John Brownlee - page 217

Microsoft’s had some good look with garnering interest in Office for Mac by giving away free MacBook Pros in the past, and now they’re at it again.

This time, Microsoft doesn’t want you to merely shill their warez or spread word of mouth: instead, they want you to share an interesting personal anecdote about PowerPoint with them on their official blog. Deliver one of the most interesting anecdotes and you might just win one-of-two ugly MacBook Pros repainted in the garish official colors of the Office for Mac logo.

Full rule details are here. Like most of you, I’m definitely going to enter, but also like most of you, the real challenge is trying to figure out which of the dozens (if not hundreds!) of witty, urbane and engaging personal anecdotes about my experience using PowerPoint for Mac to relay.

If you believe the moral crusaders in Apple’s App Review Team, the face you see to the right is an avatar of carnality and smut. Her name is Lyudmila Bouzinova, ad she’s a contestant on America’s Top Model.

According to Techradar, the guys at DLP Mobile were contacted by Apple after submitting an update to Mirror App, accompanied by in-app screenshots of Bouzinova.

Okay, maybe you could make an argument that she looks a little bit trampy, but Apple’s response seems overblown. They claimed that the images could be considered “obscene, pornographic or defamatory,” and while the app wasn’t pulled, DLP was asked to resubmit their application with updated images.

It’s not a big deal, but seriously: did Apple have to invent a time-machine to recruit App Review Team employees prudish enough to get the vapors at the mere site of an exposed clavicle? Do they have to wear burqas to work? Or is the guideline just that something is deemed risque if there’s merely a chance someone out there is going to get aroused looking at it? Because Rule 34, my friends.

We can describe the idea in one sentence: an iPod patent that switches output to mono when a pair of earbuds are split between two people.

But how, by gum, to describe the pencil-line freaks of the patent illustration, except through wordless screaming? Befreckled, sloe-eyed moppets struckwith lionitis, then decapitated, their horror-induced rictuses still face-frozen? GAH!

Good lord, Apple. If this is the best you can come up with, no wonder you prefer your iPod models to be well silhouetted.

If you’re interested in maximizing your iTuneage, Onkyo’s less-than-memorably named CS-545UK micro hi-f doesn’t just boast excellent sound quality, bass control and treble in a compact form factor… it also boasts a built-in dock capable of piping tunes from any iDevice north of the Shuffle into your living room.

Otherwise, we’re looking at a pretty high range micro hi-fi, including two 50 watt speakers, a DAB/FM tuner with RDS with 30 presets each, alarm clock functionality and support for CDs, Auxiliary and even USB.

The CS-545UK isn”t exactly a cheap piece of kit at £349, but if you’re looking for something beefier than your standard iHome dock, Onkyo’s latest is a room-filling piece of kit. It’ll be available from September.

FaceTime is one of the absolutely best features of iOS 4, but you already have to be sitting in a phone call with someone to use it. A new app called FacePlant aims to change that, though, by bringing something of an iChat-style contact list to FaceTime.

Here’s how it works. On first load, FacePlant asks you to sign up for a free account, using your name and telephone number. Then it combs through your contacts and tries to match them against other FacePlant users. If it finds them, it then keeps track of their online status, and allows you to easily kick off a FaceTime video chat with them.

Contact offline? No problem. You can leave them a video message, accessible even through 3G.

It looks fantastic. FacePlant should be coming to the App Store soon.

[via hat tip to TUAW]

Don’t giggle at professional boxer Floyd Mayweather’s bling: a diamond-encrusted, solid platinum iPod Classic. It cost him $50,000, and if you mock it, he’s liable to hit you so hard your whole family would die.

[via Gizmodo]

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9b8NlMd79w

The iPhone’s software keyboard is not always kind to we, the booze addled. Opaquely blurred vision, a wildly pirouetting universe and fingers fraught with wild jactitations are not the most wieldy of typing instruments, and after that sixth beer of the evening — or, more accurately, that sixth Grey Goose chaser — it would be nice if the iPhone would step in and make an executive decision or too about what the heck it is we’re trying to say.

Enter BlindType, which I hereby rechristen BlindDrunkType. The software employs a wonderfully accurate prediction algorithm that can transform your rotgut-induced glossalia into prose worthy of H.L. Mencken.

It seems to work quite well, and might, perhaps, have saved my “boy’s night out” from the discovery of an inamorata convinced I was spending the evening with a slim volume of poetry instead of pounding back duck farts after my goodnight “I love you, dear” text was rendered as “Q BLORPX POTRZEBIE.”

They are making it for Android and the iPhone, but naturally, the iPhone version won’t work on anything besides jailbroken phones, although apparently, the developers are hoping it will “put pressure on Apple to finally allow [replacement software keyboards].” Fat chance, but I wish them luck.

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N-3D DEMO from aircord on Vimeo.

]

Japan’s Aircord Labs have taken the iPad and brought its IPS display into the third dimension not by the usual methods — replacing the display or donning some red-and-blue glasses — but through a custom programmed app and a neat trick of crystallography. Placing a special glass pyramid on top of the iPad’s display, three separate app-generated images are merged into an animated, three-dimensional hologram.

It looks incredibly neat, even if it’s not exactly practical. Practical or not, though, it’s got me feeling some sort of primeval upgrade tug… an insistent doubt that causes me to look at my own iPad and go, “And here I am, using it in two-dimensions like some kind of sucker.”

[via MacStories]

When things on your Mac go kablooie, the incredible AppleJack repair utility is the single best pro tip you can be given. Developed by Kristofer Widholm, AppleJack is run when you boot into single-user mode and will repair your disks and permissions, flush your caches, validate your preference files, and — in general — give your Mac something of a software tune-up.

The only problem with AppleJack is that it wasn’t compatible with Snow Leopard, but lo, from the tech support angels come an update, giving AppleJack the same license to plunge inside the honeycomb of your Mac’s recesses and fiddle with its digital junk under 10.6 as it did under 10.5.

If you’re worried about your Mac’s health and want to give it a colonic, download AppleJack now.

Apple usually updates its iLife and iWork suites at roughly the same time, so yesterday’s discovery of an iLife ’10 For Dummies book to be published on September 22nd necessarily hinted at an update iWork 2010 to hit around the same time… providing those dummy guys knew what the hell they were writing about.

Today, though, independent confirmation: an iWork 2010 guide called iWork ’10: From Zero To Hero has popped up on Amazon Germany.

Of course, without any confirmation from Apple, iLife and iWork ’10 are mere speculation, but it’s been seventeen months since the last update, and it certainly seems, at least, that the software guide industry knows that something is afoot. Maybe they’re not dummies after all.

What improvements would you guys like to see in iWork ’10?

[via TUAW]

Samsung have just announced two new mid-range compact digicams with a novel twist: a screen embedded in the front to assist with your subjects’ posing, activated with a simple tap.

Called the ST100 and ST600, both cameras feature 14MP sensors, ISO levels up to 3200 (you’ll be lucky to get acceptable images at a fourth of that) and come with KREUZNACH lenses featuring optical and digital image stabilization, as well as five degrees of optical zoom.

Those lenses are the only thing that really distinguish the ST100 from the ST600: the 27mm ST600 has a wider-angle lens than the 35mm ST100, and is also a bit more sensitive to light thanks to the ST600’s f4.9 aperture, compared to the ST100’s f6.3.

Both the Samsung ST600 and ST100 will be available in September and are, of course, fully Mac-compatible. Expect the ST600 to cost $349.99, while the ST100 will cost just $20 less.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKxMuwq22sM&feature=player_embedded

With its excellent 720p video recording capabilities, the iPhone 4 is sure to gain a proper third-party steadicam sooner or later, but if you’re as impatient as Spencer Watson, you can build yourself a perfectly functional rig out of spare parts you’ve got lying around at home… or buy them straight from his online store. Looks steady enough to shoot my Evil Dead fan film, that’s for sure.

Apple has just been named co-dependent (along with nearly three dozen other companies) in a patent infringement lawsuit yesterday relating to spam filtering technology.

“Email as we know it would essentially stop working if it weren’t for InNova’s invention,” said InNova’s lawyer “More than 80 percent of email is spam, which is why companies use InNova’s invention rather than forcing employees to wade through billions of useless emails. Unfortunately, the defendants appear to be profiting from this invention without any consideration for InNova’s legal patent rights.”

And what is this amazing invention Apple stole from InNova? InNova came up with the idea of using a contextual database to identify emails a user wants from unsolicited ones according to conditions like whether or not a “From” address had been emailed before.

Spam filtering’s an amazing invention, no doubt, but it takes more to invent something than being the first to register they had the idea with the government. This is a totally scurrilous case, filed by parent troll InNova Patent Licensing in the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, well-known as a friendly court for pursing patent infringement cases. The list of defendants include Google, Dell, HP, IBM, Yahoo… as well as the likes of JC Penney, Snapple and Dr. Pepper. Really. Dr. Pepper!

Let’s hope Apple destroys these bozos.

Over the course of the last few years, the music industry has been struggling to cope with the way iTunes single-handedly changed the way music was consumed, from albums to $0.99 singles.

But is this earth change in the music industry simply due to iTunes’ ability to allow users to purchase just the songs they want, or could pricing fix the problem?

According to Eric Garland, CEO of Big Champagne, speaking at the New Music Seminar this week, the real thing killing the album is that $9.99 for an album doesn’t offer a significant discount over the per unit price of a $0.99 song, while historically, consumers have gotten a better deal on albums versus singles.

“Historically, the price of an album was five times greater than a single,” said Silverman, who believes setting the price at a tenth of an album’s cost was a mistake and that even $1.29 is too low. “It should’ve been a $1.99, and then we would’ve seen higher digital album sales because it would’ve been a bigger discount for buying an album.

The good news for album fans like me is that the $9.99 price of albums is slowly but surely making some headway: 14% of all Universal Music’s digital sales these days are for complete albums. iTunes hasn’t necessarily killed the album… it’s just put it in semi-hibernation.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkgAzB3PS1o

Are you impressed by the living, breathing Wall o’ Apps on display by Apple at WWDC every year? Polish developer iApp has created a desktop simulacrum of the App Wall in the form of the AppWall screensaver.

It doesn’t work precisely like the real App Wall, in that the icons aren’t pulled from real-time purchases, but rather pulls icons from the top free or paid apps, but it’s still pretty swank. Even better, it’s free!

We haven’t seen a new iLife release since January 2009, so common sense says that the software suite is probably about due for an update early next year.

So should you take this Amazon.fr iLife 2010 for Dummies as confirmation of a forthcoming update?

It’s hard to say: one the one hand, the book is set for release on September 23rd, so unless Apple announces iLife 2010 at their September iPod conference, we’re not going to see it this year.

On the other hand, iLife 2008 was released in August, so it’s not completely unprecedented for Apple to just drop an update into the middle of the year like this without a lot of fanfare.

Personally, I’m hoping for the latter: at the very least, I’d welcome an update to iPhoto.

[via TUAW]

Apple’s due to start sending out free cases to beleaguered iPhone 4 owners at the end of the week… and while that’s great for customers, it’s bad news indeed for companies planning on selling their own iPhone 4 cases. How do you compete with free?

Incipio is trying. They’ve just started a cute “We love our customers too” campaign. It works like this: once you receive your free bumper from Apple, you can send it in to Incipio for five bucks off one of their premium iPhon cases.

Obviously, this is only a good deal if you’re looking for a higher-quality case than the bumper, but still, it’s a nice gesture. The question is: with Apple intending on sending out third-party cases along with the bumper, what will Incipio do for people who get another free case instead? Will the same discount still apply?

With the iOS 4 update, a surprising number of iPhone and iPod Touch users are reporting a mysterious and contentless email popping up in their mailboxes, straight from the past: December 31st, 1969. Let the conspiracy theories commence!

The emails only seem to appear in MobileMe or GMail accounts, and appears without a sender, subject of content. Even stranger, the email can’t be deleted: once you’ve been 1969ed, you can’t easily go back.

The good news is there are fixes, but they are often temporary, and one involves 34 distinct steps. No official word from Apple yet on whether they’ll fix it, or what it all means… but somehow, I’m guessing, it all ties in to Roswell.

[via DVICE]

Apple has just brought their Filemaker database software to iOS devices for the very first time, and while FileMaker Go isn’t going to replace your Mac when it comes to database creation, it is a slick way to access Filemaker databases on the go.

Filemaker Go allows users to update and modify existing databases on their iPhone or iPad after they have been created and designed through Filemaker Pro. You transfer them to your device through iTunes or email, or even access an existing database online by clicking on a web link.

Filemaker Go requires iOS 4.0 or higher on the iPhone. Filemaker Go for iPad requires iOS 3.2 or better, and it will read database files as old as Filemaker 7. At $19.99, it’s not a cheap app, but for professionals who do a lot of work in Filemaker database, it’s the best solution out there.

With the iOS 4.0 update, Apple finally figured out how to bring free major updates to the iOS operating system to non-contract devices like the iPod Touch…. which makes this rumor coming out of Stuff.tv pretty questionable.

According to their app developer sources, a paid update to iOS 4 for the iPad is a “definite.” That’s a pretty big contradiction of Apple’s own iPad EULA, which reads:

Apple will provide you any iPad OS software updates that it may release from time to time, up to and including the next major iPad OS software release following the version of iPad OS software that originally shipped from Apple on your iPad, for free. For example, if your iPad originally shipped with iPad 3.x software, Apple would provide you with any iPad OS software updates it might release up to and including the iPad 4.x software release. Such updates and releases may not necessarily include all of the new software features that Apple releases for newer iPad models.

Of course, Apple’s free to change course on this, but if they figured out how to bring iOS 4 to the iPod Touch without a fee, there’s little doubt in my mind they can manage it for the iPad… even if Cupertino was tempted to go back on its word.

Fantastic. 25 years after it was first written for the Mac, Apple has chosen donate the source code of MacPaint and QuickDraw to the Computer History Museum, making one of the earliest and most efficient pieces of art software ever available to public scrutiny for the first time ever.

Originally released back in 1984, MacPaint was a revolutionary piece of software that first introduced common image editing conventions like the lasso tool and the paint bucket. From a programming perspective, though, MacPaint is even more impressive: it was so efficiently programmed and its memory constraints were so tight that MacPaint actually revealed bugs in the underlying system that could only be exposed by running so close to the edge of available memory.

According to a whimsical Steve Jobs, up to twenty-four man years went into the writing of MacPaint. If you’re interested in taking a glimpse at coding perfection spread across 5,804 lines of Pascal and 2,738 of assembly, go take a look.

To solve the iPhone 4 Antennuation problem (or, at the very least, the PR disaster of that problem), Apple’s giving out millions of dollars in free cases to anyone who bought an iPhone 4… but maybe they should have saved their money and just shipped out some of these adorable, Band-Aid style Antennaids instead: $4.99 will patch the signal boo-boos of up to six iPhone 4s, although without a kiss from Papa Steve first to make the hurt better, who can really say how effective they will prove to be?

When you think of Tron in a gaming context, you inevitably think lightcycles, which makes the official Tron game from Disney Interactive something of a puzzler: it’s a dual-stick tank shooter game. The single player is a diverting (if not particularly engaging affair, in which you blast programs into pixels across 15 different levels, but it’s the multiplayer that shines: you join a particular team, and each faction’s score is gauged weekly according to their deathmatch dominance.

The best news of all? Tron is free to download. Go grab it on the App Store, program.

If you’re a heavy-duty Flickr user, you might want to hit “Update All” under the iPhone App Store: the official Flickr app has just received a swell new update, including support for HD video uploads from the iPhone 4.

If that’s not enough, the latest version of Flickr for iPhone brings multitasking support with background photo uploads, Twitter support, fast app switching and enhanced full-screen browsing behavior, as well as the ability to clear recent searches.

Don’t have Flickr for iPhone yet? It’s free, and you can grab it here.

9to5Mac has gotten their hands on some leaked details, showing off more about how Apple’s FaceTime videochat protocol will work with the WiFi-only iPod Touch.

As we reported before, FaceTime on the iPod Touch is all linked through an email address linked to your Apple ID… although interestingly, it appears you can set up multiple e-mail addresses where FaceTime contacts can contact you. Then there’s the FaceTime icon, seen above.

Interesting, and I can’t wait to try it out. My only question: does this mean the new iPod Touch is getting a mic as well, or will FaceTime users be expected to wear mic-enabled earbuds on their calls? That seems like a lackluster implementation of a new software feature Apple intends to use as the headliner of this generation of iOS devices. My money is on the iPod Touch getting a mic.