Appletell

Real Networks and Viacom’s Rhapsody will be launching a $50 million MP3 downloads business to challenge iTunes’ 70% market share, Reuters is reporting.

Digital music seller Rhapsody is launching a $50 million marketing assault on Apple’s iTunes, offering songs online and via partners including Yahoo Inc and Verizon Wireless, Rhapsody said on Monday.

The songs will be sold in MP3 format, which means users of the Rhapsody service will be able to play them on iPods.

More after the break.

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The Wall Street Journal reported today that Microsoft is now seeking big-name partners such as NewsCorp or Time Warner to take another run at Yahoo! This time, however, it seems Microsoft is only interested in Yahoo!’s search business, with the partner in the deal likely absorbing the rest of the company.

This comes about five months after Microsoft sent Yahoo! an unsolicited bid to buy the entire company. Yahoo! rejected the deal, feeling Microsoft was not willing to pay a high enough price for the company that runs the Internet’s most visited website, according to Alexa.

This news comes on the heels of the reports that Yahoo’s new search advertising deal with Google is under the scrutiny of the United States Department of Justice because of concerns that it is anti-competitive.

Via [The Wall Street Journal]

iWebTemplate has collaborated with Jumsoft to bring you a growing collection of 32 Apple iWeb templates. These templates are available to use in creating websites, blogs, and podcasts, complete with photos, movies, and music. The themes come with their own installer application, so you don’t have to worry about moving them to iWeb. Also, each theme contains numerous common page layouts, such as “Welcome,” “About Me,” “Photos,” “My Albums,” “Movie,” “Podcast” “Blog,” and “Blank.”

Themes after the break.

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Smilebox, Inc., a leader in photo-sharing technology, has launched Smilebox for Mac giving Mac customers an easy and compelling way to share their photos and videos. Mac users can extend their iPhoto and iTunes experience by mixing their photos, videos and music with hundreds of interactive Smilebox designs, including scrapbooks, greetings, slideshows, photobooks and postcards. Smilebox also provides Mac customers with new ways to share their media: they can share creations via email, post to a blog, website or social network, or print, all in a matter of minutes.

Details after the break.

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If you’re a golfer constantly working on your swing, and you own a Mac, grab that video camera and head on over to Swing Academy. This free golfers’ network has now brought its online video analysis software to the Mac. Simply record yourself taking a practice swing, upload it to their site, then get feedback from other golfers on how to improve your game. It’s good to see another service coming over to the Mac side!

It seems as if more and more sites and developers are either switching to the Mac or realizing that if they want to be a serious business, they need to also develop for the ever-expanding Mac platform. This is good, as it is bringing new software our way, which allows even more people to switch. Let’s hope the developers keep it up and continue expanding their Mac support.

Via [MacNN]

Firefox 3 may have beaten Apple’s Safari in several tests, but Safari is still the best browser in the market at JavaScript. Webkit recently adopted the SquirrelFish JavaScript interpreter, and we can definitely see a speed increase. The current build of Webkit and Safari 3.1.1 are ahead of both Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7/8 b1. Zimbra performed these tests to find which browser would give the best user experience with the Zimbra Web client. The SquirrelFish JavaScript interpreter in Safari 4 is a bytecode engine, and Webkit claims it’s 1.6 times faster than the current JS engine in Safari 3.1.1 Why is SquirrelFish making Safari so much faster? The Zimbra blog explains why.

SquirrelFish does its magic by turning JavaScript script into so-called bytecodes, an optimized code much more suitable for run-time execution than natural language-based commands, which are longer and more complicated to interpret – and therefore are slower.

I wouldn’t called Safari a winner of the browser wars now, because JavaScript isn’t the only part of the web and other browsers have some better features. But, it does show one of Safari’s strenghts. After learning this, I’ll be using Safari when using any JavaScript web apps.

Via [Zimbra Blog]

Apple has just released a fix for a very serious Windows Safari security flaw, which was addressed by Microsoft a short while ago, and allowed the download of malicious software without warning the victim. The patch updated Safari so it would first seek permission from a user before downloading an application from a website to the user’s desktop.

The flaw affected Safari users with both Windows XP or Windows Vista operating systems. In order to exploit the bug, an attacker would first have to trick a user into visiting a malicious Web site that would initiate the download. Due to the fact that the download could be started without any sort of notification, the computer could become infected without the user even realizing it.

Apple seemed to place the blame on Microsoft in the description of the new patch, stating that the vulnerability stemmed from “how the Windows desktop handles executables.” Apple also stated that “saving an untrusted file to the Windows desktop may trigger the issue, and lead to the execution of arbitrary code,”

The new patch also changes the default download location for Safari from the desktop to the download folder in Windows Vista and the My Documents folder in Windows XP. In Microsoft’s May security advisory, the company said that users who had changed Safari’s default download location were not at risk.

[Via MacRumors]

Exibia, from Plyxim software, has just been upgraded to version 1.2. Exibia is a server video scheduling tool intended for schools and universities. With Exibia, the user can upload any video that is compatible with Quicktime to a central server, which is subsequently connected to the school’s closed circuit television system. The uploader of the video can choose a date and time for playback through the Exibia Web Client, and forget about it. The application can be used seamlessly by multiple users, and even handles issues with double booking of the system. Anyone with a Mac or a PC can connect and upload content, with no need to hook the actual computer up to a monitor or projector. Videos can also be stored for a longer period of time for multiple play-backs.

Version 1.2’s main change is a re-vamped UI for the Web Client. It is available as a free upgrade for current users. A single Exibia license is priced at $499, and a demo can be downloaded from the Plyxim website.

Product [ Exibia ]

Although it does have some simple and elegant themes right out of the box, iWeb probably isn’t being used for many business websites. iPresentee hopes to target businesses with five new iWeb themes: Office, Global, Money, Illusion and Papery. Each contains seven templates: Home, About Us, Services, Support, Clients, Contact Us, and a blank template. Personally, my favourites are Money and Global, though all can easily be customized without manually editing a line of code in iWeb.

Check out a sample after the break.

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WWDC got all the attention for the iPhone 3G and the apps demoed on it, which were amazing. However, we didn’t hear about something else...SproutCore! That new iPhone couldn’t have been the only thing they were working on. Apple attempted to keep this on the down low, and had everyone sign an NDA, but this open source project has everyone talking. We haven’t yet seen any pictures or videos, but here’s a description of SproutCore from the WWDC schedule:

SproutCore is an open source, platform-independent, Cocoa-inspired JavaScript framework for creating web applications that look and feel like Desktop applications. Learn how to combine SproutCore with HTML5’s standard offline data storage technologies to deliver a first-class user experience and exceptional performance in your web application.

Not much has been leaked, expect for when we found out the .Mac Web Gallery was built off the framework. Again, not native Apple technology; Charles Jolley of Sproutit used it for his online e-mail application called Mailroom. Flash for Mac has always been falling behind, due to Adobe focusing on the Windows version. Now, the puzzle fits together; Flash could have worked on the iPhone, but could not run rich web applications to replace desktop apps.

For more information on SproutCore, check out its official website.

Via [RoughlyDrafted]