Apple appears to be building a large, distributed helpdesk operation, either in anticipation of a major new product, or simply to sustain the company’s growing popularity.
Apple this summer is recruiting about 450 “At Home” technical support staff in at least six cities across the U.S., according to a document seen by Cultofmac.com.
Instead of locating these workers in a centralized call center, they will work out of their own homes.
“As a company who’s motto is ‘think different,’ our ‘work different’ philosophy offers you the opportunity to work independently in your home office,” the job ads said. “You will receive all the wonderful benefits of working for an amazing company without ever leaving your home.”
In fact, however, it’s a music art project slated for the Volt Festival June 6th in Uppsala, Sweden, where organizers hope hundreds of iPhones will communicate through audio – creating a musical organism. The result, according to Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke, will be a self-organizing system they describe as intelligent neural music.
The idea builds on an installation, called Bacterial Orchestra, the pair took in 2006 to Brazil, Germany, Norway and elsewhere. This year, the new generation, called Public Epidemic No.1 is spreading beyond the microphones and loudspeakers of the original installation.
Cornéer said the current project could be hosted on any mobile phone but they chose the iPhone “because it’s popular and the centralized App Store makes it easy for the epidemic to spread.”
Check out the clip from the first test of the project above and follow after the jump for more detail on how it works.
When I’m barrelling down the freeway in my four-ton Land Rover, I like to check Google Maps on my iPhone and email my friends. Trouble is, I can’t see where I’m going.
Email ‘N Walk, a new super-clever iPhone app, offers the perfect solution.
It uses the iPhone’s camera to display on screen what’s up ahead. It’s designed for pedestrians — to stop them walking into lampposts as they read or send email — but it’d work in automotive settings too.
Shame it doesn’t work for text , Web browsing, maps, or video, but it’s a start.
Available for free — for a limited time — from Phase2 Media.
Like everyone else, I’m dying to know if Steve Jobs will be returning to work at the end of June.
Since I haven’t got a clue, and neither does anyone else, I figured I’d ask someone who might know. Not the usual blowhard pundits, but Barbara Courtney, a corporate psychic known as the “Seer of Silicon Valley.”
Speaking by phone from her home in Redwood City, Courtney said Jobs will return to Apple in June as promised — but he won’t stay long.
“My feeling is he will come back,” said Courtney. “I’m not seeing June as too soon.”
Jobs took six months medical leave in January saying his ongoing medical problems were “more complex” than suspected and he needed time off work to concentrate on his health. The company has promised several times that Jobs will return in late June as planned, but many are pessimistic.
On Tuesday, hopes were further dashed when Apple said the WWDC keynote in early June will be given by a team of executives led by head marketer Phil Schiller. The slot has traditionally been Jobs’, and many hoped (and are still hoping) he’d put in a surprise appearance.
It could be a while before Ge Wang and the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) starts to feel the heat, but the The London Geek Community iPhone OSCestra served notice last week at the City’s Open Hack London that experimental iPhone music performance is alive and well.
Wang, of course, founded Smule, developer of the internationally popular Ocarina app, as well as the recently released Leaf Trombone (App Store link), and conducts SLOrk, the renowned ensemble of student computer scientists and musicians using 20 MacBooks to compose and perform new music.
The London-based iPhone OSCestra is a crew of eight musicians, conducted by a chap using a Wii controller, who opened their lone performance so far with an impressive (and authentically geeky) performance of the “Doctor Who” theme.
Jim Purbrick apparently conjured the idea for the venture just a few hours before the Open Hack event, a one-day symposium sponsored by Yahoo! on May 8 that brought together tech-savvy hackers for a day of coding and communicating.
Purbrick and his music mates downloaded the free app mrmr (App Store link), an app that supports customizable audio controllers and sends data wirelessly to other devices using OSC (Open Sound Control). A controller could be a piano-style keyboard, a bank of faders, or an array of knobs and buttons — essentially interactive widgets that allow users to control sound and music.
The free desktop application OSCulator caught all the data, and sent it to Ableton Live, a powerful performance and production platform.
In this instance, the orchestra performed using a bank of synthesizers running within Live. If you’re interested in going beyond Garage Band and making music on your Mac, it’s worth checking out the Live demo.
Reader Jay Floyd was cruising L.A.’s Sunset Strip on Thursday afternoon when he spotted Steve Wozniak fleeing some video paparazzi on his Segway. See the photo above — you’ll need a microscope to spot Woz, who’s behind the dark blue SUV.
Says Jay: “He was crossing Crescent Heights at Sunset Blvd, and went whizzing down the strip on the sidewalk. Some videographer paparazzi popped out to take pics.”
The video paparazzi must have been from TMZ.com, which has obsessed over Woz since he dated comedian Kathy Griffin and burned up the dancefloor on Dancing With the Stars.
But as with any great tabloid story, there’s a sex angle. Woz was either on a Segway date with a sexy blonde, or chasing afer her.
Explains Jay: “If you look ahead of him, there was some way-too-pretty blonde woman on another Seqway. Not sure who that was.”
So who is the mystery Segway bombshell? Unfortunately, Jay didn’t have a gigantic zoom lens to snap her mug.
“I only had my iPhone so I couldn’t zoom,” he says. “A bit ironic, I suppose.”
Full pic after jump. Plus useless fuzzy pic of mystery blond.
Microsoft was slammed this week by PC industry security experts for releasing security patches to fix vulnerabilities in Windows versions of PowerPoint, while announcing that Mac users would remain at risk until patches for OS X are completed in June.
“Microsoft is the one big company screaming loudest over ‘responsible disclosure,'” said Swa Frantzen, a security analyst at SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Center (ISC) in a post to the ISC blog late Tuesday, adding, “[But the] policy cuts both ways: You need to obey the rules yourself just as well as demand it from all others involved.”
The Windows manufacturer, claimed Frantzen, ignored its well-known best practices for responsible disclosure Wednesday by revealing that Office for Mac 2004 and Office for Mac 2008 contain three unpatched vulnerabilities, and by releasing information about the same bugs in Windows. The combination, he said, could be used by hackers to craft exploits targeting Macs.
A hacker claims to have broken into Steve Jobs’ private Amazon.com account.
The hacker is trying to sell details of Jobs’ Amazon.com account to journalists, including Jobs’ purchase history for several years and his credit card number.
According to the hacker, who identifies himself as “orin0co,” Jobs is an avid online shopper. Jobs has purchased 20,000 items from Amazon.com in the last 10 years, the hacker says. That’s 2,000 items a year, or more than 5 items a day, every day.
“I got myself a hold of this information,” the hacker wrote in an email sent from a secure Hushmail account. “No one else has it. I didn’t misuse it, otherwise Mr. Jobs would long ago change his login detail, wouldn’t he?”
Remember the fantastic portrait of Steve Jobs using Apple’s classic typefaces from last week? Here’s a step-by-step guide showing exactly how designer Dylan Roscover created it in Illustrator and Photoshop. It was 24-hours of work, he says, with no sleep.
It’s fitting, one might say, that the San Francisco Giants provide home fans at AT&T Park the most sophisticated digital amenities in all of professional sports. After all, San Francisco is the nominal home of Silcon Valley (with apologies to San Jose) and the headquarters of many of the cutting-edge internet and social media companies in the world today.
Free Wi-Fi has been a staple of the game experience at AT&T (formerly Pac Bell) Park for years, with the Giants having been one of the first professional sports teams to offer the service to fans and working journalists alike.
Things really began to change at the ballpark in the past two years, however, after the introduction of Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch, Bill Schlough, the team’s CIO, said in an interview with technology journalists this week.
Since the iPhone’s introduction around the same time the Giants hosted 2007’s All Star Game, usage of the park’s Wi-Fi network has gone up 537 percent. Users of the Wi-Fi network at the park are now able to use an innovative and exclusive system called the Giants Digital Dugout, which offers fans two unique benefits.
The first is a “food finder,” which can direct fans to the closest concession location for the exact kind of food or beverage they want, and the second is a collection of video replay highlights that includes, within three minutes after it happens, any controversial call by an umpire. Replays of such calls are banned from being shown on the ballpark’s in-house video systems, so that feature in itself could be worth bringing your iPhone to the game – even if it’s not ever likely to get the upms to reverse a bad call.
This isn’t the first Apple ad out after Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunter” campaign, but this one responds directly to the ads where pseudo-everyday consumers shop around and pick PCs over Macs.
Here Megan stands between hip the Mac guy and a line of brown-suited PCs — like a dating game show? — while she talks about her (computer) needs.
The PCs who don’t fit the bill file out but some are still lining up to win her affection until she says, “I just want something that works, without a lot of viruses or a ton of headaches.”
Leaving her alone with Mac Man. Cute couple.
Is the promise of long-term stability with little drama enough to combat the price claim made by the Microsoft ads?
A chandelier inside Steve Jobs’ abandoned mansion. Photo by Jonathan Haeber, Bearings.
On Tuesday night, Woodside town council granted Steve Jobs a controversial demolition permit to tear down his rotting mansion in Woodside, California — one of Silicon Valley’s nicest and poshest towns.
Jobs bought the mansion in 1984, the year the Mac was released, and lived there with no furniture for almost a decade. But he hasn’t lived there for nearly 10 years, and he now wants to raze the house and build a smaller, greener dwelling on the land.
The mansion is locked up, but urban adventurer and photographer Jonathan Haeber sneaked into the house and took some rare and unbelievably beautiful pictures.
Explains Jonathan: “As far as how I obtained access, I can’t really say much, other than the fact that it was back in 2006. I found the gate open (I believe there was some landscaping work being done at the time) and the font door slightly ajar. I had my camera on me, and being substantially curious found myself inside of the mansion. I came back soon afterward for a night trip, explicitly to photograph the architecture. It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life and I don’t regret doing it.”
Haeber’s photographs show Jobs’ mansion in all its faded glory. Haeber’s haunting pictures include dusty copies of The Godfather videotapes; vines creeping across interior ceilings; and the front of the boarded-up mansion with its immaculately-maintained front lawn.
The pictures are poignant and lovely, and are possibly the last that will be taken of the mansion. On Tuesday, the Woodside town council approved a demolition permit.
Jonathan is an architecture buff who is working to catalog abandoned historical buildings on the West Coast.
After a long legal battle, Steve Jobs has been granted permission to tear down his crumbling mansion in the posh Silicon Valley town of Woodside, California.
At a hearing of the Woodside town council on Tuesday night, councilors voted 6 to 1 to approve a demolition permit allowing Jobs to tear down his neglected, 14-bedroom Jackling mansion.
“It’s an unfortunate thing that Mr. Jobs doesn’t like the house,” Woodside’s Mayor Peter Mason told the Palo Alto Daily News. “It’s really sad that we’re going to continue to tear down historic resources in this town because they’re old.”
The mayor, who is also an architect, cast the sole dissenting vote.
Jobs bought the mansion in 1984 and lived there for a decade with barely any furniture until he got married and started raising a family. He currently lives with his wife and children in Palo Alto. The 17,000-square-foot mansion has remained empty and neglected since.
In 2004, the Woodside town council granted a demolition permit, but it was blocked by a local preservationist group called Friends Of The Jackling House, which claimed the mansion is a national treasure. The mansion was built in 1925 for copper millionaire Daniel C. Jackling by architect George Washington Smith.
At one point, Jobs offered to give the mansion for free to anyone who would haul it away.
Jobs plans to build a smaller, greener mansion in its place — probably a huge glass cube.
The news is a big blow to Apple fans, who were hoping Jobs would mark his return to Apple with a big splashy appearance at the conference.
Jobs took six months medical leave in January to focus on his health, which had appeared to be in serious decline during 2008. In public appearances, Jobs appeared alarmingly gaunt and thin. Jobs said he would return to work at the end of June, but many hoped he might make an earlier appearance at the week-long programmers conference, which will start on Monday, June 8.
A thief who stalked Apple customers telling them “don’t do nothing stupid” to induce them to hand over just-purchased products didn’t follow his own advice.
After robbing at least three people by stalking them from Apple’s SoHo store in New York, Dwayne Stewart got caught by using his real name to pawn the products nearby.
“Don’t do nothing stupid,” Dwayne Stewart snarled to one victim before grabbing his computer a few blocks from the Apple Store and running off, police told the NY Post.
Stewart was arrested after a person who bought one of the hot computers took it in for service at an Apple Store.
A worker there looked up its registration number and discovered it had been reported stolen.
Police traced the stolen computer back to Stewart because he used his real name at the pawn shop.
Doh!
Image of the SoHo store used with a CC license, thanks genzo
Eric Lawrence crafted a chandelier from the molded Styrofoam packing material Apple used to use for shipping laptops. What once cradled MacBooks now lights up with 16 bulbs (5W compact fluorescents) that generate little heat but produce the same light as 20W incandescents.
His creation, called Styrolight, won the Sustainable prize in Design Within Reach Austin’s M+D+F competition.
Wonder if I’d hoarded the packaging over the years whether I’d have enough to do something with it…
Via Make
UPDATED: It seems that David Hockney doesn’t like what he reads on Cultomac.com. We received an aggressive letter from Hockney’s lawyers demanding we remove the pictures posted here (which were copyright the Annely Juda Fine Art gallery); and correct an error: Hockney didn’t create the paintings on his iPhone, but on his desktop computer. David – we apologise for the error and are usually very careful and respectful of copyrights, but we were just trying to draw attention to the exhibition, not rip off your art. No need to sic the lawyers on us. We’re fans. I have a Pearblossom Highway print hanging in my house (which I paid for, btw). — Leander Kahney.
We wondered whether iPhone art was gallery ready, perhaps it took grandad of Pop art 71-year-old David Hockney to convince those who put art on the walls for a living that the output was more than random doodling.
The Annely Juda Fine Art gallery in London recently launched a show of Hockney’s entitled “Drawing In a Printing Machine” featuring iPhone works — created over the last four months — plus other drawings made with Photoshop and Graphics Tablet. All are displayed as inkjet printouts on paper.
For all the chatter generated by what may be the first major iPhone art gallery show, no one seems to mention what program he used, though it looks like Brushes.
Hockney’s technique, according to the Times, is to “stroke the screen very softly.” He reportedly sends fresh flower sketches to friends every morning, and says that he never could have imagined that the telephone would usher a renaissance in drawing.
You can see some more of his handiwork at the gallery here, if you’re in London, the show’s on until July 11.
Are his iPhone works in the gallery because it’s Hockney or because it’s art?
An App Store gatekeeper, whose name may or may not be Peter, officially positioned Apple as a ‘Holier Than Thou’ company recently, by rejecting the whimsical photobooth application Me So Holy.
The app would have allowed users to place photographs of themselves or others inside pre-set figure avatars that could let cousin Jim appear to be the face of Jesus, or Joe Bob to be Mohammed, or Mary Jane to be a bodhisattva, or, you get the picture.
Apple rejected the app, saying it “contains objectionable material,” according to Me So Holy developer Benjamin Kahle.
If you haven’t make it yet as an iPhone developer, Sam Kaplan and Louie Harboe, a couple of seventh graders from Chicago, may make you rethink your career choice.
The pair’s iPhone development company, Tapware, recently released its first iPhone application called “The Mathmaster” and has a second app in the hopper. Based in Hyde Park and supported by seed funding from a business school professor at the University of Chicago, Kaplan and Harboe have been plotting their success trajectory for years.
“Since the fifth grade, we’ve had this idea of working together and becoming successful,” said Harboe, a professional designer with a portfolio of images and icons at www.graphicpeel.com.
The Mathmaster is a simple tool designed to interest kids in things like square roots and multiplication tables. The pair developed the app in about a month and it was approved by Apple’s App Store within a week.
They hope to launch a second, quirkier advertising-based application around their site sipthatdrink.com in the coming months.
“Our goal was to get approved by the app store, sell a bunch of copies and make more apps,” said Kaplan, who has already completed an advanced placement computer science course and served as a keynote speaker at the National American Council for Online Learning.
Makes paper routes and lemonade stands look very 20th century, doesn’t it?
Police in Portsmouth, New Hampshire are setting up an iPod registry to thwart stealing. The registry covers the local high school, where staff and students reported high numbers of Apple snatching.
It works like much like bike registration: students fill out a form with a description and serial number of the device, verified by police staff at registration, and are given a sticker stating the device has been ID’d. The iPod is also photographed and the info is kept on file at the police department.
Police said the program is meant to speed up investigations and perhaps prevent thefts.
Do you think the registration will act as a deterrent?
The folks over at Pogo Stylus are offering $500 to the best artwork created on an iPhone or iPod touch made using said stylus (“no naked fingers allowed.”)
You can enter more than once (keep it clean and friendly, no copyrighted material, trademarks or logos owned by another party) and the deadline is July 1. Complete rules here.
The two works above are the first in the online gallery of contest entries.
Apple is getting down with the ‘Green is the New Black’ concept in a limited, though nonetheless laudable way.
The company is offering to re-cycle, free of charge, any school’s old, unwanted Mac computers, PCs, and other qualifying electronic waste, as long as schools register by July 31, 2009.
The program will only run for one month, until August 31, 2009, and schools must recycle a minimum of 25 pieces in order to participate.
Special consideration is being given to data security, according to Apple, which promises:
* All recycled hard drives will be ground into confetti-size pieces.
* Customers will receive a certificate of destruction for each lot recycled through the program.
* All asset tags and other identifying information are removed prior to destruction.
* All of the electronic waste collected through the program is processed domestically in the United States.
Apple has notified iPhone developers their submissions to the App Store must be compatible with iPhone OS 3.0 or they will no longer be reviewed, according to an iPhone Developer Program email.
Existing apps in the App Store should already run on iPhone OS 3.0 without modification, but Apple advised developers to test existing apps with iPhone OS 3.0 to ensure the absence of compatibility issues. “After iPhone OS 3.0 becomes available to customers, any app that is incompatible with iPhone OS 3.0 may be removed from the App Store,” the email read.
iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5 and iPhone SDK 3.0 beta 5 are currently posted in the iPhone Dev Center, which means major hoopla in iPhone-world is likely mere weeks away.
Designer Dylan Roscover has created a fabulous portrait of Steve Jobs using the words of Apple’s seminal “Think Different” campaign.
At first, Dylan’s portrait looks like a pointillist painting. But on closer inspection, you see that Jobs is rendered in the words of “the crazy ones” TV ad, using a variety of Apple-related fonts — Motter Tektura, Apple Garamond, Myriad, Univers, Gill Sans, and Volkswagen AG Rounded, to be exact.
Dylan is a self-described ‘design nerd’ who lives in Aloma, Florida.
Says Dylan: “This is a typeface-driven design based on the “Here’s to the crazy ones” ad campaign from Apple in the 90s, using… fonts present in Apple branding and products.”
Hit the jump for a detail pic and link to the fullsize picture.
Welcome iHome: doors recently opened on a solar-powered, energy efficient prefab house that creators hope has the design cachet of Apple products.
Miles away from the usual trailer park digs, the homes feature v-shaped rooflines, bamboo floors and rooftop decks.
The name’s a hat tip to Apple — much like the iApartment building or the iHotel we’ve written about before.
“We love what it represents,” Kevin Clayton of Clayton Homes told the AP. “We are fans of Apple and all that they have done. But the ‘I’ stands for innovation, inspiration, intelligence and integration.”
The recession-friendly iHouse goes for $100 to $130 a square foot, depending on extras in what’s billed as “a moderately-priced plug and play dwelling” for the eco-conscious. The ribbon was cut on the iHouse in the US a few days ago at the annual shareholders’ meeting of investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway Inc. in Omaha, Neb.
Via AP
