News - page 2353

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.

In the hustle bustle of modern urban life, especially during holiday seasons fraught with travel delays, white-knuckle driving on treacherous roads, crowded shopping districts (though maybe not so much that, this year) and kids on vacation underfoot, a little bit of peace and tranquility can seem like the greatest of gifts.

Now you can give such a gift to yourself, a friend or loved one, with Freeverse’s Tranquility app for iPhone and iPod touch.

For just $1.99, drift off to sleep or catch a few peaceful moments during a stressful day. With a beautiful visual interface and new audio tweaks in the recently updated version 1.3 (requires iPhone 2.2 firmware), you can choose from a full 60 minute relaxation and meditation track, or from other themes such as Flowing Water, Ocean Waves, Desert Wind, Gentle Rain or Thunderstorms, even Pink Noise – an enhanced form of white noise.

Tranquility is the other side of Freeverse, the award-winning app developer responsible for Moto Chaser, Burning Monkey Casino and Big Bang Sudoku, among many others. Available now in the AppStore.

The iPhone app formerly known as Exposure has just been updated to version 1.5 and now has a new name: Darkslide.

Developer Fraser Speirs explains what it’s all about on his blog. For the uninitiated, the app is an iPhone-friendly environment for your Flickr account. It lets you keep track of your photos, your contacts’ photos, and check what images have been taken near your current location (which comes in extremely handy when you’re at a tourist attraction and you want to try and shoot something a bit different).

The big new feature in Exposure – sorry – Darkside 1.5 is, in Fraser’s own words, “Upload, upload, upload”. So, it does uploads now.

(I’ve not been able to test it yet, because my App Store is refusing to acknowledge that Exposure has been updated to anything other than Exposure. I expect it’ll all update itself in a few hours.)

This is the just the first half. Of the first page. Of search results for the word “fart” on the App Store.

It would appear that if you haven’t written a fart app, you’re nobody.

Seriously: do any of you have one of these on your iPhone? Has anyone had one of these apps installed for more than 10 minutes? A day?

I can’t talk. I’ve got Star Wars Sound Board installed.

So this is je@n’s iSofa.

I did ask je@n what the story was behind it, but je@n didn’t reply. I expect je@n’s very busy. Thanks anyway, je@n, for letting us re-use your Creative Commons licensed photo. Of a sofa. Covered with MacBook keyboards.

I wonder what it feels like to sit on?

Although some are questioning how long Steve Jobs will continue to lead Apple, the Cupertino chief executive ranks No. 2 in a list of most-like company leaders.

Jobs had a 90 percent approval rating by participants in the first-ever survey by review site Glassdoor. Jobs garnered 290 reviews, far above the 50 needed to qualify.

Art Levinson, CEO of biotech firm Genentech, was ranked No. 1 most-liked boss with 93 percent approval.

Jobs beat Eric Schmidt, CEO of Internet Google, who had 88 percent approval.

Office Depot CEO Steve Odland ranked as the least-liked CEO, obtaining just 4 percent approval from reviewers.

Add Garmin to the list of companies announcing plans to introduce Android-based handsets in 2009. Garmin said its nuvifone will link GPS features with Google Maps.

The handset is expected to be the first in a series from Garmin, according to the company’s head of Asia Pacific marketing, Tony An.

An said while the nuvifone will launch this Spring, a number of others based on Android will appear during the second half of 2009. The Garmin phones will be produced by another company, reports said Monday.

Friday, Samsung said it would launch its first Android phone in the U.S. sometime between April and June of 2009. Development of the handset has been accelerated to meet the “specific needs of local carriers,” an unnamed Samsung official told the South Korean ET News.

Palm, the down-on-its-luck Treo maker, announced Monday $100 million in new funding amid talk it will unveil new products at the January CES trade show.

In addition to the $100 million lifeline, the deal allows Palm to sell shares worth $49 million — or a 31 percent premium before April 1.

The much-needed funding comes as Palm reportedly has just two years before cash is depleted and the company is set to unveil a new handset and a smartphone operating system.

‘Tis the Season of Giving and for a site such as MacHeist, where you can get bundled amazements year-round, giving really means giving. This Christmas, sign up for a MacHeist account and come to the MacHeist Giving Tree on Christmas to see what free gifts are under the tree just for you.

Refer your friends and get additional gifts with your name on them.

eMusic is into the gifting spirit this season, offering a 12 song set of Christmas tunes available to download for free.

The playlist includes songs by an eclectic mix of artists ranging from Twisted Sister to Eartha Kitt, The Brian Setzer Orchestra to Lisa Loeb, with Shawn Lee’s Ping pong Orchestra and Kidz Bop Kids thrown in for good measure.

Classic seasonal favorites include Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls and Auld Lang Syne, as well as Bach: Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring and Angels We Have Heard On High.

Well worth checking out, after all – who doesn’t love free music?

Via Distorted Loop

An unnamed Samsung official said the company is “accelerating” development of the handset in order to meet “specific needs of local carriers,” according to South Korean ET News.

Although few details are known, the handset may include a design similar to Samsung’s Instinct and Omnia phones, according to one report.

Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder and designer of the Apple I and Apple II computers, has joined the advisory board of Axiotron, maker of the Modbook Mac tablet.

Wozniak “brings a network of personal and professional contacts and offers his insight into market trends,” according to an Axiotron statement.

In 1976, Wozniak cofounded Apple with Steve Jobs, now CEO of the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer-maker.

Earlier this month, Axiotron updated the tablet-based Modbook, improving its screen and dropping to 5.3 pounds the weight of the unit priced at $2,249. MacBooks can also be converted to a Modbook, using Modbook Service for $1,299.

RIM announced Thursday it sold 6.7 million BlackBerry handsets between September and November, a figure approaching Apple’s 6.9 million iPhone 3G sales.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM referred to a “record” quarter that saw revenue climb 66 percent to $2.8 billion – despite an economic recession expected to slow handset demand.

RIM told analysts it is having trouble keeping pace with demand for the BlackBerry Storm, the company’s first touch-screen smart-phone.

Apple is being sued for patent infringement after a company alleges Cupertino used confidential data to launch Apple TV and other products.

EZ4Media is asking an Illinois court to grant an injunction and fine Apple for infringing on four patents on technology to stream video from a device to a television.

The company claims three employees with “confidential and proprietary information” about the patents were hired by Apple months before the computer-maker launched Apple TV, a product that streams video to home television screens.

Right then, lovely Cultists. We want your help.

We want to know what the Mac community’s favorite new apps are. What software – first released during 2008 – has fired you up, made you incredibly productive, had you screaming with joy or laughing with delight, or generally just been jolly useful?

We want to know.

We’re prepared to be a little fuzzy with the rules. If your nomination first appeared as a beta in late 2007, that’s fine. If it’s only just appeared in the last few days, that’s fine too. But it needs to be a NEW Mac app, and it needs to have been new this year. You get the idea.

(And yes, we’re going to do one of these for iPhone apps too – maybe next week. One thing at a time.)

So, fire away. Speak your branes. Perhaps we can reach some kind of consensus. The comments box, lovely Cultists, is yours to sully.

At long last, there’s a desktop app for UK Mac users to download digital copies of BBC TV shows.

The launch of the Mac beta comes many months after its Windows rival. It also comes with a self-congratulatory news story at news.bbc.

And it’s also a bit of a mess.

Lots of people, myself included, have spent long hapless hours this evening, trying to find any way to download the app in the first place. I hunted high and low and found nothing. I signed up as a Labs user. I clicked randomly on some stuff. Hmmm. Finally a friend sent me this link, which took me to a Download option.

It’s an Adobe Air app, so installation is fairly straightforward from that point. Even so, with the app installed, I still can’t find a single show available as a download. And that’s after trying in three different browsers. Hence the disappointingly empty screenshot above.

But hey, let’s not moan. It’s great to have the app at all, and UK Mac users will be delighted to have it around. Thank you lovely Auntie Nerds!

Only Google treats us as well as this. Other software developers insist on adding functionality to their updates; only Google gives us the benefit of enhanced version numbers. These people really care about us. It brings a tear to my eye, it really does.

The decision by CEO Steve Jobs to bypass a keynote speech in favor of marketing head Phil Schiller, sends “a clear message that a leadership shift is underway,” Munster wrote in a note.

This isn’t the first time onlookers have attempted to read Apple’s intentions through trade show speaker selection. In October, the inclusion of Schiller and Tim Cook prompted questions of a potential exit by Jobs.

The Apple Expo in Paris became the latest victim of Cupertino’s decision to scale back its participation in industry trade shows. The French show announced Wednesday next year’s show was cancelled.

Attendance at the 25 year-old Paris event had dwindled to 30,000 this year from a high of 90,000. Apple CEO Steve Jobs had skipped the event since 2004, when he underwent surgery for Pancreatic cancer. The trade show suffered another black eye in 2007, when Apple was unable to show the iPhone.

Tuesday Apple announced San Francisco-based Macworld Expo 2009 would be its last and that Jobs would not be keynote speaker. The company explained the move, saying trade shows had become ‘a very minor part’ of customer outreach.

Recent weeks have seen renewed discussion about the security vulnerabilities of Macs and the OS X operating system, though, as usual, it is primarily PC interests who say, “your day of reckoning is gonna come” and Mac interests who say, “Apple computers are the safest computers under the sun.”

Meanwhile, Apple released a security update on Tuesday that quashed 21 security bugs, news of which was taken by those on both sides of the debate as evidence their argument is right.

What better time, then, for Norton/Symantec to release Internet Security 4 for Mac and Internet Security for Mac Dual Protection, designed for those running Boot Camp or other Windows virtualization software on the Mac. Both products integrate all-new firewall and antivirus protection with tools to help protect against the increasing instance of identity theft.

I spent some time this week going over the UI and program features with Symantec’s Mac Product Manager, Mike Romo, and I was impressed with the granularity built in to the software’s control features and pleased to see Symantec has paid attention to creating a UI that says the designers have seen and used Macs themselves.

While automatically blocking attempted exploits using different protocols, Norton Internet Security for Mac’s firewall now also offers application control, which allows users to manage the applications that are connecting to the Internet, protecting Macs from spyware. New location awareness controls let users specify different connection settings for different networks to which a computer may be connected. The software is also integrated with Symantec’s DeepSight Threat Management System, an evolving database of known bad actors. Firewall rules are automatically updated at least once a day to protect against the latest attacking IP addresses.

This is powerful software that should appeal to rabidly security-conscious Mac users – especially the growing cadre of multiple-user businesses, schools and enterprise customers who have adopted the OS X platform – who will be happy with its degree of configurability as well as the extensive live monitoring and event logging it makes possible. Those who want to “set it and forget it” can also feel secure from phishing, malware or hacking threats they believe are lurking out there for the Mac.

Available now for the US from the Symantec online store and through various retail outlets, Norton Internet Security 4 for Mac is US$79.99, which includes a one-year subscription to Symantec protection updates. The suggested retail price for Norton Internet Security for Mac Dual Protection is US$89.99, which also includes a one-year subscription to Symantec protection updates.

Phil Schiller, watch out. Some people are so annoyed at Apple’s decision to quit the Macworld Expo that they are planning a humiliating revenge.

Lesa Snider King loves Macworld so much that she’s declared herself “mad at Apple” with a brand new call to arms web site: Silent Keynote.

“Apple is sending a message to the entire community–professionals, hobbyists, media, Mac User Groups, and even IDG themselves–that they care nothing for the community who supported them through thick and thin,” she declares.

And so: “If you’re attending the Macworld Expo keynote on Tuesday, Jan. 6, you can send a message to Apple by remaining silent during the 2009 keynote. While Phil Schiller is on the stage, let there be no applause, no whistling… just utter and complete silence.”

What do you think of Lesa’s plan? Will you join her in silent protest? If you do, and Apple DOES finally unveil that updated Newton-Pippin-Tablet-iPhone crossover that everyone’s been going on about for so long, how will you manage to contain yourself?

I can’t help thinking that Lesa’s just shooting herself in the foot here. By announcing that it will quit Macworld, Apple has already made clear that it doesn’t care what Macworld attendees think. It’s going to do its own thing, regardless.

(Photo used under Creative Commons license: thanks kradlum.)