a customer in Apple Computer, the company said Wednesday at the Computex 2004 exhibition in Taipei. The drive will enter mass-production during July or August and represents a jump in the storage density of Toshiba's 1.8-inch drives, said Cindy Lee, deputy manager of Toshiba Digital Media Network Taiwan Corp.'s hard disk drive division technical department.

Strata 3D CX links to Photoshop, Illustrator, more

Strata announced on Wednesday that Strata 3D CX is shipping. The new upgrade to the company's design, illustration and animation tool offers the ability to live-link with Adobe Photoshop files, automatically making changes to the Strata document when you modify the Photoshop file, as well as compatibility with native Adobe Illustrator CS, PDF and EPS files, which can be expanded to 3D geometry within a Strata documen

Aspyr to launch Space Colony on June 14

Aspyr Media Inc. announced Wednesday that its Macintosh conversion of Space Colony has gone gold master, the final step before the game goes into production. The company expects the game to ship on June 14th, with copies hitting store shelves by the 18th. Space Colony is a simulation game that also includes some real time strategy elements: Not only must you manage the interpersonal relationships of the people on board your space colony, but you've got to properly manage and develop resources too. "Imagine The Sims are sent to space, but they're dysfunctional," is how Aspyr describes Space Colony.

New cordless barcode reader uses Bluetooth

Intelli Innovations Inc. announced on Wednesday the release of IntelliScanner Cordless Collector, a barcode reader that incorporates Bluetooth technology. It's based on the company's IntelliScanner Collector USB Barcode Reader, which features the ability to scan barcodes found on books, DVDs, music CDs, games and other media. If you take the Cordless Collector outside its wireless range, it will store up to 250 barcodes that are automatically downloaded to your Mac when you bring it within range again.

Kodak intros photo correction plug-in for Photoshop

Eastman Kodak Co. released Digital Gem Airbrush Professional, a new Adobe Photoshop plug-in, on Wednesday. It accepts digital images drawn from a variety of sources, including digital cameras, picture CDs, the Internet and scanners, smoothing imperfections in the skin without affecting facial details. The plug-in offers three levels of detail as well as the ability to correct only the darker areas of an image, the lighter areas, or both, with support for 16-bit and 8-bit images.

PC World gives World Class Awards to Mac OS X, iTunes

Technology business magazine PC World has announced the winners of its 2004 World Class Awards, and Apple is on the list. The magazine's editors make their selections for the awards "based on exemplary usability, design, innovation, features, performance, and value from a reliable manufacturer."

Strange Flavour commits to more Mac games

The UK-based game developers behind such releases as Airburst and ToySight say that their efforts have yielded a full-time business making Mac games. Strange Flavour Ltd. is the creation of brothers Aaron and Adam Fothergill, who previously developed console games under the Argonaut Games label.

PC World Praises Mac Bluetooth

Mac Skeptic columnist says Mac OS X Bluetooth easier than Windows: It's partly an integration issue, which is odd given how many tools are "integrated" with Windows XP. Mac OS X has Bluetooth on its mind; with Windows, you have to install drivers.

Free Powerbook Repair Guides

If you've ever installed RAM or a hard drive into a computer, you can probably handle many small and minor repairs to a Powerbook. To help people in this task, PBFixit.com has created and made freely available a series of guides for performing common repairs in Apple Powerbooks. With a little elbow grease and some spare parts from eBay or elsewhere, you should be able to save considerably when compared to repairs done by Apple or an authorized technician.

Rumours: Apple to release New G5 Generation

According to AppleInsider's most reliable sources, the company is now aiming to introduce these new Power Macs at the end of June. This information corroborates a number of reports from the last several months, including hints from Apple's Senior Director of Channel Sales and Distribution, Jeff Hansen, during an exclusive briefing with top resellers in April.

The existence of Power Mac 8,1 support in Mac OS X 10.3.4 indicates that Apple plans to release the new models prior to the next update to Mac OS X. And we are talking here about G5 next generation 3GhZ!

Redmac: online store for Canadian Mac users

Redmac is a new online store for Canadian Mac users to purchase enhancements, accessories, and peripherals.

LiveDictionary 1.1.1 for Safari available

Michael Ash has released LiveDictionary 1.1.1, a Safari extension that adds fast, convenient dictionary lookups to the Web.

Tag offers immediate previews of Web site changes

Developer Oliver Cameron has released Tag, an XHTML tool that allows you to make changes to Web site code and preview the results immediately, rather than uploading them and switching to a browser to make sure they work. It offers a system for color-coding different code styles, a snippets feature that stores often-used code for quick copying and pasting, auto complete for code that's typed repeatedly and more. It requires Mac OS X v10.3 or higher .
A demo is available for download from Cameron's Web site.

Early documents show plans to shift dealer business to Apple stores

Company documents obtained by Think Secret, indicate that Apple has privately planned to target the business of its existing channel of resellers, and then shift that business to direct sales through its own retail stores; the documents explicitly describe plans to divert sales away from the current channel to its stores. In addition, the company's own numbers show that it has been successful in doing this.

One confidential worldwide briefing held in 2000 -- prior to the launch of the first Apple store -- laid out what the company expected to be the results of its retail initiative. The share of sales held by Apple retail stores, online stores, corporate direct sales, and resellers with company-badged Apple Solutions Consultants, or ASCs, would increase, the briefing documents projected. The share held by Value Added Resellers, or VARs -- stores which target specific markets or customers that the Apple stores would not otherwise reach -- would also increase. For Apple Specialist dealers, direct marketers, regional retail stores, and national chains without ASCs, Apple projected that opening its retail stores would cause their shares to decrease.

The briefing documents recommended that Apple "produce further channel shifts" through its actions and "close channels as they become risky," while re-evaluating its progress on a regular basis.

A different Apple document says that part of the company's growth strategy would be to "shift customers from channel," referring to the existing channel of resellers. Apple would do this through an "exclusive value proposition" that would include special service products -- such as the recently-announced ProCare -- as well as competitive repair prices, Apple-branded goods, rewards for loyal customers, and a "better" value for build-to-order hardware.

Another part of Apple's growth strategy for the stores would be to use telephone sales to "hunt" for customers, generating leads, using "available leads" and internal lists, and taking advantage of external lists to focus on educational institutions and small business customers. Apple's alleged attempts to obtain information about resellers' customers so that the company can sell directly to them has been one issue dealers have raised; for example, a customer of one independent dealer signed up for an AppleCare extended warranty -- thus providing his contact information to Apple -- and was subsequently contacted by Apple about a "special discount offer" if he bought peripherals from the Apple Store just miles away from the reseller. Apple's latest revised contract for dealers states that the company "maintains customer information independently derived from numerous sources," including "product registration" and the "use of Apple's websites by customers and prospective customers." The contract says that the customer information "may be identical" to dealers' customer data and that Apple "has a proprietary interest" in the information.

Apple's own numbers indicate that the company has experienced success in shifting sales from the channel to its stores. At a recent private company meeting, Apple revealed that in markets that lack a retail store, independent resellers have grown 8%, but in markets with an Apple store, they have declined 16%. Catalog and Web sales have decreased as well, by Apple's numbers, making CompUSA the only non-Apple winner: Apple representatives are reportedly instructed to refer customers to a CompUSA store if there is no Apple retail store in the area (Apple Specialists are recommended if no CompUSA or Apple store is nearby). At the very same meeting, though, Apple characterized channel performance in markets with and without Apple stores as comparable.

In Apple's SEC filings, it says that its "customers in areas where the Retail segment has opened stores may elect to purchase from the Retail segment stores rather than the Company's preexisting sales channels," but that it believes that "a substantial portion of the Retail segment's net sales is incremental to the Company's total net sales." At the above retail meeting, about 50% of volume was estimated to be incremental; in the past, CFO Fred Anderson has estimated that between a third and a half of the sales are incremental. When Apple launched its stores in 2001, the company publicly said that its goal would be to increase market share with an "ambush" on the other 95% of computer users.

Many dealers, believing that the "ambush" has instead been on their own stores, have been fighting back. Several resellers last year filed a lawsuit against Apple that accused the company of breach of contract, fraud, trade libel, unfair competition, false advertising, misappropriation of trade secrets, intentional interference with prospective economic advantage, and violation of the Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act, among other charges. The dealers picketed Apple's shareholders meeting in April and maintain a Web site called TellOnApple.org which summarizes news on the litigation and attempts to "uncover any skeletons that exist at Apple." The dealers also allege that Apple is defrauding shareholders and misleading the public by misrepresenting the profitability of its stores, substantiating their claim with thousands of product invoices that were examined first-hand by Think Secret and raise questions about Apple's accounting practices. Another hot-button issue has been uneven product allocation; many dealers have found themselves losing business because they can't get sufficient quantities of products from Apple. While Apple has asserted that dealers are on a level playing field with the company's own stores, many resellers have found that they have had difficulty getting the new products they were promised by Apple, while nearby Apple retail stores have had significantly greater quantities in stock. Apple's latest dealer contracts state that the uneven product allocation is allowable under the revised terms of the agreement.

At the shareholders meeting, sales chief Tim Cook said that "the indirect channel is very important to us and I don't see that changing." Still, the company's own plans show a clear desire to shift channel business to direct sales, and then close "risky" channels. While the news may not come as a surprise to independent resellers in markets where Apple has opened a store of its own, these early documents paint a different picture for customers and shareholders who have been considering Apple's public statements that it has no intention of going after dealers' business.

App. of the Week: Speed Download 2.3.5

Enriched with a totally redesigned Mac OS X interface and features that take advantage of leading edge Macintosh technology, Speed Download 2 is the fastest, most complete download manager for Mac OS X.

Never before has a download manager been so fast, powerful, and beautifully in sync with Macintosh technology.

Speed Download ensures that you always get the fastest download speed from your internet connection every single time you download a file and no matter what browser you use. Speed Download is optimized for both dial-up and broadband connections.

We love it and give it a well deserve
*****
5 Stars!

Book Of The Week: Landau's 'Mac OS X Help Line' released

MacFixIt founder Ted Landau has announced the release of "Mac OS X Help Line", his new 1,100 page Mac OS X troubleshooting guide. The only must book for all Mac Troubleshooter (or wanabe).

Sonnet announces upgrade price reductions

Sonnet Technologies today announced price reductions on eight of its top-selling CPU upgrades for Beige G3, Blue & White, and most G4 Macintosh models..

Sony to halt handheld sales in U.S.

Sony said today that it will stop selling its Clie handheld personal digital assistants (PDA) in the United States later this year.
Sayonara Clie.....

Pepsi Australia offers iPod an hour thru July 11

Pepsi Australia is trying its hand at an Apple promotional tie-in, but instead of giving away iTunes Music Store songs like their American counterpart, they're giving away 15GB iPods -- one an hour every hour until midnight, July 11, 2004. Participants use Short Message Service (SMS), a feature on cell phones and other devices, to send in a unique code on the back of their label from participating Pepsi, Pepsi Max and Pepsi Light containers; Pepsi in turn notifies the winner by SMS. Winners are drawn hourly from that hour's entries. There's an additional chance to win, as well: All the entries received during the contest's entire duration will be pooled for a final drawing for one of 10 iPods on September 24, 2004

ATI intros new mobile, upgradeable PCI Express graphics

ATI Technologies Inc. on Tuesday announced the Mobility Radeon X600, a new graphics system intended for laptops. The X600 is a further evolution of ATI's Mobility Radeon 9700, which is currently installed in PowerBooks. The new chip is being paired with Axiom, ATI's own solution for upgradeable graphics in notebooks that supports PCI Express: An emerging interface standard that's even faster than the PCI-X or AGP 8x interfaces found in today's Macintosh models.

Exensis ship Portfolio 7 for Mac

Today, Extensis is announcing the immediate availability of its leading
digital asset management solution for the Mac platform - Portfolio 7

Right on cue for the summer season. Great product, great timing!

Matias announces first Aluminum hard case for iPod mini

With looks to match Apple's wildly successful iPod mini,
Matias today announced its newest iPod Armor aluminum hard
case, the iPod Armor mini.

The new case features a rugged and stylish aluminum shell, hard ABS
window, docking port access, and iTrip compatibility.

"Based on our original iPod Armor design, iPod Armor mini offers the
best protection available for your iPod mini," said Vesna Vojnic, Marketing
Manager for Matias.
"With the new display window and the addition of iTrip compatibility, the new mini case is even better than the
original. It's even better looking."

The iPod Armor mini case comes bundled with the Armor Clip belt clip,
Matias is a computer accessories company based in Toronto, Canada. Its
products include the original iPod Armor, and its Pocket Armor line of
hard cases for PDAs.

ALADDIN SYSTEMS DEBUTS INTERNET CLEANUP 2.0

New Version Enhances Spyware Protection, Cleans IM Logs, Manages E-mail Attachments Folder, Deletes Files Securely and Adds Privacy Protection

Aladdin Systems, Inc.today announced Internet Cleanup(tm) 2.0 for Macintosh, a new version of the popular privacy tool that blocks suspicious data transmissions, cookies, referring URLs, ad banners, and pop-up windows. The software cleans up e-mail attachments and instant messaging log files to protect confidential information. In addition, Internet Cleanup 2.0 offers secure file deletion to erase compromising files and quickly remove the Internet clutter that can fill up a hard drive. It also manages browser cookies, allowing users to protect their preference and password-saving cookies while deleting the rest.

"Internet Cleanup 2.0 provides strong privacy protection to Mac users," said Pauline Shumake, Senior Product Manager of Aladdin Systems, Inc. "The software combats identity theft and keeps sensitive information out of reach. Many people worry about the presence of spyware on their machines. Internet Cleanup 2.0 tells them which applications are accessing the Internet and blocks rogue software from spreading users' personal information."

Internet Cleanup 2.0 contains a powerful array of features for Mac users:

* NEW! PROTECT AGAINST SECRET MONITORING -Network SpyAlert(tm) immediately stops programs from sending data to the Internet without the user's permission.

* NEW! SAFEGUARD IM PRIVACY -Instant Messenger Log Cleaner(tm) finds and deletes instant messaging chat logs for major IM applications to keep conversations private.

* NEW! BLOCK WEB SNOOPERS - NetBlockade now blocks unwanted cookies, as well as URL referrers that tell websites about the previous web page a user visited.

* UPDATED! DETECT THE LATEST SPYWARE -SpyAlert(tm) scans the computer for evidence of surveillance spyware and safely removes it so it doesn't track the user's activity.

* NEW! MANAGE E-MAIL EASILY -MailCleaner(tm) simplifies e-mail management by efficiently cleaning out attachments in Eudora, Entourage, Outlook, or Outlook Express without deleting the original e-mail.

* ELIMINATE DISTRACTING POP-UPS AND BANNERS -NetBlockade(tm) accelerates web surfing by blocking annoying banner ads and pop-up and pop-under windows.

* SHRED CONFIDENTIAL FILES SECURELY -Secure Delete(tm) acts like a digital document shredder, completely removing private files so they can not be recovered from a hard disk, even with special disk recovery tools.

* KEEP SNOOPERS FROM TRACKING SURFING HABITS -Internet Cleanup 2.0 clears away hidden files that show outsiders which Web pages, sites, and images were viewed. It can automatically delete unwanted cookies and protect the cookies you do want.

Sony Launches Actual E-Paper Device

Sony has launched the first e-paper device in the form of the LIBRlé. "The Electronic Paper Display is reflective and can be easily read in bright sunlight or dimly lit environments while being able to be seen at virtually any angle - just like paper. Its black and white ink-on-paper look, combined with a resolution in excess of most portable devices at approximately 170 pixels per inch (PPI), gives an appearance similar to that of the most widely read material on the planet - newspaper. Because the display uses power only when an image is changed, a user can read more than 10,000 pages before the four AAA Alkaline batteries need to be replaced. The unique technology also results in a compact and lightweight form factor allowing it to be ideal for highly portable applications." Caution: downloaded content becomes unreadable after two months!

Microsoft studying online music rental system

"We rent homes. We rent cars. We rent movies. Why not rent music? It might be a very good deal. We now have more options than ever for buying music - we can purchase CDs from Web sites and stores and download music from online services," Maureen Ryan reports for The Chicago Tribune. Ryan reports, "All that is now fairly routine for many entertainment consumers: You go to a site such as Apple's iTunes store or the new Napster and pay around 99 cents for an individual song; "What's next rent sex ?" I guess someone as already think of that one!

Skype for Mac OS X announced

"Skyper Limited has announced the Mac version of Skype, its free and simple application that enables you to make free calls anywhere in the world. Skype, created by the developer of KaZaA, uses innovative P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to connect you with other Skype users. "If you are tired of paying outrageous fees for telephony, Skype is for you!" The Mac OS X beta version will be available in a few weeks, according to the developer

Napster Rolls Out in Canada

“Los Angeles-based Napster has rolled out its services into Canada, following on its launch last week in the UK. The company is now provoding its legal online digital music service across Canada, and has also tapped brewer Molson in a strategic marketing alliance to market the service. Molson will give limited free access to its customers to the Napster service. The company said that it will offer more than 300,000 tracks of music from BMNG, EMI…We are so glad (!)"

Online dating firm patents cupid's arrow

The US patent office has outdone itself this week, awarding dating company eHarmony a patent covering online matchmaking. In patentese, US patent no. 6,735,568 describes a computer implemented method for ‘identifying people who are likely to have a successful relationship! Remind me of a talking head song: "I got love for sale....."