Nicole Martinelli - page 55

Say you lose your iPod or iPhone and some good Samaritan finds it, but there’s no way for them to get it back to you because there’s no contact info on it.

If you’ve got an iPod Touch or iPhone, enter an $0.99 USD app called DogTag, which adds an ID icon and allows you to put the contact info of your choice.

Even If you’ve got a passcode, the info is still accessible as a DogTag wallpaper. The brainchild of Ian Cinnamon, who has been programming since age seven, the app was released a few days ago, and so far the handful of reviews are mostly positive.

For older iPods, one quick way is to name your device with an email address (my iPod nano and older pods support the “@”). This way, if the iPod is plugged in, your contact info pops up on the desktop and in iTunes.

You can also add your info to “contacts” or “notes” on iPods, too so they don’t have to plug it in to go looking for you. (Although if they really dig, the name information you assign will come up, too, in the settings>about screen).

I hit on naming mine with an email address after spending a frustrating 20 minutes at the gym trying to convince the guy at lost and found that yes, the iPod containing, among other things, just the contralto part of “Lacrimosa” and three cover versions of “Mah Na Ma Na” was, in fact, mine.

Have you devised a good way to ID your iPod or iPhone? Any luck with getting it back?
Sharing is caring, let us know in the comments.

The concept does sum up a lot of iLife for infants, but the trouble with these iPooed and iPeed onesies is that once your baby soils the Apple-inspired jumpsuit, you’ll have to change them out of it.

About $16 for a set of two on Etsy. They come in a range of colors (white, pink, blue and green) and sizes to fit babies up to 34 pounds.

An Australian pilot program using the iPod touch as a classroom tool has some high school students doing more homework, others puzzling over the device.

Though the small program — eight 14-year-olds — using iPod touches is far from giving a scientific answer of how they might change learning, a few interesting things have cropped up.

One: Louise Duncan, the teacher who started the program at Shepparton High in Victoria, found that some of the kids had trouble using them.

“We assume that 14-year-olds are really technologically savvy, but they’re often not,” she told Perth newspaper Western Australia Today.

Students use the hand-held media players to search the internet, download music, do quizzes, research and submit assignments and work with students in Singapore.

Duncan found that students in the test program were more willing to come to school, did more homework and used their iPods more than laptops or desktop computers.

The iPods are on loan from Apple and run on the Study Wiz platform; the test is part of a global mobile learning project.

Via WA today

You could add this hand sewn iPod Shuffle in felt to your iPhone, a key chain, or otherwise adorn yourself with it, making the cuddly gadget just a bit more useful than the felt version of Apple’s phone that can’t be used even as a dog toy.

Cuter than cute, the 1″ x 1.5″ plush iPods are the handiwork of a woman in the Philippines with, as you might imagine, a declared love of kawaii stuffed toys.

iPod Shuffle charms come in blue, gray, pink, orange, red and green (specify your color pick in advance) at just $4 a pop on Etsy.

Via High Tech Divas

Online bookseller Books on Board brings some 20,000 e-book titles to your iPod Touch or iPhone.

From Clive Cussler to “Do-It-Yourself Hedge Funds,” there’s bound to be something for everyone. Prices range from about $14-19.

The nice thing: instead of a dedicated app that you can only use at Books on Board, the service piggybacks on free app Stanza.

If you want to try before you buy, they offer a few sample downloads gratis, mostly romance novels.

Via Textually

Five bright, whimsical designs from Paul Frank Industries are now iPhone 3G ready. Many feature Julius the monkey whose quirky mug bears a slight resemblance to designer Paul Frank Sunich, who founded the Southern California brand in 1995.

While the monkey will make it hard to get your iPhone confused with someone else’s, that funny face will cost you the Apple logo.

The silicone Paul Frank cases run about $30 online at the Apple store, where you can also find his regular iPhone cases and iPod cases, too.

Via Into mobile

A 27-year-old Aussie has turned iPhone fixing into a full-time job, but he finds his over 650 “patients” very demanding.

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Rob Jacobs, who used to have a day job as a video editor, painted the picture of the weeping iPhone owner, desperate for a fix:

“The amount of phone calls I get after 10 o’clock at night. I have people coming from Newcastle waiting outside from 6.30am. People just turn up at the door, often in tears, saying ‘Please fix my phone.’ We are all iAddicted.”

Jacobs, who has been a full-time iDoc who also repairs iPods for nine months now, added that many iPhone owners were tied to phone contracts where service providers would not replace their phones once damaged.

Time for some iPhone DIY repairs? Maybe.

Via the Sydney Morning Herald

Even if you don’t jailbreak, step on or otherwise open up your iPhone you can wear the innards on your chest.

No further details about who came up with the idea on the dedicated Exploded Phone site, but the café press page describes the T-shirt as “an exploded view of my brother’s taken-apart phone. He’s going to kill me!”

While it doesn’t have the look-at-me cry of the faux Apple logo light up tee, it has geek appeal in spades.

Costs $20 in a bunch of styles and colors.

Via The Next Web

Disney art director Stéphane Kardos has created a fascinating series of quick sketches with his iPhone using the Brushes app, most of them with a slightly gritty urban feel miles away from Magic Kingdom style.

You can check more out on flickr where he intros the iPhone sketches by saying that they were done in five or ten minutes, less for the sunset ones.

As we reported before, iPhone art even if not yet ready for art galleries looks like it may be moving in that direction.

Via cyanatrendland

In 2007, British student Meredith Kercher was murdered in Italy, during a study abroad program in hill town Perugia.

About a year later, Rudy Guede was sentenced to 30 years for his part in the killing, for which Kercher’s roommate, American student Amanda “Foxy Knoxy” Knox and her boyfriend, Italian IT grad, Raffaele Sollecito, are still awaiting trial.

Guede’s appeal now before the Italian court hinges on an iPod.

During what has been hypothesized was some sort of late-night Halloween sex game where the 21-year-old Kercher was an unwilling participant, Guede maintains he was in the bathroom of the young women’s apartment.

While she was being killed with a knife, he was listening to music on iCarta, a toilet paper holder roll that doubles as an iPod dock.

Guede’s lawyers tried to head off what they thought might be viewed as a sort of Twinkie defense for the digital age in a statement to Italian media (below translation mine):

“It is nothing more than a confirmation of how some abnormal behaviors are apparently normal among young people today,” said laywers Valter Biscotti and Nicodemo Gentile. “Just as Facebook is their virtual world, they now listen to music everywhere, even in the bathroom. The marketing of such products implies a certain routine use.”

The statement was published today in Italian papers, without information on how the legal team might use or prove the bathroom listening alibi.

Props to Jordan Horwich who re-engineered a pair of old iPods into speakers.

He’s managed to take out the innards of what look like first gen iPods and replace them with a 2.25-inch speaker cone, volume control, Altoids Tin Speaker and a battery holder.

Bulky by today’s standards, getting a speaker into an old iPod still requires a good deal of fiddling. If you’re feeling up to the task, check out Horwich’s DIY detailed guide.

Horwich had to buy the old iPods to make his speakers (spending about $100 on the iPods and the equipment) but if you’re like me you might have one or two barely working ones in Mac limbo, though it may not look as good without a matching pair.

Via Slash Gear

The third season opening episode of Channel 4’s award-winning sitcom IT Crowd features a scene where clueless exec Douglas Reynholm performs the modern equivalent of fiddling while Rome Burns.

Instead of listening to talk about cutbacks, he’s busy with an iPod party with the all-female accounting department.

Exec 1 (Denholm): “You seem to lack a basic understanding of exactly how much trouble this company is in. We have a financial crisis here. And if you don’t mind me saying, your attitude seems incredibly cavalier.”

Reynholm “What? Can’t hear you, we’re having an iPod party.”

While the trademark white earbuds abound, there’s never a shot of an actual iPod.
Update: sharp-eyed CoM reader Mark spotted a pink shuffle on the hip of the accountant at far right.

Three men were charged with the murder of a store owner in Fairbanks, Alaska after buying an iPhone with the dead man’s credit cards.

According to court documents, the three men, two of them in the military and one discharged a year ago, allegedly killed 62-year-old Daniel Frederick, owner of Blondie’s military surplus, to hinder a military investigation.

Police tracked them down after they bought an iPhone at an AT&T Store.

One of the men paid for the high-tech phone using one of Frederick’s cards, but he added the phone to his existing account with the company, according to a criminal complaint filed in court.

It was the start of an electronics spending spree that included a computer and DVDs that court documents state totaled thousands of dollars.

Frederick’s body was later found in a wooded area. The 62-year-old man had been beaten and strangled.

Court papers say the men killed Frederick in what was described only as “a matter that military authorities were investigating.”

Via AP, News Miner

Australian company Tropical Howie offers a range limited-edition neoprene cases that make you think about going on vacation as you head to work. Six styles include bright stripes (“swimwear”), one that looks like a beach towel and a paisley print (“market”) or Hong Kong taxi for adventures of a different sort.

There are 750 cases available in six styles, designed to fit 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch MacBooks, and at least one Mac fan gave them the thumbs up. Going by availability on the site, it looks like the 13-inch in most styles have sold only a few hundred, while some styles in larger sizes have less than 100 cases left.

At about $55 (AUD 79), setting yourself apart from the pack won’t set you back that much.

Via Daily Candy

Sloane Crosby, author of essays “I Was Told There’d be Cake” and maker of creepy dioramas, has a bewitched iPod.

When asked by the New York Times to name her iPod playlist (Marvin Gaye, Bon Iver, New Order) Sloane rants about her MP3 player, which apparently has a few issues:

The worst example of this technological tyranny has to be my iPod. Our relationship has gone from one of pleasurable convenience to a series of baroque rituals and infuriating modifications, of tricks and mysteries, of songs that my iPod considers playing (as evidenced by the flashing image of album art) but, thinking better of it, decides to supplant with Carla Bruni’s “Quelqu’un m’a dit” juuuust one more time instead.

My iPod may be possessed. It may be infuriating. It may be trying to tell me something.”

These things happen, I have a temperamental iPod, too. But it started acting up after falling under the subway tracks. A three-person rescue team fished it out, but alas, it has never been the same since. Maybe she isn’t telling us the whole story?

Atif Shamin, a Phd student in electronics at Carlton University in Canada, has figured out a way of reducing iPhone battery drain.

He’s replaced all the internal wires and PCBs of his iPhone with an antenna.

The swap allows a wireless connection between a micro-antenna embedded within the circuits of the chip.

“This has not been tried before that the circuits are connected to the antenna wirelessly. They’ve been connected through wires and a bunch of other components. That’s where the power gets lost,” Shamim said in an article on the University website.

He estimates that his solution uses 12 times less power than the traditional, wired-transmitter module. That means more juice for the ever-expanding choice in apps.

“It’s a common problem. There are so many applications in the iPhone, it’s like a power-sucking machine,” said Shamim.

He’s filed for patents in the US and Canada, look out for details on his hack in an upcoming issue of Microwave Journal.

Via Make

British-Sri Lankan rapper Maya “M.I.A.” Arulpragasm’s last album, Kala, was made on a Mac.

Her second album, called an “international block party” by Rolling Stone, Kala is full of ear-wormy music that includes samples of Pink Floyd, gun shots, digeridoo riffs, cash register ca-chings and kids on backing vocals. (Give a listen to “Mango Pickle”.)

She traveled with producer Dave Taylor to India, Australia, Jamaica and Trinidad to record it.

Taylor traveled with minimal equipment:

A MacBook Pro, Logic Studio, the Apogee Duet and a set of Adam S3A monitors.

Although news satirists The Onion target Apple with a certain frequency, pull back the curtain and staffers are Apple users.

When asked by the Guardian to name their favorite piece of technology, both Onion staffers Will Graham (executive producer/director) and Julie Smith (general manager) said the iPhone.

The rest of the tech Q&A reads like a love letter to Apple, a few excerpts:

Mac or PC?
Will: our whole Onion organization is very fervently pro Mac, despite doing jokes about them. For creative people there is no comparison.

Do you think the iPhone will be obsolete in 10 years’ time?
Julie: Yes, I do. They’ll probably have the iPhone 36G by then.

What’s the most expensive piece of technology you’ve ever owned?
Julie: My Macbook Pro.

Will: I remember there was a thing my dad gave me as a Christmas gift that I thought was really cool, about eight or nine years ago –œ the Mac Talk…

What piece of technology would you most like to own?
Julie: I guess a robot. Or another iPhone.

Prolific Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach has made it into the digital age with a dedicated iPod.

The Bach Pod from Passionato packs 175 hours pre-loaded on an Apple 80 GB iPod classic. Recordings are from the opus collection Hnssler Edition Bachakademier released in 2000 on 172 CDs that was favorably reviewed but was later discontinued as a set. The Bach Pod costs about $700.

There’s still enough memory left over, 63GB, to add a few things and it also comes with three back-up DVDs as insurance against hiccups.

While some hardcore classic music fans will want to pick and choose who interprets the maestro — you can check out download samples here — it would make a great gift.

Via Gadgety News

That aging isn’t for sissies has been obvious for awhile, but there’s a new crop of advice manuals about how walking the walk of youngsters works as an age-defying tactic.

Sparked in part by bestselling “How Not To Look Old” (which offers life-altering observations on how young women wear lip gloss, their mothers wear lipstick or, worse, lip liner), another expert is convinced that one way to take 15 years off your age in a job interview or at work is to know your way around Apple products:

Rule #5: Peruse your local Apple store. At least learn the difference between an iPod Classic, iPod Touch, and iPod Nano and you’re on your way. And buy a set of those identifiable white headphones to keep around, even if you don’t have the iPod to go with them. It’s all about perception.

So says Steven Vicussi, author of a book with such a long-winded title it could bring on dementia: “Bulletproof Your Job: 4 Simple Strategies to Ride Out the Rough Times and Come Out on Top at Work.”

So talk about Apple and you’ll be cooler, younger, hipper.

Reminds me of a friend, in her early 30s but a bit of a proud Luddite, who says things like “the email” (as in “I was on the email the other day”) and refers to her iPhone as “thingy.”

Let me know what you think in the comments…

Photo used under Creative Commons license, thanks to Irargerich on Flickr

Via Huffington Post

These Danish-designed iPod Nano and iPod mini cases do double duty, covering your pod and giving you a notebook.

Called the iPod Pad, the leather case secures your iPod in foam and offers a 72-page note pad opposite. (It looks like the notepad might be refillable but unfortunately, google translate didn’t get me far enough to be 100% sure — though a kind Danish CoM reader had a better look and says the site doesn’t specify).

It comes in 10 different color combinations and looks like a Moleskine notebook, which might make it less attractive to thieves. Currently for third generation nanos, a 4G version will be ready by late January 2009.

They cost about $26 dollars (139DKK) from Scripta.

Via Geek Alerts

Philippe Starck, one of the most famous and prolific designers alive, has made these monumental iPod speakers.

Called Zikmu and designed for Parrot, these sleek, wireless “couture” speakers stand 2.5 feet tall with a docking station for an iPod or iPhone on top. Audio can also be streamed from a PC or Mac via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and the speakers emit sound from both sides.

They’ll be in available in spring 2009 and cost $1,500.

Via MoCoLo

If British tab The Sun is to be believed, 18-year-old Gavin Brooke stayed awake listening to an iPod as surgeons removed a brain tumor.

The teen had a tumor in a tricky place that surgeons didn’t want to damage, so the boy had to stay awake during surgery.

Brooke was given an anesthetic to numb the pain, but the head surgeon let him hook up his iPod Touch to give him something to do.

What was on the playlist?

The first tune Brook played on his iPod was “Apologize” by Timbaland Featuring One Republic, the rest were garage and R’n’B tracks that kept him occupied during the six-hour surgery. The iPod was plugged into the operating theater’s sound system and the volume was low enough so that Brooke could carry on conversation with the surgeons.

The tumor was removed and Brooke has since recovered.

Via The Sun

One of the most depressing scenes in the already depressing “Sex and the City” movie is the one where Carrie Bradshaw gets left at the altar.

The groom, aka Big, hasn’t shown up. In a scene where all the stars especially look like they need a good night’s sleep and more calming carbs in their diets, Samantha holds an iPhone, set off against a fire-engine red dress.

Hail the retro-futuristic flair of the Sonic Chair, which now comes in a version with a 20″ iMac already attached.

The German-designed seat, aims to make you feel like you’re sitting inside a giant speaker, hides cables away in the metal base and has an MP3 jack.

Available in 35 colors, no specs on price for the Mac version, though the original cost a ballistic €7,000 euros (that’s about $10,000).

Via Gizmodo UK