News

On Boing Boing tv, John Hodgman, famous and known to Apple customers for his Apple ads with Justin Long, continues his SPAMasterpiece Theater series, part II, featuring “true tale[s] of romance, adventure, infamy, and low-cost prescription drugs, all culled from the reams of actual, unsolicited emails, received here by us and people like you –…

Apple has not confirmed that it was planning on opening a call center in the city, but Volt recruiters were telling prospective employees that the Mac and iPod maker was doing just that under a project dubbed the “Appleflex Project.” The recruits were later told that via email that their training dates had been pushed…

Currently, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is confiscating laptops as it pleases when travelers — including U.S. citizens — enter into the country. The seized laptops are being held in some cases for months, and the agency is demanding travelers turn over the passwords necessary to access all of the hard driveis contents. “Most…

In the course of discussing his career and love for computers, Steve Wozniak predicted that the iPod has peaked and will eventually die out like the transistor radio and Walkmans, according to the Telegraph in the U.K. on Tuesday. Rupert Neate engaged Mr. Wozniak who reminisced about the early days with Hewlett Packard, his shyness,…

The original report appeared on the CNN Web site, but was later removed. The information was released as a CNN iReport that said in part “Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER just a few hours ago after suffering a major heart attack. I have an insider who tells me that paramedics were called after…

Microsoft allowed their brand to be diminished, remained quiet for too long, then came out with ineffective, inconsistent ads according to Therese Poletti at MarketWatch on Thursday. Given the current economy, one way for Microsoft to save some money is to just kill the whole campaign. In March, Microsoft hired a rebel but hot ad…

Gimp.org announced on Wednesday that version 2.6 has been released. The new version was described as an important release and features changes to the user interface that address the most frequent complaints. It also introduces the GEGL graph-based image processing library that will eventually bring high bit-depth and non-destructive editing to GIMP. User interface improvements…

The “Travelersi Privacy Protection Act” bill has been introduced in both the U.S. House and Senate. The law seeks to curtail the ability of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents to demand passwords, search and seize notebook computers and other small digital devices without probable cause. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI)?introduced S. 3612 along with…

I kn ow I’m supposed to write here about things having to do with Apple, or at least technology in general. But today, it’s hard to write — or even think — about anything other than the failed bailout plan and the 777 point drop in the Dow. Perhaps I can tie it all together…

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said on Monday in a note to investors obtained by TMO, that fear is outweighing fundamental analysis as investors arenit seeing the light at the end of the investment crisis tunnel Mr. Munster wrote: Consumer [spending] is slowing, but Street models reflect the slowdown. Our FY08 Mac unit growth estimate…

You’ re ready to ditch your old pre-digital TV. You’ve decided to go for a Sony LCD television (a good choice, although I now favor Samsung myself). After much angst, you’ve accepted that fact that 40 inches is the biggest size screen that fits both your room and your wallet. Great! Your work is done.…

Your Mac Life (YML), with Shawn King, which airs every Wednesday night, has a “jam packed” show if there ever was one. Mr. King will chat with an iPhone developer whois earned a quarter million dollars so far, a TSA representative on “checkpoint friendly” laptop bags, and Adam Engst who will talk about his new…

Apple is planning a week long series of events to celebrate the Grand Opening, including free training events and seminars. Shoppers can find the new Apple Store at 3625 Shaganappi Trail North West in Calgary. For a complete list of events, and directions to the Appleis new Market Mall store, visit the Apple Retail Web…

The way to maintain the reputation of an OS is to make it appeal to the resident geeks because they are the ones who make or break its reputation, according to Don Reisinger at CNET on Monday. Microsoft didnit do that with Vista, but Apple did with Mac OS X. The downfall of Vista was…

Microsoft launched its third in a series of special ads to spruce up the image of Windows on Thursday night. The ad features a selection of cameos, some famous and some not, showing that Windows is used by all kinds of people. The ad opens with a comment by a John Hodgman lookalike, Microsoft employee…

On Thursday, the Surfini Safari blog announced the next generation Javascript accelerator, SquirrelFish Extreme. Benchmarks show that it is over three times faster than Webkit 3.1. “Just three months ago, we announced SquirrelFish, a major revamp of our JavaScript engine featuring a high-performance bytecode interpreter. Today weid like to announce the next generation of our…

Valleywag broke the news Wednesday, and Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw told the LA Times that the move was planned, despite the appearance that the company is reacting to negative reaction to the ads. According to Mr. Shaw, the Seinfeld portion of the campaign, for which he was reportedly paid some US$10 million, was always intended…

A bug in QuickTime 7.5.5 has been discovered which could be exploited for a malicious attack, but right now the risk is characterized as low. The QuickTime tag fails to handle long strings correctly. The bug was announced by Intego on Thursday, but was first discovered by Symantec researcher Aaron Adams. Intego described the exploit…

Steve Jobs was in Brussels on Wednesday to participate in a European Union meeting on the state of music and technology firms in Europe. The meeting was held to discuss how the promise of a “union” in Europe hasnit been completely successful on the Internet. That was the tone presented by EU competition commissioner Neelie…