Canadian appeals court cancels "iPod levy"...

Canada's Federal Court of Appeal has reversed a decision that would have imposed a levy on iPods and other removable devices with memory installed, says Retail Board of Canada lawyer Howard Knopf. The court took less than 24 hours to reach the decision and ruled primarily on technical grounds, referring to a previous case when arguing that the Copyright Board of Canada had overstepped its boundaries in asking for as much as a $75 levy on each removable memory device.

Opera Mini gaining popularity, partly due to iPhone...

Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner recently made available details about the upcoming Opera 9.5 web browser, and expressed optimism for the future of Opera Mini for mobile devices, partially due to the iPhone’s popularity. While Opera only accounts for 2-percent of the US web browser marketshare, the company’s popularity is on the rise thanks to the mobile version of its web browser, PC Magazine learned in an interview. Opera Mini has a user base of 30 million worldwide, and approximately 100,000 new downloads per day.

iPhone guide takes users through Macworld

i.Zami has released a new directory service formatted for iPhones and iPod touches, designed to help users through next week's Macworld Expo. The guide primarily lists all of the exhibitors, sorting them alphabetically, or by what part of the Moscone Center they will be in, whether West or South. Tapping on a developer's entry provides Macworld contact information, along with the ability to leave messages, ratings and reviews. Users can further access an interactive map of the expo, or check information on nearby hotels, restaurants and other services. Access to the guide is free.

iClipboard 1.1 brings in Spaces support...

Chronos has produced a new update for iClipboard, its integrated Mac utility. The program extends the usefulness of the Leopard clipboard, keeping a history of items so that they can be retrieved later. Quick Look support lets users preview contents, and items are listed on a shelf that slides out from the side of the screen. Users can specify the cut-off size for items to avoid consuming memory.

PDF Shrink 4.2 due at Macworld Expo...

Apago has announced that the next version of its PDF Shrink program will be released January 15th, in time to coincide with San Francisco's Macworld Expo. The software is used to drastically reduce the size of PDF files, so that they can more easily be loaded and viewed; files can be shrunk by as much as 90 percent. It does this mainly by scaling the resolution and compression of images, as well as removing base 14 fonts when desired. Input for the program can come not just from Adobe's Creative Suite but Apple's iWork and Microsoft's Office.

Primate Labs: New Mac Pro is a better value...

Primate Labs today released figures regarding performance of the new Mac Pro versus the old eight-core model. The old model is configured with the eight-core Xeon X5365, running at 3GHz, while the newer model features the Xeon W5462 running at 2.8GHz per core. Both machines were tested using Mac OS X 10.5.1, with the new Mac Pro using 2GB of RAM, versus the former that uses 1GB. Primate Labs says that the tests that GeekBench 2 uses to calculate RAM scores relies more on the speed of the memory rather than the quantity, so it was deemed a fair test.

Amazon to sell unprotected Sony BMG music...

Amazon.com today said it is now selling unprotected music from Sony BMG, making the online retailer the first store to offer DRM-free songs from all four major music labels in MP3 format, according to a report from Reuters. Apple's iTunes Store announced the availability of iTunes Plus in early April, with unprotected MP3 music files from EMI's catalog at a slightly higher price.

HighPoint adds Leopard support to RAID adapter...

HighPoint Technologies today updated its RocketRAID 3120 to support Apple's Power Mac G5 and Mac Pro systems under both Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard. The RocketRAID 3120 is a PCI-Express x1 dual port SATA RAID controller featuring the Marvell 5182 (400MHz) hardware RAID engine and with 128MB of DDR2 local memory. The RocketRAID 3120 is available for $170.

Penumbra: Overture released for Macs...

Frictional Games has released the Mac port of Penumbra: Overture, its first-person horror game. Players assume the role of Philip, a man who suddenly receives a letter from his dead father. Seeking to investigate its significance, Philip travels to Greenland, where he encounters unexpected threats. The game is rendered in real-time, physics-driven 3D, and players must use their intelligence to fight enemies as well as solve puzzles.

Hess Memorial Macworld Events List goes live...

The Hess Memorial Macworld Events List has gone live, detailing more than 100 events at the forthcoming Expo in San Francisco. Touted as the only source for events and press functions held during Macworld Conference & Expo week, January 14-18, the Web page serves as a place for visitors to get a head start on the best places to visit at the show. "The Hess Memorial Events List is updated every time a new event is received, so please let us know about your events at Macworld," said Mac consultant, writer, and photographer Ilene Hoffman. "Users should check the page every day during the show, so that you don't miss a thing."

Analysts wary of Apple-Akamai, Google rumor...

Akamai, the company in charge on most of Apple’s content delivery for iTunes and most of its online services, was falsely reported to being dumped by the company, in favor of a switch to Google. Seeking Alpha writes that Swiss American subsidiary Credit Suisse, despite the fact that they are not Akamai’s financial representatives, was blamed for initiated the rumor. Swiss American later denied that they gave any information regarding Apple’s supposed plans, even though technologist Dan Rayburn received the update from several different analysts.

Fujitsu to demo new scanner at Macworld...

Fujitsu has promised to showcase its newest ScanSnap Scanner for Mac at the Macworld 2008 Conference and Expo from January 14-18 in San Francisco, CA. The company also said it will announce a forthcoming device to address the mobile document imaging needs of the Mac community. Fujitsu's new ScanSnap S510M is one of the only single-pass duplex automatic document feeder (ADF) scanners available today for the Apple community, according to the company, and comes bundled with ABBYY FineReader 3.0 optical character recognition (OCR) software. Live demonstrations of the S510M will take place at booth no. S308.

Pyro debuts PCI Express-based video encoder...

Pyro AV has unveiled Pyro Kompressor HD, a PCI Express-based accelerator solution that encodes HD MPEG-2 and HD H.264/AVC up to eight times faster than software-only video compression. The single-slot PYRO Kompressor HD board is powered by the Ambric Am2045, a parallel processor with 336 RISC processors delivering 1.2 teraOPS-class of video horsepower for consistently high throughput encoding. Pyro Kompressor HD for the Mac platform will be available this spring for $3,500.

MacATM parodies Mac software industry...

Comedy site The Daily Grind has released MacATM 1.0, an app meant to parody the sometimes ridiculous world of Mac business and development software. "Mac OS X users have previously labored under the platform's lack of a comprehensive ATM simulation solution," Grind president Joe Stella is quoted as saying. Once installed on a Mac, says VP Damian Prendergast, users can "enjoy the excitement and immersion of an ATM on the move or at home. You need never again ram-raid a shopping center or take a tow-truck to the bank."

SmileOnMyMac releases pre-Expo updates...

In order to clean up its software for presentation at Macworld, SmileOnMyMac has released updates for five of its applications. PDFpen and PDFpenPro, which create fillable PDF forms, are now at v3.3.2; aside from minor improvements and fixes, the programs now have better support for protected documents. DiscLabel 5.1.1 makes improvements to printing, and v4.2.1 of PageSender, the fax application, fixes a cover-page hang in Carbon software such as Word or Adobe Reader.

WWDC 2007 session videos go online...

Though its Developer Connection sub-site, Apple is now selling a new video bundle intended for IT developers. The collection gathers together recordings of over 100 sessions from last year's WWDC conference, and addresses topics such as exploiting the new features of Mac OS X Leopard Server, implementing "best practices" in web or network administration, and designing, coding and testing IT projects. The videos also deal with meshing the Mac with other platforms; this includes deploying Mac clients on Microsoft Active Directory networks, or racking Mac servers alongside various other types.

Adobe unveils Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac...

Adobe today unveiled Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac, a major update to its simplified photo editing software. The new version introduces many new features, such as a “group merge” tool that allows users to pick the best facial expressions and body language from a series of shots, combining them into a master image. Photoshop Elements 6 provides users with three editing modes, tuned for different levels of experience; the new Guided Edit mode walks beginners through various image improvement steps, for example. Adobe will ship Photoshop Elements 6 early in the second quarter of 2008 for $90, and will be showing the software at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.