The OS X desktop as music video
A digital filmmaker named Dennis Liu has made an amazing video for The Bird And The Bee’s lovely song “Again & Again”. The set? His Mac desktop. You sort of have to see it for yourself to understand; luckily, Dennis has dropped it on YouTube so that the world can see it in low-res glory:
Innovative, and definitely cool. It doesn’t seem to be an “official” video for the song…but if it isn’t, it oughtta be.
[Source: MacRumors forums]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Apple promises iTunes movies same day as DVDs
Apple on Thursday announced that new movie releases will be available for purchase on the iTunes Store the same day as they’re available as their DVD release.
New releases and catalog titles are coming from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment and First Look Studios, according to Apple.
New releases available for purchase are priced at $14.99 each; catalog titles — that is, older titles that are still in circulation — are mostly available for $9.99 each.
It’s a step forward for the iTunes Store as a source for new video entertainment. When Apple first announced the availability of movies through the iTunes Store, it was indicated that Apple would offer new movies within 30 days of their availability on DVD. Now the company’s promising them the same day.
Apple is kicking off the new feature of the iTunes Store with new releases this week including “American Gangster,” the crime drama starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe; and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” a drama based on the true story of French fashion editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, at the age of 43, suffered a debilitating stroke that left him almost entirely unable to move except to blink his left eye.
Other recently released movies available to purchase from iTunes include “Juno,” “Cloverfield,” “I Am Legend,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.”
The movies can be viewed using a Mac or PC, iPod with video, iPhone, or Apple TV.
Apple now counts over six million songs, 600 TV shows and more than 1,500 films available through the iTunes Store, with 200 of those movies available in high definition video.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )PayPal: “No intention” of blocking Safari
There were strong rumors in the net and blogsphere about PayPal blocking Safari browser from its site.
PayPal public relations have clarified their position as below:
PayPal is developing features to block customers from logging into PayPal when using obsolete browsers on outdated or unsupported operating systems. An example of such a browser/OS combination might be, for example, Internet Explorer 4 running on Windows 98. We have absolutely no intention of blocking current versions of any browsers, including Apple’s Safari, from our website.
Apparently, a research paper released the week before by Michael Barrett, the firm’s chief information security officer, mentioned that the payment service would ban browsers that lacked a way to block known or suspected phishing sites, and didn’t support Extended Validation (EV) certificates, was what sparked off this piece of news and thankfully PayPal has responded soon enough. Safari is one browser that does not come with an anti-fraud blocker, and it also does not support EVs – a recently introduced digital certificate system that is meant to reassure consumers that the site has been vetted and is legitimate, leading people to speculate that this PayPal paper has also lumped Safari under the same roof as the mentioned Internet Explorer 3 from 1996 and Microsoft’s 1997’s IE4 as well.
Here’s a little bit of history lesson for the uninitiated – Apple currently supports only Safari 3.0 with security updates as well as various patches, and good to know that Safari 2.0 which shipped with Mac OS X 10.4 (aka Tiger) is still supported as well, unlike IE4 that came with Windows 98. PayPal’s revised criteria is “obsolete browsers on outdated or unsupported operating systems” will be blocked, which means IE5 is no go when 2010 rolls around while Safari 2.0 on Tiger will continue to receive support until Apple ships the successor to Mac OS X 10.5. Keep on shopping, guys!
Source: Computer World
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