AuburnCom Weblog

and boy is it great. Today’s software update for the iPhone brought with it a couple of really nice new features and the Wifi pickup seems to be twice as strong as before, I had a list of over twenty wireless networks at one point today. But the really great feature is the ability to access iTunes from the iPhone and make quick purchases, to illustrate how easy it is, search for “Car Crash” by Matt Nathanson on your iPhone or iPod touch, the single will preview really quickly, and if you tap buy, after tapping once more to confirm, your iPhone will download the song straight to your iPhone.Once you reconnect with your iTunes library later in the day, iTunes will transfer your newly acquired song to your library, it’s easy and fun and may be enough to keep iTunes market dominance growing despite Amazon’s spectacular entry to the digital music business. 

A sample of one of our tutorials:  

Obviously, to use this, you’re going to have to have a mac with at least Tiger, and a copy of VisualHub.Let’s say you’ve got your iPhone, your mac with Tiger, and a copy of VisualHub.

First, you need to be able to script VisualHub. To do that, you’re going to have to download this special script dictionary.Next you’re going to install this script library. To do so you need to…

To learn more, call or email Brendan at AuburnCom 415-871-9683 for expert Mac advice and tutorials.   

OS X began the use of using it’s development code names as marketing tools with verion 10.2 (Jaguar), prior editions were marketed as Version 10 and Version 10.1 while engineers and developers referred to these versions by their project or code names, Version 10 was code named internally as Cheetah and Version 10.1 was known internally as Puma.
We know from Wikipedia entries that Apple’s marketing team decided to use the code name Jaguar after huge buzzprior to the release of 10.2. 10.3 was then marketed as Panther and 10.4 as Tiger. By now, people have heard that the impending version of 10.5 is known as Leopard, in fact, Leopard is a much more familiar name for the upcoming release.
A client today suggested we may see Ocelot as the name for the Leopard’s successor, an eduacated guess and a most interesing name for the next iteration of OS X, the truth however, may be more mundane, Trademark filings show Apple has trademarks already on two neat names, Lynx and Cougar.

With all of that cleared up, we can speculate that Apple wouldn’t use sequential code names beginning with the same letter, namely L, thereby giving us the probable code name (and marketing name) of 10.6, Cougar.

The future of OS X is wide open though, viewers of the wonderful high definition nature series will have gained glimpses of some of the most impressive and elusive big cats roaming this planet, can anyone comment here on what names they expect or think we might see?

Macworld is an enticing, exciting oppurtunity to see Apple’s new products and developments, Steve Jobs always provides an exciting Keynote, and last year, visitors were treated to the amazing iPhone revelation which made the whole week very exciting.

There’s lots of after parties, connections, and discounts on great Mac accessories and software to be had so run over to the website and grab your four day pass for just $25!

Via TUAW

I am happy to report that registration for Macworld 2008, happening in San Francisco January 14 through the 19th, 2008, is open.
If you register before October 5th you can get a free Exhibit pass (using Priority Code: 08-E-VF01) or special rates for the higher end passes (which allow you into the various classes and labs offered at the Conference).

The environmentally friendly way to watch and listen to home and mobile entertainment has been the digital way for several years now.

I’ll set clients iTunes configurations to automatically import and eject and CD that gets inserted into their Mac, this ensures that the CD Drive motor spins for a maximum of five minutes to convert the audio into digital mp3’s or aac’s on the hard drive, thereby saving the rotations that would be used up if the CD played the standard way, that is, the CD spins around and around for about 60 minutes a la LP’s.

I also endorse this method of Rip now, watch later to DVD’s and video, where a DVD has been purchased, the responsible and energy efficient practice is to rip the DVD using HandBrake and adding the movie or video to iTunes, this can take anywhere from twenty minutes to eight hours for an older Macintosh, however, the benefits are vast. You’ll put your dvd safely away in it’s case post Rip and watch your movie from iTunes, your iPod (Nano, Classic or Touch), your iPhone, your Apple TV, or you can even post it to your personal web space for watching when you’re without any of these things (or if you’d like your girlfriend or family to see the movie).

Ripping DVD’s using handbrake not only, saves energy, wears your Superdrive down less, makes the video portable, protects your original DVD copy and is cool, but also, eliminates any Region Coding that DVD’s may have on them. For example, say you’re in Milan and buy a copy of the wonderful Romanze Criminale DVD, unavailable most everywhere else, this movie is one of Italian cinema’s masterpieces, when you arrive home in California, your Mac informs you that “Hey, your Superdrive will only play Region 1 (American) DVD’s”, sure you can change this to European Region or Asian Region, etc. but you can only change this five times, so after watching Romanze Criminale, you switch back to American to watch a classic Woody Allen DVD and then back to Italian region next week to watch a collector edition Fellini you just bought in Genoa. Pretty soon you can’t change your region anymore!
Enter Handbrake, the one stop shop for converting DVD’s to local video files that will play on your Mac, iPod, iPhone, MacBook, Apple TV or the web.
Try out Handbrake and you’ll be saving the planet as well as carrying Fellini, Romanzo Criminale, and, Woody Allens great movies all on your gorgeous iPod. You’ll never think about Region Coding again!

These UFO’s are zapping away some of the webs finest sites, see here

On this evenings Podcast; making money from blogging, how to get friendly with Nasa, and what your eyes say about you…

 

 Google Plane, Making Money from Blogging and Eyes [11:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Blocking out ads makes your web pages load 50% faster, graphical ads take up an average of half the total size of a web page and sometimes much much more.

To beat the advertising blues, follow this great tutorial by Neil Lee, it gives you a super lightweight and simple way to not see the ads that fill up a lot of our favorite pages, Nytimes, SFgate and others. And it works for the best browser on earth, Safari, as well as Firefox and OmniWeb.

A common occurence, a Mac at home, an XP PC at work and a Palm or Treo for travelling with, many people have other portable devices including Razr’s, Blackberry’s, Windows Mobile devices and iPhones. (Psst, this site uses iwPhone theme so looks awesome on an iPhone, if you’re using Wordpress, look up iwPhone and plug it in)

To keep your calendars in sync across these devices, the first thing to do is decide which computer will be your primary (or master) computer.

Second, you’ll only sync your device with this master computer.

Thirdly to do some transparent synching between Google Calendar and iCal or iCal compatible calendars, you’ll need either Spanning Sync or an open source alternative that’s also free called GCAL daemon.

If you’d like a few tips regards San Francisco, here goes:

You can reserve a Super Shuttle from either of the big airports to wherever you want to go from these guys: http://www.supershuttle.com/ , it’s a really good service and a pretty good way to do the 20/30 min journey.

There are a bunch of interesting and beautiful neighbourhoods in San Francisco, the most famous district is Fishermans Wharf where you can take ferries to Alcatraz or Sausalito (the little bayside village on the north side of the gg bridge).

Haight Ashbury is really close to where I live and is the legendary home of the 60’s hippie revolution, it’s full of vintage and funky stores and is quite fun.

Coit Tower, Yerba Buena Island, The Presidio, Golden Gate Bridge, North Beach and Twin Peaks are all nice spots to see and will be super memories, a great way to catch a lot of these in one day is to bike from Fishermans Wharf along the north shore, past the famous Fort Mason and Marina District through Crissy fields and by the Palace of Fine arts as far as Fort Point (a great viewpoint thats just below the Golden Gate Bridge), that would be a one or two hour ride, with plenty of nice places to get Ice Cream along the way, if your legs can take some more, it’s totally worth biking up the trail to the golden gate bridge entrance where you can bike across to the Marin Headlands, there’s a good vista point just beyond the end of the bridge, but for a REALLY awesome view, continue past the vista point and take the first right, go left under the freeway and continue up the hill, it’s absolutely worth it.

Also, remember to see the Cable Cars, Transamerica Building, Vesuvio, The Mission, The Castro, Pacific Heights, the Museum of Modern Art, The De Young, the Conservatory of flowers, phew! I’m out of breath, so better run on, I hope this mail is helpful and wish you good travels!