Lonnie Lazar - page 21

Users downloaded Ustream’s free video viewing app for the iPhone more than 113,000 times in the first 24 hours it was available, according to the live video broadcasting company. In only two days the app has vaulted to the top spot in the AppStore’s Entertainment category and is already the number six most popular free app.

As might be expected with such huge demand over such a short period of time, there have been reports of complaints about the app crashing and users who are unhappy that it works only over WiFi (no support for 3G or EDGE viewing), but the intense interest only serves to underscore pent-up demand for video on the iPhone – even for video of purely user generated content such as that available on ustream.tv.

The company has submitted for approval by Apple a second application that will permit broadcast of live video from the iPhone, though it remains awaiting clearance to the AppStore.

That one is likely to take off even faster than the viewing app.

Via TechCrunch

Coming Friday from Santa Monica iPhone accessory maker Phonesuit.com, theMili Power Pack promises extended, stable power in a design that compliments your iPhone’s appearance.

Compatible with both 2G and 3G versions of Apple’s mobile communication device, the Mili Power Pack’s 1800mAh battery specs at 350 Hours Standby time and will provide 6 hours of Talk time on 3G, 12 hours on 2G. Browse the Internet for 6 hours on 3G, 7 hours on Wi-Fi and get up to 28 hours of Audio play and 8 hours of Video play.

The battery pack features USB I/O ports to charge your iPhone and the Mili’s battery without removing the phone from the pack, and charge external devices, such as a Bluetooth headset from the juice in the Mili’s battery.

When the iPhone is connected to the Mili power pack, the Mili prioritizes power consumption. If the Mili is connected to a USB power source, consumption comes first from this power source. When the Mili is not being charged, the iPhone’s power consumption comes from the MiLi battery first untill the Mili’s remaining charge is less than 5 percent. When the Mili battery is less than 5% charged, the iPhone power source is used. The iPhone’s power source is always used last so it can maintain its maximum charge.

Using the included USB cable, you can also sync your iPhone without removing it from the power pack.

$79.95, from the phonesuit website.

Have you ever designed and ordered a book using Apple’s iPhoto book publishing tool? I have, and they are nice. The quality is quite good and the pricing seems fair value – they make great commemorative gifts and keepsakes. But Apple’s not really in the publishing business. Through iPhoto your options are somewhat limited and somewhat photo-centric, all of which is as it should be.

But say you’ve got a publishing idea that doesn’t fit one of Apple’s iPhoto templates and, well, gosh darn it, also doesn’t seem to be getting much interest from any of the few publishers remaining in the business of making and distributing books. There’s always the so-called “vanity press” – but what if you could just design it and print it on your own?

Well, you can. With free software from Blurb you can write, design and print your own books and sell them online. Books can be up to 440 pages long and come in a variety of sizes in both hardback and softcover, at prices that make you wonder why it’s so hard to make money in the publishing business.

Blurb’s BookSmart software for Mac (cross-platform compatible with Windows) features a ton of professionally designed layouts or lets you create from scratch, integrates seamlessly with iPhoto, lets you import from online sources such as Flickr and Picasa, and supports all of your own fonts in a variety of sizes and text styles.

When you’re done creating, you can sell your masterpiece online in the Blurb Bookstore and keep 100% of the markup.

Blurb may not save the publishing industry the way iTunes saved the music industry, but it’s nice to know you can be a Paperback Writer for just $4.95.

Handicappers currently make the new Palm Pre the most worthy contender for iPhone’s title as The Coolest Handset, so it’s no surprise there’s an “I’m a Mac” style advertising spoof pitting the two devices against one another. Here’s an installment based on Pre’s “wireless” charging capabilities.

The fun just never ends with Apple products and those who’d be like them.

Via blinkx

Wall Street greeted Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th president of the US by shedding more than 5% of its total value Tuesday. Some might interpret the market action as a vote of no confidence in the new administration, others likely view the dip as an indication of challenges ahead for the US economy and still others would say the market for stocks acts as any market with excess inventory on hand – by putting things on sale.

The sale price for shares of Apple (AAPL) closed Tuesday at $78.20, the cheapest price the stock has seen in over two years, more than 60% off its all-time high of $200, set in December 2007. One of the most widely followed Apple analysts, Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray affirmed a price target of $235 for Apple stock as recently as December and today’s price action, coming just one trading session prior to the company’s quarterly earnings announcement, would seem to be Wall Street’s equivalent of a one-day red tag sale.

So what do you think? Is Wall Street giving potential Apple shareholders a gift, or is it trying to unload damaged goods while it still can? Can a guy like Munster, who follows in minute detail every financial move the company makes, who reports, often with uncanny precision, what Apple’s revenue and profit numbers will look like before they are announced to the public, can he seriously set a price target 200% above the stock’s current value?

What I know is that a year ago, after the market had knocked AAPL down from $200 to about $140, I wished I had some money to put into the stock, because I loved the company and its products, and I thought its prospects for the future were great. I know that six months ago, when the iPhone 3G came out and the AppStore launched with the stock trading at $175, I wished I had some money to put into the stock for the very same reasons.

Today, I know I’m kind of glad I don’t have any money to put into the stock because I still love the company and its products, and I still believe its prospects for the future are great, but it seems sometimes that’s not enough to make money in the stock market.

I thought maybe I’d seen it all when I saw Hasbro’s I-Dog, the plastic, music lovin’ mutt “trained” to obey eight commands, including “Dance!”, “Stay!”, and “Tap paw!” – virtual non-stop entertainment for the pre-tween set with iPods.

But then they went and turned the iDog into a soft, snuggly, squeezable version of the portable kids’ MP3 speaker, complete with LED lights on the pup’s “face” that show its various “moods.”

And now, the giant toymaker comes back to the kids-with-iPods well, bearing I-Turtle, a groovin’ little speaker-toy that can tap its foot along to the music, bob its head and raise its shell with synchronized lights that flash to the rhythm. But this little gem of an ePet doesn’t just play your kid’s music, it’s got its own musical riffs, “tons of blinking light patterns”, a built-in whine for more attention, and a piercing scream it’ll let out when little Susie flicks its tail.

It’s almost as if Hasbro designers took a meeting and said, “we’ll teach ’em to give iPods to 8 year-olds…”

Via SlipperyBrick

Apple approved Ustream’s AppStore live video streaming app on iTunes Monday evening, just in time for what is likely to be the most photographed, videoed and broadcast US Presidential Inauguration ever, on Tuesday in Washington, DC.

Get Ustream’s free app on your iPhone, and if you can find yourself an open WiFi connection between 10am and 3pm (EST) Tuesday, you’ll be able to catch live footage of Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th president of the US.

Ustream’s TV-in only breakthrough may seem small potatoes to legions of iPhone jailbreakers, who’ll be able to use iPhone’s TV-out capabilities to broadcast Obama’s historic inauguration from their iPhones; it’s also quite something for mainstream iPhone users to now be able to receive live video on their mobile devices.

It figures, then, with up to 5 million people in Washington DC for Tuesday’s pomp and circumstance, a few jailbroken live feeds ought to be accessible to those who know the right people.

Sound Clip is such a thoughtful design solution to limitations that make iPhone’s speakers almost suck, it’s a wonder they didn’t think of it first in Cupertino.

A conical deflection chamber that reflects volume towards the user instead of away, the device is said to amplify sound by 10dB between the 5kHz and 20kHz frequencies. The SoundClip fits in the iPhone’s 30-pin dock, and also helps prevent users from blocking the iPhone speaker with their hand when playing a game.

For $8 and a barely perceptible modification to the iPhone’s svelte form, you can improve its sound appreciably.

Via MacNN

How about this uber-nerdy wood and brushed aluminum USB keyboard that features real Scrabble tiles for your next Mac mod project? The points score is slightly edited to show each key’s secondary function, but we think it’s just about the coolest thing we’ve seen this late on a Sunday night.

Via SlipperyBrick, via Datamancer

When there are more than 15,000 apps vying for one’s favor like so many new puppies in a box, deciding which ones to try might well come down to picking the ones with the cutest mugs. And of course, how does the AppStore display its puppies, uh, mugs? With galleries of app icons, that’s how.

So, unless you’re hip to some strong word of mouth on a particular app, or you know a few of the 500,000 iPhone app developers newly minted in the past year, you might as well start with something like the “50 iPhone Apps With Icons That Don’t Suck” approach taken by Dr. Macenstein.

A quick browse through the doctor’s post reveals worthy apps may in fact come with worthy icons, such as Dizzy Bee, the highly addicting tilt game, seeker, a free business and residential listings search app, and Rocket Taxi – Cab Finder, an app that uses GPS or WiFi to help you find the nearest cab company.

I feel the doctor went a little strong to the games section with his picks, but the AppStore is overweighted with games, so maybe it makes sense. What do you think? Would you check out an app based on its cute icon alone? What are some of your favorite iPhone app icons?

Via Macenstein

Steve Wozniak gave his own unique and valuable perspective on Steve Jobs, Jobs’ health and Apple culture in an interview on NBC11 in San Jose over the weekend, saying, “What [Jobs] says, we ought to accept,” referring to the public’s insatiable curiosity about the Apple CEO. “No matter how much he gave, in explanations and explanations and explanations, there [are] a lot of people that keep wanting more and more.”

In addition to defending Job’s public statements on his health and the culture of privacy at Apple generally, Woz allowed that “Apple has some incredible people…followers of the Apple mentality, followers of Steve himself,” who will lessen the impact of a short six month absence. “The products coming out of Apple, out of tech companies, have a long tech pipeline…they work their way through for a year, year and a half…Those products are in the pipeline, they’re not going to be disturbed.”

Woz even spoke of an epiphany he had in the shower, about how Jobs’ medical leave might benefit Apple: “He wants a rest. The rest and peacefulness. What do you do when you rest? Sometimes your mind floats. A person like him works out better concepts and products and ways the future could be and way we live our lives better than any individual could. Probably a great thing for Apple.”

Gotta love Woz’s positivity.

Ustream is bringing streaming webcam video to the iPhone, perhaps in time for you to watch the historic inuaguration of President Barack Obama from the nation’s capital next Tuesday, if Tim Cook can make a little rain in Cupertino over the weekend.

Via Gizmodo, via TechCrunch

Proving it really is the coolest company on the web, Google unveiled this week the Prado layer in Google Earth, an amazing bit of functionality that lets users zoom into almost any spot on the planet for a detailed view of what’s to be found there using the company’s earth mapping product.

The Google Earth Prado layer also includes 3D models which allow you to fly around the Prado buildings to experience the museum as if you were actually there. The paintings have been photographed in very high resolution and contain as many as 14,000 million pixels (14 gigapixels).

The iPhone version of Google Earth is not yet updated to support this feature, so you’ll have to use your desktop earth to get there.

Proving itself to be The Little Engine That Could of an otherwise dismal economy, Apple’s iTunes AppStore has reached an inventory of over 15,000 applications (some of which do not exist to reproduce the sound of flatulence) and has entertained more than 500 million downloads since its debut six months ago.

It took just 5 weeks for the AppStore to deliver more than 200 million downloads, whereas it took 6 weeks to go from 200 million to 300 million. So, the volume of interest in applications for iPhone and iPod Touch is increasing impressively, although the most recent bump is likely a result of Apple’s mobile gadgets having been popular gifts this past holiday season.

Via Mashable!

From the Get It While It Lasts department: ImageToys: iJiggles is an app whose developers somehow figured out what Apple’s AppStore gatekeepers didn’t like about the iBoobs app they rejected a while back.

Perhaps by marketing the application as image-reality-distortion magic they confused the AppStore police into thinking people would use it for anything but playing Hooray for Boobies!

Via Macenstein

Here’s an iPhone stand on the opposite end of the spectrum of one I wrote about a few weeks ago.

Given the the snark I leveled at the ingeniously simple iBend, I’m just speechless about the Ped 3.

$40 from Thought Out

You’ve got to love Japanese developer Yuki Yasoshima, whose free stopwatch app hit the iTunes AppStore this week. The version of the app on sale in the US store is “English,” but nowhere in the AppStore description is a word of it actually in English, just the same Japanese character information found on Yasoshima’s website, which is also in, yes, Japanese.

Now, that’s confidence in your product!

Fortunately, Big StopWatch is dead intuitive. Not to mention elegant, graphically boss and accurate to the 100th of a second.

If any of our Japanese-savvy readers want to take a shot at Yasoshima’s app description, it’s appended after the jump. Please let us know what we’re missing in comments.

In Apple rumor news having nothing to do with Steve Jobs’ health, a new Mac mini, featuring Intel’s Atom processor and the same Nvidia GeForce graphics processor found in the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros is said to be set for release in March, according to a report at Tom’s Hardware.

Citing an Nvidia partner as the source for the information, Tom’s reports the refreshed mini will pair Nvidia’s GeForce 9400 graphics processor with Intel’s dual-core 1.6 GHz Atom 330 processor and come to market around the time of CeBit, the world’s largest trade show for information and telecommunications technology, held annually in Hanover, Germany.

An update to Tom’s original report cites conflicting rumor talk out of AppleInsider suggesting that Apple may be using Nvidia’s Ion platform for an updated Apple TV, while acknowledging that no one really knows what’s going on for sure.

Tom’s Hardware via macrumors

A couple of the larger media egos on the Apple beat got into a public spat on CNBC Wednesday, in the wake of Steve Jobs’ sudden decision to step aside from day-to-day operations in Cupertino.

Newsweek columnist Dan Lyons, who outed himself as the man behind the formerly wildly popular blog Fake Steve Jobs told CNBC’s Silicon Valley bureau chief, Jim Goldman, he’d been “played” and “punked” by his sources at Apple.

Goldman had previously reported, in the wake of Jobs’ decision to forgo the keynote address at Macworld 2009, that his sources had assured him the Apple CEO was fine and healthy and that the company’s decisions around Macworld had more to do with its long-term market strategy, and had not been guided by any concerns about Jobs’ health.

The clip is a bit of Kabuki theater that reminds one of nothing so much as children squabbling over a dying parent. It devolves, as so many of these things do, into a tempest of shouting and mewling. The conversation’s moderator sums it up nicely at the end, saying, “nobody can hear anything you guys are saying because you’re talking all over one another, and we’re out of time.”

Sad.

Via Cnet

Image via Flickr, used with permission

Steve Jobs is in a no-win situation right now. Either he’s healthy and he keeps coming to work every day and the question on everyone’s mind remains, “is Steve really healthy?” or, he’s not healthy and he takes some time to go get better, and the question on everyone’s mind remains, “how long is Steve going to live?” In either case, Apple is deprived of the singular focus of its driving force; in either case no one stops wondering about his health.

Many hope beyond hope that Jobs will regain his health and his drive and his focus, that he will return to Apple this summer, or sometime, and lead the company to many more years of innovating and producing products that “put a ding in the universe.”

Some believe his decision Wednesday to absent himself from the day-to-day operations at Apple signals the beginning of the end, that he is taking time to spend with his family and to prepare for his inevitable death coming sooner rather than later. And many wish him all the peace and comfort he can find in the love of those closest to him if such should indeed be the case.

What’s certain is there will be oceans of ink poured into writing about Steve Jobs and the unique place he has made for himself in his life and times. Whether he dies tomorrow or lives another twenty, thirty, fifty years, he has assured for himself a legacy of renown unlike anyone of his generation.

He’s been called a tyrant and a diva, a rock star and a king – and such superlatives are not out of proportion to the impact he has made on the way people live, not only in contemporary times, but on the way people will live long after he is gone.

I saw on Wednesday a piece about Jobs, written by music industry analyst Bob Lefsetz, who laments his feeling Jobs’ demise is imminent, saying his death “will be like the loss of Lennon. We will feel collectively that we’ve lost something that can’t be replaced.” And I have no doubt many will feel that way.

But the fact is, music didn’t die with the passing of John Lennon, as sad and incomprehensible as his death was, and as big and unfixable a hole as there seemed to be in his absence. His work lives on, for one thing, but also his example and his influence continue to inspire songwriters and musicians a generation later. The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, ironically, had a prominent place just a week ago at Macworld, where Jobs’ presence was so sorely missed.

The day Steve Jobs dies may seem, as Lefsetz wrote, “like one of those great teen songs, where the lover dies and the singer just can’t move on.” But, like Lennon, his work will also live on. His example and his influence will continue to inspire people in many walks of life, I daresay, for generations to come. And that is something to be happy about.

Back in December, Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen put up an entertaining spoof of the iconic children’s book series Choose Your Own Adventure, in which the game is to pick Apple’s next CEO.

Perhaps you saw it. Even if you did, my guess is that you didn’t think it was quite as poignant then as it seems today. Chen probably didn’t think, either, his post might enjoy the second life it’s getting out of Jobs’ announcement Wednesday that he’ll take a leave of absence from day-to-day Apple affairs until June.

It is clever, and it’s fun, and everyone can use a little adventure now and then.

Via Gizmodo

The ad targeting algorithm they use over at the Washington Post has either got a sick sense of humor baked-in, or perhaps the instance of the ad running with the story above is a stone cold coincidence. Either way, it’s a chance to seek levity in a bit of a heavy moment for the Apple community.

Godspeed, Mr. Jobs.

Via TechCrunch

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced he will take a medical leave of absence until June in an email letter sent Wednesday to all Apple employees.

Citing continued distractions stemming from curiosity over his personal health that have affected him, his family and “everyone else at Apple,” Jobs admitted his health issues are “more complex than [he] originally thought” and has asked Tim Cook, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations until Jobs’ intended return to the company in June.

Jobs said that he plans to remain involved in major strategic decisions while he is away and said the company’s board of directors fully supports this plan.

The full text of Jobs’ email is after the jump.

Apple has begun approving the first wave of browser products to compete with Mobile Safari on the iPhone and iPod Touch, signaling the company may not be the great curmudgeon of handheld computing after all.

The apparent shift in Apple’s previous policy of denying AppStore certification to software products that “duplicate the functionality” of its own applications that ship with the devices, a handful of browser apps have begun showing up in recent days on the iTunes store.

Incognito, from developer Dan Park, promises completely anonymous browsing, with all history cleared simply by closing the application.

Edge Browser is a free app that opens up valuable screen real estate, but forces the address and navigation tools into the Settings menu, which doesn’t seem too promising a design feature to me.

WebMate is a 99¢ solution to tabbed browsing on the iPhone, that works by queuing up all the links you click on, then allowing you to view them one by one when you’re ready.