iTunes is seeking a US Marketing Manager for the iBookstore. Based in
Cupertino, it will be this Manager’s responsibility to drive awareness
and sales of iBooks through co-marketing programs with publishers and
authors, strategic partnerships, and via online and direct marketing
tactics.
Looks like Apple is determine to remediate one of the weak point of
iBookstore, which is the disappointed book selection compared with its
competitor Amazon Kindle.
We manage our printers and print jobs using Mac’s System Preferences->Print & Fax. Beneath the hood, Mac OS X is using a powerful printing system called CUPS. Turns out that CUPS has a web interface for you to manage and administer printers and jobs on your Mac.
CUPS (some say stands for Common Unix Printing System) is by Michael Sweet and debuted in 1999. It is a free software under GNU General Public License and is also the default print engine for several Linux distributions such as Red Hat. Apple adopted CUPS since Mac OS X 10.2 in March 2002. In February 2007, Apple hired Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code.
Apple has released version 9.0.4 update to iWork comprises bug fixes to Keynote, Pages and Numbers. New in this release is the support of ePub format in Pages. Pages is the first commercial word processor that can export documents in ePub format, alongside PDF and Word. ePub format will allow you to read the document in iBooks or other eBook reader software supporting ePub.
Check out Apple’s support document which explains the differences between PDF and ePub. It also contains guide and template on how to create ePub document using Pages.
This update is available via the usual Software Update or you can download from Apple Download site.
We would not call it a delay, but iOS 4.1 which is under beta right now is indeed slow to reach gold status compared with past iOS minor point beta release. The major feature for this release is the inclusion of Apple’s gaming platform Game Centre. We are guessing Apple is taking some time to make sure 4.1 release works well with iPhone 3G. Many has reported slowness after upgrading their iPhone 3G to iOS 4, and it is in Apple and its developers interest to move all iPhone to use iOS 4.
Apple tends to release iOS on a Tuesday. With its iPod event scheduled on next Wednesday September 1, we predict Apple will release iOS 4.1 next Tuesday, before the launch of new iPod models which will sport the new iOS release. The Game Centre feature in iOS 4.1 also reinforce iPod touch as a great gaming device. The new iPod touch model is expected to take most of hardware features from iPhone 4 such as Retina Display and FaceTime ready dual-camera.
iPad owners could only wait for all the goodness of iOS 4 such as multitasking, folders, universal inbox etc. We can safely expect iOS 4.2 to be in beta right after the release of iOS 4.1. iOS 4.2 is expected to be a build for iPad, and lets hope Apple can reunite the operating system so that the same iOS version runs on both iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Each beta testing cycle is expect between 4 to 6 weeks for minor point release. Thus we can expect iOS 4 for iPad to be available in October.
Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?”
September comes early for many Apple fans. Apple has just sent out invites to media on a “special event” on September 1 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco at 10am PT.
The invite image makes it clear that it is a music focus event. We can safely says its the annual September media event which typically sees Apple launching new iPod models.
Besides updates to iPod models, Apple might introduce the rumored iTV, the Apple TV refresh. Many also expect Apple to introduce 99-cent TV show rentals on iTunes. And the one-more-thing could be the eagerly anticipated cloud-based music service from Apple’s purchase of lala.com.
According to Bloomberg, Apple is in advanced talks with News Corp for TV shows rental at 99 cents. And this new service on iTunes will be launched together with new iTV and iPod models on Sept 7 in San Francisco. The said iTV will be a $99 version of Apple TV set-top box with small hard drive capacity with an emphasis on streaming.
All hail the new queen of Twitter! Lady Gaga has toppled Britney Spears to be number one on Twitter with the most followers, with more than 5,769,000 followers and counting. Check out the top 100 Twitter users based on followers from Twitaholic.com.
Apple’s PR posted this morning that iTunes U has topped 300 million downloads. Some news from Apple is better than no news.
Over 800 universities throughout the world have active iTunes U sites, and nearly half of these institutions distribute their content publicly on the iTunes Store®. New content has just been added from universities in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico and Singapore, and iTunes users now have access to over 350,000 audio and video files from educational institutions around the globe.
