Group Facebook How To...

VoIP IP Telephony has a post on how to create Group Facebook call. Have a meeting with buddies or your work team.
Group Facetime

Apple Gets Geofence-based Wireless Diagnostics Patent

USPTO has granted Apple, U.S. Patent No. 8,886,178 for a "Location-based profile," the mobile dead spot identification solution which I think mostly would benefit of cellular carriers and network providers.
Using on board location subsystems like GPS and wireless access point triangulation, devices can inform server-side systems about localized areas where calls are regularly dropped or data transfers fail. The date gathered could later be used in aiding a more robust network creation.
Apple's geofence-based wireless diagnostics patent was first filed for in 2010 and credits Shuvo Chatterjee as its inventor. 

Apple Vs Samsung, Vs S3 Graphics, Vs Motorola Updates.

FOSS patents ahve put together a nice summaries about the on going patent wars between Apple and three rivals, Motorola, S3 Graphics, Samsung.
There seem to be strange developments in Australia in Apple VS Samsung case with matters I do not understand. But Samsung seem to be looking for settlement, at least for now. In the USA, Samsung is getting some support from Verizon and T-Mobile. iPhone 5 does not seem to make much difference, looks like. I like to see what APple has against those very attractive Android phones from Sharp, Panasonic and Dell that Softbank, the Japanese iPhone seller, is bringing out.
In Florida, the court denied Apple's request to stay the Apple vs Motorola Mobility case. Apple wanted to wait till Motorola Mobility was acquired by Google. Apple has a similar request in Wisconsin.
In the case of S3 Graphics vs Apple, there is a new twist. ATI is telling that it is the rightfull owner of the patents that S3 is using against Apple! Strange!
Read about all these at FOSS Patents.

IBM Overtakes Microsoft In Value, For The First Time In 15 Years!

Even though the Big Blue was THE tech company, it lost to Microsoft in market value, after Microsoft managed to beat it in the personal computer market.
Now IBM after 15 years has managed surpassing Microsoft, with market share of $211.4 Billion. Current market share of Microsoft stands at $211.3 Billion.
Apple which passed Microsoft last year stands at the top with $356.8 Billion and is the most valuable company in the world today.

S3 Graphics Goes After Apple With Two Patents Related New ITC Complaint And A Federal Lawsuit

Soon to be part of HTC, S3 Graphics, sued Apple over two patents in new IYC Complaint and Federal lawsuit yesterday. The rift of Apple vs HTC is getting complicated and larger everyday.
Goth the complaint and the lawsuit revolves around two patents owned by S3. S3 targets iPhone and iPads among other devices in the lawsuit;

"certain electronic devices and components, [for example], the Apple iPhone, iPad, an[d] iPod Touch mobile devices, Apple Mac desktop and notebook computers, alone or in combination with associated system and application software sold or distributed by Apple"

and the ITC complaint is covering;

"Electronic Devices with Graphics Data Processing Systems, Components Thereof, and Associated Software"

The patents involved in the case are;

U.S. Patent No. 5,945,997 on "block- and band-oriented traversal in three-dimensional triangle rendering" (applied for by S3 in 1997)
U.S. Patent No. 5,581,279 on "VGA controller circuitry" (applied for by Cirrus Logic in November 1993, granted by the USPTO in December 1996 and sold to S3 in 1998;

Again FOSS Patents explain this incident and more. More meaning all the existing case

ITC To Review S3 Graphics VS Apple! Will HTC Have A lever Here?

ITC, United Stated International Trade Commission has issued a notice of a Commission determination to review the initial determination made investigating S3 Graphics' patent infringement complaint against Apple by a Administrative Law Judge.
While the investigation, initial determination found some of the claims to be valid and some not now it is back to the point one as the commission has decided to review the case in it's entirety and either party could gain.
If S3 Graphics, gain, HTC which is in the process of acquiring S3 Graphics will have some leverage against Apple in it's Android patent case, even though S3 Graphics case is only involved in Macintosh computers, not iOS devices.
According to FOSS Patents, depending on the outcome, it could benefit HTC but nothing is clear cut as there are pathways for Apple to by pass the infringements, if there are any.
ITC (PDF) via FOSS Patents

Mac Mini (Unibody) Unboxed!

Engadget has unboxed the new Mac Mini Unibody and yes it looks it belong in the living room, The power brick is gone, and you don't need putty knives to change memory! Those two factors make it appealing but the Lenovo mini attach to the back of the TV easily. But I guess, Apple was always for show offs.
Looks good.

RussianMAC Clone Challenges Apple.

After the Psystar and it's MAC clones challenged the Apple, which still in the courts a new challenge has come in the way for Apple.
RussianMac (Google Translation) is giving a full version of Mac OS X Leopard comes with computers. Actually it is pre-installed on its computers. Whats more that it assures you that you can get updates directly from Apple.
They have a whole range of computers ranging from MAC Pro (Intel Core2Duo E7400 2.8 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB hard drive, graphics card NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT 512Mb; 8 x USB; FireWire; 20-x DVD ± RW drive) to MAC BOOK (Intel Core2Duo 2.4 GHz / 2Gb / 250 GB HDD / FireWare, WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet.) and seem to be pretty hefty machines. I hope Apple see the opportunity see the demand for low cost MACs all over the world, including not so well to countries.
Perhaps they should win over Apple! :)

Tags: psystar, Apple, MAC OS X, MAC Clones, RussianMac

BMUP (Beam Me UP) Apple / Steve!

May be a part of new apple ad campaign, this was found on Apple parking lot! Sure it is not a mistake! Beam Me UP! But Valleywag says a different story about Apple missing Steve!


[Valleywag] via Gizmodo

Tags: Apple, Beam Me UP, BMUP, Steve Jobs

Nice Work Gee, PCs Are So Cheap!

Tags: Microsoft, Apple

Look Ma No Keyboard, Best Ever Mac Notebook

As usual Apple takes a giant step and our ever present Onion is there to bring it to you, to your archaic computers with keyboards. Start peeling!

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Tags: apple, New Mac Notebook

NBC Universal Returns To iTunes!

NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO—September 9, 2008—Apple® and NBC Universal today announced the return of NBC programming to the iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com) including NBC networks’ top 10 series available immediately for purchase and download in both standard definition and stunning high definition. iTunes customers can choose programming from NBC, USA Network, SCI FI Channel, Bravo, Sleuth and NBC News including favorites such as the award-winning and critically acclaimed “Heroes,” and the Emmy award-winning programs “The Office,” “Battlestar Galactica” and “30 Rock.” NBCU standard definition television shows on the iTunes Store are $1.99 per episode and HD programs are available for just one dollar more at $2.99 per episode and select library content is available for $.99. Additional NBCU programming from Oxygen, Telemundo, Mun2 and NBC Sports will be available on iTunes soon.

“The return of our shows to iTunes is terrific news for everyone who loves television and the ease and convenience of Apple’s iTunes,” said Jeff Zucker, President and CEO, NBC Universal. “And now, by offering consumers a variety of new options, our fans have even more ways to enjoy our content.”

“We are thrilled that NBC is back on iTunes in time for the Fall TV season,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “NBC has some of TV’s most popular shows and now customers can purchase and download them from iTunes in SD or stunning HD.”

iTunes customers can also purchase a Season Pass which allows viewers to buy an entire season of programming at a discounted price. In addition, NBC Universal is offering one free episode from each of their top series, available in either SD or HD, on the iTunes Store for the next two weeks. The premiere episodes of upcoming NBC shows, such as “Knight Rider,” “My Own Worst Enemy” and “Kath & Kim” will be available on iTunes a week before their broadcast premieres later in September and October, with subsequent episodes available the day after broadcast. NBC is also making full episodes of several vintage television shows available on iTunes for $.99, including “The A-Team,” “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” “Miami Vice,” “Kojak” and the original “Battlestar Galactica.”

The iTunes Store is the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store with a catalog of over 8.5 million songs, over 30,000 TV episodes and over 2,500 films including 600 in stunning high definition video. With Apple’s legendary ease of use, pioneering features such as iTunes Movie Rentals, integrated podcasting support, iMix playlist sharing, the ability to turn previously purchased tracks into complete albums at a reduced price, and seamless integration with iPod® and iPhone™, the iTunes Store is the best way for Mac® and PC users to legally discover, purchase and download music and video online.

Pricing & Availability
iTunes 8 for Mac and Windows includes the iTunes Store and is available as a free download from (www.itunes.com). Purchase and download of songs and videos from the iTunes Store requires a valid credit card from a financial institution in the country of purchase. Video availability varies by country.

NBC Universal is one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news and information to a global audience. Formed in May 2004 through the combining of NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment, NBC Universal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group and world-renowned theme parks. NBC Universal is 80 percent owned by General Electric and 20 percent owned by Vivendi.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Press Contacts:
Alyssa Donelan
NBC Universal
alyssa.donelan@nbcuni.com
(201) 735-3568

Tom Neumayr
Apple
tneumayr@apple.com
(408) 974-1972

Snow Leopard, Leaked, Misreleased and Really Released Mac OS X 10.6 Press release

With a new plans for Geemodo, this will be the last of these type of general postings and I am happy to have done it with news about Apple. I would have preferred it to be a news item about Linux but Mac OS X is not that far apart!

Here is the press release;

SAN FRANCISCO—June 9, 2008—Apple® today previewed Mac OS® X Snow Leopard, which builds on the incredible success of OS X Leopard and is the next major version of the world’s most advanced operating system. Rather than focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will enhance the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation. Snow Leopard is optimized for multi-core processors, taps into the vast computing power of graphic processing units (GPUs), enables breakthrough amounts of RAM and features a new, modern media platform with QuickTime® X. Snow Leopard includes out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 and is scheduled to ship in about a year.

“We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world’s most advanced operating system.”

Snow Leopard delivers unrivaled support for multi-core processors with a new technology code-named “Grand Central,” making it easy for developers to create programs that take full advantage of the power of multi-core Macs. Snow Leopard further extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which lets any application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications. OpenCL is based on the C programming language and has been proposed as an open standard. Furthering OS X’s lead in 64-bit technology, Snow Leopard raises the software limit on system memory up to a theoretical 16TB of RAM.

Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone™, Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, which optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback. Snow Leopard also includes Safari® with the fastest implementation of JavaScript ever, increasing performance by 53 percent, making Web 2.0 applications feel more responsive.*

For the first time, OS X includes native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in OS X applications Mail, iCal® and Address Book, making it even easier to integrate Macs into organizations of any size.

*Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. Benchmark based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test on an iMac® 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Mac OS X Snow Leopard, with 2GB of RAM.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Press Contacts:
Jennifer Hakes
Apple
jenniferh@apple.com
(408) 974-7439

Bill Evans
Apple
bevans@apple.com
(408) 974-0610

Tags: Apple, MAC OS X, Snow Leopard, iTunes, iPhone, QuickTime X, OpenCL

Misappropriation Of Apple Logo!

Steve, How about this?

After reading today about Apple’s legal challenge to the GreenNYC logo on New York Times, claiming that the looped green apple below, right, would cause “consumer confusion resulting in damage and injury” to Apple, and will “cause dilution of the distinctiveness” of Apple’s trademark, the first thought around City Room was: They’ve got to be kidding.
Yes, Apple you should have thought about it when you choose a common word for logo and trademark, Like Microsoft did with Windows. Why do you think they settled with Lindows! Anyways what is Big Apple? New York was known as Big Apple even before Steve was born.
On the other hand all trademarks and photos belong to their owners.
tag: Apple, trademark, lindows, microsoft

Aperture 2.1 with Powerful Image Editing Plug-In Architecture Released

CUPERTINO, California—March 28, 2008— Apple® today released Aperture™ 2.1, which introduces an open plug-in architecture that makes it easy for photographers to use specialized third party imaging software right from within Aperture. Available today as a free software update, Aperture 2.1 includes the Apple-developed plug-in, Dodge & Burn, which adds brush-based tools for dodge (lighten), burn (darken), contrast, saturation, sharpen and blur. Over the coming months, third party software developers will deliver image editing plug-ins for localized editing, filters and effects, noise analysis and reduction, fisheye lens correction and more.

“The image quality in Aperture 2 has won over the most demanding photographers,” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Product Marketing. “Now, thanks to our open plug-in architecture, users can access an entire industry’s worth of imaging expertise without ever leaving Aperture.”

“To date, maybe two percent of my photographs needed to be touched up outside Aperture,” said John Stanmeyer, founding member of the VII Photo Agency and contributing photographer for Time and National Geographic magazines. “Now that I can dodge and burn right within Aperture’s new plug-in, I can’t imagine when I’ll have to open any other application to tone my images.”

By clicking on one or more images within Aperture, users can choose from a menu of installed plug-ins and apply specialized imaging operations to either TIFF or RAW images. Apple is working closely with key developers to bring the most requested plug-ins to Aperture such as:

• Nik Software’s Viveza plug-in, powered by U Point technology, which provides a powerful, precise and easy way for photographers to selectively control and adjust color and light in their digital images;
• PictureCode’s Noise Ninja plug-in that delivers advanced high ISO noise analysis and reduction;
• Digital Film Tools’ Power Stroke plug-in that features a simple, stroke-based interface to quickly mask and intuitively perform targeted adjustments;
• The Tiffen Company's Dfx plug-in that provides an expansive suite of creative filters and effects;
• dvGarage’s dpMatte plug-in, which is a high performance chroma key tool for creating seamless composites, and the HDRtoner plug-in that enables the selection of multiple photos to create a single high dynamic range (HDR) image; and
• Image Trends’ plug-ins that include Fisheye-Hemi to quickly and effortlessly correct fisheye lens distortion, ShineOff which automatically removes shine from faces and PearlyWhites that automatically whitens and brightens teeth.

Pricing & Availability
Aperture 2.1 is available immediately as a free software update to current Aperture 2.0 users. Full system requirements and more information on Aperture can be found at www.apple.com/aperture. Information and availability for third party imaging plug-ins can be found on www.apple.com/aperture/resources, www.apple.com/downloads and at the Aperture community site www.aperturepluggedin.com.

tag: Apple, Aperture™ 2.1, Dodge & Burn, Nik Software’s Viveza plug-in, PictureCode’s Noise Ninja plug-in, Digital Film Tools’ Power Stroke plug-in, dvGarage’s dpMatte plug-in, The Tiffen Company's Dfx plug-in

Mozilla CEO does Not Like Apples Method Of Safari Distribution.

For a long long time I never had anything say bad about Mozilla or anything related to it. Always praise. Just see the left column, I ask you to install firefox. But today I had a laugh reading what Mizilla CEO had to say. I don't know the dude from a grass blade but I am surprised about what he has to say.
"What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong," Lilly said in a blog post on Friday. "It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that's bad -- not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole Web."

Hey go find another sand box to play! (Forgive him, he loves basketball! But Rockets will go in a puff today! Most of all Jo Ito took his blog photo. Anyone that Jo likes has to be good!!)
If I had a mechanism, I would do the same to Firefox like Apple does!
update;
OK John is right (Houston won) :(

tag: Apple, Mozilla,

Apple To Windows, Let Me Take You On A Safari, With Safari 3.1 For Windows

Keepeing to his words, Apple's Steve Jobs is offering windows version of Apples Web Browser Safari via it's iTunes Update Program.
When Mr. Jobs first unveiled Safari for Windows, he said that the main way Apple planned to get Safari on Windows is through its Software Update program. He noted that there are a million downloads of iTunes a day, with 500 million of those going to Windows machines."
What a better vehicle than iTunes to deliver Safari or any other Apple product. The task is even easier as these users already knows about Apple and it's ability to provide what users need without much of a hassle. (I myself do not like iTunes and assorted stuff running as services in my PC's as the grab too much resources. I let iTunes run freely on my Mac, correction, was my Mac. I just got a call from my girl friend who just got a new job saying that her office uses Macs and she need to practice Macs!)
But I alredy have Safari 3.1 running on one of my notebooks.
tag: apple, safari, safari for windows, safari 3.1, iTunes, mac

New XMAS Villian Comes From Apple, Is It Jobs Or Is It The Fake One?

These damn lawyers are making a bunch of money out of morons in Cupertino. Guess it is ok to get paranoid in old age. Who is going to start Fake Ellison Blog?
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: First carrot, now stick

"Leopard" Was The Best Mac OS X To Date

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The launch of Apple Inc's (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) latest operating system, Leopard, was its best ever, a research group said on Monday.

When comparing the first full month of sales of Apple Mac OS 10.5 "Leopard" (November 2007) to the first full month of sales for Mac OS 10.4 "Tiger" (May 2005), dollar volume for Leopard was up 32.8 percent and unit volume up 20.5 percent, NPD Group Inc said in a statement.

Apple, maker of the Macintosh computer, the iPod digital music player and the iPhone smartphone, started selling Leopard on October 25, after a four-month delay due to the company's work on the iPhone.

The new version of Apple's OS X software costs $129 for a single user and $199 for a "family pack" that can be installed on as many as five computers in a single household.

Tags: Mac, Mac OS X, Mac Update

Mac OS X, Safari Beta Fixed, In New Update From Apple

Apple has released year-end security patches Monday, issuing 31 updates for the Apple operating system, Mac OS X, and the beta version of its Safari browser.

The Mac OS X patches fix components ranging from the Address Book and iChat software to under-the-covers operating system components such as ColorSync, the IO Storage Family, and the Perl, Python and Ruby programming languages.

If you have not done so, do the update.

Tags: Mac, Mac OS X, Mac Update