Hands-on with HandBrake 0.9.4

I am a big fan of HandBrake and have ripped over 500 DVD’s with it onto external hard drives. Not surprisingly I haven’t used it for a while!! That said, I need to rip a few in the next week or so was interested to read about 0.9.4

“Creation comes out of imperfection.”

x264
A large portion of these speed, size, and quality improvements come to us for free, from the x264 project. The past year, like every year, has seen some massive improvements for that video encoding engine. As always, it has been further hand-optimized for better performance. But it has also gained new features like macroblock tree rate control and weighted P-Frame prediction. The end result? Better picture quality, at a smaller size, faster.

BuyMyTronics.com

As you would expect from someone that owns a Toyota Prius Hybrid I tend to try and protect the environment when I can. I am not a saint, and I am not obsessed by recycling, but there are certain common sense actions that can be taken, and when possible I try and take them.

A while back I wrote about how to recycle your Mac involving www.buymytronics.com.

I was looking through some stuff the other day and ended up on their site. Wow it has changed a lot, and in a pretty good way!

AroundMe iPhone Application

Sometimes I can only dream about how good the iPhone is! You see living here in Almerimar I really don’t get to use it to its full advantaage:

• I don’t commute to work
• The marina is 5 minutes away and that is where I do 90% of my business and socialising in Spain
• I know pretty much every bar and restaurant owner by name
• I can’t remember the last time I went shopping for anything other than food, or online
• The marina has one exit with a petrol station at the top, and a hospital 3 miles away

Apple updates Time Capsule, AirPort firmware and Final Cut Pro

Apple on Wednesday released a pair of updates: one for its Time Capsule and AirPort Base Station Firmware and a minor update for Final Cut Pro. Both updates are available from Apple’s Support Downloads site.

Dunkin’ Donuts releases ‘social’ iPhone app

Dunkin’ Donuts, the popular fast food chain famous for its coffee and baked goods, has released Dunkin’ Run, a free app for the iPhone and iPod touch. It’s designed to make it easier for Dunkin’ Donuts customers to make group orders — a social application, according to the press release.

Apple iPhone 3G S trouble roundup

No new gadget is immune to growing pains — especially when it’s tied to a manufacturing and distribution campaign on the scale of the iPhone 3G S. Statistically, it’s just not possible to walk away from an opening weekend without a few hiccups when you’re pushing this many units of anything; the best manufacturers can realistically hope for is to keep problems minor, respond to issues quickly, and spin the crap out of anything that comes up.

Apple broadens focus of Mac OS X 10.5.8 in new beta

While the first two beta releases of Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard update signaled a focus on underlying service technologies, a third pre-release made available to developers overnight expands upon those areas to include several forward-facing apps and additional frameworks.

iPhone Dev Team releases PwnageTool 3.0 for iPhone OS 3.0 jailbreak

The iPhone Dev Team has released their latest iPhone jailbreak tool – PwnageTool 3.0! This latest version of PwnageTool will allow anyone with an iPhone or iPhone 3G to jailbreak the just-released iPhone OS 3.0 update. It’s important to note that PwnageTool 3.0 will only work on previous-gen hardware running iPhone 3.0 OS – the iPhone 3G S will not work with PwnageTool 3.0.

AT&T squashes tethering surcharge rumors

Two iPhone features introduced in iPhone OS 3.0 are still awaiting activation by AT&T: Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and tethering. Rumors suggesting that AT&T will surcharge its users $55 to activate the tethering capability are wrong, according to AT&T.

iPhone 3G S Customers Reporting Activation Delays

A number of iPhone 3G S customers in the U.S. are reporting problems activating their new purchases for use. According to a message displayed during the activation process, it may take up to 48 hours for activations to go through.

iPhone Tethering and MMS Hacks Surface

Many AT&T iPhone customers have been disappointed by the carrier’s lack of support for both Internet tethering and MMS at launch for iPhone OS 3.0. A pair of new reports today highlight a couple of iPhone hacks for enabling tethering and/or MMS without requiring jailbreaking. Readers should note, however, that such hacks violate the terms of service for many carriers and should therefore proceed at their own risk.

How to tether your iPhone running OS 3.0 without jailbreaking, for free

Think I will have a look at this a bit later as current attepts to Tether iPhone haven’t been that great. If you have done this let me know how you got on, maybe leave details of the carrier you are with?

MobileMe pushes out new Find My iPhone, Remote Wipe service

Announced at WWDC, Apple’s new Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe services went online today with the warning that high traffic to the site might slow or prevent access for users trying it out on launch day. The site appears to be up intermittently and yet not actually functional yet.