Not to be outdone by Qik, Flixwagon started offering their live streaming client for the iPhone 3G/2G this week. Flixwagon offers streaming video over WiFi or over the cellular data connection. In addition, the application offers 12 frames-per-second video. The company claims that they have very fast signup right from the iPhone, and the ability to change titles/details while broadcasting.

The last time we mentioned Flixwagon, it was still in beta, but they have finally opened up the service to anyone who has a jailbroken iPhone with either Cydia or Installer 4. The application weighs in at only 98 KB. For more information about this video streaming service, visit the Flixwagon blog.

A while back, Qik announced that they would be creating a video broadcast client for the iPhone. When they first announced it, Qik was only available in a limited beta to jailbroken phones. However, Qik has announced that all jailbroken 1.1.4 iPhones will be able to get the client through Installer.app. Since Apple hasn't yet allowed streaming video using the iPhone's camera, jailbreaking is the only way to use Qik.

Qik, as you may already know, is a way to broadcast live, streaming video from a mobile device. While they are not offering an App Store version of their client, you can download it via Installer.app by adding "http://qik.com/iphone1" to your sources list. If you are using iPhone 2.0 software, you might be able to downgrade to 1.1.4, however, the risks outweigh any advantages you might get.

There seems to be a growing field of jailbreak applications as Apple continues to disallow some SDK-built apps. Even though we have the official SDK, there are still too many limitations for some apps and their users.

[via TechCrunch]

Back in 2006 we covered the launch of the Amazon Unbox video service which was then being pitched as the best alternative to the iTunes Store. There was one big problem: it didn't support Macs. Now, finally, Amazon is starting to rectify the situation with their new Amazon Video on Demand Service. PC Magazine has a First Look at the Service and, sure enough, it now supports Macs.

It appears that the new service will be similar to Netflix's streaming (which does not support the Mac, though they have promised it a long time ago) in that you'll be able to watch 40,000 movies and television shows in your browser. Unlike Netflix, however, the content will be priced individually with no subscription options. The video will be streamed with Flash 9.

Unfortunately, the program is still in beta and Amazon apparently has enough testers at the moment. However, you can sign up for their beta mailing list if you want to get in the next time they issue invitations.

I have officially managed to finish sorting and editing all of the footage from WWDC. The last video in our series is a chat with Charlie Wood from Spanning Sync. He managed to make it to an early appointment at my hotel on the morning I was leaving, despite having made the most of a large-scale bash the evening before.

If you're not familiar with Spanning Sync, it's an application that provides synchronization between Google Calendar and iCal. The upcoming release, currently in beta, will be adding contact sync as well. Charlie provides a demo in the video, highlighting the contact photo aspect of the feature.

Justin Williams recently posted a guide to using Spanning Sync with his own application, Today. If you're a Today user who's interested in integrating Google Calendar, have a look. And check out my chat with Charlie after the jump.

[Viddler link|Quicktime version]

Users of iTunes U, the free educational content channel inside iTunes, will have a lot more elementary education material to choose from -- the states of Arizona, Florida, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Utah have all added some of their K-12 material to the mix, and a number of school districts and museums from those states have also contributed videos and audio recordings.

The content is being uploaded by the SETDA, or the State Educational Technology Directors Association, which has been working with educators in member states to make more use of educational technology. This is definitely a great idea -- not only does it make this material much more accessible to educators and students alike, but anyone on iTunes can view and check out these resources through Apple's program.

Plus, it's a great way to distribute student work to a much larger audience. You can find most of the new content under the "K-12" tab on the iTunes U homepage within iTunes.

[via Macworld]

Yesterday, I was reading through our sister site TV Squad and saw this post about Broadcast Flags that prevent PCs from recording shows. Broadcast flags, which are signals sent in a digital TV data stream, indicate whether shows should or should not be recorded by third party equipment such as PVRs. Curious, I shot off an email to Nick Freeman of Elgato to see whether my Mac-based EyeTV would block flagged recordings.

Turns out that my Macintosh is a libertarian. I can continue recording any shows I receive. Phew.

Not only did Nick get right back to me, he put up this handy info page about Elgato's position on broadcast flags: EyeTV doesn't restrict recording. EyeTV (and Elgato's software in general) ignores voluntary DRM, the kind that asks you to shoot yourself in your own foot if you don't mind thankyouverymuch.

I was blissfully ignorant of these flags until yesterday. In a world of product placement and in-screen logos, does it really make sense to keep people away from watching your shows? It's not as though I don't get the concept -- a return to appointment television where people go to the bathroom during commercial breaks instead of fast forwarding -- but it just struck me as so incredibly brain-dead in its execution.

What a pity that Microsoft chose to support this silliness with Media Center. And bravo to Elgato for deciding not to. What kinds of voluntary DRM can you think up? Let us know in the comments. Mine is broadcast-approved earplugs. Stick them in whenever you encounter sounds that might be copyright.

Two of my preferred Mac-friendly cloud services have now made the jump to actually accepting money from subscribers, which is a good thing (really, it is!). TUAW favorite Evernote has moved from private to public beta, and Techsmith video hosting site Screencast.com is now at 1.0 release status. Both services are now offering trial/free plans alongside their premium plans for paid subscribers.

The Screencast.com site is already integrated with the free Jing Project capture tool for Mac and the pro-level (and, at least for the moment, Windows-only) Camtasia Studio app; you can also upload screencasts that you create with almost any tool you like (including ADA multi-winner Screenflow) in a variety of formats for hosting on the service. Selecting which of your screencasts to share and which to password-protect is very easy, and the service automatically sets up RSS and iTunes feeds for the folders you choose to make public.The 60-day trial account includes 200 MB of storage and a 1GB transfer limit; paid plans start at $6.95 a month.

Evernote's private beta grew to include over 125,000 users (ahem), and the new public beta includes an option for a $5/month premium user plan that increases your monthly transfer quota/new note cap from 40 MB to 500 megabytes and gives you SSL for all data, priority access to the text-recognition queues and tier 1 customer support. Plus you get a snazzy t-shirt while supplies last (pink elephants on parade!). The web interface to Evernote has also gotten a facelift, with full drag-and-drop support and an improved clipper feature. Can't say yet if they've fixed the session timeout issue that ate a long note my wife was writing last night, but I surely hope so.

In a conversation a couple of weeks back, Evernote CEO Phil Libin shared some future directions for the product with us as well as a couple of tips from his personal use of Evernote.

First, what many are waiting for will be coming very soon: a native iPhone client for Evernote (shipping shortly after the App Store opens), including one-button publishing to Evernote and location tagging for every item you create from your phone, like a trail of breadcrumbs leading you back to that favorite restaurant or bargain spot. (Phil's tip: whenever he parks his car at the airport, he takes a picture of the parking spot and sends it to Evernote to help jog his jetlagged brain.)

Second, the upcoming platform-wide features for Evernote will soon include more granular controls on publishing and sharing, a revamped Windows client, Evernote for Blackberry, and audio notes. (Phil's tip: he uses Evernote notebooks to share collections of photos or screenshots, like this accidental poetry from CNN rundown.) Later this summer we should expect to see the first public release of the Evernote API, which will permit third-party devs to add features to the service (personally I'd love to have a business card postprocessor tool, which Libin sees as a good 3rd party opportunity).

Other future features are yet to be publicly disclosed, but Libin hinted that the image-processing power of Evernote's servers may be bent to teasing out specific features of photographs. Faces? Product barcodes? Geotagged landscapes? Can't wait to find out. Meanwhile, the free Mac version of Evernote (read Brett's original review here) is downloadable at evernote.com.

Apologies to Dr. Peter Venkman, but it's hard to believe that it's taken this long for a webcam vendor to encroach on the vacuum left by the discontinued iSight, even though we have hints that a new model of the Apple camera might be on the HD horizon. Logitech has now announced the QuickCam Vision Pro for Mac, featuring "premium autofocus technology and Carl Zeiss® optics." No word on whether the camera will feature fine Corinthian leather or Posi-traction, but there's hope.

Seriously, though, the camera does offer a voice coil motor for autofocus, RightLight exposure technology and a 2 megapixel sensor; this should allow for VGA-quality (640x480) videoconferencing and 720p HD (960x720) local video recording. Snazzy! Logitech expects to ship the unit in July for an SRP of $130.

Update: Commenters point out that the product is quite similar to the QuickCam Pro 9000, which isn't billed as Mac-compatible but actually works just fine with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5; it's also list-priced $30 cheaper. Hrm.

[via Engadget]

I occasionally work with clients who need to have Macs set up as kiosks. That means that anyone can walk up and use the Mac to watch a video or access information, but they usually can't update anything on the Mac. Kiosks are especially useful when the user interface consists of a finger touching the screen. In my experience, touch screens are generally expensive and require that you send a Mac off to a vendor for installation.

Troll Touch now has user-installable touch screens for the 20" and 24" aluminum iMacs called SlipCOVERs. Priced at $699 (20") and $899 (24"), the SlipCOVERs come with touch screen drivers and calibration software. The video above shows a touch-enabled iMac in action -- I especially liked watching the demo dude playing Bejeweled using his finger instead of a mouse. Pull off the aluminum stand, lay that SlipCOVER iMac down on its back, and you've got a 24" iPod touch!

One thing I'm sure a lot of iPhone fans were upset about this week was the lack of an announcement of video broadcasting capability in the 3G iPhone. I mean, OMG, how else are we supposed to make obsessive fan videos of Britney Spears?!

Don't worry, the brilliant folks at Flixwagon are demonstrating live vidcasts from a jailbroken iPhone and are apparently working towards a true iPhone app that will work "as long as your battery lasts."

TV networks? Who needs 'em! We'll make our own entertainment.

Thanks to Chris Albrecht at NewTeeVee.com for the tip!

Recently, Apple posted a new online seminar (linked from enterprise Apple Store pages) entitled "Best Practices for Integrating Mac OS X into Active Directory." This seminar will show registered participants how to deploy machines running OS X into existing Active Directory setups.

Apple lists several things that are shown in the online seminar, some of which include:

• Integrating an Active Directory environment into Mac OS X
• Using the Active Directory plug-in in Mac OS X
• Configuring home directories (includes how to do this with mobile users)

You can watch this free online seminar by going to Apple's seminar website and registering. You will then be able to stream the video using QuickTime Player, or download an iPod-compatible file.

Just a few short days after the new season started on Adult Swim, the latest episode of The Venture Bros. is now in iTunes for your downloading pleasure. I love this show, and this season will probably be the best yet -- show creators Jackson Publick (a.k.a. Christopher McCullogh) and Doc Hammer (no alias, that's what they call him) seem like they're going to dive full steam ahead into the huge backstory of this series (originally a spoof on the old Johnny Quest cartoons, but lately a play on everything from James Bond to Hunter S. Thompson), and it'll definitely be a wacky, hilarious ride.

Unfortunately, there's no season pass for the series -- maybe Apple is a little leery to give those out considering what happened earlier this year (and let's be honest, as awesome as this show is, it's crazy enough to have been a few episodes away from cancellation since it started -- God bless the folks at Adult Swim for letting it go as long as it has).

If you haven't seen this show yet, the best place to start is probably back in Season 1 (Careers in Science is probably the easiest place to start, for my money), but if you want to follow along in this latest season, the show's just an iTunes URL away.

[via TUAW alum D. Chartier]

When it comes to Macintosh TV tuners, it's hard to ignore the very large cat sitting in the corner. Elgato dominates the US market, but in Europe Equinux has been a big player and they've recently crossed the ocean with a new US-compatible tuner. The TubeStick Hybrid with its "The Tube" software arrives at a distinct disadvantage.

It's a small white box that you can attach to a spare USB port and use to watch channels both from over-the-air signals or connect to your cable TV. Equinux provides the software that turns the tuned data into a watch-able show on your screen.

The product and its software remains at a stage I can best describe as "beta". Yes, you can watch TV with it. Yes, you can tune to both ATSC (High Def) and analog channels. But many features like integrated TV listings are not yet available for the US. You're able to import your own Extended Programming Guide listings in XMLTV format, and Equinux recommends SchedulesDirect.org.

Follow the jump to read more about the Equinux Tube Stick Hybrid.

Over at Theocacao Scott Stevenson has posted the video of his Introduction to Cocoa talk (entitled "Best of Both Worlds") aimed at those who want to learn a bit about Apple's preferred API for building OS X applications. The talk runs to over 90 minutes and includes "an introduction to Xcode, Interface Builder, Objective-C, Mac UI standards and more."

For anyone who has ever wanted to figure out what those developers tools are all about this is definitely worth (the rather large) download (scroll down towards the bottom) though it seems that a lot of folks are have problems getting the whole file (myself included). There's also a torrent available.

The folks who brought you the TubeStick USB digital TV tuners have released The Tube 2.7. Equinux is providing this free upgrade to The Tube, the software component of the TubeStick products. The new version enhances the timeshifting and electronic program guide features of The Tube 2.6, and adds even more functionality. What's new?

• Placeshifting -- Share a digital TV show via iChat. If you're running Leopard, just drag The Tube icon to an active chat. Your chat buddies can view or record the show, and you can talk about the show while watching it.
• Enhanced EPG -- The Electronic Program Guide (EPG) is updated twice daily, and an open plug-in structure opens the door to other program guides.
• Leopard Features -- Add a stack of video recordings to the Dock, use QuickLook to preview your recordings, and set up Time Machine to avoid backing up your videos.
• Create A Podcast Of Your Recordings -- Any recordings added to a TubeToGo web gallery can be subscribed to via RSS, so recordings can be browsed and viewed on Apple TV.
• Closed Captioning

Do you already own a TubeStick? Go get the update. If you don't, the new features in The Tube 2.7 may be just the thing to push your purchase decision!

Note: A bug fix, v 2.7.1, is now the downloadable version of The Tube. Check the version history for details.

[via PRMac]