30 Rock's Kidney Now Video

The video features big name stars such as Sheryl Crowe, Elvis Costello, Mary J Blige, Clay Aiken, Norah Jones as well as other performers. Jeff Richmond, 30 Rocks’ music supervisor composed the song.

The video is available for $.99 through the iTunes Store.

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30 Rock Gives Back Through iTunes

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A Quick Look at Augusta National

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How to Hit a Driver 300+ Yards

Google has a new app called Vidnik. It allows you to use your Macs built-in video camera to record videos and upload it to your YouTube account in a snap.

Vidnik is currently at version 0.13.0. I downloaded and tried it and it was fairly easy to use. It still needs a lot of polish. It doesn’t respond as quickly as it should.

This app is great for making quick videos for your blog. Diaries perhaps? Or just simply saying hello to friends. Download it here and give it a go.

Post from: EveryJoe

Vidnik: Video Diaries In A Snap

The software update to Apple TV is now available. During MacWorld, Steve Jobs said that Apple will be releasing a software update to the Apple TV in order to give it more features. He publicly admitted that their first try with Apple TV wasn’t successful and the software update should make it better. Props to Apple for that.

What’s new with Apple TV? Well the big thing is a the movie rentals aspect. You’re now able to rent and buy movies, tv shows and other content via the Apple TV. Computer not required.

Apple TV 2.0 also has some new features that are quite interesting. Watch YouTube videos straight from the Apple TV. Access your .Mac of Flickr galleries. It also features a new slick interface to tie every thing together.

A few days ago I posted an entry with the link to the Apple TV 2.0 guided tour. Check that out as well to see Apple TV’s new features.

When Apple TV first came out I wasn’t really sold on it. However with this new software update it’s beginning to look really interesting. Especially since I’ve gotten a taste of movie rentals. Nothing beats instant gratification… well almost instant… There’s the thing about the waiting for the download. If you have great broadband and a nice widescreen TV, Apple TV looks mighty interesting. Especially when the movie library improves.

Here’s an interesting article about it on Apple Insider.

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Apple TV Update Released

My dad’s boss was in town for awhile and while having dinner with him, he recommended that I try to see “Ratatouille”. I’ve seen most Pixar movies except for this one so I knew this was something I had to go and rent. So I clicked on the “rent” button for this movie and iTunes began downloading it. Another movie I’ve been meaning to see is “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” a classic. I saw it on iTunes and decided to download this one as well.

With the speed of our DSL connection or lack thereof, it took about a 8 hours per movie that I was downloading. I didn’t watch it as soon as it downloaded seeing that if I watched it, after 24 hours it would expire. I wanted my family to see it as well as to maximize the money I spent to rent it.

So we scheduled a viewing time wherein all of us can watch it. We finally did. Here are somethings I found out about iTunes Rentals.

1. The 30 day countdown starts from the time you download the movie. I lost a day already here since I didn’t know about this. I figured that the countdown would start after the file finishes downloading. So if you have a slow internet connection, tough luck that less time for you to watch it. However, I don’t see this as a very big issue since I think 30 days is enough time to watch the movies. If you still haven’t watched it after 30 days, you probably shouldn’t have rented it because you’re too busy.

2. You can’t access the Rented movies via Front Row or through another computer with access to your shared library. I thought that the rentals would work the same way as your purchased music or TV shows, you can actually authorize another computer and access your library through the other computer. The reason I found this out was because I lost my VGA to DVI adapter and I couldn’t connect my MacBook Pro to our LCD TV. My brother could connect his MacBook and so we wanted to watch it on the LCD TV through the MacBook. No dice. Luckily after hours of searching we found the adapter.

3. The quality of the video is good enough. Watching the movies through our 32″ LCD TV, the standard files of the movies were good enough. Close to DVD quality in my opinion although there were some parts of the movies that the gradients were still a little pixelated.

4. 24 Hours is too short of a time to watch movies. – While I find that 30 days is enough to start watching the movie, I think the 24 hour limit to finish it is quite short. There are times that you won’t be able to finish the movie for one reason or another, say you fall asleep or have something urgent to attend to, you only have 24 hours to finish it. My suggestion would be to extend the time to around 48 to 72 hours. Another alternative would be a finite time of watching the movies. Let’s say you can watch it 5 times in the span of a week or something like that.

5. You can’t move the movie to another computer and watch it from there. In trying out how to play the movies on my brother’s computer (initially that was the only computer we could connect to the LCD TV) I tried several things. Sharing my library and copying the files to the other computer. It wouldn’t play. Even if I’ve never played the movie on my computer when I copied the file to the other computer and signed in using my account on iTunes it still didn’t play. It’s said that it was only authorized to play on another computer.

6. I have to get an Apple TV. I wasn’t a big fan of the Apple TV before but now it seems like a good idea. Hooking up my MacBook Pro to the LCD TV every time I want to watch a movie is too much hassle. Plus the HD content is only available via Apple TV. So…

As a whole, my iTunes Movie Rental experience was ok. I’m sure as time passes and the selection of titles get better and wider, the rental service will pick up. I realized that for movies, the rental model will work better. Simply because people don’t want to watch movies several times over in a short span of time. Unlike music which we can listen to over and over, movies just aren’t made like that.

If you’re connection is slow, the rentals need planning. Rent your movies ahead of time and schedule a movie night with your family. I’m imagining getting an Apple TV and planning ahead of time for the rentals I want to make and making Saturday nights, movie night for our family.

Oh and one more thing that I’ve learned… Audrey Hepburn is one of the prettiest ladies I’ve ever watched.

Post from: EveryJoe

My iTunes Movie Rentals Experience

For those new to iTunes, Apple made some video tutorials on iTunes and some of its features. The tutorials are categorized into three groups. iTunes Jukebox, iTunes Store and iTunes Syncing. It coves the basic stuff that you’d want to do with iTunes. The link to the tutorial is here.

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iTunes Video Tutorials From Apple

I’m not really a big fan or learning via reading an article or a tutorial. I would rather watch a video or play around with something to learn it. It’s not to say that I don’t read articles or tutorials, I do. If I had a choice, I’d go for something multimedia.

It’s for that very reason that I signed up for an account at Lynda.com. I didn’t sign up to learn Mac stuff per se. It was for Adobe apps that I use really. However it was a pleasant surprise that there were Mac titles available.

Now they’ve added new titles in line with Apple’s release of Leopard. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Essential Training, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard New Features are two new titles specifically geared towards teaching you Leopard. Other titles for iLife 08 and other Mac apps are available.

There are several subscription packages available. I personally chose the monthly package at $25 dollars a month. It gets you unlimited access to the training titles. The drawback is that you don’t get the exercise files. There’s an Annual package that will save you 20% since you pay $250 for a year. You still don’t get the exercise files though. Then there’s the Premium package at $375 per year this includes all the exercise files.

Don’t have decent internet connection? You can buy the CD/DVDs of the titles that you like or if you’re more of a reader then books are also available.

In my opinion Lynda is a good way to learn the basics of Mac and other apps/titles at your own pace. You can always go back to the videos if you forget something. Hey, it works for me :)

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Leopard Tutorials Over At Lynda.com

Check them out here.

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The PR Lady, Boxer and Genius… Oh The Podium Too

A new iPhone Ad is out. This time it demos the YouTube application for the iPhone. Starting June 29th as mentioned in this post, the iPhone will be able to download and play YouTube videos. Cool. Downloading via WiFi should be ok but I’m not sure about EDGE.

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New iPhone Ad: YouTube on the iPhone