Giles Turnbull - page 41

Caption contest!

And this time: LOLspeak is allowed! Go crazy!

The winner – as judged by me at midnight GMT tomorrow (November 27th, which is also my birthday, yay) – will be sent a unique, once-in-a-lifetime PDF containing the word “Woof” in 27 different fonts.

Never say that Cult of Mac doesn’t offer you the most amazing prizes.

(Photo used under Creative Commons license, thanks to Arroz con Nori on Flickr).

So, erm, I’m not quite sure what to make of these.

Flickr user CoreForce posted these two, erm, stimulating images this week.

I know some people love their gadgets but the iPhone as a sex object? Not convinced about that. No.

(Photos iPhone tease and iPhone tease used under Creative Commons license, thanks to CoreForce.)

For MacAddict and MacUser editor Rik Myslewski has penned the second in a series of essays about Apple’s place in the world for The Register. This one looks at the company’s environmental and philanthropic activity.

Myslewski says that in both areas, Apple has only very recently showed signs of the kind of corporate responsibility commonly displayed publicly by its rivals and peers in the business.

The new green MacBooks only appeared after pressure by Greenpeace, which included public humiliation of the company in the charity’s 2006 Guide to Greener Electronics, where Apple was placed fourth from bottom. There are no records of charitable giving until the recent, sudden support for the Anti Proposition 8 movement in California.

If Apple has been giving more to charity, says Myslewski, it has been doing so under the utmost secrecy. Which leads him to believe that no such giving has taken place at all.

Which, Myslewski declares, is “shameful” for a company with so much cash in the bank. He gives the company an “F” rating for this particular part of the report card he’s writing.

What do you make of it all? Is Apple being treated harshly here, or is Myslewski making a good point?

Whacky journo types at the Super Soaraway Sun (as it used to be known when I was a lad) have discovered that you can turn VEGETABLES into BATTERIES.

Sun senior editors, average age 57, found that they could fill a few precious inches of newsprint with a story of a man who recharges his iPod with an onion, a technique well documented in school-level science for donkeys years.

An onlooker said: “If they hadn’t been able to get an iPod angle on it, they’d never have considered it as a story at all.

“But anything iPod is worth a hundred words here and there, mainly because everyone in the newsroom owns one.”

Continued on page 94.

Here’s some news for you:

Mac OS X is, and always has been, vulnerable to trojans.

The whole point of trojans is that they exploit the most serious security problem of all: gullible users. A trojan does not take advantage of any holes in the code, all it needs is to persuade someone to click an “OK”, or to run an installer, and it has done its job.

The problem with a lot of the reporting of malware, especially by traditional media, is that the word “virus” is widely used to mean “malware”.

Most of us who are half-way to computer literate know the difference between a trojan and a virus, but most of the rest of the world has no idea.

That’s why we’re seeing news articles about “Mac viruses”, and we shall continue to see them in future. That’s also why your Windows-using friends are going to be smirking at you, saying: “Heh. And you said you didn’t get viruses on your Mac. Bet you feel stupid now, huh?”

Any computer is vulnerable to trojans. The security hole they exploit is not in the operating system, it’s the one sitting in the chair and tapping on the keyboard.

Wanna keep your computer clean? Next time you’re surfing some random porn site and a pop-up tells you to “Install a codec” so you can watch the movies, it’s a good idea to click Cancel.

Jesse Grosjean at Hog Bay Software has released Taskpaper 2.0, an impressive update to an already impressive app.

Taskpaper is the simplest sort of task management environment you can think of, and that’s why it’s so useful. It doesn’t try to do everything. But it does one thing – manage lists – extremely well indeed.

The new release has lots of new features, such as a new search system, custom themes (so you can have green-on-black Terminal style lists if you like), and (my favorite new addition) a system-wide keyboard shortcut that calls up a Quick Entry Window for, erm, quickly adding entries.

I’ve seen people criticize Taskpaper because of the features it lacks, but I don’t see it that way. It omits many things that appear in other task management apps, and it does to with purpose. Taskpaper keeps things simple. If you want to put more focus on getting things done than you do on Getting Things Done, Taskpaper is the app for you.

Last week, Jesper at Waffle Software (makers of This Service, among other apps) posted a lengthy critique of his favorite browser, OmniWeb.

Jesper’s been using OmniWeb 5 for years now, but he feels it’s been languishing, unloved and un-updated, for too long. He says:

“Why are you not caring about your product, and if you are, why doesn’t it show? Why are you letting people chatter feature requests on your forums without showing some degree of involvement? What’s with not even letting slip that either something is up for the future or that you’re thinking of letting this go..?”

When I saw Jesper’s comments, I thought he was making a lot of valid points – so I contacted Omni and asked them if they had anything to say about them.

Today, both Jesper and I got a reply when Omni boss Ken Case added a comment to Jesper’s post. In it, he admits:

“OmniWeb has effectively been in maintenance mode for the last few years while we’ve focused the bulk of our attention on other products.”

But during that time, some ideas have been brewing. Omni doesn’t have enough developers to make them happen, so he signs off with an advertisement: “Would any experienced developers like to come work for us? We’re hiring!”

So if you fancy bringing OmniWeb up-to-date, now’s your chance.

Babies? Yes, babies! That’s all it is! Babies!

Isn’t there a law against this or something?

Wait – there’s two apps here. Babies and Babies Free.

The only difference I can see between them is that Babies costs a dollar and is described as: “Look at babies until you cannot look at babies no more! There is no end to the babies!”

Whereas Babies Free is merely “All the babies you will ever want to look at!”

I see, so there’s a clear functionality difference here. The free Babies app imposes restrictions on the amount of baby viewing. Users are limited to just the babies they will ever want to see; to see babies until you can no longer do so requires the pro-level upgrade. Figures.

So that’s all cleared up then.

As the holidays loom ever closer and the global economic get worse and worse, Apple’s doing its bit to encourage a little seasonal spending.

The new iPhone Your Life section on apple.com is full of tips and tricks for new iPhone users, encouraging them to dive into the App Store and look around.

There are recommendations and staff picks, and on the Top Apps page there’s limited web-based access to best selling apps in a range of categories – the first time I’ve seen Apple replicating some of the App Store functionality on the web.

The Tips and Tricks page is also a good starting point for Christmas Day iPhone newbies (of whom, I have no doubt, there will be many).

(Via John Gruber)

Now that iPhone Firmware 2.2 is out (all 245.7MB of it), what do we all think of it? Initial reactions around the web seem broadly positive, and my own experience so far matches that. In recent weeks I’ve been seeing quite frequent application crashes on my 2nd gen iPhone, so I’ll be interested to see if they happen less often now. On very first impressions, the phone feels faster and snappier in use post-update.

Most of the changes were published in advance, but there are some hidden extras that are new to me.

These fabulous tilt-shift G4 iMacs are the work of joelsuplido on Flickr. He’s got a whole set of them, there’s more Mac ones to drool over. It’s not just the tilt-shift effect, it’s the colors; they’re gorgeous.

These images were made using Joe Prytherch’s Auto tilt-shift Photoshop action, which you can grab and use for free.

(Pic used by permission; thanks joelsuplido!)

Flickr user raneko had a mucky Mighty Mouse, and decided to take it to pieces and clean it. This wasn’t something Apple intended to happen, so it’s quite an involved process – you can follow raneko’s progress from this photo in his Apple set (which has a bunch of other great Apple pics in it).

(Photo used under Creative Commons license. Thanks to raneko.)

(I know we’ve covered Ocarina here before, but I’m a latecomer to it and I’m so blown away, I had to have a rant about it. Forgive the indulgence.)

It took me a few days to grok what’s so wonderful about Ocarina, the $0.99 app that’s been taking the App Store by storm in recent days.

It’s not just about playing music. It’s about sharing it. Globally.

When you switch on Voice Search in Google’s Mobile App for iPhone, you see a little bit of warning text underneath which reads:

“Voice Search only works in English, and works best for North American English accents.”

Tish and piffle, I thought to myself when I read that. I’m sure it’ll understand my humdrum Estuary English accent perfectly well.

But you know what? The warning was put there for a reason. Because so far, every search I’ve done has failed when I use my normal voice, and worked when I put on my appalling attempt at an American accent.

So thank you Google for giving us voice search, which is officially the New Best Thing Ever (better than the last Best Thing Ever, at any rate). But curse you, Google, for making me sound like a complete idiot every time I want to do a voice search for something in public.

Late last night I made the mistake of staying up to listen to a talk radio show on BBC Radio 5 Live. The host, Richard Bacon, used the final hour of the show to generate some calls from listeners with the simple call to arms: “PC or Mac?”

Talk show radio shows love topics like this. Ones on which everyone has an opinion.

Sadly, most of last night’s opinions were painful to hear. Not because the PC crowd were dismissing Macs and Mac users wholesale, but because they were using such age-old arguments to do it.

There’s loads of wonderful stuff in the Google LIFE photo archive, and Gruber’s warning is apt indeed: it’s a time-sink.

Needless to say, Apple has a presence within that archive.

How many times has Steve appeared on the cover of Time? Five, it seems: once in the early days, a second time in a candid shot, the third time with the first gen iMac, next reflected in the screen of a G4 iMac, and finally as the man who knows what’s next.

The Fail Whale enjoying a well-earned break, yesterday.

Today’s big question: what is the best Twitter client for iPhone? I asked everyone in my house, but neither of them had an opinion. So I asked Twitter instead.

At the time of writing, there’s a lot of praise for Tweetsville and Tweetie (not actually publicly available yet, it seems) and Twittelator.

My favorite right now is Twitterfon. I only discovered it a few days ago, while discussing iPhone software over a pint in the pub, but it as soon as I’d got it installed, it replaced Twitterific as my daily quick-must-check-my-Tweets-else-I’ll-probably-die app. (Did someone say something about time and attention? No? Good.)

Why do I like Twitterfon? Mainly because it’s fast, also because it looks like an iPhone app. Twitterific was too pokey, too cramped, too dark, for my liking.

Annnnnyway. What’s your fave iPhone Twitter tweet-o-tron, oh lovely Cult reader? Hmmm?

Now, personally speaking, I find this very weird indeed. But some people might like the idea, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

You’re probably already aware of TextMate, which like most text editors eschews a lot of the user interface stuff you see in other apps. There’s a window, with text in it, and there are many many commands you can use, but there’s not much to see: there’s no toolbar.

SuperMate doesn’t add a toolbar, it’s more like adding a skin. It tinkers with TextMate’s panels and tabs and a few other things like the web preview window, and just Leopardizes them a little.

Personally, I think TextMate’s just fine as it is. But if you’d like to see it a bit more, um, purple, maybe this will be of interest.

This is the sound of slork, the Stanford Laptop Orchestra.

All instrumentalists are equipped with a black MacBook and a hemispherical speaker pod made out of Ikea tableware.

The brain behind the orchestra is Ge Wang, and if his name sounds familiar that’s because you might have seen it mentioned recently in connection with the superb app Ocarina.

Recently highlighted at apple.com, slork makes use of custom software written by Ge Wang:

“I wanted to focus on the intersection of music and computer science. So I authored a language with my advisor, Perry Cook, and researchers at Princeton and beyond. We called it ChucK. It’s a programming language completely tailored for sound. It let us quickly synthesize sound and use various controllers in our performances.”

Dave at Newton Poetry makes a good point in his post One Used Mac Per Child about the culture of throw-it-away that pervades our society. We throw away so many old computers and monitors – still functional, most of them, but no longer fashionable – that we end up “poisoning another country and its people.”

What happened to the “make do and mend” attitude? It got swept away by cheap deals in malls, deals that made making do seem dumb.

What with all the talk about how hard it is to manage large numbers of apps with the iPhones swipey-sidey interface, I wondered what people are doing when it comes to visualizing the things. A computer’s screenshot is one large image (maybe two or three with multiple monitors). You could argue that an iPhone’s screenshot isn’t complete without all its screens – up to 10 of them – lined up side-by-side.

And that’s what some people are doing, in the process creating gorgeous little personalized maps of portable computing. This one by thepatrick on Flickr (used under Creative Commons license – thanks thepatrick), is labeled with descriptive notes that explain each geopolitical region.

There’s lots more, of course. iPhone Home Screens is what you’d expect (and includes some nice ‘shots by Lee Bennett, manning999, and my favorite from foxbert.

If yoo fink Cheezburger haz a flavr, yoo gonna wuv dis iFone app which make da lolcatz go woop-wwop-ffloop in yor pocketz. It down-woads da lolcatz wivvout da web stuffs which crashy yr Safarie. Srsly.

(Alternatively, if you are an intelligent human being who hates lolcats and thinks this post would have been better suited to the Cult of Lolcats blog (coming soon), the Cult apologizes for wasting your time and suggests you move on to the next post. Thank you.)

Blake Patterson has the kind of monitor set up that makes some of us drool. It’s even sweeter when three monitors, plus Spaces.app, plus Exposé, produces an image like this; the symmetry and balance turns it into a work of art.

(Photo of Expose+Spaces used under Creative Commons license. Thanks Blake!)

If you’re the kind of person who loves iChat so much that you want to snuggle up to it on the couch, these pillows from Throwboy are likely to be just your cup of tea.

You can choose from Finder, Dashboard, iTunes, iPhoto, iChat, and Photo Booth. Each one is hand-made with fleece and filled with polyester fiber.

You can nerd up your living room for just $30 per pillow, or $149 for the set. I don’t think they do special requests for niche apps (Camino users, let’s hear a weak cheer from you – ahh that’s lovely). But there’d be no harm in asking them to expand the set would there? What might they add next? Is a BBEdit pillow going too far, do you think?

More on the Throwboy blog. They do pumpkins too, you know.

Brian Hines has made a little video that sums up almost everything you might ever want to say to potential switchers from Windows to Mac OS X. They might be asking themselves what makes the Mac experience so much better, and if it’s worth the investment of time and money to get started on a new system that might be alien to them.

Thing is, says Brian (and most of you reading this know it already — but maybe you know people like Brian, or the people he made the video for, and you might want to make the point to them) the Mac is simply a superior machine with a superior operating system.

The Mac is “pretty slick”, he says. The PC is “much cruder”. The software supplied with the Mac provides almost everything you might need (although he would appear to have invested in iWork, and added Firefox alongside Safari).

Brian concludes with this: “If you want to believe that the Mac is a much more pleasant machine to use, that’s absolutely the truth.”

Exactly.