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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Convert BitTorrent Video for AppleTV

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Owners of a shiny new AppleTV who are also fans of obscure foreign TV shows like Life on Mars or Doctor Who Series 3 might be interested in VisualHub.

VisualHub is a $23 video converter that transforms popular BitTorrent formats (DivX, XviD, AVI, all forms of MPEG) to MP4 format — which play nice on the AppleTV or video iPods.

VisualHub can batch process files and automatically add them to iTunes. It offers encoding up to 720p and claims to be much faster than QuickTime Pro.

For Windows users, there’s Videora AppleTV Converter, a free video converter designed especially for the AppleTV.

When combined with Videora, a file search and download program, video can be automatically found, downloaded and converted for the AppleTV using BitTorrent and RSS, according to the site. This must be the killer app for AppleTV — if it works. I’m downloading it right now to find out.

Anyone tried it?

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About the author

Leander Kahney

Leander Kahney is senior editor of Cult of Mac, editor of two books about technology culture, Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, and has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Observer in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

Email the author | Read more posts by Leander Kahney.

3 comments

    Guys, you can also convert video for iPods using iSquint. It’s by the same company and does the same thing. There are two differences.

    1. It’s free, not $23.
    2. It’s got limited output options – just iPod / iTunes MPEG-4.

    But, uh, it’s FREE. :)

    I resent that Dr Who is calld obsucre. It’ one of the UK’s highest rating shows and enjoys a huge fan base world wide and inface screesn on the US Sci-Fi Channel. But yes A way to slickly download is is great.

    I agree with Adrian – ‘Life on Mars’ was an extremely popular TV show from the world’s most respected broadcaster – the BBC. How can you possibly describe it as obscure? Is anything that isn’t American obscure and foreign?

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