If you own an Apple TV, you’re probably frustrated by the fact that most videos you download from various parts of the Web aren’t compatible with it. If they were, it would be a mere matter of seconds between the time you finished the download and sat down to watch the video in your lounge room.

There is a way around the hassle of constantly converting videos, though, with a bit of software and trickery. We take you through the steps to automating the conversion process and show you how to fix video metadata in iTunes, which is infamous for not allowing you to change the video kind from movie to TV show or music video if you acquired the media from anywhere but the iTunes Store.

Here’s what we’ll do:

- Define a download folder for your videos.

- Monitor this folder for new videos and convert them to an Apple TV-friendly format as soon as OS X sees new files in the folder.

- Automate the process of adding the file to iTunes.

- Make sure the original files are thrown out to prevent wasting disk space.

- Change the video type, show name, and add season and episode numbers and titles.

Thanks to Automator, this becomes a really nice and easy process. Automator is probably one of OS X’s most underrated applications.

1. Get the QuickTime Compression Library for Automator

When I first discovered Automator after switching to the Mac a few years ago, I was (shamefully) giddy with excitement, which I suppose isn’t totally unexpected. I went on a downloading splurge over at Apple’s Automator Actions download section and discovered the QuickTime Compression Actions file that would serve me well several years later. You can get it here, and poke around the other files in the section while you’re at it.

Install the files so the actions are ready for use.

2. Create a New Automator File

Open Automator and start a blank workflow. Save it somewhere you’ll remember.

If you’re not familiar with Automator, you should take some time to get to know it so you don’t get tripped up during the tutorial by a lack of familiarity. I don’t think I’ve missed anything that’ll make it hard for a beginner to follow along, but I always recommend fiddling with the software for a bit just in case!

3. Get Selected Finder Items

Since we’ll be saving this as a folder action, the first step needs to be Get Selected Finder Items. You can find this under the Files & Folders menu in the Library pane to the left.

4. Get Folder Contents

The next step is to tell the workflow to grab the contents of the folder (the folder being the selected finder item in the first step). You can find this action under the same Files & Folders menu.

5. Filter Finder Items

Now, we’ll need to filter out files that are already in a friendly format. No need to waste time converting files that are already good to go! Under the Files & Folders menu, insert the Filter Finder Items action.

The “Whose:” section specifies the filter. Select “Name Extension” and “Contains” under the first two menus, and then time m4v in the empty text area.

Now click on the “+” button next to the text field, and repeat those last steps, but add mp4 instead of m4v.

6. Compress With QuickTime

Under the Movies menu in the Library pane, select “Compress QuickTime Using Most Recent Settings” and, under “Choose directory for converted files,” select a location for the Apple TV compatible movies.

7. Get Specified Finder Items

Now, from the Files & Folders action menu, insert Get Specified Finder Items into your workflow. In the action pane, click the “Add” button and find the folder you’ve specified for the converted movies.

Now go and grab Get Folder Contents, the same as in step four, and place it after the Get Specified Finder Items action.

8. Add Any File to iTunes

Under the Movies library menu, add the Add Any File to iTunes action. This will take the contents of the specified folder—your converted files—and throw them into your iTunes Library. You’ll need to ensure that iTunes is set up to copy files when they are added to your library so this folder can be safely emptied into the trash later.

9. Create the Drop Box Folder

Create the Drop Box folder you intend to use to put raw, unconverted movies in—if you want you can always add an alias on the desktop or in the dock to make it easy to drop things in.

10. Send the Redundant Files to the Trash

This is obviously optional if you want to keep the videos in their original format for some reason, or keep the converted files that were created before iTunes made copies in its own folders, but I recommend it as a nice and easy way to prevent your hard drive from filling up too quickly.

Add the Get Specified Finder Items and, using the “Add” button, find both your original drop box folder and the converted files folder.

Then add the Get Folder Contents action, just like we did earlier, and finally, throw in Move Finder Items to Trash which is in the Files & Folder menu as well.

11. Save as plug-in

Go to the File menu and select “Save as plug-in.” Give the action a name, and under “Plug-in for,” select Folder Actions. Under Attached to Folder, select your drop box.

12. Set Up QuickTime Conversion Parameters

Since the workflow grabs the last used conversion parameters from QuickTime, before you run this you’ll need to go and convert a test file with your desired settings. There is an Apple TV conversion preset, so if you don’t want to customize anything to your personal tastes I suggest using this one. If you do convert anything else via QuickTime for other reasons, remember that you’ll have to run a test file using Apple TV parameters before converting videos again.

This works fine for me because I only ever convert videos so they can be viewed from the Apple TV, but it may not be very convenient if you work with video from QuickTime frequently.

13. Set Metadata Correctly

So now you have some cleanly converted files in your iTunes library. My biggest pet peeve is seeing these appear under the “Movies” section; I like them to be found under TV Shows, correctly organized by season and episode number, with the correct episode name.

Grab Set Video Kind of Selected from Doug’s Applescripts for iTunes, and install it as per the provided instructions. Now, head to iTunes and select a video. If you’ve imported several episodes of a television show and all episodes are in order and in the same season (say you have episodes 1 through 5 from season 3), you can select them all so that you don’t have to set the details one by one.

Now go to the AppleScript menu in iTunes and choose Set Video Kind of Selected. Specify the video as a TV Show under Video Kind, and add the show’s name. If you have selected just one video, set its season number and episode number. If you’ve got multiple episodes, set the season number, then under episode number, type in the number of the first episode in the selection (episode 1 using our example). The script will automatically add the rest of the episode numbers.

Flick down to the TV Shows section of iTunes. Go into the series listing, and right click the first episode, click Get Info and flick over to the Video tab. Here you can add the Episode ID—the name of the episode. The other details should be filled in. If you’re really anal about metadata, you can add the episode description as well, which will show up on your Apple TV. Now, you can simply rinse and repeat for the rest of the videos you added.

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Brightkite, one of the most popular location-based social networks, has announced an upcoming release of a Brightkite app for the iPhone. This is a much anticipated announcement because the union of Brightkite’s services with the iPhone’s GPS feature appear to be a match made in digital heaven.

The auto geo-location feature will be the heart of the new app along with some new offerings called Place Snapping and Pick a Place. Both options allow you to more easily pinpoint and identify where you are thanks to the built-in GPS service for the iPhone.

The ability to see nearby Brightkite users will also be much appreciated. You can look at a map and see everyone in the area that you specify. It can be anywhere from local vicinity to several miles. Once you locate users you can even initiate communication and possibly arrange to meet somewhere.

There are a bunch of other cool things you’ll be able to do with this new app such as track your friends and their activity feeds and locations, search for people, places and posts. You can also check your messages and post your photos and notes from your iPhone.

There’s a slew of apps for the iPhone, but this one has been heavily requested by Brightkite users, so there will be a large user base waiting to grab this one. It seems to be a perfect pairing, so one wonders what’s taken so long to get this out on the street (literally).

.

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Apple claims to have sold 200 million TV episodes to date, including one million sold in HD format since the option became available in September. And in customary fashion, the company is looking to expand on those figures with three primary pursuits: more selection, more selection, and more selection still.

Following a summer season chock-full of game-show and reality programming, this fall Apple is making an effort to provide as many dramas and comedies and the like from as many networks as possible for iTunes shoppers. The company now names ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC as HD-friendly within the pages of its storefront.

Everything from CBS’s long-time hit show “CSI: Miami” and its New York-based variant to FOX’s “Prison Break” to NBC’s “The Office” to ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” and “Dirty Sexy Money” is available either at a per-episode price of $2.99 or a season pass running anywhere between $40 and $70. Of course, all shows are available in standard definition, too, for 1/3 less cost per episode.

Ever since Apple introduced the TV option for iTunes consumers, it has had to service increasing demand for increasing amounts of programming titles and studios. And because it has had to contend with the extended removal of NBC programming for much of the last year, its sales have presumably not been as superb as they might have otherwise been. Thus, now that Apple has officially brought the majors on board as both SD- and HD-level participants, consumers are naturally bound to enjoy the comprehensive supply much more so than the gap-ridden experience that came before. Will this boost sales? Very probably.

While it’s not yet certain that HD programming will induce many sales other than the trickle of free, promotional downloads made available on a weekly, if not daily basis, the choice of HD itself is no doubt important to note. On-demand television is still in a stage of relative infancy, so pricing can only be expected to come down as time progresses.

Competition with iTunes will continue to be strong with players like Netflix, but very few distributors - iTunes and Amazon Video on Demand being the most prominent of all - can offer consumers the option to retain episodes and even full seasons of content ahead of their equivalent DVD or Blu-Ray release. This convenience is certainly advantageous to a good number of entertainment seekers who might ordinarily invest in physical media. (It should be said that Netflix’s streaming option will almost definitely have current programming to choose from in the none-too-distant future.)

All told, the iTunes TV store is still very much at a budding stage, and whether it is on the cusp of a boom, it’s difficult to say. But it is clear that Apple and its visual media partners are wasting little time in capitalizing on fresh programming. So it may not be very long before Apple can tout five to ten million HD shows sold. Or, alternatively, one billion TV episodes altogether. Looking at Apple’s release of June figures listing over 5 billion songs sold since the iTunes Store’s inception, that would be a video statistic none too small.

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Partly due to boredom, and partly due to lack of more important news, I’ve taken the time to read the extremely thorough coverage of the new Macbook Pro, due to officially come out in a matter of hours. I don’t expect much from these type of events and I know that the hype around Apple is almost always (it wasn’t in the case of iPhone, hence “almost”) hugely exaggerated, but if the rumors are true, this time even I am underwhelmed.

What’s described over at Daring Fireball - and it seems to be an accurate description - is some cosmetic changes to Apple’s laptop line. Yes, that’s right: nothing important has changed at all - the Air didn’t get a second (or third) USB port; Macbook Pros still have pretty much the same CPUs inside; the screen is still glossy (yuck); hard drives in the Air and the 17” Pro have been updated, and the new Pro has a better (but still not top of the line) video card. That’s it: that’s all. Unless, of course, you’re really, really stoked about that black keyboard and aluminum finish and no-button trackpad (I’d like two buttons, not one, and not none at all, thank you). I’m not.

It’s a laptop, folks. Those come out every day.

[blurry image courtesy of Engadget]

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Gizmodo reports that Apple, a company known for being trigger happy when it comes to lawsuits of all kinds, has sued a school for using an apple in their logo.

It’s hard to imagine that anyone will ever confuse Victoria School of Business and Technology in Canada with the company that make iThings. One could say that this is just how intelectual property laws are set up at the moment (in short: if you don’t sue, your trademark is devalued), but I’m not really sure about it. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the criteria for the possibility of confusion between two trademarks, in order of importance:

# Strength of the mark
# Proximity of the goods
# Similarity of the marks
# Evidence of actual confusion
# Marketing channels used
# Type of goods and the degree of care likely to be exercised by the purchaser
# Defendant’s intent in selecting the mark
# Likelihood of expansion of the product lines

Now, I’m not an expert, but besides possibly “similarity of the mark” and “strength of the mark”, I don’t really see much evidence that anyone will ever confuse Victoria School’s apple with Apple’s apple. And I doubt that the school will start producing consumer electronics any time soon. Plus, as Gizmodo notes, you can never look good if you sue a school. Oh well, maybe Apple’s lawyers have to fill some kind of monthly quota and this came in handy.

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Research in Motion plans to counter Apple (and Google) by launching its own app store – dubbed BlackBerry Application Center. Judging from the early screenshots and feature list from Crackberry.com, the store will be a mix of free applications – like Facebook for BlackBerry – and paid applications – like Telenav, the GPS driving directions app long offered with supporting BlackBerry devices. Users will be able to buy apps via the device, which will in turn be charged to their phone bill.

Applications for BlackBerry are nothing new – but ever since Apple decided to offer apps in a centralized store and allow developers to make money on them, mobile applications have been all the rage and in many people’s eyes the next technology gold rush. However, as a BlackBerry user, I’m highly skeptical that the device’s application center will come close to matching the windfall Apple and some of its developers are currently seeing from their app store.

First, the BlackBerry is not the iPhone. While the company is now releasing more consumer-friendly devices like the Bold and Thunder (which features a touch screen), BlackBerry’s image and user base is that of a business-focused PDA for corporate email addicts. Considering that the vast majority of top iPhone apps are either games or other forms of entertainment, it’s hard to see the typical BlackBerry user finding tremendous value in an application store like that offered by Apple. Not to mention, if you do happen to be a big mobile app user, it’s already fairly easy to find the Blackberry applications you want via RIM’s website, or via Web services you already use providing links to their respective BlackBerry apps.

Perhaps most importantly, BlackBerry does not have iTunes. The convenience and speed of browsing on your desktop – where you also already have a credit card on file – is certainly a big contributor to the app store’s success. Further, when the app store debuted, it was launching to an entrenched base of tens of millions of users who already had iTunes because they already owned iPods. RIM has neither of these advantages in launching its own app store.

My feeling is that there may be a few successful BlackBerry app builders, and they’ll be focused more on productivity and optimizing existing Web/business apps for the device. Nonetheless, launching an app store is a necessary move for RIM in terms of image, especially with other device makers offering one and launching increasingly competitive hardware and software. Just don’t expect a second gold rush for application developers.

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A rumor purporting that Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack, published on CNN’s citizen journalism site iReport, briefly sent shares of Apple in a freefall this morning. While Apple quickly moved to quell the rumor, telling Silicon Alley Insider that the news was simply “not true,” in light of the recent concerns over Steve Jobs’ health, the news was enough to spark a rapid sell-off of the company’s stock.

While it will remain to be seen whether or not this was a deliberate attempt to manipulate Apple stock and make money on the part of the citizen journalist who posted the news, it should be noted that Internet rumors concerning the stock market have existed long before we started calling anonymous Web posters “citizen journalists.” During the dotcom boom in the late 90s, stocks routinely made aggressive moves based on comments made in chat rooms and on online message boards, known as “pump and dump” scams.

In any event, today’s case is a bit different because iReport carries the branding of CNN, a respected mainstream media organization. As such, the rumor seemed more credible, and investors obviously made the decision to sell Apple stock based on it. Nonetheless, I think this is mainly a special circumstance – concerns about Jobs’ health have been in the news for months, and any indication that it is moving in one direction or the other has had implications for Apple’s shares.

Further, the premise of iReport is that the best news makes it on-air to CNN (presumably after being verified by professional journalists) – that didn’t seem to happen here. News about public companies is obviously a delicate subject, but I would hardly call this blunder the beginning of the end for citizen journalism. Media companies are learning as they go – citizen journalism for the moment is simply a compliment to the traditional tenants of reporting – and so long as the credibility of the parent organization isn’t compromised, there really isn’t much to worry about.

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There’s nothing wrong with a healthy discussion, but there’s everything wrong with a topic that’s obsolete, or better put: in a normal universe, it would be obsolete. I’m not blaming the bloggers who are discussing them; it’s obvious that some of these topics are still relevant, but the problem is that they shouldn’t be. They should have been dead and buried years ago. Let’s see what they are and drink to their quick demise.

1. DRM
OK, why the hell are we still talking about this thing? Everyone knows that the idea of digital rights management which tries to artificially remove your rights to use a product you’ve legally purchased is preposterous, idiotic, and should be abandoned. Hell, even the record companies got it, and heaven knows they’re at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to not screwing up your customers. Yes, I know it still exists; could the suits who are still pushing it in their products *cough* Spore *cough* stop doing that crap before they a) get fired and b) their companies go bankrupt? Thank you.

2. Linux replacing Windows
Every now and then I still see this topic popping up, together with the inevitable praise for the latest version of Ubuntu (what is it nowadays, Obese Ostrich?) and detailed how-to descriptions on how to do absolutely everything you do on Windows under Linux, only 100x cooler.

Guess what? It ain’t gonna happen. Decades have passed, folks, and it hasn’t happened. Microsoft sat on its ass for 6 years, and then they came up with Vista, which sucks, and it hasn’t happened. Hell, if anything is going to replace Windows, it’s going to be Mac OS, or some yet undetermined weird OS from Google.

3. The death of e-mail
Yes, it sucks. Yes, 90% of it is spam. But unfortunately, it’s not going away, despite the fact that every now and then someone proclaims it dead. As much as we’d all like a better, safer, less restricted and more intelligent e-mail, we’re going to be stuck with this one for quite a long time.

Is it cause for grief and despair? Not really: there are plenty ways to communicate on the internet, most of which are far more advanced than e-mail, and that’s probably precisely the reason why no one is trying to replace e-mail as such. We use it only for what it’s good for, and we’ve moved as far as everything else goes.

4. RIAA lawsuits

Ok, I know why we’re talking about these. Because the RIAA is evil, and because the insane “john doe” lawsuits still keep coming. What I wonder is how long this charade will go on until the legislature wakes up? Let’s repeat, in short, what these lawsuits are. Here’s a handy quote:

“A complainant may first attempt to get the subscriber information by simply asking the ISP for it. However, most ISPs will be reluctant to give out this information without a court order. The complainant will then have to issue a claim against “John Doe” (at which point they become a “plaintiff”), and will then have to ask the court for an order requiring the ISP to disclose the identity of “John Doe”“.

Yes, that makes sense. We can’t coerce ISPs into giving them personal user info, so we’ll first just sue no one in particular, then we’ll get court orders for these yet undetermined people, and then the ISP will give us all the data we need to sue their pants off. Talk about gaping loopholes in the law. I sincerely hope that these lawsuits will soon be an ugly memory of the past, never to be repeated again.

5. Microsoft/Yahoo/AOL merger

Yes, it’s the biggest IT news of the year. And no, it didn’t actually happen. So, us IT bloggers and journalists are forever bound to write about it without any real news happening, a job not entirely unlike that of Sisyphus. Trust me, if I never read another story about Microsoft buying Yahoo or merging with AOL, or any similar combination, it’ll be too soon.

And, you know what? Every young interesting Web startup brings more good to the world than the possible mating of these tired dinosaurs probably ever will. Everyone pretty much agrees that no option is good for any company, but this is what big business comes down to today: eat or be eaten, even if whatever you’re eating tastes like crap.

6. Apple rumors

Apple holds several yearly conferences in which they announce new products and services. Due to their extreme secrecy, it’s pretty much safe to assume that no one will be sure of what any new product will exactly be like until it’s officially out. Apple’s products are almost always very exciting, so one would expect that they will spark rumors several days or weeks before these events, right? Right. Nothing wrong with it so far.

But not every god damn day! The insane frequency of Apple-related rumors and their signal to noise ratio makes it totally useless for anyone to follow any of it except the hardcore Mac fans! And yet, every slightest detail visible in (obviously fake) “spy shots” of Macbooks and iPhones is analyzed to the latest detail and reported upon ad nauseam. Sometimes I wish other companies were as cool as Apple so we’d at least get a little variety here.

Have any particular tech topics you’re sick of? Please, share them in the comments!

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The music business has to be one of the most contentious online of all industries with so many players involved. On one side you have the record labels who are facing an ever increasing devaluation of their physical media business. You have the trade organizations for the music industry trying to maintain their power base and millions of dollars of income. Then there are all the online providers of downloadable content trying to eek out marginal profit margins; if you can count millions of dollars as marginal. The last two players though of this complex game of power and money are the musicians themselves and us - the fans, the listeners, the purchasers of all that music.

In the last year record companies saw their CD sales fall by 20% to $7.4 Billion while Apple and its online service iTunes is estimated to sell 2.4 billion songs this year giving it about 85% of the online market. Given that it forks over 70 cents of every dollar it collects per song to the record companies Apple’s profit margin is incredibly slim but according to Eddy Cue; iTunes vice president, in a recent CNN Money interview Apple doesn’t believe that the market will bear an increase of the price per song - regardless of what the recording industry might think.

However depending on what happens this coming Thursday when the Copyright Royalty Board set the royalty rates for the next five years; the first possible increase since the online explosion, Apple may have no choice.

The record industry is asking that the fixed per song payment be scraped in favour of 8% of the wholesalers revenues. In contrast the Digital Media Association who represent online music services like Apple is seeking to get an even lower rate of 4.8 cents per song; or 6% of revenues.

There has been a rumbling that Apple would shutter the iTunes service if the record label succeed in getting their increase. Their argument being that they are making so little money under the current structure and given that they don’t believe the consumer would accept a price increase and they are in the business of losing money. So at this point where itunes is costing they would have no alternative but to close the service:

“If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the … royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss - which is no alternative at all,” Cue wrote. “Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.”

Apple close iTunes?

Ya .. right .. and if you believe that I have some excellent bridges for sale. They would increase the price, consumers would bitch for a little while and then it would be back to business as usual. 

Have you noticed though who isn’t being included in this decision making process of royalties. That’s right - the musicians. Instead they will have to once more depend on whatever the record labels and trade associations decide to dole out after they have taken their cut of whatever ever agreements are reached. In a business that is rife with cooked books and missing royalty payments to the musicians the idea that they would see any of the possible increase in income is farcical.

Then there is us - the fans, the listeners, the purchasers.

Guess what?

We once more have the pleasure of paying more for no other reason that people like the record labels and RIAA want to shore up their power and money streams. We lose - they win.

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This week’s release of AIM for Mac 1.0 Beta might strike some as strange, given the fact that it’s 2008 and Mac OS X users have had years to grow accustomed to things like Apple’s iChat client and third-party creations like Adium, both of which have support for the protocol. But AOL insists that it is “one of the most requested applications from our users.” Because AIM for iPhone has been a popular download, apparently.

To be frank, there isn’t anything thoroughly impressive about this release - at least not in the way of outstanding features. While the company offers a Windows-friendly client that provides things like VoIP and video chat, as with many other messaging services on the Web, including Skype, users of AIM for Mac 1.0 Beta will have to remain satisfied with file transfers, AIM groups and AIM Blast groups and connections to AOL mailboxes and so forth (Just to note, personal experience has routinely shown the inability to successfully transfer files via AIM.).

If nothing else, AIM for Mac 1.0 Beta can simply be thought of as an option for those Mac users searching for AOL branding and find its heavily aged and underdeveloped predecessor, AIM 4.7 for Macintosh, too old and too tired and not thematically sufficient to run with other Tiger- and Leopard-level applications with at least some semblance of visual congruity.