Apple has posted Black Friday shopping specials on its US online store Web page, available only on November 25, 2011.
The company has discounted MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iMac systems by $101, with savings also available on iPod nano, iPod touch and iPad 2. Apple has also cut prices on accessories like the Time Capsule backup and network base station, Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad, and Wireless Keyboard.
Discounts on third party accessories including headphones, bags, carrying cases and speakers are also available.
If you’re an IT manager considering whether to update your organization to BlackBerry Enterprise Server v5.0, you may want to act now. If you upgrade to BlackBerry Enterprise Server v5.0 before December 31st, 2011, you’ll receive a free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet
AT&T said Thursday that it has withdrawn its application from the Federal Communications Commission to acquire T-Mobile USA. AT&T and Deutsche Telekom said they will instead focus on fighting an antitrust lawsuit brought against the proposed $39 billion merger by the Department of Justice. AT&T made the announcement Thursday following the FCC’s decision earlier this week to hold an administrative hearing regarding the purchase. The FCC said it was unsure the acquisition would create jobs, as AT&T has promised.
The problem with Stamped is that it correlates popularity of your stamps to quality. It makes the assumption that because you like something – and use up one of your “limited stamps” to demonstrate this as a showing of quality – that others will be inclined to agree or incited to try out whatever you stamped. I don’t think that could be further from the truth.
In order to save some time the next time you go hunting for WordPress themes be sure to note these five essential ingredients that make up a great WordPress theme – for any type of website.
The Loop uses WordPress, but we used a custom designed theme.
I’m worried that the wells of attention are being drilled to depletion by linkbait headlines, ad-infested pages, “jumps” and random pagination, and content that is engineered to be “consumed” in 1 minute or less of quick scanning – just enough time to capture those almighty eyeballs.
Rian has some images of Web sites that he doesn’t like and some thoughts on the dilemma facing publishers and readers.
I was there because I just wanted to read something. Words. Black text on a white background, more-or-less. And what I saw — at a professional publication, a site with the purpose of giving people something good to read — was just about the farthest thing from readable.
This is exactly why Peter and I changed The Loop. It’s about the content and with the help of $3 per month memberships from readers (which includes a full text RSS) and weekly sponsorships from companies, we are able to provide a readable Web site.
John Carmack has released the source code to the legendary first-person shooter Doom 3. The code can be downloaded via the Github.com Web site.
Carmack made some changes to the source code to comply with license restrictions – most notably, the removal of code used for shading commonly referred to as “Carmack’s Reverse.” The technique was the focus of a patent dispute between Id Software, Carmack’s company, and Creative Labs, which patented the process in 1999.
Also, the actual game data has been removed, of course, so you can’t just compile the code and get a working game. But the Doom 3 source is of immense interest to game developers interested in seeing what makes the game tick – and perhaps incorporating some of that code into their own products.
Apple Inc. (AAPL) is letting a video-game company offer its titles by subscription on the iPad, expanding the role of a feature typically used by magazine and newspaper publishers.Big Fish Games, a Seattle-based game publisher, won approval from Apple to become the first to offer users access to dozens of titles for $6.99 a month. Until now, games have only been available one at a time, requiring users to download individual applications.
Charging subscribers a fee to play every month is reminiscent of the way games worked on cell phones in the bad old days before Apple launched the iPhone. I, for one, am not happy to see this development.
Update, 3:49 PM 11/23: The Big Fish Games title that uses subscriptions – the first such title – has been pulled, according to MacNN.There is no explanation for the decision.
Samsung’s new television ad for their Galaxy S II smartphone focuses on ridiculing Apple customers who wait in line for hours to get an iPhone.
The ad depicts line of white earbud-clad customers lined up behind barricades, noting that it’ll still be hours before they get in the door. They notice a man carrying a Samsung Galaxy S II, and remark about the phone’s large screen and “4G speed.”
It’s worth noting, though, that even in Samsung’s ad, the Apple customers don’t get out of line.
Samsung’s envy is understandable – they were practically giving their Galaxy S II phones away in Sydney, Australia the week that Apple released the iPhone 4S, yet they couldn’t muster a fraction of the interest that the iPhone 4S generated.
The Loop reader Mike DeFrancesco took a couple of pictures and iPhone video from Apple’s Grand Central store earlier today. Rumors had the store opening sometime this week, but that seems unlikely at this point.
Louis C.K., for Fast Company (as told to Nancy Miller):
The next Steve Jobs will totally be a chick, because girls are No. 2–and No. 2 always wins in America. Apple was a No. 2 company for years, and Apple embodies a lot of what have been defined as feminine traits: an emphasis on intuitive design, intellect, a strong sense of creativity, and that striving to always make the greatest version of something. Traditionally, men are more like Microsoft, where they’ll just make a fake version of what that chick made, then beat the shit out of her and try to intimidate everybody into using their product.
The ascerbic comedian gives us his observations of female culture, as the father of two young girls.
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski issued a draft order this morning that calls for a hearing to take the AT&T / T-Mobile merger before an Administrative Law Judge. Such a hearing, reminiscent of the one held for the attempted buyout of DirecTV by EchoStar in 2002, would be held once the Department of Justice’s litigation is complete and would certainly be another blockade for AT&T to push through.
It seems that this merger is being contested at every possible turn, doesn’t it?
iBooks publishers looking to send ebooks to reviewers, or who want to stir up interest in a new title through a giveaway contest, are out of luck. Unlike the App Store, publishers cannot create promo codes for the iBookstore.
Seems strange that publishers can’t get promo codes. Hopefully this will change to allow writers to promote their books.
Recent weekly Nielsen surveys of shoppers show that, much like in 2010, the majority of consumers (80%) are avoiding in-store Black Friday shopping. While increased Black Friday promotions appeal to consumer’s desire for “hot deals,” as a shopping event, Black Friday is becoming less relevant in the retail world as online shopping grows and holiday promotions begin earlier and earlier in the year. In fact, 35 percent of those recently survey cited they’ve already started their holiday shopping.
On Friday, we reported that VMware Fusion 4.1 can run virtual versions of Leopard and Snow Leopard, a feature previously barred by Apple’s end-user license agreement. On Monday, the other shoe dropped: VMware posted a blog entry that seems to back away from that feature.“When the license verification step was added in VMware Fusion 4.1 the server edition check was omitted,” the post says. “We are preparing an update.”
Eyebrows raised when the VMWare 4.1 update enabled users to install older versions of Mac OS X on virtual machines – something that would be really handy to IT professionals, developers and others, but something that heretofore hadn’t been supported.
The passive language used in describing the omission fails to pinpoint whether this was intentional or accidental, but one thing’s for sure – think carefully about updating VMware, if you’ve already downloaded 4.1 and are benefiting from the new, apparently unintentional, functionality.
One of the most essential elements in a minimalist design is typography. Let’s face it, you can’t do justice to minimalism with pre-installed fonts like Arial, Century Gothic, Georgia, Verdana, Times New Roman, and etc. But frown no more! Here are 30 sleek fonts you can download for free that could fit perfectly on your minimalist designs.
Apple’s newly launched iPhone 4S has quickly shot up to become the second most popular Cameraphone on Flickr.com. Flickr’s Camera Finder page shows graphs of the popularity of both smartphones and Point and Shoot cameras.
The iPhone 4S is only second to the iPhone 4.
Update: I mistakenly said this was for all cameras — it’s only smartphones.
“We believe that shipments of Nokia’s new Windows Phone 7 products have been lower than we had previously anticipated,” Faucette wrote in a note to clients. “We had expected that the company could ship as many as 2 million units into the six targeted markets for the holidays; however, we now believe that those shipments are likely to be less than 1 million for the quarter.”
It’s still early yet in Nokia’s ramp-up of Windows Phone 7 products, so it’s probably too soon to declare this a failure. But it does suggest that Nokia and Microsoft have an uphill battle against iOS and Android.
Mark Milian, a technology writer for CNN, has reviewed more than a hundred of these e-mails, compiled from those posted by fans to blogs and online message boards. Some never-before-published e-mails from Jobs were shared exclusively for this book. As a whole, these correspondences provide a behind-the-scenes and inside-the-mind account of Jobs’ final and most triumphant years.
HP, not Samsung, was the ruler of non-iPad tablets in the US for the first ten months of the year, the NPD Group said in a new study. With just 1.2 million tablets sold at retail across every company outside of Apple, HP was the leader in the country at 17 percent, or 204,000, sold between its launch and October. The low count suggests that the fire sale $99 TouchPad, not HP’s Windows range, was the sales leader by going on clearance.
I guess if there’s a silver lining, it’s that the Galaxy Tab outsold the Playbook.
FileMaker has announced a free “Holiday Kit” for Bento 4, its popular personal database software for Mac and iOS. The kit was developed to help Bento users use the software to plan parties, track gift lifts, send thank you notes and perform other holiday tasks.
The Cards and Labels templates lets you print mailing labels, track recipient names, addresses, family members, notes and add images of photos and cards received. You can sync the databases with Bento for iPhone and iPad (sold separately). Also included is a Party Planning template that helps you track RSVPs and all the tasks commonly associated with putting on parties, corporate events and family dinners. Last, the kit includes a Gift List template, used for tracking and budgeting holiday gifts, including donations.
The kit also includes a free 30-day trial version of Bento 4 for the Mac, so if you haven’t already tried Bento, now’s your chance.
