At least two major news media outlets aren’t going to let the iPad’s lack of Flash support keep owners of Apple’s latest creation away from their content. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and National Public Radio (NPR) are working on iPad-specific versions of their websites, set to launch next month alongside the official ship date of the iPad. The websites will launch automatically whenever someone navigates to either NPR.org or WSJ.com, and will replace the standard sites, both of which feature pretty significant quantities of Flash content. Peter Kafka at MediaMemo also notes that this workaround ensures that iPad owners will be able to access content from the two news sources without the organizations having to rush out a dedicated iPad application. According to Kafka, NPR is in the process of developing such an application, but it won’t necessarily be ready in time for the iPad’s launch. Also, having two options available for iPad owners means that no matter what a customer’s preference, they should be able to access all of NPR’s content. Just after the device hits the streets, consumer frenzy will probably be at its most heady, so anyone ready to go on day one stands to benefit the most by way of picking up new readers and/or customers. The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

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Wall Street Journal, NPR to Open iPad-Only Websites

The recent spike in sales of vinyl and turntables brings a warm glow to our hearts. We love our technology, but vinyl is just a beautiful format. Having said that, vinyl records aren’t perfect. They’re bulky, fragile, and easily scratched, and those milk crates filled with your block-rocking jams can get heavy. Fortunately, DJ software is a rock-solid alternative for amateurs and pros, and one of our favorites, djay (5 out of 5 stars, Jan/10), just got a sweet dedicated hardware controller, the Vestax Spin. Because algoriddim (djay’s developer) and Vestax worked together to make the Spin the go-to controller for djay, you’re ready to bring the beats in djay as soon as you plug in the controller. The Spin controls nearly all of djay’s onscreen options in an all-in-one hardware package. Rather than unintuitively pressing keys on your MacBook and clicking away at onscreen turntables, this hardware controller aims to replicate the feel of rocking the wheels of steel. The “turntables” are two metal jog wheels with glowing lights underneath them. They’re touch-sensitive, and if you’ve ever bumped a turntable with your coat sleeve, you’ll realize how helpful it is that Spin only responds to your fingers. The mechanisms are smooth, and for every two turns of the physical jog wheel, the onscreen turntable spins once

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Vestax Spin

Setting up your OS to your liking can be an art for some. What if you need to set up Snow Leopard to present every user with the same look and settings? By following these steps you can have every user who logs into the machine receive the same look, feel and preferences that you desire. What we’ll be doing is creating a new user, setting it up to look how we want, then copying the settings so every new user will get those preferences. Setting Everything Up Login under your admin account and open up Accounts pane in System Preferences . Click the + to create a new Standard user. As an example, we’ll use the name  testuser. Log off and log back in as testuser. Set everything up the way you want. I customized the Dock, Safari’s home page and the Finder preferences

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How-To: Create a Custom User Template in Snow Leopard

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPhone , iPod touch , iDevice Apps , Mac Software Macintosh and iPhone/iPod/iPad product updates and announcements for March 15, 2010: Macintosh iPod Macintosh PagePlanet Software, Inc. has announced the Golden Master release of Modular Gateway Interface (MGI) 3.2 for the Macintosh OS X and Linux operating systems. MGI is an Apache 2 module that adds full functionality to every website on your server using a simple tag structure. MGI includes 67 tags to enhance a website with everything from simple counters and form processing to custom databases and shopping carts. You can also combine MGI’s powerful programming tags to make your website do anything you can imagine.  Need to build a custom login and tracking system? No problem. TheMacBundles today released its March bundle and a new and innovative Build Your Own Bundle store. TheMacBundles has set a new standard of quality and value with its high quality, low priced bundles. These no-gimmick bundles provide users with the same software, support, licenses, and upgrade benefits that apply to users who paid the full price for the titles. The new BYOB store maintains these high standards and lets users create their own customized bundles with some simple mouse clicks. iWebTemplate has announced the addition of a free iWeb themes and templates section to be used with Apple’s iWeb Website building application. iWeb Free Themes includes seven great themes: Sky, Picture, Church, Joy, Love, Billiard and Cat. Each iWeb Free theme can be used as the basis for a great new website.

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Mac, iPhone, iPod and iPad product news – March 15, 2010

A piece I wrote last week on the impact of iTunes web preview pages on App Store SEO brought up a little side conversation about how many people found it annoying that the links launch iTunes automatically. Sometimes you don’t even have any warning that the link is going to launch iTunes if you click on a shortened link. There are a few simple steps that you can take to stop this behavior and suppress iTunes in its eagerness to run and take you to the page for that app (or other iTunes content). Below, I have outlined the steps for Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. The Basic Concept The iTunes preview pages run a JavaScript function that attempts to load iTunes by opening an ITMS file. This file will launch iTunes and direct the application to open the iTunes Store to the specified content. I did not want to recommend just disabling JavaScript because that would interfere with a lot of websites that rely on the interactivity that is possible with JavaScript. We will prevent iTunes from opening by changing the way that these browsers handle the ITMS file. This approach will allow you to manually launch iTunes when you desire. In the case of Chrome, we can selectively disable JavaScript for iTunes links. Safari Safari uses the helper applications as defined in the “Get Info” dialog box for each file type. In Snow Leopard, Mac OS X relies solely on the file’s extension to determine the default application. This may behave differently in 10.5, which still respects the creator code attribute. Create a simple text file on your desktop.

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How-To: Stop iTunes Web Links From Opening iTunes

Entertain and educate the most important members of your household with this family-friendly guide to the best Mac software, websites, and iPhone apps for kids. And don’t miss our step-by-step instructions for setting up parental controls on your Mac. Let’s play!   When they’re little, kids want to be just like you–pretending to drive the car, borrowing your shoes for dress-up, and yes, pulling up a booster seat to unwind with the family Mac after a hard day in the sandbox. As fun as some Mac staples are regardless of age (Photo Booth, anyone?), your kids deserve some special software just for them–to help them master basic computer skills, stretch their creative imaginations, reinforce educational concepts, and of course, just have a grand old time no matter how young they are. With that in mind, we test-drove 29 Mac and iPhone apps and 12 activity-packed websites just for kids. Some wound up being a little too dumbed down–on the verge of becoming, well, dumb–and our reviews separate the wheat from that chaff for you. Grab the mouse; it’s time to play!   Computer Skills   KidsMouse   KidsMouse teaches basic mouse skills with 18 learning games like ABC Puzzle, Color Ball, and Shape Puzzle. Each is operated using only the mouse or trackpad, and the brightly colored, charmingly illustrated graphics will delight little ones. Some of the games test your child’s sequencing (letters and numbers), shape recognition, and memory, while others just entertain–a bitmap paint program, for example, lets them draw colorful shapes. Really little kids might need prompting from Mom or Dad–ours had fun driving from our lap. We just wished KidsMouse would lock out keyboard input because those keys sure get banged on. Click matching shapes to hear a sound

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Kidding Around – The Best Software and Websites for Kids

The following how-to video will walk you through the basics of printer sharing on the Mac. You’ll learn both how to set up and how to access printers on a network. We will cover the following points: Setting up Printer Sharing Printing to a Shared Printer Adding a Printer via System Preferences You can watch the embedded video below (lower quality) or watch the full quality version here (28MB).

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Video How-To: Printer Sharing on a Mac

A cool shooter with an even cooler soundtrack, Bullet Candy Perfect resembles the renowned top-down shooter Geometry Wars, only with better graphics. Since you play to the rhythm of the beat, the techno music really sucks you in, and that synchronicity can be helpful when going for a perfect run. You pilot your tiny ship around the space levels, zapping laser-firing enemy ships, clumps of gold rings, and some menacing green orb-like things that follow you around. In some stages, you’ll become so surrounded by the green orbs that you only have two choices: Let them kill you, or commit suicide. As a strategic option, committing suicide results in the loss of two lives, but you get to keep all your perks and power-ups. So if you find yourself trapped but have lots of lives left, it’s in your best interest to right-click to be reborn to fight another day. Everybody dance now! While shooting other ships, of course.   You gain perks by picking up spinning objects that look dangerous, but they’re actually power-ups. Rounder objects resembling planets boost your laser, while others allow you to become invincible for one round, fire triple-shot ammo, pick up an extra life, and rack up bonus points. The fluid controls have you using the normal WASD keys to move your ship around and the mouse to aim and fire. We like the game’s progress bar, which tracks your achievements, high scores, average score, highest level you’ve reached, the amount of games played, play time, and your rank. You can also look at high scores online and compare them to others around the world. Even better, though, is the Radiohead-style “pay what you like” price: Developer Charlie’s Games is selling Bullet Candy Perfect for whatever you think is fair, starting at a minimum of $1.

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Bullet Candy Perfect

Section: Mac Software , Games I’ve apparently been so busy exploring Monkey Island for the Mac that I didn’t realize Monkey Island is coming to Mac. Telltale Games recently brought us Tales of Monkey Island , and now Aspyr is also sailing back in time to bring us The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. Originally released for Xbox Live Arcade and PC last summer, this special edition can be pre-ordered now through Aspyr’s GameAgent service for only $9.99. The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition faithfully re-imagines the internationally-acclaimed classic game (originally released in 1990) for original and new audiences alike. The game is brought into the modern era with an all new re-imagined contemporary art style, a re-mastered musical score, full voiceover, and an in-depth hint system to help players through the game’s side-splitting puzzles. Purists will also delight in the ability to seamlessly switch between the updated hand-drawn re-imagining and the original classic version. The game’s twisty plot leads our naive hero on a hilarious, swash-buckling search for the fabled secret of Monkey Island. Tales of pirate wealth lure him to the port of Mêlée with high hopes, no money, and insatiable curiosity

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Aspyr unveils a Monkey Island secret of their own

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPhone , iPod touch , iDevice Apps , Mac Software Macintosh and iPhone/iPod updates and announcements for March 11, 2010: Macintosh Benedict Lowndes has announced WindowFlow Beta for Mac OS X. WindowFlow provides powerful keyboard commands for organizing your application windows. You can seamlessly move and resize windows which will snap into alignment with each other. WindowFlow’s clean and simple interface also acts as a window switcher, allowing you to easily browse all of your open application windows. The beta is available today at a discount for early adopters. Maintain has announced Cocktail 4.6.1 (Leopard Edition) , the latest maintenance update of Cocktail for users running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. This version adds ability to stop Cocktail from logging out, restarting or shutting down the computer at the end of a scheduled programme. The update also features improvements on the clear Adobe Flash Player caches and cookies procedure as well as overall performance improvements. Macgamestore.com has announced the digital download release of Warbirds: Dogfights for the Macintosh.

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Mac, iPhone, iPod and iPad product news – March 11, 2010