Apple Event To Be Streamed Live By AppleApple Event To Be Streamed Live By Apple In a move that no one knew was coming, Apple released a press release stating that they themselves would stream the event. There is a catch though, you have to have a Mac running Safari on OS X version...

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How To Import Email From Outlook to Apple Mail.app Using ThunderbirdHow To Import Email From Outlook to Apple Mail.app... The folks over at the How-To Geek have written a great article on how to do this, it's pretty long, and if you are switching, or need to get mail out of one into the other, it's a great read. Read the...

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Apple Event To Be Streamed Live By Apple

Category : Featured, Mac, Web/Tech, iPhone, iTunes

In a move that no one knew was coming, Apple released a press release stating that they themselves would stream the event. There is a catch though, you have to have a Mac running Safari on OS X version 10.6, an iOS device with 3.0 or higher, or an iPad. This is because they will be using the open HTTP live streaming protocol.

In reading the multiple blogs about why Apple is deciding to do this, according to TechCruch, they claim that streaming media will be a key part of the event, I myself think that with the new Apple TV or iTV, that will introduce some sort of iTunes in the cloud option, but there will probably be limitations, as I wish I could put my 1.72TB of iTunes media on the cloud, but it would take a year to get it uploaded somewhere.

This will also cut back on the illegal streams and hopefully Steve won’t have to tell people to shut off their wireless devices.

Anyway, it’s all rumor and speculation, so tune in at 10 AM PST and watch for yourself at Apple.com.

How To Import Email From Outlook to Apple Mail.app Using Thunderbird

Category : Featured, Mac, Web/Tech, Windows

The folks over at the How-To Geek have written a great article on how to do this, it’s pretty long, and if you are switching, or need to get mail out of one into the other, it’s a great read.

Read the full article at How-To Geek

My WWDC ’10 Predictions

Category : Mac, opinion

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With the opening of WWDC 2010 tomorrow and the big keynote, I have been sifting through all the rumors and predictions and here is my list.

1. iPhone OS 4 along with iPhone HD

2. Safari 5 and a big Snow Leopard update

3. Cloud based iTunes / MobileMe

4. Updated Apple TV

Those are the big ones I think will be announced, since the new iPhone isn’t really a rumor anymore we can probably guarantee a new one. I don’t however think it will be available on Verizon.

Those are my thoughts on it, we’ll see for sure once the keynote starts.

My Daunting Snow Leopard Upgrade

Category : Featured, Mac, Software

thumb160x_snowleopardbox.png I am a somewhat new Mac user, and my MacBook Pro is just a month old, has been replace once a week after I got it for hard drive issues, so my second machine was starting to act funny, I got my copy of Snow Leopard and started the upgrade process (I had everything backed up to externals just in case I ran into issues). So the upgrade seemed to be going fine, until I got the message that said the operating system couldn’t be installed.

Next on my list was to boot from the disk, and use disk tools to format and repartition the drive and start from scratch, again no go. So, still not convinced that something was wrong, I tried to reinstall leopard on the frehshly formatted drive, and it installed fine, I then attempted to do the snow leopard upgrade again, and again I got an epic fail.

My hard drive was a little louder than usual, even before the upgrade, and I had been having issues of the spinning beach ball spinning for awhile, then the drive would catch up and it would run fine, but after three attempts I decided to go to the Genius Bar and see what they thought.

He took the machine in the back, and after about 10 minutes, came back and said they were going to replace the drive and that it would be ready on Tuesday, this was a Friday, and I needed my machine over the weekend. With a barely working machine, I headed home with my tail between my legs, but I remembered I had an old 80 gig drive that would work, so I formatted the drive and installed snow leopard on the external, swapped the drives in the machine, and limped along until Tuesday when my new drive was ready. I am now fully up and going, but I went through the most difficult upgrade process I have ever gone through.

The one thing I am happy about is that I could migrate everything from the external to the new internal, and all my settings, programs and documents were just the way I left them, I still had to reinstall a bunch of apps, but that’s not as big a deal on a mac as it is on a windows machine, so if you had similar or other issues with the Snow Leopard upgrade, let me know in the comments.

How to Tag Your Videos for iTunes the Easy Way

Category : Featured, Mac, Software, iTunes

For a long time I was an avid windows user, and had a hard time properly tagging my videos for iTunes. I prefer to add MPAA ratings, actors, and all the data that you cannot add directly in iTunes itself. I didn’t like the fact that the videos would show up wrong, or the artwork was jacked up. Now to clarify, most of the videos you buy directly from the iTunes store or get as a digital copy off your DVD’s come properly tagged. The crisis was for downloaded content or movies that I rip from my personal DVD collection.

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Now that I am a full time mac user, I heavily rely on a couple of programs for getting the job done. If you want to get your personal DVD’s into iTunes and tag them the right way, I recommend the following combination of programs. Handbrake and MetaX. Handbrake is an open source app that takes DVD’s and a variety of other video files and converts them to a host of formats, the main one being MPEG-4 which is iTunes and iPod friendly. MetaX is a meta-data tagging application capable of batch tagging MPEG-4 as well as QuickTime videos.

Both programs will make your ripping and tagging much easier, and handbrake will throw the file into MetaX if you change that in the prefrences.

It’s an easy way to make sure that all your files are properly tagged and so iTunes puts them in the right place.

Mac Blogging Applications, I need a Good One

Category : Mac, Software

So I am supposed to be writing a list post today, and maybe later in the day that will happen, but right now I would like to ask the readers for help. I am writing this post using a demo of Blogo, and I am not quite sure if I like it. I would like to find an application that will let me do all the things that Windows Live Writer did, and if I don’t get any good suggestions, I’m afraid I may have to finally break down and install Windows 7 in a virtual machine and continue using WLW. Please leave your suggestions for a blog writing app in the comments or via twitter @btiede.

Thanks in advance for all the suggestions.


ShareAppScreen

Category : Mac, Web/Tech

So there is a website out there called ShareAppScreen it installs a widget on your mac and syncs your apps with your iTunes account. It’s a cool concept, so have a look at my screen here.

TweetDeck for iPhone is Live

Category : Mac, Software, Windows, iPhone

One of my favorite desktop twitter apps TweetDeck has released their iPhone version, and it will definately get a spot on my home screen, it’s a good iPhone twitter app. The best new feature in both apps is the ability to sync colums across platforms. You can download TweetDeck for your computer and the iPhone now.

TweetDeck for desktop download

TweetDeck for iPhone download

(photos via Kevin Rose)

3 Ways to Get Facebook Information Into Your Contacts

Category : Featured, Mac, Software, Windows, iPhone

In a neverending quest to keep my contacts up to date with photos and other information, I sought out three applications that would sync your Facebook contacts with Outlook/Address Book/iPhone.

Fonebook for Outlook

Probably the easiest way to get this info into Outlook 2003/2007 is to use Fonebook. You log in to Facebook from the application, and it will smart match your address book to your Facebook contacts and sync them. It will also let you add a Facebook contact to Outlook.

Download Here

AddressBookSync for Mac

AddressBookSyncThis is the same context as Fonebook, but for mac. It’s another easy to use app, and it lets you customize what you want it to sync.

Download Here

feX for iPhone

I have tried several iphone/facebook sync apps, and this one is the one I like the most, you log into facebook from the app, and it downloads the data and syncs it to your iPhone, this will then also sync back to Outlook/Address Book if you sync that stuff to your computer, but if you don’t it will let you keep photos up to date. feX for Facebook is $1.99 from the app store and it’s worth the price.

Download from iTunes

Hulu Desktop

Category : Mac, Windows

hulu-blackHulu surprised us all a couple weeks ago by dropping a desktop application  into the mix. The desktop app works on Windows and Mac, and moves the content from the browser to the desktop via a Hulu approved app.

Hulu desktop is easy to use right away, however if you have a Hulu account with prefrences and subscriptions set up, it’s easy to log in and access all your personal stuff.

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The application is very easy to use and let’s you browse by movies, TV, and all the other selections the website lets you. It also doesn’t suck the CPU and memory as bad as Joost for the desktop did, and this is a good direction for the Hulu folks, but I still believe they need to move towards letting people watch their content on the TV, but this is definately a step in the right direction. If you are a Hulu user, I would definately recommend you check this out.

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Hulu desktop is part of the Hulu Labs offering, which will offer a peek at the things the Hulu developers are working on. You can grab the app from the Hulu Labs Webste.

Hulu Desktop Download