This week Vern delves into the paranormal side of the iTunes Store to explore UFO encounters, creepy stories, and generally odd adventures. His findings may make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, but they won't make a dent in your bank account

This week Vern delves into the paranormal side of the iTunes Store to explore UFO encounters, creepy stories, and generally odd adventures. His findings may make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, but they won't make a dent in your bank account

This week, mixed in with some interesting tech news, John Martellaro looks at the name for the next version of Mac OS X (10.6), the JavaOne Conference in San Francisco, WWDC food, an embarrassing bug in Mac OS X and an over-the-top assertion by the Performing Rights Society that other people within ear shot of your music are listening to an illegal broadcast

The old purchase rules, based on the previous limitations of the Macintosh platform, no longer apply, according to Macworld on Thursday. Some buying myths that have persisted need to be rethought by the prospective buyer

OpenOffice.org has released the first beta of OpenOffice for Mac OS X. This version doesn't need to run in the X11 environment as version 2.x did; instead it runs natively on the Mac.

The key feature of Apple's Time Capsule, according to David Pogue at the New York Times, is to just ignore it. That has implications for spouses all over the world

Apple wants to get into growing businesses that affect people's tech lifestyles: computers, cell phones, music players and TV set top boxes according to Don Reisinger at C|Net. So it would be a logical next step for Apple to build a game console

Today TMO readers are discussing the impact the wave of recently announced iPhone carriers will have on the smart phone market and Apple

uncomplex announced the immediate availability of a public beta of Mailplane 2.0 on Friday. The new version of the Gmail-specific email application added the ability to create OmniFocus tasks and improved drag-and-drop message attachment support

Apple agreed on Thursday to offer a CA$45 credit to Canadian residents that bought a first, second, or third generation iPod before June 24, 2004. The proposed agreement came in response to two lawsuits that alleged iPod batteries prematurely wore out and failed to maintain a charge

Apple may have finally resolved a 2006 class action law suit that alleged the company misrepresented sparking issues some of its iBook and PowerBook power adapters exhibited. The company agreed to pay qualifying Mac owners between US$25 and $79

Microsoft reaffirmed the claim that it won't launch a hostile takeover attempt on Yahoo with the release of the proxy board members it had assembled. The potentail board members received the word Thursday via email from Microsoft's law firm

Keeping track of updates for all of the applications installed on your Mac can be a real pain, but life doesn't have to be that way. One of the handy tools I've found that takes the pain away is a clever little Dashboard widget called App Update. It handles the drudgery of tracking all of the third party apps you've installed, and lets you know if you have the most recent versions for each

Apple has been given a failing grade by Climate Counts, and was placed at the bottom of a list of 12 electronics companies also ranked by the organization. Climate Counts ranks companies on their practices to reduce global warming on a scale of zero to 100, and Apple was given a score of 11, some 66 points behind sector leader IBM, which scored a 77

Apple has improved the graphics card in the latest iMacs, but that won't make much difference for die hard gamers, and Apple isn't doing enough to fix that perpetual problem, according to Peter Cohen at Macworld on Thursday. ...

AT&T has had a recent on-again, off-again affair with a free Wi-Fi plan for iPhone users at more than 17,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots. AT&T's latest iPhone plan page no longer mentions the offer, and AT&T isn't commenting

Apple's Mac OS X 10.5, "Leopard" has matured into a solid operating system, according to Computerworld on Thursday. While some thought it was released too early, and there were some early snafus, debates about Leopard as a worthy upgrade have vanished.

NBC has made two of its popular shows available, 30 Rock and The Office, available, for free, on the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. The streams are commercial free

Rising prices for raw materials, metals and plastics as well as new labor laws in China are set to raise the price of notebook computers made by branded computer vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Acer, according to the Financial Times on Wednesday. The effect on Apple is not yet known

Macgamestore.com announced the immediate availability of The Scruffs for the Mac on Thursday. The seek-and-find style game sends players on a hunt for hidden treasures to save their family home. ...

Softpress Systems announced the immediate availability of Freeway 5.1 on Thursday. The update for the Web site design application added the ability to publish an RSS feed from a page, and added the ability to import graphics in SVG format

Today TMO readers are discussing the value of the iPhone's home screen to third party software and service companies, and are debating the value of swinging a deal with Apple to get your product's icon added to the default home screen button set

Jumsoft announced the immediate availability of Pages Templates 2.0 for iWork on Thursday. The package includes 40 professionally designed templates for books, resumes, business cards, certificates, business reports, and more. ...

plasq announced the immediate availability of Comic Life Magiq 1.0 on Thursday. The new version of the photo-comic editing and publishing application replaces Comic Life, and gains new editing features and image effects from the Core Image and Core Animation technologies in Mac OS X 10.5

America Movil announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with Apple to distribute the iPhone in Latin America before the end of 2008. The news follows Vodafone's announcement from earlier this week that is signed a ten country deal with Apple

U.K. residents hoping to buy an iPhone from O2 are out of luck now that the cell carrier has officially run out of inventory. O2's iPhone Web page states that both the 8GB and 16GB models are no longer available and does not say when the combination iPod and smart phone will be in stock again, adding even more fuel to the rumors that new iPhone models are just around the corner

According to Mophie, the Juice Pack iPhone battery extender provides an additional 250 hours of standby time, 8 hours of talk time, 6 hours of internet use, 7 hours of video playback, and/or 24 hours of audio playback. After using this puppy for close to a month, I can't confirm that those numbers are 100% accurate, but my gut feeling is that they're not far off the mark. Before I started using the Juice Pack I had to recharge my iPhone every single night, and even then it occasionally ran out of...

For the past who knows how many years, Consumer Reports has dutifully provided its assessment of the best and worst in computers. And almost from the get-go, its overall assessment of the Mac has been negative. Over the past couple of years, however, the seemingly impossible has happened -- Consumer Reports’ attitude has turned around

Ten years ago this week, Apple introduced the iMac with no SCSI port, no Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) and no 3.5 inch floppy drive. Pandemonium broke out. Then they sold like hot cakes.

Now that Microsoft has elected to walk away from the Yahoo deal, Microosft has wasted a lot of time and is simply back to doing with its own money what it couldn't do in the first place, according to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land

The PC world has been eagerly waiting for the final release of Window XP, Service Pack 3 (SP3). However, Mac users who plan to install it in their virtualization environment should know that Microsoft has tested the service pack under those conditions as well. Planning for the upgrade, however, is little different than installing on the raw hardware

Yahtzee is a great group game, but does it translate well to the iPod? Vern takes the dice out for a roll and lets us know what he thinks

A PC-based 1U rack mounted server can become a real administration headache. Not so with Apple's Xserve, according to Tom Yager at InfoWorld. The Xserve is a glorious antithesis to the PC server. ...

Apple's Safari Web browser has been holding relatively steady in 2008 with about 5.81 percent of the browser market despite the boost it received from additional Windows users this year. In comparison, Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser has been gradually declining compared to its position last year while Firefox has been slowly gaining market share

Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, sits on Apple's board of dicrectors. With the potential competition between Android and iPhone, that spot could go from awkward to untenable, according to Arik Hesseldahl at Business Week on Wednesday. Mr. Schmidt's recusal from Apple board meetings that involve the iPhone keeps him out of the loop on a major part of Apple's business and raises questions about his duties as a board member

If Apple releases new iPhones in June will you be ready to pick one up? Take our forum poll and let us know

If a leaked internal email proves to be legit, AT&T is prepping for what could be a late June iPhone launch, just as it did last year. Apparently the cell carrier is suspending employee vacations between June 15 and July 12 for "an exciting Summer Promotional Launch."

Perceptive Automation announced the immediate availability of Indigo 3.0 on Wednesday. The new version of the Mac-based home automation system improved support for iPhone Web-based remote control and added support for the INSTEON Thermostat Adapter for Venstar thermostats

The French cell carrier Orange already has a deal to offer Apple's iPhone in France, and now it looks like the company is in talks to expand that coverage into Poland and Spain, too. CFO Gervais Pellissier confirmed that Orange is negotiating with Apple to bring the combination iPod and smart phone to both countries "among others."

CS Odessa announced on Wednesday that it plans to ship its new ConceptDraw Office in mid-June. The productivity software suite is geared towards project managers and knowledge workers with completing extensive task lists. ...

Like Thought announced the immediate availability of Opacity 1.1 on Wednesday. The update for the screen graphic editing application added support for SVG and enhanced the user interface

A budding eBay entrepreneur that goes by the name "chris555" tried to cash in on Pystar's Mac clone scheme by offering his own knock-off Macs on eBay. His two "Non Apple Mac OS X" systems appeared at the beginning of the week for US$549 each, but had been removed by Wednesday morning

Apple released the fifth public beta of its software developer kit for the iPhone and iPod touch on Wednesday. The new SDK includes bug fixes and adds support for the latest iPhone OS

Leopard's Quick Look feature is great for checking out images without having to launch any application first, and it's also great for checking out multiple images at the same time

In celebration of the new Indiana Jones movie, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the Iconfactory announced on Tuesday that it has set up a page that will include Leopard (and Vista) resources: icons, custom dock for Mac, and desktop pictures.

Divine Fiat has announced the immediate avilability of Grunge, a theme for Apple's Keynote presentation software.

Microsoft announced on Tuesday that they have resumed the availability of Windows XP SP3 at the Microsoft Download Center. Distribution was halted last week when a last minute incompatibility with Vista SP1 and the Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS) software was discovered

Shebly Seyrafi with Caris & Co. raised his EPS estimates for Apple (AAPL) on Tuesday based in upwardly revised estimates for Macintosh and iPhone sales in 2008 and 2009

Orbicule announced the launch and immediate availability of Macnification on Tuesday. The new software allows the scientist to import, organize, find, annotate, analyze, adjust, compare, visualize and publish microscopic images. ...

Italy looks to be the first country to break Apple's one carrier per country rule for the iPhone now that both Telecom Italia and Vodafone plan on offering the combination iPod and smart phone in the country some time this year