Apple Inc has introduced a new version of Apple TV that allows audiences to rent series such as “Glee” and “Modern Family” for 99 cents, hoping to extend the popularity of its sleek devices to the living room.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, at a presentation to reporters and investors on Wednesday, also rolled out a completely overhauled lineup of iPods and the latest version of iTunes, with a brand new logo that does away with the outdated image of a CD.

The biggest shift to iTunes is the introduction of a feature called Ping, a social networking function designed to take advantage of the popularity of websites such as Twitter and Facebook.

“It’s Facebook and Twitter meets iTunes. It’s a social network all about music,” Jobs said.

But the centerpiece of Jobs’ presentation on Wednesday was Apple TV, a device the company introduced in 2006 but which never became a blockbuster hit.

Jobs once [...] Continue Reading…

Many WordPress blog owners these days prefer to post their blog content from outside. This facilitates the site owners to post blog posts without even loging into their WordPress admin panel. WordPress supports XMLRPC which can take requests and perform specific operations i.e. ‘Add Post’, ‘Edit Post’, ‘View Recent Posts’ or ‘Save a draft’.

Lets start coding now, but before we go into any details lets ensure that our WordPress installation is allowing XMLRPC (default is turned off). Go to WordPress Admin => Settings => Writing and ensure the XML-RPC is enabled. Click save after checking the enable box. We are good and our WordPress is ready to take XML-RPC commands.

We will use IXR Library to incorporates both client and server classes, as it is designed to hide as much of the workings of XML-RPC from the user as possible. A key feature of the library is automatic [...] Continue Reading…

There are now more than 175,000 mobile apps available across the three leading smartphone platforms: iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android. With all of those apps, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find the good ones, especially for business users.

I’ve picked eight apps across a handful of categories that I consider the top mobile business apps for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android smartphones. (Note: Some of these apps are also available for Palm and Windows Mobile.)
Productivity
Evernote (iPhone/BlackBerry/Android | free/premium option)
This is the Swiss Army knife of note taking. Evernote allows you to snap a photo, take a screenshot, type in text, or speak your note to capture information on the go. And once you’ve captured it, Evernote helps you organize and find it by making all of the information in your photos or notes searchable. For example, if you take a photo of a book as a reminder that you want to [...] Continue Reading…

Webmasters who optimize their site for search engines typically care about Google and Yahoo but what about Microsoft’s Bing. Its a new search engine which is quite promising. It’s easy for businesses to get caught up in Google’s expectations for their sites, when trying to market through search. That’s certainly a wise thing to do, considering Google dominates the search market by a huge margin. Still, there are other search engines that people are using, and it is also wise to make sure your site is performing to the best of its ability in those too.

I’m obviously talking about Yahoo and Bing, but Yahoo’s share is declining, while Bing’s is gaining. Furthermore, if the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo goes through, Bing search will be talking over Yahoo anyway.

We don’t hear as much about what Bing wants out of a site for rankings, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster [...] Continue Reading…

Google Caffeine is the name given to Google’s “Next Generation” search engine, which it will use to rank and index all the pages on the wonderful world wide web. According to all indications, this is not just another one of Google’s infamous Updates, but a major “Overhaul” of its index and algorithm, the complex formula and calculations Google uses to rank all web pages, including yours.

If that doesn’t sound ominous enough, according to Matt Cutts (Google Spokesperson) one database is already showing Google Caffeine, and the full blown version will be released after the holidays. The reasoning behind this, Google doesn’t want to upset webmasters and site owners during the lucrative holiday buying season. In the past, other major Google Updates have come around this time of the year, most notably the “Florida Update” which severely affected many web sites and webmasters.

Recently, Google has been more aware and much [...] Continue Reading…