If you are like me you may have found that many of the add-ons and accessories that you own that previously worked with your iPod and the original iPhone, no longer charge the new iPhone 3G. This is due to changes in the way the new iPhone 3G charges. Well help may be on the way from Ridax, a company that sells various iPod Dock Connector accessories.

Ridax has begun taking pre-orders for its iPhone 3G Charge Converter ($40) a small dock connector accessory that will allow iPhone 3G owners to use older iPod and iPhone charging accessories that are currently incompatible. With male and female dock connectors you will be able to connect this converter between your accessory and the iPhone 3G and it will covert the voltage and apply it to the correct pins o your iPhone 3G to charge it and will pass the audio, video, and control that the device offers.

Continue reading iPhone 3G Charging Converter Coming Soon…

Yahoo! has announced that it will offer its soon to be former music customers coupons or refunds for the songs they bought that featured DRM. Yahoo! Music will be shutting down its DRM servers on September 30 taking away the method to authenticate these tracks to allow playback.

They will provide a coupon on request that you can use at RealNetworks Inc.’s Rhapsody download service that offers songs that are DRM-free. For those who have “serious problems with this arrangement” refunds will be available. The servers go down on September 30, so start going through your music collection now.

VMware has made available Fusion 2 now in beta 2 which is its virtualization solution for the Mac. This new release improves on an already great product, focusing to improve the user experience, including video, data protection and adding Unity 2.0.

Looks like a fantastic update. I have not downloaded this version yet, but I plan to when I get a chance.

Apple has released an update for iTunes tonight.

Extensive release notes say:
iTunes 7.7.1 includes fixes to improve stability and performance.

Just fire up Software Update to get yours.

Continue reading OS X Tip #162: Instantly Blackout Your Mac’s Display…

Continue reading iPhone Tip #18: iPhone 3G Does Not Work With Many Accessories…

Sure has been a rocky start for Apple’s new MobileMe. Terrible syncing and lost email has tarnished the service so far. Three weeks from the launch Apple says they have fixed many of the problems.

Apple now tells us on their new MobileMe Status blog, that things should be working better now as they have “completed restoring Mail service, including historical messages, to all of the 1% of affected members.”

Continue reading MobileMe Transistion Complete Apple Says…

84 year old Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who worked against Net Neutrality with his ridiculous “the Internet is a series of tubes” rant, has been caught for allegedly failing to report $250,000 in gifts from the Alaska oil pipeline company, VECO Corporation. Guess he thought he could make money from all the tube companies.

Continue reading Ted Stevens Gets Caught in his Tubes…

My first reaction was who cares? Than I read how they hired the biggest ass in the word anal-list, Rob Enderle to consult for them. This guy has never been right in his life. So then I thought Dell must be desperate. Then I read that they were going to “kluge” together hardware and software from some already failed companies to try and compete with Apple. Now I just know they are NUTS!

Maybe Michael Dell should just give back all the money to the stock holders. If I were a stockholder, I would want my money back.

I guess my first reaction was right. Who cares?

MagicPad should soon be coming to the App Store near you. MagicPad is a rich text editor for the iPhone similar to TextEdit’s functionality on the Mac allowing six fonts, five sizes and eight colors to be used in documents. This app shows the first rough version of a copy-paste feature on the iPhone. Other options include bold, italic, underline and strikethrough formatting. Looks a bit useful, but I thought having to type a “captcha ” to send an email was a bit odd on an iPhone and slowed down the process. See video.

Now that did not take long. I counted 1010 iPhone applications available in the iTunes App Store this morning. The best is yet to come as far as the most wanted iPhone apps.

Let’s hope Apple can get an iPhone software update to us that will make the crashing, freezing and syncing problems go away.

I think Apple will need to update their website (image on right).

The Zune guy was the ultimate fanboy for Microsoft’s Zune, he now says the Microsoft did not pull their weight and seems disinterested in the product adding little to nothing in features.

This guy may be a bit of a fanatic, but I thought he made some sense here. He also is reporting that the Zune community and websites are drying up.

The FCC has finally approved the merger of XM and Sirius after a very protracted multi-year negotiation. The Federal Communication Commission decided it would be ok that the two satellite radio providers become one with what will be a combined subscriber base of roughly 18 million users.

The FCC deal calls for the companies to cap prices for three years following the merger, allow subscriber choice on content, and lower fees for channel packages.

FCC commissioner Kevin Martin said, “Consumers will get to enjoy the best of the programming on both services.” There may be parties going on at XM and Sirius but it is probably safe to say Clear Channel is not trilled.

Yahoo! Music Says NOTHING PlaysForSure!

This is starting to sound like Deja-Vu with online music stores going offline and leaving paid customers with DRM-ridden tracks they can no longer play! Now its the Yahoo! Music Store’s turn to screw their customers who bought music from them.

Yahoo! has announced that they are taking its Music Store DRM license servers offline forever on September 30th, essentially freezing out customers from ever registering their music with another computer.

Continue reading Yahoo! Music Taking DRM Servers Offline Screw Customers…

Walt Mossberg (see video), WSJ Tech Guy points out the problems with the Apple’s MobileMe service. He said he would pass on the $99 service at least until the glitches are cleared up.

I painfully have to agree with Mossberg, this rollout is not at all going smoothly. One point that Mossberg did not point out that has infuriated many MobileMe users is the lack of support for subscribed calendars.

Apple has acknowledged some of the problems getting MobileMe up and running smoothly and has offered to extend paying subscribers 30 days for free. The way things are going however, it could be more than 30 days before they can fix all the issues users are having.