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Vevo's website redesign simplifies the video watch page, adds artist pages
Chances are you've enjoyed Vevo's music video catalogue in one form or another, and purists who prefer .com access are being rewarded today with a fresh website design. The "video watch page" was previously littered with related clips, a playlist and other distractions, which have now been dispatched for greater focus on the tune at hand. Much of this has been moved to "artist pages", a new pop-up hub (pictured above) which is full of extra info on your chosen act. Head over to Vevo to see the enhancements for yourself, and with impending OUYA support, you might want to consider it your primary dispensary for that daily dose of Biebzilla.
Grooveshark circles back again, swaps app for HTML5
It's hard to keep up with whether Grooveshark is in the Google Play store, or out again, but now it doesn't matter. The music streaming service has decided to ditch its yo-yoing app, and instead opt for a flashy new HTML5 website for all devices. It's gone live in the US with an international launch "in the coming months", although this London-based editor didn't have any trouble using it. If you've been missing your favorites list, then jump over to Grooveshark.com and get listening -- after all, you might see it disappear again soon if a fresh lawsuit from EMI has any impact.
IconSettings provides one-touch access to iOS settings with bookmarks
IconSettings, from the South African blog iPhoneZA, is an interesting hack that lets you set up one-touch buttons on your iOS device to access specific parts of the Settings app (like turning Bluetooth on or off, toggling Airplane mode, adjusting date & time, etc.) without going to the trouble of jailbreaking and using a tool like SBSettings. It's free, and takes only a moment to configure. All it is is basically a series of JavaScript links that you can save out to your iOS homepage as bookmark app icons. Tap an icon, and it loads the bookmark in the browser; Mobile Safari then tells the iPhone to launch the Settings app to a particular function, sending you to the appropriate screen with just a touch. Pretty smart. Of course, you'll need to be connected to the Internet when you use set up these things, since it's just a link on a webpage (the latest 2.0 versions of the bookmarks do not require connectivity after the initial config). But it's a cool implementation, and if there's a setting you find yourself having to browse through menus to adjust often, it might be worth setting up a bookmark or two for quick and easy access. [via Engadget]
HTML5: seriously, it's not just for video
In a way, HTML5 has been reduced to a buzzword. You hear a lot of noise about how great it is for video, and how the web standard is an alternative to Flash content, but you don't see a whole lot of examples of that. We thought we'd take a moment and round up some of the cooler, more exciting instances of HTML5 online -- sites and experiments that go way beyond just playing someone's home movies. We're talking 8-bit gaming, some really crazy video effects, and a handful of incredibly interesting ways designers are maximizing the potential of the everyone's favorite new toy. Check out the links below, and prepare to readjust your expectations of HTML5. Note: Your best experiences for the links below will be in Chrome or Safari. You can get some of this working in Firefox, but as Chris Ziegler just remarked, "It's mega slow." These will absolutely blow your mind. Mr.doob's Chrome experiments -- Ball Pool and Google Gravity. Here's a roundup of experiments from Ben Joffe, including a rudimentary 3D shooter, a 3D functions plotter, and an HTML5 color picker. Some of my personal favorites, KesieV's Akihabara game room. The Legend of Sadness is where it's at. Exploding, real-time video. WPilot -- a multiplayer shooter. Like Asteroids meets Quake. A giant, color-cycling canvas. Weirdly addictive to play with. 3D molecules. 'Nuff said. Mega Man intro. In HTML5. If you guys have suggestions or examples you'd like to show off, let us know in comments!
ePrint is a nice solution to printing from your iPhone
The iPhone wasn't designed from scratch to print things, but it can be done. I've reviewed some solutions in the past, including one that required you to run a small print server on your computer, which then directs your print jobs to any local printers. There are also some apps that print photos directly to printers. I've just tried ePrint, which has some limitations, but gets the job done without any print servers. There are two versions of the app: The free version, ePrint Free [iTunes link] lets you print contacts, notes (more on that later), photo albums, and even brings up the camera so you can fire off a snapshot and print it immediately. The paid version [iTunes link], meanwhile, is U.S. $2.99 and adds the ability to print web pages as well Setting up is easy. The app will find your printers in a snap if your phone is in Wi-Fi mode, and you are running Bonjour zero configuration setup on your network. You can also elect to enter the IP addresses of your printers as well. If your printer is color, and you send color images, you'll get them in color. There are a few catches, however. To print a web page you either have to enter a URL for it in ePrint, or set a preference to bring up the last web page viewed. When you go to print notes in either app, it doesn't mean from your Notes app. ePrint can only print from the ePrint Notes app, although you can still copy and paste any text into it and print away. That's how I test-printed an email, because Apple doesn't allow any way to print an email or anything else directly. After doing a 'select all' on an email, I copied and pasted it into the ePrint Notes app, and it worked just fine.
Flickr Find: Apple homepage, 1983
Of course, we didn't have Flash, or web designers, or shiny browsers with big graphics, or the actual connections to load those graphics back in 1983 when Apple introduced the Lisa. But what if we did? That's the premise of this slick little photoshop by Dave Lawrence, imagining Apple's current homepage advertising their products of yesteryear.It's good for a chuckle -- if the blistering 1mb of RAM doesn't get you, the iPhone preorder or the "BASIC" on the menubar probably will. But wait; what's all of this about Apple Retail Locations? We've never heard of an "Apple Store," and actually won't until Steve takes a bunch of investors to the first location in 2001. We know all about Apple Authorized Resellers, though. Maybe that's what you meant?
HTC's official Fuze page shows up... kinda
If you had any lingering doubt that HTC's US, GSM version of the Touch Pro (AKA the Fuze) was headed to AT&T in the near future, you can probably take a deep breath. Thanks to an eagle-eyed tipster, we're now able to view HTC's official page for the device, although it looks like they may not be done with all the coding, as an image of the Tilt is still being used as a placeholder. There's no mention of release date, though we do learn that the device will sport AT&T's Cellular Video and Mobile Music services, and a "unique AT&T defined 5 row slide out / slide away QWERTY keyboard," which definitely means nothing at all. Hit the read link if you don't believe us, but for goodness' sake -- you should see someone about that paranoia.[Thanks, Wie]
WotLK Beta test begins to ramp up
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/World_of_Warcraft_Wrath_of_the_Lich_King_Beta_Is_Starting'; The beta test is beginning to ramp up. Tonight we have word that the beta downloader is in action and delivering data to those that have access to it (via WotLK Wiki). This is an obvious indicator that Blizzard has switched over to the beta testing phase, and that they are getting ready to send out invites.Additionally the beta page at beta.worldofwarcraft.com now shows beta information and activity. If you do get a beta key, you can use this page to sign up and gain access to the client files. It would be a good time to start keeping and eye out for a real beta invite, and let us know if you get one if you're one of the first lucky few. However at the same time, please be very careful not to fall for any beta scams.WoW Insider will keep you posted throughout the evening on this breaking news.%Gallery-5525% Hungry for more Wrath of the Lich King Beta news? WoW Insider has a slew of articles for you including a walkthrough of the new Achievement system, the new Death Knight Runeforging skill and maps of Northrend. Keep checking the site for more class analysis and insights to the changes.
In Russia, World of Warcraft page visits you!
Blizzard has released the Russian World of Warcraft webpage over at their European site. I can't read a darn thing on it, so I'm forced to rely on other's translations of it, and some good old Google Translator action on the press release. A couple interesting things. First, they'll be releasing the fully localized version of Russian WoW in a few months. The second interesting thing is that they're actually looking for some people fluent in Russian to work for them, and this is a good thing since the Russian version of the site isn't nearly as complete as other language's versions of the site. Finally, ignore the translator error given by Google: "Our list of frequently asked questions concerning the withdrawal of Russian version of World of Warcraft." There is no withdrawal, there will be a Russian WoW.The Russian version of WoW was announced back on December 10th, 2007. It's good to see that Blizzard is continuing the localization of the game. Many international users are forced to either play on the plethora of European servers or come play on the United States servers. This can be a difficult thing, in that the distance between the realm server and the player's computer is so great that very large and unruly ping times often result. This is not a good thing if you're trying to have any sort of skillful game playing.All and all a nice little present for our Russian friends.
NetFixer - capture screenshots of entire websites
NetFixer is a new webpage capturing utility from Shiny Frog software, the same crew that brought us the fantastic Delibar. In the same vein as Paparazzi and Yoink, NetFixer employs some unique features: Very small and light app, only 240kb (Universal Binary) Shot directly from your preferred browser with the awesome bookmarklet Export the shots in various formats The user can set the default size of the canvas From my brief tinkering, NetFixer is pretty brain-dead easy to use, and it creates good looking screencaps (though I admittedly haven't had much of a reason to use any similar apps in the past). NetFixer is apparently free from Shiny Frog Software's site.
insideapple.apple.com?
The promotional email for the .Mac webmail refresh that went out over the weekend might have been a bit more revealing than we originally thought. Reader Harry noticed the address Apple used to send it was a bit different than the standard 'noreply@apple.com' (and honestly, I'm signed up for so much promo stuff these days I don't pay attention to who it's from with stuff like this anymore). The email was sent from an inside.apple.com domain, and following it redirects you to an apple.com/chatterbox 'we'll be back soon!' maintenance page - not the typical 'Looking for something at Apple?' page.Some googling revealed that others have seen this /chatterbox/ link used before, especially with images that are linked in newsletters, so this might be nothing more than some internal system for site and/or email and newsletter management. The 'we'll be back soon' bit simply makes it a little more interesting, as that sounds like it could actually be something public. In all likelihood it's nothing, and you can simply move along.
Use a webpage as your desktop with WebDesktop
Here's a handy bit of freeware. WebDesktop lets you use any web page as your desktop picture. Simply enter the URL of a terrific website (like, say, this one), set the transparency and reload rate and you're all set! When in the background, the page you're monitoring acts as your desktop picture, but when in front, you can scroll, click and otherwise interact with that site as if you were using a typical browser.MacDesktop requires Mac OS 10.3.9 or higher, is free, and universal.[Via FreeMacWare]
