9to5 Staff

The iFund DB has been compromised.  Data which was entered in the online application here which includes contact information, founder bios, the business plan, demos, financial information, etc. is included.  Out there on the internets for all to see.

Woops!

For those less scrupulous folks out there, you now have access to a DB of developers who might have a share of $100,000,000 to spend on Viagra and Nigerian lottery scams.  Get spamming!

You’ll want to be getting this…

What is the Google Earth API?

The Google Earth Plug-in and its JavaScript API let you embed Google Earth, a true 3D digital globe, into your web pages. Using the API you can draw markers and lines, drape images over the terrain, add 3D models, or load KML files, allowing you to build sophisticated 3D map applications. If you have an existing Maps API site, you can 3D-enable your page with as little as one line of code.

New! The Earth Browser Plug-in is now available on Mac OS X (Intel and PowerPC).

Note: The Google Earth API and Maps API Terms of Service have been recently updated.

The Google Earth API is a free beta service, available for any web site that is free to consumers. Please see the terms of use for more information.

BGR has the goods on a proported $99 4GB iPhone going on sale at Walmart on Dec 28th.  Sounds good initially.  You can still keep the  high ground with your 16GB monster while the unwashed masses go about with thir $99 – can barely hold the Star Wars Trilogy – handset.  More marketshare, more potential customers for apps, more websites designed for iPhone.  Woot!

But, as we’re sure many of you know, the two year plan that is required costs $80- $100 a month depending on the plan you choose.  If you can’t afford the extra $100 for an iPhone, are you going to be financially able to get on a $100/month plan?  Sounds like a poor financial decision. 

Perfect for the Walmart demographic?

Maybe, just maybe, Apple has some EDGE iPhone chipsets (sans GPS) laying around ready to go for another run.   Heck, even the old design was pretty solid.

So, maybe also at lower plan prices?  Even the old AT&T plan prices would be a gift for the holiday season.

Will a $100 giftcard to Walmart will be the "must have" gift this year?

Not too much in the way of excitement here. But we thought it’d be interesting to see what the competition was up to in the ever-popular boot-up screen graphics category.  For those of you with a Playstation, you might see something familiar.  http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf

Redmond appears to be pointing their copying machines toward Japan?

Adobe is hitting some rough waters lately with its latest sales figures in.  It seems that in a bad economy, companies take a pass on upgrading a $1000-2000/seat piece of software (CS4).  Most creative agencies aren’t really increasing headcounts either.  No surprise there.

• Adobe expects Q4 sales to come in between $912 million and $915 million, below its previous estimate of $925 million to $955 million, and below Wall Street’s consensus of $930 million. (Not terrible, actually.)
• The main reason: Weaker than expected demand for its Creative Suite 4 software, including Photoshop, etc.
• Adobe will lay off 600 workers worldwide. That will result in a pre-tax charge of $44 million to $50 million, about 60% of which will be written down in Q4.
• Adobe is aiming for $800 million to $850 million in Q1 revenue — below year-ago sales, and significantly below the Street’s $931 million consensus, but not far from the Street’s low estimate of $809 million.

Along with dropping those 600 workers, there has been some restructuring at the top, and apparently frivolous ventures like showing up at Macworld with a huge fancy booth have been cut out of the plan as well.  What better way to show the public you are on the ropes?

Never fear!  Adobe will be fine.  They’ve long ago bought up the competition.  Their big focus right now is on Air and Flash platforms running on everything.  Creative Suite on the Mac, for the most part, sells itself.  Or in the case of Macworld ’09, there will be Adobe training sessions which hope to sell some CS4.

In case you ever wanted to know how well the Apple iTunes streaming scales, here is your answer…

Reports around the Internet say that Amazon and others are having problems keeping up with demand on iPods.  A quick check around refutes this claim to a degree, as Amazon has all models in stock and ready to ship – tho sometimes they are from affiliates.  There are a few outages here and there but overall, they appear to be in good supply.  But, just in case, if you have holiday iPod aspirations, you may want to pick up something now.  

Oh, we’d like to take this opportunity to show you how cheap our Amazon affiliates sell iPods  (maybe they will run out!):

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thepartim-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B001FA1NZU&md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrApple iPod touch 32 GB Best Price $378.99
Apple iPod touch 16 GB Best Price $284.99
Apple iPod touch 8 GB   Best Price $200.00
Apple iPod classic 120 GB Best Price $190.00
Apple iPod nano 8 GB  Best Price $134.95

Best Buy? Ships in a day  Update: some nanos are out of stock

Target? 24 hours with a few nanos waiting

In related news, did Shaw Wu leave American Technology Research? Snap!

Papa needs a new pair of shoes!

Red’s new camera is out and for those out there willing to spend just shy of $3000.  Not a bad deal for such high end specs, but we’d probably still take a Canon 5D Mark II but what do we know?

Click to see world’s biggest jpeg (taken with Red Camera?)

Amazon is releasing an iPhone App today according to the New York Times that will allow, amongst other less revolutionary functions, people to take pictures of something they want and have it come up as a purchase option.  Obviously, if this works, it’d be a really interesting feature.

But it is, at the moment, slightly smoke and mirors.

The photos are then uploaded to Amazon and turned over to the far-flung freelance workers in Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program, who will try to match them with products for sale on Amazon.com. The results will not be instantaneous (between 5 minutes and 24 hours, the company says), but the idea is to entice consumers to buy products from Amazon instead of its offline rivals.

Update: It is out.(iTunes link) You can start taking pictures of your privates and seeing how much Amazon charges for them!

Obviously, brick and morters aren’t going to be too pleased with iPhone users running around their stores snapping pictures and purchasing cheaper items online.  Will iPhone usage be banned in stores?

After three long, painful months of waiting on edge, the planet can join together in jubilation, for Apple has finally started shipping their in-ear headphones. A lot has happened since these headphones were announced, including the downward spiral of the US economy, so the likelihood that people will decide to shell out 80 bucks for these is about as slim as the chance that they will stay in my ears. Nevertheless, its nice to see a delayed product finally ship, no matter how late it may be.  This looks to be a great product at a very un-Apple like great price.

Cinema Displays, check. In-Ear Headphones, check. Mini-Display Port to Dual-Link DVI… not quite.  Just in time for Eastern Orthodox Christmas maybe.

Oh and by the way, for some inexplicable reason the volume control doesn’t work with the iPhone.  Just because it has volume control on the device itself?  WTF

 The fanboy alert is ready for anyone who dares to defend this.

"Use of the iPhone’s accelerometer controls to launch grenades & the touch screen to aim at and shoot enemies."  -enough said. 

Brothers in Arms (iTunes link) is a new title from Gameloft.   We probably won’t buy it but the idea of launching grenedes using the accelerometer seems…um, awesome!

More screens below.

Two big stories today that I don’t understand.  Can anyone help?

1. Apple is suddenly warning its users to use Anti-Virus software.  Apple has always recommended anti-virus software – especially to enterprise customers.  They do it because they want Apple users to be safe and for Virus makers to know that their user base is protected. 

Do a quick search on Apple Docs and you’ll find a number of them.  Here’s one from 2002.  Here’s one from earlier this year.  There are plenty more.  This isn’t at all new.

6) Check for Viruses
Macs are far more less likely to get a computer virus like Windows PCs are prone to but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. If you don’t already have antivirus software, you may want to consider making a purchase. If you have the software installed, be sure to keep your virus definitions up to date—you can find the latest updates on your software manufacturer’s website.

 I mean didn’t they used to give out Virex with a .Mac accounts?  WTF.

2. Also, Mini DisplayPort is going to be licensed for free?  It is a VESA-approved open standard that Apple has no control over.  Displayport has 20 pins.  Mini DisplayPort has 20 pins.   The "mini" isn’t any sort of technology.  It is just an adapter.  It is like saying I am going to license mini-USB adapters.  4 pin to 4 pin. 

Apple may want to help other companies make parts for their hardware but they are by no means licensing the DisplayPort Technology.  Nor is there any technology in a DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort adapter.

Am I nuts?

Apple doesn’t air all of the ads they produce. MacBlogz found 7 that never hit the boob tube. Are there any others out there you can think of?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEZOABjd2jQ&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
See the rest on www.macblogz.com/2008/11/30/unaired-apple-commercials-the-definitive-list/

Microsoft is having a bad month. Redmond is losing share in Web metrics as well as in the OS market.  (Oh and people are buying up old PCs for the XP licenses)

In the broader operating system market (depicted below) you’ll notice that Apple’s OS’s (Mac and iPhone) now operate at over 9.25 percent of the market. Microsoft dipped below 90% for the first time ever in this survey.

Firefox also had a great showing, scoring over 20% of the browser Marketshare for the first time ever.  Safari and Chome also gained ground on Internet Explorer.

So the Apple cult gets slammed a little bit in last night’s Simpsons…but Mapple fans can laugh at themselves once in awhile, right?

http://www.hulu.com/embed/2o5YyvJ36vjql-Gb58xfBQ/133

http://static.ning.com/appleheads/widgets/video/flvplayer/flvplayer.swf?v=3.9.1:11517

Via

Joost isn’t brimming with fantastic content, though there are some interesting titles for sure.  However, it is now on the iPhone (iTunes Link).  Interestingly it works only over Wifi.  While this is a nice little application, it is most important because it means that slightly more exciting applications like Hulu and Slingplayer are both possible. 

This class of media broadcaster seems like a great pick for the iPod touch – since AT&T isn’t letting the video stream to be played over 3G.  Early reports day it is more than slightly buggy but its on the store – which is the big victory

So, it was bound to happen at some time. Linux is now booting on the iPhone.  It still has a long way to go in the "features" department but tinkerers will no doubt be interested in playing with the iPhone and its new capabilities.  Don’t expect a mainstream version any time soon…head to OpenMoko if that is your thing.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2373142&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

via Engadget
 

We’ve been hard at work finding good Apple-related deals for you guys over the past few months but thought we could really step it up a notch by getting one of the experts involved.

So, we went to the best deals site out there, Dealnews, and we’ve pulled only their Apple related merchandise into our blog posts.  From time to time we’ll put a post onto our frontpage content (if it is that insane) but it will constantly be updated (about 20-30 posts/day) on our new Toys site: 

http://9to5mac.com/toys

You’ll be able to comment on the products just like any other blog post and give your fellow 9to5mac readers some direction with their purchasing.  Perhaps you know of better deals out there or you have some positive or negative opinions about the products being offered?  Let everyone know. 

We’ll feature the top 5 deals in a block on the right side of the page and also have a link to 9to5mac.com/toys at the top nav bar. If you are a feed type of person, grab the feed here.  Other than that, get shopping!

Just a little ‘for instance’: $120 for a 1.5TB hard drive with free shipping

9to5mac sometimes may recieve financial beneft from purchased items through our affiliate programs and partner, Dealnews.