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- Super secret spy iPhone
Filed under: Cool tools, Found Footage, iPhone
Reader Alex Bratton over at Lextech let us know about a fun iPhone project they're working on. Most high-end surveillance systems use a joystick or mouse to control those cameras that we see all over the place. Lextech has done some work using the touchscreen of the iPhone to replace the old 70's UI tech.
To pan the surveillance camera, you scroll the screen left or right using the traditional iPhone finger drag; tilt is done by dragging a finger up and down. Want to zoom in for details on the bad guys? Use the iPhone "reverse pinch" gesture to get the close-up. And if you want to zoom back out to get the big picture, it's a simple pinch on the iPhone display.
Videos demonstrating the control system are on the Lextech site and on YouTube.Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - Yahoo! and Inquisitor seen sitting in tree
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools
Dave Watanabe's Inquisitor plugin for Safari has been the source of some controversy for affiliate linking shenanigans, and underwent some changes following the public outcry. None of that seems to have deterred Yahoo! from taking an interest in the search plugin. Yahoo! revealed today in a blog post that they would be acquiring the rights to Inquisitor.
The new version (which is a free download) removes affiliate links (completely, I assume) and updates the preferences interface. There is a reference in the Yahoo! post to a simplification of the process of selecting a search provider but I'm failing to remember what was complex about it in the previous version. Obviously, the top choice on the dropdown is now Yahoo!, but you can still choose to use Google and all of the other secondary search options appear to be intact.
I'll give Yahoo! credit for recognizing a beautiful interface and what many -- myself included -- agree is an extremely useful plugin. Whether Dave Watanabe's existing reputation will affect Yahoo! in any way is debatable, so I'm withholding speculation. Dave has made it clear that he remains an independent developer and is not joining the ranks of Yahoo!, remaining focused on his existing projects.
Thanks, Ross!
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - Found Footage: Understanding technology's past
Filed under: Retro Mac, Found Footage, Apple History
When I think about a computer, I usually don't think about a 5-ton assembly of brass gears, cams, and steel rods. Yet in 1847 - 1849, Charles Babbage first created his design for the Difference Engine No. 2, a large mechanical computer that used these non-electronic components.
Nathan Myrhvold, former Chief Technical Officer of Microsoft, commissioned the building of a Difference Engine No. 2 based on Babbage's design. It's on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, and will soon grace the living room of Myrhvold's home.
What does this have to do with Apple? In this MarketWatch video, it's mentioned that Babbage had problems getting funding for a device that was considered to be ahead of its time. It kind of reminds me of Apple's Newton MessagePad. It was the progenitor of all PDAs and smartphones, but failed in the marketplace because of its price and the fact that few people understood what it was good for.
The video also highlights Daniel Janisch, PowerBook Guy, who upgrades and sells antique PowerBooks (8-year old "Pismo" PowerBooks, for example). You can run Tiger on the Pismos, but they're often abandoned for the new kids on the block.
Thanks to Jomo for the link!Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - TapeDeck 1.0
Call me a curmudgeon if you must, but I am wary of any app that replicates a physical object with its UI. Isn't a large part of the power of computing come from the fact that programmers can transcend the limitations of the real world and offer up better ways of doing things?
In this frame of mind I started looking at TapeDeck, a new $25 Leopard only recording app from SuperMegaUltraGroovy and Toastycode. As the name suggests it looks like a cassette recorder of old, but it does offer up some improvements. Each recording is saved on a new 'tape' automatically, so you never have to record over a previous file (TapeDeck records audio in the AAC format, so the files are small, but you can make them even smaller by lowering the recording quality). It also allows you to annotate your tapes and then search your recording library using that information, and you can send your audio to iTunes if you prefer to organize your files that way.
The real question is: does the UI help or hinder TapeDeck? I'll have to spend more time using TapeDeck to fairly answer that, but at first blush this app is great fun to use (especially if you remember using tape recorders like these).Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - Back to My Mac saves a stolen laptop
Filed under: Odds and ends, .Mac
A clever Mac user helped police recover a stolen laptop using Back to My Mac's screen-sharing feature.
After her apartment was burglarized, the victim received a call from a friend while she was at work (conveniently enough, at the Apple Store in Westchester, NY). The friend noticed her stolen computer was online. The victim then quickly used another Mac to connect to the stolen laptop.
The article doesn't mention the technical details, but I reckon she activated screen sharing, and started Photo Booth (or another app that activates the laptop's built-in iSight camera). After a while, the perps showed up, and the victim's roommate recognized one of them as an acquaintance who had attended a party at their apartment some weeks before.
Armed with names and photos of the alleged thieves, police quickly arrested two men, who were in possession of most of the property stolen in the burglary.
If that isn't worth her year's subscription to .Mac, I don't know what is.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - iPhone shortage hits NYC
Filed under: iPhone
While the UK has been reporting a run on current-model iPhones recently, Gizmodo says that the shortage has reached across the pond to New York City. According to an anonymous staffer at the West 14th street Apple Store, "it's been out of stock all week." And to think, you were only worried about rice and flour.
If you check out the picture on Gizmodo, you'll see a line of about 30 people who are waiting for an iPhone at the West 14th street store. These people will probably be very upset in a month or two.
[Via Cult of Mac]
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - Renoise: A multi-platform tracker for music composition
Filed under: Audio, Multimedia, Software, Universal Binary
Back in the day before Ableton Live and Reason and all the other sequencer apps out there, desktop electronic producers made do with trackers: apps which allowed the budding Moby or Paul Oakenfold to sequence samples. They were basically software equivalents of legendary hardware sample sequencers like the Akai MPC. These usually had all of the usability of a 1957 Trabant and none of the good looks.
Renoise 1.9.1 sequences like an old-school tracker, but it's got loads more features: plugin and MIDI instruments, effects chains, a halfway decent mixer, and even internal sample editing. Everything a growing music geek needs to make bleep-bleep music (and maybe more). It's available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS 10.3.9+ as a Universal Binary.
At 49.99 euros (US$75.80 at today's exchange rate) for a license, Renoise is a helluva lot cheaper than alternatives like Live or Reason, and the ability to use a single license for versions running on multiple platforms is nice. The only drawback is that the interface appears a little complex for users unfamiliar with the conventions of sample trackers. Also, the demo version times out and doesn't allow rendering of your tracks out to .wav format.
I still have nightmares about using FastTracker on my old Pentium II back in the late '90s, so I haven't tried this one myself. If you have, drop me a line in the comments and let me know what you think.Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - Muxtape works on iPhone
Filed under: iPod Family, Internet, iPhone
If you are a Web 2.0 fanatic (which, come on, who isn't these days?) then you probably know about Muxtape. For those of you who aren't religiously reading the latest Web application news at DownloadSquad, Muxtape is basically a way to share your personalized mp3 mixtape. Not only can you subscribe to the tape's RSS via iTunes, but it turns out that you can also listen to Muxtapes on your iPhone!
Just navigate over to the Muxtape page of your choosing and select a song. Mobile Safari will then load the file and begin to play it like normal mp3 audio. How cool is that?
Thanks for the info, Craig!Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - Bokeh locks down your idle apps
Filed under: Software
I'll admit that when I first heard of the new utility from Elgebar Studios, Bokeh, my first thought was of Kenan Thompson's SNL exclamation ("Bokay?") and not the Japanese photography term (the control of out-of-focus areas) that presumably inspired the tool's name. Bokeh is a $17 utility from
one ofthe guys behind iPod-music-sharing conduit Misu, and it's intended to do one thing: freeze your applications. No, really, it's a good thing.
Bokeh allows you to put applications into suspended animation and free up additional processing power for your crunchiest tasks (3D rendering, Photoshop filters, etc.) when you need it most. You can select a single app for focus, or suspend applications one at a time. It's not the sort of thing everyone would need but in a production environment where time is money, it might be worth the cash. You can download a Bokeh demo directly from the site.
Update: Ollie from Elgebar sent a quick note to clarify the benefits of Bokeh: When you select one app to focus on, Bokeh actually blurs the background and helps you isolate the task at hand. It's also highly scriptable, so you could include an automatic 'freezeout' before starting a rendering pass or other CPU-intensive task.Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - C64 emulator for iPhone
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Odds and ends, Apple, iPhone
Unfortunately we don't have much more than a splash screen on this one, but Stuart Carnie sends word that he's used the Apple SDK to port a Commodore 64 emulator on to the iPhone. He has yet to put in a Save/Resume state mechanism, a way to browse for files and disks, or a virtual keyboard/joystiq to control it with, but the hard stuff is done, so by the time the App Store comes around, we may have a working C64 emu in there ready to go.
As long as it's ok with Apple. In point of fact, we have no idea how any emulators might work in the App Store -- actually, we have no idea how any apps will get in the App Store. Sure, it would be cool to play the original versions of Sim City or Maniac Mansion or Elite, but without Apple's OK to let any of those on the platform, we may not be able to do so without jailbreaking the thing anyway. We'll see -- if Carnie, once his work is done, can't get an official emulator in the App Store, maybe we'll be able to try it out and put it to use in some other, less official way.Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - Digital Wrongs Management
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Multimedia, iTunes
I don't think anybody likes DRM. Customers certainly don't like it: they want to listen to music and watch video where and when they please. I don't think it's that popular with the content providers, either, because it's not a perfect solution. It might cut down on some piracy, but by no means eliminates it entirely.
DRM has come up recently in a few places, and companies have set up camps at two ends of the spectrum. Amazon.com is doing a booming business selling DRM-free music, sometimes for better prices than at the iTunes Store. On the other hand, we have NBC, who may or may not be partnering with Microsoft to create device software that (somehow) determines if a particular music or video file has been stolen.
As much as I'm sure that both Zune users would appreciate having access to NBC's video library, the problem remains of how exactly Microsoft would do that, aside from splashing giant watermarks across everything. My money's on unicorn tears.
How much more investment will there be in DRM before content providers realize it's an inefficient, ineffective way of deterring piracy? Sound off in comments.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - Mac 101: Back it Up
Filed under: Software, Leopard, Mac 101
If you're like me, you probably spend a great deal of time using your Mac. From checking email, working with photos, surfing the web and paying bills to writing posts just like this, my Mac serves me well in so many ways. Using it every day as I do, I tend to create a massive amount of files, photos, emails and all of the other items that go along with daily Mac use.
The items that are created, modified and used every day are very important. So, to make sure I have access to them and that nothing bad happens to them, they need to be backed up so they're safe no matter what. But even though I know these files, folders and more need to be backed up, how do I do it in the most simple, effective and least time-consuming way?
Fortunately, there are several solutions available to Mac users to help ensure that their precious data is preserved. Most are simple to use and all provide an automated backup solution that once set up, doesn't rely on the user to make sure it works -- it all happens automatically on a particular schedule.
But which solution to choose? Here are the three simplest, cheapest and most reliable backup solutions for your consideration:Continue reading Mac 101: Back it Up
Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - Gamers and the faster iMacs
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Rumors, Odds and ends, Apple, Mac mini
Peter Cohen over at Macworld continues his sideline analysis of Apple's gaming chances with a post about how the brand new faster iMacs are indeed faster, but still not fast enough for gamers. And to a certain extent, he's right -- gaming on the Mac is like that old beat-up, "someday I'll fix it up" convertible your father's had in the garage covered with a tarp since you were a kid. Getting it out and putting a new engine in it might help it run better, but it's still not going to turn it into a car that anyone wants to drive around.
But (and we talked about this extensively on the Talkcast a few weeks ago with Brian Akaka from Freeverse) it's a step. A faster video card, even if it isn't blazing, will run games better than before, and it'll do a little to bring not only gaming customers but developers back to the Mac. Cohen is right -- that old convertible needs an actual mechanic to take a look at it, and it needs the seats to be reupholstered, and sooner or later it's going to need a new can of paint (not that, like your Dad's actual convertible, these things aren't ever going to happen -- we continue to hear rumblings that Apple is aiming for gamers).
But something is something -- the very fact that Apple is offering faster video cards is a sign that they're interested. And, other than simple profiles of games on their website and cameos by game execs at keynotes, that's more than we've had in a while.Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - iPod Touch/iPhone Music Round-Up
Filed under: Audio, iPod Family, Multimedia, iPhone
Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music has posted a great round-up of all the tools people have put together to make music with the iPod Touch and iPhone.
The post touches on some of the more technical aspects of music app development on the iPhone and iPod Touch, and there's a great list of links to cool apps you can download and mess around with.
Music apps are still in their infancy on the iPhone, but hopefully, as the SDK gets out there to more developers, we'll begin to see more robust and feature-heavy apps.
Me? I want to see Ableton Live on the iPhone.Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - Here Comes A Special Boy...
Filed under: TUAW Business
Hi, TUAW readers! My name is Josh Ellis, and I'm the latest addition to the TUAW team.
I'm a blogger, web designer/developer, electronic musician, former newspaper columnist, and occasional DJ -- your usual post-millennial hipster nerd scum, basically. I currently reside in Las Vegas, NV, USA, and I spend a lot less time in casinos than you might expect.
If I were on Jeopardy, my categories would be:
- Using Logic Pro To Bring The Noise
- The History Of The Early Roman Empire
- Alternative Rock 1967-1993
- Damn You, ActionScript 3.0
- DC Vertigo Comic Books
- Digital Music Distribution
So hello, and be kind, folks -- though I've been a blogger since the early Neolithic period, I'm new to this whole professional / group blogging thing.
I plan to drop some (hopefully) useful info on TUAW about guerilla Mac music production in the very near future, so keep an eye out for that. And thanks to the TUAW team for having me!Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать - Found Footage: Managing Active Directory with Workgroup Manager
Filed under: Enterprise, Education, Found Footage
Years ago, Macs didn't even acknowledge the presence of Windows networks, which made those LAN wine-and-cheese parties pretty awkward. Now, however, OS X machines are exemplary network citizens, and apparently can even manage Windows workstations under the right circumstances.
TidBITS linked to a roundtable discussion at Cornell University, where Philip Halcomb, of Cornell's Mann Library ITS staff, demonstrated managing user accounts in Active Directory. Now, this wouldn't be very exciting, except for the fact that he was using Mac OS X Workgroup Manager to do it. Sweet.
Phil's part starts at about 7:30. It's a long QuickTime video, too -- almost an hour -- but for IT folks, especially in an education environment, the roundtable series is a must-see.
(Thanks, MHA, for Phillip's name!)
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsПереслать
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