WWDC 2008 is sold out! This is the first time it's happened. Looks like it's going to be a big time in ol'San Francisco town this year with all the Mac devs as well as the new iPhone developers and all the IT nerds this time.

Someone thought it would be cool to make a ye olde rotary dial simulator for the iPhone. They called it iDial.

Singapore Airlines is adding iPod/iPhone docks on a couple of planes. Perfect for watching a couple of movies that you actually want to watch on those long haul flights, instead of the usually terrible in-flight movies.

Despite Google launching it's own mobile phone platform, Android, they are still deeply committed to creating native iPhone applications. Good on ya Google.

Anyone into the P2P scene knows of Soulseek, which is pretty good for finding off-beat types of music. If you've ever wanted to use Soulseek while on the move, there's now a client for the iPhone.

A bit green to Mac OS X Server? Apple has started a series of podcasts about Leopard Server, starting with how to set up a new install of Leopard server, as well as the basics on how to manage a Leopard server. Suck it down now on iTunes.

Microsoft released a service pack for Office 2008 a few days ago - the Tao of Mac gives us a run down of what's changed or is new in the service pack.

Forum member tcn33 has taken a quick review of the Moshi PalmGuard for the 15" MacBook Pro, which protects your laptop from scratches and the like.

Intel have a new quad-core CPU designed for laptops with a low thermal output rating destined for release in September. Chances are we'll see these bad-boys in a MacBook Pro later on this year.

Cradlepoint have an interesting little device that takes a USB or ExpressCard 3G/HSDPA modem and shares the internet connection via Ethernet or wi-fi. Very useful if you have a few people or devices that need to share an internet connection out in the field.

Fresh apps of note for today:

• Cyberduck 3.0, the best free FTP client on the Mac now has support for WebDAV and Amazon S3 amongst a slew of other things.
• djay is a DJ app that links in with your iTunes library and has support for multi-touch trackpad laptops, check out the video to see how things like scratching and cross-fading work using multi-touch.
• Skype 2.7 brings a lot of fixes to this seminal app, so if you were having issues with it on Leopard, take a look now.
• Adobe has released a beta version of Flash 10 Player, which can offload tasks to the GPU, leaving your CPU free - so it's less of a resource hog playing YouTube and such. It's beta, but still worth a look.
• Readair is an application written using Adobe AIR to bring Google Reader to your desktop, a nice solution if you are a Google Reader user, but also want an OS X client to view your feeds and keep them all in sync.

Don't forget the two MacTalk meets going on in Brisbane and Perth this Sunday!

This sounds to me like a general version of Virgins Broadband.

Virgins Broadband use Mobile technology to provide local WiFi, and local telephone calls.

You could use Cradlepoint with any provider to do the same, but for the local telephone calls, where you would need to use a 3rd party VOIP service.

Does that seem plausible?

Yep, that's correct. It's just a router with the option to take a USB/ExpressCard device and share it out via wi-fi and ethernet.

Yes but what types of USB devices does it work with?

Would it work with Telstra's modems or Virgin/Optus's?

Here's a list of devices: CradlePoint Technology

The most common device in Australia is the Huawei E220 (USB soap on a rope thing), which the Cradlepoint doesn't support

So the Cradlepoint thing is doing the internet sharing thing without a Mac, right?

Yep - thats the point of it

the cradlepoint type device is exactly what I am after, earlier in the month I also found out that a Netgear MBM621 3G Internet modem does a similar thing using your virgin sim card from the "soap on a rope" type modem. Only catch is although the Netgear is listed on the au website its not avaliable till next month. And its rumoured to be arround $390 (sigh a little expensive)