The iPhone SDK (software development kit) is taking up a lot of space on websites all over the blogosphere and rightfully so. This fantastically successful device is on the verge of being truly “insanely great” to take another more famous Steve’s quote. In all the news on the iPhone SDK that will open up the iPhone to thousands of third-party apps, I have to wonder if Apple will even bring an SDK for the Apple TV? Where is the Apple TV’s App Store?

Imagine the apps we could have running on an “open” Apple TV. DVR, SlingPlayer, TiVo, sms, chat, RSS, social networking, games, home automation, alarm clocks, remote desktop, security, video conferencing… Bluetooth add-ons like keyboards and mice.

Maybe this would be the right approach to bringing what Jobs called a “hobby” into yet another “insanely great” and very successful product for Apple. There are no really open set top boxes on the market. With Apple TV running OS X the developers would flock to it. If Apple wanted to get into the living room further what better way? None of this gets in the way of Movie rentals and gives loads of people another reason to buy an “open” Apple TV with all these added capabilities. What are your thoughts? Take our poll on the left.

Apple has released for immediate availability updated MacBook and MacBook Pros featuring the latest Intel Core 2 Duo Penryn processors and larger hard drives.

The MacBook Pro has better graphics and a trackpad with “multi-touch” that was first introduced on the MacBook Air. See all the juicy details at the Apple site.

Apple has enhanced .Mac Web Gallery with some new features. Many require that you running the latest version of iPhoto ’08 and iMovie ’08.

Web Gallery is now integrated with the latest update of the Apple TV that now allows viewing any .Mac member’s public photos and movies right on your widescreen television. You can also view Flickr accounts.

Other new features are:

• Full-size JPEG downloads. Using iPhoto ’08 7.1.2, you can now choose to let visitors download your full-size JPEGs (highest resolution), or images optimized for 16-by-20-inch prints (smaller file size).
• Standalone photo albums. Also using iPhoto ’08 7.1.2, you can publish standalone albums that do not appear on your Web Gallery home page. These are ideal for sharing photos intended for a select audience.
• Password-protected movies. Using iMovie ’08 7.1.1, you can now require visitors to enter a password to view or download specific movies from your Web Gallery.
• Web Gallery subscriptions. Visitors can now subscribe to your entire Web Gallery with a single RSS feed. The feed is updated any time new photos or movies are added, so subscribers can stay up to date automatically.
• Aperture support. Aperture 2.0 users can now publish directly to .Mac Web Gallery. You get all the publishing features of iPhoto ’08, plus an option to allow visitors to download your original RAW files.

If you want to stay fit and spend way too many hours in front of your computer, this might be for you. [iPhone and direct link]

TechCrunch has a post about a new startup called iVideosongs that is offering video tutorials on how to play guitar from world-class instructors, musicians and sidemen. The site offers some free tutorial videos, but most cost $5 (for instructor videos) or $10 (for artist videos) that play in QuickTime of an player that supports H.264 playback.

The site has launched with a catalog of 50 songs, plus 25 free tutorials. By the end of the year, it hopes to have 1,000 different songs. Instructions for how to play the drums and keyboard are available as well. The content is downloaded to your computer once purchased and appear to be DRM-free. I looked over some of the lesson previews and they look great.

Apple has delivered a hardware companion for Mac OS X Leopard’s Time Machine feature called Time Capsule. Time Capsule combines an AirPort Extreme base station supporting 802.11n and a hard disk drive.

Time Capsule’s main use is to allow wireless users to use Time Machine without connecting their MacBook’s to a “wired” hard drive. Time Capsule features dual-band antennas for 2.4GHz or 5GHz frequencies. It has one USB 2.0, one Gigabit Ethernet, and three Gigabit LAN ports. The device also has a built-in power supply and can connect to print wirelessly from a USB printer.

Continue reading Apple Brings Us A Time Capsule…

Sony may be on their way to victory in the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD format war. But when it comes to digital music Sony BMG STILL truly does not get it. They are moving to DRM-free music in the dumbest of ways imaginable. John Scalzi does a nice job explaining what will probably be Sony’s downfall with its new MusicPass idea. Check it out!

The cable giant Comcast has launched its one-stop movie-television destination for viewers to watch more than 3,000 hours of TV shows, movie trailers, and short videos.

Fancast.com gathers film and TV offerings scattered all over the Internet on such a large scale, thanks to agreements with content owners such as CBS, Viacom and Hulu.com, which is owned by NBC Universal and News Corp’s Fox Network.

Google has teamed with Matsushita’s Panasonic in developing televisions that display Internet content such as photos and videos. The TVs, to be launched this spring, will allow users to directly browse and access videos from YouTube, a video-sharing web site owned by Google, and view Picasa Web Albums, a free online photo-sharing service from Google, Panasonic said in a statement on Monday.

Slacker’s portable music players are set to be available on their website on January 31st with 4GB ($199) and 8GB ($299) versions. Slacker is based on customizable streaming radio stations with the basic version being free. A Premium Service includes all the features of basic Slacker Radio, and adds unlimited skipping, and the ability to save radio songs to your Slacker device library and play them whenever you want for $7.50 per month. See demo video on Slacker Portable player. This is the lazy person’s iPod alternative.

FlyTunes is a free music service that is designed for today’s highly integrated and 3G capable cell phones and media players, such as the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch (via Safari). Offering a music experience that you can personalize (a bit like Pandora) making it better than satellite radio. Featuring thousands of high quality music channels to enjoy on your iPhone any time, anywhere you go, without limitations, and without fees.

FlyTunes can queue up to a half hour of music should you want to listen for awhile after leaving an EDGE / WiFi-covered area!

Napster has joined DRM-free MP3 party, by dumping Microsoft’s Windows Media format for DRM-free as it plans to offer copy protection-free music downloads by spring. The DRM-free tracks, will only be available purchased music. Napster’s subscription customers must of course deal with DRM copy protection while also getting a price hike in their monthly service fees! Obviously, another nail in the coffin for DRM, but is this the beginning of the end of subscriptions?

In what I have to consider one of the most ridiculous of 2007, a lawsuit has been filed against Apple (filed December 31, 2007) claiming Apple by not supporting .wma is a monopoly.

The lawsuit revolves around Windows Media Audio, which is notably unsupported by both the iPod and iTunes claiming that Apple could easily afford a license from Microsoft. Despite the fact that DRM is fading and Apple supports .WAV, AIFF, Apple Lossless, AAC, Audible, and the most ubiquitous MP3 format.

Continue reading Apple Lawsuit Claims Monopoly?…

Well to be truthful DRM is far from dead, but at least it is moving that direction as far as music downloads anyway. BusinessWeek is reporting that Sony BMG will now join the other major labels, offering part of its catalog DRM-free.

Sony BMG would become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music Group, which in late December said it would sell DRM-free songs through Amazon digital music store. EMI and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group announced their plans for DRM-free downloads earlier in 2007.

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