Seth Weintraub

According to CNET’s Greg Sandoval, iTunes previews may double in length as of Wednesday’s iTunes announcement.  Apple wants to improve the iTunes experience and the 30 seconds of music in the preview aren’t enough according to some.

That’s some pretty good news as you can pretty much listen to a whole song, along with a music video and lyrics on YouTube.  iTunes needs to stay competitive there.

Oh, and speaking of Cloud services, CNET says Apple hasn’t obtained the rights to do Cloud music storage and distribution so it won’t be able to store music via the cloud anytime soon.  Downer.
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Got to love the Onion.
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Arcade Fire made this incredible video using only HTML5 and Google Earth.  Check it.

Other experiments in HTML5. (via day job)
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…there won’t be a shortage of cases or color selection for the smaller mini-Nano (should one be announced).

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It appears that AMD is slowly killing off the ATI brand and will now use AMD for video cards going forward. Look for new AMD video card options in your upcoming Intel Macs.

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That September 1st surprise from Plex is a new iOS app that allows iPod touch, iPhone and iPad to be both media devices as well as remotes for the TV.  CrunchGear got a hands on look before launch.  For those who use a Mac as their mediacenter, this news may be as exciting as a $99 iTV.

Plex, if you aren’t aware, is a mediacenter built off of the original XBox MediaCenter  Open Source code.
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Alibaba has some new screen protectors for Apple’s next round of iPods, expected to be released on Wednesday.  In this particular rendering, the Nano has Wifi, though these manufacturers may only know about the screen size, if that.

They are also advertising a case for the new iPod Nano 6, below, which bears a striking resemblance to the older Shuffles.  They also have room for a 30-pin connector.

Close ups, below, with room for clips on the back.:

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iLounge speculates that a 2.8-inch iPod touch with the same resolution as current iPod touch devices would be a smart play for Apple at this week’s event.  They mention that the current Nano’s screen is only marginally smaller (2.4 vs. 2.8 inches) and it uses the same class of Processor (albeit with less RAM).

I like the idea for a few reasons:

• It would bridge the gap left between the Shuffle-sized Nano (which gets smaller) and regular iPod touch Retina Display with cameras (and lasers?)
• It would add a very inexpensive way to get onto the App Store and other media stores, which helps Apple in the numbers game vs. Android.  Apple starts to make more after purchase which warrants subsidizing the initial price.
• At lower storage points (4GB/8GB?) and no camera, It wouldn’t compete with the higher price point iPod touch with cameras, faster processors and Retina
• You can already find the current iPod touch 8Gb for $149 on Apple’s refurb store.

The major downsides which could be deal-breakers:

• Typing on a 2.8-inch screen would be difficult
• At $99, Apple would risk being considered cheap.  Maybe $129 or $149 are more realistic, but less awesome.
• The speed of the older/cheaper chip architecture has taken a significant hit with iOS 4 (see iPhone 3G).  It would be unfortunate for Apple to release a slow device out of the gate.  Maybe Apple has a speedy/efficient A2 processor waiting in the wings.

Still though, it is an interesting concept.  Imagine a Wifi, full web browser, email client, 250,000 app App Store, Maps, videos, photos etc on a sub-$100 device for the masses.  If you consider the implications, would this be a better OLPC device for kids with small fingers?

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—>??

So the reports of a 1.8 inch screen Nano continue this week.  If you can imagine how small a 1.8 inch screen, measured diagonally, device is, you’ll note that it is pretty much the same size as a modern wristwatch.  Apple, known for its ultra thin and light products, isn’t going to have a lot of weight around the outside of this product.  It is pretty much going to be screen, battery, System on Chip and some way to charge it.  Dick Tracey time!

I’m not saying Apple is or isn’t going to release an iWatch.  I’m just saying that if Apple does release a 1.8-inch iPod nano touch screen device, all of the kids are going to be ‘harnessing’ them on their wrists.  It is the natural way to use a device like this.  Think about it.  Why do people wear watches on their wrists?  It makes sense.  Don’t fight it.  Apple’s founders haven’t.

In fact, people are already wearing their heavier iPod touch and current iPod nanos on their arms,  Is it that hard to imagine the device sliding down another foot?

People at the gym or jogging around town schweaty are going to be rocking these too with its Nike+ skills and pedometer.  The kids mentioned before are going to be wearing them like kids of my generation wore Swatch watches.  They’ll carry pictures, video, movies, a calendar, a contact database and a bunch of other stuff.

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Patent trolling isn’t just for the relevant these days according to the WSJ.  Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who lost $8 billion in the cable industry and now owns the Seahawks and Trailblazers, is suing Apple (and everyone else) over some mundane patents.

The technology behind one patent allows a site to offer suggestions to consumers for items related to what they’re currently viewing, or related to online activities of others in the case of social networking sites.

A second, among other things, allow readers of a news story to quickly locate stories related to a particular subject. Two others enable ads, stock quotes, news updates or video images to flash on a computer screen, peripherally to a user’s main activity.

The Journal notes that Allen’s Vulcan Ventures conveniently  isn’t suing anyone in the local Seatlle area.
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This is obviously old news by now, but we’ve upgraded 9to5mac.com again.  We had some significant issues throughout the update (and there are still some things left to hammer out), but we’re back up to full speed.

There were a few objectives to the update:

1. Platform. We moved from Drupal 6 to WordPress 3.  We are losing a few benefits of Drupal, like pagecounts, extensibility and user functionality, but we gain so much more with WordPress.  Wordpress is lighter weight, fast moving platform and offers a wealth of plugins.  Hosting is also more efficient.  For writers, there is a better WYSIWYG and we can use our iOS devices to write and edit content and comments.   In the end, it was a no brainer.

2. Speed. We wanted to move to Cloud storage so that traffic would scale for the very busy times like Apple events or big stories where we’d often slow down or temporarily go offline.  Over the past two months we had a particular slowdown in our Drupal installation that our previous developers and MediaTemple weren’t able to sort out.  We needed more power.  Now we are on the Rackspace Cloud which should be close to unlimited bandwidth.  You should feel the difference.

3. Comments. We really enjoy comments.  Our previous commenting system was the Drupal standard.  It wasn’t good at keeping out spam, flexible logins, nesting or embedding multimedia.  With the move to WordPress and Intense Debate comments we have so many other options.  The downside is that longtime users will have to reclaim their login in Intense Debate or login using Twitter/Facebook.  We debated this for a long time but felt like t his was the way to go.  You can still comment anonymously but you’ll likely end up in the moderation queue whereas logging in should have your posts alive immediately.  All of your old comments are kept in the old posts.

4. Design. We liked most of what we did for our last design iteration and wanted to continue to clean it up, both to make the page load faster and to make the site easier to use and easy on the eyes.  The designers over at ThinkBrilliant did a great job for us there.

We really hope that you enjoy all of the new features on 9to5mac.com and that the DNS outages over the past two days were worth it.  As always, feel free to comment below (even if it is just to try out the new comments system!) on what you think and what you’d like to see.

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The first shots are coming in of Yerba Buena Center getting decked out for the Apple Event.  Can you feel the excitement?

More below:

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A fake iTunes review company in the US got a big slap on the wrist today for accepting payments for writing fake iTunes store reviews.

Under the settlement, the California firm, Reverb Communications, and one of its executives, Tracie Snitker, agreed to remove all of the iTunes reviews that appeared to be written by ordinary people. The settlement also bars Reverb and Ms. Snitker from making similar endorsements of any product or service without disclosing any relevant connections. The settlement did not involve any monetary penalties.

Yeah, I’m sure that won’t happen again.  Even if companies were scared to do this sort of thing, what’s to stop companies from outsorcing this type of behavior overseas where this isn’t illegal?  The big fines?  That’s why Apple makes you buy a product before reviewing it (image above).

The charges stem from a new law passed last year..

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Apple updated its iWork suite with some bug fixes and a nifty addition today.  By far the most interesting is the ability to export into ePub format.   That means you can easily put your documents into your iBooks application on iOS devices (not that you couldn’t use PDF for the same purposes before).

We are always wary of updates before an event so we’ll see soon if there are any hidden compatibility issues addressed for new devices revealed next week.  Other updates to Pages, Numbers and Keynote include:

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Apple today updated the firmware on the new (mid 2010) 15 and 17-inch MacBook Pros.

The update resolves a rare issue that may cause the system to freeze during startup or intermittently stall during operation, and it improves compatibility with external displays.

Connect up that power cable and hit Software Update or head here if this affects you.  
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Developers got another seed of Mac OSX 10.5.6 today covering iCal, Mail, USB Devices, 3D Graphics, QuickTime, and Time Machine.

Only known issue? Having VMware installed may prevent USB devices from working after waking from sleep.

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Mixing fast luxury sedans with Apple iPads and Macintoshes?  What else could you ask for?

(Click for larger)

In addition to the cushy leather seats and Alcantara headliner, the rear compartment is stocked with two Apple iPads, two seat-mounted multimedia screens, a 64GB iPod Touch and a 15.2-inch headliner-mounted Mac display. Not only can these products be used for personal use, but the two iPads also control the car’s Command system, encompassing the radio, navigation and telephone systems. The whole Apple setup is powered by an ultra-small Mac Mini in the trunk that is housed in an electronically deployed drawer.

via Autoblog

This is one of those Chicken or the Egg riddles.  Is Plex 9  (the best Macintosh Media Center) coming out on the same day as Apple’s media event because it is taking part, related to what Apple is unveiling, or being bought?  Or is Plex just jumping on the bandwagon for the sake of publicity?  Either way, we’re pumped!

September 1st.  We’ll be covering

iLounge reports that a Chinese website has the future iPod touch and iPod Shuffle cases.  We’ve seen the iPod touch retina cases with camera holes before, but the new iPod Shuffle/Nano cases seem to indicate that those small 1.8-inch Apple screen (below) might turn out to have a home.

iLounge had previously concluded that the 1.8-inch screen will be the touch screen, and/or it may have some controls on the side or back.

September 1st isn’t even a week away :D.

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The September 1st event may or may not have a iTV entry. What are Steve Jobs’ latest thoughts on the industry? “Tear up the set top box and start over”.

[vodpod id=Video.4289468&w=650&h=425&fv=videoGUID%3D%7BFF922002-FA63-4B68-A326-EA12EC800612%7D%26amp%3Bplayerid%3D4001%26amp%3BplyMediaEnabled%3D1%26amp%3BconfigURL%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fm.wsj.net%2Fvideo-players%2F%26amp%3BautoStart%3Dfalse]

So, what is the go to market strategy?  (Via Syracuse)
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Well now.  That wasn’t quite the ‘mid-September’ that Kara Swisher had predicted.  It wasn’t even the week earlier that  Bloomberg threw out yesterday.

Apple’s Music/TV event is September 1st.   Will there be an iTV?  A iPod touch with Retina and cameras?  A smaller nano-shuffle?  Tell us your predictions in the comments.

Oh, and get your credit cards ready! via Engadget.
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