Nicole Martinelli - page 35

Robert Gary Jones was enjoying a jog along on the beach with his iPod when a single-engine plane making an emergency landing hit him from behind, killing him instantly.

The 38-year-old father of two was on a business trip in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina when a Lancair IV-P aircraft lost its propeller and was “basically gliding” Monday evening before hitting Jones, coroner Ed Allen told AP.

“There’s no noise,” said aviation expert Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the National Transportation Safety Board. “So the jogger, with his ear buds in, and the plane without an engine, you’re basically a stealth aircraft. Who would expect to look up?”

Pilot Edward I. Smith and his passenger walked away from the crash landing near the Hilton Head Marriott Resort and Spa.

According to the Lancair web site, the airplane model that killed Jones is a four-seater that can reach speeds of up to 345 mph and is sold in kit that can “be easily built in one’s home shop,” with a final price tag estimated at $320,000 – $470,000.

Jones’ death is uncommon, but not unheard of: last year a Philadelphia jogger using an iPod died when a tree fell on her.

Hard to say whether volume control might have saved him, but it’s worth thinking about.

Via AP

A new app called Silent Bodyguard features a panic button that sends an SOS distress signal with GPS coordinates to potential rescuers without alerting onlookers.

While the $3.99 app, available on iTunes, isn’t the first ICE (in case of emergency) app, this one is backed by Dr. Clint Van Zandt, former FBI chief hostage negotiator and criminal profiler.

Van Zandt says the app may prove useful in situations where a person is trapped or in grave danger but can’t place a call or create a text message. In Silent Bodyguard, users program in contacts for SMS alerts, calls or email addresses to reach in case of emergency.

Silent bodyguard is the brainchild of Los Angeles mom Jo Perry whose daughters came a little too close to becoming crime statistics for comfort.  Her youngest daughter was the classmate of a girl abducted and killed while  on an errand and her oldest daughter attends the same University as the graduate student recently murdered in a lab.

Perry, who co-developed the app with Justin Leader, points out that once activated, the SOS messages will continue to be sent out every 60 seconds, updating location. Even if it goes out once, four emergency contacts will know that the user is in some kind of trouble. The alarms keep going out until turned off.
The idea is that you can communicate distress when you can’t make a call or a text. Perry keeps hers in a pocket, not her purse, just in case.

“The app is simple, but because we designed it to be silent and for “stealth” activation, it’s not the usual on-off button people are used to, ” Perry told CoM in an email. “That’s why people don’t always “get it” at first. The home screen is designed to look like a photo viewer, not an alarm. Again, to make it easy to use when a person feels threatened in the presence of people who might be hostile. Joggers, college students, realtors, etc. can find themselves in scary situations with people around whom they can’t just dial a friend and say, “I’m scared.”

We do like the idea, but wonder what you’re supposed to do when the first thing the perp grabs is your iPhone…

A judge upheld a ruling to let Steve Jobs raze a crumbling mansion in Woodside, California, though a preservation group may appeal the decision, again.

The saga of the sagging 30-room Jackling mansion is a long one. Jobs bought it in 1984 and lived there for about a decade, then rented it until 2000. Built in 1925 for copper magnate Daniel C. Jackling, it sat empty, overgrown until Jobs was granted a demolition request in 2004. (For a good look on just how run down, check out Jonathan Haeber’s amazing photos).

A local preservation group called Friends of the Jackling House went to court and kept the bulldozers at bay.  In May 2009, Jobs submitted more documentation to bolster his argument that razing the house was more feasible than restoring it.

This week a supreme court judge upheld the council’s decision, so Jobs can apply for another demolition permit.

If there’s a good thing about the recession, it seems to be bringing some fine Apple memorabilia out of storerooms and closets.

Cliff and Dick Huston — ex-Apple engineers, for the record employees 27 and 25 — have decided to part with a treasure trove of Cupertino collectibles by auctioning them on eBay.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcvN-eVfR4s

Gary Katz, patron saint of kids and parents stuck indoors with his iPhone theater in a box, has now developed a download version. (The mail-order version cost $20.)

For just $12 you get high-quality images and a choice of walls, ceilings, roofs and curtains and plus extras for a touch of customization.

It comes with instructions, you provide the laser printer, safety scissors, glue and shoebox.  In about an hour, it’s showtime!

Though a few early adopters have noted that the confirmation emails for pre-ordered iPads are slow, it looks like the in-store pick up option should be fun with some kind of launch fete in the works.

Via AleVH of Tech info team

As we predicted, the iPad went on pre-order in the US this morning in the Apple store after a nail-biting world blackout.

Are you going to reserve yours today or wait? Which one are you getting? Buying your customer limit (2) at once?

Let us know the whys and wherefores of your purchasing decisions in the comments.

[polldaddy poll=”2841120″]

The Apple store is back online, US customers can pre-order up to two iPads each for April 3 delivery.

Updates on what else is new on the store to come.

The Apple store went down at 11:01AM GMT. We’ll post an update when it’s back online. If our crystal ball readings from the past are reliable, when it goes back on line, you could be the first to pre-order an iPad.

In the mean time, wild speculation abounds — since it looks like Apple stores worldwide are all down and only US customers can order iPads — add yours in the comments.

Via isapplestoredown

Steve Jobs may be one of the most admired CEOs in the tech industry even if he’s not the richest.

Jobs ranked 136 — down from up 43 spots since last year — in the annual Forbes list of billionaires, far behind Bill Gates (no. 2), Larry Ellison (6), Google founder Sergey Brin (24), Steve Ballmer (33) and Michael Dell who came in at no. 37.

Here’s how they explained his ranking:

“Following months of rumor and speculation, cultish king of the iGeeks presented the highly anticipated iPad in January; ten-inch, multi-touch computer intended to fill gap between smartphone and laptop. Delighted: nerds everywhere. Scared to death: newspaper and magazine publishers. Also unveiled new iBookstore and iBooks application in direct challenge to Amazon’s Kindle; several book publishers have committed to content agreements. Apple shares up 100% in past 12 months. Reed College dropout founded Apple in 1976. Revolutionized music industry with iTunes, iPod. Best investment: bought Pixar from George Lucas in 1986 for $10 million. Created string of hits (Finding Nemo, Toy Story); sold to Disney in 2006 for $7.4 billion in stock. Today is Disney’s largest shareholder; stake worth $4.2 billion.”

Via Softpedia

There’s been a tremendous amount of peek-a-boo over racy apps in the iTunes store lately. Following a purge of apps with names like Epic Boobs — which once squeezed their way past censors — some of them were re-instated.

Most of the offending apps, however, were produced by small shops. The hotties available on the iTunes store from big franchises — like Playboy and Sports Illustrated — were left untouched.

In this now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t fest, Apple, however, seems to have ignored an implicit gentleman’s agreement with German publisher Springer.

Springer owns tabloid Bild whose “Shake the Bild Girl” app undresses women with a shake of the device, leaving them naked, like the babes featured in the print edition.

Apple now wants them to remove the Teutonic ta-tas from the app — leaving the women in bikinis — raising the ire of the publisher. Springer reportedly sold 100,000 downloads of the app which costs €1.59 a month ($2.15, circa), also available with a PDF edition of the print tab for €3.99 ($5,40)  a month.

“Today they censor nipples, tomorrow editorial content,” Bild Digital CEO Donata Hopfen told local media.

The issue has raised enough ire that the Association of German Magazine Publishers (VDZ) asked The International Federation of the Periodical Press (FIPP) last week to approach Apple over the issue.

More to come.

Via the Guardian

This is the man-bites-dog of gadget crime: a mugger stuck a gun in the face of a 15-year-old demanding cash but just said no when offered an iPod instead.

It happened in Sydney, Australia, where police believe the attacker was another teen.

“[The boy] offered him an iPod but the attacker didn’t want that,” Green Valley Local Area Command duty officer, Inspector Siobhan Busetto told the Sydney Morning Herald. The attacker ran away, leaving the teen unharmed and still in possession of his mp3 player. Reports didn’t specify the iPod model involved in the scuffle.

For years, iPods have been at the center of countless robberies — and a few murder cases —  attesting to their cult status and steal-a-bility.

Is this a fluke or a sign that market penetration has been reached?

Perhaps the mugger was waiting for the iPad?

All gratuitous speculation welcome in the comments.

Design collective Quirky just launched this earbud detangler that looks like a pocket protector for the aughts.

Cute, colorful and just $5, Wrapster is made out of bendable rubber. It keeps your wires uncrossed when you’re wearing an iPod and stores them when you’re not.

Perhaps if nerds start wearing what look like 4-inch safety scissors in their front pockets, those annoying co-workers who waste their time with questions like “How do I clear cookies from Firefox?” will start running for cover.

The Italian priest who launched prayer app iBreviary has now slashed the price from $0.99 to gratis.

Given the popularity of the app, Don Paolo Padrini decided to give the current version away for free. (Profits from the app previously went to refurbishing a parish shelter.)

Available in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin and an  Ambrosian Rite version (for mobile Milanese), this virtual breviary, or book of hours, gives the morning prayer, evening prayer and night prayer or complines for the day. It is the first app of its kind to obtain approval from the Vatican.

As a paid app, it was in the top 100 of its category (reference) beating out similar mobile prayer helpers like iPieta and iMissal.

What’s next? Don Padrini tells us his developers are hard at work on an iPad version they hope will be ready to launch when the new device hits stores in March.

Pulling a stunt worthy of Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible,”  thieves cut a hole in the roof of a Best Buy then dropped down 16-feet to snatch up 20 Apple laptops. Then they climbed back up, escaping with $26,000 of merchandise without ever touching the floor.

Touching ground would have set off the store’s burglar alarm. And the two or three person crew were too clever to get caught on tape: they cut the roof hole in a spot where security cameras are blocked by ad  banners.

The cinematic caper took place in South Brunswick, New Jersey leaving police to marvel at their handiwork:

“(This was a) high level of sophistication,” said Detective James Ryan, a police department spokesman told NJ.com “They never set off any motion sensors. They never touched the floor. They rappelled in and rappelled out.”

Via NJ.com

Apple won the top spot in Fortune’s  most admired company list for the third year in a row. In the annual popularity contest — business people from around the globe are asked to vote for the outfits they admire the most — Apple earned a total score of 7.95.

Why is Apple so prized? According to Fortune: Product, product, product.

“The whole world held its breath before the iPad was announced,” observes BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer. “That’s brand management at its very best.”

The top 10 of the 50 companies included just two other tech outfits Google (2), Amazon (5). Microsoft ranked number 11.

Via AJPontti

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzresnkvFGA

Ok, a cardboard theater with an iPhone in it, but this still beats the sugar-cube igloos my dad used to pile together to amuse us kids on rainy days.

Gary Katz crafted this theater in a couple of hours using a laser printer, rubber cement and a humble shoe box.  Put an iPhone in and voilà: it’s showtime.

Katz shows how he did it above, but if you’re short on patience, he sells pre-made kits — personalized on request — for $20, plus shipping.

Via iPhone Savior

Controversy pays: after going public about pressure from glass company Seele over the eBay sale of a fractured stair, former Apple employee Mark Burstiner sold the cracked keepsake for $9,950.

It comes from the spiral staircase in Apple’s 5th avenue store, Burstiner saved the glass heading to the trash after it was fractured by a customer’s Snapple bottle.

The final sale price is about four times what Burstiner first thought a 250lb glass stair from the staircase was worth, $2,500.

We can’t wait to hear the buyer gets the thing home and what they do with it. And whether the suits will have any more to say about it.

Stay tuned.

You need not risk $20 million in alimony to find deleting compromising text messages from your cell phone useful.

That’s the premise behind Tiger app, a nod to philandering putter Tiger Woods, an iPhone application that erases indiscreet SMS messages, forever, right after you’ve read them. You can set a text “life span,” then those texts are deleted from both user’s phones,  living up to its slogan “to cover your tracks.”

A boon for star-crossed lovers, double dealers, anyone needing a bit of privacy in a world of oversharing, this is certainly a more elegant solution than the double SIM card, a favorite in amore-happy Italy from where I write — where the number of SIMS outnumber inhabitants.

It also provides a much-needed buffer in the dating world, since it offers a tigertext ID you can give to out and then figure out if beer goggles are 20/20 or not.

As one of the app reviewers, JJH13 says: “I was out at a party last night and met someone and wasn’t sure I wanted him to have my number. I noticed he had an iPhone and just gave him my tigertext user name. Later I can decide whether to give him my number. I love the fact what I say via text is pretty much going to stay that way. I work as an attorney in family law and can see some great uses for this professionally.”

However, even the yawningly monogamous may find a use for this: who doesn’t have a few friends or co-workers whose SMS messages are just about always worth automatically deleting?

Boston is one of the first US cities — along with Pittsburgh and San Jose — to let angry citizens file complaints about potholes, graffitti and missed trash pick-ups via iPhone.

Boston’s Citizens Connect, which city officials say has been downloaded 5,000 times since it’s October 2009 debut, won’t be the only way people can let city government know what’s awry in their fair city.

The Cradle of Liberty aims to be the city of smartphone apps thanks to a new one called Boston Urban Mechanic Profiler, or BUMP.

It’s still under development, but the general idea is that instead of using bumping to exchange your phone number with that cute denizen of the coffee table adjacent, by bumping fists with their phones drivers or bicyclists can quickly and easily report road conditions to city officials.

To bridge the iPhone divide — wealthy areas get bumped a lot, poorer areas not at all — officials are considering equipping city workers who live in less affluent neighborhoods with iPhones so they can boost the bumps.

Via Boston Globe

You’ve got about 10 hours to place the winning bid on an unusual piece of Apple memorabilia: a cracked glass stair from the 5th Avenue store’s stunning spiral staircase.

As we predicted, Apple wasn’t happy about it. Former Apple employee Mark Burstiner, who rescued the stair from the trash after it was cracked by a customer’s Snapple bottle, got into an email tussle with a VP from Seele, the company that makes the glass stairs, over pulling the auction.

Burstiner pulled the item, then, in a post on Gizmodo, explained why he decided to put it up for sale again:

As far as Iʼm aware, I have done nothing illegal. I have not stolen. I have not deceived in any way. The step is not confidential, and it is not IP. The step is the very same that any New Yorker could see by walking into Apple Fifth Ave. The only thing I am guilty of is taking the risk of throwing out my back through having to move the step multiple times. I saw an opportunity, I asked for permission, received it, and proceeded. I wonʼt allow a major corporation to bully me into a corner. At the time of this posting, it has been seven full days since I put the listing up, and I havenʼt heard from Apple directly a single time. I have every right to sell my property, and I plan to do so.

The controversy is turning what might’ve been yet another quirky, deserted auction into a potential moneymaker.

So the architecture isn’t spectacular like some bucket-list worthy Apple stores, but the iLounge looks like a good excuse to check your email or harass expert staff about flash cookies while on vacation.

This is a rendered first look at what will be rolling out on Celebrity Cruises fleet launching in April: funky retro carpet, comfy armchairs and workstations with bar stools and more comfortable-looking work benches.

This new seafaring iLounge is an Authorized Apple Reseller where cruisers can check out the latest MacBooks, iPods and accessories. (No word on whether it will also have iPad, yet). It also has a classroom plus an “enrichment center” where trained staff offers tips.

Saturday Night Live spoofed cubicle-based reality show Undercover Boss — where the corner office guy or gal climbs back down the career ladder to go incognito as a menial employee — with Undercover Celebrity Boss.

Steve Jobs sticks a “mainentance” badge on his signature black turtleneck and tries to sell an unimpressed secretary on the iTrash and the iTrash Shuffle.

Jobs, likable if clueless in a Michael Scott sorta way, gets a much kinder send up — some say too kind — than the other celebs, most of whom (Sir Richard Branson, the Olsen twins) are barely undercover before they say stuff like: “Because I’m Martha f*ing Stewart. ”

(It’s a Hulu video, which means if you’re outside the U.S. to you’ll need to install something like Hotspot shield to view it. It’s a drag. We know.)

Via Geekosystem

Police and fire officials were called when an iPod spontaneously exploded on the desk of a high school student in West Newbury, Massachusetts.

The iPod was sitting on the girl’s desk in science class when it exploded. No one was hurt and fire chief Scott Berkenbush said the situation proved to be minor.

“iPod is the new Toyota,” Berkenbush remarked to the Daily News Online. “I think the problem is with the battery itself. If any moisture gets on it or it falls in a puddle, it can spark.”

Unfortunately, the report doesn’t mention what iPod model — one of the older iPod nanos that have had battery problems — was or whether it was a school-issued iPod Touch that more and more schools are adopting for classroom work.

Via Daily News Online

Steve Wozniak hasn’t given up his desire to appear in the spotlight: after hamming it up on “Dancing with the Stars,” he’s going to show his adorable mug at a Roller Derby event on March 6 in San Francisco.

Woz will be on hand when the Bay City Bombers Roller Derby team takes on Thunder at the Kezar Pavilion in Golden Gate Park. Tickets for the “family friendly evening” are $5-$10, organizers expect a sell out.

“Steve Woniak has been a Bomber fan for a few decades,” said team owner Tim Patten. “He will be the official game starter at the event.”

(Too bad they spelled his name wrong on the flyer.)

No idea whether the “official game starter” means he’ll be taking an initial spin on the banked track, but we really, really hope so.

Via iPad Frenzy