Josh Darrah, an Australian graphic designer, crafted this iPod Mini case entirely in wood — with a nifty matching charger dock.
Darrah told Stuff he spent about four weekends to craft the case out of just $12 USD in materials — Australian red cedar for the main shell and Camphor Laurel for the click wheel and base.
He used screws instead of glue, making it a little greener (he did employ some double sided tape to secure the clickwheel).
XMenu from the Devonthink people is one of those freeware apps that I recommend to every Mac user I meet. The latest update, version 1.9, is newly released and boasts visual refinements and a helpful new feature.
For the uninitiated, XMenu is a Menu Bar widget for getting to stuff quickly without leaving the app you’re in. What I like most about it is its flexibility. You can have six different shortcuts in your Menu Bar if you like, or just one if you prefer to keep things simple.
That’s what I do. I use the user-defined widget and throw aliases for useful files and folders into ~/Library/Application Support/XMenu – that way, I keep my Menu Bar uncluttered but XMenu still gives me quick click access to stuff like my todo.txt, my income and expenses records, and a handful of use-them-every-day folders.
If your Dock is overcrowded with folders or stacks that you don’t use because, well, because it’s overcrowded, then you should have a look at XMenu. This latest update adds a text snippets manager that works just the same as the user-defined widgets. Put some plain or rich text files in the right place, and XMenu will let you insert them into any app with two clicks.
People have been speculating about a Google OS for years, and finally it’s official. Chrome OS will be open source, free, and popping up on a netbook near you in about a year or so from now.
Today’s deals include a Samsung Netbook that can be hacked to run OS X, a 2TB external HD for a nice price, and a Philips 42-inch LCD HDTV for $850. And many more!
Two weeks after an iPhone 3GS was dropped in a swimming pool while recording video, the phone is still frickin’ working says its owner.
“I’m talking to you on it now,” says Khena Kara, the iPhone’s owner, speaking from his home in Nashville, TN. “It’s still going strong.”
Kara’s iPhone 3GS gained internet fame after Kara accidentally dropped it in a swimming pool while recording a video. The iPhone kept recording as it sank to the bottom, and as he fished it out. “It still frickin’ works!” he says in surprise as he pulls the iPhone from the pool. Kara posted the footage to YouTube, and it spread fast on blogs and Twitter. It has now been watched more that 500,000 times.
“Yes, it’s real,” says Kara of the video. “It was the pool in my subdivision.”
Above is a video still of Kara taken from the iPhone video right after it was fished from the pool. And below it is a new picture of Kara taken with the same iPhone.
The new picture’s metadata appears to back up Kara’s story.
Having now lived with an iPhone 3GS for the better part of three weeks, I remain incredibly impressed with the device. It’s powerful, fast, and running extremely mature software that’s delightfully quirk-free.
That said, it’s also become apparent that if you’re actually interested in using the phone for its intended use (web browsing, e-mail and video), battery life is ridiculously inadequate. In spite of assurances at WWDC, the 3GS only lasts marginally longer than the 3G, and I often need to charge up mid-afternoon to make sure i have decent battery for my train ride home.
Yesterday, things really went out of wack, and I could literally watch my charge diminish by 2 percent per minute when I was doing nothing so much as leaving it on my desk. A restart fixed it, but it was an extreme case of a persistent problem.
I started thinking about all of this thanks to Joel Johnson’s review of the Mophie Juice Pack Air over at BB Gadgets today. I still think having any case would be a downer, but the extra battery power is becoming increasingly necessary to enjoy my long-awaited iPhone in the manner I choose. That said, I can’t really bring myself to by one of those big battery packs that hold four times the charge, or what have you — afraid of losing it.
What’s been your experience? Do you moderate your Flight Control play to preserve your talk time? Or do you sport a bonus battery pack?
In the unlikely event that you’ve been yearning for more browsers on your Mac, and in the even less likely event that you wish you could splash out money for one; well, sunshine, your prayers have been answered.
For iCab, the last Mac browser that still costs money, is still being updated and has just reached version 4.6.1. And it can be all yours for 20 bucks. (I’m wracking my brains, and I can’t think of any other browsers that cost money these days – not since OmniWeb went free. Shout if you know of another.)
Exactly one year ago, Apple brought forth the iPhone App Store, which has gone on to become the greatest gift to Twitter’s growth imaginable. Among other things.
Let’s hope they have it really perfected by next year.
By all accounts, the iPhone 3GS launch has been a tremendous success for Apple. Despite launching in a down economy, the new model managed to sell as many units in its first weekend as its predecessor with little sign of slowdown. It’s also been an incredibly smooth launch. Though the iPhone 3G launch was marred by product shortages and buggy software, Apple’s kept a steady supply of hardware in the channel, and iPhone OS 3.0 is quite stable for such a new release.
But as effective as Apple has become in managing all of the aspects of the iPhone that it controls (hardware and first-party software), the launch also reveals the challenges the company faces in its efforts to take advantage of a larger network. AT&T’s signal strength continues to be a subject of much heated debate, and more crucially, Apple’s position as minder of a large software platform with thousands of developers looks increasingly untenable.
I don’t need to go into detail about the numerous cracks in the App Store facade of the last year: the baby shaking app, the unapproved porn, the copyright infringement, the excellent apps inexplicably rejected for arbitrary reasons and the apps that never made it out of the approval process one way or another. What I can say is this: the release of the 3GS has inspired a burst of app submissions the likes of which Apple has never seen before. When the App Store first opened a year ago, it had a flurry of submissions, but a smaller pool of developers. This is the first real “event” period since the iPhone dev community has grown, and the submission pool is not unlike the giant hyperwall of apps that dominated the conversation at this year’s WWDC.
A developer friend tells me that a pre-release version of his app was checked off and approved in a week in the period immediately before the 3GS announcement. The final release, submitted the day of the WWDC keynote on June 8, took nearly four weeks to get through the system, and I’m told that Apple has even notified its developer community that all apps are taking between three and four weeks to vet. That means it takes four times as long to get new products to consumers, four times as long to fix bugs, and four times as long to go from finished work to money-making.
If Apple wants to maintain the dominance of the iPhone and the success of the App Store, it needs to find a more effective way to manage the sheer volume of submissions it’s tackling. Too much crud is making it through, and too much brilliant code is sitting on the shelf. The iPhone is by far the best mobile platform today. Unless Apple learns to treat its developers better on the front end (I hear payment works brilliantly), they won’t be loyal when the next Next Big Thing comes around.
The United States Department of Justice has taken the first baby steps that could eventually lead to an official investigation of the Telecom industry and the effects its exclusive carrier agreements have on consumer prices and choices, according to a Wall Street Journal report Monday.
The initial review looks to determine whether large U.S. telecom companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. have abused the market power they’ve amassed in recent years, according to people familiar with the matter.
Largely moribund and hamstrung by internal politics and inefficiency during the Bush administration, DOJ under President Barack Obama has seen renewed relevance as an arm of the Federal government and has lately signaled business as usual could soon be ending for an industry left to its own devices during the past decade or more.
Many people have long decried exclusive carrier agreements that make popular gadgets such as Apple’s iPhone available only to consumers willing to sign multi-year service agreements with AT&T and likewise Blackberry’s Storm to those who’d sign with Verizon.
The Wall Street Journal quoted the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, Christine Varney, saying she wants to “reassert the government’s role in policing monopolistic and anti-competitive practices by powerful companies.”
Apple’s iPhone has recently become the most popular camera on Flickr, one of the Internet’s most well-regarded photo sharing social media sites.
Expressed in “percent of members” terms, the iPhone has lately bested two models of Canon’s EOS Digital Rebel, of which the XTi had long been the clear favorite choice of Flickr members.
UPDATE: Since this post was originally published, the Flickr site’s graph has been changed, and now shows the iPhone is the #2 camera among Flickr members, resting just behind the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi, which has apparently enjoyed a bump in popularity for which the previously published graph did not account.
[Thanks Rafael, for the heads-up on the graph change!]
Among popular camera phones, the iPhone has outdistanced its rivals since its release two years ago and recently widened the gap between its nearest competitor, the Nokia N95, by a huge margin.
The data is to be taken with a grain of salt as anecdotal and largely unscientific, but it is interesting to note such graphic evidence of popularity for a phone camera that had been denigrated by many as one of the most pitiable features of Apple’s popular smartphone.
Apple recently upgraded the specs on the iPhone camera, giving it a boost in pixel capacity and adding both variable focus and video capabilities, which should only increase its attractiveness going forward.
Love the Exploded 128 Mac tee but find there are only so many places you can wear it? You can hang up your Apple love with Garry Booth‘s take on the inner workings of this milestone Mac, it’s part of a trio of retro-Mac posters.
snippets from Mactrilogy posters
You can also deck your halls with “Macronaut,” Ray Frenden’s space-age voyager who looks like he’s lost Command or create a den of antiquity with Gary Gao’s “Mac Ghosts,” specters of computers past.
This is a limited run of fewer than 100, offered at a package price of $39, so if you’re interested in the Mac Poster Trilogy, make a move.
One of these iPhone headsets is from Apple; the other is a knockoff.
Spot the difference? One of these is a $30 iPhone Stereo Headset from Apple. The other is a $14 knockoff from the Philippines.
Thing is, the $14 copycat is as almost good as the original. It’s nearly physically indistinguishable. The sound is exceptionally good. And the microphone/remote works the same as it does on the genuine article.
Even the packaging is remarkably realistic.
Except there’s a few things that are off — a few minor details that give them away as fakes. Plus, they broke down after a week.
The audio manufacturer Shure has battled knockoffs for years. http://www.flickr.com/photos/digaderfox/
The audio manufacturer Shure is known for its excellent headphones, which makes it a favorite target of counterfeiters.
In May, Shure helped Chinese authorities bust knockoff shops run by two Shanghai companies that were making copycat Shure headphones. The raids uncovered large quantities of Shure E2c and E4c earphones, which sell for about $70 and $170 respectively, as well as headphones branded JVC and Audio-Technica.
Unlike copycats of yore, today’s counterfeiters are amazingly sophisticated and accomplished, turning out high-quality knockoffs that in some ways rival the originals. Flickr user digaderfox bought a pair of fake Shures on eBay last year, and documented the surprisingly high quality of the knockoffs on the photo site.
Apple is also is becoming a target of copycats, with amazingly good knockoffs of iPhones and headsets coming onto the market.
Paul Applebaum, Shure’s Executive Vice President and General Counsel, said counterfeiters are increasingly sophisticated. Some are setting up convincing factory-direct websites, or hijacking U.S. eBay accounts to make it appear goods are shipped domestically.
In the security video, the employee is seen opening the back door to the store after the suspect rang the bell at about 10.15 AM. She is led back into the store at gunpoint, and was shot soon afterward. The suspect fled on foot.
Police describe the suspect as a thin black male, aged 35-45, wearing a dark baseball cap and light-colored shirt and pants.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Arlington County Police Department Tip Line at 703 228-4242.
Or call Detective Alan Lowrey at 703 228-4199 or Detective Michael Austin at 703 228-4241. Det. Lowrey can also be reached via email at [email protected] and Det. Austin can be reached at [email protected].
Full text of the police description of the crime and appeal for help after the jump.
What it is: iPlay Music, a Mountain View, CA company, produces music learning software and operates a web-based store in the iTunes mold that just launched an innovative Chords for iTunes app that gives musicians an easy way to synchronize music in an iTunes library with a Quicktime video showing the chords to play along with a particular song.
Why it’s cool: The Chords for iTunes app is a promising tool for learning to play popular songs, whether you are a guitarist or keyboard player, and offers easy to read visual cues to the chords of songs such as Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay, Proud Mary, Refugee, When I Come Around, and more.
At present there are but 26 songs available to download for free, but the iPlayMusic Store offers a host of additional paid downloads that teach everything from 12 Bar Blues to Reggae strumming to Swing and Rock chord formations. The catalog of downloadable lessons is a bit thin in the early going, but many of the basics that underly a strong foundation in musicianship are covered and for those just beginning to learn an instrument, iPlay Music products and services are well worth checking out.
A couple of cool features of the software allow you to slow down a song while remaining in pitch so you can play along at the speed you need to learn the song, and an Export to iPod feature, that allows you to put the lessons on your iPod or iPhone so you can take them with you on the go.
Where to Get It: All the info you need is available on the web at the iPlay Music site. The Chords for iTunes (Beta) app is a free download, and many of the lessons available on the iPlay Music Store are available for free as well.
Most paid content sells for 99¢ and multi-lesson packages and Family Packs can go for up to $29.95.
Feel slightly bad for the folks at Marshall Aerospace out on the tarmac, using forklifts or putting planes together who got used to listening to ambient or Vegan-a-Go-Go podcasts while on the job.
Following the advice of a health and safety expert, the 1,500 employees of the Cambridge, UK company have been banned from using iPods at work.
“There have been no particular incidents,” said an unnamed spokesman in a press release. “But on our site there are aircraft, forklift trucks and so on moving around – and we are a precision engineering firm. We feel that people should always be concentrating fully.”
He added: “We don’t get middle-aged employees wearing iPods but we do see employees in their 20s who listen to music while working.”
Comforting to know the young ‘uns won’t be distracted on the job.
What other professions should be banned from using iPods at work?
Take note, readers: eReaders apparently offer frequent/intense mature/suggestive themes! Well, at least this one does.
On Twitter, Eucalyptus author Jamie Montgomerie says his app is now saddled with a 17+ rating, a change he made after Apple requested that he do so. (And, oddly, the app is referred to as a game on its App Store page warning section.) You may recall that the app caused controversy when Apple rejected it, primarily for it enabling you to download the text from Kamasutra. Apple later relented, but now the app has all sorts of warnings on the App Store, as shown above.
Again, the problem isn’t so much Apple’s decision—although it seems heavy-handed for a text-based eReader that only grabs content from Project Gutenberg—but a lack of consistency. At the time of writing, Free Books (App Store link) is rated 12+, while Stanza (App Store link) is rated 4+, despite it providing access to Project Gutenberg and a bunch more content.
Here’s hoping Apple soon starts levelling the playing field for all, because it’d be a huge shame for a great piece of indie software to lose sales due to having a rating none of its similar competition has.
Eucalyptus is available for $9.99 on the App Store and comes recommended if you can deal with the kind of mind-warping infrequent/mild alcohol references, infrequent/mild profanity, infrequent/mild horror themes, frequent/intense mature/suggestive themes and infrequent/mild sexual content that Apple argues you’ll find in the text of classic out-of-copyright novels.
For all of its public perception as a great censoring overlord, the Chinese government leaves plenty of wiggle room for computer manufacturers, including Apple, to avoid complying with recently mandated strict Internet filtering requirements.
While foreign and domestic makers of computers running Windows will eventually have to ship their machines with controversial Green Dam Youth Escort software, other machines running Mac OS X or Linux, for example, will be exempt from the mandate, according to a report at Yahoo Tech.
An Apple sales representative in Beijing indicated Green Dam is not being bundled with Macs sold at the Apple Store there because the software, which blocks pornography and “sensitive” political content, is not compatible with the Mac’s operating system.
In addition, a Lenovo spokesperson confirmed its computers running Linux are also being shipped without Green Dam and said the Ministry of Industry and Information and Technology is not requiring non-Windows machines to come with the program.
A source connected with Green Dam developers said they are testing the software on non-Windows platforms but did not indicate when or if an OS X compatible update might be released.
Police at the Apple Store Clarendon in Arlington, Virginia, where an employee was shot during an armed robbery. Picture by Fox 5.
Updated: Police have confirmed that a 26-year-old female Apple employee was shot in the shoulder and injured at the Apple Store Clarendon in Arlington, Virginia, during a “violent armed robbery” at about 10.15AM.
The suspect rang a doorbell at the back service entrance and shot a female employee as soon as she opened the door, the Washington Post reports. A police spokeswoman said it is unclear if the employee had words with the shooter or put up resistance to the robbery.
According to the Post, only two employees were in the store at the time, the shooting victim and another employee who was in the main showroom. The other employee called police as soon as they heard the gunshot. It’s unclear if there were customers in the store at the time, the police said. The shooting occurred about 15 minutes after the store opened.
The shooting victim was injured in the shoulder. The injuries are not considered life-threatening, police said.
The suspect is described as a medium build black male, aged between of 35 and 45, with facial hair. He was wearing a dark baseball cap, a light-colored shirt and pants. He fled on foot, carrying a handgun.
Security camera footage of the shooting may be released to the public to help the search, police said.
The store is located in the tony Market Common outdoor shopping district, which is considered a quiet, safe area.
“I think it’s a sign of the times, the economy, when you have someone desperate enough to rob an Apple store in an area like this,” said a shopper who was planning to buy a new MacBook.
Unfortunately this is bunk, but it’s worth posting anyway because, well, I guess a ton of other websites will publish it.
A new non-slip rubber case for the “Apple iPod Touch 3” on a junk accessory website hints that the soon-to-be-updated device will have a camera. The rubbery red case has two holes on the back, presumably for a camera.
The third-generation iPod touch is expected in September, and is rumored to include a camera, which would be an obvious upgrade for the device.
However, the tip came from a reader “Jenny,” who has also tipped off CrunchGear and I4U News. Best guess is that Jenny represents the accessory website, Uxsight.com, and is trying to drum up traffic and Google juice.
In her email to CoM, she makes sure to mention the case’s low, low price. “Can’t vouch for the
creditability of the source,” she writes, “but I guess $1.69 is not much of a risk.”
Plus, why are there two holes — one bigger than the other? And why two versions of the case, one with the camera on the left, the other with the camera on the right? UPDATE: As readers kindly point out, I’m as blind as a bat. That’s the inside and outside of the case.
Hotz’s application requires an iPhone 3GS running the 3.0 OS, and the latest version of iTunes — 8.2. Hotz warns that the unlock s beat and to back up the iPhone before running it.
The unlocking process seems straightforward. Writes Hotz on his blog: “Connect your iPhone normally. Click ‘make it ra1n.’ Wait. On bootup, run Freeze, the purplera1n installer app. Hopefully you’ll figure out what to do from there.”
There is another jailbreaking application for the iPhone 3.0 from the iPhone Dev Team (The 19-year old Hotz was associated with the group, but split with it). The Dev Team’s app will not work on the iPhone 3GS.
Jailbreaking allows an iPhone and iPod touch to to run unapproved apps through unofficial installers like Cydia and Icy.
Jailbreaking is not unlocking, a different, distinct process that frees the iPhone from the current carrier and makes it available for use with other wireless networks.
Needless to say, Apple sanctions neither process. Both have their risks and have been known to “brick” devices.
Hotz gained fame in 2007 when he became the first person to unlock the original iPhone. Using a combination of software and hardware hacks, the then 17-year-old tried to sell the hacked iPhone on eBay, but pulled the auction when jokers raised the bid price to more than $100 million.
He shortly traded the unlocked iPhone for three locked iPhones and a Nissan 350Z with Terry Daidone, founder of Certicell, a phone repair company in Louisville, KY.
As the issue of overheating iPhones heats up, Apple might be preparing to point the finger at iPhone owners who fail to keep their iPhones within acceptable temperatures.
Apple recently updated its knowledge base advising iPhone owners how to keep their devices within acceptable operating temperatures.
For many, this was not the answer they were hoping for because Apple’s solution to an apparent defect appears to be to place the burden on the user to ensure their iPhone’s temperature remains within an acceptable range.
What’s troubling about Apple’s position is that it sets the stage for Apple to adjust its iPhone service policy based on the argument that damage caused by overheating the iPhone is the fault of the iPhone’s owner — not Apple.
That’s right, if you bought an iPhone with a defective moisture sensor that subsequently gets tripped by sweat or humidity you have to pay Apple $199 for a replacement under the theory that Apple cannot confirm that your iPhone was not exposed to water.
Up for sale is on eBay is a sketchy-looking, non-functioning white iPhone described as a prototype demo unit of the brand new GS model.
The auction has attracted two bids and is currently running at $305, even though the iPhone doesn’t work.
The seller says there’s a problem with restoring the software: “This device is not eligible for the requested build,” iTunes says when he tries to restore it.
The seller, vofffka, of Ocean City, New Jersey, says an Apple genius at his local retail store verified the iPhone as an Apple product, but can’t service it, “because it’s never been sold.”
WTF that means, who knows?
The seller has a very high rating. He is currently selling several unlocked iPhones.
Where did he get this prototype? Get this. In the QA section, a potential buyer asks the same question, and gets this reply:
“Hi! It is currently NOT WORKING, I got it on ebay a month ago and the guy I got it from told me he found it in the airport. Thanks!”
Yeah, that makes me feel real keen to bid on this item.
