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After years of winning (and losing), a car company learns an awful lot about engines, why and how they fail, and that expertise seeps into their regular product line for consumers — making for better products. I’ve always believed that the same applies to Apple. The analog for computing is the High Performance Computing (HPC)…

Virgin America is using Gogo’s in-flight wireless Internet service and will allow users to surf the Web, participate in text-based chats, and check email, but will block Voice Over IP services so users can’t participate in audio or video chats.AirTran announced earlier in May that it planned to be the first airline in the U.S.…

Apple Training Series: iLife ’09 uses real-life material and lessons to take readers step-by-step through all aspects of iLife ’09, from organizing and sharing photo libraries to creating video and soundtracks. Readers also learn to produce movies, photobooks, podcasts, websites, blogs, and DVDs. The book retails for $28.79 ($26.39 – Amazo.com.) Apple Training Series: GarageBand…

The first thing to know is that the domain names we use every day are just human friendly, memorable names for Internet addresses that use the Internet Protocol (IP). For example, we tell our Web browser to got to Filemaker.com because that’s easy to remember. However, the Mac has to convert that to an IP…

MacVoices episode 973 is available as a free download at the MacVoices Web site.

Cult of Mac’s Leander Kahney contacted the popular psychic to the tech industry to get her take on Mr. Jobs’s future with Apple. Along with her prediction that he really is returning, most likely at the end of June just as Apple executives promised, she also said that someone else would surface as part of…

Highlight text in your photos so WhatTheFont knows what to check out.To identify fonts with your iPhone, you’ll need the WhatTheFont application. It’s available for free at Apple’s iTunes-based App Store.Verify the WTF is correctly recognizing each letter.Once the app is installed on your iPhone, you can use its built-in camera to snap a photo…

According to AirTran, its Wi-Fi service is compatible with laptops, the iPhone and iPod touch, BlackBerry smartphones, Windows Mobile Devices, and the Symbian S60. Voice services, however, are not supported.AirTran’s in-flight Wi-Fi service requires a Gogo account. Signing up for the account is free, but users will have to pay for in-flight Internet access.

According to Mr. Kahney, orin0co offered him a screen shot from Mr. Jobs’s purchase history, a screen shot that doesn’t exactly do much to support the notion that he has purchased approximately five items per day, every day, for ten years. The screen shot, he wrote, “includes only three purchases over the busy holiday period,…

If you have to drive and talk on the phone, Kensington has a new product out that lets you keep both hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.The primary component of the Hands-Free Visor Car Kit for iPhone and Bluetooth phones is a speaker that clips over the top of your visor.…

“We all know from past experience the reverse engineering of patches back into exploits starts at the time — if not before — the patches are released,” Mr. Frantzen said. “Typically it takes between hours and a few days or so to complete this if it’s easy to exploit.”In this case, the flaws could allow…

The software is designed to help users find receipts and documents with a search functionality, then organize documents into collections or Smart Collections. The utility also tracks expenses for tax purposes and exports the text content of receipts as a .csv for Microsoft Excel® or .qif for Intuit’s Quicken. The utility reduces the user’s need…

An Overweight rating from Barclay’s means, “The stock is expected to outperform the unweighted expected total return of the sector coverage universe over a 12-month investment horizon.” Mr. Reitzes wrote that he expects Apple to reposition the Mac product to keep to stay in line with the declining prices in the market, and repeated his…

Mr. Schiller, along with what Apple is calling “a team of Apple executives,” will deliver the keynote.Senior vice president of Software Engineering, Bertrand Serlet, also confirmed that developers would be receiving a final developer preview release of Mac OS X 10.6 at the conference.CEO Steve Jobs started a six month leave of absence early in…

Mr. Jones is a fan of Jonny Ive’s. In his filing with the WIPO, the non-governmental body that oversees such issues by treaty, Mr. Jones said: “I’m a web designer living in the UK, and I’ve been a huge fan of Jonathan Ive since I first used an iMac G3 in college in 1998. I…

Neat’s main competition comes from Fujitsu, which similarly makes desktop and portable versions of its popular ScanSnap scanners. The latest version of its desktop scanner is the S1500M (also available for approximately $400 at Amazon). I have the previous S510M model, which is overall quite similar and is what I used in my comparisons here.…

Apple and Psystar are currently fighting a legal battle over whether or not companies can sell PCs with Mac OS X installed. Apple asserts that any company wanting to sell Mac clones needs permission, and the Cupertino-based company has no plans to let companies sell PCs with Mac OS X installed. Psystar claims that Apple…

If the other major apps for writers previously reviewed are aircraft carriers, and Jer’s Novel Writer is a destroyer, then CopyWrite is a frigate. Lightweight, simple, focused, and devoid of anxiety inducing complexities that can stymie the creative writing process. There are apps for writers that try to do everything: manage time lines, enable rich…

County fire fighters evacuated Building 4 on De Anza Blvd around 3:30PM after receiving a call about the suspicious envelope. Additional details about the envelope and the powder inside are still unavailable.

This new version of the computer security program offers enhancements to the program’s logs, and improves performance for several of the program’s functions. The update includes the following changes: Logs now record more events: start and stop of real-time scanner, virus definition updates, and cancelled archive scansLog entries can be copied to the clipboard, and…

Like the smaller 6-inch display Kindle 2, the Kindle DX includes a built-in keyboard, wireless downloads via the 3G Amazon Whispernet network, and text-to-speech support.Amazon is targeting education and research with its new Kindle model. Educational book publishers Cengage Learning, Pearson, and Wiley have already committed to offer text books  through the online Kindle Store,…

Apple filed its motion to compel with the court after what it saw as a disappointing deposition hearing with Psystar’s CEO, Rudy Pedraza. Mr. Pedraza, according to Apple, “stated approximately 90 times during the deposition that he did not know or recall answers to basic questions about Psystar’s sales, its general costs and profits, its…

For those who intend to connect a Mac to their HDTV and also preserve HDCP for protected content, the Atlona USB to HDMI converter provides a very simple solution. It’s about the size of a pack of cigarettes, accepts audio + USB from the Mac and outputs 720p via HDMI. The number of different ways…

Why should you care what a spudger is? Glad you asked. Turns out that, if you want to do any hardware repairs or maintenance on an iPhone (such as replacing a cracked front panel or a dead battery), you’ll want this tool. Apparently, a flat-head screwdriver won’t cut it. While most people will leave such…