Lonnie Lazar - page 33

Startup 280 North on Thursday released a new online programming language that promises to bring Mac-like software to the web.

Called Cappuccino, the programing language will allow developers to bring the look and feel of Mac OS X desktop apps to online apps. 280 North promises that online apps will have drag ‘n drop, copy and paste, undo and redo, and document saving functionality simply by pointing your browser at a URL.

A major trend in the development of Web 2.0 functionality is toward applications that work within your browser as opposed to relying on desktop programs that live on your hard drive and use up CPU resources every time you call on them. Cappuccino will let designers create apps like 280 Slides, the highly regarded presentation application the 280 North shop released in June to showcase the framework’s robust capabilities.

Unlike existing web app development frameworks, such as Prototype or Sproutcore, Cappuccino doesn’t expect its developers to know any HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – the languages used traditionally for standards-based web development. Cappuccino’s Objective-J works in every major browser, is completely extendable and comes with useful language features not available in JavaScript.

280 North co-founder Ross Boucher says “Cappuccino is an attempt to restore control of the language and basic building blocks of web development to the developers” and is quick to point out that it’s not about building web pages. “Cappuccino is about building applications – think 280 Slides, GMail, Meebo,” he says. “We believe the future of the core technologies of the web should not be in the hands of a select minority and that no one company [should] control the destiny of any other.”

Cappuccino is being released as open source software under the lesser general public license which Boucher and his colleagues hope will build a strong open source community around the development platform. “We believe in the importance of getting the entire community involved, so that we can experiment and move forward at our own pace.”

In addition to the 280 Slides site, Cappuccino developers have a Flickr Photo Demo and a Puzzle Demo to showcase the platform’s capabilities.

iTunes 8 will launch next Tuesday at Apple’s “big” media event in San Francisco, according to Digg founder Kevin Rose. Rose was the first to report rumors of a September 9 Apple event back on August 23rd, which the company confirmed with media invitations issued yesterday.

Among the new features in iTunes 8 is something called Genius, which makes playlists from songs in your library that go great together, according to the “tipster” Rose cites in his blog posting. Genius also includes Genius sidebar, which recommends from the iTunes Store music you don’t already have.

Other goodies supposedly will allow you to browse  your library’s artists and albums visually with a new Grid view; download your favorite TV shows in HD quality from the iTunes Store; sync your media with iPod nano (4th generation), iPod classic (2nd generation), and iPod touch (2nd generation); and enjoy a stunning new music visualizer.

Salling Software’s MediaSync is a brand new application that synchronizes playlists, music, and podcasts in iTunes onto mobile devices from Sony, Nokia and Sony Ericsson. President of the Swedish software maker, Jonas Salling, says “There are a lot of frustrated phone owners out there who love iTunes, but can’t easily get their tracks onto their non-Apple device.” His application works with iTunes 7.6.x and 7.7.x, is compatible with many popular phone models, and requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or 10.5.x. A Windows version is also available for Windows XP SP2 and Vista with Windows Media Player 11.

The basic installation is free, though the paid app features “smart” sync, allowing you to sync faster by minimizing the amount of data transferred in incremental syncs.

With a compatible phone connected to a USB port, you simply select the playlists and podcasts you want on your device. Media Sync not only uploads the music tracks and podcast episodes, but also replicates each actual playlist on your device and–on devices that support it–transfers play count metadata for each item, reinforcing the sense of having a piece of iTunes in your pocket. Although Media Sync works with most media in iTunes, it will not transfer DRM-protected content.

Apparent dimensional drawings for both the fourth-generation iPod nano and second-generation iPod touch have appeared, suggesting the devices will have familiar measurements but with interesting new shapes and features, according to a report at iLounge.

With all eyes looking toward Apple’s “Big Event” scheduled for next Tuesday in San Francisco, rumors of what might be announced are sure to come fast and furious over the next several days.

Or maybe, in the best Super Hero tradition, it started out that way.

Steve Jobs will host Tuesday’s “Let’s Rock” media event at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco

Apple PR is pulling out the stops to get media in SF next week, saying the announcement on the 9th is a “big deal.”

One East Coast journalist, who writes for a big news weekly, said Apple PR called and urged him to fly to San Francisco next week for the press event.

“Apple just told me it’s a big deal and I should try to be there,” said the journalist, who asked to remain anonymous.

The call is unusual for Apple’s PR department, which rarely gives clues to the import of its press events.

The event is scheduled for 10am, September 9th at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and is widely expected to showcase updates to the iPod product line, with some hoping for new Mac notebooks and even possible indications of a touch-screen Mac tablet.

Veteran Mac expert and writer Joe Kissell is among the first to report that Google’s brand new Chrome browser appears to be “way faster” than Safari, even running in a virtualization environment like VMWare Fusion.

Kissell ran a quick, informal head-to-head on his MacBook Pro, comparing Safari on OS X to Chrome running under Windows XP and VMWare Fusion.

“Chrome launched in the blink of an eye (really shockingly fast) and I tried a few web pages side by side in Chrome and the Mac Safari, and they loaded noticeably faster in Chrome,” said Kissell.

Chrome is Google’s entry in the web browser sweepstakes, currently a Windows-only offering that launched today. The browser is based, however, on Apple’s webkit, the same rendering engine that powers the Safari browser. Mac and Linux versions of Chrome are in the works but Google has yet to announce a time frame for releasing those versions.

Kissell’s initial report came over Twitter, saying he ran Chrome in XP under VMware Fusion on a MacBook Pro and that it “is way faster than the Mac version of Safari on the same machine. Wow.” But some of his reaction may be chalked up to perception, and later off-the-cuff speed tests presented a mixed bag.

In tests done on a regular work machine with a zillion things running in the background, not a clean environment to be sure, but representative of the “real world” in which many are likely to use the browser,

• Chrome launched in < 2 seconds in XP under VMware Fusion
• Native Mac Safari launched in ~9 seconds

LifeHacker Stopwatch

• loaded in 7.254 seconds in Chrome
• loaded in 9.531 seconds in Safari

How To Create Css Test

• rendered in 162 ms in Chrome
• rendered in 37 ms in Safari

Despite his admittedly highly unscientific testing, Kissell reported “AJAXy things like Google Docs seemed zippier in Chrome, but it’s possible that my perceptions are incorrect, because I expect everything in a Windows VM to be slower.”

Let us know in comments below how Chrome works for you.

Via Gizmodo

Apple has scheduled a “special event” for September 9th at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The event is presumably to announce long awaited, much-rumored updates to the iPod product line and, who knows what else?

If you’ve accumulated any amount of gadgetry in the past several years you may consider from time to time the carbon footprint you lay down charging their batteries up every day and overnight.

Well, if designer Vivien Muller ever gets production funding for her concept solar charger, you’ll be able to rest easy and get visitors talking about your impeccable taste in futuristic decor.

Via Gizmodo

Blogger Ian Hoar details a method for creating a custom icon for your website that will show up on iPhones when someone bookmarks your site.

I made icons out of images I created for a couple of projects called China Works and Nickie’s BBQ, and bookmarked them to my iPhone. Hoar’s process is easy and it works!

Basically, just save any graphic image you like as a 57×57 PNG file, name it apple-touch-icon.png, put it in the root directory of your webste, and iPhone will do the rest. Hoar details a method for saving multiple icons in different directories by using a “link rel=” line in the “head” of your web page, so be sure to check it out.

Photographer Pat St. Clair has a couple more panoramic images from Thursday’s big night for the Democratic Party at Invesco field in Denver.

Above is a still shot from his vantage point near the Jumbotron behind the media pavillions. St. Clair made it from three fisheye images stitched and interpreted usung PTGui Pro 7.8 on a McBook Pro. The original size image is here.

Go here for a dynamic four-image shot that captures the enormity of that historic evening.

Unlike St. Clair, I was in Denver without the benefit of a Press Pass or professional photographic equipment and struggled to capture my own memories with the rudimentary camera in my iPhone.

Judge for yourself the quality of the iPhone’s camera by clicking on the gallery thumbnails. Large pics and descriptions after the jump.

The Hills screensaver is about the coolest screensaver I’ve seen for Mac OS X, but it’s not easy to get.

The screensaver shows beautifully rendered rolling green hills covered in perfectly-manicured grass. You fly over them as though gliding in a silent helicopter. It’s utterly hypnotic — and very relaxing, especially on a big display.

The developer, Chris Kent, was hosting it on a .mac account, but he exceeded bandwidth limits and it’s now gone.

Searching for it in Google brings up a bunch of old links — it’s very frustrating.

So we’re hosting the file here. Download The Hills version 1.1: hills-1-1.dmg.

Via Flickr

Flickr user Danial Forsythe has taken matters into his own hands and found a way to manually refocus the iPhone’s camera. Long derided as a deficient feature of Apple’s popular handset, the iPhone camera’s default focal length is set to infinity, which makes for less-than-stellar close up shots. Forsythe has posted instructions detailing a way to open up the case, get the screen out of the way, flip the camera up, break the glue, adjust the lens, and plug the screen back in to check the focus.

If that sounds like more getting “under the hood” than you might be comfortable with, third party lenses and filters do exist to help you try and get more out of your iPhone’s camera.

Via Ars Technica

Photographer Pat St. Clair shot a super-cool QuickTime panoramic photo from last night’s historic session of the Democratic Party’s convention at the Pepsi Center in Denver, CO.

Working on assignment for LightSpeed Media, St. Clair shot the DNC image using a new Canon XSi with a Sigma 8mm f3.5 circular fisheye lens. It was four shots around on a custom rig, with the camera set to ISO 1600 and aperture priority metering.

He shot RAW files, used Photoshop Camera Raw to render them to tiffs, stitched the panorama in PTGui Pro 7.8. and authored the final pan in Cubic Converter, all on a MacBook Pro.

Third party iPhone application developers have taken to paying each other $1 in order to get around communication restrictions in the iPhone developrs’ NDA, according to a story in the LA Times.

By making themselves “subcontractors” to one another, they can discuss issues related to programming for the iPhone, communications Apple has sought to restrict through the Software Development Kit’s Non-Disclosure Agreement. Developers have bristled at the company’s refusal to let the NDA expire now that the iPhone is available on the commercial market, with many feeling Apple’s continued restrictions are stifling innovation.

UPDATE: You can fix the hole by remapping the “Home” button. In the iPhone’s Settings/General/Home Button, assign double clicking the Home button to “Home” — not “Phone Favorites.”

iPhone’s 2.0.2 firmware allows almost full access to your iPhone even when it’s under password protection, according to a report in MacRumors. Access can be gained through the “Emergency Call” keypad that appears on the passcode entry screen, allowing unrestricted use of Safari’s browser as well as access to Mail, SMS, Contacts, Maps and more.

Here’s how it works:

1. On the passcode screen hit “Emergency Call” button at bottom left.

2. In the Emergency Call screen, hit the “Home” button twice. You’ll be taken to the Favorites screen.

3. From there, hit the blue arrow next to a contact’s name.

4. You can now access all the iPhone’s functions by selecting their email address, homepage URL or address.

5. For example — hit the contact’s “Homepage” URL — and you are straight into Safari.

6.  Hit the email address, and you enter Mail. Cancel the message, and you have full access to the iPhone’s email.

Via MacRumors

Apple wants to know what you’re thinking about your new iPhone 3G and has been sending out email surveys asking questions such as where you’ve gone for iPhone help, whether you’ve returned your handset to your carrier for repair or replacement, whether you primarily use Windows or Mac, whether you primarily use your iPhone for work or play, whether it’s your first Apple product, and general demographic info.

The company promises not to use your responses to sell you products or services.

Via iPhoneBlog

Pre-release testing of the Blackberry Bold 3G smartphone appears to show the new handset may suffer from connection problems similar to those that have plagued the iPhone 3G. Citigroup investment research analyst Jim Suva reported occasional 3G signal dropping troubles at some locations, “especially on high-rise building streets on our 34th floor… which may be why AT&T has yet to launch the product,” according to AppleInsider.

Because the Blackberry uses a component of its Marvell processor as its 3G modem, where iPhone 3G uses a different Infineon chipset, previous speculation about problems with Apple’s hardware appears less likely to be the cause of iPhone 3G connection instability.

3G network performance varies greatly among different 3G carriers throughout the world, according to survey released this week on the Wired blog. Users in Europe, which has some of the most mature 3G networks, reported the fastest overall results, while US-based iPhone owners suffer the largest number of failed data speed tests, particularly in dense urban areas, according to the Wired survey.

Citibank’s Suva speculates that the Bold won’t be released in the United States until AT&T rectifies its 3G network issues.

Some iPhone owners continue to report an alarming bug in the device that causes 3rd party applications to crash or fail to load and makes media stored on the phone inaccessible. Calling it a “tragedy of monumental proportions” given that the phone just launched in 22 additional countries over the weekend, writer Jonny Evans reports in MacWorld UK the “well-known bug means none of my third-party apps work, and I can’t access any media held on my iPhone.”

Others have reported the issue and some have speculated on comments by Steve Jobs promising a fix for iPhone crashes by September. But so far, the true nature of the problem remains uncertain, with possible fixes and workarounds seemingly complex and sometimes ineffective.

“Frequent requests to Apple PR have yielded no response at all – and people inside the company dance around the matter, or so it seems,” according to Evans.

Apple is on track to sell just shy of 3 million Macs and close to 11 million iPods in the September quarter, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. If Apple manages to hit the high end of Munster’s estimate of betweeen 2.7 million and 2.9 million Macs sold from July through September, it will be the first time Apple will have sold 10 million Macs in any fiscal year in its history.

Munster based his estimates on July sales data from NPD Group, which also suggested the possibility of sales of 4.1 million iPhones and a gross margin of 32 percent. Munster estimates Apple’s earnings per share at $1.19 on revenue of $8.5 billion. Wall Street consensus estimates put the numbers at $1.11 on $8.08 billion, while Apple’s previous guidance calls for $1.00 on $7.8 billion.

Munster affirmed his Buy rating on Apple, Inc. (AAPL) shares, with a price target of $250. The stock closed today at $172.55 in New York trading.

When I was researching material for a long article about third party development programs for the iPhone back in March, one of the most common complaints I heard from users and skeptics alike was leveled at the lack of cut and paste functionality on Apple’s groundbreaking mobile device. In July, Apple spokesman Greg Jowsiak basically said cut and paste was a low priority as far as the company was concerned.

No surprise then, that third party workarounds for the missing tool began to emerge, with one fashioned by student developer Zac White among the more promising. Unfortunately, Apple has placed new roadblocks in the path toward letting you cut and paste text on your iPhone, according to White.

No word yet from Apple on whether cut and paste has been re-prioritized in-house.

Via AppleInsider

Image by Vissago via Flickr

Using testing equipment similar to that used by the FCC and mobile phone manufacturers to make sure phones are able to properly send and receive signals without interfering with other devices, engineers in Sweden pronounced the iPhone 3G’s capabilities “completely normal,” according to a report at Engadget.

Much speculation and not a little complaint registered in the wake of Apple’s 2.0.2 firmware upgrade last week, calling the iPhone’s 3G capabilities into question. One woman in Alabama filed suit in federal court seeking a class action to hold Apple liable for selling a “defective” product. But engineers at Bluetest in Gothenburg, Sweden, tested the iPhone 3G against a Nokia N73 and a Sony Ericsson P1 and found the difference between these two popular 3G phones and the iPhone 3G was negligible.

Your mileage may vary.

Track your progress toward cleaner living, or at least breathing. Every body needs somebody.

Sources familiar with inventory management practices at large retailers such as Target in the US and Argos in the UK say all signs point to a refresh of Apple’s iPod line on the near horizon.

Handheld PDA scanners used by employees at Target show all current iPod models have changed inventory status from “Active” to “Discontinued,” and Argos outlets in the UK have recently taken receipt of new point-of-sale displays promoting “price cuts,” according to a report atAppleInsider.

Who’s ready for a $199 iPod Touch?

Steve Wozniak spoke to Intel developers in San Francisco yesterday, telling them maintaining a vision without compromise, is “the right way of going through life.”

In a wide-ranging on-stage interview at the annual Intel Developer Forum, Wozniak also said being poor helps inspire creativity. As a computer designer, “I would do any trick I could think of to try to save money,” he said. “Not having any money helps.”

In the end, the man who began work on the first Apple computer as an engineer working at Hewlett-Packard (and offered his invention to that company five times before accepting rejection and taking it on himself with Steve Jobs), waxed philosophical about technology’s impact on our lives.

“Technology is always supposed to improve our lives,” he said. “I don’t know. Are we happier than we were 100 years ago? Are we happier than we were 1,000 years ago? Do we smile more?”