Now that Maciverse.com author Dan is the proud owner of a Macbook Air (MBA for short), he’s also been going without his favorite DVDs. We’ll overlook the fact that he also owns a large HDTV and pretend he would really prefer to watch his movies outside in the shade on a beautiful spring day. Not only does the MBA suffer from not having a DVD drive, it also doesn’t have a lot of space for a movie collection. But don’t let that stop your fun.

For about the same price (depending on the model) as the MBA Superdrive, you can buy a slingbox. This lovely little device connects to your normal Cable/DVD/DVR output and to your network and lets you watch whatever is playing over your network with its SlingPlayer software. Depending on the brand of DVD/DVR/Cable Box, you can even control it from your computer as if you were pointing the remote at it. It can even be connected to an Apple TV. However, it doesn’t have wireless networking capabilities and that might be a drawback if your wireless router is on the other side of the house (or on a different floor). Also, once your movie is over, you will have to get up from your shady spot, go to the DVD player and put in another DVD just as if you were watching in your living room. So it doesn’t give you any type of media library (unless you connect it to your DVR or Apple TV). But all in all, a Slingbox is a very simple way to keep watching on your super slim Macbook Air. We’ll have a few more recipes for turning Dan’s MBA into a movie machine in future articles.

Many of you know that Apple recently announced their SDK for the iPhone and iPod Touch. During their announcement they also took time to announce that Kleiner Perkings Caufield & Byers will be investing $100 million of venture capital into companies that will be developing applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

FUNDING INNOVATION

$100 million dollars is a lot of money, especially since developers will be essential building applications for one mobile device. The fact that KPCB is willing to put so much capital behind the iPhone/iPod Touch is that they see an amazing Future with these Apple Mobile Devices.

With a true mobile computing device a completely new market of potential applications and technical solutions will start to be explored. Over the past few years the GPS system has become more and more popular as it was a device that provided people with information and service from anywhere.

This is something the iPhone and iPod Touch will be doing but unlike the GPS which just sends a location signal, the iPhone and iPod Touch have the ability to prompt the user for information, act on it, and send it out to servers across the world.

WHAT COULD CHANGE?

Imagine what Car shopping will be like when you have the ability to pull up the inventory, safety report, and price that other dealers in the area, State, or Country are selling the car for. With an iPhone application optimized to provide such information the customer has all the information needed to make knowledgeable purchasing decisions.

Additionally, imagine sitting at a Major League Baseball game when you get the urge for a hot dog. Instead of waiting for the inning to end to walk to the concession stand, you could use the iPhone or iPod Touch to pull up the Stadium concession’s menu, select your food, and pay for it with your credit card all while enjoying the game. Then the food could be brought to you at your seat.

A customized iPhone App could allow you to enter your Ticket ID number which would identify your seat location. Then professional sports teams could also provide fans with statistics about how often foul balls are hit to that section of the stadium, which parts of the stadium are providing the most vocal support for the home team, and provide additional stats to the fans about the game and players they’re watching.

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, recently touched on one way that the iPhone/iPod Touch can be used while viewing events at the American Airlines Center during Maverick games and other sporting events. He even sent out inquires to his IT Head to investigate ways that the platform can be used before, during, and after events and by leveraging the WiFi signal in the Arena.

CONCLUSION

The future possibilities of how the iPhone/iPod Touch can be used and applications that developers can provide are truly endless. From purchasing on the go, to being provided with interesting and new information, the iPhone/iPod Touch may have just started to change the way we experience media and entertainment. It seems certain that great things are coming for the iPhone/iPod touch and it looks like the user has everything to gain.

Over the past few weeks we’ve posted a number of articles on ways you can enhance your Mac experience.

Some of the most popular posts have been about how to make your Mac a phone, what we really wanted with an enhanced AppleTV, and how to take advantage of screen sharing in OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Other popular articles discussed how to combine a Mac, Wii, and HDTV to get a new media experience in your living room.

If you missed any of these articles, now is your chance to catch up!

Over the past few years RSS feeds have been transforming the web. Automater on OSX 10.5 allows you to transform RSS feeds from text to your own audio files or podcasts that you can take with you on your iPod.

RSS FEEDS TO AUDIO FILES

To transform your favorite RSS feeds into audio files open Automator in OS X 10.5 and add the following steps:

1. Get Specified URLS (Add the URL of the RSS Feed you want to convert to an audio File)
2. Get Feeds from URLS (This extracts the actual feed from the URL)
3. Get Text from Articles (This step pulls out the text from your RSS feeds and saves it to a text file)
4. Text to Audio File (Have OSX read your new text file and save it to an audio file. Be sure to select the voice of the file, I suggest Alex, and where you want to save it)

If you’d like to import the new audio file into iTunes you can add the step: Import Files into iTunes.

From here you can take your favorite RSS feeds on the go with you. Listen to the articles at your convenience.

Try it out with the maciverse.com RSS Feed.

For those of you that like things the easy way, you can download the Automator workflow here.

Last week apple announced a number of software features and additions to the upcoming release of iPhone 2.0. One of the most significant features was the support for Microsoft Exchange servers.

Now users will be able to access their work based email with full Microsoft Exchange support on their iPhone.

Since Apple often mentions how the software you use on your iPhone and iPod Touch are based on the same code as their counterpart applications on your Mac computer, it suggests that Microsoft Exchange support will also be coming to mail.app.

This possibility is significant as it helps push Apple’s products more into the business market

IF Mail for OS X does gain full Microsoft Exchange support then users will be able to take full advantage of their work email without needing to purchase Microsoft Office 08 to gain access through Entourage.

Apple may have added one more feature to their iWork package, Corporate Email Support through MAIL.