Mac News Online

GearLive.com is reporting on the new features found in the 1.1.3 Firmware release for the iPhone, which include

Apple iPhone version 1.1.3 Feature List

• The ability to send an SMS message to multiple people is now there
• Google Maps application can now pinpoint your location using cell tower triangulation
• Google Maps can now display the Hybrid map view
• You can now drag and drop application icons on your home screen
• The home screen supports pagination
• You can now add web bookmarks to your home screen
• Ability to email the current page in Safari

The ability to keep bookmarked URLs on the home screen is a logical addition and will make using web based iPhone apps to feel more natural. Pagination is essential for the addition of icons on the home screen, and also paves the way for the 3rd party apps to come.

Earlier reports of a voice memo app, disk mode, and the ability to sync notes are noticeably absent from GearLive.com’s report.

Flickr Photoset of the new firmware.

GearLive Demo Video:

Video of Home screen icon drag and drop:

To view the whole article at GearLive.com including pics of the new features

Read Full Article

Apple and News Corp.’s 20th Century Fox film studio have reportedly signed a deal for giving Apple access to the FOX new release library to be made available for rental through iTunes and possibly the AppleTV. Consumers will be able to rent the latest Fox DVD releases from iTunes for a limited time. There is also said to be functionality/DRM in place to allow place shifting the rented media to iPod/iPhones. I hope this includes Fox Atomic movies because I really really need to rent The Hills Have Eyes 2 again.

via Valley Wag

UPDATE: According to the NYTimes.com, FOX Studios will not be the only movie studio to offer it’s new releases for rent through iTunes.

If you’re like me and really hate that process of searching, downloading and compiling to install programs, you will definitely appreciate that PHP5 is included in Mac OS 10.5. Unfortunately, it is not enabled by default to work with the built-in web server. Fixing this can, however, be done in about five minutes.

Fire up a Terminal window (Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app).
Note: This will only work if Leopard was installed as a “fresh OS” (i.e. not an upgrade installation).

In your Terminal window, type:
cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/private/etc/apache2/

This command will put you in the Apace2 directory. In this directory, we will make changes to httpd.conf, the Apache2 configuration file. Before we start, it is good practice to make a backup copy of the original file, just in case you need to revert to it in the future.

Make a copy of original httpd.conf file:
sudo cp httpd.conf httpd.conf.default

The command sudo uses Administrator rights to make a copy of this configuration file. Provide the Administrator password when it is requested.

Next, edit the configuration file with the built-in text editor, Vi. Again, provide the Administrator password when requested:
sudo vi httpd.conf

Search the document for the following line.
Type: /
Search for: #LoadModule php5_module

With the cursor on the hash symbol (#), type “i” to enter Insert Mode. Move the cursor one character to the right and Delete the hash symbol.

Press Esc to exit Insert Mode.
Press Shift + ‘:’ to enter a command.
Type in wq! to save and exit the file.

You will be returned to the command line. The next step is to edit the PHP configuration file, php.ini.default.

Change your directory:
cd /private/etc/

Make a copy of the php.ini.default template:
sudo cp php.ini.default php.ini

Use Vi to edit the file:
sudo vi php.ini

Like before, use Vi’s search feature to find:
error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE

There are a few lines that contain the above string. Find the line that does NOT begin with a semi-colon (;).

Change this line to read:
error_reporting = E_ALL

Press Esc to exit Insert Mode.
Press Shift + ‘:’ to enter a command.
Type in wq! to save and exit the file.

Now, navigate to Sharing in System Preferences and start/restart Web Sharing.

Create a PHP file in your Site directory and verify it is displayed correctly.You are all done! Good luck and happy coding!

As much love as Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard has received in the press and from users, there are still plenty of bugs that need ironing out. Lucky for those users and those not-easily-embarrassed members of the press, Apple seems to be addressing most of those remaining bugs with its 10.5.2 update. 10.5.2 will also bring support for the new Penyrn based Xeon processesors slated to be used in an updated Mac Pro line up, as well as additional functionality for the currently limited Stacks feature.

Read Article via Engadget

One of the very early features I was excited about in Leopard was the new synthesized text-to-speech voice, Alex, which sounded very good, and much more natural than “Bruce” or “Agnes” which were seemingly inherited from Mac OS 9. While Leopard’s “Alex” does indeed sound great, it hasn’t been put it to good use, until now. Vocero is an RSS reader widget that will read the titles of the top stories you select right from the widget. Now you can hear your morning news read to you by a silky smooth computerized voice, right from the dashboard!

Get Vocero!

While native iPhone games have been rumored to make an appearance at Macworld ‘08 but surely there must be some web based iPhone games to tide us over during this Christmas season.

The iPhone games chosen for this compilation by the MacNewsOnline.com staff were judged on the following criteria: Game/Menu Design, Entertainment Value, and Ease of Use.

10. Block - a tetris clone.
9. Lumina - A Fun Memory Game, kind of like simon.
8. Duck Hunt - this one brings back memories.
7. Video Poker - Fun, and smoke free video poker.
6. Stitch Words - Here is one for all your word lovers out there, match prefixes and suffixes together to create whole words.
5. BlackJack - Who doesn’t love a quick game of 21.
4. Sudoku - Great way to keep your brain sharp, a must for Sudoku lovers. Also check out Mind Dojo.
3.Bubble Trouble - A classic blocks game, great for killing hours and hours of time.
2. Smash - High Quality bouncing brick game.
1. Frenzic - A fresh new puzzle game, also available for your desktop, super addictive!

Download The Bookmarks CLICK HERE!