David Pierini - page 58

If you are broke after buying an iPhone, do yourself a favor and leave it in the box until you can afford a proper cover.

The quickie DIY cover demonstrated in the video below is neither smart nor attractive, but it does demonstrate just how much thought people put into different ways to live with their devices.

The balloon trick, while probably keeping part of the phone protected from rainy weather, renders the camera useless. On the plus side, if you drop your phone from a great distance, the balloon should keep your broken bits together.

There are millions of asteroids in the Solar System and relatively few astronomers to track them. They’d hate to miss that one dangerous rogue headed on a collision course with Earth.

So NASA has made it easier for the amateur stargazer to record and compare their discoveries and put extra eyes on the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

NASA and Planetary Resources Inc. have developed a computer program that is based on an algorithm that analyzes images for potential asteroids. The new asteroid hunting application, available for free download here, was announced Sunday by NASA at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas.

British singer Sarah Brightman has a five-octave vocal range and millions have paid top dollar to hear her sing. But to hit the highest note of her career, Brightman is spending her own money.

Brightman is paying a reported $52 million to become the first singer to travel in space. She will board a Soyuz spacecraft on Sept. 1 for a 10-day trip aboard the International Space Station. It is the most expensive space tourist trip on record, according to the TASS Russian News Agency.

Photos of Brightman’s training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City near Moscow, can be found on her website and in Wednesday’s Daily Mail, which gave a detailed account of her training.

Mitch Silverstein would have many visions of the future in 1964 and the first would appear in full-color wonder, his big 6-year-old eyes staring back at him in disbelief.

He was seeing himself on a color television at the RCA Pavilion at the World’s Fair at Corona Park in Queens, New York.

“It left such a big impression on me,” Silverstein said. “That was a first for most people because that was a pretty major technological step.”

For all the things the New York World’s Fair of 1964-65 was said to get wrong, the fair showcased several technological wonders that, some 50 years later, we take for granted.

The shiny new watch on Tim Cook’s wrist wasn’t the item that tipped Apple’s hand as it bets on the future of computing.

The really big development was what wasn’t in the room: multiple ports on the new ultrathin MacBook.

The future lies in a single port for powering the device and seemingly not much else. It’s called USB-C. And the “C,” for now, stands for confusion.

If you only had about three minutes to spend in the country of Austria, let Thomas Pocksteiner and Peter Jablonowski give you the tour.

The filmmakers, who formed FilmSpektakel, have just released a breath-taking hyperlapse tour of their country. The two-minute, 54-second video took two years of filming and was winnowed down from 5 TB of raw footage.

Their travel Valentine, A Taste of Austria, awakens the senses with movement, sweeping and seamless color changes with day-to-night transitions and 360-degree views of architectural and natural wonders.

Actress Anna Kendrick can probably afford a $10,000 gold watch, but that didn’t stop her from taking a bite out of Apple after it flexed its wrist-computing power Monday.

Known for her brutal Twitter truths, Kendrick offered a sour evaluation of the high-end Apple Watch, which is made of 18-karat gold and comes with a matching luxury price tag.

“We should be thanking Apple for launching the $10,000 ‘apple watch’ as the new gold standard in douchebag detection,” wrote Kendrick.

Betabrand designers don’t want to dress us in crap. But they will happily cover us in Poo emojis.

The San Francisco-based crowd-funded clothing company known for innovative blends of comfort, clever, cool and humor – consider the Photobomber hoodie or Shiny Silver disco leggings – seem to have piles of material with a poo emoji pattern.

First, Betabrand produced a Chuck Taylor-inspired high-top sneaker, then a men’s short-sleeve button-up shirt that left the company flush with orders. Now, a sleek pocket dress sprinkled with the bright-eyed, smiling coil of fun is available.

The people of St. Pauli in Hamburg, Germany are pissed off about being pissed on.

Declaring “Peeback Time,” an anti-public urination group has coated neighborhood walls with a special chemical that will return the stream back to anyone too lazy to find a bathroom.

St. Pauli draws throngs of visitors in the German port city because of bars, music clubs and a well-known red light district. The Beatles briefly called St. Pauli home before fame struck.

Today’s media presentation was billed as an Apple Watch event and even its name, “Spring Forward,” had the press preoccupied with time and wrist-based computing.

But journalists in attendance were just as excited to learn about a completely reinvented Retina MacBook. Reporters covering the Apple unveiling eagerly shared initial impressions once they got their hands on Apple’s thinnest, lightest computer yet.

The look impressed. The touch was another matter.

Blood makes Sherwood Forlee squeamish, it really does. So imagine the surprise of friends who know his weakness when he created a type of bandage for the everyday boo-boo that creates the illusion of a stomach-churning wound that would make most people call 911.

Forlee’s sense of humor is sicker than the images on his Boo-Boos bandages, though. He says he was in a “jovial spirit” when he began drawing up plans for the morbid adhesive strips.

“They look disgusting, but they also look funny,” Forlee told Cult of Mac. “While I was doing the research, I was at the point of quitting. I would google search ‘terrible wounds’ and I could only handle like five minutes at a time.”

GoPro may have a new celebrity endorser, but he seems like a real sour pus.

An octopus in the neuroscience lab at Middlebury College apparently did not like having a GoPro placed in its tank. It turned the camera around on his photographer before trying to eat it.

Benjamin Savard, a digital media producer for the College, retrieved the camera and was surprised to discover the photos, which he posted to Reddit following Monday’s shoot.

Snapchat may wipe away your messages after a period of time, but don’t count on it to wipe away your sins.

A man in the San Antonio, Texas who goes by “@Priest David” is hearing confessions via Snapchat through March 16. News 4 San Antonio interviewed the man, who said he has been a priest for 23 years and started taking the Snapchat sacrament as a way to help a college student with a class project.

The man, who wished to remain anonymous released a statement to News Radio 1200 WOAI said religion needs to “engage young adults, where they are and how they live.”

There are plenty of schools with computers. But find a teacher with tech industry experience and you’ve found a “unicorn,” says a school director who wants to introduce kids to the language of coding.

Lyel Resner, director of K-12 curriculum at New York’s Flatiron School, is promoting a series of summer workshops across six U.S. cities to teach high school students programming fundamentals, app development, front-end web design and how to get a startup off the ground.

The Cold War and that whole mutual assured destruction thing sure made the space race fun.

Every astronaut strapped into a rocket and sent toward the stars was an ideological finger in the chest of the other side, each mission asserting who had the better technology or, more importantly, the most firepower.

The United States took its licks as the Soviet Union was first to launch a satellite, put a man in space (and then a woman) and execute the first spacewalk. Only after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon could the Americans begin to perceive they were finally winning the race.

But the Reds were absolutely unmatched when it came to using talented illustrators to make the average citizen believe their country would conquer the cosmic frontier.

Sometime this month, a plane will lift off from an airstrip in the United Arab Emirates and attempt to fly around the world fueled only by rays of the sun.

How technology will keep the plane airborne, or how two pilots — taking turns during five- and six-day flights — will endure a tiny cockpit, extreme temperatures and very little sleep, have kept the company Solar Impulse busy for 12 years. Aviation history could soon be made.

Yet all anyone wants to know is how the pilots will go to the bathroom.

Just look at this team. Their faces read, “Close the deal, you won’t regret it.”

A good stock photo makes you believe, a bad one makes you laugh. But when you recognize the team leader is Vince Vaughn, his smoldering confidence projects that good laughs lie ahead.

To promote his upcoming comedy Unfinished Business, 20th Century Fox used iStock by Getty Images to create a series of stock photos, featuring Vaughn and co-stars Dave Franco and Tom Wilkinson, to promote the film. Unlike the bad stock photos that cost money, these are available for editorial use for free.

Salavat Fidai is working proof that artists need not create large pieces to make a name for themselves.

Much of what he creates is no bigger than the tip of a pencil — literally.

Under the glow of a single work light while his family sleeps, Fidai uses a craft knife and 4x magnifying glass to create tiny sculptures out of pointy pencil lead.

From the Vulcan salute by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station to the pancake artist who created a batter likeness of Mr. Spock, the tributes to the late Leonard Nimoy have been touching and creative.

Canadians have gone as far as putting Mr. Spock on the $5 bill though the Bank of Canada is not that thrilled.

The Canadian Design Resource tweeted a request after hearing of Nimoy’s passing on Friday. They asked Canadian’s to “Spock their $5 bills to honor of the iconic Star Trek science officer played on television and in movies by Nimoy.

You taking a selfie and a dolphin hunting for prey don’t seem to have much in common. But what if you could operate your smartphone with signals similar to the ones dolphins use to find food?

Elliptic Labs, which has bases in San Francisco, Norway and China, used the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, to show off advances in ultrasonic touchless gesturing Tuesday that will be available on some smartphone models later this year.

“We are excited about this,” chief technology officer Haakon Bryhni told Cult of Mac in a phone interview from Barcelona. “We’ve been working with touchless gesturing for years and now we have a real breakthrough. The technology enables you to wake up the phone, take a selfie or engage any other functions on the phone without touching it.”

Australia has a flying superhero and his name is Sheldon.

A camera mounted on the helmet of his helmet captures Sheldon McFarlane’s successful pursuit of an unconscious skydiving student during a terrifying freefall last November in Australia.

In a YouTube video posted on Sunday, the student, Christopher Jones, is seen rolling on his back as he suffers a seizure during a dive. McFarlane races to Jones, his hand reaching into the frame to pull the parachute’s ripcord. It took McFarlane two attempts to reach Jones.

Apple Man, the “sickest” drummer on virtual skins, added black nail polish to his fast-flying fingers in his latest YouTube video to display his iPad-pounding prowess.

We never see his face, so there’s no telling whether he went full Marilyn Manson with the makeup when he produced a drum cover video on Feb. 26, drumming on the iPad to the song, The Beautiful People.

Apple Man of Japan prefers to remain anonymous, but as you can probably tell by the name, he is a fan of Apple products. He is always willing to share his drumming passion with Cult of Mac readers.

Leonard Nimoy’s portrayal of unflappable calm and logic during dangerous space travels on TV and in movies inspired those whose stage is actual space.

NASA is mourning the loss of Nimoy as if Mr. Spock was one of their own. Since news of Nimoy’s passing Friday, astronauts have tweeted, uploaded a YouTube video tribute and issued statements, thanking the iconic Star Trek actor for the courage to “boldly go” into professions involving space exploration.

One of the more touching tributes came from astronaut Terry Virts, who tweeted a photo of his hand in Spock’s iconic “Live Long and Prosper” gesture at a window in the International Space Station looking over Earth.

At our current place on the evolutionary chart, we are a species that carries more things in the pockets of tighter pants.

Michael Tunney understood this every time he went to a bar and saw patrons pull out their cell phones and bulky wads of keys before sitting down. Tunney, himself bothered by keys in the pocket, set out to solve this problem.

The 28-year-old Chicagoan with a manufacturing engineer background invented Key Smart, a holder that keeps keys from jabbing your thigh and removes the unsightly pocket bulge out of form-fitting pants.

Think of a Swiss Army knife, but with keys that fold out of a slim handle.