From apple.com, "Now, you can choose from millions of iTunes Plus songs from all four major music labels and thousands of independents. With iTunes Plus, you get high-quality, 256-Kbps AAC encoding. All free of burn limits and digital rights management (DRM). So iTunes Plus music will play on iPod, Apple TV, all Mac and Windows computers, and many other digital music players. It’s also easy to upgrade your iTunes library to iTunes Plus. You don’t have to buy the song or album again. Just pay the 30¢ per song upgrade price. (Music video upgrades are 60¢ and entire albums can be upgraded for 30 percent of the album price.)"

From apple.com, "Apple(R) today introduced iLife(R) '09, which features major upgrades to iPhoto(R), iMovie(R) and GarageBand(R), and includes iDVD(R) and an updated version of iWeb(TM). iPhoto '09 builds on the ability to automatically organize photos into Events by adding Faces and Places as breakthrough new ways to easily organize and manage your photos. iMovie '09 expands on the revolutionary super fast movie creation introduced in iMovie '08 by adding the depth users want through powerful easy- to-use new features such as the incredible new Precision Editor, video stabilization, advanced drag and drop, and animated travel maps. GarageBand '09 introduces a whole new way to help you learn to play piano and guitar with 18 basic lessons and optional lessons from top artists such as Sara Bareilles, John Fogerty, Norah Jones and Sting. iLife '09 is included with every new Mac(R) purchase and available as a $79 upgrade for existing users.

Apple(R) today introduced iWork(R) '09, the latest version of Apple's popular office productivity suite, which adds powerful new features without sacrificing Apple's legendary ease of use. Keynote(R) '09 introduces advanced object transitions, which automatically animate objects with a choice of effects and Magic Move, an innovative way to create sophisticated animations just by applying a simple transition. Pages(R) '09 features a new Full Screen view that helps you focus on your writing and an outline mode to organize your thoughts. Numbers(R) '09 introduces a quick way to group and summarize data and a dramatically simplified way to create complex formulas. Apple also announced iWork.com public beta, a new service Apple is developing to share iWork '09 documents online."

From apple.com, "Apple(R) today unveiled the new 17-inch MacBook(R) Pro featuring a durable and beautiful precision aluminum unibody enclosure, and a revolutionary new built-in battery that delivers up to eight hours of use and up to 1,000 recharges for more than three times the lifespan of conventional notebook batteries. The new 17-inch MacBook Pro has a high resolution LED-backlit display and the same large glass Multi-Touch(TM) trackpad introduced with the new MacBook family in October. In addition, the new 17-inch MacBook Pro includes state of the art NVIDIA graphics and the latest generation Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processors. As part of the industry's greenest notebook family, the new 17-inch MacBook Pro is made of highly recyclable materials, meets stringent energy efficiency standards and is made without many of the harmful toxins found in other computers."

Written by Michael Arrington, techcrunch.com, "My guess is this has nothing to do with the phishing attacks that started on Twitter a couple of days ago. But a few minutes ago the official Fox News Twitter account posted “Breaking: Bill O Riley is gay” (referring to the host of the popular Fox show O’Reilly Factor), right after a legitimate message about making turkey lettuce wraps.

My guess is they’re just finding out about it now, and realizing their password, which was probably “password,” has been changed. Twitter will promptly restore the account to its rightful owners, I’m sure. But here’s my question - if you’ve had your Twitter account hacked, how long did it take you to get it back?

Update: Ok, this is turning into a coordinated attack or one heck of a coincidence. The official Britney Spears Twitter account (which launched in October) also appears to have been hacked Any others?"

From Steve Jobs, "For the first time in a decade, I'm getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed."

Written by Noam Cohen, nytimes.com, "THE golfing star Natalie Gulbis recently joined the microblogging site Twitter, where she gives the public frequent updates of her life in short text messages, or tweets. First, though, there had to be a meeting between her media consultant, Kathleen Hessert, and other advisers.

“I had to talk her management team into it,” recalls Ms. Hessert, whose company, Sports Media Challenge, represents athletes and professional teams.

Deciding to join a service devoted to spontaneous, often spectacularly mundane updates throughout the day apparently was something to be thought out carefully. Ms. Gulbis and her team were concerned about who would be reading what she writes on Twitter and what they would do with the information."

Written by Daniel Lyons, washingtonpost.com, "Ge Wang never dreamed of becoming a high-tech Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He's an assistant professor at Stanford, a specialist in computer science and music whose biggest passion has been organizing nerdy "laptop orchestras" composed of 20 people each "playing" a notebook computer.

But last summer his friend Jeff Smith -- who'd run two successful high-tech companies before dropping out of the corporate world to take music classes at Stanford -- talked Wang into trying to create applications for Apple's iPhone. Smith and two others put up some seed money, and Wang, 31, set to work with a handful of engineers."

From macdailynews.com, "We've heard through the grapevine that Apple is considering releasing the Apple TV software as a separate box / download purchase.

Take any Mac, install the Apple TV software on it, deploy the appropriate video adapter, and "Boom!" - you have an Apple TV."

Written by Olga Kharif, businessweek.com, "SanDisk suspends production as inventories pile up for makers of computers, cell phones, and TVs, signaling a worse-than-forecast fourth quarter"

From iphonesavior.com, "Passenger Mike Wilson of Denver was sitting on Continental Airline’s flight 737 in route to Houston, Texas Saturday evening when the plane skidded off the runway at Denver International Airport immediately catching fire after crashing into a ravine. At least 38 passengers were taken to hospitals though there were no fatalities after the 110 passengers and five crew members evacuated on the plane's emergency slides according to reports."