Exclusive: RSS Feeds and You

This is an exclusive post written specifically for current MacStories subscribers. If you don’t see it showing up on our home page, don’t worry!

When we launched MacStories 3.0 on Wednesday, we had to make a few difficult decisions about what we were going to do with our RSS feeds, and the announcement came with a lot of anger. “I’ll unsubscribe!” I’d unsubscribe too to be honest, but we had something planned we couldn’t implement at the last minute…an hour before launch.

Our goal was to implement what you see here: exclusive feeds made especially for our current subscribers. In WordPress it should be pretty easy – a lot of things are. However, some of our custom code did not like the publication of this exclusive content. Mainly, we had a lot of problems working with our new featured section you see at the top of the site. We didn’t want to sacrifice some of our site essentials at launch, so we decided to grin & bear it.

These exclusive feeds enable us allow us to introduce exclusive content that nobody else but you can see. And the first thing we wanted to do with our exclusive feeds was announce a special RSS feed free from the excerpt-only BS; everyone who has been with MacStories since the beginning deserves better.

The RSS feed link you’ll find below was made exclusively for our existing subscriber base – for the few thousand of our readers who continue to dedicate a portion of their inbox to our content. For that, we’re incredibly thankful and we really gritted our teeth when we threw you under the bus with our excerpt-only announcement. Future subscribers won’t immediately have the same luxuries you’re receiving this evening.

The full MacStories experience can be had in your favorite RSS reader through the following subscriber link. We call it the MacStories VIP feed.

feed://feeds.feedburner.com/macstories/vip

Again, we had planned to introduce this on Wednesday, but due to technical difficulties, we were unable to share this particular link with just our current subscribers. This wasn’t destined to be too public, as we would like future subscribers to land on the excerpt-only feeds for the time being.

In the future, all subscribers will have a choice between an excerpt-only feed, and a full ad supported feed. We may toy with the idea of a paid subscriber list, but we think that takes it too far if we don’t provide additional exclusive content. Anyone can subscribe to the MacStories VIP if they know it exists, but we really wanted to just share this little gem with our current subscribers - you’ve been with us far too long to be subjected to ads or excerpt-only mania.

Thanks for holding on for a couple of days while our very own Alessandro Vendruscolo (@MisterJack on Twitter) worked out the bugs. We appreciate your readership, and we hope to continue rolling out additional features to MacStories that will improve and diversify the content you read everyday. Next week, we’ll be making an announcement regarding just that - diversifying and expanding our content. In the meantime, we’re huddling and planning the latest features. Please enjoy the VIP feed, and we certainly hope you enjoy the new MacStories.

Steve Jobs Confirms White iPhone 4 Available for Christmas?

The white iPhone 4 has become some sort of unicorn amongstApple devices: where is it? It should have been available by launch, then it was delayed, and delayed again, and delayed again. We heard rumors about Apple facing issues with Chinese manufacturers (light leaking out of the metal band) and we also heard that, anyway, Apple should have the white model ready “later this year”.

Basing on a recent Steve Jobs email iPhoneDownloadBlog has received, it seems like Steve is indeed confirming the availability for Christmas. Read more

$250 of Mac & iPhone Apps Up for Grabs On MacStories

Two days ago we launched MacStories 3.0, and it was a great launch that went beyond all our most optimistic expectations. Really, thank you guys. To celebrate the new site we launched a series of giveaways, and many of you entered. For all those of you who didn’t win anything, though, we thought it’d be nice to offer a second chance.

So hit the break, check out the great Mac and iPhone apps we’re giving away and read the rules to find out how you can enter this awesome contest. Good luck! Read more

Airplay is Apple’s ‘Go to Market’ Internet TV strategy→

Airplay is Apple’s ‘Go to Market’ Internet TV strategy

Apple’s three year campaign to get content producers to shift from Flash to H.264 has been largely successful and is now at a tipping point. You can now view ‘most’ video on the web on H.264.

That means you can watch most Internet video on AppleTV over Airplay.  The day AppleTV is released, you’ll be able to watch free SD versions of clips shows that appear on ComedyCentral.com like the Daily Show and Colbert Report via Airplay.  You theoretially should be able to watch Hulu Plus so long as it is encoded in H.264 (and doesn’t get blocked once the networks figure out what Apple has done).

Killing Flash video (or at least making content providers offer H.264 alternatives) is what made all of this all possible. Whatever video you watch on your iOS device, you can now watch on your  HDTV.

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Grazing: My New Favorite iPad Browser

I feel bad writing this. No, let me rephrase: I love when facts prove me wrong. I especially love when third party developers of iPad applications prove me wrong. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece called “Your Alternative iPad Browser Sucks” in which I basically stated that every alternative browser I had tried on the iPad couldn’t keep up with the elegance and powerful engine of Safari. I still stand by that statement: 3rd party developers are not Apple and I’m pretty sure Safari has got some exclusive features buried deep down in the code engine (such as memory management) which 3rd party devs have not access to.

What’s great now is that I found an alternative that doesn’t suck. Actually, it’s a beautiful, powerful and feature-rich app for iPad called Grazing that has been sitting on my homescreen for a week now. Grazing is now my favorite alternative browser for iPad. Read more

DomainBrain 2.0 Is The Ultimate Domain Management App for Mac

I’ve got a bunch of domains to manage, and it’s not exactly the easiest of the tasks. Each domain comes with lots of information (Registrar, expiration date, WHOIS record) and it’s very easy to get lost in all these usernames and passwords. Plus, if you consider that you’ve purchased a domain because you probably want to run a website on it - then add database data, hosting, content management system, users.

1Password isn’t meant for managing domains, especially multiple domains at once. If you, like me, wanted to buy goodfuckingdesignadvice.com but went for other 5 similar domains instead, then DomainBrain 2.0 is for you. It’s the best tool to manage a “domain library” you could ever find on OS X. Read more