Hitchcock Shows 6 Ways Psycho Slashed Hollywood's Rule Book to Shreds - Alfred Hitchcock might have been a bully, a voyeur and a snob, the master filmmaker was also a shrewd subversive who beat stodgy Hollywood suits at their own game.
(Via Wired Top Stories.)
Mobilize Your Data With Wired's Top 3 Portable Storage Drives - Auto-backups, sharing files, simple peace of mind. You should never be without a reliable portable drive for storing your data.
(Via Wired Top Stories.)
HDMI cable buying guide - Find the best price on the right cable for your new HDTV.
(Via CNET News.com.)
8 Apps for an Awesome Thanksgiving Day -
A time to gather together with loved ones, scarf down gluttonous volumes of deliciously cooked foods, and give thanks for all of the great things happening in your life, Thanksgiving is a wonderful once-a-year opportunity to gorge on the spice of life. With lots of family, food, and fun also comes a lot of hard work and more than a little craziness both inside and outside of the kitchen. We aim to make your turkey day smoother one with this selection of helpful apps for planning, prepping, cooking, and keeping everyone happy during this festive holiday.
(Via Mac|Life all.)
Skype unwraps gift cards - Starting at $10, the new cards can give the gift of free Skype phone calls or text messages to people on your shopping list.
(Via CNET News.com.)
Report: Over 1 Million Apps Have Been Submitted to iOS App Store - Mobile app development hit a major milestone today when Apple accepted its one-millionth ? yes, one-millionth ? app for sale in the App Store, further underscoring Cupertino's lead in the apps space.
(Via Wired Top Stories.)
Murder Suspect John McAfee: I'm Innocent - John McAfee, 67, is the prime suspect in a murder discovered Sunday morning in Belize. Convinced that he'll be killed if he's taken into custody for questioning, the millionaire antivirus pioneer has gone into hiding somewhere in the Central American nation, where he moved in 2008 to retire. Starting at 10:30 this morning, Belize time, he has been calling to tell me his side of the story.
(Via Wired Top Stories.)
BofA takes aim at Square with new mobile-pay service - Bank of America's service lets vendors use smartphones to swipe customers' credit cards. BofA is charging vendors 2.7 percent per purchase, just a hair below Square's rate.
(Via CNET News.com.)
Visa officially launches its digital wallet V.me - According to the company, over 50 financial institutions have adopted the payment service, which will compete with Google Wallet, PayPal and other offerings from mobile carriers.
(Via CNET News.com.)
Three Mac apps to help you self publish your book -
As a writer, I’m always looking for ways to maximize my revenue streams. While doing contract technical writing is working out pretty well for me, I’d like to start work on writing some content that earns money over time. To that end, like millions of dreamers, I’m starting to look at creating ebooks and self-publishing them. I’ve tried a bunch of programs for the Mac to create ebooks and these three below are the ones that I liked best.
As a forewarning, I’m not going to go too far into the various bookstore formats, other than to say that at the least you’ll need to start with a Microsoft Word or ePub file. While Amazon and the like will accept a Word file to publish, to ensure your book converts to the various proprietary formats, I recommend creating an ePub file as your base. EPub is the most common ebook file standard, and I think you’ll have fewer problems starting with that. Fortunately, the ebook creation apps I’m going to tell you about all export an ePub natively. While there are Automator scripts to convert text to ePub, by using these packages you’re pretty much guaranteed to keep your document formatting.
One quick note up front: I’m not going to include Apple’s own iBooks Author tool. That’s because my goals for this piece were simple: talk about ebook-making programs that can be used in multiple bookstores and create files that aren’t just static images of a page. iBooks Author creates static pages that can only be used in the iBookstore. That’s great for getting an interactive textbook into the iBookstore, but not so good for other kinds of books.
(Via TheAppleBlog.)
Ultimate Ears' new ultimate: The Personal Reference Monitor - The Logitech UE Personal Reference Monitor in-ear headphones are the first of their kind, with a design that's custom-molded to your ears and a custom-tuned sound!
(Via CNET News.com.)
What Square's rise means for the startup ecosystem - Like Google and Facebook before it, Square is set to transform the startup ecosystem.
(Via CNET News.com.)
Which iPad is Right for You? -
It's hard to believe that the iPad has been with us over two and a half years. In that time a whole new industry has sprung up, businesses are now encouraging employees to use the iPad in their workflow, and it's become a centerpiece of the living room. Despite protesting its existence, the iPad family has extended with the iPad mini giving a wide range of options available for all of those now testing the waters in the tablet world. However, not all iPads are created equally in the eyes of the user, so let's take a look at which model is the best option for you.
(Via Mac|Life all.)
Maximize your old Mac's performance - If you have an older Mac system that seems to be on the slowish side, a few upgrades can help you get the most out of it.
(Via CNET News.com.)
The iPod touch used to lag behind the current iPhone in specs, and the fourth-generation iPod touch was the worst: introduced in 2010, it got a white version and a lower price in 2011, and it’s still for sale—but the totally redesigned fifth-gen iPod touch blows it out of the water. It’s got the same extra-tall 4-inch Retina display as the iPhone 5, the same Bluetooth 4.0 and dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, the same scratch-resistant sapphire cover on its iSight camera, and an equally gorgeous aluminum unibody, complete with shiny chamfer.
In some ways, the colorful iPod touch is even better-looking. It’s insanely thin, a millimeter thinner than the super-thin iPhone 5—even the back iSight camera can’t fit into that thinness, resulting in a non-Apple-like bulge around the lens. We don’t mind so much, just because it’s so thin. Light, too, just 3.1 ounces, 22 percent lighter than iPhone 5.
But you still get lots of power, thanks to the A5 chip and 512MB of RAM. The beefiest games play like a dream, and it’s even got Siri. Of course, to use Siri or any other network-dependent app or service, you need to have Wi-Fi, since the iPod touch lacks a cellular networking. “Duh,” you say, “if it had cellular, it’d be a phone.” Unless it had an optional, contract-free 4G option like the iPad mini. We can dream, can’t we?
Apple quotes the same battery life as the fourth-gen iPod touch: 40 hours of music or 8 hours of video. It’s hard to ding the iPod touch for the only spec that didn’t improve, since they’re running out of room to make the battery bigger anyway. And we did get 43 hours of music and 9.5 hours of video, so that’s still a big win—in a small package.
The bottom line. If I were the type to carry a Mi-Fi around (or I weren’t so addicted to streaming music), I would try to ditch my iPhone 5 and just carry an iPod touch. It’s that much fun to use.
(Via Mac|Life all.)
Great local search apps for iOS - I found an interesting local search app that got me thinking about apps that tailor results to what's around you. This collection for iOS is perfect for when you're in an unknown area or just want to try something new.
(Via CNET News.com.)
What's better: A $329 iPad Mini or $319 iPad 2? - While supplies last, Apple is offering the refurbished (but good-as-new) iPad 2 for less than the price of a new Mini. Which is the better buy?
(Via CNET News.com.)
Snow Leopard still used on more than a quarter of all Macs - 
Haven't upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion yet? You're definitely not alone. In fact, according to a report by Computer World, more than a quarter of all Mac owners haven't even made the jump to OS X Lion, instead opting to stick with the last version of Apple's operating system capable of running PowerPC-exclusive software, OS X Snow Leopard.
Citing data from Net Applications, Computer World explains that nearly 30 percent of all Macs still run Snow Leopard, compared to roughly 25 percent that have Mountain Lion installed. In fact, new installs of Mountain Lion seem to have eaten away more at Lion installs than Snow Leopard. Lion installs are now about even with Snow Leopard. The adoption rate of Mountain Lion appears to be running slightly behind where Lion and Snow Leopard were at this point in their lifespans.
16GB Kindle Fire HD costs Amazon $207 to make - An IHS teardown of the lowest price Kindle Fire HD, which costs $199, shows Amazon loses less money on the tablet than its predecessor.
(Via CNET News.com.)
Netflix gobbles one-third of traffic at peak time in North America - Sandvine also reports that total Internet data usage across North America is up a whopping 120 percent.
(Via CNET News.com.)
