Ten Great Applescripts For iTunes 10→

Ten Great Applescripts For iTunes 10

But iTunes is one of Apple’s most flexible applications, offering a huge library of AppleScript commands and properties. AppleScript virtuoso Doug Adams has been running the Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes Website for years, collecting scripts that he and others have written, and providing them for free. Here are some of the best AppleScripts that I’ve found on Doug’s site.

Great tips and great list. The Embed Artwork one is exactly what I was looking for. Make sure to visit Doug’s website for more AppleScripts.

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Shellfish Safari Extension Takes You On A Lonely Trip To The Internet

If you live on the Internet, if you ready dozens of blog posts every day but you hate the fact that the latest trend among publishers is to put tons of sharing buttons in their pages – then you’ll love this extension fo Safari called Shellfish.

Also available for Chrome and Opera users and released a few months ago, Shellfish strips away all the Twitter, Facebook and Digg buttons that suggest you share stuff with your friends. “Be Shellfish”, writes the developers on the extension’s site. Other services such as AddThis, AddToAny, Apture and Tweetmeme are blocked as well.

Shellfish is available here and works as advertised. If you think there’s no need to share anything, go install it.

AMD Fusion Coming To iMacs and Mac Pros?

Hardware Upgrade reports that AMD showed a couple of slides yesterday during the 2010 Financial Analyst Day which suggest that Apple might be included as a partner for future AMD Fusion releases. In the slides (which you can see below, or jump to the full presentation here) iMacs and Mac Pros are the Apple computers AMD’s slides are referring to.

As Hardware Upgrade also notes, rumors about deeper Apple / AMD collaborations have been floating around for months. Apple, of course, hasn’t confirmed any of them.

Apple Teams Up With Dentsu To Bring iAds to Japan

With a press release today Apple announced its exclusive partnership with Japanese brand agency Dentsu Group to bring iAds to Japan. The iAds following this partnership will be rolled out in Japan in early 2011 and Dentsu “will be responsible for the selling and creative execution”.

Dentsu subsidiary cci will provide creative production and media planning.

Check out the full press release below. Read more

Smule Wants To Make You A Musician Again With Their Magic Fiddle

There’s no doubt Smule knows how to release popular applications. If you look at their iOS portfolio, there’s not a single app that hasn’t sold thousands and thousands of copies in the App Store: I Am T-Pain, Magic Piano, Ocarina, Glee Karaoke and now, again on the iPad, the new Magic Fiddle.

Just like Magic Piano allowed you to play some sort of digital piano based on its own rules and system, Magic Fiddle recreates a violin on screen you can play with a few taps and swipes. The app is getting rave reviews on many blogs and publications, and while I haven’t tried the app myself (I’m not really a big fan of music apps in general) I have to admit it looks good from the screenshots and video posted by the developers.

The app contains a tutorial section to teach you how to bow, pluck, trill, vibrato and glissandi with your fingers; when you’re good enough to show off your skills, you can play with your friends and aim at the global leaderboards. Graphically speaking, Magic Fiddle looks interesting.

Magic Fiddle is available at $2.99 in the App Store. Check out the demo video below.

1.0 Is The Loneliest Number→

1.0 Is The Loneliest Number

I imagine prior to the launch of the iPod, or the iPhone, there were teams saying the same thing: the copy + paste guys are *so close* to being ready and we know Walt Mossberg is going to ding us for this so let’s just not ship to the manufacturers in China for just a few more weeks… The Apple teams were probably embarrassed.

But if you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long.

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Researchers Sound Alarm Over Critical Mac OS X Bug→

Researchers Sound Alarm Over Critical Mac OS X Bug

Security researchers Tuesday warned that Apple’s OS X contains a critical vulnerability that attackers could use to hijack Macs running the older Leopard version of the operating system.
Although Leopard was supplanted by the new Snow Leopard operating system more than a year ago, the older version still accounts for about a third of all installations of Mac OS X.

It’s a variation of the bug that made JailbreakMe possible.

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Apple Confirms iTunes Connect Will Be Closed December 23-28

With a brief note on the iOS developer center, Apple informed developers that iTunes Connect won’t be available starting December 23rd through the 28th:

iTunes Connect will be temporarily unavailable from Thursday, December 23 through Tuesday, December 28 for the winter holidays. iTunes Connect access will be back online for use on December 29. If you choose to set an available date for your app to go live during the scheduled holiday shutdown, your app will not go live on the App Store until iTunes Connect resumes for business on December 29. Please plan your releases accordingly.

Previous rumors reported that Apple was planning an additional “lockdown” for the Thanksgiving week. Nope, that won’t happen. Developers, get your apps ready before Christmas.