News - page 2355

From Smule, creators of the internationally captivating Ocarina app for the iPhone, comes Zephyr, a 99¢ app that is part snow globe, part artboard, part multi-media messaging device, part chain letter and altogether fun.

Classified as a Social Networking application in the App Store, Zephyr invites users to use the touchscreen to draw pictures and messages rendered in snowflakes, while the app simultaneously translates touch and movement into distinctive wind sounds to complement the written message. You can erase a composition entirely by shaking the phone or erase parts with a two finger swipe gesture. When you’re happy with your creation you can send it off anonymously into the ether, where it will be received by another Zephyr user.

The chain continues when the recipient of your message expresses “love” for it by tapping a heart icon that appears on the screen with a received message. The more a message is loved, the more it will be passed forward.

You can also receive a message, see the stops it made on its way to you and decide whether or not it will continue on its journey around the world.

No word yet on whether Smule developers plan to update the app with different iconography for the changing seasons.

Now that you’ve been introduced to Burrell Smith, you can get a feel for the kind of eccentric behind the original Macintosh. This is a charming guy, a hard worker, and a creative character. These types of people are the foundation of Apple’s success through innovation.

While it’s great to read these examples of creative things that these employees have done, it’s much more valuable to understand how they got about becoming this type of person. The story “Make a Mess, Clean it Up!” from Folklore.org provides that key analysis using a lesson in Burrell’s style of video gaming. Notice that even in the first few paragraphs, the idea of innovation comes to mind immediately.

“Working 90 hours a work week requires frequent, and highly effective, work breaks. In the center of Macintosh work area in Bandley 3 we had a ping pong table, a nice stereo system, and a Defender video game machine. We found that competitive play gave us a jolt of adrenaline, and a refreshed mind-set when we resumed work. We also learned a lot about our coworkers and how they excel during competition. While playing Defender one day I got some great insight into how Burrell accelerates his own learning process.”

Make a Mess, Clean it Up! [Folklore.org]

“Expectations are low given Steve Jobs will not speak at the conference,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told investors Tuesday. Earlier this month, Jobs announced he was handing the speaking reigns to Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller. The 2009 event will also be the last for Apple.

The introduction of Schiller at the key Apple gathering “suggests there will not be any revolutionary products this year,” Munster wrote. As a result, chances for a new iPhone being launched at Macworld are not as likely as once thought by the bullish Apple watcher.

RIM is asking a court to permit it to hire former employees of hard-hit rival Motorola. The Canada-based handset maker claims Motorola is blocking its workers from joining the BlackBerry manufacturer.

The case revolves around a February agreement between RIM and Motorola which forbade the two companies poaching employees. RIM said the agreement expired in August and wants the court to invalidate the pact.

“RIM entities continue to grow and hire new employees within the United States and globally against a backdrop of recent public announcements by Motorola that it has and will continue to make massive layoffs,” according to the RIM lawsuit filed last week.

To combat lower handset sales, 3,000 Motorola workers were axed and the Schaumburg, Ill-based company recently announced it would cut pay and benefits.

Intel Tuesday introduced the Q9000, a 2.53 GHz quad-core chip designed to offer a cheaper alternative for notebook manufacturers. Acer becomes the first to use the $350 chip to power a product, its $1,800 Aspire 8930G-7665 for gamers.

Unlike its bigger brothers, the Q9000 sports 6MB of cache memory – half that of Intel’s Q9100 and QX9300. Intel also offers the 2.53 GHZ P8700, 2.66 GHZ P9600 and T9550, as well as the 2.93 GHz T9800.

Apple is among a number of computer makers that will use new Intel Core 2 Quad chips created for mobile PCs. Cupertino reportedly will use the new chips for an expected refresh of its line of iMac desktops, reports suggested Monday.

News broke over the weekend that iFart Mobile, the current #1 paid application on Apple’s iTunes AppStore, netted its creators $40,000 in two days at Christmas, according to a blog post by Joel Comm, the application’s lead developer.

The two-day holiday haul was in addition to $25,000+ in profits the app generated in the two weeks prior to Christmas.

Comm’s is by no means a unique success story. Steve Demeter, developer of the game Trism, made $250,000 in the first two months the AppStore was open; Eliza Block, the developer of “2 Across” app, was reportedly earning $2,000 per day on her application back in September.

Granted these are but three names out of the more than 10,000 apps now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s not difficult to do the math, though, and when an application designed around people’s fascination with flatulence – one of dozens dedicated to the same theme – can net its creator $40,000 in two days, it would seem irresponsible of a director attempting a remake of The Graduate not to write this exchange into the script:

Mr. McGuire: I want to say two words to you. Just two words.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: iPhone Apps.

More Apple oriented websites felt obligated to post the news on Monday that casemaker Vaja has added an iPhone Nano category to its offerings of cases for Apple phone products. Coming on the heels of last week’s news that XSNS had done the same, the pre-Macworld rumor mill seems to indicate a strong likelihood that Apple will introduce a mini-me version of its popular mobile phone next week in San Francisco.

Is this what we’ve come to? Roughly 10 million people have bought iPhones this year. AT&T is selling refurbished iPhones for $99 and now you can buy them new at Walmart, too. Who, exactly is dying for an iPhone Nano?

I have to go on record as saying I’ll be disappointed to see Apple cave in to the mobile handset market’s mystifying tradition of churning out 1001 minutely varied executions on a theme, for the sake of what? Surely not functionality.

Prior to the iPhone you had relatively similar smartphones made by a few companies (Palm, RIM, Nokia) and hundreds of other devices that were just, phones, made by dozens and dozens of manufacturers. Even within the smartphone realm, my eyes glazed over at the number of “different ” Blackberries, for example.

The iPhone came along and changed everything. And in perfect Apple fashion there were basically two choices, a perfectly fine device and another one for those whose device must, under any circumstance be perceived as “bigger.” Hey, fine. There’s nothing wrong with a Corvette…

But now, a Nano? Something smaller? Less functional than its big brother? Less touchscreen real estate? A virtual keyboard for really tiny fingers?

Knock yourself out, Apple. I would think there are greater heights to scale.

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

It didn’t take long for a French retailer to begin selling ‘unlocked’ iPhones, following a recent court ruling in that nation. FNAC Friday began selling the popular Apple handset without the usual carrier contract.

Despite the rather steep prices (an 8GB iPhone sells for the equivalent of $1,122), the FNAC offers seems to be the first to take advantage of a ruling by France’s Competition Council temporarily striking down the practice of requiring contracts tied to carriers.

Earlier this month, the competition board described Apple’s 2007 exclusive deal with France’s Orange carrier a “serious and immediate” threat to broader competition.

Besides an all-in-one design, new iMacs expected in January could sport new cooling technology for chips developed by chip giant Intel, two Asian-language publications are reporting.

Foxconn will create a “magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis,” according to the Economic Daily News. The Chinese-language pblication also claimed Foxconn’s Precision Components and Auras Technology will produce the iMac’s “cooling module.”

The news may dovetail with a previous report from DigiTimes that Apple was among a group of PC makers opting to use new quad-core processors from Intel expected to alter computer power requirements. The Core 2 Quad chips, ranging in speeds from 2.33 GHz to 2.83 GHz, require 65W rather than 55W for current iMacs, according to AppleInsider.

I love hearing and reading stories about the people who made great things happen. In much the same way that I enjoyed “Classic Feynman” and shared the book with many friends, I share with you the beginning of the Apple Macintosh. Andy Hertzfeld’s website, Folklore.org, chronicles the early days of Apple Computer and the creation of the Macintosh. It does more than that though, it brings back all the fun had in creating it, and gives us a first look in the original Cult of Mac: its creators.

Quite a few of the stories follow Burrell Smith. Originally hired as an Apple II service technician, Burrell was an amazing hardware engineer and generally crazy guy. It was his hardware and circuitry work that made the original Macintosh a reality.

“I’ll Be Your Best Friend” introduces you to one of the key men behind the Mac through his introduction to Andy Hertzfeld:

“Toward the end of my first week as an Apple employee in August 1979, I noticed that someone had left a black binder on my desk, with a hand-written title that read, “Apple II: Principles of Operation”. It contained a brilliant, concise description of how the Apple II hardware worked, reverently explaining details of Woz’s epic, creative design hacks, in a clearer fashion than I’d ever read before. I didn’t know who left it there, but the title page said it was written by “Burrell C. Smith”.

Later that day, in the late afternoon, I was approached by a young, animated, slightly nervous guy with long, straight, blond hair, who entered my cubicle and walked right up to me.“

I’ll Be Your Best Friend [Folklore.org]

iPhone app developers iPaguri have a new offering on the AppStore today, called Walking Tour Fierenze, a one and a half hour audio guide for, you guessed it, a walking tour through the center of Florence, Italy.

The version currently available is in Italian only, with versions in English, French, Spanish and German coming. The developers promise anecdotes, curiosities, stories and legends about the famed center of Renaissance art and culture that “others can’t show you,” a claim we’ll have to get our Italy-based colleague Nicole Martinelli to suss out and possibly opine on regarding the true value of this $10 app.

In concept, however, iPaguri could be sitting on a gold mine. I envision Walking Tour versions for every major tourist destination and gallery in the world…

Requires iPhone 2.2 Software Update.

If you just can’t live without emoticon functionality on your iPhone, you may have cell phone users in Japan to thank. Perhaps with a nod to the centrality of “emoji” on all mobile devices in Japan, Apple has apparently enabled their use with iPhone 2.2 firmware, according to one report, but only through the Japanese virtual keyboard.

You must be willing to enter the brave world of jailbreaking your phone using cydia.app, but once there, you’ll be able to enable “emoji” right from the phone’s settings for International keyboard functionality: settings -> general -> international -> keyboards -> japanese -> emoji

Requires iPhone 2.2 firmware.

Via Pradt

For those of you who remember the good old days of the Error Bomb and the SE-30, you may remember the old Broderbund game Shufflepuck Café. You were thrust into rough and tumble space bar, clearly the outsider, forced to prove yourself in a true game of wits and agility: computer air hockey. It was a simple game for simple times: a handful of wacky alien characters, mild nudity, and an animated screen crack when your opponent scored. Ah to go back for one more round.

But you’d need a vintage Mac for that, and you threw yours out with your velour leisure suit years ago. Fret not! There are a few free possibilities for a quick match on OS X! None line up perfectly with the original, and for that I am exploring the avenues of emulation, but in a pinch these will do.

TuxPuck is perhaps the most reminiscent of the original, with a character closely resembling Princess Bejin. It is, however, limited in the characters you can play against and might need a bit of massaging to get it to play.

Shufflepuck REVOLUTION provides a bit more variety in the way of characters, including Woz and Jobs as opponents, but it’s also updated the system with 3D graphics. Unlike TuxPuck, Shufflepuck REVOLUTION insists on playing in fullscreen, which is a bit off-putting if you don’t know that right away.

The quest for the perfect OS X Shufflepuck match continues!

Did you know the AppStore has a free app for iPhone and iPod Touch that will let you print borderless 4 x 6 photos (10 x 15 cm in Europe) directly from your device, without the need to upload them first to a computer or image processing program?

iPrint Photo, from HP uses Apple’s Bonjour technology to locate most WiFi enabled HP network printers wherever you are, letting you immortalize that once-in-lifetime capture on the spot. Printers with separate photo trays automatically select that option, and otherwise default to the main paper tray. The app is compatible with most industry standard WiFi environoments, including Apple Airport, Linksys, D Link and Netgear.

Via Slippery Brick

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?

A promise to “unleash the true power of your iPhone” might not be the best marketing slogan for Snapture Flash, a xenon flash accessory with red-eye reduction for Apple’s mobile device. As snappy as it sounds, the slogan also calls attention to what is roundly regarded as the iPhone’s weakest attribute, its 2.1 megapixel, fixed focal length still camera.

The flash’s sleeve-like case is powered by the phone itself, which SnaptureLabs estimates will give you 1000 flashes on a single charge. As a bonus, the sleeve also provides amplification for the iPhone’s on-board speaker.

The downside here is that the flash is only a prototype and the accompanying Snapture camera software (which itself provides some interesting creative mods and controls for the iPhone’s camera), requires a jailbroken phone to avail yourself of its charms.

It will be interesting to see whether Snapture Labs can strike a deal to get it’s patent-pending flash technology to market before Apple comes out with a new version of the iPhone with some sort of flash built-in.

Via Engadget

Is there any social dynamic the iPhone cannot be leveraged to transform somehow?

Here’s a six minute video from digitalJournal TV detailing a “social taxi service” that San Francisco-based Avego Shared Transport hopes will one day expand the public transit system by enabling every private vehicle to operate as a public transport vehicle.

This free iPhone app has the potential to dramatically reduce wasted seat capacity in cars, reduce the costs of commuting and expand commuting options for riders and drivers alike. This is definitely not your father’s hitchhiking experience.

Using the iPhone 3G’s GPS capabilities and web services, Avego seeks to enable a cross between carpooling, public transport and eBay, by matching a driver’s wasted seat capacity – those seats which are unoccupied – to passengers, reducing commute costs for all participants. Avego automatically apportions the cost of the commute, providing a financial incentive to commuters frustrated by high gasoline prices.

The company is quick to point out that the arrangements it facilitates clearly fall under “carpooling” laws that exist in nearly every jurisdiction in the US since the oil shock of the 1970s, and financial transactions are carefully limited so that participating drivers only recover the expenses associated with providing transport and do not cross the line into making them commericial transport operators.

For the nitty gritty on how Avego works, see the further information page on Avego’s website, but definitely take time to watch the video here and marvel at yet one more example of how Apple technology is changing the ways people interact with each other and with the world around them.

Steve Jobs in January 2008. Picture by Macinate. Creative Commons.

In the wake of Apple pulling out of Macworld — and the prospect that Steve Jobs may leave the company — many are wondering if Apple will survive without him.

The answer is yes, Apple will definitely survive without Steve Jobs. It may even thrive.

Here’s three reasons why, after the jump:

I’m very interested in Wiimote projects for the Mac for two reasons. One is that the guy who came up with the idea (Johnny Lee) is an alumnus of my university. I’m so into his work that I even went to his thesis defense. The other is that my mom is a sixth grade teacher, and I helped her convince the technology department at my old middle school to buy two Wiimotes for her to use with the projector and iMac in her classroom.

Setting up the Wiimotes with the whiteboard is a snap, especially with the Wiimote Whiteboard program for the Mac. The only problems we’ve had are making the IR light pen and finding something simple for the kids to do.

In a quick demonstration last week, using a DVD player remote control since the IR light pen I made ran out of batteries, I set the kids up drawing in Appleworks. This was fun, and the ENTIRE class immediately jumped out of their seats and lined up at the chance to draw themselves. This was certainly one of the most excited and engaged audiences I’ve ever presented to.

Even so, Appleworks isn’t a really great program to be using for this type of thing. It’s obviously not designed for a pen interface, and it can’t use the Wiimote’s multitouch capabilities. This is why I was so excited to see Adrien Mondot’s effort to hook up eMotion to the Wiimote set up:

eMotion+Wiimote in IR mode from Adrien Mondot on Vimeo via [Hack A Day]

The video shows all kinds of wonders that sixth graders would lose their minds over. Drawing is cool enough, but I think we’d have to resuscitate some of them once we got them moving letters around, using multiple pens, affecting particles and giving them 3D graphics.

I’m going to try to make some little kids pass out after winter break. Have you tried the Wiimote whiteboard project?

A good Apple t shirt is hard to find. You want to be unique, to be different. You want your shirt to be like your Birkenstocks and Uggs before they were cool. Some companies will mail these things out to you for free if you beg them enough (my friend got a Digikey shirt after a week of calling), but for Apple you’ve got to go out and get them from third party vendors. These are for the long time Mac users, and the nerds who want to look good.

This shirt lurks in its awesome. Most would think that it’s just another “power button” shirt. Those in the know recognize it from other places. There’s also a bandana for the truly serious.

Mac t shirts are all well and good, but when it really comes down to it, you probably don’t want to wear them to work. You want something with a little more sophistication, even if you’re locked in the server closet all day. The Spinning Beach Ball of Death polo shirt is the way to go for casual Fridays.

Insanely Great Tees could easily fill this entire list, but I’m just going to include two of their shirts. The Bomb is definitely a must-have for me, as I can’t remember how many times I saw that little popup window. It’s ingrained in my mind. This shirt says “Yes, I was around before OS X”, “Yes, this is a metaphor for my coolness” and “No, I don’t belong in airports”.

The second Insanely Great Tees shirt is also one of my favorites. The Campground Command symbol is a subtle nod towards your Mac side, but the general concept is there for Windows and Linux users as well. This shirt was even featured in the nerd-shirt gold mine of a television show The IT Crowd.

Finally, a parody of the most sold t shirt ever. There’s too much Mac nerdiness going on here to even try to get into it all.

For those of you looking beyond this list, I recommend that you click around the sites that these shirts are from. Blue Collar Distro and Insanely Great Tees have a great selection of Mac and otherwise geeky shirts. I recognize that there are lots of great Mac shirts on Cafepress, but I tried to steer clear of them because of some issues with quality they’ve been known to have. There are also lots of great expo and out of stock shirts to be had, but that’s no good for your wardrobe is it?

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.

Apple’s iPhone now has 23 percent of the smartphone market, trimming RIM’s lead and showing signs of strong consumer demand even five months after the launch of the 3G, a new survey indicates.

The iPhone’s share of the smartphone market has more than doubled since June, when ChangeWave found the Apple handset held 11 percent of smartphone sales.

Although RIM’s BlackBerry remains leader, with 41 percent of the market between September to December, the Ontario company slipped by 1 percent.