FROM MACWORLD As widely rumored, Steve Jobs announced at Macworld Tuesday that Apple's switch to Intel processors will occur about six months earlier than previously announced. The first Macs to make the transition will be the iMac line, with the rest of the company's products moving to Intel by the end of the year.

Previously, Apple had only publicly committed to releasing Intel Macs by the middle of 2006, around the time the company holds its annual Worldwide Developer's Conference.

Continue reading →

FROM MACWORLD Apple refreshed its iWork productivity suite at Macworld on Tuesday. The package still features the Pages word processor and Keynote presentation builder, but adds support for 3D charts, advanced image editing and image reflections, tables with calculations, along with new themes and templates. iWork '06 will remain $79 and come as a 30-day trial on new Macs.

Continue reading →

FROM MACWORLDApple CEO Steve Jobs introduced a brand new iLife application in his Tuesday morning keynote for publishing photos, movies, music and blog content to .Mac. Dubbed iWeb, the program makes use of themes to quickly create a personal blog in seconds, which can be viewed in any Web browser.

Users can use the iLife browser to select content for uploading, and create iPhoto-like slideshows that appear on the site using AJAX technology. Content can be organized by simply dragging boxes around, and iWeb integrates directly into the iTunes music library as well.

Continue reading →

FROM MACWORLD As part of its $79 iLife '06 suite, Apple has updated iMovie with the ability to export video to the iPod and create video podcasts. Animated themes are also now available for movies, along with new audio adjustment tools and real time effects. iDVD has also been improved to automate the creation of DVD movies.

A new feature called Magic iDVD lets users select a theme, drag and drop videos and photos, and click one button to build a disc. Third party burners are also no supported in iDVD. GarageBand, meanwhile, has been turned into a vertiable "podcast studio," with a podcast artwork track, speech enhancer and the ability to use iChat for conducting remote interviews.

Continue reading →

FROM MACWORLD Apple on Tuesday will release Mac OS X 10.4.4, along with new Widgets from Google and ESPN. An address book and calendar Widget for Apple's Dashboard will also be available. 10.4.4 has long been rumored to be the version of Mac OS X compatible with Intel based Macs.

Apple is also issuing an update to its $79 iLife suite of applications, which CEO Steve Jobs called a "giant release" comprised of a new version of iPhoto with speed improvements and full-screen editing. Photos can also be shared over the Internet in what Apple calls "photocasting." Photocasting will require a .Mac subscription and uses RSS to receive photos.

Continue reading →

FROM MACWORLD In his Tuesday morning keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that Saturday Night Live content will be available through iTunes, including classic clips of the Blues Brothers, Coneheads and more. Last week, Apple added the college bowl games to iTunes.

Giving iPod users more options to access content beyond iTunes, Apple has launched a new remote control with FM tuner that works with existing iPod models. A new radio screen on the iPod allows users to tune FM radio directly with the device. The remote costs $49.

Continue reading →

FROM MACWORLD The holiday season proved a boon for Apple Computer, with the company selling 100 iPods every minute in the fourth quarter of 2005. Total sales numbers for the iPod reached 14 million, and topped 32 million for the entire year. The holiday rush also pushed iTunes to an 83 percent market share.

In total, Apple has sold 850 million songs and 8 million TV shows through iTunes. At the current sales rate, Apple is hitting 1 billion song downloads per year and trumping its Windows Media based competitors. According to CEO Steve Jobs, since the iPod's launch, Apple has sold 42 million units.

Continue reading →

Universal Music Group announced Tuesday that it would make more than 1,100 music videos available to subscribers of the MobiTV mobile video service. Four channels of music videos will be made available from 375 artists, including 50 Cent, Beck, No Doubt, U2 and others. The videos would be included in the standard monthly fee for MobiTV.

The label said that MobiTV was an ideal way to reach "hundreds of thousands" of music fans with mobile phones. Musical genres to initially be represented in the service include hip hop, pop, alternative, rap, rock and heavy metal. "Universal is an ideal music partner for us, allowing MobiTV customers access to a roster of incredible music talent," MobiTV CEO Phillip Alvelda said.

Continue reading →

Verizon has confirmed reports that its new VCast Music application disables the ability to play MP3s on phones used with the service. The company said the change was done to simplify the use of VCast, and not to remove features from the device.

This is not the first time Verizon has been caught red-handed in attempting to remove advertised features from phones on its service. Unhappy customers have already sued the company for taking out Bluetooth features on the Motorola v710 handset.

Continue reading →

Kyocera said on Tuesday that it had resolved a patent dispute with Nokia relating to CDMA mobile phone technology. Under the agreement, both companies have agreed to pay each other licenses fees for their respective mobile patents.

Kyocera has also agreed to pay royalties to Nokia for use of CDMA technology within the mobile phones it produces. The agreement would prevent any further litigation and would end a nearly two year dispute between the companies. Other details of the settlement were not disclosed.

Continue reading →

Thousands of Sprint Nextel wireless and landline customers across the country were without service for about three hours Monday as two fiber lines in the network were cut around 3:30pm ET. The problem occurred in Sprint's lines running between Phoenix and Palm Springs, Calif.

While most of the affected customers were in the Western U.S., the company received scattered reports of service issues across the rest of the country as well. According to a statement from Sprint, the cut occurred during emergency maintenance near Reno Junction, Calif.

Continue reading →

One week after issuing an emergency patch for a vulnerability in Windows Meta File image processing that opened the door for arbitrary code execution, a new problem has been discovered in the format. But Microsoft has downplayed the concerns, saying the bug only causes "performance issues."

According to a posting to the Bugtraq mailing list, "Windows WMF graphics rendering engine is affected by multiple memory corruption vulnerabilities." The problems involve the ExtCreateRegion and ExtEscape functions.

Continue reading →

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it would not overturn a lower court ruling that allowed the University of Texas to block thousands of e-mails from an online dating service. According to court documents, the college blocked over 59,000 e-mails in 2003.

White Buffalo Ventures, which owns LonghornSingles.com, claimed UT's actions violated its constitutional rights to free speech under the First Amendment. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the CAN-SPAM act does not pre-empt the university's anti-spam policies.

Continue reading →

The self-proclaimed King of All Media made his debut on Sirius Satellite Radio Monday, complete with the theme from "2001: A Space Odyssey" performed to the tune of flatulence in different keys. However, some fans may have walked away disappointed; Stern says he will attempt to keep his language in check.

Both critics and fans had been anticipating a much raunchier show than what was offered Monday. While some sections of the show featured points where foul language was the rule of the day, Stern actually took one of his co-hosts to task over cursing too much.

Continue reading →

In order to beef up the playlist capabilities in Yahoo! Music Engine, Yahoo has acquired Webjay and hired its creator Lucas Gonze. Webjay enables users to create and playback playlists of music and video from the Web. Gonze also played a role in developing the open XSPF playlist format.

"With Dave Goldberg (head of Yahoo! Music) running around telling people that the playlist is the next frontier in digital media, it shouldn't come as any surprise that we're interested in what Lucas is doing with Webjay. Y! Music Engine has some interesting playlisting features, open APIs, and more goodies on the way. Lucas will help shape our strategies around playlisting in the future," explained Ian Rogers on the Yahoo! Music Blog.

Continue reading →