Στο Apple event της 1ης Σεπτεμβρίου, ο Steve Jobs δεν ανακοίνωσε τίποτα σχετικά με το κλασσικό iPod. Αρκετοί ήταν αυτοί που διερωτήθηκαν κατά πόσο το αγαπημένο μοντέλο θα αποτελούσε παρελθόν από την οικογένεια των iPod.

Η Apple όμως κράτησε το iPod classic για ακόμα ένα χρόνο (τουλάχιστο). Παρόλο που δεν είδαμε κάποια προσθήκη ή βελτίωση, το συγκεκριμένο μοντέλο, παραμένει στη σελίδα της Apple και είναι και διαθέσιμο προς αγορά από το store. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι είτε παρατείνετε το support της συσκευής για ακόμα ένα χρόνο και μετά τέλος, είτε σε κάποια φάση, στο μέλλον, η εταιρία θα το ξανακοιτάξει για τυχόν προσθέσεις ή βελτιώσεις.

Για ακόμα μια φορά η Apple δεν έδωσε μια flash συσκευή με αρκετή χωρητικότητα, αφήνοντας στους χρήστες με μεγάλη μουσική συλλογή, το iPod Classic σαν τη μόνη επιλογή.

What do you do when the Moon Men kidnap your girlfriend?

I figured it was enjoy the peace and quiet, but apperently I was wrong. Hoggy goes on a quest to gather all the keys (by eatting all the fruit, obviously) to save her. The premise might not make a whole lot of sense, but it is entertaining.

Created by Raptisoft Games, Hoggy is a sidescrolling platformer that utilizes the iPhone or iPod’s tilt control to move around. Touching the screen reverses the effect of gravity, negating the need to jump. The game feels like the spawn of Yoshi’s Island and Mario 2, which is both good and bad. The world is laid out as a series of screens blocked by locked doors. Each screen has baskets and tunnels and vases that you go down into a little mini-level. By eating all the fruit, you are granted a key. After you collect enough keys you can continue.

It starts off easy enough, but the game quickly becomes difficult. The lack of a D-pad only makes things worse. Tilt control might be innovative, but it proves to be more of a burden than anything as the levels become increasingly complex. The games graphics however are crisp and the varying stages keep the game from getting stale. You’re also able to move on to a different level if you’re having trouble, but to complete the game you need all the keys.

This game is currently free on the App Store (orginally $2.99, and $1.99 after a price cut), but it might not stay that way. Grab it while you can because this is a great portable platformer.

I picked up Veggie Samurai today as a free App of the day, developed by QuantumSquid. Probably for the best because I would be disappointed had I paid for it.

The game’s best feature is its many game modes. You can slice and dice for combos in Samurai Mode (or turn up the heat in Chaos Mode) or you go for three-of-a-kind style combos in Match Mode. Harmony Mode allows you to compete against the clock and Sort Mode asks you to keep all but one type of veg out of the cart. The game also allows multiple swipe inputs allowing you to use all of your fingers at once.

On the down side, the game revolves around asking you to swipe your finger to ‘cut’ the veggies. The first cut is simple, but the second cut (the dice half of slice’n'dice) is very difficult if your iPhone or iPod has a tendency to delay. This second cut is where the bulk of your points come from. It takes a while to nail the timing because it’s a bit different than what your normal reaction would be.

Overall, if you can grab the game for free, it’s a neat little time-waster. As a paid app it’s lacking the fluid controls it should have. You could also opt for Fruit Ninja (the original produce slashing game, from Halfbrick Studios) for $0.99 on the App Store.

Ping – Apple’s new social media network, will allow users to follow friends’ music interests working in a stream of updates similar way to Facebook or Twitter Having cornered the MP3 player, mobile phone and computer tablet markets with the iPod, iPhone and iPad devices respectively, last night Apple announced its latest expansion – into social media – with Ping. Ping will be integrated into Apple’s latest iTunes software update and will enable users, or “Pingers”, to follow musicians, friends and others to see details including what music they’re buying and what concerts they’re attending. Steve Jobs, Apple’s chairman and chief executive, said the information will arrive in a long stream of updates, similar to the way Facebook and Twitter work. “Be as private or as public as you want. The privacy is super-easy to set up,” he said adding that users can choose to automatically accept followers or decide on a follower-by-follower basis – similar sounding controls to those on Twitter. The service is available immediately to more than 160 million iTunes users, Jobs said, and will also be available across the iPhone and iPod Touch ranges.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/sep/02/ping-apple-music-social-media

Big Save! Ipod Touch 8GB Newest Model on Amazon.Low Price & Free Ship.order Today!

First up is the iPod touch. Thinner than ever, the 4th generation iPod touch–available in 8 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB capacities–features Retina display (4x pixels, 326 ppi, 24-bit color, and LED), the Apple A4 chip, a three-axis gyro, iOS 4.1 with Game Center, FaceTime with front camera, and HD video recording. Plus, the battery life is a whopping 40 hours!

Order at:http://astore.amazon.com/apple-ipad0a-20

Apple released iTunes 10 a couple of days ago and with that the new Ping Social Music Network. They also provided a way of integrating into your Facebook account so you could notify your Facebook friends about your Ping music preferences. However, something went a bit sour with Facebook.

Apple and Facebook had talked about incorporating the social network into iTunes new Ping service but couldn’t come to terms, according to Steve Jobs. So shortly after release the Facebook integration was pulled from iTunes 10 and Ping.

The new Ping Social Network on iTunes allows anyone using iTunes to recommend music to your friends and family and also see what others are recommending.

Let’s hope that Facebook and later Twitter intergration could eventually make it into Ping in iTunes 10.

Being in a relationship means syncing your iPod with music that may not necessarily be up to par with your own musical preference. Currently I am downloading music albums that my boyfriend D requested and syncing them to my music player. Of course, I was the one to ask him what he’d like to listen to, because being in a relationship also means being considerate enough to imagine that he may not like listening to what I like to listen to. Knowing this at all, is another facet of being in a relationship, sometimes you have to ask what your partner likes; you can’t always pick things up by mere observance. Anyhow, that’s my relationship tips, advice, whatever-you-call-its, for today.

My reason for asking my boy what he’d like to listen to is because he’s helping me move in to my new apartment tomorrow (or rather today, since it’s Friday now) and I wanted to make it as pleasant for him as possible by having music he likes blasting from my stereo. He is doing me a huge favor and I’m so grateful for it; he even made sure to get off from work just to be there for me. I have never had a boyfriend help me move in before and I am quite tickled at heart to finally experience this. It just goes to show how serious we are, yeah? D asked specifically for Diablo Swing Orchestra, Cat Empire, Arctic Monkeys, and Owl City. I threw in some Coheed & Cambria, Ray LaMontagne, Lady Gaga, and Amy Millan. It will be a party moving in all my stuff. I am so excited. He and I will get to see the unveiling of my new apartment first. I blogged about my new apartment earlier this summer, so I’m sure you know the extent of my excitement.

My summer is slowly coming to a close and I am not in the least bit sad. I am eager to get back to school and immerse myself in academia. Not to say that my summer was a bummer, not at all. I had a fantastic season, perhaps not exactly all I hoped it would be, but at least it wasn’t worse. I got to spend quality time with family. I traveled quite a bit. I didn’t have to miss my dogs (I don’t think it’s possible to ever get enough of them). And I got to plan stuff out. I have a long list of things to do this next academic year and I cannot wait to get started. One thing my mother said earlier this summer meant a lot to me: it is okay to dream, but daydreaming is dangerous. Don’t ever get caught spending your days dreaming. The point in dreams is to make it a reality. It is okay to dream, just remember to go out and make it real.

And that is exactly what I intend to do: set my dreams in motion. I just have to wait just a tiny bit longer, then it’s ready, set, go!

The speculation from ex-Lala users on Twitter, leading up to Steve Jobs’ presentation at the Apple music event yesterday was by-and-large reasonably optimistic. Many were hoping that he would announce that the streaming functionality from the popular but now defunct Lala had been integrated into iTunes to enable Apple device owners to stream the contents of their libraries via an online incarnation of iTunes.

Lala's technology appears not to have been reappropriated for iTunes after all

Most were sorely disappointed however; it now looks as if the technology may well have been reappropriated to deliver the improvements showcased with Apple TV instead.

To the uninitiated, this lack of streaming might seem a little strange, however looking more closely at the reasons behind it, I don’t think so.

1. Apple iPods are designed to store thousands of tracks. Why on earth would Apple suddenly make the one of the primary function of these devices (a mainstay product) effectively redundant by allowing streaming of users’ libraries? Not to mention the massive associated costs streaming billions of tracks would incur. iPod sales have been on the slide for a while now, however the announcement of a complete set of new-and-improved iPods may well help slow this decline, especially given the desirability of the new devices now sporting Apple’s oh-so-delicious iOS touch screen technology. It’s not as if Apple need worry either, their players still being the most popular on the market by a country mile.
2. iTunes store download sales delivers an enormous amount of revenue to the labels; 10 billion tracks have been downloaded thus far and Apple is still currently the largest single retailer of music in the US with its 25% share. Adding streaming to iTunes would surely reduce the number of paid-for downloads thus eating into these profits. Would the labels have been happy with this?
3. Apple takes large percentage of the revenue from download sales. More streaming and less downloads would simply mean less revenue since the amount changing hands is smaller; each user would have to stream several orders of magnitude more tracks to make up the shortfall.
4. Apple is still geared very much towards selling downloads as illustrated by the announcement of Apple’s new music social network, Ping, Jobs also announced yesterday. Look no further than the fact that Ping is built into the iTunes store for confirmation of this.
5. Why change your strategy in the market in which you’re already the dominant player and likely to remain so; additionally why switch to one which has so many legal challenges in terms of resistance by the labels? There are a number of big streaming players – the likes of Spotify, Rhapsody and now Sony’s Qriocity are all competing in an ever-more crowded space. Driven by Jobs, Apple have always led the way forward into uncharted technology and in the latest keynote on Apple TV streaming video, this is exactly what he did.

So – perhaps streaming to devices in the Apple ecosystem might be delivered at some stage (after the labels have been won around in a desperate attempt to look for new revenue generation areas) but if you’re an ex-Lala user looking for Apple to deliver this streaming fix, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

All is not lost however; if you own a web-enabled Apple device and you want to stream your music, why not sign up to Psonar for free, upload all your tracks to the Psonar Cloud and browse to our mobile website where you can do exactly this. You can also download your music to any computer, any other device (Android, BlackBerry, MP3 player, laptop, etc.) or stream it to any web browser whenever you like, all completely free.

I bought an iPod Nano 4th Gen last year to accompany me in my runs.  I think an iPod is great for running.  I bought it from the money I saved in a piggy bank.  I do still have one and still have the habit of dropping 100 peso bills at the end of the week if I have extra money left.

This year, Apple released the 5th Gen Ipod Nano with FM and video recording.  And now, they have an new range of Ipod products.  One thing that is interesting is the completely redesigned Ipod Nano 6th Gen which is now smaller like a shuffle and has a touchscreen.

Read more to see them: Check Out the New iPod Range to Spice Up Your Runs

For complete list of races , news and updates about running in the Philippines, please visit www.takbo.ph.  Race results of the different running events are available at the download section.