Surf-Bits Link Blog

Panic is happy to announce the release of Unison 1.7, a significant update to our popular, user-friendly, and powerful Mac OS X Usenet newsreader! Unison 1.7 offers many improvements and fixes, but most importantly adds binary uploading / posting, a much-requested feature. Users can now post a file to Usenet with a single click, including the ability to easily split large files into smaller files, and automatically create PAR2 recovery sets if desired. Unison 1.7 is a free upgrade for all users!

Download Here (and view release notes) http://www.panic.com/unison/

Unison remains a mere $24.95 to purchase, instantly and securely, online. Most excitingly, if a user buys Unison before December 30th, 2005, they will be automatically entered in a drawing to win an extremely rare Panic iPod Nano — a 4 GB white iPod Nano with the Panic logo factory engraved on the back. Manufactured by Apple for Panic as a gift for Panic employees, this rare iPod Nano is literally impossible to obtain at any cost — and is only available through this special, limited-time contest.

Full contest rules (and Nano pictures!)
http://www.panic.com/unison/contest/

Purchase Unison to Enter to Win
https://www.panic.com/unison/buy.html

Pressure Drop today announced DecoDock Ice, a special wintery edition of DecoDock. With a white base and glacier blue LEDs, DecoDock Ice provides users with a simple, cool, and stylish way to connect an iPod shuffle to their computer. Let your iPod shuffle \”chill out\” in the DecoDock Ice while it recharges and syncs in Art-Techo style.

DecoDock Ice makes the perfect stocking stuffer for any shuffle owner, sells for $28.99, and is now shipping in limited quantities. Pictures and more information can be found at pressuredropinc.com.

Pressure Drop also announced today special holiday pricing on several great gift ideas. PaperHub, the stylish paper tray with an integrated USB/FireWire combo hub is just $99.99 (normally $149.99). Our classic DecoDock, an iPod shuffle dock available with white LEDs and in a variety of colors, is now a stocking-friendly $19.99 (normally $28.99). zStand, the first monitor stand with an integrated USB/FireWire hub and designed to house the Mac mini, is just $89.99 (normally $99.99). All special prices are limited to stock on hand and expire December 31st, after everyone has spent their Christmas cash.

Mac-Pro Systems and Software has become the new source of DVForge/MacMice branded products for the U.S. market. Before DVForge, Inc. closed it’s doors in September, Mac-Pro made arrangements to secure much of the remaining inventory.

Products such as The Mouse, The Mouse BT, the iBreeze fan-cooled laptop stand, and the JamPlug are all available through Mac-Pro. The JamPod, a brand-new device that enables any electric guitar or bass to be played along with the music on their iPod or iPod mini, is now available for the first time to the U.S.

Mac-Pro is currently overseeing production of some brand new items created by DVForge product designers. These forthcoming products include:
The PortBuddy
A port re-locator designed specifically for the original iMac G5 that prevents the need to climb behind your computer to plug in USB and/or Firewire devices.

The Stand
A re-birth of the wildly popular iBreeze made from aluminum and containing two whisper-quiet fans, perfect for any Apple PowerBook.

The Ball BT
The world\’s first Bluetooth trackball
Mac-Pro Systems & Software, Inc.
www.mac-pro.com
2360-A Bascom Ave.
Campbell, CA 95008-4352
1-800-525-3888

Sonnet Technologies, a worldwide leader in upgrades for Apple Macintosh® computers and iPod® digital music players, announces G5 Jive™, the internal drive mounting system for Power Mac® G5 computers. G5 Jive enables Power Mac G5 users to add up to three additional Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives inside their computer-just add drives and a SATA PCI card to create the most cost-effective solution for adding high-performance storage capacity in a Power Mac G5.

Pricing and Availability
G5 Jive (Part no. ENC-G5-3HD) will be available this month with a retail price of USD $99.95.
For more information about G5 Jive, please refer to the Sonnet web site at :
< <http://www.sonnettech.com/product/g5_jive.html>>

Inventive today has pre-announced the upcoming iClip 4, which features a new, stylish user interface by veteran UI designer, Piotr Gajos (Pe8er). To celebrate the forthcoming release, Inventive also announced the “iClip 4 ‘Re-gift’ Giveaway” where a Mac mini, an iPod nano, or an iTunes Music Card will be given away to three lucky winners. Inventive recently won the Mac mini in the DashboardWidgets.com “Favorite Widget” Contest for their iClip lite widget and decided to “re-gift” it for this promotion. iClip 4 will be priced at $29 US and anyone who purchases the current version of iClip for $19.95 will receive a free upgrade to iClip 4 when it\’s released. Details of the giveaway are at http://inventive.us/RegiftGiveaway/

Podcasting high-quality audio of telephone interviews just got easier with today’s announcement of a new bundle called PhoneValet Podcast from Parliant Corp. PhoneValet Podcast is a software product extension to the PhoneValet Message Center 3.0 telecommunications hub for small businesses, homes and home offices, also being shown at MacWorld Boston.

The new PhoneValet Podcast bundle includes the VST edition of SoundSoap 2 and Peak Express from BIAS Inc. Including PhoneValet 3.0 hardware and software, the price of the PhoneValet Podcast bundle is $249.95. Existing PhoneValet 3.0 customers can upgrade to PhoneValet Podcast for $74.95.

The partnership between Parliant and BIAS brings a $400 value ($199.95 for PhoneValet Message Center, $99 for SoundSoap 2. and $99 for Peak Express if the full retail editions are purchased separately) for the $249.95 price of the PhoneValet Podcast bundle. PhoneValet Podcast is being demonstrated at MacWorld Boston booth # 522, and can be purchased at www.parliant.com starting July 12th.

Caphyon LLC is pleased to announce the release of Advanced Web Ranking 4.0, a tool that helps check your web site position on all major search engines. Advanced Web Ranking runs on Mac OS X, Windows 98/2000/XP, Linux and Solaris.

Checking your web site position is a very time consuming task. For example, if you have 10 keywords that you want to monitor, and you want to check the top 20 positions for 10 search engines, you need to perform about 200 (10 keywords * 10 engines * first 2 pages) individual searches to get the results. Then you need to compare the results one by one to find where your site is positioned. It may take you days to complete this task if you do this manually. That’s where Advanced Web Ranking comes to help.

Advanced Web Ranking costs USD $149 for the Professional edition. Users who don’t need certain advanced features like printable reports or the submitter can purchase the Standard edition for USD $59.

The application can be downloaded from:
http://www.advancedwebranking.com/download.html

Thank you Phil Shapiro for this article.
Skype was invented as a free Internet phone service, but with just a bit of creativity you can use it to conduct interviews over the Internet. These interviews can be saved to hard drive, edited and then posted on the web, published via a podcast, incorporated into video or multimedia presentations or distributed via various computer media. This article includes a link to a QuickTime of an interview with an open source advocate in Trinidad and Tobago.

Jon Johansen’s PyMusique application which allowed purchasing and downloading of music from iTunes Music Store without the normal DRM attached was shut down by Apple, and now is back working again. PyMusique does not write out DRM to the song, leaving it unprotected and free to be used on an unlimited number of machines. Johansen says he wrote the program to allow Linux users to buy music from iTunes music store, the ability to move the music from machine to machine without the DRM is just a nice side-effect. Looks like this serve and volley will continue for a while.

Microsoft’s Mac BU today announced that its .PST Import Tool for Entourage 2004 is now available. “Microsoft Entourage 2004 users who want to import PST files from Microsoft Outlook 2001 for Mac can use the instructions in this document to install the PST Import Tool.” Announced earlier this year at Macworld, the .PST Import Tool helps customers more easily migrate data from Outlook 2001 for Mac to Entourage 2004. Microsoft began a public beta program immediately after the announcement to solicit customer feedback that would further shape and perfect the tool before its release.

You all know how much I love to listen to Podcasts. I never listen to the radio in my car, I’m always listening to my iPod over the radio when I travel. There are several great podcasts for tech info that I like, but I also like the laid-back comedy podcasts just as much. “Late Night With Mr. X and Just Julie” is one of those. Their podcast is one that tends to grow on you and I’ve been a fan since the first time I listened.

Well believe it or not, Mr.X is a huge Mac supporter and asked me to Skype in each show and give a “Mac News Minute or Two” report. It will be laid back, like the show, and unscripted. If you are a podcast fan, please check out the “Late Night With Mr.X and Just Julie Show” starting next week and let me know what you thought of the show and my news.

Here’s a story I found on a Microsoft employee’s blog. His reasons for dropping Napster. Bye Bye Napster!

Here’s a paragraph from the story.
Example #2: Two hours ago, I was walking to the book store to check out (and ultimately buy) Designing with Web Standards on a beautiful Seattle afternoon. I plugged headphones into my phone, opened up Windows Media Player, and clicked on Stevie Wonder/Music of My Mind. Same damn thing. Can’t play the music without connecting to the Internet to authorize it. “OK, great, this time I have an Internet connection. No problem.” No dice. Turns out over-the-air authorization doesn’t (or didn’t) work. And it kept trying to connect for the rest of the afternoon. Ugh.

Newer Technology and OWC today introduced a new high-capacity 750mAh replacement battery for all fourth-generation (”4G”) Click Wheel iPod models. The NuPower 4G battery model offers the “maximum capacity possible” with 20 percent more capacity than the factory-installed battery shipped with 4G iPod models. The company also sells 2100mAh and 1800mAh iPod batteries, which offer up to 70 percent more capacity for first- and second-generation models, and the 850mAh iPod battery, which offers 30 percent more capacity for third-generation models. NewerTech 4G 750mAh iPod battery, available for $26, includes non-scratch installation tools and instructions for installation.

Yahoo! is about to turn 10 today, March 2, 2005. They have a surprise for everyone on their birthday. Click through the Free IceCream link to get your free scoop of Baskin Robbins Ice Cream from Yahoo for being a Yahoo Member.

ACR Data Recovery, Inc. a leader in data recovery services and software since 1991, and Prosoft engineering, Inc., a leading PC and Mac software utility maker, today announce that Prosoft is acquiring all software assets of ACR. The software affected is all software previously sold by ACR, including RecoverSoft, and Media Tools Professional which is comprised of File Recovery Tree, Boot Partition Repair, Secure Wipe, Cycle-Clone / Cycle-Image, and Media Editor. While ACR will continue to perform data recovery services, all further sales of software, ongoing software support, and future software development will be handled by Prosoft. Media Tools Professional is recognized as a market standard software utility by data recovery professionals in private, corporate IT, and government forensic data recovery labs everywhere. With it’s self-booting CD and custom operating system, RecoverSoft leverages Media Tools’ algorithms and methodologies to provide an easy-to-use, and cost effective emergency data recovery solution that anyone can use.