iTunes gets American TV shows. And there was some rejoicing.

I've often cast a skeptical eye over at the Canadian iTunes TV section, wondering who in their right mind would want to download Dragon's Den or FutureWeapons.

Slowly there have been some interesting shows added to the store, but today, the floodgates opened. Battlestar Galactica. The recently canceled and much lamented Sarah Conner Chronicles. Lost. 24.

Of course, there are some notable exceptions. Dollhouse, for instance, is not in the Canadian store, the store doesn't have the same depth of back catalogue as the US store does, and it'd be nice if the Canadian store were to offer some BBC/UK programming (Dr. Who, anyone?), but this is the breakthrough that Canadians have been wanting for a while. (Boy, have I just revealed myself to be the geek that I am with that list? Dollhouse? Dr. Who? BSG? Total geek.)

Now the question is, how will this affect cable and satellite? I don't know if we'll be dumping our satellite, at least not until we run some numbers, or at the very least until Dollhouse is on iTunes, but I know of a bunch of people who've already said sayonara to Rogers and Bell.

Episodes are $3.49 for HD, or $2.49 for standard def. A season pass for 24 is $64.99, which makes the cost per episode $2.70, assuming a 24 episode season, or $42.99/$1.79 per episode for standard definition.

ice-Pod

Cool story. Actually, darn cold story.

http://robulack.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/ipod-emerges-from-ice-and-still-works/

Tick, tick tick boom

In case you weren't following it, the Newton, Apple's famously erratic PDA, hated by many, loved by a passionate few, is about to die.

Because of the way the clock system is set up, the Newton can only keep time until January 2010. Then...well some people who have set their clocks ahead have reported that the system crashes and needs a hard restore.

The patch which was under development by the community has proven to not be a workable solution, so Newton users are looking at the Calendar worriedly as we slowly make our way to the end of the year. Will this be the end of the plucky Newton? Tune in next week. Better yet, follow the goings on at http://myapplenewton.blogspot.com.

Deep thoughts, from Magnus S

A friend of mine, a late convert to the iPod revolution (we're still working on getting him off a PC...) has this interesting post about iPods and how they define who we are. Of course, his argument is more about the music held therein rather than the device itself, but interesting reading nonetheless.

Brainzzz

I know I'm a little late to the party, but...

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/163350/iwork_trojan_horse_may_be_turning_macs_into_zombies.html,

Yay! Our very own Zombie Botnet.

It's not a bug, it's a feature

Time for another Safari issue. This one with the built-in RSS reader.

I group my RSS feeds into folders: News, Photoshop, Writing, Design, Photography, Mac and Me, and then keep those folders in my bookmark bar, so I can see when there are new articles.

I know that smart people use Bloglines or Times or Google Reader or some other stand alone or web-based app, but I kinda like how I can just glance up while in Safari and see "ooh, new article."

Here's the deal. There are two articles that have shown up in my personal feed the last time it checked, and it is set to check every half an hour. These are friend's blogs, web comics...stuff like that. If I click on that say ten minutes after the reader checked, and there's another post by Peter, it will go out and get that, too.

But here's the deal. A lot of times, it will add that the the post count, but it won't subtract it. So my bookmark bar will tell me that I have one new article that hasn't been read, even if I read it.

I can refresh the feed, and it still won't go away. I can restart, and it won't go away. After a day or two, it finally goes away.

Yes, it is a small complaint, but it is really annoying when I'm waiting for a new Order of the Stick, and I look up and see that there's a new article in my personal feed and I click, only to discover that no, what I have is a stuck RSS reader again.

Some days, I love living in a small town

I've gone on at length in the past about stupid slow internet and stupid nearest Apple Authorized retailer being 800 km away, but despite what I've said, I love living in a small town. And here's another reason why.

In a big city, they investigate murders and theft of car. Here, an iPod Touch goes missing, and you get an officer assigned to the case.

And now, I have an iPod Touch returned in good order. Oh frabulous joy, Caloo, Calay (I know I mangled that....)