It's Saturday , 29th July 2006 and you're listening to the EuroMac Podcast

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

For the benefit of any new listeners, 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.

Apple announced Thursday that its European iTunes Music Stores have sold more than 50 million songs since first opening a year ago. Apple estimates it's sold more than 400 million songs total through iTunes since the store first went online in 2003. Apple's European iTunes operations first opened in June, 2004 with stores in the United Kingdom, France and Germany -- racking up 800,000 songs sold and download in the first week of operations. Since then, Apple has opened up iTunes Music Stores in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

www.pcwelt.de—114442

Hexus Lifestyle reports on Apple has finally unveiled a wireless version of its smooth-topped, five-button Mighty Mouse. The newcomer is available in limited quantities from the company's own UK stores at £49 inc. VAT and the Apple online store is taking orders now at the same price - with free delivery and shipping promised for five to seven days. In contrast to the current wired Mighty Mouse - and most other optical meece - Apple's Bluetooth 2.0 newcomer uses a laser rather than an LED to control tracking. Moving to laser is claimed to make the new mouse "20 times more sensitive than standard optical mice, for better tracking on even more surfaces". Irritatingly, though, Apple gives no clue as to the true tracking resolution of the new mouse in dots per inch, not even in the online specs. Apple says that the mouse connects to the latest Macs with built-in Bluetooth wireless technology and requires Mac OS X “Tiger” version 10.4.6 or later to customise buttons for one-click access to Spotlight, Dashboard and Exposé or to launch applications. What's not yet clear is whether it can also be used in a more limited way with older Macs running earlier versions of Mac OS X and external Bluetooth adaptors. Windows, though, it would appear is a complete no-no. That's likely to hack off anyone using Boot Camp to dual-boot between OS X and Windows XP on a new Intel-powered Mac. That being so, it may be possible to gauge just how significant Apple regards dual-booting simply by seeing how long it takes to offer XP drivers for the Wireless Mighty Mouse. Listen out to the end of the show to learn how you can win a brand new wireless Mighty Mouse

lifestyle.hexus.net—item.php

Apple has published an extremely brief technical support document for MacBook Pro owners who are experiencing a whining noise under the keyboard of their machines. If your MacBook Pro is affected, Apple's brief advice follows: "If your 15-inch MacBook Pro emits a high-pitched buzzing sound, please contact AppleCare for service." Thankfully my MacBook pro isn't affected!

docs.info.apple.com—article.html

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MacWorld reports that Apple has once again extended its £20 discount on .Mac membership for those buying a new Mac in the UK The company supplies a range of services to its .Mac subscribers, including image hosting, iWeb hosting, online bookmark and contacts book sharing, file hosting, free applications and BackUp integration. The usual cost of .Mac is £69. The discount was made available with new Mac purchases on May 2, and the deal was set to time out on July 17. This has now been extended, users can now benefit from the discount on their subscription from July 18 to October 23. The discount is only available to users when they buy a new Mac and .Mac must be bought and paid for at the same time.

www.macworld.co.uk—index.cfm

Stuart Miles over on Pocket Lint writes that It's like an never ending train, once again weekend web surfing was filled with rumours about its next iPod model yet to be announced. The latest is that the new iPod will also be geared toward s allowing you to read ebooks on the go. The move, if true, is most likely in response to Sony's eBook reader due out later this year and could see the computer company offering eBooks for download via its iTunes Music Store online. Engadget is reporting "that according to a source at a major publishing house, they were just ordered to archive all their manuscripts -- every single one -- and send them over to Apple's Cupertino HQ." The weblog backs up the statement with another source saying "the next iPod will have a substantial amount of screen real estate (as we'd all suspected), as well as a book reading mode that pumps up the contrast and drops into monochrome for easy reading." As the days count down to the Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on 7 August, the rumours about what new iPods Steve Jobs will pull out of his hat are heating up.

www.pocket-lint.co.uk—news.php

Ancient Macs Make Modern Art

A link now passed to me by a regular listener didier in Belgium and its from Wired news. Jason Walsh writes about - Ancient Macs Make Modern Art Apple Computer may have quietly killed its easy-to-use programming tool, HyperCard, but it has an afterlife -- in art. The near-redundant, 18-year-old technology has found a new lease on life at the cutting edge of European art. British artist Richard Bolam uses HyperCard to create generative art using ancient Mac Classics. Bolam, who lives and works in the British city of Sheffield, is gaining recognition as an artist successfully working with technology -- old technology. "I enjoy embracing the technology of old Macs," Bolam said. A recent work, Hyperscape 1, was shown at Sweden's Malmö Konsthall as part of the Electrohype festival. Hyperscape 1 is a generative art installation, which runs on eight compact Macs. One Mac runs a program Bolam wrote in HyperCard, Apple's abandoned hypermedia software. The HyperCard program determines the screen output on the other seven machines. All the screens start out black and steadily fill with semi-random shapes and images. The master Mac running HyperCard proposes certain image manipulations -- inverting areas of the screen, tracing edges or copying parts of images -- and the other machines decide whether or not to accept the changes. The result is abstract, random and dynamic -- an ever-changing montage of broken and distorted shapes spread across the eight screens.

www.wired.com—0,66397-0.html

'Switch' ad star Ellen Feiss makes French flick

I'm sure many of you will remember this... Ellen Feiss - the Mac user who rose to prominence with her unique persona when she appeared in Apple's 'Switch' ad campaign - has resurfaced as the lead actress in a French film. In one unreleased ad, Feiss talked about an Apple PowerBook: "It's really fast and it's silver... and I don't have to watch airplane movies any more", she said. She became a 'Switch' campaign mascot by virtue of her laid-back personality. Now she's landed the lead role (as Laura) in a new Martin Beilby and Loic Moreau movie called Bed and Breakfast. The movie website says of Feiss: "The 19-year-old star of Apple's 'Switch' campaign in the US and of the resulting internet phenomenon, Ellen, beyond the rebel charm which had already seduced so many fans, has, in Bed and Breakfast, shown a very singular emotion and sensibility, and revealed the full extent of her talent." The movie captures what happens to a young US couple while on holiday in France. They are trying to track down an old friend who has inherited a French chateau, only to enter a "strange and fantastic world" where nothing is as it seems, the movie website reveals. Feiss has lost nothing of her unique charm. You can listen to an interview with here about the new project here.

www.macworld.co.uk—index.cfm

Listener Emails

Had an email this week from a listener looking for some help with creating with widgets - Justin fellowes writes I really need a widget created for my website. Are the any freelancers / design companies out there that can offer a design service

Cannes Lions Young Creatives Competition

The Apple pro website have posted an article about The 53rd Cannes Lions advertising festival which took place from June 17th to 23rd, 2006. As part of the festival, young people from 42 countries pitted themselves against the clock and against each other in the Young Creatives Competition. Categories The competition was divided into three categories: Print, Cyber and Film. For each category, every participating country entered a team of two young creatives, all of whom work for top ad agencies, and all of whom came through a domestic competition for the right to represent their country in Cannes. Tools of the trade The Print teams were challenged to create an A3 ad in just 24 hours using a 20-inch iMac running Adobe CS2; the Cyber contestants were tasked with producing an interactive Flash banner; while the Film teams were given 72 hours to shoot and edit a 30-second promo, filmed on the new Nokia N93 mobile phone and edited on an iMac running Final Cut Studio.

www.canneslions.com—competitionwww.apple.com—canneslions

ScreenCastsOnline

The UK Magazine MacFormat is now on the streets and features ScreenCastsOnline this month including a number of early shows on the cover disk. . If you were thinking of becoming an ScreenCastsOnline Extra Member there's a special offer for MacFormat readers to sign up for $20 USD for 6 months instead of the usual $25 USD. Check out the special page at

www.macformat.co.ukwww.screencastsonline.com—macformat.

And don't forget the free competition for the next two weeks to win a new EyeTV for DTT device simply by emailing a special address at ScreenCastsOnline - checkout the details in this weeks show

www.elgato.com—index.php

For any new subscribers to ScreenCastsOnline Extra! during the month of August, you'll be entered into a free prize draw for a new Wireless Mighty Mouse - again details on the ScreenCastsOnline website.

www.screencastsonline.com

So that's it for this week, If you've got any interesting news on the mac in Europe or you want to promote any events on 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.