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Commuter Delays? iPhone Tube Refund App Pays for Itself

Londoners stuck in the tube now have a handy iPhone app to request ticket refunds.
Tube Refund, which costs $0.99, zaps off the request for riders whose journey is delayed over 15 minutes.
Depending on where you go and what time of day, a one-way tube ticket can cost from £1.80 to £4.00 ($2.75 – $6 circa) [...]

What’s Next For the iPad? A Tabletop iPad, According to Xerox PARC Circa 1991

Way back in 1991, just as Apple was transitioning from 68k to PowerPC chips, the braniacs at Xerox PARC were predicting it’s entire iPod, iPhone and iPad strategy. And next up for the iPad is a blackboard-sized device.
Nearly 20 years ago, just as personal desktop computers were taking off, researchers at Xerox started thinking about [...]

iPhone App Arms Users With Silent Panic Button

A new app called Silent Bodyguard features a panic button that sends an SOS distress signal with GPS coordinates to potential rescuers without alerting onlookers.
While the $3.99 app, available on iTunes, isn’t the first ICE (in case of emergency) app, this one is backed by Dr. Clint Van Zandt, former FBI chief hostage negotiator and criminal [...]

Early Apple Employees Auction Killer Collectibles

If there’s a good thing about the recession, it seems to be bringing some fine Apple memorabilia out of storerooms and closets.
Cliff and Dick Huston — ex-Apple engineers, for the record employees 27 and 25 — have decided to part with a treasure trove of Cupertino collectibles by auctioning them on eBay.

What’s on the block:

Apple [...]

Apple Gear Gives New Life to Classical Figures

panwithipod

California sculptor Adam Reeder is working on series of neo-classical pieces he calls Socio-technic Evolution, that depict Greco-Roman gods, combined with technological objects to illustrate the concept of how technology changes the way western culture interacts with its world.

He chose figures from the Greco-Roman period because it lies at the root of western civilization; he chose Apple products to depict the influence of technology because, well, they do.

“My work is not about the change [itself] that takes place,” Reeder explained, “but the change in interaction, facilitated by technology.”

Pan with his iPod player is the first in the series. It won first place in the spring show at the San Francisco Academy of Art University, and has been selected for showing at the TEXAS NATIONAL 2009 Exhibition. After that it will go to the “art building” in Los Angeles, and then to SoHo.

“The Greek god Pan played his flute in the woods and danced with nymphs,” says Reeder, adding, “my depiction shows Pan, still dancing as before, but no longer playing his own music. Thus, the technology changes the context, but not the nature” of the classical image.

Reeder explains further that the work is not about consumerism, or commercialism, it is about how technology changes the ways in which Western culture interacts with its world.

Among the images in the gallery below, Reeder’s unfinished Atlas is planned to hold a large-scale iPhone.

panwithipod Nano Sculpture Base
Unfinished Atlas Zeus, Calling Down the Thunder

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About the author

Lonnie Lazar

Lonnie Lazar is a writer, musician, web designer attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

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