OrbLive Brings PC Files to iPhone

Since the iPhone has no SD card slot or anything similar, you're pretty much limited to a maximum of about 16 GB of onboard storage for music, photos and videos. The next generation of the iPhone may up that to 32 GB. But if you've been collecting MP3s since the dawn of Napster, 32 GB still might not be enough space for your whole music collection, let alone a handful of videos. But with an iPhone, you've got a nearly constant connection to the Internet, and with an app called OrbLive, you can access almost any media file on your home PC, provided it's turned on.

 

Full article at here

Houston courts shut down due to Windows virus; Macs unaffected

"A new variant of a computer virus that has been around for years was the culprit that shut down courtroom operations in Houston's Municipal Court and will keep them closed until at least Thursday, city officials said,"

"Officials initially had hoped that courtroom operations would resume this morning, but virus-detection applications did not identify the virus until Sunday, said Janis Benton, of the city's information technology unit,"

"The virus infected the computers on Wednesday, Benton said. Workers began cleaning the 475 infected computers on Monday, she said, and those not infected have been protected,"

"Workers first thought the virus was Conficker, a super virus that has breached at least 10 million computers worldwide, including the government health department in New Zealand and defense systems in France,"

 

"On Monday, officials said the infection was from the virus family Virut, which has been around for several years. The city identifies the variant as W32/Virut.n."

"Virut infects different types of files, including Web page files, screen-saver files and some program files. It also can download other malicious software. This particular version infects winlogon.exe, the part of Microsoft Windows that handles the login process,"

 

"The city has authorized a contract for up $25,000 to Gray Hat Research, a technology security company, to correct the problems. Benton said she doesn't expect the remediation to exceed that."

Dale Lezon and Dwight Silverman report for The Houston Chronicle,  full article here.

 

Calendar and contact syncing for iPhone and Windows Mobile devices

For iPhone and Windows Mobile devices, Google Sync allows you to get your Gmail contacts and Google Calendar events onto your phone. Sync uses "push" technology, which means that any changes you make to your calendar or contacts from the browser or phone will be reflected on your device within minutes. For phones that support SyncML, the tool will allow you to get your Gmail contacts onto your phone. For all of these devices, synchronization happens automatically over the air, without having to manually sync your phone. The connection is always on, which means your information is always up-to-date, no matter where you are or what you're doing

 

To try Sync, visit m.google.com/sync, and check out our video tour here

Apple's Next-Gen iPhone Picture Getting Clearer

Like a stoic chess player, Apple gives nothing away, but the hints are there as to what could be next. And naturally, there's no shortage of speculation.

In the year-and-a-half since the launch of the iPhone, there have been numerous attempts to deliver a competing "iPhone killer" device. Some of these might even be successful. But for now, it seems the only thing that will beat the current iPhone may be its next-generation successor.

What that might be remains anyone's guess, but there have been hints along the way that have many Apple observers believing they know the answer.

Full article at here

Cocktail (Leopard Edition) adds trojan horse eradication

Cocktail puts a Mac-friendly user interface on many of the advanced Unix functions of Mac OS X that you'd otherwise need to access using Terminal's command line interface. The software sports access to features that let you run diagnostic tasks on disks, files, networking, user interface, and the core system itself; you can run periodic maintenance scripts, clear system and component cashes, optimize network settings and much more.

 

The new 4.3 release for Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" now adds the ability to clear potentially harmful files from your operating system, including most common trojan horses: Services.A, iServices.B, RSPlug.A, Jahlav.A, Leap.A, Astht.A, Astht.B, PokerStealer included. The new release also adds the ability to clear CrashReporter and HungReporter logs, and compatibility issues with QuickTime 7.6 have also been resolved.

 

 

HP iPrint Photo App for the iPhone and iPod Touch

HP iPrint Photo is a free downloadable software application that allows you to quickly and easily print 4" x 6" photos. Images stored on your iPhone or iPod touch can print on most HP networked ink jet printers connected to a local WiFi network. Wireless printing is a fun extension of the iPhone / iPod touch's easy photo capture and viewing experience.

 

Learn more at hp.com

Report: Apple Dominates the Mobile Web

The latest data from AdMob, the world's largest mobile advertising marketplace, shows that Apple now dominates the mobile web in the U.S. with a 48% market share. This growth, interestingly enough, does not just come from the iPhone, but the iPod touch also saw a meteoric rise in usage during the last month. Traffic from the iPod touch to AdMob's network in the U.S. increased 3.4 times from November to December.

 

 

Google Book Search Mobile for iPhone puts 1.5 million books in your pocket

Now you can. Google has launched of a mobile version of Google Book Search, opening up over 1.5 million mobile public domain books in the US (and over half a million outside the US) for you to browse.

 

To try it out and start reading, fire up Safari on your iPhone and go to http://books.google.com/m.

PageSender adds new fax-via-email services

SmileOnMyMac has announced the release of PageSender 4.4, a new version of its fax software for Mac OS X. A free update for registered users of version 4, PageSender costs $39.95.

 

With PageSender, fax or email anything you can print. Use the built-in PageSender Fax Center to manage and automate your fax activities.

 

The new release of PageSender has added several fax-via-email services, including Faxaway, Ring Central, MetroFax, TrustFax and Fax FX. QuickBooks 2009 and other "garbage-collected" applications are now supported; 64-bit applications are now supported (in preparation of Snow Leopard's release), and other minor fixes and improvements have been made.

System Requirements
PageSender 4.x requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
For Mac OS X 10.1.3‚ 10.3.9, download PageSender 3.5.5.

 

Windows virus knocks out Vancouver school computers for three weeks and counting; Macs unaffected

Three weeks after a virus infected computers across the Vancouver school district, information technology staff are being forced to attend to thousands of computers individually - and still have a long way to go before the system is running efficiently.

 

The virus hit most computers in the school district on January 7. Since the virus replicates itself from one computer to the next, staff were instructed to shut down every computer in the school district.

There are more than 10,000 computers in the district, each of which had to be shut down and disconnected from the network, then individually scanned and repaired if necessary, said Weir.

An online student forum by Point Grey secondary students identified the virus as Win32.Krap.b trojan, a bug that affects mostly Windows operating systems, shutting down computers as soon as users try to start them.

 

Full article here.

Report hints at next-gen iPhone in June

Coverage of Apple's plans to launch the iPhone 3G in the United Arab Emirates later this month appears to also signal a June release date for the handset's successor.

 

On Monday, Emirates Telecommunications - Etisalat said that it had struck the first iPhone deals of 2009 when it announced in a local newspaper plans to bring the iPhone 3G to the UAE and Saudi Arabia (under the Mobily brand) later this month.

Mark Davis, Program Director for iPhone at Etisalat, later spoke with Dow Jones and revealed the precise launch date to be February 15th. The same report went on to say that the "next version of the device, which is due out in June, will be launched in the UAE at the same time."

 

Full article here

Apple’s iPhoto and iWeb ‘09 hit technological tipping point

Many people have a technological tipping point. That's the point where software, life '09 for example, becomes so compelling that it can persuade one to give up personal, specialized, or UNIX geeky ways of doing things and just throw one's entire weight behind a product. life '09 did that for me with iPhoto and iWeb.

Sometimes, especially when one has been using computers in a UNIX environment for a long time, he or she will develop ways of doing things that grant great liberty and flexibility.

 

As a result, when a package like life comes along, an initial inspection may reveal that Apple has imposed its own way of doing things, flexibility is restricted, and other tools or methods remain useful, indeed hardly replaced by Apple.

The changes in these two apps, iPhoto and iWeb, are sufficient to justify the price of the upgrade if the plan is to get photos better organized, get more enjoyment out of them, and more easily organize them onto the Internet.

 

For those who never engaged this suite of apps before, now is the time - before the further features might overwhelm. For those who've been along for the ride all along, the upgrade is worth the money, just based on these two apps.

John Martellaro writes for The Mac Observer, full article here.