Apple has devs to the grindstone for a new social networking app called iGroups. Patently Apple reports that docs out today from the US Patent Office describe a new service that would work on your iPhone and probably MobileMe, too. Let’s say you’re attending SXSW: iGroups would keep you in touch with your co-workers and friends by

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An Australian tech website has started running ads featuring Mac Pros and MacBook Pros whose entry-level prices are noticeably higher than those in the current Mac lineup. So what, right? The ads are probably incorrectly labeled, or something. But the word on the street (well, the word on Engadget , anyway) is that these might predict the much-anticipated Mac refreshes that we’ve been waiting for. From Engadget: Apple’s Australian online store lists the most affordable versions of the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and Mac Pro at A$1599, A$1999 and A$3599, respectively, but the ads show significantly higher “starting at” prices of A$1899, A$2399, and A$4499. Following the ads to Apple’s Australian online store reveals the same Mac models at the same old prices, so either these ads are terribly wrong or they’re been released a little early… It has been over a year since Apple released a major update to its high-end Mac Pro computer. I know very well because I bought one last April at an astronomically high price, and as such, guard it with my life. (No one else is allowed near it. No one!) If history has taught me anything, it is that I am not allowed to have the best and brightest kit for long. Therefore, an update is imminent. As for the MacBook Pro, we can probably expect to see Apple upgrade it with Intel’s powerful i7 Chipset

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The iWork.com team at Apple sent out an e-mail to registered users today, touting new accessibility from Apple mobile devices and more sharing options for all. However, the biggest feature, really the only feature that matter, editing documents, remains missing. Carefully not introduced as an online productivity suite designed for collaboration, the iWork.com beta site has existed as little more than an online repository for sharing iWork documents. The only real advantage over simply e-mailing documents has been the ability to comment via sticky note and downloading in multiple formats. More than a year later, the changes have been minimal, and that may be exactly the way Apple wants it. As of today, “iWork.com allows you to share a document by creating a public link” with an incredibly long URL. However, accessing the public link does not allow the adding of comments or notes. Sharing documents is a little more efficient with a single page for sharing documents and a counter indicating the number of views for the document. The other change, likely in anticipation of the iPad, is something that iWork.com should have included from the beginning, a mobile interface. The new interface has “improved scrolling” and supposedly helps you “find your shared documents faster.” Unfortunately, what it does not do is show comments and notes, making the value of iWork.com even more dubious, if that’s possible. It’s becoming more and more apparent that an online version of iWork akin to Google Docs may not be coming at all. After all, Apple has never suggested iWork.com was meant for anything more than sharing, rather a collaborative online productivity suite was just logically assumed. Well, the new logic is even simpler, that being iWork.com is cloud storage for the iPad

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Last week DynDNS released its beta support for Wide Area Bonjour and DNS Service Discovery. This means that if you own your own domain name, and you have a Custom DNS service with DynDNS, you can configure your Apple AirPort device (AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express and Time Capsule) to present itself as part of that domain, automatically updating your domain name and broadcasting configured services. What is Wide Area Bonjour? Wide Area Bonjour enables the same zero-config automatic service discovery functionality over the public Internet that we all enjoy on our local network (seeing our shared files, printers, scanners and so forth). If you have a MobileMe account and utilize the Back To My Mac functionality, you’re already using Wide Area Bonjour without even knowing it. Why would we use this? Most of us who use DynDNS use it to be able to let the IP Address that our ISP give us resolve with a friendly domain name (such as myname.homedns.org). This basic free DynDNS service works really well as long as you have a third-party router that supports DynDNS (which most of them do). Unfortunately Apple, being Apple, does not support DynDNS in its routers, leaving you to run the OS X DynDNS updater application on your computer. The downside to this is that if your computer is asleep and your home Internet connection drops and reconnects (giving you a new IP address) DynDNS does not get updated until the computer wakes up. When wanting to use Snow Leopard’s Wake On Demand feature this is a problem, so this has meant “tough luck,” requiring you to run the DynDNS Mac client on multiple machines and hope the IP updating occurs often enough. It generally works fine, with the occasional expected downtime when your home IP changes at midday if computers are sleeping. Does it work?

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Traditional publishers may be feeling the heat to develop iPad apps and versions of their pubs, but online publishing execs are adopting a wait-and-let’s-see 2.0 attitude. The Association of Online publishers polled its 1,500 members, finding them optimistic for 2010 — but not about e-readers or iPads.  Half of the respondents predicted strong growth of 10%+, 

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Electronista reports that Wearable began shipping their AirStash wireless flash drive today. Those concerned about the lack of an SD card slot now have a highly portable way of accessing media on SD/SDHC cards wirelessly. The AirStash is effectively a portable WiFi access point with an SD slot. It has a pop-out USB plus for easily loading files from your computer to an SD card. Then carry the small unit with you and access it as a wireless network through the iPhone app. It has its own battery, so it doesn’t add any extra drain on your iPhone. It connects at 802.11g rather than 802.11n, so don’t be expecting 720p HD video on an iPad. But they claim a full 30 frames per second at 640×480. The AirStash supports a wide variety of video, audio, and image formats, but surprisingly also claims support for web pages, Keynote, Numbers, Pages, PowerPoint, and Acrobat files. Since it acts as a WiFi access point, it should let you take extra documents with you on a trip and share them with every laptop in the meeting. Don’t have a DVD system in your car? Your kids in the back can watch movies on their iPod touches streamed from an AirStash as seen in the video below:      

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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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A new survey by research firm Crowd Science brings bad news for BlackBerry maker RIM , and some good news for Apple. The company that comes out best of all, though, is Google, whose Android operating system seems poised to see some major growth in the near future. The survey, which Crowd Science performs semi-annually, addresses smartphone brand loyalty. This time around, it found that iPhone and Android customers were well satisfied with their choice of smartphone, but that BlackBerry is hemorrhaging users badly to both of those primary competitors. A little over 90 percent of both iPhone and Android smartphone owners plan to stay with that OS when they purchase their next device, while nearly 40 percent of BlackBerry owners said they would opt for an iPhone next time around, and 34 percent said they’d go with Android instead of a RIM device. It’s bad news for the Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry maker, and this latest survey shows that Apple isn’t exclusively to blame for the company’s steady decline. According to Crowd Science CEO John Martin: These results show that the restlessness of Blackberry users with their current brand hasn’t just been driven by the allure of iPhone. Rather, Blackberry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems

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Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPad Want to read the most interesting and shocking sentence of perhaps your entire week. Here it goes: “If your iPad requires service due to the battery’s diminished ability to hold an electrical charge, Apple will replace your iPad for a service fee.” Yup, you read that right. According to Apple’s webpage, having a dead battery on your iPad will not only make you eligible for a new battery, they’ll simply replace the iPad itself (keep in mind, it still costs $99, but unlike the iPhone, you get a new device, not just a new battery). While this is certainly intriguing, it does raise some points. For one, the reasoning behind this may because the solid structure of the device makes it too hard to open up and replace the battery to even make it worth it. Perhaps replacing the entire iPad is more cost and time friendly to Apple. However, this also poses the question of how environmentally safe this really is.

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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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