Aliph launches Jawbone 2 headset...

Following a last-minute leak, Aliph tonight unveiled the Jawbone 2 Bluetooth headset. The company promises it has learned lessons from the original while keeping its namesake voice detection system, which measures voice activity from the jaw to provide extremely accurate noise cancellation. The earpiece is more discreet than the earlier version at half the size but is said to be even more effective at blocking outside sound. The ear hook itself is also more comfortable and detaches entirely for users whose ears are already a good fit.

Mimic lip sync studio for Carrara 6.2...

DAZ 3D recently announced the immediate availability of Mimic Pro for Carrara, a plug-in enabling seamless lip-synching, sound analysis, and speech animation simulations directly within Carrara 6.2. Mimic Pro provides an advanced environment for creating facial animation sequences, such as winks, nods and smiles, allowing 3D characters to obtain a greater level of expression.

Monetra 7.0 adds check processing, more...

Main Street Softworks this week released Monetra 7.0, a payment server software that securely processes credit card, debit card, gift card, and electronic benefit card transactions for retail point-of-sale and eCommerce systems. It is capable of scaling from operation on custom embedded devices to fully redundant clustered server installations processing thousands of transactions per minute, transforming how payment systems are deployed, secured and managed.

Intel exec claims Atom-based Apple tablet...

Intel Germany chief Hannes Schwaderer today claimed at a Munich company event that Apple is developing a touchscreen device based on his firm's new Atom processor for ultra-mobile devices. As interpreted by AppleInsider, the executive provides few details but indicates that it will be slightly larger than the iPhone due to a larger display.

NY Post: Apple 'seriously' pursuing Wall St. store...

Apple is focusing in its hunt for an additional New York City store, according to the New York Post. "Sources" tell the newspaper that after having considered the linked locations of 15 Broad Street and 23 Wall Street, it is now concentrating on the latter, and in the middle of serious leasing negotiations with Robert K. Futterman and Associates. A representative for Apple at RKF, Karen Bellantoni, has declined to comment on the issue.

Cyberduck 3 adds WebDAV, Amazon S3, more...

Developer David V. Kocher today unveiled Cyberduck 3, a major update to his FTP client software, offering users a number of new protocols and several other enhanced features. Cyberduck 3 now offers support for both Amazon Simple Storage Service and WebDAV protocols, as well as the ability to use Quick Look in the browser under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The update is available from Kocher's website, or through the automated "Check for Update" feature.

HTC forecasts over 2m Touch Diamond sales...

HTC CEO Peter Chou is confident his company's newest product, the Touch Diamond, will sell more than two million units in 2008. Last year, HTC sold about two million units of its original Touch handset. Still, the numbers represent only about half of all iPhones Apple sold last year, with the company hoping to sell 10 million in 2008.

First Look: OpenOffice 3 Beta...

Microsoft Office may be the most popular office suite in the world, but not everyone needs or wants to use it. Some people object to its cost, while others feel that it doesn't offer the features they need. If you don't want to use Office on Windows, you can choose from plenty of alternatives, including the free OpenOffice suite. Until recently though, Mac users have had far fewer options, limited to either Microsoft Office 2008 or Apple's iWork. While OpenOffice has been available in some form on the Mac for years, it used to rely on the X11 interface, which made the program look different from other Mac OS X applications. With the latest beta, you can now run OpenOffice as native code on Intel Macs.

Apple sells out WWDC developer conference...

Despite having had to extend early registration late last month, Apple now states that it is officially sold out of WWDC passes. Developers still interested in the conference are being asked to wait for the immediate aftermath, at which point Apple will upload the videos of events to iTunes. Some clips should become available with a free developer account; others, however, will require a paid membership.

AT&T limits iPhones to one per customer [U]...

AT&T has sent a message to its retail staff curbing sales of iPhones to one per person, according to an alleged e-mail leak obtained by AppleInsider. The brief note, elaborating on an earlier note obtained by BGR, cuts the official limit from three to one. No exceptions are made in most for business users or for buyers of refurbished models, which recently opened up to both 8GB and 16GB models on AT&T's website.

Ableton Live 7 LE offers music remixing, production...

Ableton has released Live 7 LE, its affordable professional-grade music-making solution. Built on the Live platform, the single-screen music production and performance solution offers most of its Ableton Live 7's new features for recording, songwriting, remixing and DJing. It includes studio-quality recording up to 32-bit/192 kHz; 64 audio tracks and unlimited MIDI tracks per project, MIDI sequencing for software instruments; and more than 20 built-in audio effects, including a host of creative delays, filters, distortions, studio compressors and EQs. The software also offers two software instruments-Simpler for creative sample-based synthesis, and Impulse for dynamic, sampled drums as well as support for VST and AU effects/instruments (along with automatic plug-in delay compensation).

Dell denies rumors of XPS phase-out...

Dell has no plans to eliminate its XPS line of computers, a company representative says. On Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that Dell intends to phase out four of its XPS gaming systems, on the basis that they are eating into sales of its newly-bought Alienware division. Dell is said to be in tough financial circumstances, having lost its former dominance in PC sales to chief rival HP. In April the company revealed plans to fire at least 8,800 people, and close its desktop manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas.

GhostReader 1.5 improves iPhone/iPod export...

ConvenienceWare has released a v1.5 upgrade to GhostReader, its text-to-speech conversion application. The software supports multiple languages, and can read out chosen documents such as Word and PDF files, or selected text in any program. Another feature is the ability to convert text to permanent audio files, including boomarkable audiobooks for iPhones and iPods.

Telefonica: 3G iPhone in "coming weeks"...

Telefonica Europe chief Matthew Key today said that his company would make a joint announcement with Apple regarding the iPhone within weeks, hinting at a near term launch for an anticipated 3G upgrade to the cellphone. Key, whose telecoms group operates O2 in Ireland, the UK, and other countries, hasn't directly confirmed the device when asked about its existence but alludes to both its release and a possible expansion of service beyond just the O2 brand.

BurnAgain FS leaves beta, hits 1.0...

Freeridecoding has announced that after a brief public beta period, its BurnAgain FS disc burning software has reached v1.0. As opposed to most authoring tools, FS does not operate through a distinct application; rather it mounts CDs and DVDs in Finder, treating them as if they were hard drives. This lets users perform quick, multisession burns, without also having to create multiple volumes.

Cheetah3D upgrades to 4.6, gains video tutorials...

A new version of the Cheetah3D animation suite has been released, bringing the software up to v4.6. The program handles a majority of the tasks in creating 3D animations, including modeling, pose managing and rendering. The update primarily introduces an auto-saving option, to protect against losing a project; when turned on, it will save work in Cheetah every few minutes, minimizing the amount of data lost in case of a system or application crash.

Apps: Web2Delight, Cocktail, iBank, Guitar Hero

• Web2 Delight 1.1 ($20) updates the video/photo downloader, organizer and viewer that offers the ability to create slideshows, video conversion, and scheduled downloads; Web2 Delight acts as a portal for multiple video sites (YouTube, Veoh, BlipTV) and photo sharing sites (Flickr, Picasa, Webshots and Photobucket) and can preview and automatically convert any video or photo downloaded, to play on a Mac, iPod, iPhone, or even on Apple TV. Version 1.1 offers an improved thumbnail feature, the ability to transfer entire collections to iPhoto/ iTunes, and other UI tweaks. It requires Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later. [Download - 16MB]


• Cocktail 4.1 ($15) for Leopard is the latest maintenance update for the general purpose system utility, adding support for clearing dynamic link editor's (dyld) shared cache as well as support for clearing Internet caches created by the Flock web browser. It also addresses an issue in which the weekly maintenance script may fail to run properly, fixes compatibility issues with Safari 3.1 or later, contains improved Automator actions, and adds many new interface settings. [Download - 2.6MB]


• Guitar Hero III Legends of Rock for Mac v1.3 (free update) is an official update for the popular game. This patch, which will update any previous version and is recommended for all users, adds a new "Front Row Cam" option that allows better performance and smoother gameplay on low-end configurations. It also adds laptop-specific optimizations for better performance and a battery meter icon will display remaining battery charge on supported laptops. It requires the full game ($60), a 2GHz Intel Mac, and Mac OS X 10.4.10. [Download - 296MB]


• iBank 3.1 ($60) updates the personal and small business finance management software with improved duplicate sensing: it adds the ability to preview direct downloads for matching transactions; users are alerted if a duplicate transaction has already been imported to iBank, or advised to proceed when no matching transaction is found. The internal browser, which allows users to log in to online accounts without leaving the application, has been enhanced with improved page loading. Upgrades are $30. [Download - 20MB]


• PocketMac AudioExtractor ($10) enables Mac users to download the audio from YouTube videos and other video streaming sites. It runs in the background of the users' machine, and every time a user visits YouTube or other video sites in Safari, the software automatically downloads the audio from each video and adds the audio into a special playlist in iTunes. It also supports blip.tv, crackle.com, funnyordie.com, jumpcut.com, myspace.com, superdeluxe.com, and vimeo.com. The Universal Binary requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. [Download - buy]

Montage 1.5 updates screenwriting software...

Mariner has released the v1.5 update to Montage, its Mac-based screenwriting and playwriting software. The program can be used to edit, organize and submit drafts, and includes a variety of templates, such as separate ones for film and TV. New to v1.5 is the "Comic Book" format, with accompanying, color-coded templates; the major revision however is the rewritten styles system, which is said to have more flexibility and control, easier text formatting, and improved stability.

LG, Samsung join for US mobile TV standard...

LG and Samsung this morning jointly said they would team up to promote a new standard for digital mobile TV in the US. Already submitted to the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) that governs HDTV, the unnamed format would use the existing wireless spectrum already in place for digital over-the-air broadcasts to conventional tuners. The choice would not only make adding portable TV simple for existing providers but would do so without impacting the bandwidth available for full-size digital broadcasts, the companies say.

Photos of Boston, Sydney Apple Stores...

Various images have emerged for two of Apple's major new retail locations: the Boylston Street store in Boston, Massachusetts, and the first store in Sydney, Australia, located on the corner of George and King Streets. The Boylston store should open this Thursday at 6PM, and is comprised of three floors and 20,000 square feet. As the photo below reveals, Apple has also chosen to go with a glass exterior reminiscent of the flagship Fifth Avenue store in New York City.

AT&T plans 20-megabit 3G by 2009...

AT&T's cellular Internet access will be more than five times faster in 2009 than it is this year, the company's mobility chief Ralph de la Vega said today at Morgan Stanley's annual Communications Conference. The executive says that the company's HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) network will be improved from the theoretical peak downloads of 3.6 megabits per second common across most of the network today to about 20 megabits per second in 2009.

iPhone announced for Switzerland...

Swiss national carrier Swisscom today revealed that it too will carry the iPhone, making it the fifth new European country after the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, and Portugal confirmed to be offering the device. The provider echoes previous announcements for other providers and doesn't provide specifics as to the devices or plans. The iPhone will be available "later this year," the company says.

"Largest" iPhone launch set for India: 250,000 stores...

Apple's iPhone is set to make a big splash in India. A new report says that the rollout of the iPhone in India is set to be the largest, anywhere in the world -- through both Vodafone (previously announced) and Airtel mobile carriers. Citing industry sources, Riyaz.net says that Apple's iPhones will be sold through about 250,000 Vodafone and Airtel retail outlets including franchisee-owned shops. "This rollout would be mammoth when compared to iPhones being available only in about 7,000 AT&T outlets in the US apart from the Apple Stores," the report noted. With the launch of the new 3G iPhone expected next month (likely at WWDC), Apple is already expanding the number of countries in which the iPhone will be available, including Australia (in an non-exclusive arrangement) as well as Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Asia, Egypt, New Zealand, and South Africa via a pre-announced Vodaphone deal.

Servoy 4.0 to ship as an Eclipse IDE plugin

Servoy has announced Servoy 4.0, a new version of its cross-platform application development and deployment environment. Servoy consists of a powerful GUI designer that is fully event-driven and scriptable through JavaScript. Version 4.0 is now an Eclipse-based plug-in for improved productivity via a standards-based IDE; it also adds new Team Synchronization features to connect to CVS and Subversion, new form inheritance and form variables, live client debugging to both client/server and browser-based deployments, plug-ins for custom menus and Jasper Reports integration, and more. The company also announced it is hosting three Webinars on the new features of Servoy 4.0; "What's New in Servoy 4.0"; as well as "Comparing 4.0 With Previous Versions"; and "Getting Started in Servoy 4.0". All are offered free for developers already creating solutions with Servoy.

Jumsoft offers Aperture Web Themes, Pages Templates 2...

Jumsoft has recently released new Aperture Web Themes and Pages Templates 2.0 for iWork, which includes 40 high-quality and professional templates. The new Aperture themes include five separate designs: The Frames Gray Theme produces pictures that have a photo frame, with shadows that imitate the real 3D look of the photo; Grid Black Theme offers a frame for each picture and the gallery appears in a table form that "evokes the image of orderliness;" the iPhone Theme, described as both "modern and calm," frames all pictures and headings together; Rounded Black Theme, similar to the Grid Black Theme, offers a Rounded Black Frame for each picture that separates it from the others; and Mental Image Theme has attractive details for the top and the bottom of your picture gallery or journal pages.