Suburbia

Review: Apple Composite AV cable for iPod Touch, iPhone, Nano etc

I just bought myself the Apple composite AV cable for my iPod Touch so that I could hook it up to my TV to watch BBC iPlayer programmes. At first I thought the £35 price tag was pretty steep, but seeing as I was at the Apple Store in Glasgow I thought I'd treat myself to something!

On closer inspection though I saw that it isn't just an AV cable but it also has a USB cable which plugs into a dinky little power supply which comes with both UK and North American power supply connectors, so basically it can be used to charge your iPod and also means that you don't run out of power whilst watching programmes on it.

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Dropbox: Putting a human face on Amazon's S3 storage system

I've recently been checking out Dropbox, I'd come across the website for it before and checked out the screencast showing it's features and it looked pretty good, a few people on Twitter mentioned getting invites to the invite only beta program so I eventually managed to get hold of an invite to try it out for myself.

I've been on the look out for an off-site backup system that makes use of some kind of distributed 'cloud' based storage system such as Amazon's S3. I've tried Mozy and also JungleDisk and they both worked well enough but I didn't really take to them. Both of those options do have the main feature I was looking for in that they offer a cost-effective way to backup lots of data online, additionally Mozy's Mac client in particular has a great strength in that you can tell it which files and settings you want it to backup such as iCal data etc.

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Evidence of the hidden "features" of Vista and Windows Media Centre?

Way back in February 2007 I wrote a blog post called "Windows Vista: Beneath Aero's transparency hides some future 'surprises'" where I pondered some of the features of Vista designed to appease Hollywood's desire to control how people use media on their computers.

More evidence of these features were revealed recently when users of Windows Media Centre in the US who intended to record an episode of Gladiators found that the recording was blocked because of a broadcast flag known as CGMS-A in the TV signal which WMC understood to indicate it should not be recorded. NBC, who aired the show, said it was mistakenly added and that it wouldn't happen again. Microsoft have claimed they will work to make sure this doesn't happen again. However, many people are skeptical about this, in an article on Ars Technica Eric Bangeman wrote:

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Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth CS4 Betas now on Adobe Labs

Following on from last years move of offering a public beta of Photoshop CS3 Adobe have announced three new public betas of their CS4 applications.

You can download betas of Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks CS4 and Soundbooth CS4 from labs.adobe.com. You'll find all the details of the new features in development on each application's page, here's a few notable feature headings for each application:

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Adobe Open Screen: Will Apple make their own Flash Player for the iPhone?

Adobe recently announced the 'Open Screen' initiative which further opens up the SWF format along with the FLV / F4V video specifications along with . The Open Screen FAQ explains the core deal:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
• Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

The FAQ also explains why Adobe is opening up these specifications:

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