Recently, the question came up of how to automatically "tweet" a birthday message to a friend or loved one on their special day. After thinking on this question for some time I finally came to a solution. As it turns out, intrepid TUAW blogger Dave Caolo wrote a Mac 101 article all about attaching AppleScripts to iCal events. Additionally, Brad Linder over at Download Squad put together a nice little tutorial for posting to Twitter via the command line.

It wasn't obvious at first, but these two articles together formed a dynamic duo of birthday tweeting proportions. If, dear reader, you are interested in setting up a system for sending out some birthday tweets then follow along as we travel the mysterious world of iCal events and command line tweeting. Read on for a somewhat technical tutorial on how to set up some pre-scheduled tweeting goodness. (If you're looking for a service to take care of all this for you, here you go.)

In a display of environmental posturing on both sides, Dell lodged a complaint with the advertising industry's self-governing oversight board: The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus (NAD). The claim? When Apple says it has the "world's greenest family of notebooks," family could be taken to mean all models of MacBook past and present -- including models that weren't built with the environment in mind.

"Common industry usage of 'family' refers to a particular model or group of models, and not the entire notebook line," argued Dell, according to a post on the New York Times' "Green Inc." blog. Dell also complained about Apple's use of gold EPEAT ratings -- an award that many of Apple's competitors have also earned.

Standing behind their claim, Apple effectively said, "that's right, deal with it": Family, in the context of the ad "refers to its whole line of notebooks, taken in toto, [and] not a particular model or group."

The NAD said there was no problem with Apple communicating its EPEAT ratings to consumers, and commended the company for its commitment to creating an entire line of notebooks that meet the highest EPEAT ratings, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Even so, the NAD suggested that consumers could believe that "family" means a line of products (and not all the products) that a company makes. They recommended that Apple use direct comparisons between MacBooks and competitor notebooks to clarify their claims of environmental friendliness. They also recommended that Apple avoid the use of world's greenest "given the potential for overstatement." Apple? Overstatement? That's unpossible.

Apple was happy with the conclusion, with PR spokesman Steve Dowling telling the New York Times that the NAD had confirmed that MacBooks are indeed the world's greenest notebooks when compared to other manufacturers' entire product lines. It appears that Apple has taken to using the word "lineup" instead of "family" on its website.

Dell issued a statement, saying they "commend the NAD for their part in helping ensure companies represent their products' environmental attributes accurately." Dell has previously lodged advertising complaints against Lenovo, and last year the company had to stop using the slogan "the world's most secure notebooks."

If you have been following Saltatory Software's Family.app, then you know how great it can be for easily creating family trees. Recently updated, this application allows you to easily track your family's genealogy. The new update fixes some bugs that occurred with Leopard, like the iSight/iLife integration. Some of the updates to Family include:

• You can now export your Family file to PDF, and it will still be crisp if you zoom in.
  
• The iSight and iPhoto/iLife integration work again in 10.5.
  
• You can now zoom in 120% when in the main editor.
  
• Updated Family bubbles to make Family files look better in general, especially in printing.
  
• Minor bug fixes regarding text input.
  
• There is a fun little fade out when you close windows.
  
• Made it so that dragging a new connection is easier than before. Dragging a connection is not as particular about where you click like it was in 2.0.2.

If you want more information about this update, or would like to download Family.app, you can visit the Saltatory Software website. Family is $29.95US for a personal-use license and it requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher.

CNET is reporting that iSuppli announced Apple is "cutting" their flash memory order this year, and in this case "cutting" doesn't mean "cutting" the way you or I would use it (as in, "The doctor said I had to cut my sugar intake, so I'll only have one doughnut instead of six."). No, it means "cutting" as in they're only raising their orders for flash memory by 16% instead of the expected 32% (which is like saying "I'll only eat three more doughnuts instead of six").

Still, it's enough to send a few folks into a tizzy -- as CNET's Tom Krazit says so perfectly: "If Apple coughs, the flash memory market gets sick." I don't know that there's too much to read into this, except maybe that we probably won't see a brand new iPod this year. With the iPod touch and all the iPod iterations out right now, Apple pretty much has the market covered on mp3 players. That doesn't mean they won't drop lots of new products (I hear that they used to make computers of some kind), but it probably does mean that in terms of the current iPod brand, growth has peaked. Until they bring out that gaming device, flash memory isn't their biggest need.

As the good Doc Mac points out very adeptly with the picture above, the reason for the Apple Store's outage Wednesday morning must have been a redesign-- it's come back with a splash of blue.

I like the new look. I think the slight gradient in the background makes it, but the rounded corners, blue bars, and especially the arrows give the whole store a definite iTunes feel. There's been a reorganization as well-- Mac, iPod, and iPhone are all top level product lines now (the Apple TV is filed under the iPod, which is close enough, I guess), and those three fit the buttons on the top of Apple's site as well. Apple's gone Amazon as well-- there are "New to the Store" and "Top Sellers" boxes that will, we'd assume, change as the facts do. No idea, however, why the Mac Top Sellers goes to 8, the iPod to 9, and the iPhone only to 5.

Looks good, though. A welcome refresh to a store that was starting to look a little last-gen.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Teen iPod ownership is apparently way up from the 1% level reported in 2003. According to a recent study, one third of American teens aged 13 through 18 own an iPod. One can only presume that the other two thirds of American teens are ticked off with insane jealousy and/or hoping for an iPod under this year's Christmas tree. These numbers come from News.com's report on the findings of the Harrison Group's 2006 Teen Trends study. The article states, quite amusingly in my opinion, that "[The teen's] love of music is second only to their love of friends and even ahead of their love of family, according to the study."

iPods: better love money can't buy.

I was rooting through a friend's treasure trove of iPod accessories yesterday when he whipped out his Radio Remote for the iPod. He then pointed out the striking similarity it has to the new iPod shuffle 2G he just picked up - and behold! They clearly must be related; possibly separated at birth - long lost siblings, happy to be reunited after many long quarters of product updates. Look! I think the shuffle is smiling!

"Gee, you've really let yourself go," said the Remote. "But who cares! C'mere, gimme a hug big guy!"

Ahhh... ain't a silly obsession with Apple products love grand?

This is one of those widgets that makes me wonder why Apple hasn't already made one. Type Cast is pretty simple and straight-forward: it's a font preview widget from Code Line Communications, makers of Art Director's Toolkit (amongst other things). This widget isn't short on capabilities either; you can navigate font families, styles and sizes with merely your keyboard, and you can even be taken directly to the font file in the Finder.

The Type Cast widget is free and available from Code Line Communications here.