April 29 - 2:20pm EDT   BBC today has announced that its programming is now available through the iTunes Store in the U.S. Starting today on iTunes, customers can purchase single episodes and complete seasons of BBC America's sci-fi series Torchwood, the the comedy Little Britain and hit drama series Robin Hood -- which premiered its second season Saturday on cable channel BBC America. During the run of the new season, Robin Hood episodes will be available on iTunes 24 hours after its premiere, Saturdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Like other shows on iTunes, BBC's programming the U.S. for $1.99 per episode and can be viewed on a Mac or PC, iPod with video, iPhone or widescreen TV with Apple TV. [full story]

April 7 - 11:00pm EDT   Programming a computer generally isn’t difficult, but requires mastering a specific language along with a handful of programming tools. Unfortunately, most programming languages and tools are geared for professional programmers who can devote time learning a particular programming language and operating system. For someone who just wants to write a full-featured program without getting bogged down in technical details, there’s Revolution 2.9, a cross-platform programming tool that uses a programming language based on plain English syntax. Revolution makes programming easy for novices while offering advanced features for more experienced programmers. [full story]

April 7 - 2:55pm EDT   In brief: We have a review of the Tannoy i30 iPod speaker system, Apple refreshes the "Macintosh" trademark, a 36-hour iPhone programming marathon takes place and iSync phone plugins gets new device support ... We have posted a review of the Tannoy i30 iPod speaker system. This heavy-duty speaker system has an oval shape that is flat from the front view, but extends the oval in the back, complete with an inset hidden handle. The clean front design has not a button to be seen; so all the controls are on the small remote. The front is graced with two non-removable gray grills that cover 4-inch iCT, Inductive Coupling Technology , speakers and an iPod dock, under which ... [full story]

March 28 - 3:00pm EDT   Apple has released the second beta of its iPhone SDK for registered developers. The new release includes an Interface Builder, which allows the drag-and-drop integration of graphical components which can be linked to underlying Objective-C code created in Xcode. The new SDK build is a 1.3GB download, available from Apple's Developer Connection site. You must be a registered developer to download the SDK, but no fee or program acceptance is required. Apple's development kit uses the same programming language and interface used by Apple itself and now includes Cocoa Touch, an API designed to add touchscreen input. [full story]

March 7 - 4:00pm EST   Apple yesterday unveiled its forthcoming iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) during a town-hall meeting on its campus in Cupertino, but developers who read the company's own iPhone Human Interface Guidelines say the SDK comes with several troubling restrictions. TechCrunch reports that VoIP services are "basically out of luck," and developers can only use published APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) according to Apple's rules. The most significant limitation, however, is the fact that third-party iPhone applications can never run in the background and will immediately quit when users 'leave' the application to perform another action -- such as making a call. [full story]

February 20 - 11:45am EST   Due to a lack of visually-oriented programming tools, the Macintosh has a reputation for being a difficult platform for which to develop applications, especially when designing the user interface. Although Apple includes a free copy of XCode with every Macintosh, XCode is really designed for experienced programmers who are versed in several programming languages. Since C-based languages can be hard to learn and XCode can be confusing as well, most people can’t write programs for the Macintosh. Fortunately, that’s all changed with REALbasic 2008 Release 1, the latest version of the cross-platform development tool from REAL Software. [full story]

February 11 - 1:30pm EST   REAL Software is now shipping [full story]