You may want to **** them, but you have to make sure you have the right devices to hand.
Nicole posted about the somewhat crazed Microsoft Windows party video earlier today. Just when you think Microsoft advertising and marketing can’t get any worse, it does.
Funny as the original is, Fraser Speirssuggested on Twitter: “I bet that Win7 party video would be an internet sensation if someone just beeped out all the references to Windows 7.”
If you’ve wanted a MacBook for so long, but have held off waiting for the right moment, wait no longer, because we lead off today’s caravan of Apple bargains with deals on MacBooks, MacBook Airs and two offers on MacBook Pro laptops. Of coursem no hardware extravaganza would be complete without a deal of Time Capsules.
For details on these and other items (such as the Gogo iPod and iPhone case), check out CoM’s Daily Deals page.
To help launch Windows 7, Microsoft is enlisting PC people to hold house parties to promote the new operating system.
For the October 22 launch date, Microsoft enthusiasts around the world just got selected to show off their new software at home with parties, sort of Tupperware style.
Naturally, the company has a few ideas of how these launch parties should go. A short sample party agenda, from the above talking heads: first, have a drink and mingle. Then shoot 20 or so photos. “Then when everyone was settled, I showed them my favorite features from the new Windows 7.”
“It only took like 10 minutes. Everyone just crowded around the computer in the kitchen.”
Andrew Coates, developer evangelist for Microsoft, told the Sydney Morning Herald the idea behind Windows 7 was to bring back the “sense of mastery” to software users.
“We have done a lot of work around why people weren’t feeling comfortable with software any more. People felt like they weren’t in control.”
Party hosts also have “a good chance” of winning a Windows PC worth $750, according to Microsoft.
“In a lot of ways, you’re just throwing a house party with Windows 7 as an honored guest,” says one of the actors in the video. “Sounds easy and it is.”
Whatever they’re smoking in the Microsoft marketing department, I’ll have some.
What it is: Tab Toolkit is a sophisticated guitar practice and education app from Agile Partners, makers of the handy Guitar Toolkit app that came out in 2008. Tab Toolkit lets users read and listen to real-time guitar tablature files, scrolling through songs at the correct tempo, showing both traditional and tablature notation and superimposing fingering notation updated in real-time on a virtual fretboard or piano keyboard.
Why it’s cool: Tab Toolkit is an app for serious guitarists willing to invest $10 in something that will make tab charts come alive on the go. That said, the app is cool because it shows the user exactly where to finger guitar parts as a synthesized version of a song is playing in real time through the iPhone or iPod Touch speakers or headphones. Songs can be stopped and started, scrolled forward and back, and the sound output can be muted to allow users to concentrate on their own playing. The fretboard can even be flipped to accommodate left-handed players.
Tab files can be a bit of a rare beast to come by, with the most useful files optimized for Mac being those created and readable by GuitarPro software, which runs $59.
Online libraries such as GPro Tab offer free sharing of user-generated GuitarPro tabs, which can be a great way to get started in the rich world of online instrument practice and education. Tab Toolkit supports text files and PDF files as well, but the genius behind the app is best appreciated with a GuitarPro tab.
The app supports multitrack parts, so users can learn two different guitar parts to a song, for example, or the bass part, the keyboard part, or even the vocal. Tempos can be speeded up or slowed down, and getting tabs from a user’s computer on to the iPhone are a snap over a wireless network connection – from the web onto the phone they are just as easy using the embedded Safari browser.
This reviewer doesn’t have too many $10 apps on his iPhone, but as a musician, I can say without reservation that Agile Partners have created an incredibly useful, well-thought-out app that performs – so far – flawlessly.
Where to get it:Tab Toolkit went live in the iTunes App Store on Tuesday; it sells for $9.99
I’m going to climb out on a limb here and suggest that most people don’t use their headphones to dig trenches or compute the rotational velocity of Jupiter. No, headphones are for sound reproduction. Shure’s new SRH440 Professional Studio Headphones do nothing more or less than that, do it very well, and at the bargain price of about $100.
But where Apple’s device will be designed for your fingers, Microsoft’s includes a pen! WTF? Is this the nineties? Has Microsoft learned nothing from the iPhone at all?
Yeah, Apple’s tablet will also support a pen. For detailed graphics work, and maybe even text input, a pen will work better than your fingers, but the primary input device?
Says Giz:
“The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple’s tiger style. It’s complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications.”
Codenamed Courier, it has two multitouch 7-inch screens joined by a central hinge, which has a single iPhone-like “Home” button. It’s a late prototype, Giz says, and may have nifty hardware features like inductive pad charging.
But if you have to use a pen to control it, it’s fucked.
Google has added push Gmail to the iPhone/iPod Touch via its Google Sync service.
“Using Google Sync, you can now get your Gmail messages pushed directly to your phone,” says the Google Mobile Blog, which announced the change. “Having an over-the-air, always-on connection means that your inbox is up to date, no matter where you are or what you’re doing.”
Google Sync also syncs contacts and calendars, or any combination of contacts, calendars and Gmail.
Push Gmail works in the iPhone’s/iPod’s native Mail app, but you have to set up your Gmail account as an exchange account. Full instructions after the jump.
Remember when wearable computers were all the rage? Well, we’ve come far from the days of geeky head-mounted displays and backpacks stuffed with electronics. Killa is a Vancouver-based interactive apparel firm that specializes in turning the common into wearable consumer electronics. In 2008, for instance, the company introduced a line of coats, including a pea coat, that had iPod controls sew into the sleeve. Now Killa is remaking the ordinary World War II satchel.
The bags, the first in the Killa Vintage series, are actual World War II items from Germany – with a bit of updating. Touch pad controls connect to your iPod via Bluetooth. Also, the bags include a solar panel from Germany’s Solarc. Along with a unique upgrade of 50 year military gear is how and where the solar iPod bags can be purchased. First, sales are limited to 20 per year and only to buyers able to visit Killa’s Vancouver store.
Now solar backpacks for iPods aren’t new – a number of companies offer them, including O’Neill Europe, Voltaic Systems and others.
The scenario is familiar: you’re rockin’ out to your favorite tunes and you have to answer a phone or converse with someone, requiring you to pause the iPod, remove an earbud, then the reverse to get back to the music. Apple took a stab at easing this annoyance by including a pause and volume switch on the earphone’s cord. However, Sony Ericsson has come along with an even more intuitive solution: motion-sensitive earbuds.
The MH907 ($55) automatically pauses music when one earbud is removed, restarting when the SenseMe technology detects human contact. The technology sounds fantastic, except it requires Sony Ericcson’s fast port connector, currently not available for the iPhone.
Now this looks interesting: Blasted is a Menu Bar app that quietly tracks what you’ve been working on – all the files you’ve created, opened, or modified recently – and makes them available when you need them via an unobtrusive icon.
Staff at an Apple retail store in Seattle are planning a walkout over “abusive” management, the first labor dispute to hit the company’s super-successful retail chain, IFOAppleStore is reporting.
Employees at Apple’s Alderwood Mall store claim the store’s management is “abusive” and cite unspecified violations of state and federal labor laws.
Apple’s human resources department hasn’t properly investigated their complaints, and even an appeal to the head of the chain, Ron Johnson, went unheeded, the staff told IFOApplestore.
Workers are planning a walkout at 1PM on October 3 if no action is taken before then.
The threat of industrial action is unusual for Apple’s stores, which have a reputation as a good place to work and an unusually high retention rate for retail.
If you haven’t encountered Reevoo before, go and take a poke around it now. It’s a UK-oriented customer reviews site that’s managed to aggregate an impressively large database of real comments from real people about real products.
And the iPhone version of the site is incredibly useful when you’re out at the shops trying to track down the best product at the best price.
Citing anonymous sources, The Loop says managers are being offered better money and in some cases, relocation expenses. They are then encouraged to recruit their former colleagues with similar incentives.
The strategy seems to be in line with Microsoft’s playbook. Earlier this year, Microsoft reportedly tried to lure iPhone developers to the Zune platform with cash incentives.
Which means that Microsoft’s retail strategy can be summarized thus:
Copy the idea of retail stores
Hire Apple’s former real estate head George Blankenship as a consultant
Locate Microsoft’s stores next to Apple’s stores
Put in face-to-face help desks, but call them Guru Bars instead of Genius Bars
Hire Apple’s staff
What’s next? Stock the stores with Apple products?
Microsoft’s first retail store is scheduled to open in October near Apple’s retail store in Mission Viejo, Calif., at The Shops.
Your kids won’t remember the day you made them wear the “cheese” body suit instead of the one with the cute felt Mac on it, but if you work it out right, a happy face photo in the Mac version and a stroppy pout in the cheese may hang around long enough to traumatize them.
Imagine the fun if you have twins: you could spark lifelong arguments about which one you have favored since infancy.
Handmade felt designs on 100% cotton, available in black, white or red.
$36 for the pair on Etsy.
It’s fall in the U.S., the leaves are beginning to turn color, but the deals keep coming. Today we highlight hardware, software and a discount duo for iPod touch owners. Apple is selling MacBooks starting at $849, while iPhone owners can grab Spore Origins for just a buck. Meanwhile, you can take a stroll through Mac hardware history with deals on early iMacs, PowerBooks and more.
For details on these and other products, check out CoM’s Daily Deals page.
If the older iPod Nano had video, she could shoot your grunts from the treadmill. @Pioneer Press: Richard Marshall
The impulse to immortalize locker room nudity or wiggly-jiggly at the gym is leading at least one large gym chain to limit use of the new iPod Nano over privacy issues.
Health club chain Life Time Fitness has restricted use of the new Nano in its 84 facilities in 19 states, saying that it fears gym goers may shoot videos of people working out or in locker rooms.
The chain also forbids cell phone use in locker rooms to avoid nude or compromising shots of patrons making their way to the Internets.
Spokesman Jason Thunstrom admitted that discerning whether someone is taking video or just fiddling with a playlist can be difficult.
Gym goers at Life Time can still use their iPod Nanos in the work out room, however, as long as no one catches them capturing fellow participants grimacing through that last squat or revealing an eyeful of cottage cheese bottom.
It’ll be interesting to see how they manage to enforce it as video and photos become more common features; the same gym chain reported a couple of years ago that 60% of gym members used iPods or MP3 players to work out.
My gym would face a revolt if it tried to ban cell phones — more or less a permanent appendage in the locker room and weight room and most of those phones now have video and photo capabilities, so it seems a little harsh to single out the iPod.
12mail is the first video messenger for the iPhone.
What it is: Developed by the creators of the excellent photo/slideshow sharing app 12 Seconds, which was among the first iPhone apps to support shared audiovisual messaging, 12mail is the first app to fully support streaming video messaging.
Why it’s cool: 12mail features full integration with Facebook and Twitter, allowing users to instantly populate the app with contact information for their friends on the the two most popular social media platforms in use today. The app breaks contacts into Everyone and Favorites groups, making it easy to find those in heaviest rotation, and has an option allowing public posts to a user’s Twitter page or Facebook wall.
Compiling videos stored on a user’s phone or recording new video is dead easy, and most brilliant of all, the app only uses the first 12 seconds of any video users choose, keeping messages small enough to send and receive painlessly even over a slow Edge connection. The app uses push notification and features the ability to annotate with text titles and geotags.
All video streams from servers at 12seconds.tv, which avoids use of limited storage on a user’s device and allows people without the app to receive and even initiate 12mail video messages of their own.
Where to get it: 12mail is free and went live in the iTunes App Store today.
Among the many dozens (hundreds?) of companies in the cottage industry that makes cases and other protective doo dads for your iPhone, Totonto-based Gelaskins probably produces the most arresting and beautiful of them all.
Actually, just saying they produce protective devices for the iPhone is selling the company way short since they adapt fine art from a deep roster of global artists working in a broad range of styles, putting photo quality prints on thin, but tough, scratch-resistant polymer with a patented 3M adhesive, allowing you to personalize and protect everything from iPhone to the full range of Apple iPods and laptops.
The iPhone covers go for about $15, while iPod protection runs a little less and laptop protective art will set you back about $30. Not that Apple’s industrial design isn’t beautiful itself, but all the Gelaskins art is distinctive – and any of it is guaranteed to make your device stand out from the crowd.
Hit the jump for a gallery of 10 of the newest designs that we think are among the coolest.
As a result of this Cult of Mac interview, Trichotomy Media attributed our coverage of the iPhone app promo code refusal as instrumental in their reinstatement. In celebration, we posted a weekend giveaway contest where the winner gets a single download code of the controversial app.
On second though, naughty dice are more fun for two, so let’s give away two codes!
Freebies go to Freddys Garcia and CG for their randomly chosen comments.
Like Apple, Microsoft is rumored to be working on a touchscreen tablet. Hopefully it won't resemble this earlier effort.
Like Apple, Microsoft is developing on a touchscreen tablet, several sources say.
CoM has heard rumors that Microsoft has a touchscreen tablet in the works. 9to5Mac is reporting that Microsoft is working on a tablet (and two touchscreen phones to compete with the iPhone).
Mary-Jo Foley at ZDNet has some details: Microsoft’s tablet effort is being led by James Allard, the Microsoft executive in charge of the XBox and Zune, and members of Microsoft’s Surface team, Foley reports.
Okay, at first the idea of using your iPhone while biking makes about as much sense as gabbing away on your phone while behind an auto’s steering wheel. But if risk is your middle name and you need your touch-screen on your handlebars, Dahon has just the ticket. The company’s BioLogic iPhone bike case is both waterproof (includes touch-sensitive membrane) and shock-proof. The case also pivots 360-degrees, permitting an on-bike experience in either landscape or portrait mode.
The BioLogic iPhone case ($60, January) can be teamed with Dahon’s ReeCharge system that provides juice for your gadget via the bike’s generator.
A Fiat 500 in carpet, drawn by Matthew Watkins on his iPhone and made in Katmandu. @Matthew Watkins
“Art in the Time of the iPhone” is one-man show by artist Matthew Watkins, on now at Apple reseller C &C in Bari, Italy until September 25.
Watkins, who hails from England and lived in Canada before moving to Italy, shows just how versatile an artist can get by letting his fingers do the talking on the touchscreen.
His mainstay is the Brushes app, out of which he transferred the works to forex, paper — and even had two rugs made in Katmandu (see above) from designs made with his iPhone.
Hit the jump for a Q&A on how Watkins got the iPhone art from his phone to a gallery and for a gander at more of his work.
A 10-year-old girl was dragged, bug-eyed, out of the Apple store in Lakeside after her mom found her looking at porn on one of the iPod demo models.
“I called to complain and was told matter of factly by staff this happens a lot as people come in and download it for a laugh,” mom Helen Goodman told website the Echo.
“I don’t find it funny and all my friends think it’s disgusting, but Apple say there is nothing they can do to stop it.”
C’mon. There has to be a way to make the Apple store kiddy-safe — or maybe there’s something else behind the looks of wonder on those retail store field trips?
