This is a new player for Windows called Songbird. Recognize the layout?
It seems that they copied iTunes — and there are even links to music stores like Amazon in the player. A wild guess is that it works, and is intended for players other than the iPod.
London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has launched an illustrated podcast showcasing art in its paintings collection.
The podcasts feature reproductions of the art with commentary from curators and other art experts. The first episode tells “all about Botticelli and his wombats.” The V&A claims it’s the first podcast published by a UK museum or gallery.
“There are often audio guides for special exhibitions, but there tends to be a paucity of guides for existing collections, so this is a way to bring them to life,” Susan McFarland, editor of the V&A’s PR website, told 24 Hour Museum.
(Via MacWorld UK)
On Kroll’s Blog:
While I was at the Apple Store last night with my girlfriend getting my nano, some guy brought his old Mac in because he thought it was time to “upgradeâ€. He had been doing his banking on that machine since he got it, using quicken or something. This mac classic came out in 1990, had 1meg of RAM, and a 8mhz processor!
The machine appears to be a Mac SE, which came out in 1987 — making it almost two decades old. That’s a long time to be using the same computer.
When I was in New York a few years ago, I spent an afternoon at Tekserve, a big Mac repair shop in Chelsea.
While there, a couple of people bought in classic Macs for repair, and there were several on the shelves waiting to be picked up. I was surprised there were so many. Tekserve’s owner said they belonged to the many writers in the neighborhood, who considered them perfectly functional for scribbling on.
Philip Torrone has some friends who own a $20,000 laser-engraving machine. So he gave them his PowerBook and a 19-Century etching of a nocturnal creature (from a book by O’Reilly, who Torrone works for).
The result is this amazingly-detailed etching.
In one of the episodes of Futurama there was a parody of the classic Apple commercial “1984”.
For those who missed it, or wants to see it again, mac TV has published a short clip of it. Enjoy!
live.watchmactv.com/featured/futurama
It’s pretty common that people buy a Mac mini and connects it to their big plasma screens and use the mini as a media center.
But where to put the mini?
Put it on the wall! Of course! Maybe easiest with a mount like the one to the right. “Mini mount” is the name and you stick it to the wall with two screws. Something nice for the cords and you are game.
50 dollars, 70 if you want it with backlighting. But you don’t want that.
Reports the Religion News Service:
A leading Catholic cardinal is warning Catholic parents to be careful when buying iPods and other wireless devices as Christmas gifts because they could be used by minors to access pornography.
Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore, who co-chairs the Religious Alliance Against Pornography, said iPods, PDAs and video cell phones can easily send and receive pornography, much of it unsolicited.
“Sadly, unwanted pornography often leads to wanted pornography,” Keeler told members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Tuesday.
(Via MyAppleMenu)
PodDater.com is a new dating service that allows members to download videos of potential dates to their video iPod.
Members create video profiles, search for matches, and synchronize the ones they’re interested in to watch later.
The free service, launched on Wednesday, has about 130 registered users so far. Predictably, few are women.
Potential mates can be sorted by “tags,” which include “mac,” “sports” and “beer.”
Wired News has a profile of one of podcasting’s first stars — an obscene, gay drag act from Chicago called Madge Weinstein.
A performance artist and one-time aspiring filmmaker who lives in Chicago, Bluestein appears to have successfully traded his former job in tech support at a local hospital for a life of spouting off on air.
He sees himself as one of those people for whom the new medium of podcasting has created opportunities where none existed. He had sporadically posted video blogs online and had performed as Madge around Chicago since 2000. Then, last November, stuck in a funk over President Bush’s 2004 re-election, Bluestein stumbled over (ex-MTV VJ Adam) Curry’s show and became obsessed with podcasting. Soon thereafter, Yeast Radio was born as an outlet for performing as Madge and for obscenity-laden political venting.
Curry, the ex-MTV VJ turned self-styled “podfather,” says he thinks Bluestein’s act is a scream and hired him in September as a member of Curry’s PodSquad stable of talent. Yeast Radio has been heavily promoted on Curry’s programs and Madge has subbed for Curry on his Sirius radio program from time to time.
…
“Richard is just the sweetest guy and he’s really spearheading this qPodder community with over 150 gay and lesbian podcasters (on the site), which is remarkable,” Curry said. “I mean, come on. Is this some big secret in advertising, that gays and lesbians are a good market? I don’t think so. If that’s not a market, let me go eat my shoe.”
Here’s one way to resolve the spat between Lugz footwear and Apple over the copycat Eminem iPod ad — combine them.
iPodz is a seamless mashup that advertises two products in one ad – the iPod and urban streetwear. It’s actually not a bad idea. The products and target audience are complementary.
(Via Fscklog)
Nitrozak and Snaggy, the lovely people behind the Geek Culture website and the Joy of Tech comic, are giving away three of copies of Cult of iPod — as well as Geek Culture beanies, t-shirts and books.
Cult of iPod contains several JoT cartoons, like the iPod madness comic above. (Click the link for the full cartoon).
Entering the contest is easy — simply post a reply in the forum thread. The contest closes Friday November 18th at 8PM Pacific. Winners will be chosen at random.
Cult of iPod by Leander Kahney
The Best of The Joy of Tech by Nitrozak and Snaggy
There’s a lot of criticism of Apple’s copy-protection scheme, Fairplay, in the news today.
Tidbits Adam Engst describes the headaches he encountered trying to make an audio book, which had been split into four chunks, into one easy-to-use file — a perfectly legal and reasonable thing to do.
Newsweek columnist Steven Levy chastises Apple for refusing to license Fairplay and allow consumers to play iTunes songs on other devices.
Ex-Wired News columnist Adam Penenberg, now writing for Slate, wraps it up with a cogent explanantion of why we, the consumers, have to put up with limiting copy-protection schemes. It has little to do with protecting content, and everything to do with protecting business models:
While Apple stands alone and Sony self-destructs, Microsoft is practically giving away its digital-rights-management tool in an effort to pick up market share against Apple (so far with little success). We may even see a replay of the Apple-Microsoft battle over the desktop, which ended with Apple holding on to a tiny sliver of the computer market. There is, however, a big difference between then and now. Steve Jobs has a hefty market share and a massive content library made up of millions of songs at a price that people like. As long as the record companies license their content to Apple and consumers flock to the iPod, Apple is in a powerful — some might say Gatesian — position.
What’s hardest for the consumer to swallow, then, is that anti-piracy schemes like DRM look like the subtle tactic of the monopolist. Neither Apple nor Microsoft is hurt by music piracy. Instead, they use it as a marketing ploy to force people to use their products. It doesn’t have to be this way. The companies could agree on one standard that allows people to play the music they lawfully purchase on whichever player they choose. The music industry is supposed to sell music, not the medium it comes in, right?
The iPod “Mega Helmet” was made by duct-taping a loud Radio Shack megaphone to an old motorcycle helmet, allowing its wearer to broadcast their taste in music to everyone in earshot. It also includes a microphone in the chin strap.
Its makers advise: “Go play softball wearing the helmet. It is very good for antagonizing the pitcher, and trash-talking in general. The helmet allows both for amplification of your voice, and playback of mp3s from the iPod.”
In the comments, someone else notes: “I’m Loving it! At the movie theater, not only can you block the view of the person sitting behind you but you can also make clever comments about the actors on the screen. Perhaps you could duct tape an egg timer to the side of the helmet to see how long it takes before you’re kicked out of the theater. I give it the maximum five star rating.”
(Via TUAW)
Watch this fun video of a transparent PowerBook screen.
At first the PowerBook looks like it’s displaying a regular “transparent desktop,” made by snapping a pic of the scene behind the computer and displaying it onscreen, giving the impression the LCD is transparent.
But then the PowerBook is picked up and the background stays stationary in space — just as though it would if the screen were truly transparent. It’s a really convincing illusion.
The clip was made by Jose Izquierdo of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and he explains how he did it after the link:
Love Labs, a UK sex-toy manufacturer, has devloped an iPod vibrator that buzzes in time to the music.
The 2-inch, $30 iBuzz plugs into the iPod’s headphone jack and vibrates in sync with the rhythms of the iPod.
The only online retailer that seems to be selling it — Lovehoney — describes it thus:
A super-fun sex toy that plugs into your iPod! The music-activated vibrating bullet stimulates you in time with your favourite music. And you can listen to your songs while you’re enjoying the vibrations…
Use the his-and-hers attachments to add extra excitement. Turn him into a vibrator with the stretchy ring and use the soft sleeve for sensitive stimulation.
Out of Japan, a set of stackable add-ons for the Mac mini that transforms it into a towering music system.
Made by a company called Greenhouse, the components are a 15 Watt subwoofer (bottom); a speaker and USB hub (the one with the knob); and a hard-drive case for storing gigabytes and gigabytes of digital music. On top is the mini itself.
Unfortunatley, there’s no other information about cost or shipping — or how it sounds. Sure looks good though.
Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab was offfered Mac OS X for free for his $100 laptop project, the WSJ reports.
Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.’s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company’s operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative’s founders. “We declined because it’s not open source,” says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Under present plans, the first production version of the laptop will be powered by an AMD microprocessor and use an open-source Linux-based operating system supplied by Red Hat.
Steve Jobs will unveil the first Intel-based Macs at Macworld in January — and it’ll be the flat-screen iMac and the 15-inch PowerBook, according to a somewhat-believable report at AppleInsider.
Most observers had expected low-end products like the Mac Mini to switch first, but AppleInsider says:
Although Apple has only committed to introducing the first Intel-based Macintosh systems by mid-2006, extremely reliable sources and a several-month-long investigation have revealed that January’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco is being primed as the launch-pad for at least one of the Mac maker’s next-generation Intel systems.
Surprisingly, the most reliable information indicates that the iMac and PowerBook — two of the company’s most recently revised Mac offerings — are targeted to be the first two Mac models to receive Intel processors in January. The iMac and PowerBook are also believed to be Apple’s best-selling Mac models, which explains why the company will be upgrading them with Intel processors first and refreshing their associated product lines for the second time in as little as four months.
A several-month-long investigation! Well, it must be true. We’ll see. Macworld rumors sure are flying early this year. But, people are saying AppleInsider is the new ThinkSecret.
The developer of the the iLoad CD-to-iPod loader is hoping it will be a hit so he can pay off his court-ordered restitution.
Reports the Colorado Springs Gazette:
A Monument businessman convicted of theft and securities fraud won’t be allowed to travel to China to market a product he invented, a judge ruled Friday.
Sanford Schupper, 56, has been convicted of defrauding Citibank Visa of as much as $200,000 and sentenced to six years in prison. In another case, Schupper was convicted of swindling a family out of $872,000 and sentenced to eight years in prison.
Friday, Schupper’s lawyer asked senior state District Court Judge Donald Campbell to grant Schupper permission to go to China to market his latest invention, an accessory for Apple iPods.
Schupper says the product could make him millions and allow him to pay court-ordered restitution to victims of his crimes. He hasn’t revealed specifics about the product because of fears someone might steal the idea.
Meanwhile, Schupper is sparring with Gizmodo.
For future reference, TUAW has some sage advice for selling a used Mac:
Sell it as soon as you can! The longer that Mac sits unused, the lower its price will be when you finally sell it. I’ve personally made that mistake several times, sitting on a used Mac for months (or even years) before finally getting around to listing it. It’s not a pleasant realization that your procrastination lost you hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Shawn Morton has published a very handy howto for converting a classic Mac into a bog roll dispenser, or Apple iWipe. Now that’s time well spent.
One of my co-workers was giving away and old Atari 800XL and Macintosh SE case. He had been planning to do a mini-ITX project, but had never gotten around to it. Always wanting an excuse to tinker with something, I decided to take them off of his hands.
Well, as soon as I saw the Mac SE case, I realized that this one had the most potential. So this weekend, I bought a few things at Home Depot and got started making my Apple-power, wireless, portable toilet paper dispenser — the iWipe.
The whole project took a couple of hours and cost about $15.
As seen on Flickr, the San Francisco Gate finds a clever use for image “alt” tags.
Mark Williams, a programmer from Nottingham, UK, had dreams of hitting the big time by designing and selling an iPod case that “isn’t a glorified condom.”
This is his cautionary tale:
The story of Shufflicious – making an ipod case to sell
This morning I could hardly contain, cough cough, my excitement as I get the box of samples. I open it up to reveal about a 100 solid perspex cubes containing chinese figurines dressed up as a western bride and groom. WTFF?
You COULD NOT make this stuff up. Its like a sitcom – Carry on manufacturing. Mix up at the depot you say, stickers on the wrong boxes you say. Hmm. I feel sorry for the person who was expecting their kitsch loveliness and instead gets a box of tri-colored vaginas.
Coming soon: the iLoad, a gizmo for loading CDs right onto the iPod. There’s no details except the promise it’s “coming soon” and this:
iLoad copies your CDs onto and iPod or other Digital Music Player, along with all album and track data at a high rate of speed.
The site says the “iLoad” trademark is owned by Wingspan Partners of Campbell, CA, which claims to be also working on a MagLev train between Los Angeles and Las Vegas!
I wonder why anyone would want a CD loader when the computer already does a pretty good job ripping CDs. And where will the track data come from? ITunes goes online to fetch them; will this?
(Via MacFeber)
Behold the i-Stones, a pair of stone iPod docking stations.
Sold by Brand Incubator of Japan, the i-Stones come in two models: Wabi and Sabi. They feature USB 2; audio and S-Video out.
Wabi-sabi, according to Wikipedia, “represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic.”
It is difficult to explain wabi-sabi in Western terms, but the aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, or incomplete. A concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the first noble truth – Dukkha.
… Many Japanese arts over the past thousand years have been influenced by Zen philosophy, particularly acceptance and contemplation of the imperfection, constant flux, and impermanence of all things. Such arts can exemplify a wabi-sabi aesthetic.
(Thanks Nobi!)