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As we worked on this years 15th Dream Machine, we couldn't help but think about how far we've come. From the original 200MHz, 8MB-of-RAM 1996 Dream Machine up to this years 12-core, 24-thread, 24-gigs-of-RAM version, the ultimate computer has grown exponentially more powerful. But that's not much of a shocker (we've all heard about Moore's Law).

RIM is expected to announce details of the iPhone-esque BlackBerry 9800 next week. Tony Bradley of PCWorld looks at what the new smartphone could mean for RIM

Filed under: iPhone

Rocknor's Donut Factory is due to hit App Store on Monday. It is an iPhone update of a Windows game that was critically acclaimed back when it was released in 2003. It offers terrific puzzles and fun gameplay that's unfortunately hampered on the iPhone by a too-literal transition from the original game.

In this game, you move dough through a factory -- shaping it, cooking it, topping it, and shipping it out -- using a variety of assistive machines. You have to be clever. Some of the factory floor layouts are fiendish. Getting each donut produced to order to meet your quotas isn't as simple as you might think.

TUAWFirst Look: Rocknor's Donut Factory originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers from Atlanta-based security company SecureWorks have uncovered a major check counterfeiting operation, which resulted in a $9 million fraud. The fraudsters used a botnet designed to automate a wide variety of tasks, from money mule recruitment to scraping processed checks repositories.The gang, which resea...

Shinji Mikami, legendary game designer and the head of Platinum Games, has revealed the difficulty settings for his upcoming cover-based third person shooter entitled Vanquish. They are Casual Automatic, Casual, Normal, Hard and God Hard. Mikami also wrote in blog post on the official site of the game that he was surprised how good was playing the game in Ca...

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty has finally been launched ten years after the original came out and a lot of attention is focused on Blizzard Entertainment, one of the most successful companies working in the video games industry at the moment. Talking to MCV Michael Ryder, who is the vice president and in charge of internal ope...

Apple has posted a very interesting job position to their jobs website which details the future of Mac OS. Apple is looking for a novice software engineer to be apart of a team which is creating the core of Mac OS's future. This core is totally new and revolutionary, as described by Apple, and has "never been done before."

"Are you looking to help create something totally new? Something that has never been done before and will truly amaze everyone? Are you excited by the prospect that what you helped create would be used every day by millions of Apple customers? Then come and work on with the Mac OS X software engineering team to help build a new and revolutionary feature for Mac OS X."

"We are looking for a senior software engineer to help us create a revolutionary new feature in the very foundations of Mac OS X. We have something truly revolutionary and really exciting in progress and it is going to require your most creative and focused efforts ever." 

"An ideal candidate will have a degree in Computer Science (or equivalent), five years of professional experience developing C / C++ / Objective-C libraries or frameworks for use on end user systems, experience with developing for Internet technologies and services, and a passion for doing “really hard” things that have never been done before."

"An exceptional candidate will also have up close and personal experience with the HTTP protocol as well as other protocols layered atop it, have participated in or lead the architecture of large web scale systems, have shipped multiple “platforms” for use by millions of users."

Umm.. what can this revolutionary and never done before feature be? A fully multi-touch-optimized desktop OS?! FaceTime for everyone?! Let us know what you think in the comments. Keep in mind that Apple "invented" mobile phone video calling and multi-touch technology.

Also, too bad they didn't describe it as magical!

via AI

Mac users aren’t bogged down with the same viral issues as their Windows-using brethren, but they aren’t bullet proof. They can still get scammed, hoaxed, and bilked out of their time, energy, money. ClamXav is a free, open source virus and scam scanner for Mac OS X. By default, it doesn’t run in the background [...]

Backup and recovery software (beta).

As Nvidia falters, AMD's ATI graphics unit is on the rise, spurred by "radical" shifts in a notoriously fickle market, says Mercury Research.

At a Congressional Internet privacy hearing on Tuesday, a group of middle-aged men had some questions about the 'Net. Why was it such a creepy place? How come replying to spammers doesn't get one immediately removed from their e-mail lists? And what is this talk we hear about websites gaining the rights to one's immortal soul?

The creepiness was best summed up by the Senate Commerce Committee's Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), who in his opening statement compared the Internet to a deeply disturbing shopping mall. In this mall, there's "a machine recording every store you enter and every product you look at, and every product you buy. You go into a bookstore. The machine records every book you purchase or peruse. Then, you go to the drugstore. The machine is watching you there, meticulously recording every product you pick up—from the shampoo to the allergy medicine to your personal prescription.

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Crutchfield.com offers the Samsung 46" 1080p Widescreen LCD HD Television, model no. LN46C530, for $804.10. Coupon code "3A825" cuts it to $784.10. With free shipping, that's tied with our mention from nine days ago as the lowest total price we could could find by $20. It features a native resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p), 80,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, USB connectivity, three HDMI inputs, and VGA, component, and other video inputs.

For its "M" Club members only, mwave.com offers the Kingwin Mini 4-Port Squid USB 2.0 Hub in Black, model no. U2SH-4BK, for $1.99 with free shipping. ("M" Club membership is free; click here to sign up.) That's a buck below our June mention and among the least expensive 4-port USB hubs we've seen, especially without rebate hassles.

BuyDig.com offers the LG 55" 120Hz 1080p Widescreen LED-Backlit LCD HD Television (pictured), model no. 55LE5500, bundled with the LG BD550 Blu-ray Disc Player, LG Slim 52" to 60" Wall Mount, and LG Wi-Fi USB 2.0 Adaptor for $1,719. (Add all four items to your cart to see this price.) With free shipping, that's $198 less than our June mention of the HDTV alone and $247 under the lowest total price we could find for these items purchased separately elsewhere.

The HDTV's LED-backlit LCD features local dimming, a native resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p), 120Hz refresh rate, 4,000,000:1 contrast ratio, Ethernet connectivity, two USB ports, four HDMI inputs, and VGA, component, and other video inputs. The BD550 features 1080p output with DVD upconversion up to 1080p, NetCast Entertainment Access including Netflix Instant Streaming and YouTube, and more.

For its "M" Club members only, mwave.com offers the MASSCOOL Clear 120mm Ball Bearing Case Fan, model no. FDC12025S1L, for $2.99. ("M" Club membership is free; click here to join.) With free shipping, that's the lowest total price we could find by $8 and among the lowest total prices we've seen for such a fan. It includes 3-pin and 4-pin power connectors.

Summertime is travel time. What is your destination this year and where are you going to sleep? If you still need to find a place to stay, you should have a look at the three pages I’m reviewing in this article. These are the best and most helpful sites to find accommodation anywhere in the world. [...]

 

 

If you’re in the market for a new computer, laptop, mobile phone, games and other accessories; don’t waste your time searching online. We’ve taken the liberty of locating the best tech deals and unifying them into a single post for your convenience. For more fresh hot deals, visit our Hot Tech Deals page, which is constantly [...]

 

 

The Internet has been around for a while now, and at this point we don't know what we'd do without it. Despite having ample time to adapt their sites to meet current trends and expectations, some people just don't get it. Here are 50 of the Web's most face-numbingly bad sites, all still active today.

A French mother, Dominique Cottrez, has been charged by with murdering eight newborn babies and her husband has been charged with hiding the bodies in the village of Villers-au-Tertre, near Lille .

Today, President Obama wades in to a controversy that threatens to split one of the Democratic Party's most generous source of donations and activists, the teacher unions, from the whole.

A new corporate job listing from Apple boats of a "revolutionary" new feature for the foundations of Mac OS X that will "truly amaze everyone."

The new low-end iMac -- one of several models released this week -- displays some significant performance boosts over its predecessor, tests show. The latest version switches from a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo CPU to a Core i3 processor of the same clock speed. Graphics are now handled by a dedicated ATI Radeon HD 4670 chipset with 256MB of onboard memory, instead of NVIDIA's integrated GeForce 9400M; system RAM has been upgraded in speed from 1,066MHz to 1,333MHz....


IMac - NVIDIA - Intel Core 2 - GeForce - Intel Core

Freshcode on Thursday announced a new promotion called “Experience Bodega” that will give users the opportunity to get a deal on Mac software. Bodega is a Mac software storefront application that provides users with a one-stop shop for many Mac apps. Bodega is free to download and use to browse for software in a variety [...]

We’re already on the fifth (out of seven) contest questions for our giveaway of Office 2008 for Mac (AND Office for Mac 2011 once available later this year) on a customized color Macbook. Continue to answer each question we pose here and on Twitter (@OfficeforMac) for more chances to take home the big prize.



This question is for you number crunchers and data heads who can’t live without Excel for Mac. It’s amazing to hear about the many different ways people use Excel. We’ve heard of people managing their personal or business budgets, keeping track of statistics for their favorite team, and even those using it as a food diary to keep track of their calories throughout the day. And it seems whatever data you are working with, there is always a helpful formula to make managing it even easier. So for your next entry into the contest we want to know: In what project of yours has Excel for Mac been the most helpful?



To submit your entry, share your legitimate (contextually relevant, appropriate and legible) response in the comment field of this blog. Please see the attached document for full rules and details.



And just to make sure you’ve capitalized on all of your chances to win, here are the other blog posts that serve as places you can enter:



Contest Question #4: What are you most proud of writing on Word for Mac?

Contest Question #3: Your Best PowerPoint for Mac Presentation

Contest Question #2: Getting creative with Office for Mac

Your chance to win Office for Mac 2011, and more

What you’ll pay for an iPhone 4 on Rogers/Fido, more to come! International carriers are finally starting to release their iPhone 4 plans and rates, and as more countries now have multiple providers and unlocked iPhones, does that mean things will be more competitive than ever? Nope. You say monopoly, I say oligopoly, they’ll still take [...]

International iPhone 4 carrier plans and rates is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Political correctness will be the end of us, British public health minister Anne Milton believes, at least as regards the obesity epidemic that is sweeping over the world and leading the NHS in the UK to financial ruin. One way to end it and make those who need help just how bad a state they’re in to speak the truth to their face. This w...

Contextual menu to move/archive files/folders to common folders.

Chat and share your music, photos, files with anyone.

The government using the Web to make its policies and processes more "open" sounds sunny, but the inability of a Supernova conference panel to go into much depth about it highlights its complexities.

Cross-platform backup software Roxio Retrospect (recently purchased by Roxio's parent company; see "Retrospect Backup Software Acquired by Sonic Solutions," 27 May 2010) has been upgraded to version 8.2. Beyond interface enhancements designed to make the software simpler to use, the upgrade makes network backup performance up to three times faster than before. The new version also adds support for 64-bit memory utilization, which can handle backups for volumes with "tens of millions of files," the company says. Additionally, the upgrade reintroduces the capability to restore from backups made using the older Retrospect 6 (those backups are treated as read-only). In the Retrospect 8.2 Read Me, Roxio recommends that you run Retrospect servers on Intel-based Macs, and warns that the software performs more slowly on PowerPC-based Macs. The company also notes that Internet/FTP backups are not yet supported, and optical device support has been deactivated in this release (though you can enable it manually if you don't mind dedicating the drive to Retrospect). Full release notes are available. ($129 new for up to three users, free update, free trial available, 258 MB)

 

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Copyright © 2010 Lex Friedman. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Snapz Pro X, the popular screenshot and video capture utility from Abrosia Software, has quietly been upgraded to version 2.2.3. The update addresses two crashing bugs. One, limited to newer MacBooks, occurred during object selection, and the other occurred for folks using mirrored monitors while attempting to make captures. The updated version of the software also automatically stops capturing video before the movie fills up your hard drive. ($69 new, free update, 10.8 MB)

 

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Copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing, Inc. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

U.S. President Barack Obama demonstrates Healthcare.gov using an Apple MacBook Pro...

Everybody's all excited today, the Chevy Volt has announced a price at 41 grand...

Nintendo on Thursday faced its first loss in two years as competition from Apple hurt its business...

The latest hole in WiFi security is quite serious, but it's unlikely to cause widespread disruption in the corporate and government networks for which it would have the potential to cause the biggest headaches.

In fact, the exploit continues to demonstrate a lack of any effective method of cracking the WiFi Alliance WPA/WPA2 certified versions of IEEE encryption standards found in WiFi gear starting in 2003. Brute force and dictionary attacks against short passphrases used typically on home and small-business networks remain the only methods for key recovery.

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Just Mobile announced a new stand for the iPad called UpStand Thursday. The stand is made from aluminum, with rubber-fitted grips to protect your device. Thestand will work in portrait or landscape mode, and it can accomodate many iPad cases too.



IPad - Page orientation - Aluminium - Business - Metals

If you have an iPhone 4 or other iOS 4 compatible device, you’re probably running iOS 4.0.1. Great. But what if you want to downgrade back to iOS 4.0 or iOS 3.1.3? Too bad. You probably won’t be able to do it. At least not easily. There are several roadblocks that get in your way. The source of these roadblocks is Apple. They have deliberately made it difficult to downgrade. Why have they done this? How have the done this? And how you can circumvent their obstacles? You are about to learn the answers to all of these questions. 



Apple - IPhone - IPhone OS - Handhelds - Smartphones

For its newsletter subscribers only, newegg.com offers the Sceptre 27" 1080p Widescreen LCD Monitor, model no. X270W-1080P, for $299.99. Coupon code "EMCYVNX69" cuts it to $249.99. With free shipping, that's $20 under our April mention and the lowest total price we could find by $60. It features a 1920x1080 (1080p) resolution, 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 2ms response time, and HDMI, DVI, and VGA video inputs. Deal ends August 4.

Consumer firm MyType has done a study of the opinions of 20,000 people, and have determined that iPad owners are wealthy, sophisticated, educated, and score very low in tests designed to chart altruism and kindness. In short, they're rich and smart, but also spoiled and cruel.

Something weird is happening to mobile phones: After shrinking from enormous Zack Morris proportions in the '80s and '90s, they're getting bigger again. The Dell Streak, which is set to be released in the U.S. later this summer, is the biggest of the big-daddy phones so far, with a 5-inch screen.

The mustache is a style that has sadly been relegated to antiquity: It is a quaint, often goofy relic that's looked upon with derision in the modern world, when it is looked upon at all. So of course, it's time for the insufferable hipsters to ironically bring it back.

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FTA: Originating in Southern California and Hawaii, sand volleyball – as well as regular Volleyball – is really fun and it’s a great way to exercise your body too. Yeah, okay, but check out these babes !

President Obama uses a MacBook Pro 15″ with antiglare screen, and it looks like the entire White House staff uses Macs too. The top picture is from a White House video and the other of White House staff is from Fortune. It’s not just Macs that the White House is crazy over, the iPad has also [...]

This virtual turntable app isn't inexpensive. But it produces realistic scratching sounds and effectively mimics the look and feel of using real turntables.

The latest update to Synium Software's Mac Family Tree brings an overhauled interface and a handful of new features.

Google today started running its first location-sensitive mobile ads. Apps and websites tailored to Android and iOS devices can now use the location features, such as GPS or Wi-Fi triangulation, to trigger ads in a given area. The ads are expandable and expand with a tap to show a map with the location as well as the option of calling or getting directions....


Google - Global Positioning System - iPhone 3G - Wi-Fi - Location awareness

Filed under: iPhone, iPad

It's a tip calculator, check-splitter all-in-one app... and yes, there are a bunch of 'em on the store. Check out the demo to see if BistroMath combines the power you need with ease of use you're comfortable with. Ultimately, that's the differentiator in these calculator apps: usability. If you can't quickly split a bill, or split a bill fairly (say some guy ordered a bottle of champagne just for himself), then the calculator isn't for you. BistroMath seems to do this and more quite easily, so if you're in the market for such a calculator -- and yes, some people use these quite often -- check it out for iPhone or iPad for US$2.99. Try not to confuse it with the other Bistromath, which is not in the App Store.

TUAWApp demo: BistroMath originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After testing Apple's iPhone 4 against competing HTC and Nokia models in a remote area on the edge of Norwegian carrier Telenor's mobile coverage, the county's largest paper has concluded that its antenna design is "just as good and bad as competitors," rather than suffering any defect.