Hold onto your seats, ladies and gentlemen. Steve Wozniak is in a dance-off against former Go-Gos lead singer Belinda Carlisle, who apparently lost the beat at some point in her routine last week. Results imminently.

9:43 p.m. Belinda Carlisle just finished her routine with the world’s most awkward headstand/look-at-my-crotch! move I’ve ever seen.

9:44 p.m. And the judges hated it, just 17 points! Woz might live to fight another day!

9:49 p.m. AANNDDD…we’re BACK!

9:50 p.m. Steve’s going for the quickstep again! This is apparently quite gutsy. And his partner is giving a dull inspirational speech.

9:51 p.m. Steve just stole her feather boa! That’s a good start!

9:51 p.m. This feels worse than last night, actually.

9:52 p.m. It does seem a lot more energetic now that we’re getting to the end. Woz is obviously really tired out now, but he had a blast doing it…

9:52 p.m. Bruno admires Steve’s sunny disposition. But “You are NOT a good dancer; but I love watching you!”

9:52 p.m. Carrie-Ann: “I liked you were better tonight. You were smoother!”

9:53 p.m. Stuffy English judge is impressed that Steve danced at all. And notes he’s the “best for fun and entertainment.” Which is pretty good praise for the creator of the world’s first dial-a-joke service.

9:53 p.m. Debrief interview. Steve: “I just loved doing it the whole time.” If eliminated: “We were lucky enough to do it twice!”

9:54 p.m. It’s another 17! That’s a tie with Belinda Carlisle. If Steve got more audience votes, he stays! I have to imagine there are more geeks than Go-Gos fans.

10:00 p.m. Good lord that was a long ad break. This stupid show goes until 10:03 p.m.

10:01 p.m. Belinda Carlisle’s going home! Woz is still in! WOZ IS STILL IN!

10:01 p.m. That’s one surprised Apple founder.

10:01 p.m. Apparently, we’ll be back next week, folks…

The new iPod Shuffle may talk, but a lot of what people have to say about it concern the placement of controls on the headphones. No third-party headphones are available yet and the rumors are flying about “authentication chips” contained in the headphones that Apple may require on those made by other companies, too.

Sean Mulvihill, who recently shared with CoM his MacBook Touch mock-up, sent in a prototype for a redesigned Shuffle, with the controls on the side of the device. The resulting Shuffle isn’t bulked up and would be easy to use on-the-go. Plus no headphone kerfluffle.

What prompted him to try a redesign?

“With the new release of the revamped iPod Shuffle me and a lot of  people were disappointed with the controls now on the headphones, therefore you cannot use your (own) headphones.  I decided to make a little mock-up of what I think the new iPod Shuffle should have looked like. ”

Though the small size and storage capacity of the actual Shuffle are interesting, I’d be hard pressed to replace my dead pod with it. Each iPod I’ve had averaged about three to five pairs of headphones (that’s a conservative estimate), if forced to replace the busted ones with Apple earbuds or pricey headsets (leaving the mystery chip issue aside for the moment)  it wouldn’t be worth it.

What do you think?

Click for larger image view.

Perhaps you know about Steampunk, the geek sub-culture movement that marries devotion to the aesthetics of Victorian romance with a commitment to the use of modern technology.

The vast majority of Steampunk practitioners work in the PC realm, though there are impressive examples of Apple gear transformed.

None moreso, perhaps, than the eye-Pod Victrola from Doctor Grymm. A custom mod of an Apple iPod Nano 1st Gen, the design is inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

The “eye-Pod” can be worn on the wrist via the leather cuff, or placed on it’s custom Victrola base.

Full functionality of the iPod remains intact and a hidden USB cord retracts from the base to either a wall charger or a computer. Hidden pressure plates send a strobing “static charge” into the quartz crystals on either side of the magnified veiwing portal, and music plays through the Victrola horn or though a portable personal hearing apparatus (in progress).

[SteamGearLab, via BoingBoing]

Dennis Liu shot The Apple Mac Music Video last year that went pretty viral on the internet.

Liu says he got interest pretty high up the Apple corporate ladder from that video, but “Microsoft actually took my music video video very seriously, and we decided to collaborate on a viral video for Microsoft Office for Mac.

The video was supposed to debut at Macworld this year, but delays intervened and it is finally being released today.

Liu told Cult of Mac he had hundreds of windows open at times in PPT, Excel, and Word during the making of the video. “Honestly, it didn’t crash, and didn’t slow down. Not like anyone else in the world would try and animate ASCII in MSWord, but … ”

He explained his motivation for the project, saying, “I think Apple users should know that MSOffice doesn’t have to be “un-fun” like ILife ’09 makes it out to be.”

“I’m a huge Mac fanatic, and I wanted to make Microsoft seem less corporate-y with this ad campaign. Microsoft gets thrown under the boss (sic) a lot.”

For what it’s worth, Liu said he was bored and curious, and he tried doing this with iWork ’09 but it wasn’t holding up as well. “I do have to hand it to MSFT for making a pretty stable program, with good creative features (if you know how to use them).”

At China’s biggest online shopping site,  Taobao, $200USD iTunes gift cards are on sale for a fraction of their value, some as low as $2.6 USD.

Outdustry broke the story,  interviewing the owner of the site where hundreds of iTunes gift cards are on offer in varying amounts, from $25-200.

“The seller just sells the gift voucher code which they send you directly through Taobao’s IM software. You then redeem the card in your iTunes account.

Once successfully redeemed you then click ‘confirm’ and Alipay transfers your 18 RMB to the seller and you are free to start downloading.

The owner of the Taobao shop told Outdustry the gift card codes are created using key-generators. He also said that he paid money to use the hackers’ service.”

The hacked cards have been on sale for  about six months, the price has been driven down due to competition but a growing market have kept the false iTune cards lucrative.

Prices do seem to vary widely, when we checked there were $200 cards were going for about $15USD.

Via slashdot

Apple introduced an all-new redesigned iPod Shuffle Wednesday, touting it as the first music player that talks to you.

Except that it’s not the first music player that talks to you. Does anyone remember the Nanocromatic iPods introduced just last summer?

Those iPod nanos also featured the “Voice Over” function being touted as Wednesday’s big new improvement to the shuffle, which now sports 4GB of storage (up from 2GB). Apple’s smallest music player now features playlist support, however and syncs with iTunes through an included USB cable which connects to the shuffle’s audio jack.

The new shuffle also comes with earbuds featuring on-cord remote control.

The new design is rectangular rather than square, comes in Silver or Black and costs, as did previous models, $79. Apple is making these things smaller all the time, with the new shuffle being smaller than a house key and not much thicker.

It’s probably a good thing the shuffle’s Voice Over function, which supports 14 languages, is accessed manually, to tell users the name of the artist and song playing or run through the playlists available on the device. On the iPod nano introduced last summer, the Voice Over feature was an on-or-off setting and quickly grew tiresome when it would kick in at the mere changing of the device’s orientation from vertical to horizontal.

More user control is good; thank you, Apple.

UPDATE: this piece has been edited to more accurately reflect the new shuffle’s capacity. Thanks to readers who pointed out the error in the original report.

I grew up with 1980s home-computer gaming: Atari, Commodore, Spectrum, Amstrad. In the UK, we had, comparatively speaking, no money (yuppies aside), and, rather than being lucky enough to follow our disk-happy American chums, had to make do with cassettes. Inevitably, with tapes being cheap, publishers soon realised that affordable games were very saleable games, regardless of quality. Eventually, the number of £1.99 and £2.99 games being churned out was astonishing, as was the ever-diminishing amount of time it would take full-price releases to show up on budget labels.

Towards the end of the 1980s, it got to the point where almost no-one bought full-price games in the UK, because everyone would just wait for a price-drop. Watching apps on the App Store brings back these memories, and so perhaps it was inevitable that the other bastion of 1980s software—the compilation—would at some point make its way to the App Store.

On March 9, the 5 Fingers Games Bundle appeared, mashing together BurnBall, Chopper, Up There, Sneezies and Blackbeard’s Assault. Time will tell if this process works in the present day. It certainly has the potential to give exposure to poor-selling but quality games. However, compilations were the other thing that broke 1980s gaming in the UK, since almost every half-decent game ended up on a compilation eventually. I’m hoping people will continue to buy and support indie devs, rather than wait for a now seemingly inevitable price-drop or compilation entry that will ultimately lead to cheaper entry points and fewer development resources.

Photo from Woz.org

Steve Wozniak on “Dancing with the Stars” is the greatest cultural event of the decade. As such, I’m plopped in front of the couch awaiting the Woz for the West Coast broadcast (I’m told we’re just three minutes away). Nicole told you how to vote, and I’m here to tell you how he did. Check out the blow-by-blow below!

9:15 p.m. I just endured a solid three minutes of Jewel’s cowboy husband not dancing. It was absurdly painful. He gets a total of 14 points.

9:18 p.m. There goes Olympic silver medalist Shawn Johnson. She’s being pulled around by a man who looks like the uglier brother of Mark from “Ugly Betty.”

9:23 p.m. Big points for Shawn! I guess! I’ve never watched this show before.

9:23 p.m. Woz just rolled in on a Segway in a cloud of smoke! There is a god.

9:24 p.m. Also, Tom Bergeron just said Woz founded Apple in the early ’70s. A factual error on first sentence.

9:24 p.m. Woz meets his dancing partner by rolling up on a Segway, too.

9:25 p.m. Woz really does not know how to dance, based on these rehearsal shots. Though he does notice that dancing can be mathematical and left-brained.

9:26 p.m. Words of Wozdom: “I like to close my eyes when I’m practicing, because it lets me get an image of my head of me dancing. It’s like I’m dreaming.”

9:27 p.m. “Nerds can dance.” No, Steve, they can’t.

9:27 p.m. Steve comes out with a giant pink feather boa and a tux. He’s actually got a lot of personality, although he might want to close his mouth. Still, he’s a natural ham. A lot of sticking his tongue out.

9:28 p.m. The song is “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.” Quite.

9:29 p.m. You know, by the standards of this show, that was very not embarassing.

9:29 p.m. Bergeron: “Take that, Bill Gates.” Also: “If Safari freezes, should I delete it or restart it?” Yes, because Woz has a lot to do with current Apple software.

9:30 p.m. Cranky Italian judge: “It was like watching a Teletubby going mad at the gay pride parade!” Well said.

9:30 p.m. Lady judge: “You are what this show is all about!” And “You made it to the end! It was fantastic!” It’s true. He didn’t once take a break or sit down.

9:31 p.m. Woz score coming after the ad. I have to say. He looks way more composed than his partner.

9:33 p.m. Here come the scores: 5, 4, and 4 for 13 total. Which means they did worse than Jewel’s stupid cowboy husband. Which is a serious miscarriage of justice. He was so much better than that guy! 

9:34 p.m. Empty headed-host: “You said that ballroom dancing is harder than designing computers. But you just got through that entire dance!” They really seem concerned about his ability to remain standing.

9:34 p.m. Woz: “That was the most incredible fun thing I’ve ever done. It’s so great. I’m so glad to be here!” More fun than pretending to date Kathy Griffin?

9:35 p.m. Dance partner Karina Smirnoff: “Honestly, he’s the nicest man alive, and he gives 100 percent in every rehearsal!” Well, he would have to give at least that much. He’s Woz.

9:36 p.m. And…it’s over. Please turn it off before David Alan Grier dances, and get your vote in now! (Just done with my 13 now; what a worthy cause!)

See you next week? Maybe?

In other Rock and Roll news, U2 has chosen Blackberry to be the lead sponsor of its upcoming 360 Degrees tour, set to kick off with a June 30th show in Barcelona, Spain and travel across Europe during the summer, before crossing the Atlantic for the first US date at Soldier Field in Chicago September 12th.

The band, which famously stood with Steve Jobs in 2004 and launched a special edition iPod, said at the time, “We want our audience to have a more intimate online relationship with the band, and Apple can help us do that.”

Now, after five years in which Jobs has supposedly raked the music industry over the coals with his tough iTunes pricing negotiations, either the band feels that mission’s been accomplished, or perhaps its record company has merely had enough.

In any event, Bono, U2’s lead singer and most identifiable public figure, is a partner in the firm Elevation Partners which holds a 39 percent ownership stake in Palm, whose highly anticipated Pre smartphone is slated to debut around the time the band’s tour kicks off.

In a statement about the partnership with Research in Motion, makers of the Blackberry, Paul McGuinness, U2’s manager, said, “This tour announcement marks the first stage of a relationship and shared vision between RIM and U2 that we expect will lead to new and innovative ways to enhance the mobile music experience on the BlackBerry platform for U2 fans.”

It might be tempting to read an emotional component into U2’s “rejection” of Apple and its public embrace of a major competitor, but the greatest likelihood is that — as the old saying goes — it’s just business.

Back in December we wrote about a potential land-mine of problems for owners of new MacBook Pro 15″ notebooks, related to possibly defective NVIDIA GeForce 9400 graphics processor chips that Apple may have knowingly shipped with some units in 2008.

So far, the major storm speculated about by the Inquirer in that report does not appear to have manifested. But new reports Friday regarding some threads in the Apple support forum indicate that some owners of the new MacBook Pro 17″ model are complaining about a persistent graphics issue related to the NVIDIA GeForce 9600 chip included in those machines.

Recently some NVIDIA notebook GPUs began failing that were used in many notebook computers from Dell and Apple among others. The GPU failures ultimately led to a lawsuit being filed against NVIDIA by some affected notebook owners.

The current issue manifests in green lines that appear all over the notebook screen. More than one user is having the same exact issue, even on new notebooks. The error appears to be limited solely to the 9600M GPU. At this point, if a replacement is needed for the GPU or a firmware fix will suffice is unknown.

Is your new MacBook Pro 17″ giving you graphics fits? Let us know in comments below.