It's Friday, 5th May 2006 and you're listening to the EuroMac Podcast

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Hi, This is Don McAllister and welcome to another edition of the EuroMac podcast

The EuroMac Podcast is a free weekly audio podcast which covers news, technology and features connected with Apple and the mac from a European perspective.

Something different this week in that I've escaped out of the EuroMac podcast studio and done the first EuroMac interview. I met up with Katie Lips who you may remember was instrumental in setting up the CocoaDevHouse event in Amsterdam a few weeks ago. Katie was visiting my home town of Liverpool to setup an experimental art exhibition based on macs which actually used some of the code developed during the cocoadevhouse event. We'll hear all about the event and the experiment from Katie a little later in the podcast.

First on with the news

MacBook Pro 17"

Following on from my displeasure at Apple last week in the delays in delivering my MacBook Pro I think I owe them an apology as I forgot to mention that I've ordered a non standard configuration which probably accounts for the extended delivery time on the order. Sorry Apple! I've pre-ordered the Parallels Windows Virtualisation software and I hope to be doing some special MacBook Pro based screencasts over on ScreenCastsOnline in the next few weeks so swing by the site and subscribe to ScreenCastsOnline if you want to see the MacBookPro and Windows in action.

www.screencastsonline.com

Code Jam

MacWorld UK reports that Google has launched a programming competition - Code Jam - to find Europe's brightest and best engineers. Engineers must first select their own programming language and then solve computer coding challenges set by Google. The winners share a €30,000 (£20,661) prize fund. Registration ends at 8am on May 23rd and anyone in Europe can take part. On May 30, contestants will compete online to qualify for 500 spots in the first round. A second online round will reduce the pool to 200, who'll compete for the 50 final positions. The 50 finalists will be flown for an all-expenses-paid weekend to the championship round on June 29 in Dublin, Ireland. As usual, links for all the EuroMac news items are on the podcast and in the detailed shownotes on the EuroMac website

CodeJam www.euromacpodcast.com

Germany 2006 World Cup Guide

Something for any soccer fans listening in that Coolgorilla have launced a Germany 2006 World Cup Guide for your iPod featuring: * Details of every player from every team * A full break down of the schedule * Every score from every game from every World Cup ever! * Country details * Stadium details * Manager Profiles This game will transform your iPod into an interactive football encyclopedia. It unleashes the power of your iPod by using a clever system of menus so that all the information you want is only a few clicks away. Astound your friends with your knowledge of the beautiful game. Best thing of all is it's free!

CoolGorilla

Business Software Alliancr e

UK workers are being offered a reward of £20,000 (E28,800, $35,600) for blowing the whistle on employers who use pirated computer software, which accounts for over a quarter of all software used in British businesses. Global industry group, the Business Software Alliance, the members of which include US computing giants such as Microsoft, HP, Cisco and Apple as well as European software developers such as Germany’s SAP, has decided to double its existing £10,000 bounty for anyone who reports illegal corporate software use before the end of June.

WhistleBlowing

New Apple Ads

The big Apple news this week, well at least if you're in the US is that Apple have launched their "Get a Mac" campaign with the first mac related TV ads for a while (at least if you disregard the recent Intel Ads). The new campaign replaces the infamous "switch" campaign and is the first to directly compare PCs with Macs. Interesting there's no mention of Windows, just PCs! No sign of the Ads or even the "Get a Mac" campaign over here in Europe though. The UK web site still has the Switch campaign pages on the web site. You can download or stream all of the ads from the US website so at least we can see whats happening. My initial impressions are that the Ads are great but I'm still not convinced that they hit the spot when trying to convert potential switchers. Apple tend to have a habit of dissing PC users by making them appear uncool or simply stupid and I'm not sure that that's the right way to go. But the ads are funny and will raise the profile of Apple until they bite the bullet and actually show PC users the actual benefits of using a mac. There's a forum thread about the ads over on the Euromac and ScreenCastsOnline forums where one of the regular contiributors (thomas) made the following comment: "The Europeans on the forums will know what I’m talking about when I say that most people here don’t even have an idea what Mac OSX looks like. In the area where I live there is not a single store offering Apple products (apart from iPods), giving people no opportunity at all to actually look at these computers. " I'd love to see some ads that show OSX and the iLife suite and show people just how easy it is to use a mac. I can only hope that the "Get a mac" ads are just the start of a major Apple offensive!

Apple - Get a Mac

Interview

So onto the interview I mentioned at the beginning of the show. I met up with Katie Lips at Liverpools Film, Art and Creative Technology Center or FACT where she was involved in setting up an experimental art project. I first asked her to tell me about the recent CocoaDevHouse event over in Amsterdam.

FACT CocoaDevHouse - The CocoaDevHouse wiki password is: c... www.attentionplease.co.uk

Thanks Katie, ther'll be another snippet from Katie in the upcomming events section.

Promo - Podcaster Confessions

www.podcasterconfessions.com

The BBC's film-footage licensing arm, BBC Motion Gallery, has released a Dashboard widget for Mac OS X that lets users search its online film archives without a browser. BBC Motion Gallery says the release underlines its commitment to providing creatives with fast, simple access to its extensive catalogue of digital assets. The widget is available now for download. The catalogue includes 300,000 hours of video across a huge range of topics, including natural history, news, art, music and more.

BBC Motion Gallery - Home Page

Ted Stringer Lecture

iPods Crash hospital PCs

That's all for this week. I hope you enjoyed this weeks show and thanks again to Katie for the interview. I think I'll try and do a few more so if you've got any interesting developments your working on or launching any new products and would like to be interviewed for the Euromac podcast, just drop me a line at euromacpodcast@googlemail.com

Have a great weekend and I'll see you next week for another edition of the EuroMac Podcast.