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A New Kind Of Heist: Six Apps For Free

Those crazy MacHeisters are at it again, and this time the deal is even harder to resist.
The first ever MacHeist Nano won’t cost you a penny. You can download, without charge, fully licensed copies of ShoveBox, WriteRoom, Twitterific, TinyGrab, and Hordes of Orcs. If 500,000 people take part (which I think is a pretty safe [...]

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Cult of Mac Favorite: MobileStacks Is the Best Reason To Jailbreak. Period.

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A Commanding Sight In Iceland

commandsymbol-20081110.jpg

The keen Mac cultists among you will already know the story behind the cloverleaf Command symbol (⌘) but for those of you who don’t, this photo (by cogdogblog on Flickr, used under CC license) tells the story rather well.

The ⌘ was discovered for Apple by bitmap artist Susan Kare in a dictionary of symbols, where it was said to be commonly used in Scandinavia to identify places of interest or camp sites.

Cogdogblog’s photo shows the symbol alive and well in Iceland, 1300 miles or so away from Stockholm but culturally close nonetheless.

Where else has the command symbol been spotted? In a jellyfish. In a bakery. In a bedroom. If you’ve seen it anywhere interesting, do let us know.

About the author

gilest

Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He is a columnist for PA, and has written for the BBC, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, MacUser, Macworld, and The Morning News. He has a blog you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

Email the author | Read more posts by Giles Turnbull.

8 comments

    ⌘ is comonly used all over europe “to identify places of interest”. usually on brown background.

    They use the same signs in Sweden for ‘interesting points for tourists’:
    http://blog.tice.de/beitrag.php?file=2007_02_09_2251&sprache=englisch

    And in Norway, we have them placed under water also :-)
    http://www.norway.org.uk/culture/heritage/kulturminneskilt.htm

    The logo is adorned on the football shirts of Histon FC in England.

    http://www.histonfc.co.uk/images/histonsquad0809.jpg

    I don’t think it has anything to do with a Swedish campground – if this was so, you would expect to find it here: http://www.camping.se/templates/article____312.aspx. As I understand it, the meaning is any kind of tourist attraction. I always thought it was meant to resemble a castle seen from above.

    This sign is used in Lithuania to denote places of interest as well. Maybe in other Baltic states too.

    You can find it even in street art XD
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/cranjam/2853234904/
    is it meant as a weapon??? :P