Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco freelance writer who heads up Cult of Mac Magazine, our weekly publication available on iTunes. You can find her on Twitter and Google+. If you're doing something new, cool and Apple-related, email her.
Work on the set of NBC show “Heroes” has its down time. So actor Greg Grunberg, who plays Los Angeles cop Matt Parkman with the ability to hear people’s thoughts, pulls out his iPhone nearly everywhere. To keep himself busy, in between takes on the studio lot, he uses the device to send missives to Twitter. He broadcasts them to the more than 20,000 friends and fans following him.
Grunberg also started a business to create a free iPhone app called Yowza — think mobile coupons, it’s expected to launch shortly — with two men he befriended on Twitter but hadn’t met in person.
Some think that the iTunes model — small payments for content subscriptions — might help save floundering old media.
One case in point: London fashion glossy “Drama” pictured above which was shuttered as a monthly newsstand mag only to be reborn on iTunes. At $3.99, the digital version for the iPhone and iPod Touch costs about what you’d expect to pay for something you could read on a train.
The people who came up with the idea of letting the mag rise from its ashes in digital form are calling it “the beginning of the next revolution in publishing.”
Tim Colburne plugged in his iPhone 3G to his computer’s USB port and left it to charge. Three hours later, it caught fire. The above is an aftermath pic.
Colburne writes on his blog: “The fire started in the space between the lead and the phone and resulted in a couple of pins fusing together.
Although the main functions of the phone are apparently unaffected, the device won’t connect to the computer which means I can neither charge it nor transfer data. Result: one dead iPhone.”
Colburne reckons very few iPhones go up in flames, he was able to find one other similar incident on a site from Sweden in 2008.
Anyone else?
And if your iPhone did go into meltdown, how did getting a replacement go?
French software development company Visuamobile is planning to launch an iPhone app called ELIZA AI, based on the 1966 artificial intelligence computer program trained to respond to questions like a therapist, that is by asking other questions.
Though the program is dated, Leca says the Eliza iPhone app still had the same effect that surprised creator Joseph Weizenbaum back at MIT in the day — at a certain point people forget ELIZA is not a human therapist.
“What seemed really interesting, and I have tested it at the office, is that people are reluctant to show you what they have been discussing with Eliza,” Dominique Leca of Visuamobile told Cult of Mac. Leca, who handles business development at the Paris-based company, had the idea for the app. “And, to tell you the truth, Eliza has helped me several times. The fact that she constantly asks you to explain yourself is a great way to analyze what you think.”
Set to be released for free download on the visuamobile store on iTunes March 3, Leca said the Eliza app will likely remain gratis but the company has more sophisticated psyched-up apps in the works, like one based on AI chat robot ALICE, that will probably be fee-based.
Despite a year described by analysts as rocky, Apple moved up from the number two spot to top Fortune magazine’s list of the 50 “World’s Most Admired Companies.”
Apple was given a perfect score for innovation and people management, while it ranked lower in long-term investment, global competitiveness and social responsibility.
“As much of the computer industry struggled, Apple shipped 22.7 million iPods during its first quarter (up 3 percent from last year), 2.5 million Macs (up 9 percent), and 4.4 million iPhones,” noted Forbes writer Alyssa Abkowitz.
Apple was far above Microsoft, which ranked 10, IBM (17) and Sony (49).
Rounding out the top five: Berkshire Hathaway, Toyota, Google and Johnson & Johnson.
This doesn’t look like the simplest DIY project, but one creative Mac fan turned an old G3 into a house for an old Sega Dreamcast.
The project, dubbed the iCast, started out while doing a workshop cleanup: handy person logicdustbin realized that among the spare parts were a few G3s and an LCD monitor.
Once the Mac was gutted, the LCD fit inside nicely.
Then “it was an easy decision to slap a Dreamcast inside,” logicdustbin wrote on the www.cgcc.ca forum. “The hard part was figuring out where to place it. I didn’t want to cut a big hole in the side of the case… but I ended up doing a ‘PS1 upside down mod’ – its not great, but it works pretty good.”
In final analysis, logicdustbin concedes: “A lot of work went into this, like getting the original power button to work for the new monitor and adding a power switch for the DC, then adding a sound amp to power the iMac speakers…it was all pretty fun to do and it plays just great!”
Spotted this Marware game grip for iPhone, with a silicon sweat-proof lining and cleverly-designed slits for cables if you want to play while charging or have headphones on so you don’t disturb fellow commuters or co-workers.
Available for the iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2G, price ranges from $39.99-$44.99.
While given the thumbs up for games that require a lot of movement (like I Love Katamari) at least one review said the color combo (the only one available) and price didn’t justify the playing ease.
Photographer Russ Croop used his fingers and app NetSketch to create what may be largest iPhone drawing to date, a portrait of his Boulder, Colorado living room. At 72 pixels per inch it measures 85.579 x 70.931 inches, or about 7 feet by 6 feet. (NB: full-sized version on his site.)
“If you were going to print it at 300 ppi, when converted, it measures 20.543″ x 17.023 That’s much more than most high-end digital cameras, ” Croop told Cult of Mac. “A camera with a 11.1 megapixel resolution will render a photograph at 300 ppi of 13.5″x9.”
The super-sized sketch created some problems, however.Croop couldn’t upload the drawing to the NetSketch site to share with the community — his iPhone kept crashing.
“I felt like the guy who built a boat in his basement and couldn’t get it out because it was so big,” Croop told us.
Things got a little heated in a London marketing firm when an Apple laptop (a PowerBook G4?*) started smoking, then burst into flames.
“When I got there, much of the smoke has dissipated and nothing much was happening. I picked up the notebook to investigate, and turned it over. Soon after I put it down again, it basically exploded. Flames were flying six feet high in the air, and sparks,” an unnamed IT manager told the Inquirer.
The fire is thought to have started in the battery, the IT manager said the computer was three-to-four years old.
“We are aware that there was a battery recall several years ago, it is entirely possible that the battery was one of those subject to that recall, but we can’t tell now as the battery is now just slag.”
The pics — melted keyboard, smoke, battery fused like a modern art sculpture — are worth a gander.
(*The story first identified the flaming computer as a MacBook, then Powerbook).
Potentially fake reviews — written by people who didn’t buy or download the app — were recently removed from the app store on iTunes.
When the app store launched in 2008, you could review the app even if you didn’t buy it. As a result there were a lot of static reviews, both good and bad, as companies tried to push their products or topple competitors.
In September, Apple announced a ban on non-customer reviews from the apps, but the old reviews were still visible.
Until a few days ago, when the slate was wiped clean. The move seems to have removed some of the static: SEGA’s Super Monkey Ball review count dropped from 4,197 to 3,710 while Namco’s Pac Man reviews shrunk from 395 to just 122.
CBS just released a free app for the iPhone, bringing everything from episodes of the new 90120 to McGyvver and CNET reviews to your device.
Many early reviews of the TV.com app are enthusiastic, commutes are much more entertaining when you can watch an episode of CSI: Miami, the season premier of Tudors then customize your own feed.
Some frustrated would-be viewers, however, complained about videos not loading,scarcity of full episodes and iffy quality.
If you try it, let me know how it works (or doesn’t) for you.
Photographer Lisa Wiseman , who describes herself as “addicted to Polaroid film,” snapped a series of pics with her iPhone in everyday settings she called “the new Polaroid.”
About them she says,”These images are the evolution of the Polaroid: they were all taken with my iPhone camera. Because the iPhone is becoming a ubiquitous and trendy accessory, on-the-go picture taking is now the norm.
I see people using their iPhones to take spontaneous photos in the same carefree way that cheap Polaroid has been used in the past…Just like Polaroids had a specific size and look, iPhone photos are unmistakable because the technology limits them to a fixed size and resolution.” (NB: we’ve resized them here).
Complete album on her site.
What may be the largest investor fraud committed by a single person may have been hatched on a Mac.
These are shots are from ABC’s 20/20 recent special about Bernie Madoff, showing him in his Manhattan penthouse whiling away the hours (without remorse, they suggest) on a MacBook Pro.
Called “The Hunt for Madoff’s Money” it aired on Feb. 20, but you can watch it online here.
If you take the Basic Lessons on GarageBand ’09, your improving finger work on the guitar and piano will be thanks to a guy who introduces himself at the beginning of each segment as just “Tim.”
That’s Tim Blane, a Boston singer-songwriter with a decade of live performances under his belt. Other credentials include ringtones for Pepsi, he also opened for Guster and KT Tunstall and writes his own soulful pop tunes.
When Blane received an e-mail from an Apple guy last summer saying that he’d seen Blane’s clips online and wondered if he would be interested in auditioning for a job, he jumped at the chance.
“I thought maybe they needed someone to show up at a trade show,” recalls Blane, who was sent a script and flown to LA for an on-camera audition. Nearly a thousand actors and musicians auditioned for the gig. Four screen tests later Steve Jobs selected Blane, who has never taught a lesson in his life, to be GarageBand‘s music instructor.
“They didn’t want a preachy vibe, but more a vibe of sitting down with your little brother. I had a great time, although I had to wear super HD makeup on my face and hands and arms. I think I ate more makeup than lunch.”
Meetings at daily news organizations are generally pretty lively affairs. Now journalists at outlying bureaus or on assignment at UK daily The Guardian can participate in the daily pitching and griping — without having the odd pen thrown at them or having to deal with the face-melting scowls of colleagues.
Canadian-born, Hong-Kong based actor and singer Edison Chen is in court against a computer technician after explicit nude photos of him and several starlets were posted on the Internet.
Chen says some 1,300 sex pics, including about a dozen celebrities, were illegally copied from a custom pink PowerBook that he brought in for repairs in 2006.
He’s testifying in a criminal case against Sze Ho-chun, a computer technician charged with obtaining access to Chen’s computer for dishonest gain.
Chen believed he had erased the files by putting them into the trash before the machine was handed over for repairs.
“I did not know about encrypted data or securing the trash. In my opinion, when you deleted a file and put it in the trash bin, it was deleted,” he said, adding that he later found out that files deleted from the trash could be recovered in some cases. Chen went on voluntary hiatus career after the scandal broke in early 2008, media reports that it halted careers of several of the women involved.
No matter if you have nude starlets or bad poetry or bank info on your Mac, this is about as nightmare as it gets.
To clean out an old MacBook to give to a friend recently, I tried out permanent eraser and (until the Internet proves me wrong) it seemed to do the trick…
Aside from remembering to take out the trash after binning it, what’s your preferred method of erasing data?
There are plenty of cutesy headphone alternatives — but if you’re looking to replace your Apple earbuds with something likely to start up a conversation or get a few stares, these giant green fly-shaped versions may be the answer.
The look a little less gross on than in the package, but for $12.95 they might not be a bad emergency spare. Available at Patina.
Came across this art work by Nick Rodrigues while trying to find help for my dying iPod.
His “diePod,” made back in 2007, is an an iPod gravestone that contains all note worthy songs and photos of your life debuted at Art Basil Switzerland.
Of it, Rodrigues says, “A child born today will most likely carry some type of media device with them for there entire life. If these devices live on with us we will carry a record of our entire life with us to the grave-that’s better then the tomb of king tut.”
Amen. My fourth gen 20 GB iPod is ready to shuffle off this mortal coil, and I just can’t let it go. Yeah, I know it’s old but it was great for audio books and came in handy now and then as an external hard drive.
The folder icon keeps cropping up, no amount of partitioning + erase + restore seems to fix it for longer than a week, when the battery runs out. It’ll soon be ready for my drawer/graveyard, since there’s no recycling program yet locally.
Ever kept your dead pods around, perhaps for use as doorstops or paperweights?
Apple lost its bid to trademark the word “pod” in Australia, due to an objection from a guitar company that also makes a product called “POD.”
Guitar accessories company Line 6 makes a line of multi-effects processors, like the pocket version aimed at giving your guitar sound a boost sans amp pictured above, called POD. Line 6 blocked Apple’s trademark claim, arguing it has a pre-existing trademark in the same category related to musical devices.
Although Line 6 has sold far fewer PODs than Apple’s range of iPod devices, the Australian Trade Marks Office hearing officer Iain Thompson declared that the POD device was still an established product.
“While the evidence does not show particularly strong sales [for Line 6’s POD], the marketplace is not particularly large and the participants in the musical industry are generally well informed about the products available to them to enable them to perform.”
Apple’s lawyers maintained the POD was “digital signal processing hardware,” and therefore did not qualify for the “portable electronic devices” class of trademark. Thompson rejected the claim, arguing the iPod’s sound equalizer features used digital signal manipulation.
A new adjustable bed called the Prodigy claims it can end nocturnal snore wars, thanks to iPhone, iPod touch capabilities.
Prodigy debuted recently at the Las Vegas Furniture Market, though in the only image I was able to find (from the product sheet .pdf) it looks like geriatric central, makers Leggett & Platt say outright it “is not your grandparent’s adjustable bed.”
Some of the new features aimed at stopping bedroom tiffs:
*One-touch, anti-snore technology allows annoyed awake user to change the position of a snoring partner by seven degrees to open nasal passages, which can alleviate mild to moderate snoring. After thirty minutes, the bed gently returns snoring perpetrator to the original sleep position.
*A gentle-wake alarm system that softly massages the sleeper awake. Because Prodigy can work on dual twin mattresses, each sleeper can be awakened individually, perfect for couples who can’t agree on a common wake time or a unified snooze-button strategy.
All this controlled from your iPhone or iPod touch. No word on pricing; makers are taking pre-orders up to May 2009.
Of course, it would mean having to give up on the liberating swift kick or annoyed shove, but perhaps one could get used to it.
The iPhone 3G launched today in United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Some 25,000 people signed up in the first few hours, not bad considering you can’t send or recieve text messages in Arabic and the web browser does not yet render Arabic text properly. (Mobile providers have promised that these services will be available within the next three months.)
The 8GB iPhone costs around $600, 16GB around $700, with a monthly fee of about $25. Mobile provider Etisalat also throws in a hundred texts a month, to thumb perhaps in French or English while you’re waiting for Arabic.
“Wheels on the Bus” is an iPhone app in five languages, based on the nursery rhyme, with extras like instruments kids can play and a recording feature, hopefully providing hours of entertainment for kids and perhaps a bit of respite for parents.
My only reservation about the app, named “Staff Favorite” in iTunes and currently the number two paid education app, comes from the song itself, perhaps one of the most annoying kiddy tunes to ever hammer itself into the tired brains of parents. A friend of mine with a two-year-old daughter was so fed up with the ditty (the doors on the bus go open and shut, open and shut) that “Wheels on the Bus” became shorthand for “Mommy needs a few cocktails or something bad will happen.”
A small study indicates that students who listened to podcasts remembered more than those who attended lectures.
The study, as reported in New Scientist, tested 64 students on information retention.
To see how much students can learn from podcast lectures alone, students were given a single lecture on visual perception from an intro psychology course.
Half sat through a live lecture and were given printouts of the slides used. The other 32 downloaded a podcast that included audio from the same lecture synchronized with video of the slides. These students also received a printed handout of the material.
