On Monday, reader Abram Siegel’s iDisk showed 2TB of available storage. Yeah, that’s right — terabytes. The default iDisk storage is 20 gigabytes.
Siegel’s iDisk said 2TB when logged on this morning and is still saying 2TB this evening. “Still showing,” he says. “Very strange.”
Even stranger, a few other people on MacRumors forums have also experienced the mystery 2TB upgrade.
Is it a common glitch, or is Apple upgrading accounts? Anyone else’s iDisk showing 2TB?
The future of digital government rests in building a model much like Apple’s, Tim O’Reilly told BBC News. That means creating “killer apps” and making them accessible, he added.
“The iPhone comes out and Apple turns it into a platform and two years later there is something like 70,000 applications and 3,000 written every week. They have created a framework and infrastructure and that is the right way we should be thinking about government,” said O’Reilly.
A working example of the strategy?
Apps for Democracy, a data hub site for government apps that also sponsored a contest that resulted in 47 web, iPhone and Facebook apps in just a month.
A $10,000 prize was awarded to Victor Shilo for an iPhone and Facebook app combination called 311 that allows users to send complaints and requests — abandoned cars, info on trash pickups, graffiti — to District of Columbia officials.
O’Reilly warned that “going back to politics as usual” was not an option.
“In terms of unlocking information, it’s not a question of fast enough, it’s a matter of strategically enough. The government is so large and there is so much data there that the real question is how much of it is really useful. This is why it is important for the government to think strategically.”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sait24emvUw
Milan’s first Apple retailer is not in the heart of the fashionable city, as we noted last week, but that didn’t stop people from turning out in groovy headgear and giving stadium cheers for the first to walk out with the signature inauguration tee after camping out overnight.
Giving a touch of style to the event, web designer Marco Tognoli came adorned in Apple logos from old iMac G3s, topped by this fanciful conical hat with a real apple on top:
Proving Apple fans will live up to Milan’s reputation for daring fashion to open Apple’s second Italy store. (Hit the jump for more pics).
Spotify’s iPhone app has just gone live on the iTunes app store. But us poor Yankees are SOL. It’s available in Europe only — for now anyway.
The app is available here for free from Apple’s App Store, but requires a premium Spotify account to work at a cost of about £9.99 (about about $16) a month.
Neither the app nor Spotify is available in the U.S., but plans are afoot to bring the highly-rated service across the pond. It is set to come to the U.S. sometime later this year, or maybe next, pending licensing agreements with the record labels, and advertising deals that support the free service.
Because Spotify’s streaming music service is such a threat to iTunes, it was possible that Apple might somehow disable the iPhone app. Apple has disapproved of apps that replicate core iPhone functions, like Google Voice. While there is no indication yet that Apple cripples threatening apps, it doesn’t approve them. Apple perhaps doesn’t see the Spotify iPhone app as a threat while it is restricted to premium customers.
But Spotify’s app doesn’t seem to have any restrictions, except one imposed on all third-party apps — it can’t run in the background.
Spotify’s streaming music service has taken the world by storm with a music library that rivals iTunes — about 6 million tracks — and an interface to match. It’s dead easy to search, build playlists, and find new artists. It’s basically iTunes in the cloud — but free (with the occasional ad).
Spotify’s iPhone app adds a very important feature: it can cache full playlists to be played offline. You can store up to 3,333 songs — that’s 10 days constant listening — and they will play when the network goes dark. The offline caching service allows tracks to be played anywhere offline: on airplanes, in subways or even when traveling overseas to avoid roaming charges.
Official screenshots of the app and a video of it in action after the jump.
Apple is already setting up shop for Wednesday’s “It’s only rock & roll” press event that will likely see new iPods with cameras and the return of Steve Jobs to the public eye.
Apple has already hung a big banner on the front of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco — the venue of a press event next Wednesday at 10AM. The company last week sent invites to reporters with the line: “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it.”
The banner out front shows a rockin’ iPod chick kicking her feet in the air as she freaks out. The company has also hung a big banner inside the front door with a white Apple logo on a silver background.
There are no other posters visible inside the venue. The center is crawling with security guards. There are half-a-dozen security guards with Apple-logo shirts at the front, back and sides. Apple will likely have a 24-hour security detail until the event starts on Wednesday.
There’s a TV van already parked to the side on Third Street. The van is likely there to transcode video from the event for distribution via iTunes and Apple’s website, which the company typically does just after the event ends.
The event will likely see the introduction of new versions of the iPod touch and iPod nano with built-in cameras, which has all but been confirmed by dozens of cases for the new devices. There will also likely be a new version of iTunes with built-in hooks to social software like Facebook.
The event will also probably mark the return of Steve Jobs to the public stage. It’s hard to imagine he’d let the event happen without him, even if it’s just a few words at the start. But let’s hope he’s well enough to MC the whole show. He’s been missed in the last year. No one does an Apple event like Jobs.
More pictures after the jump.
All the icons for folders and apps in Snow Leopard are now drawn in glorious 512 x 512 pixels. It’s a step toward making the operating system resolution independent, and perhaps also to make Snow Leopard a touchscreen friendly OS.
But it’s also obviously done just for the art of it. These icons are real beauties. They are full of great details and little surprises. One icon contains the words to a song, visible only if you blow it up to its full size.
Hit the jump for a gallery of hardcore icon porn.
Twitter user livelovelight just posted this picture of Steve Jobs’ car in a handicapped spot at Apple’s campus. The snap was posted at 2.43 PST — about half an hour ago. Steve’s car is probably still there.
Forty minutes earlier, livelovelight tweated that he’d just missed Jobs: “At apple headquarters. Just missed steve jobs by 2 minutes,” he said.
Jobs is famous for parking in the handicapped spots (check out this hilarious gallery), but perhaps now he’s recovering from a liver transplant he has a genuine handicapped permit. I don’t see it hanging off the mirror though. He must have taken it with him.
And here he is talking to Jonny Ive. This picture was uploaded to Skitch about 33 minutes ago.
We’ve read of all sorts of ingenious ways to power our favorite electronics, including solar and our own body’s heat or movement. But in one of the more practical examples, a New York company harnesses the power of your bicycle to keep your iPod or iPhone charged.
The BioLogic FreeCharge, unveiled at the Eurobike show in Germany, can fully charge your iPod or iPhone in 3 hours. Although its unlikely most of us go on three-hour bike rides, the $100 gadget will keep your iPod from going flat when you’re nowhere near an electrical outlet.
The BioLogic FreeCharge works by taking the power from your bike’s generator hub, filtering the juice through some circuitry that prevents spikes, and sending the electricity off to you iPod, iPhone or any gizmo with a USB port.
The BioLogic FreeCharge will be available March 2010.
[Via Gadget Lab and Bike Hugger]
Apple clone maker Psystar’s got some new lawyers who believe the federal case against the Florida company is difficult, but not “crazy.”
Kiwi Camara and Tim Nyberg of Houston legal studio Camara & Sibley agreed to defend Psytar in June. They’re taking a winner-takes-all approach, charging the Mac cloner a flat fee — only if they prevail over Apple in court.
“We take hard cases, but not baseless ones,” Camara told the Houston Chronicle.
Marc Sky, better known as the “Dollar Artist,” crafts legal tender into everything from dog sculptures to bookmarks and chopstick holders.
Now he’s made these cool iPod sculptures, about which he remarks:
“Although it can’t be seen in the photos, the scroll wheel (eagle seal) is creased in around the border of the circle. This creates a 3-D effect of the scroll wheel rising up. When you run your finger around the circle, you feel the edge.”
He’s also coaxed dollar bills into cheap iPod stands, meant to angle your device so you can comfortably watch videos.
Basic one-bill sculptures cost $7.95; the more complex ones using two cost $15.90., they can be ordered from his online showcase.
Via Mac Surfer
Adobe’s Flash is fixed in the Mac OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard update that’s in the hands of a limited number of developers.
The seed updates Adobe Flash to version 10.0.32.18. Snow Leopard shipped with version 10.0.23.1, which is known to be insecure and needs to be patched to close various security holes. (If you’re running Snow Leopard and haven’t updated Flash, follow this link to download the latest version).
Apple seeded the update less than a week after shipping Snow Leopard on August 28. The other fixes seem to be relatively minor. According to World of Apple, which has published the seed notes, the 71MB update includes:
– compatibility with some Sierra Wireless 3G modems
– an issue that might cause DVD playback to stop unexpectedly
– some printer compatibility drivers not appearing properly in the add printer browser
– an issue that might make it difficult to remove an item from the Dock
– instances where automatic account setup in Mail might not work
– an issue where pressing cmd-opt-t in Mail brings up the special characters menu instead of moving a message
– Motion 4 becoming unresponsive
It’s not unusual for Apple to continue working on the operating system after the launch of a major OS update. In the past, the first update has typically been released in a couple of weeks.
Here’s a selection of games to take you through the weekend from Mac Games and More. Games include a medieval RPG where you play a megalomaniac monarch, an addictive alien shooter, and a challenging puzzler set in Amsterdam. Click on the images to see a larger screenshot.
The iPhone Spotlight search feature has been improved yet again.
Universal Search, a jailbreak app from Efiko Software, takes searching with Spotlight to a whole new level. With this add-on installed, Spotlight can access mobile search sites and generate location-based results all from within the Spotlight search window.
Universal Search’s smart input monitoring allows the user to enter a phone number or url directly into Spotlight and options to call, text or visit the url pop up in the results. It also searches Google Maps and mobile sites directly rather than going through a search engine’s web results.
Search sites include Wikipedia, Google Maps, Twitter, CNN, ebay, IMDb, flickr, and ESPN.
Universal Search is available for $4.99 in the Cydia Store.
Multimedia Messaging Service is coming to the iPhone on September 25, AT&T just announced in a press release. The service will be available at no additional cost to iPhone customers with a text messaging plan (which start at about $20). But there’s still no word on tethering (which allows your computer to access the internet via the iPhone’s data connection).
The MMS announcement comes as AT&T draws fire for its slow, unreliable data network. MMS is likely to put more strain on the network, but AT&T claims it is ready.
“The unique capabilities and high usage of the iPhone’s multimedia capabilities required us to work on our network MMS architecture to carry the expected record volumes of MMS traffic and ensure an excellent experience from Day One. We appreciate your patience as we work toward that end.”
We’re riding the leading edge of smartphone growth that’s resulted in an explosion of traffic over the AT&T network. Wireless use on our network has grown an average of 350 percent year-over-year for the past two years, and is projected to continue at a rapid pace in 2009 and beyond. The volume of smartphone data traffic the AT&T network is handling is unmatched in the wireless industry. We want you to know that we’re working relentlessly to innovate and invest in our network to anticipate this growth in usage and to stay ahead of the anticipated growth in data demand, new devices and applications for years to come.
The MMS service will allow iPhone users to send and receive messages containing images, audio, video. MMS is widely available in other countries, and can be enabled on many iPhones with a simple hack.
Tethering is not likely to be announced for several months as AT&T builds out its network with 2,100 cell towers and 100,000 new backhaul links.
The cruel but funny People of Walmart website is looking for a developer to create an iPhone app for the website.
If you’re interested in making an iPhone app to make fun of misfits — and possibly get sued for publishing their unauthorized photographs — contact People of Walmart at [email protected].
Surely you’ve seen the viral website, which publishes candid-camera style pictures of the various meth tweakers, rednecks, and other sundry weirdos that frequent the nation’s largest retailer, along with cruelly funny captions.
Just a few weeks old, the site is often down due to server overload. The developers are also looking for a new host that can cope with the traffic.
Now you can create tilt-shift photographs on your iPhone thanks to a new app called TiltShift Generator.
Available now for 99c (the price rises to $2.99 in two weeks), the app makes those fake miniature pictures so popular on the internet.
Created by developer Takayuki Fukatsu, the app works by selectively blurring parts of the picture to simulate a very narrow depth of field, making the subject look like a miniature.
The software can be used to create other effects, like vintage-looking photos.
If you want to try it out before plunking down your hard-earned 99c, the developer also offers a free online web app, and a free Adobe Air version. More sample pictures after the jump.
Logitech today introduced two new ways to stream your DRM-free iTunes Plus and other music collections. The Squeezebox Radio is a standalone device which streams iTunes, Napster or Sirius. Using a six-button navigation system, and the unit’s color screen, you can flip through album art, track and station listings, along with visualizers, the company announced.
The 5.12-inch by 8.66-inch by 5.04-inch radio also serves as an alarm clock with a display that automatically brightens depending on lighting situations.
The Squeezebox Radio offers “clear sound with minimal distortion” Logitech claims. The company said the unit has a 3/4-inch high-definition, soft-dome tweeter, plus a 3-inch high-power woofer. A 3.5mm headphone jack is also included.
Update 2: Thanks to Cult of Mac reader Gus, who noted that certain websites were screwing up his Photoshop. I started playing around with Safari and noticed that sites with embedded Flash were causing the cursor issue. I then recalled Adobe UK PR bod Emma Wilkinson’s tweet from earlier today:
Info: Snow Leopard ships w/earlier version Flash Player, recommend all update to latest, more secure which supports SL https://bit.ly/yP2VA
Sure enough, after installing the Flash update, the problem seems to be gone.
I’ve been a quite vocal critic of Adobe of late, but I’m damn impressed with the company today—it looks like someone is listening, and that’s always a good thing.
Update: Kudos to Adobe. Shortly after this post went up, a ‘Senior Software Product Quality Specialist – Photoshop’ was in touch, and we’re now involved in a discussion to try and figure out what’s going on. Also, Nack is keeping people up to date regarding some of the reported CS3 and CS4 problems.
With any new operating system comes a certain amount of pain, but the transition to Snow Leopard has been relatively easy for me. I’ve had one incredibly nasty hard crash that locked up the Mac, painted vertical stripes down the screen and looped about a quarter-second of audio at maximum volume (it was like the iMac decided to do its own really small horror film), but nothing bad before or since.
A minor exception is Photoshop CS4, which on the face of it works well, but is becoming increasingly quirky. Two bugs I’ve so far discovered that have hampered my workflow quite significantly are: 1) Photoshop deciding to ignore drags from Finder to its Dock icon—half the time, it opens just one of multiple documents; 2) insanely useful Photoshop custom cursors vanishing when the mouse button is held down.
For the latter of those things, I made a quick video (with an exasperated tone of voice). If anyone knows what the hell causes this and how to fix the bug, please post in the comments. (Note the hardware in this case is a 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac.)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZQRSMzOvKw
Now here’s something unexpected. Sophos security consultant Graham Cluley has a warning for everyone who’s just upgraded their computer to run Snow Leopard: go check your Flash plugin version as soon as possible, because you might find that your OS upgrade simultaneously downgraded your plugin. (Assuming your plugin was up-to-date to begin with; full explanation in the video above.)
You can check your plugin version at this page on Adobe’s site.
While the Vimeo Flash video player Graham’s using is not going to cause any harm to your computer, you can’t be certain that Flash content elsewhere on the web will be as safe.
How so? I called Graham this morning and asked him.
Coinciding with Steve Jobs return to the public eye next week, Penguin Portfolio is reissuing my book Inside Steve’s Brain with a new chapter about how Apple will cope without its dynamic CEO.
Published in April 2008, Inside Steve’s Brain was a New York Times best-seller and an international hit (translated into 15 languages and a best-seller in Brazil and Italy). But the book was written before Jobs’ recent liver transplant, so the publisher asked me to update it for a second edition.
Jobs will take the stage next week at Apple’s special press event to show off new holiday iPods to the press. He has to: If he doesn’t show up Sept. 9, there’ll be a media shitstorm and Apple’s stock will tank.
Jobs’ last public appearance happened exactly a year ago. Last Sept. 9, he presided over a similar iPod event at the same venue. Bloomberg had accidentally published Jobs’ obituary, and when he appeared onstage he flashed a slide with Mark Twain’s famous line: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
Indeed. One liver transplant later, Jobs is still with us, thank God. But there will be a time when Apple will have to do without its supreme leader, and as I explain in the new chapter of Inside Steve’s Brain, the company will be both royally fucked and totally OK when the inevitable happens.
Duracell’s cheap and cheerful little rechargeable battery pack is “perfect,” Gizmodo says in a nice little review of the new gadget.
Just released, Duracell’s $20 Instant Charger is good for about half a charge of an iPhone, or a full charge of an iPod nano.
“Duracell’s Instant Charger is a perfectly executed little gadget,” Gizmodo says.
The site has seen plenty of pricey chargers with all the bells and whistles, which are usually superfluous. Gizmodo is charmed by the Instant Charger’s purity: it’s basically a rechargeable litium ion battery hooked to a USB port, and that’s it.
You plug in your own charging cables, so it’s good for iPhones, iPods, digital cameras, Bluetooth headsets and any other gadget that comes with a USB cable.
The Instant Charger ‘s bigger brother, the $50 Powerhouse Charger, stores enough juice to charge an iPhone 3G 1.2 times, or an iPod nano 4 times, Giz says. But it isn’t as compelling as the Instant Charger, which is perfectly simple and cheap.
Searching the iTunes app store is much easier when you’re not using the iTunes app store. Launching today, uquery.com aims to be the vehicle for the app discovery process.
The site uses its own system of algorithms called “AppRank” to make it easy and fast to find the right app for certain tasks. Search results appear in a easy-to-navigate center column along with options to refine your search.
Unlike the iTunes App Store, you can use your browser’s “find in page” command to pinpoint your search term in the search results. It’s the little things.
At the moment, uquery.com appears to generate search results from the full text app descriptions. As the site gains visitors, search queries and tweets, the “AppRank” system will improve its ability to make the app discovery process more intuitive.
RadTech today doubled the usefulness of its AutoPower on-the-go iPhone and iPod charger, offering two USB ports. The new device also nearly halved the price, to $10 from $17 for the single-port version. The single-port option does include a 30-pin retractable cable.
The 3.3-inch by 1.3 inch AutoPower includes fuseless recharging with a sensor to avoid hardware damage. RadTech says the 5V 500mA recharger is “not for 1st -3rd Generation iPod.”
The camera world is all aflutter over Panasonic’s Lumix GF1 digital camera. Along with questions about how the device measures up to the rival Olympus E-P1, the question on everyone’s lips is the GF1 a DSLR wannabe?
It seems the question has some substance. The “R” in DSLR requires a mirror. However, the GF1, the latest in Panasonic’s Micro Four Thirds standard, is “mirror-free,” according to the company.
The British security firm Intego has published a security memo that provides a clear and detailed view of Apple’s new XProtect anti-virus system in Snow Leopard.
There are several interesting tidbits: Apple’s new XProtect system cannot recognize all the variants of the Trojans it is supposed to protect against, for example.
Also, the XProtect system does not spot Trojans hidden inside .mpkg files downloaded from the internet, a major weakness, according to Intego. (Apple’s installer recognizes two types of files — .pkg files for simple packages, and .mpkg files that contain multiple packages to be installed.)
The memo is patently self-serving — Intego sells several anti-virus and privacy packages for the Mac — but nonetheless provides a clear and detailed view of what Apple’s new XProtect system does — and doesn’t do.
The full memo after the jump.