Apple announced today the immediate availability of iTunes 8, a substantial upgrade to the popular music software for both Mac and PC.

New in iTunes 8…

1. Genius playlists and sidebar. Create a playlist of songs that go great together and get recommendations for new songs.
2. HD TV shows. Buy your favorite shows, including Heroes and The Office, in high definition. Episodes cost just $2.99.
3. New ways to browse. Browse your music, movies, and TV shows by cover art. Quickly skim albums by artist and genre.

iTunes 8 also syncs with your iPod or iPhone much faster than previous versions. All in all, a must-have upgrade.

I’m a sports car nut. I used to autocross a Mazda Miata, and one of the biggest challenges I faced as an amateur racer was measuring performance before and after major improvements to my car. Accelerometers are expensive, and booking time on a dyno can be cost prohibitive as well. But now, if you’ve got an iPhone or iPod, you can have a fairly decent performance meter in your pocket!

Dynolicious is the first automotive performance meter available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It uses the hardware built-in to your iPhone to measure the performance characteristics of your vehicle. No external wires or equipment are necessary, simply slip the iPhone into a cradle or cupholder and go!

Some of the performance metrics Dynolicious can measure:

• 0-60 Acceleration
• 1/4 Mile Elapsed Time
• Lateral G’s
• Horsepower

And, unlike other accelerometer-based performance meters, Dynolicious maintains a history of test runs, showing you averages and trends in your results. You can also enter modifications performed to your vehicle, and it will instantly show before-and-after results to easily identify gains or losses.

At just $12.99 on the iTunes App Store, it’s a must-have for any auto enthusiast.

Check our the Dynolicious Auto Performance Meter for iPhone and iPod.

If you use WordPress for your personal or corporate blog, and you own an iPhone, then you’ll want to check out the newly-released WordPress for iPhone.

WP for iPhone lets you write posts, upload photos, and edit your WordPress blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. With support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.5.1 or higher), users of all experience levels can get going in seconds. Download it now!

The good folks at Mozilla have announced that the latest version of their popular web browser, Firefox, will be available for download on Tuesday, June 17th.

The Firefox web browser is probably the best web browser available today, with built-in phishing filters to protect surfers from malicious or phony sites, standard-compliant support for the latest web standards (which makes the life of web designers SO much easier), and significantly faster browsing speeds.

In short, Internet Explorer should take a few notes.

After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.

UPDATE: Guinness bestows download record on Firefox

Perhaps even bigger news than the new 3G iPhone (which of course, I’ll be updating to, as soon as it releases) was Steve Job’s announcement of the much-improved online productivity suite, formerly called .Mac.

The revamped service, now called MobileMe, offers web versions of Apple’s email, calendar, address book, photo album and remote disk programs. Now, folks everywhere can begin to use Apple’s gorgeous applications, with having to switch to Mac, or even buy a new computer! This is simply ingenious.

Of course, if you already own a Mac, then you’ll be instantly familiar with the look and behavior of the online versions of these applications, because they are simply web versions of the exact same software you’ve been enjoying on your Mac—plus a few extra goodies thrown in.  AJAX goodness makes the programs function more like desktop applications than web sites, including drag-and-drop functionality.

Push email. Push contacts. Push calendar.
MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars on an online server — or “cloud” — and pushes them down to your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change on one device, the cloud updates the others. Your changes happen automatically, instantly, and continuously. You don’t have to wait for it or remember to do anything — such as docking your iPhone or syncing manually — to stay up to date.

With this functionality, along with embedded sharing capabilities, the iPhone/MobileMe marriage offers up a serious challenge to the antiquated Microsoft Exchange Server business solution. Goodbye, ridiculous licensing fees, specialized IT personnel and decade-old user interfaces! Hello, gorgeous, intuitive, web-based applications that don’t require a dedicated IT department!

MobileMe will cost $99/year when it launches, but I’d highly recommend the Family Pack, which costs $149/year, and features five licenses. Share the other four with friends and family and the cost per year drops to $30 per person, which is a great price for this productivity suite.

UPDATED! I just found out that you can buy .Mac right now from Amazon for just $69.99, and still get upgraded for FREE when MobileMe launches! Save $29.96 and get MobileMe… what a deal!

Click here to check out .Mac on Amazon for $69.99!

Or click here for the Family Pack for just $124.49!

I anticipate MobileMe will turn out to be one of Apple’s best strategies to date, and will be even bigger than the iPhone itself! Welcome to Mac, PC users everywhere!

Thanks, Jake.

In the past few years, we’ve designed quite a few WordPress sites for our clients, enabling them to edit and update content on their on website, using just a web browser.  The good folks at WordPress have just released a “sneak peek” of version 2.5, which is a major update to the popular content management system.

Navigation

The new design cuts the number of navigation options in half, separating the primary functions (writing, managing posts and pages, editing the blog’s design, and managing comments) from secondary functions. This presents information much more intuitively, revealing only the information that’s necessary. Everything you need is still there — just better organized. (Especially for people new to WP.)

Write

The new write screen only displays the information that you’ll use most often. It displays the most common fields in a way that makes writing new content incredibly easy. Additional options are hidden away until you need them. The new Write screen anticipates the natural flow of the way you write, and is smart enough to remember the way you left it so that your preferred writing environment is always quickly available. My personal favorite new feature is the new full-screen mode, which helps block out distractions while composing your newest post.

For a sneak peek of the new features, click here.

Check out this website for HEMA, a Dutch department store. It’s a clever example of using animation to create a viral site that will get folks telling all their friends!

Take a look at HEMA’s product page. It’s in Dutch, but just wait 15-20 seconds after the page loads to see what happens. (Turn sound on.)

There’s something in the air. At the 2008 MacWorld Expo, his Steveness delivered another of his famous keynote speeches, introducing a plethora of new products, including Time Capsule, Apple TV, the much-rumored MacBook Air, plus fantastic feature enhancements to the iPhone, iTunes and more! (more…)

CNBC is reporting that Apple will introduce its much-rumored sub-notebook in January during the annual MacWorld Expo. Apparently, insider sources claim the device will be 50 percent thinner than the company’s existing MacBook Pro and utilize flash memory in place of a traditional hard disk drive. The new sub-notebook will be smaller than other notebooks, with a much more efficient 12-inch or 13.3 inch LED screen.

Details coming soon to a MacWorld Expo near you!