For the discerning Apple fan on your list, or for yourself, GelaSkins may be just the thing to personalize and protect precious laptops, iPhones and iPods this holiday season. Made with a patented 3M adhesive, GelaSkins are easy to apply and leave no residue behind when you change or remove them. The adhesive allows you to reposition the skin easily for a perfect fit.
They feature richly colored, photo-quality graphics ranging from fine art prints to contemporary urban images designed by artists from around the world and certainly make any mobile device stand out in a crowd.
GelaSkins can be purchased online or at retail outlets world wide and range in price from $12.95 for iPod skins to $29.95 for laptop skins. The Gelaskin website has a convenient store locator with good contact information, and offers a web-only deal of a 4th skin free when you buy 3.
Check out the gallery of just a small sample of the arresting designs available below and head to the GelaSkin website for more. Definitely a “Think Different” gift idea.
The iPhone and BlackBerry have helped erode the market for inexpensive flip phones as Apple and RIM reshape the handset market, a new report said Thursday.
Touchscreen phones now amount to 10 percent of handsets, nearly triple the 3.6 percent of phones in use each month during 2007, according to ComScore m:metrics.
Phone designs including a fixed QWERTY keyboard, such as the BlackBerry Curve, now comprise 22.6 percent of the market, up sharply from 9.5 percent a year ago, the report said.
AT&T, the exclusive carrier for the iPhone 3G, Thursday began offering online sales of the Apple handset with home activation, a move not available through Cupertino.
The new ordering system is open to new AT&T customers or iPhone owners that would like to add a line, according to Apple Insider. iPhones purchased online can then activate the handset through iTunes.
Before today, iPhone purchasers had to trudge to an AT&T or Apple retail outlet.
Hollywood now classifies iTunes as a competitor to television networks. That’s the seeming reason behind Apple yanking a number of movies from its online video rental and sales, according to a recent report.
When Hollywood licenses movies for TV network airing, they provide a “release window” during which the broadcast is exclusive. In other words, if CBS buys rights to a movie, it can be sure NBC won’t air the same show during that timeframe.
But since first-release DVDs are also a lucrative revenue stream for Hollywood, that “release window” restriction has never been applied to brick-and-mortar retailers, such as Blockbuster or BestBuy.
Gizmodo has the scoop on the launch of Pastebud, a third-party workaround for basic copy/paste on the iPhone using a couple of clever bookmarks and a webapp.
I say basic, because it is dependent on the bookmarks and so will only work with Safari, or with webapps that run within it.
I think the most interesting thing about Gizmodo’s scoop is the comment by Bandit underneath:
“No gadget in 2008 should require someone to create a workaround like this, let alone a gadget from a company as prominent as Apple. Apple should be embarrassed.”
Apple unveiled a number of firmware upgrades aimed at addressing several hardware problems experienced by owners of newly-introduced MacBooks, including the MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.
The firmware updates were designed to improve stability of the new laptops introduced in October, Apple explained in a note.
“This update improves the stability of MacBook computers and addresses issues with sleep-wake, USB and device compatibility.”
Tune Up, already a popular iTunes plug-in for Windows, makes its OS X debut on Thursday, promising to automagically bring order to your hopelessly unorganized iTunes Library and bestow upon you missing cover art, concert information, music videos and news about your favorite artists, all without your ever having to leave iTunes.
Nicely presented to a snappy backing track in the video above, Tune Up will first analyze your library, presenting you with information on all the megabytes of music you have labeled Track 1, Track 2 and so on, all the Unknown Artists, Unknown Albums and missing information keeping your database from being fit to be housed in the Library of Congress.
Once you’ve been shamed to learn how sloppy you’ve been about importing music onto your Mac, Tune Up gives you the chance to clean up your mess and the automagical stuff really starts to happen. Using a secret forensics algorithm, the program takes an “audio fingerprint” of each mislabeled track and compares it to the 90 million song Gracenotes® Global Media Database and automatically fills in the missing information.
“All of us here are entrenched in music. We’re cranking tunes all day,” says CEO and founder of Tune Up Media, Gabriel Adiv. “We’re also the type of people who want all of our cover-art, don’t like missing concerts and spend hours online looking for YouTube videos, news, and merch from our favorite artists.”
Once your library has been cleaned and all your cover art rendered, Tune Up knowingly displays upcoming local concerts for every artist in your collection, and fetches YouTube videos, Google news and Wikipedia bios related to any playing track. The best part of this feature is that it’s built in – no filling out extra forms or compiling lists of favorite artists or albums from scratch.
For a limited time, a full-featured version of Tune Up is available with 500 “cleans” and 50 cover art “finds” for free. “Tune Up Gold” provides unlimited cleans and cover art finds for a one-time fee of $19.95 or an annual subscription of $11.95. The OS X version launching Thursday requires Leopard, but the company plans a release supporting Tiger soon, as well as support for Windows Media Player and AOL’s WinAmp later in 2009.
Geek rapper GOSHone shot a video for his song “Newteknowledge” on an iPhone 3g.
He says it’s the first music vid shot entirely on an iPhone, but whether someone else has done it or not, the song is catchy as hell (though we do wish he’d given “props up to my fellow nerds” on CoM instead of CNET) and the video where he looks like the overtaxed nerd next cubicle over is clever.
He filmed the clip with Cycorder (the app “rocks,” he says but only works on jailbroken phones) and edited with After Effects, because Final Cut had issues with Cycorder resolution and frame rate.
The song is part of GOSHone‘s album “ctrl_alt_ego” which can be downloaded gratis from his website. A three-year labor of love, it includes tracks like “Laptop Muzik,” “Big Brains” and “Data Flow.”
Promo App Codes, a web forum, tradingpost and clearinghouse for iPhone app developers and the people who love them, launched this week and seems to already be generating considerable interest on both sides of the aisle.
For developers, the site is an oppportunity to promote their work and share Apple’s recently authorized promotional codes, a device for getting early-release and review copies of AppStore approved apps quickly into the hands of up to 50 app testers/reviewers. For reviewers/bloggers/app-nuts, the site provides an easy way to learn about new apps and to establish relationships directly with developers while giving them the valuable feedback to optimize and improve their applications.
Amanuel Tewolde, a developer and founder of Promo App Codes, told Cult of Mac, “When I first heard that Apple will give me 50 promo codes for my apps in the store, I didn’t know who to give them out to.” The site was conceived as he began to consider that “user testing is expensive, and these codes provide a cheap alternative, not to mention help with some positive buzz.”
Potential reviewers and developers alike register for a free account on the clean, simply designed site, with developers having the opportunity to post app information and screenshots in blog-fashion. Registered users have the opportunity to post comments on each “post” about an application.
Users/reviewers/bloggers create profiles and add apps to a “wish list,” entries which show up to developers as interest in their apps, and developers then contact users with free promotional codes. The site maintains a rating system for each app and hosts a forum where all interested parties can communicate with one another. At this writing the site has registered 685 accounts in the two days it’s been open for business.
“We still have lots to learn and do but things look very exciting and the timing seems right,” says Tewolde. “It is christmas season, could there be a better time to start a site where people get free apps?”
UPDATE: This post has been edited for clarity as to search results on the US iTunes store.
Informed of racist content in the music of German neo-nazi band Lancer, Apple moved to pull the content from Germany’s iTunes store within two hours, according to a report at MacBlogz.
Landser had been banned by a German federal court in 2005 for brazenly racist songs with titles such as “Polacken Tango” (Polack Tango) and “Zigeunerpack” (Gypsy Vermin), but an Apple spokesperson was mystified as to how the bands tracks made it on to iTunes, saying, “I don’t know how it made it into the store. We do not tolerate this kind of content.”
Computerbild, a German technology publication apparently made the discovery, while a spokesperson for Jugendschutz, a German youth protection agency, was quoted saying, “the right-wing extremist scene has long identified with and used music to exercise their influence on young people.”
The iTunes Terms of Service for the US store clearly states that “you agree to use the Service at your sole risk and that Apple shall have no liability to you for content that may be found to be offensive, indecent, or objectionable.” A quick search on the US iTunes store for music produced by Detroit-based Resistance Records (alleged to be closely associated with the US Skinhead movement) turned up tracks from outfits such as hard core punk label Fat Wreck Chords and compilations from Rot Records and Riot City Records, though nothing by affirmed neo-nazi bands such as Landser, No Remorse, Bound for Glory or Skullhead.
We reported last week on internet voice service provider Truphone’s mobile app that enables Voice over IP phone calling over WiFi using Apple’s iPod Touch. Wednesday, the company announced availability of Truphone Anywhere, an update to its iPhone app that lets iPhone users make VoIP calls “even if you’re not connected to WiFi or a 3G network.”
With TruPhone Anywhere you pay for a local connection – meaning your call is routed to the cellular network – before the rest of the call is connected using VoIP. Change-o, presto: cheap international calling is here.
Except that it’s been here for more than a year. San Francisco-based service provider RF.com has enabled the same type of calling with any VoIP provider (Skype me, anyone?), and even Asterisk, since shortly after the debut of the original iPhone.
Another mobile VoIP provider, JAJAH, had an app to enable VoIP-completed cellular calling ready for the AppStore launch this past July, but Apple rejected it “because the VoIP service is active over the cellular network, which as outlined in the iPhone SDK Agreement section 3.3.15 is prohibited: ‘If an Application requires or will have access to the cellular network, then additionally such Application: – May not have Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) functionality,” according to JAJAH spokesman Fredrick Hermann.
Perhaps Apple is less concerned with enforcing the SDK’s VoIP via cellular prohibition today; perhaps Truphone’s “Anywhere” functionality slipped through, or perhaps its app will be pulled from the AppStore tomorrow, or next week. As usual, Apple isn’t saying anything publicly.
Morgan Stanley analyst Kathryn Huberty Wednesday cut Apple’s target price to $95, down from $100. Huberty pointed to a survey indicating weaker consumer interest.
Huberty also trimmed her expectations for calendar 2009 iPhone sales to 14 million handsets, down
Photo: Cishore/Flickrfrom 19 million. The analyst predicted Apple will sell 4 million iPhones during the December quarter, down from 4.5 million.
By contrast, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster expects Apple will sell 45 million iPhones next year.
Up to 1 million iPhones may be purchased through Apple gift cards, giving Cupertino a boost during an otherwise expected flat 2009, one analyst said Wednesday.
Use of Apple gift cards to purchase iPhones means many handsets won’t be activated until after Dec. 25. That delay could result in misleading December iPhone sales, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu told investors.
“The risk here is that the customer will likely activate post-Christmas; therefore revenue and units won’t likely be recognized until the March quarter,” Wu wrote. March is viewed as usually a weak month for sales.
Griptonite Games, makers of the wildly overpriced iPhone trivia game Ben Stein: It’s Trivial ($4.99 at the AppStore), announced Wednesday an opportunity to receive an autographed “diploma” from the dour funnyman and crypto-pundit/economist for the first 100 players who successfully complete the game and steal Ben Stein’s mansion. Winners will be inducted into the “Hall of Stein” and be entered into a drawing for the chance to play the game live against Stein himself.
It’s Trivial features fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek gameplay and over 1200 ranked trivia questions. Alongside simian cohort Cheex the Monkey, players go up against a virtual Stein, disguised as the Master of Trivia, to win points and prizes from Ben Stein’s Estate.
Players who complete the game can submit screenshots online at www.bensteinitstrivial.com. Of the first 100 submissions, one player will be randomly chosen to compete against Stein in a live broadcast event.
iPhone enters S. Korea starting Apr. 1 (photo: Jinho.Jung/Flickr)
The South Korean government has put out the ‘welcome’ mat for Apple’s iPhone and other handset makers, dropping a long-standing demand that blocked foreign cell phones from the tech-saavy country.
The Korean Communications Commission said starting April 1 it will no longer require cell phone makers adopt the home-grown Korean Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability, or WAPI specification.
The rule, in place since 2005, had prevent Apple, RIM and others from competing against local handset makers. Samsung and LG now control 90 percent of the South Korean market.
Psystar, the Florida-based Mac clone maker, now alleges Apple misused its copyright to prevent competition. The new legal theory is part of a modified countersuit the company hopes to file in a California federal court Jan. 15.
The U.S. District Court of Northern California recently dismissed Psystar’s original countersuit, rejecting the company’s claims Apple violated the Clayton Act and Sherman Act antitrust laws.
In a response to the court’s rebuff, Psystar said it “respectfully disagrees” with the ruling by judge William Alsup, who in November granted Apple’s motion to dismiss.
It works well on an iPhone, complete with a shiny icon if you decide to add it as a home screen bookmark. It’s great if you want to access your bookmarks on the move; what’s missing (and is equally important in my opinion) is a view of your network’s bookmarks.
I agree with Fraser Speirs – my Delicious network is a fabulous source of links, news, ideas and stuff of interest, and it’s compiled automagically for me every day by 58 people I know, like, and admire. I couldn’t live without it.
At a talk in San Francisco tonight, I encountered a very cool (relatively) new OS X app called MemoryMiner. Basically, it takes all of your photos, your address book, and Google Maps to create interesting, shareable stories with friends and family. The most important piece of the app is its ability to quickly tag a portion of an image, much as Facebook and Flickr do, then associate those pieces of data back to your wider social network — over the course of time. It’s explicitly designed to allow you to tag a person at different points in their lifetime, so you can track and associate your family’s history over the course of centuries, if you have the documents to support it.
It’s currently in version 1.85 (available for a 15-day trial or $45), and creator John Fox tells me version 2.0 is well on its way, as is a social tool to track your personal geographic history compared to others. Having played around with the app for a few hours now, I will say that the program is really great at tagging and adding in new people to my MemoryMiner people file. In a few minutes, I had clips of pictures and names with all the people I wanted to. Unfortunately, for those whose birth dates I didn’t know (most of them), I had no ability to track their photos over their lifetimes. But it largely works as advertised.
Unfortunately, it has some pretty basic, pretty show-stopping limitations for the time-being. I couldn’t get it to import my iPhoto 08 Library, so that’s a huge portion of my memories that aren’t included right now. Even more troublingly, the program lacks the basic functionality to rotate photos so they’re in the correct orientation. Or, if it’s there, I just couldn’t locate it, which would almost be worse
Still, it’s a program with considerable potential. I could even imagine the company setting up a service to scan, upload, and tag archival photos so they can be associated and studied by users at home. I can just see the genealogy lovers getting way into this. Maybe in version 2.0.
The proliferation of cheap applications on the AppStore is stifling innovation and holding Apple’s mobile touch platform back from realizing its true potential, according to developer Craig Hockenberry.
In a post Tuesday at his furbo.org blog, Hockenberry published an open letter to Steve Jobs, saying, “I’m not going to give you suggestions on what to do” about developers (himself included) working on 99¢ titles that have a limited lifespan and broad appeal instead of on “the cooler (and more complex) ideas that could see the utility of the platform taken to another level.”
He goes on to describe the economics of paying development team members the going rate of $150-200 per hour, the realities of having to make up the bulk of development costs during the short period of time an app is likely to be featured among the tens of thousands soon to be available on the AppStore, and concludes “there’s too much risk…in developing something that takes 6 or even 9 man months…with a break even at 215K or 322K units.”
Under the prevailing conditions, where 99¢ “ringtone apps” dominate the landscape, Hockenberry says “going for simple and cheap instead of complex and expensive” is the fiscally responsible choice for developers to make.
In the end, he says “We’re not afraid of competition. In fact, we welcome it as a way to improve our products and business. [But] we’re hoping for a way to rise above the competition when we do our job well, not just when we have the lowest price.”
It’s hard to quibble with Hockenberry’s assessments from a developer’s economic risk perspective, especially in the midst of a contracting economy such as the one at present. It’s also unlikely the iPhone’s “killer app” will end up being one that goes to market at 99¢.
From the perspective of consumers, though, from that of users of new technology that is itself in the midst of early stage development, of users who in many cases make purchase decisions sight-unseen or on the basis of 2 minute YouTubed product demos – simple and cheap seems just about right.
Apple and Nvidia may be sitting on a potential landmine of defective chipsets in new 15″ MacBook Pros, according to a report Tuesday at the Inquirer.
Citing questions stemming from problems affecting Dell, HP and Apple computers earlier in the year with failing chips due to bad materials and thermal stress, as well as a $200 million charge Nvidia took over the problem in July, the Inquirer commissioned researchers to take apart a new MacBook Pro and investigate Nvidia’s assurances that none of the bad chipsets made it into Apple’s new computers that began selling in the fall.
“A small lab of mad scientists who do not wish to be named, fearing repercussions from Nvidia and Apple” took an off-the-shelf 15″ MacBook Pro apart, desoldered the parts, and “cut the defenseless notebook into many pieces,” according to the report, examining what they found through a scanning electron microscope equipped with an X-ray microanalysis system.
The findings indicate the Nvidia GeForce 9400 GPUs in some unknown number of MacBook Pros are in fact afflicted with material, called “bad bumps”, the tiny balls of solder that hold a chip to the green printed circuit board it sits on, that will crack, causing the computer it is in to die.
The Inquirer article suggests that “barring a total failure of their lot-tracking system, [Nvidia] had to have known the Macbooks shipped with ‘bad bumps’.
Did Apple know? Calls to Apple PR were not returned prior to the story’s publication, and while that might look pretty damning, it isn’t. “Apple will not talk to journalists unless they are assured the response will be fawning,” according to the Inquirer report.
We’ll have to keep an eye on this story to see if the news affects sales of MacBook Pros and whether – or when – Apple support forums might begin to erupt with tales of dying notebooks.
Bring me the head of Nick Pavis! The CEO of San Francisco-based entertainment software company MunkyFun is ultimately responsible for the two hours I failed to notice ticking by this afternoon while engrossed in his visually stunning, sneakily addicting iPhone game, Ivory Tiles.
With its oddly calming Oriental soundtrack and the realistic sounding slide and click of ivory tiles on a wooden gameboard, Ivory Tiles draws you into the challenge of solving its spatial and geometric puzzles like nothing I have ever experienced. Making excellent use of iPhone’s accelerometer and impeccable 3D graphics engine, the game took me through levels of frustration, elation and ultimately relaxation that I hardly imagined possible from playing a game on a mobile device.
Must. Keep. From. Number. One. Son.
$1.99 from the AppStore; worth ten times that amount. Requires iPhone 2.1 software update.
They may not look as studiously Apple as the Earbud speakers in the next post, but I’ll wager the $20 difference in price these Altec Lansing expressionist CLASSIC speakers kick some serious audio jams on those stylin’ earbuds.
To begin with, Altec Lansing is one of the venerable names in audiophile engineering. The Milford, PA-based company has been producing superior quality speakers since 1938 and this offering in the PC audio category lives up to its 70 year reputation for good sound. Unique cylindrical cabinets house specially designed 3″ drivers powered by 15 watts of total continuous power to deliver a full spectrum of clear, warm sound found in other PC audio products costing twice as much.
Speakers should never require an engineering degree to get going and these small-footprint machines, with their own simple style that says “listen up,” are about as plug and play as any audio component you will find. Power and speaker volume controls are at your fingertips on the rear of the Right speaker, and if you’ve got a friend over with an iPod or other portable audio device, you can easily listen to their iTunes library by plugging into the Altec’s 3.5mm Aux-in jack. All the cords and connecting hardware are made from high-quality, heavy gauge material that inspires confidence in a well-made, long-lasting product.
I mentioned they sound great, right? For $79.95, these speakers will upgrade your standard thin, tinny PC audio system and bring new life to your music, gameplay and movie watching experience.
Available now from the Altec Lansing website and select Apple Retail outlets, these and the full line of Altec Lansing PC audio components will also be featured at Macworld 2009.
Just like your iPod earbuds, but supersized 500 times.
These 500XL giant earbud portable speakers have a built-in amp, run on three AAA batteries and come with a USB cord.
No specs on how much they pump though the makers assure you’ll be able to annoy your co-workers, which is important.
Walmart could sell 4.5 million iPhones in 2009, equally the number of handsets sold by Apple retailers, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster speculated Tuesday.
The analyst called the 4.5 million benchmark “achievable” if each of Walmart’s 3,500 stores sell 1,284 iPhones in 2009. Munster expects Apple’s 208 retail locations will sell 4.5 million iPhones.
“We do not believe that Street numbers accurately reflect the potential impact from Walmart stores on iPhone sales in 2009,” Munster told investors. The Piper Jaffray analyst retained his belief that 45 million iPhones will be sold next year.
Even credit-crunch era consumers will break out the plastic to buy an iPod in a new color.
USA today devoted an article on how shoppers aren’t color blind — especially when it comes to Apple mp3 players:
Nearly five years ago, Sally Trammer of Indianapolis, a senior systems analyst at Eli Lilly bought herself an iPod Mini specifically because it came in the color she craved: lime green.
Trammer was fully aware that this model stored far fewer songs than a full-size white or black iPod.
“I didn’t care, I just wanted to have that color,” she says. She recalls overpaying, too about $300. Then she purchased a fancy, lime-green leather case, to boot. “Regardless of what it cost, I knew I had to have it.”
Such consumer color devotion is a key element in iPod sales. Apple officials declined to comment, but retail expert Marshal Cohen of NPD says he’s spoken with plenty of adult iPod owners who bought new iPods specifically to get a new color. “This boggles the mind,” he says.
Color me a little astonished by the trend, too. A silver iPod nano is as far as I’ve strayed from classic white.
Fess up in the comments: have you bought a new iPod for the color, for yourself or for someone else?
