AuburnCom Weblog

A lot of folks love Google Talk over any other instan messanger, even Adium or iChat, because of a couple of features,

one, it works in your browser with no extra software,

two, it saves all your chats, and includes their text when you search through your emails

three, it has a neat “off the record” feature that disables item two, other software like ichat is either in “always record conversations” or “never record conversations”

Well, starting today, Google talk has a slick new webapp for the iphone that gives you all your Google talk benefits right to your iPhone or iPod touch, try it out here: google.com/talk

Some Cool new stuff on iTunes today: Wall-E Soundtrack, Celebrity Playlists  Star Trek, The Original series  and elsewhere: NBC has an iPhone optimized nbc.com page, go there from your iPhone or iPod touch and you can watch full episodes of The Office, 30 Rock and more… 

Apple has initiated it’s 2008 Back to School campaign today on their site 

The bottom line of the promotion is that students who buy a Mac between now and the start of school get a free iPod touch, that’s a $299 value.

(In prior years students only got an iPod valued at $199)

In addition, students get much better pricing on their computers, MacBook Airs are only $1699(saving $230), regular MacBooks are $999 and the savings continue up to the MacBook Pro and iMac lines.

The site is nicely designed, located at http://apple.com/backtoschool and features some of Apple’s slogan writers better lines, like :

and, my favorite

Starting with today’s update to MAC OS X Leopard, 10.5.3, which should come down to your Mac automatically in the next week.

You’ll see an option in Address Book to sync your contacts with Google Contacts, this is really good news, as many client’s already are using a combination of Gmail’s great IMAP and Spam filtering combined with Apple Mail, the big issue was that Apple Mail, and your iPhone/iPod uses Mac’s own ‘Address Book’ (not to mention your iPhone and/or iPod’s contact list), wheras GMail relies on it’s own Contact database. 

Well rejoice, you can now synce the two of them up and have one unified list of your contacts accessible inside a browsear window, Apple Mail, your iPhone, iPod Touch or any other device that syncs with your Mac, Moto RazR springs to mind.

Details are here:  http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2008/05/mac-os-x-1053-sync-google-contacts.html
   

On Lewis Blacks excellent Carnegie Hall Performance (available from Amazon on CD or downloadable MP3!), jokes that while iPods are the size of credit cards and play music, they still haven’t created a good method to harness solar power, he jests “iPods are geting so small, pretty soon, you’ll just be wearing underwear and hear music playing in your ears!”And now, reports in MacWorld now say your clothing will soon be powering your electronics:  ”Professor explains Nanotech power for iPods“From the article:

“Wouldn’t it be great if you could walk down the street listening to your iPod or using your smartphone without ever worrying about the battery dying?Zhong Lin Wang, a professor and nanotechnology researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, says that within five years, you might be able to do just that. According to Wang, instead of using a battery to power phones, MP3 players and other portable devices, you could harvest the energy generated by the movement of your shirt. Yup, you read that right - a “power shirt,” which would provide users with a flexible, foldable and wearable power source.” 

Via the remarkable Steven Frank from Panic, An incredibly easy way to save videos from Daily Motion, YouTube etc…

Not extremely surprising! These devices are well suited to toting around the new HD Videos’s that iTunes is selling and renting!  

At the Apple store yesterday, I was there to get my iPhone Earbuds replaced, and, also to submit my brother in laws iPod nano for diagnosis. While waiting on their bench, I spoke to the girl beside me, after telling me that her current iPod nano with video is ‘not syncing’, after going to the bar she came over and showed me the brand new replacement model they’d given her. Just like that. My turn came, and though my brother in laws iPod Nano is thirteen days out of warranty, they diagnosed it as dead,  and still offered to replace it!Over and over again I’m impressed with the high level of customer service Apple provides.  

Brendan

I was given a card to get free tracks off itunes, with a download code.I’ve asked people to download them for me but they say it can’t betransferred to another computer or MP3 player.Can you confirm this? there’s no way for me to get those? (unless Iinstall itunes on one of my computer and listen to those tracks onlythere, which sounds ridiculouis…)thx!

Approximately 10% of the entire iTunes music store is now DRM free, which means that it will play on ANY computer or Device that you like, these songs are labeled iTunes Plus, and display a small plus sign (+) next to them, almost every song on the EMI record label, as well as many many songs from independent labels are in this format. But, the other labels, Sony, Warner, and Universal are not allowing their music to be sold in this DRM free format that allows you to choose your own player, be it iRiver, Creative, Palm, Blackberry or any of the 100’s of music players out there.
I believe quite a few of the cards with free tracks on them are indeed these “Free” tracks, one reason they do this is to make happy kittens, and the other is so kitties can become aware of this DRM issue and make trouble for the silly record companies that don’t allow DRM free sales. 
So, go ahead and claim your free songs, if, for some reason they are restricted to play only in iTunes and won’t play in your Linux/Windows wonderland (free from silly fruit symbols) then simply burn a cd from iTunes, that will liberate your songs to the old fashioned CD format and remove that pesky DRM, you can then rip to any operating system, be it Unix, BeOS, Ubuntu, Windows 95 or Microsoft Ultimate Limited Super Exclusive Signature Vista Premium Edition

An Apple certified evangelist is awaiting your phone call to help you get the most out of your Mac. Certified by Apple in OS X support, I provide consultations on Panther, Jaguar, Tiger and the amazing New Leopard operating system. Would you like it to do more for you? automate your calendar events, simplify your music collection, handle the party music for your elaborate home audio system.

or lets talk about video, I evangelise the Apple TV, apple’s great product that brings your entire iTunes library to your living room, your bedroom, in fact any rooms in fact you’d like to listen to the large music library that you’ve spent so much time building, wouldn’t it be great to play all that music from the comfort of your living room couch? Call for a example of it’s usefulness.

Mac Hardware, software and Networking is all under our microscope, Apple has certified us as experts and we are so happy to bring this expertise to you.

AuburnCom is a registered San Francisco company with clients from Marin county, Sausalito, Yerba Buena island, the city of San Francisco and as far south as Daly City, we make house calls to the East Bay, and ship replacement and upgrade superdrives to faraway states including Texas and Massachusettes.

Call us on 415-871-9683, email brendan@auburncom.com or visit http://www.auburncom.com to find out more about us or how we can make things better and easier for you.