GooBall 1.0.2 comes to Intel-based Macs

Ambrosia Software today released GooBall 1.0.2, enabling the 3D game to run natively on Intel-based Macs as a Universal Binary. The update also changes the physics engine from ODE to Ageia PhysX for improved real-life physics simulation. "Roll, jump, and slime your GooBall through dozens of fanciful worlds of wonder as you control the cutest little alien around, the Goober. Being trapped in a gooey ball of protoplasm has never been this fun!... Welcome to GooBall! Roll, jump, and slime your GooBall through dozens of fanciful worlds of wonder as you control the cutest little alien around, the Goober. Being trapped in a gooey ball of protoplasm has never been this fun!" GooBall is priced at $25 and requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later.

Apple officially posts Apple TV ad

The advertisement for the Apple TV which quietly surfaced yesterday on CNBC has appeared on Apple's website in four different qualities. Visitors to Apple's site can select small, medium, large, or HD to display the advertisement that depicts Jack Black in the motion picture 'School of Rock.' The ad shows the film playing first on a computer, followed by an iPod, and finally on the TV in a modern living room. The ad narrator speaks a series of simple phrases to accent the visual images, as viewers are led from room to room in the home: "It's on your computer. It's your iPod. Now, it's on your TV."

Microsoft "dead," at a turning point?...

Microsoft may be at a turning point in its future, according to actions taken by key figures today and over the weekend. Goldman Sachs financial analyst Sarah Friar today removed Microsoft from its conviction list, noting that while the stock was still worth buying it no longer had the same allure as before. A fundamental shift in the market towards the web and the resulting independence from Microsoft's software were cited as the primary reasons, as users no longer needed Windows or desktop utilities for an increasing number of tasks.

"Vista may be the last big operating system developed by the company," Friar said. Microsoft still plans a revision to Vista codenamed "Vienna" for 2009.

Refurb MacBooks for $949, MBP for $1,299

Apple is offering refurbished MacBook Pros from $1,299 and reconditioned MacBooks from $949. The company's current stock of refurbished MacBook Pro models includes its 15-inch 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo ($1,299) with 512MB of memory and an 80GB hard drive; its 15-inch 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo ($1,349) with 512MB of memory and an 80GB hard drive; its 17-inch 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo ($1,999) with 1GB of memory and a 120GB hard drive; and its 17-inch 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ($2,299) with 2GB of memory and a 160GB hard drive. Apple's selection of consumer-oriented MacBooks includes the White 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ($949) with 512MB of memory and a 60GB hard drive; the White 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ($1,099) with 1GB of memory and an 80GB hard drive; and the Black 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ($1,299) with 1GB of memory and a 120GB hard drive. As always, all refurbished Apple products come with free shipping and a one-year warranty.

Magic Bullet, Primatte Keyer updates at NAB...

Red Giant Software is announcing Magic Bullet 3, Primatte Keyer Pro 4, Instant HD Pro, and upgrades for Trapcode products at the NAB 2007 convention in Las Vegas from April 16-19th (site not updated). Magic Bullet now comes in three forms which include Magic Bullet Looks, Magic Bullet Frames, and Magic Bullet Colorista. Magic Bullet Looks lets users define the style of video or film with imaging tools in After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Premiere Pro, and Avid. Magic Bullet Frames offers fast and high-quality conversion of 60i materials to 24p or just de-interlacing of video in After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Premiere Pro, and Avid. Magic Bullet Colorista is the same color correction tool that Red Giant launched in 2006, with new support for After Effects CS3 Professional, Premiere Pro CS3, and the new Final Cut Studio.

Boinx to showcase iStopMotion 2 at NAB 2007...

Boinx Software today announced that it will preview several new products -- including iStopMotion 2, QuartzChartz, FxChartz, QuartzCrawl, and FxCrawl -- at NAB 2007. iStopMotion 2 is a tool for recording stop motion animation and time lapse movies. The update promises a much more productive animator that allows instant previews of animations as well as various tools to improve the animation workflow. iStopMotion 2 also adds numerous tricks, such as blue or green screening and the ability to import a video to guide the animation. The latest release will also brings continuous recording of sequences, as well as support for HD cameras. QuartzChartz and FxChartz are extensions to Apple's Quartz Composer system that allow designers to draw with dynamic data -- such as stock market information -- from SQL databases, and visualize that data using a charting tool.

Briefly: Apple store opening; Apple TV PBX...

In brief: Apple is preparing to open its latest retail store in Birmingham, Alabama on Saturday, April 14th with a preview of the new outlet. At least one Apple TV fan has managed to get the Asterisk PBX system running on an Apple TV, collecting the $500 reward offered by AppleTVHacks.net. Nokia has released an iSync plug-in page that offers support for its mobile handsets, and Palm has used its Investor Day event to announce that the next version of its PalmOS will be based on a new Linux kernel. Apple is set to open its latest Apple Store at 217 Summit Boulevard in Birmingham, Alabama. The grand opening will be held at 10:00 a.m. CDT.

Sling to stream Apple TV to cellphones?...

Sling Media is developing support for its Slingbox streaming hubs that would let them support the Apple TV, the company said late on Monday. A future update should give cellphones with SlingPlayer Mobile the ability not only to view an Apple TV's content streamed over the Internet but to control it as well by sending IR codes.

The combination of an Apple TV and Sling's device would allow not only the option of streaming media cached on the Apple hub's 40GB drive but media stored in iTunes on the host Mac or Windows PC, providing a rare opportunity to share a user's entire home media library with their cellphone. Specific release dates were unavailable but are expected soon while the Apple TV is in testing, Sling's Brian Jaquet said.

iTunes adds HD news podcasts for Apple TV...

Washingtonpost.com today began offering high-definition (HD) podcasts designed for viewing on HD TVs and the Apple TV via the iTunes Store. Washingtonpost.com is the first news organization to conform to the highest specifications for the new Apple TV by offering its documentary videos online in a format that is optimally viewable on Apple's set top box specifically designed for living rooms. "Keeping true to its dedication to evolving multimedia platforms, all washingtonpost.com videos are shot with high-definition cameras, and the series available on iTunes is coded to play in 720p. The HD videos will also be available for download from washingtonpost.com."

iPodmods offers 100GB iPod modification

The team at iPodmods is offering a new modification enabling users with 30GB or 80GB iPods to upgrade the portable player's hard drive to 100GB of storage capacity. The 100GB hard drive replaces the current drive in the iPod, and requires a simple back panel replacement. iPodmods' upgrade uses an iPod-compatible Toshiba hard drive that consumes roughly the same amount of power as current fifth-generation iPod drives. The modification comes with a 90-day warranty, and is priced at $300. iPodmods is also offering a free extended-life battery to customers who purchase the 100GB hard drive for Apple's video iPod or Microsoft's Zune player.

NI Vokator, NI-Spektral Delay go Universal

Native Instruments (NI) today released Vokator 1.2 and NI-Spektral Delay 1.6, adding Universal Binary support to the vocoding synthesizer and FFT-based effect processor applications. Vokator boasts a sophisticated synthesizer and a granular sampler, as well as advanced features and multiple modes of operation. NI-Spektral Delay uses real-time FFT (Fast Fourier Transformation) to split each channel of a stereo signal into as many as 160 separately modifiable frequency bands. The software allows users to set the levle, delay time, and feedback amount for each band while applying various modulation effects to the signal in the frequency domain. Vokator and NI-Spektral Delay are each priced at $200, with upgrades available for $30. Customers who registered after September 12th, 2006 can upgrade for free.

OWC, Seagate ship fast 160GB portable drives

Other World Computing (OWC) today unveiled its highest capacity high-speed portable storage drive -- the OWC 160GB Mercury On-The-Go portable hard drive. Trans International today also began shipping the 2.5-inch 160GB Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM SATA hard drive (shown at right) for Apple's MacBook, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini. Other World Computing's 160GB Mercury On-The-Go portable drive offers FireWire 800/400 and USB 2 connectivity in a palm-sized bus powered unit. The Seagate Momentus drive features a 3Gbps SATA interface with Native Command Queuing (NCQ), which Trans International says is the fastest option available with perpendicular recording technology to enhance data reliability. The company is offering the Seagate Momentus 160GB drive for $200, while OWC's Mercury On-The-Go drive is priced at $280.

Finetune Desktop preview released

The Finetune digital music service is bringing its catalog of two million tracks from major and indie labels to Mac and Windows desktops, ramping up competition with Apple's iTunes software via customizable playlists. Finetune today released a preview version of Finetune Desktop, one of the first applications built on the alpha release of Adobe's Apollo application runtime. Users can launch Web applications directly from the desktop, without the need to open a Web browser. Finetune allows users to create custom playlists, and can tap into iTunes libraries to automatically generate playlists based on library content. Finetune is available for free, and integrates several aspects of a social network to help users discover new music (system requirements were unavailable).

iSlayer releases iStat nano 2.0...

iSlayer has released iStat nano 2.0, a major update to the system monitor widget with animated menus and transitions. The widget enables users to view statistics about bandwidth, battery CPU, and memory usage as well as hard drive space and temperatures. The software also monitors fan speeds, uptime, and the top five processes. iStat nano displays a system's public IP address, with the latest version featuring a new interface as well as new skin colors. The update replaces the old method of selecting views with a 'fly-over' animated view selector, and the overview view displays uptime alongside a user-selected fan sensor. The widget also adds support for eight CPU cores to work with Apple's new Mac Pro systems. iStat nano is available for free, but donations are encouraged. The widget requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

Hog Bay updates Mori 1.6 digital notebook

Hog Bay Software today released Mori 1.6, a digital notebook that makes it easy to record and organize notes. Mori provides a place to remember notes and organize ideas, allowing users to search through an entire notebook with its built-in search engine, or via Mac OS X's Spotlight search. Leveraging the familiar Mail-style interface, users can sort, tag, link, and alias notes as well as use Smart Folders and Tag Folders to collect and organize matching notes. Version 1.6 adds support for a del.icio.us-style tagging system for structuring notes outside of the traditional file / folder hierarchical structure. It also adds new interface elements to view and edit these tags as well as new "Tag Folder" entry types, which not only find matching entries based on a search criteria, but also allow users to drag and drop entries onto tag folders to match the tag folder's search criteria. Mori requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later and is available for $40.