Along with the announcement of the new iPod Touch, Nano, and Shuffle, Steve Jobs also announced a new version of iTunes. The release was available on Apple’s website soon after and it definitely had some changes that made it stand out against Apple’s other applications.

Some of the changes that made it differ the most from other applications was the new interface and the new icon. The new icon looks nothing like iChat, Finder, Mail, etc.. The black note inside the dark blue color enclosed in a white bezel just looks much different than icons that Apple are known for designing. It just feels like the icon is off in its own world, away from the pack.

Also, the interface seems like it’s a little more touch-friendly, which is odd of Apple. It looks like they tried to match the design of the iPod application on the iPad. All songs in the song list seem a little more spaced out than other versions and the volume slider seems slightly larger too.This could possibly mean that Apple has an upcoming slate planned that is going to run Mac OS, so that they can compete with the flood of Windows 7 slates.

This new release of iTunes also came with a social feature called “Ping”. Ping is described as a social network for music, and that’s what it is. Ping didn’t really impress me much as a social network. It can’t really compete with something like Twitter or Facebook. All it is is a place where you can talk about music with friends and it has some features such as posting on your page when you buy a new song on iTunes, which is kind of useless for people who use other services for downloading music such as AmazonMP3.

This release of iTunes really has me looking towards Apple for new announcements and overall, this version of iTunes is snappier than older ones on my Mac Mini, but it didn’t really leave me amazed.

David – Senior Editor

What happens when an awesome office suite and the cloud get mixed together? Docs.com. Docs.com is a website that has Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint in the form of Web Apps. And It does this without the loss of many features.

In Word, you still have your normal options such as highlighting, headings, spell check, etc. except the only difference is that you can write your documents in your web browser. This can come as a big plus for people with multiple computers or people who don’t have sufficient disc space for a large office suite. The same is with Excel and Powerpoint.

Docs.com also comes packed with some features that interact with your Facebook profile. This includes making resumes using your profile info, putting info from your friends such as age and gender into charts, and a feature called “Photo Show” which lets you take photos and put them in different frames and templates. Also, every time you make a new document using the Facebook features, it posts it on your wall, however you are able to customize the privacy of the document.

Overall, Docs.com is a great alternative to Google Docs for people who love Microsoft or love the atmosphere of Microsoft Office.

David – Senior Editor

David – Senior Editor

David – Senior Editor

Lev – Lead Writer

Bloatware is much more common in desktop applications than mobile applications. The thing is that with mobile applications, there really isn’t much room to make a program that does multiple things. On my iPod, I have a separate application for web browsing, viewing photos, listening to music, etc.. simply because the screen is too small to have other functions besides the main function. But on a desktop program such as Firefox, I can have multiple functions using add-ons and extensions, simply because there’s space for those functions. But there are times when desktop applications only perform one function; take Tweetie for Mac by atebits for example , it only lets you post to and read your Twitter.

David – Senior Editor

The hype of the 3-D movie age is only getting larger and larger with new technologies like Digital 3-D and stereoscopic 3-D which requires no glasses, but is this hype really worth it?

3-D movies have never really seemed to amaze me. I mean, I just can’t seem to find two blurred images that make an illusion like they’re popping out of the screen interesting. The movie industry is really focusing on making 3-D movies now that they really can’t seem to make a decent 2-D movie. It’s like having a nice-looking video game that fails when it comes to playability. What’s the point? Also, movie theaters have to invest in new projectors to display some newer movies. Is this really fair?

3-D movies have always seemed to annoy me because they make me dizzy and I can never seemed to focus on the whole picture because the foreground object always seems to be standing out too much. Isn’t the whole point of a movie to enjoy it in its entirety, not to just focus on the frontmost object.

I think that with this 3-D age, the movie industry can’t focus on other technologies that could be cool like 360-degree movies or movies which make the viewer feel like he/she is in the environment using elements such as wind and temperature. I think that 3-D is just an on-going fad that’s taking away from the good part of the movie industry; the movies, and  I hope it gets out-dated soon.

David – Senior Editor

After the large amount of traffic on the Steam servers, I was successfully able to download and install Alien Swarm on my Macbook Pro’s bootcamp partition. Since the game is around a co-op campaign, I decided to go right into the online mode. Based on the loading times, you could tell that the servers were very packed. I was greeted by three other players. We all chose our classes (tech, medic, etc.) and started the game.

First thing I noticed was the weirdly-layed out HUD. Being more of a health at the top, weapons and players at the bottom-guy, it was difficult to adjust to this layout.

The gameplay is really unique compared to many other games and it FEELS like a console game for a variety of reasons. And the weapons make it all the better. Players get new, stronger weapons when they level up.

As for the campaign, the story line isn’t the best, and easily becomes confusing due to the plot.

In terms of the engine, the graphics look very nice but in terms of performance, it’s not living up to the Source engine name as far as expected. Example: at 1080p, David’s Mac Mini (bootcamp) gets about 15-25fps.

Overall this game deserves 4/5, especially for being free. If you have time to spare, check it out here.

Lev – Lead Writer

David – Senior Editor

The first Boxee Box arrived from the D-Link Factory from Zach Klein on Vimeo.

David – Senior Editor