Vodafone's just got a tiny, minor, insignificant announcement to make this morning: it's signed with Apple to sell the iPhone in ten markets, including Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy (so much for Telecom Italia), India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey. Expect the phone later this year -- that's all we know for now. Score one (or ten?) for Voda.
AT&T's free Starbucks Wi-Fi for iPhone usersdeal didn't last very long. Users on the MacRumors forum say that locations where Wi-Fi worked just days ago now have the free iPhone access removed. Considering AT&T never made an official mention of the service, it's possible somebody at the Death Star jumped the gun and the mistake has been corrected. Or maybe the company found out that a simple hack would let anybody with a friend's iPhone number get a free ride.
Well, there are likely to be about 174 people in Elk Grove, CA who may be a little miffed with Apple. The company has decided to shift jobs from their facility there, about 122 miles northwest of Cupertino, to a location in Austin, Texas. Elk Grove employs over 1,100 workers, primarily in support positions: call center, warehousing, and distribution. The jobs in question are telesales positions, including 99 online store reps, 19 customer service tech support reps, and 37 of those lovely people who will chat with you online when you’re feeling lonely. On the upside, they’ve been offered the option to apply for a new position at Elk Grove or keep their existing jobs and relocate to lovely Ausin (I hear it’s pretty nice, if you don’t mind the yearly invasion of mild pretension). It is kind of a long trip, though.
via MacUser
What are your thoughts? Will Apple create multiple iPhones tailored for different users, just as they have for the iPod and MacBook lines?
Time Capsule combined with Time Machine is a great way to backup your files, but a horrible way to protect them in cases of fire or theft. Odds are, any natural disaster that takes down your computer will likely destroy a Time Capsule sitting a couple feet from it, and odds are if someone breaks into your house to steal your expensive computer, they’ll grab the Time Capsule as well. Macminicolo, the company that currently offers off-site Mac mini and Xserve hosting, has come up with the solution to this backup problem with their new Transport service. Basically, you buy a Time Capsule from them (or send in your own Time Capsule), and they store your Time Machine backup securely off-site in Sin City, Las Vegas. And as we all know, data that is sent to Vegas STAYS in Vegas, right? 
The service sounds pretty cool, actually, as the hosted Time Capsule appears and functions as if it were connected to your machine locally. All Time Capsule’s features remain intact, so you can set up multiple users, password protect the data, etc, and you use the AirPort admin to set it up.
So, how much does all this peace of mind cost? Prices start at $29/month for 50 GB of bandwidth per month, and go up depending on options (that doesn’t include the $299 or $499 cost of the Time Capsule, of course). Of course, Macminicolo realizes your first Time Machine backup session alone might exceed 50 GB, so during the first month of service they give you 300 GB of bandwidth to do your initial Time Capsule backup/sync.
So, is it worth it? That all depends on what you are storing on your Mac. Personally the most important things on my computer are my digital photos, and I already have a “low tech” off-site storage plan in effect (I burn DVDs of all my photos and keep them at my office). While it would suck to loose everything else on my computer, the photos are the big thing that I would never forgive myself for losing, and more importantly, my WIFE would never forgive me for losing (or let me hear the end of). So for married men with kids, a wife, and a ton of digital photos, odds are it’s a small price to pay.
via Maceinstein
After years of wanting to, I finally submitted a Cool Tools entry, and my friend Steve Leckart edited it for me. It's about using a spare Playstation cable, which one of the smart readers at KK.org recognized as a IEC C7 cord, instead of the nub or grounded garden hose that comes with a Mac Laptop.
It's confirmed. Apple will release all new movies from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment and First Look Studios on the same day as their DVD release, for $14.99. Full press release after the jump.
Now that AT&T has full control of wireless hotspots like Starbucks and Barnes and Nobles, it looks like they're doling out freebies to their favorite customers: iPhone users. Apparently, if you've got one of Apple's devices, you can hop on the WiFi networks for exactly zero dollars provided you enter your phone number at a login screen. Great for iPhone owners, but a raw deal for everyone else, right? Not so fast, apparently a dumb hack gets you the service on the house too -- just switch your browser's user agent to Mobile Safari, and presto! Free internet. We can't imagine this is a hole that won't get plugged real fast, so get it while the gettin's good.
Yeah, we too are hoping that these overseas impostors will have to start changing up their game if they still want to ape the iPhone in just a few months, but as it stands, the Toggolino Phone actually does a fantastic job of shaming itself. Apparently this handset, er, device comes packaged with some form of German kit meant to teach kinder a few things about words, animals and the equitable distribution of wealth throughout social classes. Okay, so maybe that last bit isn't in there, but seriously, those animal apps look way more interesting than stocks, weather and company email.
On the surface, the new iMacs just look like a speed bump, there's actually something pretty interesting under the number splooge: 
While you can argue that Windows Mobile is feature-for-feature and spec-for-spec superior to OS X on the iPhone, Apple's mobile UI is certainly more fun to use. So if you're running WinMo with a hankerin' for rubber band-like scrolling, jiggly icons, screen flicking, SummerBoard themes, and even simulated multi-touch pinching of photos then you're in luck. Flick Software Research is set to release its iSwish interface and iZoom pinch software in beta come "early May." Hey Flick, here's a hint: Dell Axim != sexy demo hardware... or maybe that's the point. See the action after the break.Continue reading Video: iSwish puts the iPhone UI on any Windows Mobile phone
While greeted with heaps of initial skepticism, forum jockeys over at OQO Talk now seem convinced that a junior member by the name of TRF has successfully hacked the OQO to run OS X Leopard. Adding a video filmed by Mr. Blurry Cam didn't hurt the cause. TRF's OQO is setup in a dual-boot Vista / OS X mode which boots Leopard in about 2 minutes and 30 seconds. WiFi, sound, power management and Bluetooth... it's all there with applications popping with serious snap. The only thing missing at the moment is WWAN access which TRF is now testing. While not yet a "plug and play" hack, it's "definitely doable," he says. Perhaps, but we'll need more details to say the least. Video excerpt posted after the break.Engadget: Continue reading Video: OQO hacked to run Leopard, now world's smallest Mac
We've already seen the MacBook Air bathed in gold and crystals, but it seems that people just can't leave well enough alone, with the folks at Computer Choppers (no strangers to gilded Macs) only the latest to spare no expense in taking the laptop to heights of tackiness that no one from Cupertino would ever dare dream of. That includes 24kt gold plating over the entire laptop and, in a final stake through El Jobso's heart, an Apple logo ensconced in multi-colored sapphires -- not to mention a polished gold SuperDrive to go along with it. If your eyes can take it, you can find a few more pics in the gallery below.
Remote - The remote is very familiar to anyone with a new Mac or iPod dock, it is simple and works well. Still, a couple more buttons might make it a little easier to use for simple things like volume control (which the Apple TV can't do) or turning the unit off without having to hold the pause button down for a little while. One interesting bit about the remote is you have the option to pair it with your Apple TV. Each Apple Remote has a unique ID that it sends out in IR before its command (yes, this is learnable for smart remotes). If you have multiple Apple Remotes, you can make sure you don't accidentally wake your computer when using your ATV. Definitely a nice touch.
Delicious Library allows you to catalog, browse, and share all your books, movies, music, and video games. When version 1.0 first arrived on Mac OS X, it set a new standard for user experience and redefined user expectations for this category of software. Written using Objective-C 2.0, Delicious Library 2.0 (alpha), which is currently not available, uses a slew of new Leopard technologies to do more with less, such as:
Coda is a unique web development environment that offers a complete file browser (both locally and remotely), publishing, full-featured text editor, WebKit-based preview, CSS editor with visual tools, full-featured terminal, built-in reference material, and much more. Coda is the Mac's first one-window Web development application that integrates numerous modules into one cohesive user experience. Coda is a great Mac OS X citizen and integrates technologies such as:
CSSEdit has a polished and focused Aqua interface that sports flexible tabs, intuitive visual editors, and exhibits extreme attention to detail. CSSEdit offers real-time styling for absolutely any web page using technologies in a variety of ways:
World of Warcraft is the world's #1 Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) with over eight and a half million current subscribers. Players adventure together in an enormous, persistent game world, forming friendships, slaying monsters, and engaging in epic quests that can span days or weeks. The Burning Crusade, the first expansion pack for World of Warcraft, continues to be highly optimized for Mac OS X technologies such as multi-threaded OpenGL. The implementation of multi-threaded OpenGL utilizes the multiple cores found in every Mac, and brings a performance gain of 2X. Other Mac OS X technologies used, include:
Scientists have been waiting for a solution like Papers for years, and now it's finally here—exclusively on Mac OS X. Written entirely in Cocoa by two part-time programmers, Papers helps scientists and researchers organize their personal library of scientific articles. It also provides a completely new workflow for reading scientific articles with the ability to search for literature through the built-in access to the PubMed search engine, the major source of scientific research in the biomedical domain. Papers offers downloading, archiving, reading, and sharing PDFs all within a gorgeous user interface.
Papers uses a host of Mac OS X technologies, including:
The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) widget allows commuters to plan trips on the BART subway system in the San Francisco Bay Area. Users can glance at the widget to see when the next trains are coming, or explore the BART system in space and time. This widget isn't just a web front-end and it doesn't require a network connection since, after all, there is no network connection in many train stations. It has schedule data built in, and uses integrated routing and scheduling algorithms to calculate the fastest trips.
The BART widget replaces simpler, traditional web interfaces with a more intuitive design incorporating direct manipulation, immediate feedback, and speech synthesis to inform users of arriving or departing trains. In addition, it makes extensive use of the Canvas element and its related methods for the trip timeline and maps, and AJAX and Javascript for the rest of its capabilities — is an excellent example of how much value a widget can provide.
Picturesque is a batch image beautifier with a simple, modern, drag-and-drop interface. Picturesque easily enhances the aesthetics of images with such tasteful effects as reflections, glows, shadows, curves, strokes and fades. Picturesque shines in its ability to apply all of its included effects on multiple images in batch mode. Designers can save significant amounts of time by beautifying all their images at once using Picturesque's Automator and AppleScript support.
Written by two students, entirely in Cocoa, Picturesque takes full advantage of Cocoa drawing and Core Graphics to provide beautiful image effects, and Cocoa scripting to make all image properties in Picturesque fully AppleScriptable. This scriptability opens the door for nine Automator actions allowing users to achieve gorgeous results in a fully automated manner.
