Nike + iPod = surveillance
If you enhance your workout with the new Nike + iPod Sport Kit, you may be making yourself a surveillance target. A report from four University of Washington researchers to be released Thursday reveals that security flaws in the new RFID-powered device from Nike and Apple make it easy for tech-savvy stalkers, thieves and corporations to track your movements. With just a few hundred dollars and a little know-how, someone could even plot your running routes on a Google map without your knowledge.
Matrox announced that its DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go peripherals now support the Macintosh. The devices are small external boxes that connect to the Mac’s display output, and enable it to work with either two or three displays simultaneously. The DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go cost $169 and $299 respectively, and are available now.
Michael writes: "For every Apple product we see on the shelves, there are dozens that never make it to production. Sometimes, these rare gems surface on the web for us to take a look at, and ponder what might have been. Scouring through the interweb, I’ve compiled 
The ImageIO framework, introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, allows applications to read and write popular image file formats. ImageIO works in conjunction with Quartz and is designed for maximum performance, convienient metadata access, and color management. As the definitive way to access image data on Mac OS X, you should consider using ImageIO in your application as a high-performance substitute for Image Importers or other image handling libraries. This article gets you started working with ImageIO, shows how to read and write data to and from Quartz, and points to some of the capabilities in working with Core Image that you can explore further on your own. 
In this two-hour lesson, you'll learn how to create and deliver custom installation packages for Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server and describe the differences between packages and metapackages.
Since its retail debut on Nov. 15, customer interest in Zune has been lackluster, analysts report. Early reviews of the product have been less than stellar as well. According to a research note published Tuesday by PiperJaffray senior research analyst Gene Munster, only 8 percent of 40 retailers surveyed by the firm recommend the Zune to customers, while 75 percent recommend Apple's iPod.
Beginning in January of 2007, Future Media Concepts will offer Apple Pro-Certified training courses. These nine courses are designed to help IT professionals unlock the potential of Mac OS X 10.4 for professional use and aid systems administrators in utilizing the many powerful features of Mac OS X Server.
Apple researchers have apparently have built a full working prototype of a Mac tablet PC and three Companies in Taiwan are now costing a product for a potential launch in mid 2007. Sources in Taiwan have said that the focus has been more on the home and the education environment than the enterprise marketplace.
If you take a lot of photos, having them organized on your workstation may be a challenge. Fortunately, there are bloggers out there with the same problem and one of them wrote a good article on the subject so do check it out. He also provides some sound advice on backup, I like the man! :)
The "Month of Kernel Bugs" strikes again. At the beginning of the month, a security researcher known only as LMH started the project to highlight unpatched flaws that are so severe that attackers could use them to completely subvert the security of vulnerable computers. On Monday, the project's curator released instructions for targeting a serious flaw in the way Mac OS X systems processes certain types of files.
PhoneValet 5.0 also adds unlimited call trees, giving callers a logical path to access dynamic announcements. Callers can transfer to voice mail boxes or outside phone numbers as necessary while hearing music or other audio information while the transfer is taking place. Depending on how the call tree is set up, callers can be directed to specific voice mailboxes or information on weekends, at night or during lunch hours. Different lines on a call tree can also present different choices. 
Even if you're using Gmail as your primary e-mail account, there are many instances where having an offline version of all your messages is very handy. This article shows beginners how to do it.
JC writes: "For a variety of reasons, the Boot Camp Assistant sometimes fails to let you do the things you want to do. It doesn't work, for instance, if your drive is already partitioned. Many early adopters partitioned their drives before Boot Camp, hoping for an eventual dual boot solution either from Apple or elsewhere. In my case, I used Boot Camp to repartition my hard drive, then used that partition to install another copy of OS X for a test. Unfortunately, Boot Camp Assistant refused to reclaim that partition when I was done. That's 20GB down the drain!"
The Macintosh versions of the Adobe Flash Player 9 Update are now available from Adobe. Adobe Flash Player 9 Mac OS X (PowerPC) requires Mac OS X 10.1 or later.
Ask heavy users of iTunes for their biggest complaints, and you’ll soon compile a lengthy list of “I wishes"—as with any tool, the more you use it, the more things you find that it can’t do. Many users are surprised to learn that you can address many of iTunes’ power-user shortcomings, especially those relating to media and metadata management, via AppleScript.
Easily create web photo, movie, and audio galleries simply by dragging the desired files into the application. Choose from a variety of customization options like adding rotation, inversion, brightness, contrast, sepia, auto-levelling, and so much more! For a limited time you can get Gallery Designer at 50% OFF so start clicking! :)
As communication becomes more important to our lives, so does the need for automation. The Google Earth Action Pack is a set of Automator actions that makes it easy to share your view of the world with others.
Bare Bones Software released Yojimbo 1.3, the effortless information organizer, now with tagging for powerful grouping and retrieval of items stored in Yojimbo. Yojimbo 1.3 is also a maintenance release that fixes reported issues and adds several significant refinements to this reliable, effortless information organizer.
Apple laptops are hot items—particularly when they’re sitting on your lap. Does the recent switch to Core 2 Duo processors in Apple’s high-end laptops do anything to help beat the heat?
Apple is launching a new 8 GB model of the iPod nano Red Special Edition that holds up to 2,000 songs and is available for US$249, joining the 4 GB model priced at $199. The company will contribute $10 from the sale of each iPod nano Red - which comes in a red aluminum enclosure and features 24 hours of battery life - to the Global Fund to help fight HIV/AIDS in Africa.
The Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) was a collaborative initiative involving major industry players. Unfortunately, there are several aspects of trusted computing that are often misunderstood—in particular, its relationship to the controversial idea of Digital Rights Management (DRM). We will not discuss the pros and cons of trusted computing here: far too many expositions haven been written both for and against the concept. The purpose of this document is to discuss a specific piece of hardware found in certain Apple computer models: the Trusted Platform Module (TPM).
This article doesn't even attempt to try and make the hard decision of whether or not you should allow your .Mac account to expire. Actually, this article assumes you've already made that choice and presents a practical approach you can follow to get yourself on track for a smooth move to a Google-centric web experience. Getting your mail, address book, calendar, online storage, online photos, and blog squared away are among the topics we'll investigate.
This may be nothing more than a simple curiosity to most, unless you're trying to debug some subtle email problems, when some of these settings can become quite useful. Mail.app has a number of settings which allow watching of the activities it is doing.
Parallels Desktop for Mac — the software that lets Intel Mac users install and run Windows and other operating systems side-by-side along with Mac OS X — has added a new feature called Installation Assistant. The software automates the installation of Windows XP or Vista RC2. A free update for registered users, Parallels Desktop for Mac costs $79.99.
Red Sweater Software released FlexTime 1.1, an innovative timer utility for repetitive activities. FlexTime's intuitive interface focuses on the metaphor of a "routine" made up of any number of timed activities and associated "cues." FlexTime costs just $18.95 and is available as a full-featured 30 day trial download.
Using a handy Quicksilver plugin, you can access every menu item in the currently active application. It may not sound useful just yet, but do read this article for more information.
