Posts tagged Subscriptions at The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Posts with tag Subscriptions

Ringtone Subscriptions in iTunes

Posted Mar 24th 2008 2:00PM by Erica Sadun
Filed under: iTS, iPhone

Here's a clever concept that I would never have dreamed up myself in a million years: iTunes ringtone podcasts! The idea is this: you subscribe to podcast that delivers ringtones to iTunes and allows you to sync them directly to your iPhone. I gave it a try, downloading one "episode" and sure enough it was immediately available for iPhone syncing. There aren't a lot of ringtones at this point -- just variations on the teen/mosquito high-frequency buzz -- but as a proof of concept, it's very neat indeed. Hopefully others will pick up this idea and run with it. I'm not a big ringtone aficionado personally but I know a lot of people will love this -- especially for well chosen ringtones sampled from real life.

Thanks, Klaus.

How the Writer's Strike could cost iTunes subscribers

Posted Jan 14th 2008 6:00PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Video, iTunes, Apple

Macworld (the magazine, not the party that many of us are missing out on this week) has an interesting note up about how the writer's strike is going to be bad news for iTunes subscribers, and it's not what you think. Sure, the whole strike is supposedly about television writers getting paid for their work from online sales (which means that if the writers win, networks will likely claim they have to charge more for sales on iTunes and other digital outlets), but there's another negative: no writers means shorter seasons, which means iTunes subscriptions aren't worth as much. Desperate Housewives and Prison Break had both of their seasons cut short, and that means that anyone who bought either of those seasons isn't getting as much as they expected for their money.

As MW says, the closest thing they've heard to an answer from Apple on this is an example of The Daily Show and Colbert Report subscriptions-- subscribers of those shows were told that their subscriptions would resume when the shows did, so people who have subscribed to Desperate Housewives may just expect to have part of the next season paid for already as well (or may get refunds of iTunes credit for other shows that are available).

And it'll be interesting to see what effect this has on the keynote at Macworld tomorrow-- will Apple promote television shows that are headed off the air for a while? Or maybe the rumored movie rentals will draw attention away from iTunes TV subscriptions anyway.

TUAW Automator App: Export NetNewsWire feeds

Posted Jun 21st 2007 2:30PM by David Chartier
Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Productivity, Internet Tools

Not many people are familiar with how flexible and shareable your NetNewsWire / NewsGator subscriptions are, so I thought it was time to elaborate a little and play with Automator again.

First on our sharing list: the ability to embed an automatically updating list of your NetNewsWire / NewsGator subscriptions into your website or blog. To enable this, simply sign into your NewsGator account (if you're using NetNewsWire 2.1.x or 3.x I believe you automatically get at least a 1-year NewsGator subscription) and go to Settings > Edit Locations. Assuming you have syncing with NewsGator enabled, you should see at least one location related to your NetNewsWire feeds which should have a 'Blogroll' option listed. Clicking on that will give you all the options you need to embed a small snippet of code in your site to create a list of the subscriptions you want to share publicly.

There is another way to share your NetNewsWire subscriptions in a handy-dandy file format, easy for friends, family and visitors to download and import into just about any newsreader they use, including NetNewsWire, Google Reader and even Vienna (this is technically referred to as an OPML file, with the extension .OPML). NetNewsWire offers a File > Export Subscriptions command, but there are a few options involved and this isn't very automation-friendly. If you want to make your subscriptions available to, for example, website visitors or simply back them up on a regular basis, I put together two very basic, two-step Automator apps (packaged as zip files) that can work fine on their own or easily be incorporated into larger workflows.

Continue reading TUAW Automator App: Export NetNewsWire feeds

NNW booted from my Dock, long live endo!

Posted Mar 8th 2006 2:00PM by David Chartier
Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Internet Tools

Scott posted on endo yesterday, and today I am happy to report that NNW has gone to that giant "poof" in the ex-Dock sky. Sure, endo has some minor "it's a 1.0 release" quirks, but this is the newsreader I've been waiting for. After putting it through its paces last night I was happy to dethrone NetNewsWire's place in my Dock, and here's why.

First and foremost is NetNewWire's age. Version 2.x is old, and it's starting to feel like it hasn't been touched in a while, possibly due to it's dominance in the newsreading market or the NewsGator buyout. Now I don't mean any disrespect; Ranchero is a great company and NetNewsWire both initiated me into and carried me through the newsreading market for a couple of years now. endo simply feels like it pays a little more attention to the market and is aiming to evolve with it, as it offers some really slick integration and headline organizing options. Headlines can be added to a del.icio.us account right from within endo, without the need for snarky applescripts that make me leave the app to do the actual bookmarking in a browser.

On the topic of feed management, endo is very customizable, with the ability to set refresh rates for each group and/or feed (and disabling them altogether) and even the ability to colorize particular feed's headlines so they're easier to pick out in a crowd. endo also offers a Growl-like notification system, toggled per feed, that allows you to sift through snippets of new headlines and short summaries while leaving endo minimized or even hidden. The headline column on the left is also quite tweakable, as summaries and tags can be displayed in-line with the headlines, or you can completely turn off both of those items as I have in my screenshot. To round up the feed management angle: for all those times when you can't get online, endo has the ever-obvious "offline" option.

Continue reading NNW booted from my Dock, long live endo!

#	Blogger	Posts	Cmts
1	Dave Caolo	51	0
2	Cory Bohon	43	4
3	Mat Lu	39	5
4	Scott McNulty	34	2
5	Erica Sadun	33	1
6	Michael Rose	28	19
7	Brett Terpstra	23	0
8	Mike Schramm	20	4
9	Steven Sande	19	9
10	Robert Palmer	17	27
11	Joshua Ellis	7	4
12	Christina Warren	6	19
13	Nik Fletcher	4	1
14	Chris Ullrich	3	2
15	Jason Clarke	1	1
16	Lisa Hoover	1	1
17	Victor Agreda, Jr.	1	4

Ken and Morrigan shown hitting the links in We Love Golf Mega64 puppet Marcus interviews David Jaf ... er, Cory Barlog Sonic Unleashed impressions: all Sonic, no Unleashed	Video-Tabs: Learn to play guitar the YouTube way Sociagami adds Twitter support, status updates OLPC Sugar OS takes on a life of its own, will anybody care?
WWDC schedule: Ajax to PDF Mail Unread Menu 3.1 Orange offers up iPhone for EMEA	Hasbro, jealous of Marvel, reacquires Sunbow Cartoons Lowe's (LOW) falls on housing report Verso Paper's thin IPO
EA deadline for Take-Two offer ends tonight WRUP: dreams of the future edition Grifball returns for H3 Double EXP Weekend	Rumormill: Nissan's new RWD sports coupe could be hybrid-powered VIDEO: More turbine excellence -- this time, it's a Z car First Drive: 2009 Ford Escapes, more of almost everything

Ringtone Subscriptions in iTunes

How the Writer's Strike could cost iTunes subscribers

TUAW Automator App: Export NetNewsWire feeds

NNW booted from my Dock, long live endo!

TUAW Features

RESOURCES

RSS NEWSFEEDS

Sponsored Links

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) bloggers (30 days)

Featured Galleries

Twitter Updates

Most Commented On (7 days)

Recent Comments

More Apple Analysis

More from AOL Money and Finance

Weblogs, Inc. Network