Microsoft Messenger recently got updated to version 7.

Yahoo! has had a native messenger client for Mac with audio and video support for a while. You can use iChat on Mac OS 10.5 to connect to your Google Talk account; albeit with a catch - audio and video chat works only if your buddy on the other side is also using iChat on a Mac (although the recently introduced voice and video chat browser plugin for gmail does address this limitation somewhat).

Now the newest version of Microsoft Messenger does support audio and video chat if you are connecting to the Office Communication Server service inside your corporate network but it doesn’t support audio or video if are connecting to the ‘public’ Windows Live service.

Microsoft Messenger is a free download. Get it from Microsoft’s download page. Given the lack of audio and video support, chances are that most of us will stick to the swiss army knife of messenger clients - Adium.

One thing that Microsoft badly needs to work on is a cohesive branding for their chat client. Depending on which Microsoft site you are browsing, you can be looking at Windows Messenger, MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger or Microsoft Messenger - all connecting to the same MSN Messenger (or is it now Windows Live?) service and/or your corporate Office Communications Server service.

Apple has started sending out confirmations for the iPhone Tech Talk event in Bangalore. The event is on 24th November from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM at Le Meridian, Sankey Road.

If you attending the event in Bangalore we would love to catch up!

Here is the what the confirmation mail says:

We are pleased to confirm your registration for the iPhone Tech Talk in Bangalore on 24 November 2008.

———————————-
EVENT INFORMATION
———————————-

iPhone Tech Talk
Monday, 24 November 2008, Bangalore

Registration: 8:30 - 9:30
Sessions: 9:30 - 17:30

Le Meridien
28, Sankey Road
Bangalore, Karnataka 560052, India
+91 80 2226 2233

——————————

IMPORTANT: Remember to bring a photo ID and this registration notice, both are required to enter the event. iPhone Tech Talks attendance is by invitation only.

Please contact us at techtalks@apple.com if you have any questions, comments or if you are unable to attend.

We have a great event planned and we look forward to seeing you there.

Regards,
iPhone Developer Program

iStore
Reliance Retail,
89, Dr. Radhakrishna Salai
Mylapore,
Chennai - 600004
Ph: 044-49930318/19 044-43930318/319

Thanks for the heads-up Manu and Siva.

We’ve updated our master list of iStores with Chennai.

p.s. WPC has a website, which seems to be down at the moment (surprise!). Google’s cache reveals the following:

The WIRELESS PLANNING & COORDINATION (WPC) Wing of the Ministry of Communications, created in 1952, is the National Radio Regulatory Authority responsible for Frequency Spectrum Management, including licensing and caters for the needs of all wireless users (Government and Private) in the country. It exercises the statutory functions of the Central Government and issues licenses to establish, maintain and operate wireless stations. WPC is divided into major sections like Licensing and Regulation (LR), New Technology Group (NTG) and Standing Advisory Committee on Radio Frequency Allocation (SACFA). SACFA makes the recommendations on major frequency allocation issues, formulation of the frequency allocation plan, making recommendations on the various issues related to International Telecom Union (ITU), to sort out problems referred to the committee by various wireless users, Siting clearance of all wireless installations in the country etc.

Go figure!

Update: (Nov 9) Just got off the phone with iStore in Bangalore and they have the iPod touch available now in all 3 capacities. We’ve updated the iPod price list too.

A lot of us - either out of aversion to iPhone’s high price (in India at least) or out of our love for a tactile keypad/keyboard - still use a Nokia phone. Now Nokia makes some decent phones that often ship with a wonderful piece of software called the PC Suite - which as the name indicates - runs on PCs only. Among other things, PC Suite enables seamless synchronization of your Outlook contacts and calendar with your Nokia phone.

Enter iSync (and exit)

To enable this functionality, Mac OS comes with an application called iSync. iSync has a plug-in architeture that allows the phone manufacturers to write plug-ins that enable Address Book and iCal synchronization with your phone. Apple maintains a knowledge base of iSync supported phones but chances are you won’t find your phone there. The list either has phones that are years old and therefore out of circulation or has only the high-end models. Macs have never been on Nokia’s priority list and so if you own a mid-end phone (a Series 40 or Series 60 (aka S40/S60) phone that cost you somewhere between Rs. 4,500 to Rs. 12,000) chances are that you’ll find yourself without any iSync support.

But there is hope

That said, you can still make iSync talk to your phone. The instructions below are specific to Nokia 5000d. It should be possible to modify them appropriately for similar Nokia models.

Pair them up

Turn on your phone’s Bluetooth and pair it with your Mac. Make sure you can do things like transfer pictures from your phone’s camera to your machine over Bluetooth.

A minor iSync surgery

Launch Terminal and paste the following commands:

cd /Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/
cd Contents/PlugIns/PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources
cp MetaClasses.plist MetaClasses.backup
open .

This will open this (Applications/iSync.app…/Contents/Resources) folder in a Finder window. Locate the file called MetaClasses.plist. Right click it (Control + click), select Open With… and select TextEdit. You’ll have an XML file in front of you. Scroll down to the end. You’ll see three closing tags:

  </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Paste the following text between the two </dict> tags:

    <key>com.nokia.5000</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Identification</key>
        <dict>
            <key>com.apple.gmi+gmm</key>
            <string>Nokia+Nokia 5000d-2</string>
        </dict>
        <key>InheritsFrom</key>
        <array>
            <string>family.com.nokia.serie60v2.3</string>
        </array>
        <key>Services</key>
        <array>
            <dict>
                <key>ServiceName</key>
                <string>com.apple.model</string>
                <key>ServiceProperties</key>
                <dict>
                    <key>ModelName</key>
                    <string>5000</string>
                    <key>PhoneIcon</key>
                    <string>NOK3230.tiff</string>
                </dict>
            </dict>
        </array>
    </dict>

Voilà!

Save and close the file. Logout. Login. Start iSync and from the Devices menu select Add Device. Your phone will now show up in the iSync toolbar. You should be able to click the round Sync Devices button to synchronize your contacts and calendar with your phone.

You can click the Phone’s icon to modify the synchronization settings.

You can replace the generic looking icon, with a somewhat accurate Nokia 5000d icon, by:

a.) Saving this icon to /Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/
Contents/PlugIns/PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources. (Icon via Eric Fish)

b.) Replacing NOK3230.tiff in the text above with NOK5000.tiff. Don’t forget to save MetaClassess.plist, quit iSync and login again.

iSync and Nokia 5000d support 2-way sync - i.e. any contact or calendar event that you add (or for that matter modify or delete) on your phone shows up in your Address Book/iCal and vice versa.

Credits: I found most of this information while browsing this thread at Apple’s discussion forum.

Fire up terminal, and give the following command to download and extract the Ruby 1.9.1 preview:

cd /tmp
curl http://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.1-preview1.tar.gz | tar xz
cd ruby-1.9.1-preview1

Now we’ll build it. This will take a few minutes:

autoconf
./configure --prefix=/opt/ruby19
make

The –prefix=/opt/ruby19 will ensure that Ruby 1.9.1 preview is installed under /opt and doesn’t muck with the version of Ruby that comes with Mac OS (1.8.6 on Mac OS 10.5.5).

Finally, we issue the following command to install what we just built:

sudo make install

That’s it! You can run it from /opt/ruby19/bin/

/opt/ruby19/bin/ruby -v
ruby 1.9.1 (2008-10-28 revision 19983) [i386-darwin9.5.0]

On a related note, Jon has a wonderful suggestion about adding an alias to your ~/.profile which places /opt/ruby19/bin in your path before /usr/bin.

Below is a small matrix which shows the price difference between the new lines of notebook purchased in the US vs in India. The prices are from the US & Indian Apple website store. Taxes are extra in both cases.

Model	Speed	US Price	In INR	Indian Price	Difference	% Difference
MacBook	2.0GHz	1,299.00	64,651.23	72,910.00	8,258.77	12.77%
MacBook	2.4GHz	1,599.00	79,582.23	88,280.00	8,697.77	10.93%
MacBook White	2.1GHz	999.00	49,720.23	56,580.00	6,859.77	13.80%
MacBook Pro 15″	2.4GHz	1,999.00	99,490.23	109,410.00	9,919.77	9.97%
MacBook Pro 15″	2.53GHz	2,499.00	124,375.23	136,310.00	11,934.77	9.60%
MacBook Pro 17″	2.5GHz	2,799.00	139,306.23	148,800.00	9,493.77	6.82%
MacBook Air	1.6GHz	1,799.00	89,536.23	97,890.00	8,353.77	9.33%
MacBook Air	1.86GHz	2,499.00	124,375.23	136,310.00	11,934.77	9.60%

*USD<->INR price is calculated at 49.77, the rate as of October 26, 2008 (source: XE.com)
Update: Since the USD INR exchange rate is a little volatile these days, you can enter the current USD to INR rate below, and click the Update button to recalculate the prices in the table above.

Imagine in Bangalore is also offering discount on the 3rd gen iPod nanos (aka ‘Fatty’). The 4 GB ‘Fatty’ nano is priced at Rs. 5,995, while the 8GB one is now selling for Rs. 7,495.

I’ve added the new 4 GB iPod nano to our master iPod price list.

Grapher

Grapher clearly shows Apple’s historically strong presence in academia - especially sciences. Grapher, as the name implies, allows you to plot equations. You start Grapher, choose the type of graph you want, type in the equation and a graph is plotted. You can add multiple equations to a plot.

You can even use a template as a starting point for your equation. Select New Equation from Template from the Equation menu to get started.

Under the Examples menu you’ll find some very advanced examples of Grapher’s usage - like one here:

Do check out some of the 3-D examples as well.

Here is a fun equation for you to try out (Cassini Ovals):

({x^{2}+y^{2}+a^{2}})^{2} - 4a^{2}x^{2 }= b^{4}, a = |_list_{0.1,0.5…1.5}, b=|_list_{0.1,0.5…1.5}

DigitalColor Meter

DigitalColor Meter allows you to pick a color from anywhere on your screen - much like Photoshop’s Eyedropper tool. It can show the color’s value as hexadecimal RGB - something that should come in handy if you are into web development.

You can press Shift+Command+C to copy the currently selected color to clipboard as text and directly paste it into your editor or even into Photoshop’s Color Picker!

Network Utility

Network Utility brings a host of networking related tools into a neat application - including Ping, Traceroute and Whois. Most of these are available as Terminal commands too. But Network Utility comes in handy when you need to run a bunch of these commands in quick succession. The app is multi-threaded, which means you can run a Ping or Whois while you wait for that Traceroute to finish.

Apple officially announced the availability of the updated unibody aluminum MacBooks, MacBook Pros, MacBook Air and the 24″ Apple Cinema Display in India at a press conference in Mumbai this morning. We are told that the MacBooks and MacBook Pros are shipping today and the MacBook Air and the 24″ Apple Cinema Display will start shipping in November. While we’ve already published the prices of the new notebooks, the price of the Apple Cinema Display was announced today. It will retail in India for Rs. 60,900. With the Rupee heading south, this is a good price (provided, of course, that $ 899 is a good price in your book for a display).

(Angeline - ‘Product Head’ (we assume Product Head Asia-Pacific) with the new MacBook Pro)

Apple’s India events are a mere formality for the press and traditional media as the blogosphere and Mac enthusiasts are usually cued in well in advance. In fact most of us get our fix of the event through live blogs in the US or through Apple’s keynote podcast the very next day.

Also, a word on MacBook family’s availability in India - ’shipping today’ doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll see the new machines at stores tomorrow or even this weekend for that matter. But we’ll keep an eye out for them and alert you of their availability here - we personally quite look forward to getting our hands on them!