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News

Apple’s new books, we love our developers

Apple is giving Christmas presents early for Mac and iOS developers. These eBooks are available in the iBookstore which is free when you download it through your iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad. Apple is giving out six free development books on Mac OS X and iOS development. The books have just come out on the iBook application as of December 17, 2010. These books aren’t new, but they haven’t been available in the iBookstore. You can still download them in a PDF version at developer.apple.com. Many developers have already started on the PDF version, but it is handier to carry around the version in the iBookstore. You can read it anywhere you are such as riding a bus, at the coffee shop, or just for fun at home.

The six titles that are available are: Cocoa Fundamental’s Guide, The Objective-C Programming Language, iOS Application Programming Guide, Object Oriented Programming With Objective-C, iOS Technology Overview, and iOS Human Interface Guidelines. Many international developers have said that they can’t see that some books in the iBookstore. Apple has concentrated on getting more developers to make new games. Apple shows that they do care about their developers and by giving them free books, it shows that they want their App Store to continue to grow. Apple has been a dominate figure for developers because apps have been a huge success with Apple. Without developers, there wouldn’t be any handy devices or fun games. I know for a fact I wouldn’t be able to live without my games.

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Uncategorized

iTunes U, start learning the right way

iTunes U is the new innovative way to get students more interacted into education. iTunes U is a great way for students to learn from lectures, language lessons, films, labs, and audiobooks to tours. More than 800 universities have an active iTunes U site. Some of these universities include UC Berkeley, Yale, MIT, Oxford, and Stanford. These schools are very distinguished and have been honored with many awards. Students can learn from iTunes U because many professors go on virtual tours of places where the students learn from. Such as the Galapagos Islands which is a great place to learn about animals and more. People who want to learn about different areas of a certain field can go back and replay the lecture the professor taught.

iTunes U gives you a wide range of options to make changes to your site. They also give you ideas whether to use a PDF file or the ePub format. When using a PDF file, they tell you to use it for distributing brochures, flyers, or illustrated manuals. For text based papers, reports, and books, they advise you to use the ePub format. Many teachers have found that basic lectures are not enough to capture the kids’ minds. Many teachers and professors have found that virtual tours are very useful in giving the student a real look into what actually happens. Words can only take a person so far, images can take them farther.

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Reviews

Review: Bowers and Wilkins MM-1 Desktop Speakers

Bowers and Wilkins Hi-Fi speakers, once again raising the standard even higher for brilliant sound quality. The MM-1 speakers are the latest product in their tradition of excellence. The difference between these and their other speakers lies mainly with the fact the MM-1s are designed for desk use. Before we start, let’s begin with the breakdown:

  • Dimensions: 3.9 in x 3.9 in x 6.7 in
  • Connection type: USB
  • Includes: Speakers, Remote, Audio Cable, USB Cable, Power Supply
  • Weight: 1.9lbs

Point Scaled Grading

Style: 1-25 Given: 23
Price: 1-15 Given:12
Quality materials: 1-15 Given: 14
Brand name: 1-10 Given: 9
Modern technologies: 1-15 Given: 15
Compatibility: 1-15 Given: 13.5
Ease of use: 1-5 Given: 3

OVERALL: 89.5

Set up: Setup for the MM-1s is simple, just plug and play. In the box, a small, black, pebble shaped remote is included for easier control, which is a very useful tool.

Style: Needless to say, the MM-1s have style. Jet black, and chrome silver, they truly are a statement to the way quality speakers should look. In addition to being known for their Hi-Fi sound, Bowers and Wilkins are also known for the appearance of their products.

Price: At the retail price of $500, the MM-1s are definitely pricey. Although the MM-1s have incredible sound quality, you have to ask yourself, do you really want to pay $500 dollars for a set of desktop speakers? If the answer is yes, then go for it. But for the average consumer $500 seems to be way too much.

Quality Materials: Quality materials? Yes. The MM-1s are very sturdy speakers, and have a nice weight to them. They do not have that light and cheap feel that many other speakers have, but they sport a very solid build.

Brand name: It’s Bowers and Wilkins, what else is there to say?

Modern Technologies: The MM-1s use new technologies, such as the USB connection, which gives better quality fed through the speakers. They also boast two drivers, one for bass, and one for treble. The MM-1s also use digital signal processing, that keeps the bass and music sounding good at whatever volume played at.

Compatibility: There’s nothing really here to complain about, these speakers are compatible with Macs, as well as PCs. They also include an audio jack on the back for headphone compatibility.

Ease of Use:  The MM-1s are unique, in the way that they are specifically designed to be desktop speakers. The audio from the two speakers converge at around two feet from the speaker, ultimately giving the user musical bliss. The downside to this is if you move away from the center of the speakers, the sound seems faded. One solution is to move the speakers according to your position in the room.  Although this seems to work, it still is an inconvenience to reposition every listening session.

Continued Evaluation

Bowers and Wilkins MM1s have crisp vocals, strong bass , but they cost the hefty price of $500. The MM-1s are truly revolutionaries to the field of desktop speakers, giving Bowers and Wilkins’ signature Hi-Fi sound. I would recommend the MM1 speakers for hard core audiophiles, as well as any consumer wanting great quality speakers and is willing to pay $500 up front.

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Uncategorized

Take Your Web App Relationship to the Next Level

Gmail, Springpad, and Last.fm always occupy a tab on my browser, and I think we all know we’re doing more than just ‘browsing’.  These sites fall under the category of web apps, which is the trend on the net these days, as web developers take the attractiveness and usability they’ve unleashed in their iPad apps and adapt them to their desktop domains. Treating these as websites rather than standalone apps is a pain. This is where Fluid comes in to make the transformation from site to app.

A standard browser is not optimal for these apps when you’re constantly using them. They take up browser space, don’t stay loaded when closed, and don’t appear in your dock. Fluid is not the first site specific browser (SSB), (Mozilla’s Prism has been around for a while) but it is the only one designed specifically for OS X.

Simply launch the app and give it the URL and a name for each app you want. The web page is saved in your Applications folder, and treated like any standard app- ready to bounce in your dock, open at login, and take your relationship beyond the ‘browsing’ level.

Fluid has the standard browser features with tabs and the like, but options to change the theme to ‘chromeless’ (hiding the browser bars all together) turns your web app into a true application. You can lock an app to the desktop, change transparency, and there are tons of plug-in options as well.

Fluid uses the sites Favicon by default, which is pretty worthless as its insanely blown-up and pixilated, but you can choose a custom option, and their library of icons online even enables notification badges for sites like Facebook and Gmail.

The ability to set default window sizes and automatically find high-res default icons would be nice touches, and I’m not positive exactly what value plug-ins could add, but it’s really hard to find complaints for Fluid. The simple SSB provides easy and uncluttered access to your constantly used websites (apps).

Check Fluid out here — and as always, if you have any alternatives, share the knowledge in the comments.

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Average Joe's Tips

Fastest SD Cards

Most people don’t think to much about buying SD Cards and just buy a cheap one with a lot of memory. I have to disagree because there are many different factors to buying a SD Card such as speed, and from all of the research that I have done it always leads to the website newegg which lists things like speed as “Class 1,2,3,…” and features. Some SD Cards that I have found fast are the SanDisk 8Gb Extreme III, or the Kingston Class 10, but these can be pricy. Remember you can buy these things from newegg.com or Amazon. Also, note to make sure what kind of SD Card you need to buy like a Micro SD or a Secure Digital SD Card.

What do you think? How does your SD Card work for you? Leave a comment below and let us know.