Amazon has today launched a new music service called AutoRip, which offers customers a free MP3 version of every album they’ve bought on CD from Amazon since 1998. The service currently boasts more than 50,000 digital albums from all the major record labels, and Amazon insists that new titles are added on a regular basis.
Australian airline Qantas has announced its support for Apple’s Passbook service, allowing users to checkin using digital boarding passes on their iPhones.
AC/DC is one of the highest-grossing bands of all time, but until today, you would have struggled to find their music in digital form via any legal means. Why? They were one of the last great iTunes holdout bands, refusing to sell their music online in order to preserve the hallowed “album” format. Looks like they finally realized the battle’s lost, though. Now the Australian hard rockers have finally released their entire back catalog to the iTunes Store.
Just like Blue Microphone’s non-digital Spark, the new, Digital Spark microphone has been put together with an armful of we’re-not-playing-around components and features. Things like a beefed-up condenser capsule, a Focus selector that toggles between a low-frequency bias and a detail bias, and an adjustable desk stand with shock mount. But this Spark is built for iPads (or iPhones); though its USB connector means it’ll work just fine with your MacBook Pro, iMac, Sony Vaio, Samsung Galaxy Tab or anything else with a USB input.
Apple has released a new digital user guide for the fifth-generation iPod touch, which was announced alongside the iPhone 5 back in September. The 138-page eBook covers “everything you need to know” about the device, and is available to download now — for free — from the iBookstore.
In addition to this, the new iPod touch has now received its first benchmarks, which reveal it’s packing an 800MHz dual-core A5 processor.
Most camera bags today offer a big pocket or pouch you can use to keep safe your motley crew of memory cards and batteries, but I really hate digging through a man-purse full of photo nicknacks just to find the SD card I need. Worse, in my years as a photographer, I can’t count how many times I’ve misplaced or lost entirely items from my conglomerate of memory cards because I end up just throwing them somewhere in my bag.
The SD Pixel Pocket Rocket (PPR for short, $15.75) and DSLR Battery Holder 4 (DBH 4, $16.50) from ThinkThank Photo aim to fix those storage woes by keeping your ample nacelles and secure disks stored and stashed in their own teensy little wallets.
Hmmpph! Their own wallets? It’s a wacky notion, to be sure — but I think it’s working!
There are probably a thousand different flash-diffusing accessories out there that claim to transform your DSLR Speedlite’s sickly beam of photons into one that’s more soft’n'dreamy. Problem is, many portable diffusers are tricky to use, don’t work well, or both.
But the Gary Fong Lightsphere Collapsible ($60), though it looks a little too much like a flash’s top hat, is surprisingly effective at softly lighting all that surrounds it.
Apple has released two new updates today that improve support for processing raw image files from recently released digital cameras and provide enhancements and bug fixes for Apple’s audio/video production tools for professionals.
Apple has reportedly purchased the iCloud.com domain for the new cloud-based storage service it is currently working on, paying $4.5 million to the previous owners who have now rebranded their service. Visitors to iCloud.com are currently redirected to the new service – now called CloudMe – but it is believed Apple will take over the domain when it’s ready.
The report comes from GigaOm, who cites a source familiar with the company:
My source, who is familiar with the company, says that Xcerion has sold the domain to Apple for about $4.5 million. Xcerion hasn’t responded to my queries as yet. At the time of writing, the Whois database showed Xcerion as the owner of iCloud.
MacRumors also received some information on the iCloud rebranding last week, but were unable to obtain enough information at the time to link the change to an Apple takeover.
Apple’s upcoming cloud-based storage service – also dubbed a ‘music locker’ – will purportedly be a solution for storing music and other content online which can then be streamed to internet connected devices, such as the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.
The most recent speculation has suggested that Apple is currently in the process of signing deals with all of the major music labels and getting the service ready for launch. An announcement is expected at WWDC in June.
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