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HBO joins PlayStation Network video service
Time Warner's premium cable channel is coming to the PS3 and PSP later today. Sony has just announced that programming from HBO will be made available via the PlayStation Network video delivery service in North America. The initial selection includes the both the first two seasons of True Blood (Season 2 debuts on DVD today, as well). In addition, select seasons of Big Love, Entourage, Eastbound and Down, The Sopranos, Sex and the City, The Wire, Rome, Da Ali G Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Flight of the Conchords will also be available, with "more titles and additional seasons to be added each week." Pricing information wasn't made available in the press release, but we believe it will be similar to the content currently available on iTunes: $2.99 per episode. HBO enthusiasts will definitely want to stay tuned for tonight's PSN Tuesday update.
Entourage Edge review
Is it an Android tablet? An e-reader? Just a sweet gadget with two screens? Truth is the Entourage Edge is a little bit of everything, and that's exactly why we've been so intrigued with the "dualbook" since we fondled it at CES. Finally ready to make its shipping debut, the $499 dual screen device is aimed at students, but really it's for anyone interested in a combination 9.7-inch E Ink reading / note-taking experience and a 10.1-inch Android web tablet. It's sounded very cool to us for quite a while, but there's always a difference between hype and reality. Does the Edge live up to its promise or attempt to do too much? The only place to find out is after the break in our full review. %Gallery-88032%
Entourage Edge suffers month's delay, minor price bump
It was kind of inevitable with all these e-readers competing for attention at CES that some of the manufacturers would overestimate their capabilities and make promises they could not fulfill. One early candidate for the newly inaugurated promise breakers' club is the dual-screen Entourage Edge, whose February delivery date and $490 price have both been elevated, albeit slightly, to their new values of March and $499. The delay is clearly the most significant change, though we should note the careful wording, which states that "new orders will ship March 2010" and thereby leaves a glimmer of hope for early pre-orderers. The rest of us shouldn't be too downhearted either, it's a moderate time to wait, and we can just fantasize that the company's busy filing away at that splendiferous bezel. Update: Entourage have gotten in touch to let us know the extra $9 on the price is for the new (as of February 1) inclusion of the Documents To Go software, and pre-orders placed before January 12 will be shipped this month. Candidacy for promise breakers' club is denied. Better luck next time.
Entourage Edge gets super official at CES, set to ship next month for $490
It's nothing different than what we heard back in December, but for those paranoid about delays -- take it easy. Entourage Systems has today officially launched the planet's first "Dualbook," the Edge. Easily one of the most bizarre looking e-readers to hit the market, the dual-screen, WiFi-enabled device utilizes a 9.7-inch e-ink display and a 10.1-inch LCD screen. You'll also get a virtual keyboard, software that allows both screens to work together and access to over 200,000 trade books including e-textbooks from McGraw Hill, John Wiley & Sons and content frequently adopted by professors for course use from Oxford University Press. It'll be ready for hard hitters and book worms next month for $490, and you can dig into the full details just past the break. %Gallery-81510%
Ask TUAW: recovering deleted files, encrypted backups, cheap scanning, and more
Welcome back to a new year of Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about cheap scanners, encrypting backups, recovering deleted files, troubleshooting new hardware, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.
Entourage Edge dual-screen Android e-reader given lusty hands-on (video)
It's one thing to see the Entourage Edge in a controlled demonstration by a company representative, something else entirely in the capable hands on CNET's Ina Fried. Ina got down with a prototype of the Marvell-powered, dual-display, 9.7-inch E Ink and 10-inch LCD hybrid with built-in WiFi. The video walkthrough after the break shows that Android-powered resistive touchscreen browsing the web and launching other apps from the familiar Android desktop. The E Ink display lets you read EPUB and PDF files, as you'd expect, in addition to taking notes and manipulating text with the help of an included stylus. You can also move content between the displays and record audio via a pair of mics (one to record the lecture, one to cancel the noise). Unfortunately, Fried says that the device is still buggy and "definitely has the look and feel of a first-generation product." Sounds like the company has its work cut out in order to launch as planned in February as a textbook / notebook replacement for "typical highschool students" with $490 to burn. Let's hope they have more luck with that than Amazon did in its early Princeton pilot. Right. [Thanks, Henry]
Entourage Edge e-reader shows off its softer-ware side on video
Can't get enough of the Entourage Edge? We feel you. It's easily a sight for sore eyes in the pool of me-too e-readers, and while we've learned that it has plenty of power under the hood to handle quite a few desirable tasks, we've yet to really see the software do its thing in any real capacity. Until now, of course. The video posted up after the break is as good a look of the inner workings as we've seen, and the company has contacted us directly to affirm that the Feburary 2010 ship date is still on track. To be honest, we're really digging what we're seeing on screen, but a premedidated demonstration and real-world usability are certainly horses of different hues. Here's hoping we get a tick to play with a production unit ourselves at CES, but till then, you know where to head.
Marvell's Armada chip bringing 'HD-quality video, 3D graphics support' to Entourage Edge
We already knew that a potent Marvell chip was under the hood of Spring Design's Alex, but at long last the mystery surrounding the powerhouse within Entourage's Edge is no more. The Armada PXA168 processor will be responsible for steering the world's first "Dualbook" through the stormy seas that'll be created once crazed consumers get ahold of this thing, and while we've no idea if the software will actually support this laundry list of capabilities, the chip should have no issue with "full-featured web browsing, multi-format video and image processing." More specifically, we're informed that "HD-quality video and 3D graphics" will be supported, which could obviously lead to some pretty interesting applications (you know, like actual web surfing on an e-reader). Hop on past the break for a brief look at an early generation model as well as a functioning version of what should hopefully hit shelves in early 2010.
Dual-screen enTourage eDGe ebook reader gets a little hands-on time
We're still reserving our doubts about the viability of the enTourage eDGe -- after all, at $490 you can buy yourself a respectable netbook and a halfway decent ereader for the appropriate occasion -- but we won't say that we're not interested. Just under a month after it hit the scene, the dual-screen device has landed (in prototype form) over at Gearlog, and while some of the features weren't functional, the physical build shouldn't change much when it goes final. At first glance, the whole thing just looks a bit dated, but then again, we've still got the ultra-fresh Nook on the brain. Hit the read link to have a look yourself, won't you?
Entourage eDGe is the red-headed stepchild of two oversaturated markets
The once-nonexistent intersection of netbooks and e-readers seems to be populating quite hastily these days, first with this morning's questionable Spring Design Alex and now with the entourage eDGe. On the left side of this dual-screen, dual-function hybrid, where ePub and PDF files are said to open by default, we've got a 9.7-inch e-paper display with 16 shades of gray. On the right, a 10.1-inch, 1024 x 600 resolution screen with Android. Both sides are stylus-centric touchscreen -- scribbling and note-taking is encouraged here -- and other amenities include 3GB memory, 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth, SD slot, two USB ports, 3.5mm headphone jack, a Li-ion battery for up to six hours, and support for EVDO / HSDPA via external modem. No word on what processor's actually under the hood, but we won't get our hopes up for anything more than very casual browsing. The site just launched with pre-orders being accepted to the tune of $490, or $530 if you're wanting any color other than midnight blue, and will ship out February 2010. We also happened to stumble upon a PDF presentation from the company dated back to August 2009, if you feel so inclined to take a trip down memory lane. Read - Entourage eDGe product page Read - Aug. 2009 presentation [Warning: PDF file]
Entelligence: Will Snow Leopard's Exchange support earn Apple a new entourage?
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. Apple, Microsoft and the Mac have an interesting history: Microsoft was among the first developers for Macintosh, yet not long after, Apple would sue Microsoft for copying the look and feel of Mac OS in Windows. By the late 90s, Microsoft made a huge splash at Macworld with an announced 150 million dollar investment in Apple and promises of further development of Office and Internet Explorer for Macintosh. Office in particular was a major issue as it was a key requirement for business users. Early on, Office applications for Mac were far more advanced than their Windows counterparts. Excel was actually introduced for Mac users before Windows users could get their hands on it. But by the mid 90s, all that changed, the Mac versions of Office lagged behind Windows in terms of features and performance. It took forever to get things such as a common set of file formats, so that users of Office on the two different platforms could exchange documents with ease (it seems like something we take for granted but having managed and supported PC and Mac users in mixed shops, it was a nightmare to deal with). The latest version of Office for Mac, Office 2008 showed that Microsoft could produce top quality Macintosh software. I personally, think Office 2008 for Mac is the best version of the software that Microsoft has ever done (far better than Office 2007 for Windows, as it preserved the core part of the Mac UI while co-existing nicely with the ribbon UI). Obviously, however, a situation with such broad inconsistency is untenable.
Microsoft Mac Business Unit announces details of next version of Office for Mac
With Microsoft Office for Mac still owning a hefty portion of the Mac software market, it's always news when the Mac Business Unit decides to spill the beans on their product plans for the future.TUAW's Michael Rose was on the press call this morning and noted the headlines, with details in the press release in the 2nd half of the post: Next month, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac will be trimmed down to 2 editions: Home/Student and Business Edition. The new SKUs for Business Edition 2008 will be available next month. This makes more sense than the 3 editions currently available. The Office 2008 Business Edition includes Entourage Web Services Edition & Microsoft Document Connection Entourage Web Services Edition ships today (August 13, 2009) Office 2008 Business Edition has extra templates, clip art and bundled Lynda.com training lessons Upgrade costs for 2008 Business Edition $240, full licenses $340; Entourage Web Services update will be free for existing Office 2008 users One More Thing: The next Mac Office version will be ready by holiday season 2010, and includes a 'brand new application' -- Microsoft Outlook for Mac (!) Outlook for Mac will be a Cocoa app, will sync tasks and notes, and has a new database supporting Spotlight searches; IRM for confidential data controls. There was no announcement from Microsoft on any Office for iPhone development to date Visual Basic returns in Office 2010 See the continuation of this post for the full press release from the Mac BU.
Screen Grabs: Jawbone gets chewed out by Entourage's Johnny Drama
Screen Grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today's movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dt com. The best show to ever land on HBO has certainly seen its fair share of hot technology, from last week's Ferrari-fest (with a notable 'holla' to Porsche) to this week's love affair with Aliph's Jawbone. As you can see in the Screen Grab above, Johnny Drama couldn't help but sport the all-black Bluetooth earpiece to match his ebony jacket and equally dark motorcar whilst jabbering to Turtle. Nah, it's not the Jawbone Prime, but we wouldn't put it past Sloan to tease E (again) over one here in the not-too-distant future. Now, if only Marky Mark could convince the suits at Time Warner to allocate an hour per episode to this masterpiece, we'd really be in heaven...[Thanks, SmoothMarx]
HBO, Cinemax coming to Comcast's On Demand Online
Following Starz, HBO has announced plans to provide programming on Comcast's On Demand Online trial. Of course, this move shouldn't surprise anyone given previous hints HBO was looking for ways to brings its video online or previous trials it has participated in. Just like Starz, users can expect a mix of television shows and movies, basically reflecting the current on demand lineup, including series like True Blood and Entourage, further detailed in the press release after the break. Also like Starz, following the launch, HD streaming is expected -- clearly premium channel subscribers have the most reasons to be interested in being included in the 5,000 customer nationwide trial Comcast is launching in the coming weeks, but what about the basic cable only folks?
Kerio MailServer 6.7
Yesterday, amidst the SlingMobile débâcle and an OS update, Kerio Technologies released Kerio Mail MailServer 6.7. The mail and collaboration server, often used as a replacement for Exchange, has added several new features, including a few geared toward Mac users. The Kerio Global Address List (GAL) is a new feature that provides a simple way to get address and contact info from clients like Outlook or Entourage. It syncs and authenticates with both Microsoft Active Directory and Apple Open Directory, as well as Kerio's own user directory. In any company, people join and leave the group, and users are often required to manually update their address books to add and remove entries. With GAL, it's a single directory in a single place, and changes are transparent for users. It supports Entourage, works with the iPhone and functions offline. Kerio MailServer 6.7 also comes with an auto-configuration script for Entourage 2008, downloadable within the Kerio client, providing pre-configured account setup. There's support for private events in iCal, allowing users to maintain personal schedules without requiring a separate calendar application. AddressBook gets some additional love with support for synchronizing groups (which become Categories in Entourage). Kerio has had good support for iPhone users for a while now. For non-iPhone mobile users, there's new support for viewing HTML emails on Nokia devices, as well as DataViz RoadSync compatibility. The MailServer itself is now a certified VMWare appliance, and promotes compatibility with two new Linux distributions: Ubuntu 8 and Debian 5. CentOS is the preferred platform for running on VMWare. IT admins and users alike will appreciate the dramatically improved anti-spam engine, which has been optimized for multi-CPU use, parallel processing of email messages for large queues, improved heuristics and 13 layers of spam protection. In addition to some of the previously available migration tools provided by Kerio, a new IMAP migration tool relieves what is undoubtedly one of the biggest headaches in switching mail servers: keeping your old mail. It's a cross-platform utility which moves messages, folders, accounts and domains from the old system to Kerio MailServer. The IMAP migration tool has been fully tested with OS X. Kerio's pricing has remained the same with this release. Starting at $499 for 10 users, there's a range of options available for different configurations and add-ons, as well as subscription pricing. See Kerio's pricing page for more details.
Microsoft releases Office 2008 update to fix Entourage issue
How long is two weeks? If you're vacationing someplace warm and sunny, it might seem to pass in a flash; if you're in bed with the flu, it probably seems like a lifetime. For Office 2008 users who got bit by a bug in the recent 12.1.3 update, chances are the latter assessment is more on target. Those who ran the 12.1.3 update and met a particular set of criteria (Entourage users connected to Exchange + a secondary POP or IMAP account for personal email) found themselves unable to send calendar invitations or reply to meeting requests. The most straightforward fix was a rollback to the 12.1.2 version; otherwise, using a webmail client or Outlook was the best way to manage calendars. Not fun.Two weeks, though, is what it took for the Mac Business Unit to get a tested patch out the door that resolves this problem. Today, Product Manager Andy Ruff announced on the Mactopia support forum that Office 2008 12.1.4 is now available for download (16 MB, requires 12.1.3 installed), billed as follows:This update fixes a calendar issue in versions of Microsoft Entourage that were updated with the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.3 Update. The issue prevents Exchange accounts in Entourage from sending meeting invitations and responses. This issue can occur when an Entourage identity is configured with more than one mail account. We strongly recommend that all Entourage users who installed Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.3 Update install this update.While this particular fortnight may have been difficult for Entourage users, I will say that this is definitely the fastest response to an Office bug that I have ever seen from the Mac BU; in terms of the development cycle on a suite as large as Office 2008, it's an eyeblink. Kudos to the MBU for its quick action; now, the next prudent PR step is a little bit of transparency about why this bug -- which should have been fairly obvious to anyone who tested with both Exchange and POP accounts configured in the same identity -- managed to make it through to the release.Update: Wow, talk about your rapid response... Andy has posted an explanation of the issue and the testing circumstances at the Mac Mojo blog. The missing piece of the puzzle, apparently, was account creation order: if the Exchange account was added to Entourage after the POP or IMAP setup, the problem got triggered -- a condition that never made it onto the testing radar. Points for transparency: awarded.
Mac Automation: automating Microsoft Word 2008
When Microsoft released Office 2008 for Mac, they did something that I must applaud -- they joined the ranks of Mac developers creating Automator-able applications. When you do a search in Automator for "Microsoft," it will reveal all of the Automator actions that ship with Microsoft Office 2008. There is lots of great stuff included, so we'll be covering some of it in this four part Mac Automation series. I will take you through how to automate each of the Microsoft Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage.First off, let's take a look at what you can automate in Word 2008. Doing a search for "Word" in Automator will display the available actions for Microsoft Word. As you can see, there are plenty of actions that you can automate. For this how-to, we'll focus on a workflow that does the following: Creates a new document Sets document properties Gathers text from the clipboard Places a watermark in the document Saves the document Prints the document Continue reading to learn how to create this workflow.
Entourage Email Archiver, Emailchemy updated for Entourage 2008
Archiving your Entourage mail is a chore that varies in ease and effectiveness, depending on how much time and tweaking energy you're willing to put into it. You can drag messages to Finder folders to export them, or pull out entire folders as MBOX files; you can also export folder sets to Entourage's proprietary idiosyncratic RGE format... neither particularly appealing. You can streamline this process with Paul Berkowitz' multifaceted Import/Export Entourage script, but it's still a pain.For an easy, one-step archiving option in Entourage, your best bet is Entourage Email Archiver X (EEAX), just updated to version 4 -- now Leopard and Entourage 2008-only, with v3.6.1 still available for Tiger/2004 users. Along with the companion Entourage Email Optimizer product that Scott mentioned last week, EEAX can streamline your archiving to six different target formats. You get Spotlight-searchable archives, a FileMaker template for database storage, and .eml native-format messages in case you need to bring things back to the mothership. A single-user license of EEAX is $30, and upgrades to v4 for existing users are $10.If you've got scores, hundreds or thousands of mail accounts to archive, or you're converting from one mail format to another (say, from Outlook Express to Entourage), that's a job for an industrial-strength email exporting and conversion tool. You might want to check out Emailchemy, which has a pretty good track record; it's the only tool I know that can go directly from Outlook 2003 PST files to Entourage RGE archives. The latest version supports Entourage 2008 and includes a Google Apps migration tool as well. Emailchemy is $28 for a single-user license.
Entourage Exchange Accounts Optimizer 1.0
Just the other day a co-worker of mine wondered if there was a way to have Entourage (she's using 2008) automatically archive messages like Outlook does (we run Exchange on the job, which stores all your messages on the server; you run the risk of going over your quota if you don't archive things to a local mail store from time to time). I had to report that Entourage does not automatically archive (though it really should), and sadly I knew of no other automatic solution for her.I now have a much better answer for her: Entourage Exchange Accounts Optimizer 1.0. It gives Entourage (2004 or 2008) the auto-archiving features that should be built in. You launch EEAO and tell it how old messages should be before they are archived, where to archive said messages to, and if you want it to run on a schedule. That's it.Entourage Exchange Accounts Optimizer costs $10, though a free demo is available.
What's the deal with Entourage 2008 and Blackberry sync?
If you've got a Blackberry that you plan to sync with Entourage 2008 (other than via Exchange and a Blackberry Enterprise Server, which could give two figs for your client application -- although as a commenter points out, BES still doesn't fully support sent mail or read/unread sync from Entourage), you might run into some difficulty. No, you'll be fine. Well, now we're not sure. What's all this fuss about? Let's start with this post from MacWindows, which raises the alarm: Microsoft dropped direct BlackBerry syncing in Entourage 2008, the headline reads. Uh-oh, whatever shall we do? The article reports that the plug-in that enabled direct synchronization of Entourage to Blackberries will not be supported in 2008 by Microsoft or Missing Sync, and all synchronization must take place via Apple's Sync Services framework.Gosh, that's scary news, except that it's complete hogwash, says Mac pundit/gadfly John Welch. While Entourage 2004 did support Palm synchronization via a HotSync plugin that's now absent in 2008, the Blackberry sync process was always handled by Entourage's interface to Sync Services, the same underlying technology that connected Entourage to Address Book and iCal. Did MacWindows talk to someone at Mark/Space who mixed up the two sync technologies, or was the confusion on the reporting end? Welch is pretty sure where the problem lies.All that said, it should be safe to sync Entourage with your Sync Services clients, right? Not so fast, say the mavens at the Entourage Help Blog. Since Entourage 2008 shipped, there have been plenty of reports of issues with Sync Services, including some catastrophic cases of data loss. The recommendation of the experts is to leave Sync Services off for now until Microsoft can address some of these problems. Once that's taken care of, both Mark/Space and PocketMac say that Entourage 2008 should be supportable for calendar and contact sync. What a relief.
