Lonnie Lazar - page 16

Times are tough for Blair Saldanah.

“My wife needs medical care; and we don’t have health insurance,” he explains on the website he just put up, where he is selling quite a collection of Apple memorabilia, including posters, brochures, cards, stickers, manuals, annual Apple fact books, t-shirts, even a vintage Apple ProMouse that was Steve Jobs’ gift to attendees at the Macworld New York keynote address in 2000.

“Don’t be intimidated by the prices!” Saldanah writes on the portal page. “Most items have some bargaining room built-in, and we’ll do quantity discounts too, so find what you want and let’s talk. You might be suprised!”

That’s a good thing, too, because — for example — he’s got eleven t-shirts from various Apple Store grand openings priced at $200 each.

These economic times are difficult for so many people and one never wishes on anyone the need to sell things near and dear to them in order to raise funds for medical bills. We wish Saldanah and his wife the best.

Zumobi announced Monday the arrival of the first-ever official American Idol application for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. “American Idol Season 8 Exclusive” (link opens iTunes) follows this season’s American Idol Top 13 finalists in their quest to be named the next American Idol and brings fans exclusive multimedia content and news updates for $2.

The app gives dyed-in-the-wool AI nuts contestant bios, pictures, news and exclusive video from behind-the-scenes of the on-air show. In total, 78 original videos of the remaining contestants will be released weekly between now and the Finale, giving fans the opportunity to get know their favorite contestants better.

A “My Rankings” feature allows users to test their talent-picking power by predicting, customizing, and tracking the order of who stays and who gets voted off each week. As users track their favorite contestants’ progress, they are also one click away from the American Idol iTunes page where they can download music from recent performances.

Of course.

A pre-release version of the original iPhone has surfaced for sale on eBay, though if it’s real, it may not be there for long.

According to the Bloomington, IL seller, up for auction is “a quite rare and collectable example of iPhone prototype,” that even runs on a beta version of the iPhone OS.

The device features a matte plastic screen and has serial number YM649xxxxxx, which the seller claims corresponds to a factory in China, manufactured week 49 of the year 2006. It supposedly works, running iPhone OS 03.06.01_G — the iPhone launched running OS 1.0, version 03.11.02_G.

The seller claims the phone can make calls, browse the mobile versions of websites, and can receive SMS, but lacks any way to manually type an SMS on the phone.

Also for sale is a non-working prototype with a glass screen, a slightly higher serial number, and is described as being in “fair” cosmetic condition, with various scratches.

The bid on the two phones is currently $735, though it remains to be seen whether the auction will close on March 11 as scheduled. Apple demanded eBay take down a recent auction for a pre-release iPod, citing intellectual property concerns. eBay quickly complied, though the iPod owner apparently sold his device privately anyway.

[iLounge]

In other Rock and Roll news, U2 has chosen Blackberry to be the lead sponsor of its upcoming 360 Degrees tour, set to kick off with a June 30th show in Barcelona, Spain and travel across Europe during the summer, before crossing the Atlantic for the first US date at Soldier Field in Chicago September 12th.

The band, which famously stood with Steve Jobs in 2004 and launched a special edition iPod, said at the time, “We want our audience to have a more intimate online relationship with the band, and Apple can help us do that.”

Now, after five years in which Jobs has supposedly raked the music industry over the coals with his tough iTunes pricing negotiations, either the band feels that mission’s been accomplished, or perhaps its record company has merely had enough.

In any event, Bono, U2’s lead singer and most identifiable public figure, is a partner in the firm Elevation Partners which holds a 39 percent ownership stake in Palm, whose highly anticipated Pre smartphone is slated to debut around the time the band’s tour kicks off.

In a statement about the partnership with Research in Motion, makers of the Blackberry, Paul McGuinness, U2’s manager, said, “This tour announcement marks the first stage of a relationship and shared vision between RIM and U2 that we expect will lead to new and innovative ways to enhance the mobile music experience on the BlackBerry platform for U2 fans.”

It might be tempting to read an emotional component into U2’s “rejection” of Apple and its public embrace of a major competitor, but the greatest likelihood is that — as the old saying goes — it’s just business.

Phonesuit’s MiLi Power Pack will free you — in style — from the tyranny of needing to recharge your iPhone every night, or after say, every five hours of serious use.

The casual iPhone user probably doesn’t need a MiLi Power Pack, which, at $80 is a not-insignificant investment in extra power, especially if one tends to be in the habit of recharging the device overnight on a daily basis.

However, power users, who have adopted the iPhone as their primary telephone, or who spend a lot of time using it to surf the web, pull up Google maps, send lots of email, are into serious gaming, use it as a constant music player, or take and edit lots of photographs — those users will love having a MiLi Power Pack on hand.

Read on to find out why.

We thought $5 was pretty much a rip-off for the iBend plastic iPhone stand, though readers took us to task in comments on that story back in December.

So maybe you’ll love the idea of a $10 bean-bag, or as the makers of this cloth sack filled with airy polyester nuggets likes to call it — the Movie Wedge. The soft microsuede covering is also perfect for wiping your iPhone’s screen!

On the other hand, with thanks to Gizmodo’s Jack Loftus, we can point you to this bean bag, which you could pick up for a buck.

Your choice.

[Gizmodo]

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.

Back in December we wrote about a potential land-mine of problems for owners of new MacBook Pro 15″ notebooks, related to possibly defective NVIDIA GeForce 9400 graphics processor chips that Apple may have knowingly shipped with some units in 2008.

So far, the major storm speculated about by the Inquirer in that report does not appear to have manifested. But new reports Friday regarding some threads in the Apple support forum indicate that some owners of the new MacBook Pro 17″ model are complaining about a persistent graphics issue related to the NVIDIA GeForce 9600 chip included in those machines.

Recently some NVIDIA notebook GPUs began failing that were used in many notebook computers from Dell and Apple among others. The GPU failures ultimately led to a lawsuit being filed against NVIDIA by some affected notebook owners.

The current issue manifests in green lines that appear all over the notebook screen. More than one user is having the same exact issue, even on new notebooks. The error appears to be limited solely to the 9600M GPU. At this point, if a replacement is needed for the GPU or a firmware fix will suffice is unknown.

Is your new MacBook Pro 17″ giving you graphics fits? Let us know in comments below.

At least three new online stores selling applications to run on Apple mobile devices will soon be open for business, taking aim at capturing a piece of the projected $800 million market for iPhone and iPod Touch applications, according to a report at The Wall Street Journal online.

Jay Freeman, a 27-year-old computer science doctoral student who says his “jailbreaking” software has been installed on nearly 2 million iPhones, is opening the Cydia Store to create a vehicle for himself, and developers like him, to capitalize on their efforts to develop software built outside the tightly controlled parameters of Apple’s iPhone SDK. Freeman says he will collect the same sales commission from 3rd party developers on his site that Apple collects from developers whose wares sell on the iTunes AppStore.

Two other “renegade” application marketplaces are planned, according to the Journal report – Rock Your Phone, for iPhone users who have not yet modified their devices to download unauthorized applications, and a thid online store specializing in selling adult games for the iPhone.

While Apple has yet to indicate any action to try and prevent the online stores from opening, Freeman has nonetheless hired legal counsel to press his case, should it come to that. “The overworking goal is to provide choice,” he says. “It’s understandable the [Apple] wants to control things, but it has been very limiting for developers and users.”

Via WSJ

Image: Claude Estèbe

Japanese women between 20 – 26 awarded Apple products 4 out of the top 5 spots in a survey of their thoughts on superior design commissioned by Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization and published at the online site What Japan Thinks.

Asked “Amongst stuff you have never owned, what do you feel has superior design?” the women named Apple’s iPods first. Second place went to the Apple iPhone, with Plus-Minus Zero humidifiers (?) coming in third. In Fourth and fifth places were Apple’s desktop computers and notebooks, respectively.

The survey of 1,102 young women distributed among Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, also had respondents rank companies in general, asking “Amongst stuff you do own or have owned, what do you feel has superior design?” Apple came in first place, followed by Sharp, Sony, NEC, Muji Ryohin [a Japanese retail design company, literally named “no brand quality goods”], Panasonic, Franc Franc [a Japanese Ikea], and Nintendo. Results of the same question directed to stuff they “have never owned” again placed Apple first, and with respect to overall brand image (not tied to any specific products), Apple came in second only to SONY.

Results of the survey are enlightening, coming in the wake of the brouha-ha that grew from a recent Wired article suggesting that Japanese “hate” the iPhone.

Via AppleInsider

We’ve previously shown some of the musical amazements made possible with the iPhone and Smule’s Ocarina, and we’ve talked about the incredible, inventive Stanford Laptop Orchestra, but check out this video of The Mentalists playing a fully arranged pop tune using nothing more than their Apple mobile devices and software downloaded from the iTunes AppStore.

The truly paradigm-shifting import of the creative doors opened by Apple’s breakthrough mobile operating system are only just beginning to surface.

Via Edible Apple

If Apple’s mobile handsets are destined to become world-class gaming devices, one supposes this kind of thing is to be expected. Somehow, though, the Racing Wheel for iPod Touch showcased by Hama at CeBIT09 seems over the line, doesn’t it?

Then again, I’m not a gamer, so maybe I’m just driving outside my engine qualification.

How about it Cult gamers?

Via Engadget

Digital media company Mosaic Legends and San Francisco rock photographer Jay Blakesburgh have created a limited edition interactive app and eBook titled, simply, Grateful Dead, avialable now for $6 on the iTunes AppStore, that appears to be a template for more titles to come.

But who better to start a long, strange trip with than Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead?

Focused around a stunning Photomosaic of the Dead’s iconic guitarist, comprised of nearly 450 individual photographic “tiles” that users can double-tap and pinch their way into, down to full-res views of single photographs, the app also includes photographer’s notes on each photo, additional history of the band, built-in capability to comment on and share photographs with other app users, and a link to the Mosaic Legends store, where users can preview and purchase photographic Glicées and limited edition large prints.

If this AppStore offering takes off among the Dead’s famously loyal and devoted community, look for the idea to be reprised as a marketing vehicle in many additional incarnations.

Via MP3 Insider

The Z-bar, from Zillion TV is a compact set-top box that pulls HDTV signals from your broadband connection to offer you ad-supported HDTV shows and pay on demand.

The service is currently in beta, but when it’s available later in the year, you will be able to view shows for free with advertising attached, or buy them to watch ad-free shows.

Some big names are attached, too, such as NBC Universal, Disney, 20th Century Fox Television, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution.

Zillion TV claims 15,000 titles in the current library and by launch they say they’ll have more. Is this the future of TV in your home?

Via Crave

We’ve featured the stunning Apple-inspired creativity of artist Kyle Buckner before in these pages, from his woodworked iPhone pedestal to a custom plexiglass Apple clock.

Today the Virgina-based artist is at it again with pics of his inspired iPod Nano-Chromatic sculpture.

Buckner’s newest work is wood and plexiglass and includes a motorized Genius logo, as well some other prety cool things. The iPods at the top are made out of plexi, to which he attached a graphic from behind with transparent, double-stick film.

The iPods are on a seperate piece which spins when the Genius logo does, but they can also be made to remain stationary. The Apple logo at the top stays still. Buckner has also built in a potentiometer to control the speed of the motorized parts.

The artist tells Cult of Mac, “I planned on adding a few things to it, and just never got around to it, and still haven’t… but I really dont know if I’ll ever get time to do so. I’m constantly starting more projects and commissions.”

To which we say, Bravo, Kyle. Keep on creating…

It’s no secret President Obama and much of his team are big Mac fans, or that some of their more publicized frustrations with the transition to power in DC have come with confronting the challenges posed by outdated Windows technology and requirements to meet legal guidelines for security and archiving of official communications.

Perhaps readers will recall, as well, Obama’s stated desire to continue using his Blackberry in office and the various and sundry security concerns that have arisen around that issue.

News Wednesday is that Waltham, Mass.-based Onset Technologies may be working on technology that could allow the President to use an iPhone, should that desire strike the Commander in Chief.

Many high profile government groups, including the US House of Representatives, the Senate and NASA, use Onset’s METAmessage ACT to secure correspondence on mobile devices, as do many private businesses. The technology can scan, block and archive all wireless communication on a device that uses it and keeps companies compliant with regulations like SEC, NASD, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, FINRA and the latest Privacy Act.

While Blackberry maker Research in Motion is Onset’s most high-profile partner to date, the company’s solutions are available on all the major US carriers and it is looking to expand its reach.

Onset expects to release new versions of METAmessage ACT for Windows Mobile and Symbian soon and yes, even hopes to make a version for the Apple iPhone.

Via VentureBeat

Amazon’s ingeniously named Kindle for iPhone hit the AppStore Tuesday, a free download that synchs with Kindle owners’ web store accounts on Amazon, allowing them to read their Kindle e-books on Apple’s smaller iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

Amazon’s Whispersync bookmarking technology interacts with the iPhone app to allow readers to start reading on one device and pick up where they left off at a later time on the other device.

The app allows users to buy a Kindle ebook through the Amazon web store and wirelessly transfer it to the iPhone. First chapters of all books in the Kindle web store catalog may also be read for free in the iPhone app.

Somewhat lost in the shuffle of Tuesday’s product announcements was news of the new wired keyboard Apple will bundle standard with all new iMacs, a compact design modeled after the aluminum wireless keyboard, which omits the numeric keypad traditionally found on the right side of the device.

The new keyboard requires Mac OS X 10.5.6, and features two onboard USB 2.0 ports.

It will be available as a separate item for $49, with the long-form wired keyboard also remaining available as an optional upgrade.

The often interesting, always entertaining Dr. Macenstein posted the chart above Tuesday night seeking to explain and illuminate the perennial complaints about price vs. perceived value of new machines that surface whenever Apple has the temerity to upgrade its product lines.

In the end, the Dr. was left to conclude, “The only thing I can think is that when Apple ditched the plastic chassis of the G4 towers in favor of aluminum (or “all-oo-min-ee-um”, as our cute little “petrol-saying” UK readers call it), they didn’t anticipate that today we’d be in the midst of a massive aluminum shortage which has caused the precious metal to eclipse gold in value.”

Follow after the jump for an analysis of where the Doc gets it wrong and what to make of the so-called “Apple premium.”

If nothing else, Apple’s product refresh announcements Tuesday serve notice that even when the world around them seems to be coming apart at the seams, the product teams in Cupertino can be counted on to refine and improve the company’s product line at regular intervals.

And to, more often than not, prove the Apple commentariat wrong in the process.

A case in point is the refresh of the Mac mini. Written off almost a full two years ago by AppleInsider as a dead item, Apple has since then made THREE updates to the product line, two of them substantial. AI were originally saying the mini wouldn’t make it to Intel.

And then, just last fall, Gizmodo tried to bury the mini under rumors that European inventories were being allowed to thin.

The truth of the matter is that as much as great thinkers in the press and great dreamers among the consuming public may want Apple to craft product in the image of their hearts desire, the producers and designers inside One Infinite Loop have their own vision and their own timelines to which they prove, again and again, focused and true.

Yes, the era of locked-down secrecy may be at an end, as leaks and (invariably badly lit) spy-shots tend to precede product announcements more these days, but those who would seek to bury an Apple product before the company itself issues an EOL statement are more likely than not digging a hole they might look to crawl into months or even years down the road.

We’ve written previously about the odd dichotomy emerging from the general disdain with which the iPhone’s camera is regarded — fixed focal length, only 2 megapixels, blah, blah, blah — and the ever-increasing number of applications appearing to give iPhone photographers unprecedented control and creativity over their images.

Tonight we call your attention to a wonderfully whimsical app called ColorSplash, for two reasons.

First, it’s an amazingly powerful tool that, for $2, gives anyone the ability to transform their snapshots into arresting images in a way that Madison Avenue has long paid professional photographers and creative directors big bucks to do.

Using your finger on the iPhone’s touch interface you can highlight just enough color on a black and white image to make it pop, turning something ordinary and mundane into something extraordinary and memorable.

It’s cool, it’s easy, intuitive and it works. And it’s $2.

Which calls for the second point, which is that, when this kind of thing can be done so well and so easily and so cheaply on Apple’s mobile UI, just imagine the creative possibilities to come when touch interface technology becomes the norm for high-end mega CPU computing platforms.

What I was able to accomplish here tonight, literally in a few minutes dragging my fingers across a little 3″ screen, would have been far more complicated — if not more time consuming — to accomplish using masks and layers and industry standard digital retouching tools in common use today.

The current economic situation may appear to be dire in many respects, but the future of creative expression, as evidenced by the explosion of tools and ideas inspired by the iPhone, seems bright indeed.

Pocketmac and the ASPCA announced Monday a one-of-a-kind fundraising promotion in which $1 of every sale of Pocketmac’s $3 iPhone game ShiveringKittens will go to the ASPCA through the end of April 2009.

ShiveringKittens is a quirky puzzle game in which users must successfully arrange falling blocks of ice in order to free – you guessed it – shivering kittens – from their cold-hearted captors.

Comes complete with a strangely hypnotic soundtrack, appropriately mewly sound effects and 10 levels of increasingly difficult play.

Leave it to Van Morrison to pull back the curtain on the state of the music industry today: “We don’t know where the record business is going, and the record companies say, ‘We don’t know what’s happening, and it’s a really bad time.’ So if it’s really bad, why would you want to do business with a record company?”

Morrison, perhaps Rock’s greatest living iconoclast since the death of Frank Zappa, gave a wide ranging interview to TIME, in which the much-beloved, notoriously cranky Irish troubador downplayed the importance – to him and fans of his music – of download sites such as iTunes, admitted he’s neither inspired nor impressed by anything or anyone in music today, and said if he had one thing to do over he would never have become famous.

Follow after the jump for more on Van the Man’s thoughts on the music business and why he doesn’t need iTunes

With Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur scoreless after 120 minutes of regulation play in the English League Cup Final, Sunday, United’s goalkeeping coach Eric Steele turned to his iPod to show goalkeeper Ben Foster videos of Hotspur players taking penalty shots.

In the ensuing penalty kick shootout, United prevailed 4 – 1. Foster told BBC Sport afterward, “We went into the shoot-out as well prepared as possible. We have had things to look at over the last couple of days and before the shoot-out, you can see me looking at an iPod with Eric Steele. It had actual video on it and showed where players put things. Eric brought it when he came to the club. I have never seen anything like it. It is a fantastic tool for us.”

The PR lads and ladies ought to be pullin’ an extra pint for Eric Steele today in Cupertino, eh wot?

Via TUAW

Anyone like to start a pool on which big-city police force will be the first to gun down an innocent iPhone user as a result of the hapless victim flaunting his “Bang! Bang!” app in the wrong place, at the wrong time?

With authentic Hollywood sound effects and realistic depictions of firearms “carefully crafted,” all the way down to the “specific look, realistic options, and unique animations” of the real world gun they’re based on, according to the developer, this is not your father’s game of Cops and Robbers.