Nicole Martinelli - page 38

If you take a lot of photos, you know it’s all about storage and organization.

Enter Eye-Fi’s Pro X2 8GB Wi-Fi memory card with Endless Memory Mode.

The software recognizes the pics and videos that have already been uploaded and wipes them from the card faster than you forgot which co-worker you slurred sweet nothings to at the company Christmas party. (The self-cleaning card may also help curb bad habits, if, like me, you tend to leave stuff on the camera out of  laziness or fear and loathing of iPhoto).

What else has it got? Class 6 read and write speeds for a minimum transfer speed of 6 MBs and Wi-Fi with built-in 802.11n,  plus a bunch of features for sharing your pics: geotagging, free HotSpot access for a year, uploading to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, MobileMe and YouTube (and it’ll also alert you via text message when your photos are uploading).

Price: $150.

I grabbed the Eye-Fi 4GB for my mom after realizing her new point-and-shoot came sans memory card — for $80, it’s been a great buy.

Via Wired

This bang-whiz creation is the brainchild of Justin Adler plus the handiwork of  artist/costume maker/prop designer extraordinaire Ted Southern.

It’s the innards of two Apple G4s, plus a graphic card, turned into a the kind of table that will make any night feel like was-there-something-in-my drink? night, if the promo video is anything to go by.

Sure, it doesn’t have the cool linearity of the iPod table, but it’s better than the scrap heap.

There have been times when I’ve wanted to slit a throat over the altar of Word to keep a buggy file from crashing but wonder if this is some kind of divine castigation for downloaders?

Via Digg

Even when they’re dead, Apple products are still timely  — like the iPod clock or the G4 timepiece.

Here’s a nice step-by-step transformation of a defunct Power Mac G5 into a sleek wall clock.

It’s the handiwork of Japanese Apple fan NOBON — the same one who “printed” Fuji apples with the Apple logo.

Via NOBON

Kenji Kojima developed a music app called RGB MusicLab that transforms images into music. You can download the app gratis and do what you will with the ditty coming out of that awkward family portrait on your blog, video or work presentation.

Here’s how it works:

RGB MusicLab converts RGB (Red, Green and Blue) value of an image to chromatic scale sounds. The program reads RGB value of pixels from the top left to the bottom right of an image. One pixel makes a harmony of three note of RGB value, and the length of note is determined by brightness of the pixel. RGB value 120 or 121 is the center C, and RGB value 122 or 123 is added a half steps of the scale that is C#. Pure black that is R=0, G=0, B=0 is no sounds.

The clever folks over at Synthtopia took the app for a spin using a head shot of actress Megan Fox — currently topping lad mag FHM’s list of the sexiest woman alive.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4IjeO7g6kA
If you’re not sold on the freshmen  augmented reality apps available for the iPhone, this one probably won’t change your mind.

With it, you launch a simulated iPhone on your iPhone screen. Then you can zoom your virtual iPhone or spin it around and run other apps on it. The virtual “apps” aren’t real applications but the effect is suitably trippy nonetheless.

Developed by Ogmento for Orange Telecom Israel to generate interest for the iPhone launch there, it’s not available to the general public.

Useless? Pretty much. But sort of an Escher for the digital age.

Via Mashable

A word to drivers down under: make sure your license and registration are up to date.

Police in Tasmania are using iPhones to snap plates, relay the pics to a database of unregistered vehicles and unlicensed and disqualified drivers via an app developed for the department.

In just 10 days of operation,  the app has outed 167 unregistered vehicles and caught 107 disqualified or unregistered drivers, the Mercury reports. Formerly, officers had to radio in the information and wait for a co-worker to check.

Within the first 10 minutes of trying it out, police pulled up alongside a car at a traffic light ran the app and found the car was unregistered. They pulled over the car, found the driver was also without a license and drugs in the car, too.

The app, designed by the Tasmania police department, is also used by motorcycle cops.

Via Mac Daily News

Canadian researchers have developed an add-on that makes iPods easy to use for people with disabilities.

Called the CanPlay podWiz, it lets users control off-the-shelf Apple iPod Nanos by using knuckles, jaw muscles and voice prompts. It’s a black box with a microcomputer that acts as a switcher for external commands that are delivered through a range of means and can be wheelchair mounted. (Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any pics available).

It’s the brainchild of CanAssist,  a research lab at the University of Victoria, which has also developed a host of cool ideas from the Polecam Power Chair and to a launcher that wheelchair users can throw balls to their dogs with.

125 CanPlay podWizzes will be given to young Canadians this Christmas, but director Neil Livingston says he’s in touch with Apple to make the product commercially available through its distribution network. No word on how much it might cost.

Via Globe and Mail

If you know your way around Macs,  can untangle the gnarliest iPod problems and love sales, Apple wants you for its retail stores.

To handle the general surge in customers — Apple’s 5th Avenue store is outperforming Tiffany’s, to name just one — the stores are adding a new role called “Expert.”

Previously these were internal promotions, so it sounds like you’d have to be a cut above the average “Genius”  with an interest in sales and management.

Apple’s ideal Expert from the job description:

•    (Seeks) A career in sales where you can share your passion for Apple in a fast-paced and dynamic team environment.
•    You love working with people — it energizes you.
•    You embrace Apple’s standards of customer service and live them every day.
•    You like being the first person on the block to touch new technology. And you like to share that knowledge.
•    You love learning. And you’ll learn from people every day.

If you think you can cut it, it looks like every Apple retail store is on the lookout for in-house Experts to don the new sky-blue T-shirt.

Via Ifoapplestore

So what if Time magazine passed him over for person of the year:  Steve Jobs beat out a couple thousand CEOs around the globe to be named the best-performing CEO by Harvard Business Review.

Researchers looked at what execs brought to the table and to shareholders from 1,999 publicly-held companies worldwide during the entire time of their tenure.

Though they admit “it may come as no shock that Steve Jobs of Apple tops the list,”  it does seem a little surprising that Bill Gates is absent. No shocker: Gates is out of the running because the research only considered execs who took the helm from 1997 on.

Even without Microsoft, tech execs took the lion’s share of the top 10, including Yun Jong-Yong at Samsung Electronics (ranked 2), John T. Chambers, Cisco Systems (ranked 4), Jeff Bezos from Amazon (7),  Margaret C. Whitman eBay (8) and Eric E. Schmidt Google (9).

So what put Jobs ahead of the pack?

Just came across Apple Rush, an organic apple juice and beverage company that turned up in an RSS feed for news on Apple Computers.

This one looks a lot more like the Apple logo than some of the logos with apples that have been taken to court by Apple over trademark issues.

Apple Rush, based in Dolton Illinois, sells apple juice and sparkling beverages in bottles and cans through a network of 40 distributors in the U.S. and abroad.

Granted, since confusion is one of the cornerstones of trademark infringement, unless consumers are likely to mistake a sparkling beverage with an iPod — though an Apple energy drink, to make your computing breezier would be pretty nifty — this one may end up in the copycat hall of shame instead of the courts.

Thoughts?

If 80 percent of success in life is showing up, the Apple board of directors have it made.

Reuters released a list of the best-paid US corporate boards, Apple ranks number three.  In 2008, the seven-member board of directors pulled $633,000 each for attending five board meetings.

That works out to $127,000 per meeting for board members to sit in a conference room and — according to some, do nothing but graze on the pastries provided — while Steve Jobs calls the shots from the head of the table.

That’s the median price of a house in Greer, South Carolina or Pensacola, Florida. (Sure, neither places are likely to see Apple board member Al Gore plunk down his meeting money on a property, but just to give it a little context.)

The top two spots are held by Nabors, a global oil and drilling company, and Intuitive Surgical Ltd.  a robotic health care equipment maker that paid its seven non-employee directors an average of $697,000 last year or about $139,000 per meeting.

Reuters notes that both Shares of both Intuitive Surgical and Apple have more than doubled in 2009. Both companies pay directors largely with stock options, which have become especially valuable in light of their recent performance.
A spokeswoman for Apple declined to comment.

Via Reuters

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YkKmuQRayQ

Apple’s latest iPhone ad revisits that old holiday chestnut “The 12 Days of Christmas” with a lucky smartphone owner breezing through the rigors of the season with a few effortless finger scrolls.

The coolest one, the last, turns on your Christmas tree. Though Apple has added a page on iTunes of apps featured in ads, this one’s not on it. We have it on good authority that it’s  Schlage LiNK, a free app (requires extra hardware, though) designed as a remote control for home door locks.

Here’s the complete holiday app line up from the ad:

– 12 cookies cooking: The Betty Crocker Mobile Cookbook [gratis]
– 11 cards a’ sending: Postman [ $2.99]
– 10 gifts for giving: My Christmas Gift List [ $0.99]
– 9 songs for singing: TabToolkit [$9.99]
– 8 bells for ringing: Holiday Bells [ $0.99]
– 7 slopes a’ skiing: Snow Reports $1.99]
– 6 games for playing: Christmas Fever [ $0.99]
– 5 gold rings: Anna Sheffield Jewelry [ gratis]
– 4 hot lattes: myStarbucks [gratis]
– 3 flights home: Flight Search [gratis]
– 2 feet of snow: Weather Pro [$3.99]
– Tree-lighting app : Schlage LiNK [gratis]

Over the years, the tear-down gurus at iFixit have opened  up 91 Mac models, 34 iPods and a couple of iPhones to repair what ailed them.

Now, they’ve released the guides in CC-BY-NC-SA license, with the blessing of Lawrence Lessig, who has also delved into a few computers himself thanks to the guides.

The nice thing about the content being CC-licensed is that by following a few rules (attribution, not using the material for commercial gain) you can recover, modify, publish these documents giving them a longer shelf life than the site if necessary — and translators around the world can get to work with non-English versions.

While DIY repairs aren’t for the fainthearted, I’ve used iFixit to transplant a MacBook hard drive and change a first-gen iPod battery, the step-by-step instructions got the job done flawlessly.

Via Hardmac

Microsoft just launched an app for its search engine Bing for iPhone.

Offered gratis on iTunes, the idea is to put a Microsoft search engine in the hands of iPhone users who have shunned Microsoft smartphones.

Capturing the iPhone market might be a way for Microsoft to bump up traffic for the “decision engine,” which currently has about 10% of the US Internet search market.

Wishful thinking?  Maybe not: the first 247 reviews, 191 are five star — 77% — though some of the comments “I love this app, it’s a great Christmas present from Microsoft” set the BS-ometer spinning.

Any Bing aficionados out there planning to download the app?

I gave the web version a quick whirl when it first came out, but it didn’t blow my hair back.  Haven’t bothered since.

Via Silicon Valley Insider

Steve Wozniak takes reader questions put to him by tech reporter Arik Hesseldahl for BusinessWeek.

The interview lasts just under 10 minutes (embedding wasn’t agreeing with our powerful wordpress system, so click on the above image to watch) the questions:

What is Fusion-IO and what does it do?

You once said “never trust a computer you can’t throw out the window,” can we trust cloud computing?

What would your life have been like if you grew up outside the Bay Area with access to the Homebrew Computer Club?

Which Sci-Fi futuristic technologies will come to fruition next?

What’s beyond solid state storage?

And a throwaway question with a cagey answer about the presumed Mac Tablet…

Haven’t happened to see Woz on TV since Dancing with the Stars, he is on much more solid ground talking tech than dancing the tango, but is still pretty entertaining.

Via BusinessWeek

A plea for help with existential ramifications found on Yahoo answers:

“How come my iphone never rings?
I had it six month it never ring, y?”

Additional details:

There are four days left to provide the right answer.

Via Faster Times

After our recent post about Apple computers held hostage as they were sent to the FDA with documentation as if they were fruit, Susan Rosenberg, a public relations manager at UPS, cleared up the mystery in an email statement to Cult of Mac:

“Apple products are not being associated with fruit for import documentation or clearance. It’s coincidental that UPS groups the FDA and Dept. of Agriculture in the same tracking message as UPS provides detailed real-time visibility of events through our process.

The FDA does have import documentation requirements for low-level radiation-emitting devices with lasers such as CD-Roms or DVD components that are part of most any computer.”

Rosenberg points us to the Food and Drug Administration page about Radiation Emitting Products, where one is reminded that sending electronic products —  including those cell phones, ultrasound diathermy devices or microwave blood warmers you were going to pop in the post — will be inspected.  (Kudos to CoM readers who commented on the previous post that this was the real cause).

So, what are the delays about, then?

The financial crisis may be spurring a few Apple collectors to clean the computer room — after a couple of Apple Is we found on eBay, reader David Fulero tipped us off about this Lisa model up on the block.

She’s up for sale for just $999, a relative bargain if you consider the 26-year-old machine’s original sticker price was about $10,000 — something like $20,000 today.

Vacuuming is one of those mundane chores that can’t be helped much by listening to your iPod.

The beast whirs and whines over whatever soundtrack you try to stuff into your ears while hoovering over stale cornflakes.

Recognizing this immense problem, Electrolux invented a concept vacuum called the UltraSilencer. It’s so quiet, that you can dock your iPod on the front and built-in speakers on the sides blast your fave whistle-while-you-work tunes. (Perhaps to avoid a lawyer king-of-the-hill match they’ve put some iPod-like MP3 player in the mock-up).

Whatever reality-bending substances are being imbibed, chewed or smoked at UPS, sign me up: they tagged Adam Jackson’s iMac Core i7 as a fruit.

And now his work tool is awaiting inspection by the FDA, after UPS did the smart thing by “submitting proper documentation” for what it believed was a 40-pound shipment of possibly forbidden fruit from China.

Sounds like a funny fluke, but there’s more than one burnt bulb at UPS processing centers — MG Siegler at Techcrunch had the same problem just last week.

Note to UPS: the words “apple” “mac” and “core” do NOT necessarily mean foodstuffs.

Or are they just PC people messing with us?

UPDATE: After viewing your comments about other incidents, we asked for a comment. Here’s what UPS had to say about it.

Today, Apple launched a new RSS feed for iPhone Developers, promising updates, tips and how-to information on a range of relevant topics — from development to distribution.

The idea is to keep iPhone devs on top of the ever-shifting highways and byways of getting an app on iTunes, including:
— Tips for submitting apps to the App Store
— Current turnaround time for app reviews
— Program updates
— Development and testing techniques

With complaint sites over rejections and possible scams growing along with the astronomical app sales, something needed to be done to get better info in a timely fashion to devs.

The first few headlines look promising (see below)  it remains to be seen whether the RSS will be another reality distortion field emanator…

iTunes Connect Unavailable Dec 23 – Dec 28

Adding iPhone OS 3.x Features to Your iPhone OS 2.x-compatible Apps

You Can Now Choose the Currency For Your App Store Payments

Updated iTunes Connect Developer Guide Now Posted

Via Network World

Reports of scorching MacBooks abound, one frustrated flickr user stuffed the calescent computer in the fridge above the vegetable crisper and below the leftovers to cool down after that realizing that rendering a big chunk of video on it became an “aluminum BBQ.”

When you’ve regained your composure, you can come out of the fridge, little MacBook.

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

It took them eight months, but the planning commission in Cupertino granted Apple permission to rezone a nearly 8-acre property to expand the company’s campus.

Apple asked for the rezoning last year after purchasing the property back in 2006.

Check out Steve Jobs’ addressing the city council about Apple’s growing pains resulting in far-flung employees they considered leaving the town to reunite — keeping it soft until the end when he can’t help but mention that Apple is the largest local taxpayer. Council members make lots of kissy-kissy noises,  but they didn’t reach a consensus.

The 7.78-acre property on Pruneridge Avenue, south of the Hewlett-Packard campus, houses two office buildings currently occupied by Apple employees.
The buildings were already on the property from the site’s industrial days. Before Apple purchased the property in 2006, the city rezoned the industrial site to residential in anticipation of a 130-unit townhouse and condominium project that previous property owners Morley Brothers had proposed.

Via San Jose Mercury News, Mac Rumors

Cult of Mac reader Tiago Piccini from Brazil wrote in with yet another idea — following our posts on cat beds and hackintosh holders —  for recycling the shell of a dear, departed iMac.

He spent under an hour gutting his non-working iMac, then adding a lamp socket and switch device, powering it with a 40w bulb and adding a piece of fabric under the screen to soften the light.

Piccini, who by day works at an Apple Solution Expert, calls his creation the iAbat-jour…It’s an easy DIY project that gives off a nice glow, no?