Archive for July 31st, 2008

At Apple's iTunes online store, Britney Spears and Shakespeare are separated by just a few clicks. While an episode of "Desperate Housewives" will cost $1.99, a series of lectures by renowned University of California-Berkeley philosophy professor Hubert Dreyfus is absolutely free. A single song by pop diva Rihanna is 99 cents. The price of a course on modern theoretical physics by Stanford University quantum mechanics professor Leonard Susskind? Free!!!.

Apple calls it iTunes U, an unsung but popular feature of iTunes. Audio and video downloads of classroom lectures are available to anyone who wants to listen to them through a computer or an iPod. Though the program has existed on a smaller scale for a few years, it now offers more than 50,000 audio and video tracks - course lectures, language lessons, speeches - from scores of universities and colleges. Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Yale are there. Beginning in the fall, both UC-Berkeley and Stanford are planning expansions to their respective digital lecture programs.

Go to iTunes U in the iTunes Store.

Just a week after the first iPhone 2.1 beta seed, Apple has released another 2.1 firmware release to developers. The new version appears to include several bug fixes.

"This is the second beta of the iPhone SDK targeting iPhone OS 2.1, including bug fixes to iPhone OS as well as an early implementation of the Apple Push Notification Service API. This API is not yet integrated with a live push server."

Related posts:

• Firmware 2.1
• Copy/Paste might appear in firmware 2.1
• Firmware 2.1b - no problem for Pwnage

No direct download link yet. Just run iTunes and hit updates. The update includes "fixes to improve stability and performance".

Use iTunes 7.7 to sync music, video, and more with iPhone 3G, and download applications from the iTunes Store exclusively designed for iPhone and iPod touch with software version 2.0 or later. Also use the new Remote application for iPhone or iPod touch to control iTunes playback from anywhere in your home — a free download from the App Store.

iTunes 7.7.1 includes fixes to improve stability and performance.