The new documentary Welcome to Macintosh has just been been accepted to the Wisconsin Film Festival, and is scheduled to make its debut on April 6. The film features interviews with a variety of Mac-notables like Andy Hertzfeld, Guy Kawasaki and others, and traces the history of the development of the Mac since before its introduction. I have to admit I'm a sucker for this sort of thing, so I'll definitely be interested to see the film when it's released.

[via Macworld]

A while back we noted that Apple had introduced a weekly movie rental special in the iTunes store for 99 cents. Each week there's a new movie available at the special rate (Changing Lanes [iTunes link] this week), but until now there hadn't really been a convenient way to keep track of them.

Enter 99rental.com, a new site that simply lists each $0.99 movie as it comes available, with the standard iTunes plot summaries and accompanying iTunes links. Add the RSS feed to your aggregator or subscribe by email and you'll never miss out on that week's special. And since you have 30 days to watch after renting, this makes it easy to grab anything you think you might watch in that period.

Thanks Damien!

Perhaps you've seen the documentary Trekkies. Hosted by the late Tasha Yar (curse you, Armus!), it profiles several of the show's most zealous fans and by that I mean people with serious mental disorders. Did you see what they did to that poor truck? None of us would get so carried away with our Apple fandom.

Just a minute. Before you set your phasers to Smug, check out the trailer for MacHeads: The Movie. It feels like a cross between Trekkies and Leander Kahney's The Cult of Mac. Several users proclaim their love, including the guy with the tattoos and the girl who states in no uncertain terms that she has never slept with a Windows user.

A few Mac celebs appear as well, including the man who isn't America's least-beloved technology pundit. The movie looks awesome, and we can't wait to see it. Not that we're obsessed or anything.

[Via JSTAMANT.com]

411Mania's got an interview up with actor and filmmaker Ed Burns, whose latest movie, Purple Violets, is going to be distributed exclusively through iTunes for four weeks. Apparently he says he had a couple of "half-assed theatrical offers" for it, but none of them panned out, so when iTunes promised to promote his movie (maybe we'll start seeing it at keynotes rather than The Office?), he decided to go for it.

And lest you think the movie's stuck on the super small screen because it isn't any good, our friends at Cinematical rather liked it, calling it his best film since The Brothers McMullen. Still, even Burns admits that it's definitely a change. Movies are made for the big screen, and always will be-- just like the interviewer at 411, I have a real problem with someone seeing The Godfather, Jurassic Park, or even Star Wars on an iPod screen for the very first time.

But this is the future, I suppose-- movie theaters aren't going anywhere, I'm sure, but the way we watch our movies is definitely diversifying. Burns likens it to digital media-- when it first came out, LP lovers said they would never listen to anything so cold and stiff, and yet iTunes now sells more songs digitally than anyone else who is selling analog recordings. Movies aren't necessary shrinking-- they're just, like everything else, changing.

[via DF]

CNN Money has more fuel for the fire on the iTunes movie rental rumors popping up lately. They say Apple is in talks to get the rentals up and running with major Hollywood studios.

Supposedly the movies would be watchable on the iPod or iPhone, but could not be copied, and would not actually be purchased. You'd have a 30 day access period to the movie for $2.99, but CNN doesn't say whether that means you get to watch it once during the 30 days, or if it's yours for as many times as you want it during the period. The low price says just one viewing to me (since iTunes movie purchases are at least $9.99, if not more), but you never know.

Of course, the big question is: would you do it? If incorporated with the iTunes WiFi store, I think it could be huge-- be somewhere bored on your iPhone, click a few buttons, and be watching The Incredibles within minutes. But as usual, it all depends on what the studios want-- if the whole process is burdened with DRM, and I get error messages when I try to re-sync with iTunes, they can keep their rentals. I'll just make a note to put it in my Blockbuster queue.

[via Ars]

iMovie '08 has gotten a bad rap lately so I decided to put it through its paces and see what all the fuss was about. Now, I'm not a professional video editor -- just your average Josephine -- but, frankly, I think the new iMovie kinda rocks.

DemoApp is that mystery application that coexists in the iPhone's Applications folder along with all the standard apps like Google Maps, Calculator, Stocks, and so forth. We've known for a while that it had something to do with movies but until today, we weren't sure what it did. Today, I can confirm that it does what most people have suspected: it plays a single movie over and over in a repeat loop. It does not, as others hoped, allow you to play video out through your dock. Here's the down and dirty on DemoApp.

Where is DemoApp located? It's found in /Applications. You will not be able to see this application without hacking your iPhone.

How do I make my iPhone automatically play a movie? Place an h.264-encoded movie named Demo.mov into /private/var/root. Reboot your iPhone. (Power down and then re-power on.) The iPhone automatically opens your movie and begins playing it on a loop.

How do I make it stop? Remove the movie from /private/var/root and reboot.

While playing, will it export video out my dock? No. Just audio.

Why does it play in portrait mode? Presumably so it can remain docked and powered.

Does it have to be encoded in h.264? That's the only encoding I've tried.

Does it have to be named Demo.mov? Yes.

How did you figure this out? Testing and playing with the Unix strings command and, frankly, quite by accident.

How do I make DemoApp appear with my other Widgets? You can do this but it's really kind of pointless. You must edit /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/DisplayOrder.plist. Copy the file to your Mac, make a copy, and use Property List editor to move the com.apple.DemoApp dict pair from special into iconList. Return the edited version to the iPhone and reboot. To hide the widget, just restore the original DisplayOrder.plist.

Finder's column view doesn't seem to be a big favorite among switchers, which is a shame. Switchers tend to prefer using icon views or lists but column view offers a huge win over these other when working with media, allowing you to preview your media directly in Finder. To switch to column view, choose View -> as Columns or just press Command-3. Finder changes over to this view which shows a tree-like structure of your disk.

Not only do you see the contents of your current folder, but you can see other folders higher up the directory tree. And here's the good part: when you select an image, audio or video file, you can preview its contents directly in the Finder window. Select any media file and Finder shows you its name, kind, size and other file information. It shows you the contents of the file as well.

If it's a picture, you see a small version of the image. If it's sound or video, a QuickTime-style player appears and you can play it back directly in Finder. Got a lot of pictures or other media to sort through? Use the up and down arrow keys to scroll through your files. Finder will update the preview to reflect your current selection until you find the file you were looking for.

IFC Entertainment has just announced the immediate availability of select independent films in the iTunes Store, including IFC's 2007 Independent Spirit Award (think Oscars for indies) nominees. All thirteen films, six of which are nominees for the award ceremony this weekend, are available for purchase at $9.99. The other films are previous Independent Spirit Award nominees, highlighting some of the most critically acclaimed titles in IFC's catalog. Film titles include Me And You And Everyone We Know, The Thin Blue Line, Pizza, Sorry, Haters, Camp, Go Tigers!, and others. Also available are free podcasts dedicated to each of the movies with behind-the-scenes footage and discussions. No word on potential future releases from IFC.

Today's edition of 'yes they did/no they didn't' is brought to you by Wal-Mart, the New York Post and Reuters. As we knew, Wal-Mart is the largest DVD retailer (at least in America), with 40% of the market. Obviously, a player with that large of a stake in the game might not be too happy when a music download service with as much momentum as the iTunes Store announces movie downloads, and the New York Post printed a piece confirming just as much. According to the Post, Wal-Mart returned "cases and cases" of DVDs to Disney after suffering a panic attack over word of the iTS. Never one to stop at throwing product back in just one client's face, Wal-Mart then went on to throw a temper tantrum at the Hollywood studios, "overtly threatened to retaliate" by ordering fewer movies if they shook hands with the iTS. One has to wonder what happens when Wal-Mart doesn't get ice cream for desert.

On the other side of this coin, however, Reuters printed comments from a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, saying "we are not dissuading studios from conducting business with other providers." Setting aside the discussion of who competition truly benefits, a Disney spokeswoman also stated she was not familiar with the NYP claims, though Reuters failed to mention whether this spokeswoman has anything to do with the shipping department.

It's a twisted web these players are weaving, and we'll (do our best to) stay on top of who's saying what.

[via Engadget]

If saving YouTube videos as favorites and making your own playlists online with their services isn't enough to quench your thirst for their literal flood of content, TubeSock lets you take things one step further by allowing you to save the videos and even convert them for your iPod. It's a small utility that allows you to enter a YouTube URL or simply a video ID, and it can show you a preview of the movie and offer a couple of saving and export options including H.264, PSP, audio-only and even a plain Flash FLV file. TubeSock can also install a bookmarklet in Safari for speedier delivery, and it can even send exported videos straight into iTunes to complete the ultimate YouTube-to-iPod workflow.

After playing with the demo, I'm impressed. Compression is impressively speedy, and for bonus points it automatically cleans up the Flash file it dowloads once exporting is done.

The demo is limited to exporting only the first 30 seconds of any video until you fork over the $15 registration fee. TubeSock is a Universal Binary and available from stinkbot.

[via digg]

Call Recorder from Ecamm Network is a Skype plugin that allows you to record your calls (interviews, podcasts, etc.) as two-track AAC files for that perfect 'edited for your blackmailing pleasure' effect (calls can also be converted to MP3 for the AAC-haters in the audience). A recent version update also brings the ability to save voicemails as quicktime movies.

Call Recorder is a Universal Binary and requires Mac OS X 10.3.9, as well as Skype for Mac v1.4 or higher. A demo is available, while a license costs $14.95. As of this writing, Ecamm Network is offering a sale price of $12.95.

Joystiq, a sister blog, has been following an odd story about an Apple logo and a Sony PS3 site. As you can see from the image, an Apple logo *blips* at the beginning of a PS3 Flash promo movie at Sony's site (it has since been 'fixed', but Joystiq links to a copy of the original movie here). Their investigation has more or less resulted in dead ends; at first the logo was thought to be a watermark left by creating the movie in a trial version of Shake. As it turns out, trial versions of Shake don't allow saving to begin with.

The issue has turned into a bit of a mystery, as Apple (of course) hasn't made any sort of comment, and Sony apparently promised a statement but has yet to deliver.

In the meantime, we'll forgo speculation and leave the rumoring up to you readers.

[thanks to everyone who sent this in]

For Intel Mac users who either love or hate WMV but have to deal with it one way or another, Flip4Mac has just begun beta testing the long-awaited Universal Binary version of their WMV QuickTime components. Announced in their forums today, it is more or less an invite-yourself program, as I had to contact them weeks ago to get on their email announcement list.

After briefly testing on my MacBook Pro, it seems like everything is working just fine. I'm able to play embedded WMV files with no problem, but I unfortunately don't have any locally saved WMV's to try at the moment. So far, the beta seems like a success, and while I hate the WMV format just as much as the next Mac user, it's nice to no longer receive that 'plug-in not found' error.

When it comes to turning a DVD into a movie file, Handbrake's name is hailed far and wide for its ease of use, speed and overall quality. Recently, Handbrake's developer took these praised aspects and raised the bar by releasing Instant Handbrake (beta), a one-stop, brain-dead-easy app for converting a DVD to iPod/PSP-compatible video.

By default it's set to crop the video when necessary (4:3 for iPod, 16:9 for PSP), depending on which device you specify, but you can elect to maintain the video in its original size. Video formats are MPEG-4 or H.264 for the iPod, and MPEG-4 for the PSP.

Like its big brother, Instant Handbrake is free and available here.