longofest

With today's introduction of Thunderbolt by Intel and new MacBook Pros from Apple featuring the technology, long-standing questions regarding how the technology would be implemented are finally coming to rest. Intel just held a media event to provide additional details on the technology, and CNET provided a live blog of the event. True to recent developments, Thunderbolt is initially being...

Apple has announced via an email to MobileMe members that pages created with the legacy .Mac Homepage web application will cease to be viewable online as of November 8, 2010. Dear MobileMe member, Over a year ago, we retired the .Mac HomePage application for publishing new pages, but allowed previously published pages to remain viewable on the web. On November 8, 2010, we will discontinue...

AMD announced yesterday (via IDG News/Businessweek) that it will be dropping the ATI brand and will attach the AMD name to the Radeon, FirePro and Eyefinity offerings. ATI's graphics products have long been used in Apple's Macintosh line, most recently with the 2010 Mac Pro and the Radeon HD 5870 Card. AMD acquired ATI in 2006, but has kept the ATI brand until now. The company says the...

ID8-Mobile today announced the MoGo Talk XD for iPhone 4, claiming to be the Worlds thinnest and only high-performance Bluetooth headset + protective case system. According to ID8-Mobile, one of the major challenges for bluetooth headset users is keeping their headset handy with their phone without constantly wearing it. Their solution is the MoGo Talk XD for iPhone 4, an integrated...

There is renewed concern today over iOS security after a website-based jailbreaking tool was released for iOS 4 for iPhone and iPod touch and iOS 3.2 for iPad. While the jailbreak appears to be a relatively benevolent attack against a security hole in iOS, concern remains that there is a yet-unpatched and largely unidentified security vulnerability in iOS that hackers could use in a similar ...

In celebration of the 30th Anniversary of Pac-Man, Google has released a playable Pac-Man game "doodle" on their front page in place of their traditional logo. Written in Javascript, the game is playable on iPhone OS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) using swipe gestures. iPhone and iPod Touch users may need to switch over to "classic" from "mobile" (located at the bottom of the...

Apple has updated their WWDC website to indicate that the event has sold out. The event took only 8 days to sell out after being officially announced last week. WWDC 2010 will take place June 7-11 and is expected to focus intensively on the iPhone OS platform. Apple is widely expected to introduce its new iPhone hardware during a keynote address at the event, although the device has...

Almost as soon as we were ushered into the age of modern driving with the invention of the automobile we entered the age of distracted driving with the inventions of shiny things to keep us distracted: let it be the car radio or more recently the cell phone. Recent research by the National Safety Council on distracted driving has shown that cell phone usage when driving can cause a driver to...

Apple announced on Monday that it had sold over 300,000 iPads on the first day of sales. MacRumors has since heard from a believable source that Apple has already hit over 750,000 in sales. Apple is set to preview iPhone OS 4 tomorrow, and we may hear a formal update to sales figures at the...

Just in time for the iPad's release tomorrow, Apple has approved an update to Amazon's Kindle application to include support for the iPad (iTunes link). The Kindle app is optimized for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, providing users the ability to read Kindle books using a beautiful, easy-to-use interface. You can discover and read over 450,000 books in the Kindle Store, including the latest...

Consumer Reports today released its most recent survey of more than 50,000 readers that found only 54 percent of respondents were completely or very satisfied with their cell-phone service (regardless of network). In a press release Consumer Reports notes that despite smarter phones, more flexible plans, and faster wireless networks, cell service continues to be among the lower-rated of all the...

In a brief press release today, RadioShack announced that it will begin selling the iPhone starting with the Dallas-Fort Worth and New York City markets later this month. RadioShack plans to sell the iPhone across the U.S. in 2010. "As part of its ongoing mobility strategy, RadioShack is pleased to announce that it will introduce Apple's iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in a limited number of...

Multiple reports have come in that Apple is researching RFID integration into the iPhone, but some may still be wondering what such functionality would bring to the table for consumers. Firstly, we should note that RFID is a catch-all term that describes a vast array of technologies and standards. RFID tags can be relatively large and battery-powered, such as ones used in toll collection, to...

Apple today officially announced that more than 100,000 apps are now available from the App Store. "The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for...

As part of the iPhone/iPod Touch 3.1 Software update released yesterday during Apple's rock and roll event, Mobile Safari gained anticipated anti-phishing features currently present in its desktop version. However, security firm Intego is criticizing the feature's inconsistency as being worse than if the feature hadn't been included at all. We've had a number of people test [the anti-phishing...

In another seemingly controversial App Store approval decision, Apple has forced iPhone developers to remove functionality that allows users to "free memory" on demand. While third parties are limited from developing background applications for the iPhone, Apple allows their applications such as the iPod, Safari, and Mail applications to continue to run. After prolonged use, these background...

Apple today announced that Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard will go on sale Friday, August 28 at Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apple's online store is now accepting pre-orders. "Snow Leopard builds on our most successful operating system ever and we're happy to get it to users earlier than expected," said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of Software...

Apple today announced the launch of the iTunes Store in Mexico. Continuing Apple's tradition of providing international stores with localized collections, the Mexican store features local artists including Paulina Rubio, Vicente Fernndez and Zo and a wide range of international artists including Shakira, Lady Gaga, Green Day and thousands more. "The iTunes Store in Mexico is off to a great start...

Speaking to attendees of the MobileBeat 2009 conference in San Francisco yesterday, Google Engineering vice president Vic Gundotra predicted that the Web would prevail as the dominant mobile application development platform despite the huge success of Apple's App Store (via Financial Times). According to Gundotra the harsh economics of maintaining multiple platform-specific copies of...

Microsoft has officially launched Silverlight 3, the latest major update to their web media platform. New features in Silverlight 3 include the addition of H.264/AAC codec support and "Smooth Streaming" which "dynamically detects and seamlessly switches, in real time, the video quality of a media file delivered to Silverlight based on local bandwidth and CPU conditions." Full-screen...