French castle uses iPods for audio tours

Chenonceau Castle in France has started using 200 iPods to present its audio tours to visitors, a MacNN reader notes (page is in French). The iPods are loaded with eleven languages of the castle's guided audio tour, which visitors can borrow and listen to at their leisure around the famous property.

New Zealand online Apple Store coming soon

The Apple division of Renaissance, Apple's corporate representative in New Zealand, will be launching an online store in the coming weeks. ARNnet reports on the store's pending launch and its possible implications for the New Zealand market.

New utility strips DRM from iTunes Music Store tracks

playfair is a tool for Mac OS X that strips the digital rights management protection from tracks purchased at the iTunes Music Store, converting them to ordinary AAC audio files without any loss in quality. The utility is believed to be the first to circumvent Apple's DRM without employing quality-sapping lossy compression formats to do so. The current version, 0.2, requires Xcode to be installed and must be built and run from the Terminal. An iPod or Mac authorized to read the purchased track is also needed.