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Filed under: Odds and ends, Developer, iPhone, App Store

White House releases official app for free

The White House (as in, the home of the American President Barack Obama) has introduced a brand new iPhone app, according to White House blogger Dave Cole. The app is a one-stop shop for everything there is to know about what the president's up to, including blog posts, a newsroom, photos, videos, and even live feeds from various events, including speeches and even press room briefings. It's actually pretty darn impressive -- obviously you're only going to get official White House news, but if you want uncut video of the goings on over there, you've got it.

The app is a free download [iTunes link], and in my short hands-on with it, it worked very well -- the updates come often, the video is crisp and clean, and while I didn't get to view any of the live feeds, I presume they'll work just fine over a solid 3G or Wi-Fi connection. If you want direct access to official White House news, this app is perfect.

[via Engadget]

Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

Regator provides news aggregation for the more blog-minded

Catching up on the happenings around the blogosphere is a difficult task. Luckily, I happened to stumble upon John Burke's Download Squad piece on the release of Regator [iTunes link].

So, if you'd like to get caught up on the latest news, insights and commentary on Rod Blagojevich around the blogosphere (now that's a tongue twister), Regator could be of assistance.

Regator's user-interface is similar to USA Today's iPhone app [iTunes link]. A horizontal menu displays a number of categories -- such as sports, lifestyle, and entertainment -- that are touch-scrollable. Tapping on a category displays its subcategories. For instance, NBA news would fall under the basketball branch of the sports tree. While a breadcrumb trail displays your viewing hierarchy, the browsing menu disappears as you scroll down; this was my only annoyance with the app, although it's a relatively minor one.

Regator's stand-out feature is what it calls "trends." Like a tag cloud on a blog, in which bigger clouds are usually associated with more hot topics or issues, trends provides a listing of the latest hot topics around the blogosphere.

For instance, a look at sports trends shows Tiger Woods at the top of the list -- which is no surprise given Y.E. Yang's surprising victory over him this past weekend. And Brett Favre's retiring-unretiring-retiring-unretiring-retiring-unretiring puts him near the top of the trends list as well.

Regator is available as a free download at the iTunes app store. Domo arigato, Regator!

Filed under: Multimedia, Other Events, Apple

Apple posts "Notebook" keynote event video

If you've been reading TUAW today, you already know all of the exciting news from today's event. However, some people would rather hear it straight from Steve's mouth instead of reading the "spoilers," so here's your chance. Apple just posted the keynote video for the Apple Special Event.

You can watch the keynote here, or wait for Apple to update the Keynotes podcast [iTunes Link] soon with the new video. It's 53 minutes long, so be sure to lock the door and put up the "Do Not Disturb" sign for the full hour.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Use Pingie to get Macworld alerts from TUAW on your mobile

pingie for tuaw macworld 2008Next week is going to be a busy one for the Mac blogosphere and TUAW is no exception. Sure, you can watch our Twitter feed for goings-on (we'll be reporting our location regularly), or subscribe to our Macworld 2008 tag feed, but what about keeping tabs while you jog? Enter Pingie. As Nik explains over on Download Squad, Pingie takes RSS feeds and sends SMS messages whenever something new pops up.

You can put in pretty much any feed you like, but Dan over at UNEASYsilence was nice enough to create a hot little landing page for TUAW's Macworld feed. Just put your email and phone number in, and you're ready to get updates as we publish them. Please be aware that you're gonna want the unlimited text messaging from whatever carrier you're with-- we don't want iJustine-style bills going to anyone.

To unsubscribe from the Pinged feed you can text "Ping Stop" to 95495. Let the pinging begin!

Filed under: Software, Internet

An exhaustive exploration of Netnewswire

Blogger Shawn Blanc has written an exhaustively thorough review of NewNewsWire (We interviewed Brent Simmons, author of NetNewsWire, over the summer). He begins with a description of how he first became aware of the application and goes on to describe a history of the UI, his "favorite things" about NNW and concludes with an exploration of the paid version.

Note that Shawn intends to give other popular applications, like Coda, SuperDuper! and Transmit, the same treatment. We can't wait.

Filed under: TUAW Business

iPhone-Free TUAW feed

Inspired by Engadget and by popular request, here's an iPhone-free feed of TUAW posts courtesy of Yahoo Pipes for all of you who are sick to death about all things iPhone. To subscribe, click the Subscribe button at the top left (just under "Edit Source") and select from Get as RSS, My Yahoo, Add to Google, Sub Bloglines, Royo, Netvibes, Newsgator, My AOL or Get results by Email or Phone.

Of course, you'll be missing out on all the excitement but sometimes it's nice to lead a simpler, less-complicated life. Enjoy the feed.

Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Beta Beat

Beta Beat: NetNewsWire 3.0 sneak peek


Brent Simmons has released the first public 'sneak peek' (note: it isn't even a beta) of NetNewsWire 3.0, a much-anticipated new version of his immensely popular RSS client which NewsGator acquired in 2005. Brent has made a brief announcement on his blog, reminding everyone that there's still a lot to do, but he also mentions he'll be writing more in-depth about what has changed in the coming days.

Adventurous users - remember: this isn't even a beta - can check out the change notes for this public sneak peek, and head over to the download page to give it a go. For a tasty primer, a lot is new: Spotlight searching, a much-requested new Combined View, a Full Screen mode, a tab bar on the right with page thumbnails (which can be condensed to mere text titles), the ability to chose a folder when subscribing (a lá Safari bookmarking) and much, much more. As a personal side note, it's great to see even that FeedLight style Brent found recently to make its way onto the built-in styles list.

A few words of caution from a blogger who's been testing this version for around a month (hint - that's me): back up your existing NNW support folder if testing software like this makes you queasy. NetNewsWire 3 makes significant changes to the way your data is stored, and you won't be able to run version 2.x without its old support folder after firing up v3. Surfing to ~/Library/Application Support, selecting the NetNewsWire folder and pressing cmd + d is a simple enough backup.

With that said, go enjoy a sneak peek of NetNewsWire 3.

Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Productivity, Internet Tools

Screencast of endo's ability to handle event feeds


The endo blog today linked a well-produced screencast (.MOV link) of endo's ability to handle event feeds, an RSS microformat. The screencast walks through endo's feed discovery, pin-pointing a specific event feed from a blog, and then endo's ability to add these events to iCal, complete with a choice of which calendar receives the event.

This is a really slick and powerful feature that I haven't seen in other newsreaders, not even the mammoth NetNewsWire. Kudos to Adriaan (endo and ecto's developer) for being on the cutting edge.

Tip of the Day

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