Macgasm

We don’t live in a world of AOL Instant Messenger, MSN, and Yahoo anymore. The kids these days like the Facebooks, the Googles, and the marijuana cigarettes. Okay, maybe just the first two. In any case, old fogies like myself like the idea of having a dedicated client for instant messaging. Luckily, we can stay connected with the hip kids by linking Google Talk and Facebook Chat to iChat.

Google Talk Setup

Google Talk is very easy. Luckily, Apple has implemented all of the special sauce into iChat already.

1) Launch iChat, and go to the Accounts pane in the application preferences.

2) Click the + symbol to add an account.

3) Select “Google Talk” from the drop-down menu, and then enter your Gmail account and password. You’re done.

Facebook Chat Setup

Facebook, unfortunately, is slightly less straight forward. Just follow the steps, and you’ll be fine.

1) Launch iChat, and go to the Accounts pane in the application preferences.

2) Click the + symbol to add an account.

3) Select “Jabber” from the drop-down menu, and the enter YOURFACEBOOKUSERNAME@chat.facebook.com into the Account Name field. Your password is needed too.

4) Press the arrow to reveal the server settings. Now enter chat.facebook.com in the Server field, and enter “5222″ in the Port field.

5) Make sure the SSL check box is unchecked. That’s it.

It’s not that hard to get your favorite chat methodologies working in iChat. If you can follow these instructions, you’ll be fine.

The usual suspects are starting to get their invitations to Apple’s special event, which is officially being held on September 1, 2010. A whole week sooner than Bloomberg thought it would be. Mum’s the word on what they’re going to be releasing, but it’s pretty obvious from the invitations that the event is going to be focusing on music and the iPod lineup.

Everyone expects that they’ll also make other announcements regarding the Apple TV, iOS, and possibly white iPhones, but to be honest we’ve got no idea what they’re going to be announcing. If I was a betting man, I’d play it safe and stick with a new iPod Touch with Retina display, and cameras, but that’s speculation at best.

We’ll be covering the event when it happens, so mark September 1 off on your calendar, and book us in now, just in case you forget.

Article Via TechCrunch

Is there nothing sacred anymore? Ads are everywhere, and while I understand that advertising is the only way a lot of people make money these days, there’s one medium where I’m not even remotely interested in seeing them — books. I don’t want to see ads in print, in ebooks or ibooks, or in the middle of blog posts. Copy should be readable, uninterrupted, and as clean as is humanly possible. The moment an iAd shows up in an iBook I’m packing it in, giving up on e-readers, and never, ever going back.  The Wall Street Journal has some interesting speculation about the possibility of including iAds in iBooks, but it still makes me feel all queazy inside.

I’m not even remotely joking about this. I can’t think of one single situation where an advertisement in a book is remotely plausible. If anyone could make the advertisement unobtrusive, it would be Apple, but I’m still not willing to go down that road.

There’s one exception that I might be willing to consider and it’s advertising carried out in the way books currently do it today — an advert on the first and last page and that’s it. If the advertisement was for other books in the book store, a discount on a print edition of the iBook, or something similar, I might be willing to let it slide. But only in that case, and I certainly won’t be happy if I occasionally get an advertisement bar, iAd bar, or popup in the middle of my reading.

What would you be willing to embrace?

Article Via TUAW

A motorcycle enthusiast  went for a ride on his bike with his Macbook Pro in his backpack. During his ride, the zipper on his backpack somehow got unzipped, and his beloved Macbook fell out of his bag while he was riding at a speed of 195 miles per hour.

It was a nice Sunday afternoon and the boys wen out for a ride… on some damn powerful motorcycles… One of them took his brand new MabBook Pro 13? on his standard back pack… When testing the bike at 315km/h [195mph], the backpack zip started to fail… and all of the sudden, the macbook flew trough the air… landing on the side of the road, beginning a series of turns and crushes from about 150 meters… while being torn apart.

The aluminum casing is completely bent and pretty much destroyed. But, all hope is not lost yet, because his Macbook still boots when connected to an external monitor!

The best part… we try to make it work again…. and we could!!!
the hard disk, motherboard and superdrive survived! and with an external monitor, keyboard/mouse and new ddr3 memory modules… it booted!!

Well, what can I say? You got extremely lucky here, but just remember to never bring your Macbook with you when you’re out on your bike trying to impress all the ladies.

Article & Images via OS X Daily

A British women destroyed a speed typing record on her Samsung Galaxy S using the Swype keyboard alternative, setting a time of 25.94 seconds. She walked in off the street, Swyped away on her keyboard and cranked out, “the razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.” Mission accomplished, until yesterday when an iPhone user took Melissa Thompson to task on YouTube.

Brian Sweet, with an iPhone 4 in hand, managed to take Thompson to task and accomplished the same feat in 21.8 seconds. The funny thing about this whole challenge is that Apple users hate it when Android users go around making grandiose claims based on half-truths, so it’s nice to see someone putting the smack talkers in their place a little. Dare we even say, OW3ND!

The touch keyboard is not a detriment to the iPhone as many Blackberry users might believe. Sure, after using one for a week it might still feel clunky and challenged, but you adapt and carry on, and it works well.

Video Evidence

Article Via MacRumors

Image Credit: William Hook

Another week, another patent lawsuit. This time, a Malaysian company StreetSpace has filed a lawsuit against Apple, Google, and their recently acquired mobile ad companies Quattro Wireless and AdMob, for violating U.S. Patent 6,847,969 which details a “Method and System for Providing Personalized Online Services and Advertisements in Public Places.”

You may have seen StreetSpace’s “Web Station” public internet terminals around California, in place since 1999. StreetSpace also provides web-based network management software that allows remote content delivery to the WebStations over the network, with the ability to analyze location, user profiles, and usage history, and thusly deliver personalized content. StreetSpace believes that its intellectual property rights are being trampled by Apple and Google with their mobile devices and ad services.

Now looking at the product, and comparing a web kiosk to a handheld iPhone or Android phone seems a bit of a stretch. Even throwing in location based services into the mix, I’ll take a wild guess here and assume that the WebStations aren’t meant to be moved around. Their location is fixed, and the way you use it is totally different from how you use a mobile device that goes with you wherever you are. I’ll be surprised if this lawsuit goes anywhere.

Release the lawyers!

Article via InformationWeek
Image via StreetSpace

If you’ve been reading our site for a while now, you probably remember us bringing up Apple TV television show rentals a while ago now, and we’ve even mentioned the price point. So, it’s not really big news now that Bloomberg has gone ahead and posted the rumour. It’s a slow news day, and these things kind of happen from time to time, but what’s caught my attention is that they’ve even gone ahead and listed September 7th as the day of the event, something no one else has even guessed at to date.

It falls in line with the traditional “iPod Event” Apple plans every single year, so they aren’t really going out on a limb predicting it. If this part of the rumour is true, we will probably start hearing about teaser laced invitations any day now.

So now back to the original rumour: 99 cent rentals in the iTunes store for television content. Bloomberg says that individual episodes will be on iTunes within 24 hours of airing on traditional networks, they’ll be commercial free, and they’ll be ready for the fall season. Oh yeah, and they’ll be streamed through the Apple TV instead of downloaded in the traditional manner. We’re sure the internet service providers will LOVE that.  It seems like a forgone conclusion at this point, and we’d be surprised if something along these lines doesn’t happen in September.  I’m actually pretty excited about the possibility. It’s the first time that I’ve considered replacing my Mac Mini with an AppleTV as my media centre machine.

What does Apple have to do to get you excited about the Apple TV again?  For meit’s iOS, but how about you?

Update: @npann on twitter noticed that September 7th is also the day that the current iPod Touch promotion for back-to-school students ends.  It doesn’t make much sense for Apple to end it on the day they release new ones.   He suggested that the event might actually be a week or two later. An interesting find, and he might just be right.

Article Via Bloomberg

Apple has released a security update for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard users. This is not unheard of by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a bit odd to release a security update for the latest version of OS X that is not also rolled into a point release of the OS.

There are 12 vulnerabilities addressed that affect seven different areas of the Mac OS X software. These areas are ‘Apple Type Services,’ ‘CFNetwork,’ ‘ClamAV,’ ‘CoreGraphics,’ ‘libsecurity,’ ‘PHP,’ and ‘SAMBA.’

Of these 12 vulnerabilities, four affect Mac OS X 10.5.8 client users, five affect Mac OS X 10.5.8 server users, seven affect Mac OS X 10.6.4 client users, and all of the vulnerabilities affect Mac OS X 10.6.4 server users.

One notable flaw that is fixed is the vulnerability with Apple Type Services, which may lead to a buffer overflow when using embedded fonts. This is similar to the iOS fixes for the ‘jailbreakme.com’ hack.

A second notable flaw is fixed by updating PHP to 5.3.2 on Mac OS X 10.6.4 client and 10.6.4 server, which removes multiple vulnerabilities in PHP 5.3.1,. This is good for those who are using MediaWiki, as there is an issue with PHP version 5.3.1 and the latest MediaWiki update that this security update fixes.

This update is only available for Mac OS X 10.6.4 and Mac OS X 10.5.8 users. If you’re using a version other than this, you will need to update to the latest version to obtain the security update.

Updates are available from the Mac OS X Software Update Utility or by following one of these links:

Mac OS X 10.5.8 Client update is 211.88MB.

Mac OS X 10.5.8 Server update is 418.92MB.

Mac OS X 10.6.4 Client update is only 80.63MB.

Mac OS X 10.6.4 Server update is 136.86MB.

All previous updates have been included, hence the discrepancy in the file sizes. It is a good idea to download the update, but it will require a reboot, so head off and start your downloads now.