Released about two years ago, the Nike+ Sport Kit allows your iPod to communicate with an accelerometer embedded in a shoe(or attached to it), and display various information, such as the elapsed time of the workout, the distance traveled, pace, and even calories burned by the individual wearing the shoes. There was only one major problem with this kit so far - its lack of support for any other iPod than the Nano. Now, things are getting much better, with the Nike+ updated version.


The most interesting part of this update is that, while the older Nike+ iPod Sport Kit requires you to turn back to your computer and upload data online, from now on, you may be able to use the Wi-Fi capabilities of the iPhone or the iPod Touch, and even the 3G capability of the iPhone, when that is going to become available. Unfortunately, this is not official yet, but comes "from the inside," so the updated Nike+ is more than just a rumor, since there are even a lot of pictures available with it.

At last, it should be noted that this successful product may be killed by Apple's upcoming digital lifestyle fitness companion, which promises to arrive with much more features than the Nike+ offering, but until that one arrives, there's still enough time for Nike+ to enjoy its status...

The Apple TV, launched to the public on the 21st of March, 2007, is Apple's view of a digital media receiver - a network device running Mac OS X and designed to play online digital content from YouTube, iTunes Store, or even another computer on the network. The resulting images are displayed using an enhanced-definition or a high-definition widescreen TV, and video footage can be easily stored on the internal hard drive, as well as streamed across the network to another computer running iTunes on Mac OS X or Windows. Well, it seems that after all this time, now the Apple TV is going to have a direct competitor, a device from the movie rental house Blockbuster!


In the last years, Blockbuster's fame and fortune started to fade, and now Reuters reports they are developing a set-top device for streaming movies directly to TV sets. "If you can't rent'em, steam'em!" Sounds good to me, although there are no official comments about this rumored product. After all, the rumor says "the device device is believed to be a stand-alone product akin to Apple TV as opposed to embedding a Blockbuster-branded service in such existing devices as Microsoft's Xbox 360 or TiVo," and nothing more.

Anyway, since Blockbuster spent $6.6 million last year to buy Movielink, a service for rental, download, and watching video content on computers, the next logical step is to create a device only for this task, just like the Apple TV.

This is it for now, but you can bet we'll be there as soon as something new happens, and if you don't want to miss it, be sure you have subscribed your address to our news by email, if you forgot to do that so far. Keep in touch!

Do you enjoy your favorite tunes when working out or jogging around? Probably you do, because most people I know enjoy music when they work out, so keeping your iPod close and safe in such moments is a natural need. As usual, we have a solution for your needs, and today's one is simply called "tuneband."


Designed and manufactured by a young company, Grantwood Technology, LLC, which was started last year, the tuneband for iPod is compatible with Nike+iPod Sport Kit, and includes a silicone skin and a screen protector. The armband is only available in black, but the skins are available in a wider range of colors.

The tuneband supports the following iPod models:

- iPod nano 1G/2G (black skin only)
- iPod nano 3G (assorted skin colors)
- iPhone (black skin only)
- iPod touch (black skin only)
- iPod classic 80GB (black skin only)
- iPod classic 160GB (black skin only)

The last four models are not available yet, so this leaves us only with the tuneband for iPod nano available as we speak. Available for about $13, the tuneband can be purchased from Grantwood's official online store, and if you want to know more about it, there's also a tuneband official page, of course!

When we talked about the last iPhone SDK, as well as the future iPhone 2.0 and the 3G iPhone, we didn't mention anything about VoIP, as far as I can remember. Anyway, videoconferencing on the iPhone is something everyone is expecting already, and it seems we will have them both in the near future, thanks to the applications that are going to arrive with iPhone 2.0!


Considering the patents Apple has filed in the last months, and all the reports we heard of and read so far, it seems VoIP and videoconferencing will be the new "killer" programs for the business users, and those that are not really into gaming, because I am sure iPhone 2.0 must have some surprises for mobile gamers too - after all, it would be a pity not to use all those hardware features of the iPhone, since they are capable of pushing gaming on smart phones where none has gone before...

Even more, since Apple already has iChat up & running, they may not need a new VoIP software - thoughts and rumors about iChat to iPhone have been heard already, so that wouldn't really be a surprise. Unfortunately, there's still some time left until the iPhone 2.0 arrives...

Usually, Apple's updates solve some problems, add some new features, nothing you wouldn't expect from a software update, but it seems some secrets came with the latest iPhone SDK, and some people were bright enough to find them. Anyway, until we get there, we'll talk about the latest software updates from Apple, first, then we'll get to world's most notorious smart phone, so get ready...


Well, since none of the updates issued by Apple in the last 24 hours doesn't come with any accurate information, I'll simply tell you what is this all about, and give you the links to the official update pages. After all, you know it already - "stability improvements" and "other issues," that's what Apple usually says for its most updates...

Being given the above, here you have the latest updates: iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.3, MacBook EFI Firmware Update 1.2, MacBook Air EFI Firmware Update 1.0, MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.5, and the Aluminum Keyboard Update.

At last, there's the iPhone SDK Beta 3, available here. This time, it's only a 1.4GB download, compared to over 2GB, the previous version, and an examination of this SDK has shown that code in this software development kit suggests the next iPhone will have "3.5G" HDSPA functionality, including a bunch of advanced features, and a maximum connection speed of 7.2 Megabits per second. As usual, Apple didn't comment anything yet, so we'll have to wait and see - June isn't that far, after all...