SiliconBeat

Apple is on track to deliver its long-rumored iTablet before the holidays, according the Financial Times.

At the same time, the Cupertino is working with major record labels to counter the digital trend of  acquiring music by individual songs, not the more profitable albums as people did during the era of CDs and records, the paper reports. The plan, code-named “Cocktail,”  is to include rich interactive booklets and other features with albums.

“It’s about recreating the heyday of the album when you would sit around with your friends looking at the artwork while you listened to the music,”  the paper quoted an unidentified executive. The companies are looking for a September launch, according to the FT.

Meanwhile, Apple is hoping to release a new device that will also trigger interest anew in albums. The touch-screen tablet PC will have as much as a 10-inch screen, the paper reports.

Apple today announced an upgrade to its professional video software Final Cut Studio with 100 new features.
The updated suite of editing software includes new versions of Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Color and Compressor.
Final Cut Pro 7 supports virtually any workflow and includes Easy Export for one step output to a variety of formats and iChat® Theater support for real-time collaboration. Motion 4 includes enhanced tools, including 3D shadows, reflections and depth of field for motion graphics and visual effects. Soundtrack Pro 3 features new multitrack audio tools to streamline audio post production.
The new program sells for $999, $300 less than the previous release. It also sells as an upgrade for $299.

No, Apple is not thinking about diving into the low-end of the PC pool.
During Tuesday’s quarterly financial conference call with analysts, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook once again batted away questions about Apple dipping into the booming netbook sector.
“Our goal is not to build the most computers; it’s to build the best,” he said. “Whatever price point we can build the best at, we will play there. At this point, we don’t see a way to build a great product for $399, $499.”
Cook speculated that the success of netbooks – just about every major PC maker is cranking them out now – is tied to the recession. Ultimately, he added, consumers are going to be “disenchanted after buying these.”
To underscore his point, Cook said, “We will not put the Apple brand on a product that does not stand for innovation and does not have the legendary ease of use we are known for.”
As for whether Apple is working on a long-rumored tablet PC, the Apple executive demurred: The Cupertino company never reveals its future product secrets

Universal Studios Home Entertainment today announced a plan to deliver iPhone and iPod touch-enabled features on its upcoming Blu-ray releases that can be accessed with applications from the App Store.
The new functions will be launched July 28 to coincide with the 2-Disc Special Edition Blu-ray release of the box-office hit Fast & Furious, starring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. For the first time, iPhone and iPod touch users will have the ability to control interactive content on their Internet and Wi-Fi connected Blu-ray players.
Later this year on select Universal releases, consumers will also be to access bonus content found on their Blu-ray disc and download it into their iPhone or iPod touch; use the devices as a remote to control their Blu-ray disc features; and access additional detailed information about the film, including its cast, while watching the movie.
These releases will also integrate with social network applications or sites such as Facebook and Twitter to allow users to update their friends about movie-related activities.

IPhone and iPod Touch users will be able to use the interactive technology tied to the Fast & Furious “Virtual Car Garage” bonus feature. They also can use their devices’ touch screens to control 360-degree views of the movie’s street-racers and get technical specs for the film’s high-tech cars.

More than 1.5 billion applications have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store, a sign of how much the one-year-old online site has re-arranged the smart-phone industry.
In just a year since it opened, the App Store lists an inventory of 65,000 free and fee-based apps created by more than 100,000 developers. The applications run on the Cupertino company’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices.
“The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. “With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.”
The Cupertino company’s announcement comes on the heels of its latest iPhone release, the 3GS.

Cisco Systems, which hopes to grab a share of the sports industry business by providing network technology to stadiums, has signed up to be a sponsor of the 2012 Games.
London Olympic officials announced on today that the San Jose networking giant will replace bankrupt Canadian technology sponsor Nortel Networks. Nortel, as a “tier one” sponsor, had committed $65 million in cash and services. Cisco, on the other hand, will be a “tier two” provider, which means the company will kick in about $20 million less, according to organizers, the Associated Press reported.
“We continue on a path to deliver the most connected Games possible. We part with Nortel on good terms,” London 2012 CEO Paul Deighton said in a statement. “Nortel acknowledges our fixed deadlines and our desire to have a single supplier for our entire network infrastructure have been impacted by Nortel’s decision to move towards standalone businesses. This is in no way a reflection of their capabilities — this is all about meeting our fixed deadlines.“
Organizers hope to raise as much as $1.13 billion in sponsorships. So far, it has commitments of nearly $810 million.

Mobile-phone chip maker Telegent Systems is adding to World Cup fever.
The four-year-old Sunnyvale company just inked a deal with Claro Argentina, the telecom that is the official sponsor of the national soccer tea. Frenzied fans will be able to follow the World Cup live on trains, in cars (God forbid!) or walking on the street by tuning in with their cell phones.
The company, which makes the chip that enables mobile devices to pick up analog TV broadcasts, expects other deals to come in other “football” crazed countries in Latin America and Asia before the 2010 World Cup. The service is free to phone users.
“It will truly be the first World Cup available through mobile phones,” said Telegent Vice President Diana Jovin.
At the end of 2008, Telegent Systems, which began shipping its power-sipping chips in April 2007, had supplied more than 20 million mobile phones worldwide — including 5 million in China — with its technology.

More than 11 million copies of Apple’s latest version of Safari have been downloaded in the first three days of its release, the company announced today.
Apple, which claims Safari 4 is the “world’s fastest” Web browser, said more than six million of the downloads were for machines running on the Windows operating system.
Safari 4 loads HTML Web pages more than three times faster that Firefox 3 and nearly eight times quicker than Internet Explorer 8, according to Apple.

China-based business-to-business e-commerce site Alibaba.com, which has an operation in Silicon Valley, is doing its part to help the American economy.
It just announced a “Newpreneur of the Year” contest, which will award a total of $100,000 to entrepreneurs starting a new venture amid the recession. The contest, presented in partnership with Inc, is hosted at www.inc.com/alibaba, where entries can be submitted until August 14, 2009.
A panel of judges will review the online submissions and invite 30 semi-finalists to present their idea at regional events in October held in six cities; New York City, Miami, Dallas, Chicago, Seattle and Los Angeles.

Twelve 12 finalists will be profiled www.inc.com/alibaba for public voting. Then the top five finalists will be invited to the finale event in San Francisco on November 18, 2009 where the grand prize winner will be revealed. The winner will receive $50,000 to invest in their business. The four remaining finalists will split $50,000.

It’s a diplomat’s job to reach for the impossible.

Thus is should come as no surprise that Japan’s ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki should dream the impossible dream.

He spoke at Stanford University this week about the importance of incorporating strong environmental measures in the world’s economic recovery from the tough recession. He also made a pitch for Japan’s bullet train technology in a country now looking to expand its rail transportation service.

Fujisaki, who has been posted in Paris, London and Geneva, became dreamy as he recalled the year he studied at Stanford University. 

In addition to the “precious” friendships he developed in Palo Alto, the diplomat also fell in love with one of the area’s great wonders — its weather.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “I wish the capital of the United States was here.”

He surely is not alone in his dreams, especially as the sweltering Washington D.C. summer approaches.