@methodshop

Cult of Mac blogger, Leander Kahney found an interesting video on YouTube.com that could prevent your Apple laptop from being stolen.

"iAlertU is a super clever anti-theft software package that sounds the alarm in the event of an attempted laptop theft.

The software uses the hard drive motion sensors built into late model PowerBooks and MacBooks. The sensors park the hard drive heads in the event of a fall, but in iAlertU, they sound a screeching alarm if the laptop is picked up. Click the video to see it in action.

I love the witty use of the remote, which arms the laptop just like a car alarm. The screen even flashes like a vehicle's marker lights."

Who knows, iAlertU could actually save your laptop from being stolen. You can download iAlertU from VersionTracker.com.

Would you rather entertain loved ones or just look like an idiot in front of them? The choice, really, is yours. You may have the big picture and sweet sound of your dreams or you may blow your investment in any of the following ways...

For more information on setting-up and getting the most from your home audio/video system, check out the following books:

• The Complete Guide to High-End Audio
• Practical Home Theater: A Guide to Video And Audio Systems
• Home Theater For Dummies

Sometimes even the most "simple" systems have some idiosyncricies that cause frustration for the most seasoned professional. Regardless of your purchase and where you're placing it in your home, these books can makes things easier and sound better.

read more | digg story

Stereophile covers the recent, first ever national meet of the internet headphone community, Head-fi.org. These are not your daddy's white earbuds .

Wow! Talk about enthusiasts...there's a pair of headphones pictured in this article for $15K. Yes, that's $15,000. If you're looking for the absolute authority on headphones, how to test, where to buy, these guys should be the first stop while researching your headphone purchase.

A Few Treblemaker Recommendations

• Shure E2c Sound Isolating Earphones
• Editor's Choice: Bose TriPort Headphones
• Sennheiser HD650 Audiophile Open Dynamic Stereo Headphone

Here's a sample from the article: "As we walked the perimeter of the room scanning the manufacturer's tables, we spied a gent with bright green goo packed into his ears. Ultimate Ears had brought an audiologist with them to produce custom molds for their $900 UE-10 in-ear monitors (which JA will be reviewing shortly). "Here," said Mike Dias, "try these with the temporary foam inserts and tell me what you think." Minutes later, I was grooving to Gorillaz, experiencing intensely physical bass and phenomenal clarity. When I resurfaced, dazed and confused, Dias sat me down in the chair, and the next thing I knew, the audiologist was stuffing foam into my ear canal so he could take a custom mold of my ear."

read more | digg story

Apparently iTunes and the iPod hold a major stake in the future of music. In just a few years, the iTunes Music Store has become the most powerful and popular music retailer in the world. How powerful? Apple has enough clout to tell the greedy big four music companies (Universal, Warner, SonyBMG and EMI) how much they should charge for music.

Apple has been battling with music companies for months now. The music industry as a whole wants to raise prices on iTunes. They feel $0.99 per song is too low. Some music companies were even thinking about no longer supplying music to iTunes in protest.

But according to an article on CNET, the record companies make more money by selling songs on iTunes, than from CD sales.

Here's a breakdown of the cost of an average CD:

$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead

When the record companies sell a song via iTunes, several fees are no longer necessary including: distribution, retail overhead and packaging/manufacturing.

So why are the record companies trying to RAISE prices on iTunes? Greedy bastards!

Roar! Tetran wants to eat your earbuds.

Tetran is a terrifying little monster cleverly disguised as a earbud cable winder. When you're not looking, Tetran eats your earbuds, then you can simply wind the undigested cable around his spiked, spherical body and it creates a neat little package.

Basically Tetran is just a clever way to keep your iPod earbuds from getting all twisted and tangled.

Tetran comes in the menacing colors of pink, green, yellow, and orange and sells for $7.99 on Amazon.com.

This sign was found late last night (April 22) on the 3rd floor of the Manhattan Port Authority bus station.

Found on bus: iPod Radio. Please see supervisor at gate 305 & 306

An "iPod Radio"? I didn't know iPods had radios. Either an Apple employee lost a new iPod prototype or the Port Authority staff haven't joined the iPod revolution yet. That's alright, my friends mom still thinks I work for a company called "The Internet."

The person who found this iPod may not know what exactly an MP3 player is, but you have to respect their good intentions. If I ever lose my iPod, I hope someone is as nice as this.

read more | digg story | flickr
methodshop.com

Looks like there will be a break in the Infinite Loop!

Steve Jobs revealed this week that Apple is building a new, 50-acre corporate campus. They plan to tear down 9 different adjacent properties about 1-mile away from their current campus and build their second home.

Why does Apple need a new corporate campus? They are growing. The first iPod was released in 2001. Six years later the success of the iPod and the iTunes Music Store means Apple's business has tripled. As result of this expansion, Apple has been renting every spare piece of real estate in Cupertino and their employees are scattered across 30 different buildings.

It was time for Apple to build a new home.

The gang at Ntronics just tipped us off to the Vaccine Drive. It's a USB flash drive that comes loaded with antivirus software. Might be something worth looking into... especially if you are worried that little nasty virus might come and wipe out your hard drive.

A company called Iocell sells the Vaccine Drive. They claim it's the world's first portable anti-virus USB drive.

How does it work? When you plug the Vaccine Drive into a PC, the it will automatically run a series of anti-virus programs and kill any virus, spyware or piece of adware it finds.

No IT nerd should leave their cubicle without it.

This is a ridiculously absurd pie made out of Peeps leftover from Easter. Like lobsters, the Peeps were placed into a saucepan and murdered. What did it taste like? PEEPS heaven. Duh.



You can see all the photos of the cooking carnage here.

methodshop

Labels: holiday

Before the iPod and the iPod Hi-Fi, there was the 1993 Apple PowerCD.

The Apple PowerCD was a short-lived "portable" disc unit that could function as a stand-alone CD player, a 1X (150K/sec) SCSI CD-ROM drive, or a Kodak Picture CD player that could be attached to a television. It came with a 12v AC adapter and remote control.

Chances are you've never even heard of this obscure Apple product. The PowerCD didn't last very long and was discontinued after only a couple years. The PowerCD and the Apple Pippin are probably the rarest Apple products ever released. Even finding one of them on eBay is extremely difficult.

/>The Apple PowerCD was billed as a "portable" media center, but it required 6 AA batteries, external speakers, lots of cables and a small backpack to carry it all. In reality, the Apple PowerCD was completely impractical for portable use, unless you had a sherpa to lug it around for you.

Beyond its portability problems, several factors led to the failure of the PowerCD.

• The 1X drive speed was very slow. Other CD-ROM devices released during 1993 were capable of 4x speeds.
  
• Sure the PowerCD had some great features, but it originally sold for $499 in 1993. That's still expensive today. Just imagine trying to cough up almost $500 16-years ago.
  
• Depending on which model Mac you had, a specific device driver was required and many users found connecting the PowerCD to their Macs to be rather tricky.

Was the PowerCD ahead of its time? If Apple released an external DVD player that you could hook into your TV and computer at the same time would you get it?

Are pushy salespeople preventing you from getting an iPod? Still scared of using your credit card online. Don't feel like paying inflated shipping costs? The list of excuses for not owning an iPod is slowing coming to an end. Chances are an iPod vending machine is coming to a location near you.

These vending machines aren't absolutely everywhere yet, but apparently they are pretty popular and more and more of them pop up every month. I ran a quick search on flickr and found photos of iPod vending machines in the following locations:

• San Francisco International Airport
• Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
• Concourse A of the Atlanta International Airport
• Las Vegas Hilton Hotel

These locations seem to target travelers as well as take security into mind. Airports and hotels usually have 24-hour security and lots of people around. Someone trying to tip over the vending machine and pull a "smash and grab" would have a tough time not getting caught.

But how practical are these iPod vending machines? An iPod is probably not a good "impulse" purchase. If you were to buy an iPod right before getting on a plane, how would you fill it with music and videos? You would need a laptop computer and WiFi Internet access to the iTunes Music Store. Loading an iPod via an airport WiFi network isn't necessarily a quick process, so hopefully you have a long layover between flights.

Regardless of the practicality, this seems to be a growing trend and it's probably just a matter of time before iPods become as common in vending machines as gum? Hell, the Japanese even sell iPods in 7-Eleven.

So how many quarters would you need to buy an iPod Video anyway?

Useless fact of the day: The first iPod vending machine was built by Zoom Systems and was located in Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Before the iPod and the iPod Hi-Fi, there was the 1993 Apple PowerCD.

The Apple PowerCD was a short-lived "portable" disc unit that could function as a stand-alone CD player, a 1X (150K/sec) SCSI CD-ROM drive, or a Kodak Picture CD player that could be attached to a television. It came with a 12v AC adapter and remote control.

Chances are you've never even heard of this obscure Apple product. The PowerCD didn't last very long and was discontinued after only a couple years. The PowerCD and the Apple Pippin are probably the rarest Apple products ever released. Even finding one of them on eBay is extremely difficult.

The Apple PowerCD was billed as a "portable" media center, but it required 6 AA batteries, external speakers, lots of cables and a small backpack to carry it all. In reality, the Apple PowerCD was completely impractical for portable use, unless you had a sherpa to lug it around for you.

Beyond its portability problems, several factors led to the failure of the PowerCD.

• The 1X drive speed was very slow. Other CD-ROM devices released during 1993 were capable of 4x speeds.
  
• Sure the PowerCD had some great features, but it originally sold for $499 in 1993. That's still expensive today. Just imagine trying to cough up almost $500 16-years ago.
  
• Depending on which model Mac you had, a specific device driver was required and many users found connecting the PowerCD to their Macs to be rather tricky.

Was the PowerCD ahead of its time? If Apple released an external DVD player that you could hook into your TV and computer at the same time would you get it?

According to Starpulse, The Beatles' entire back catalog is being remastered and will be distributed in the iTunes Music Store. The information was revealed in court by Apple Corps Records CEO, Neil Aspinall.

"We're remastering the whole Beatles catalog, just to make it sound brighter and better and getting proper booklets to go with each of the packages. I think it would be wrong to offer downloads of the old masters when I am making new masters. It would be better to wait and try to do them both simultaneously so that you then get the publicity of the new masters and the downloading, rather than just doing it ad hoc."

Normally when an artist gets added to the iTunes Music Store it isn't a newsworthy event. However, Apple Computer and Apple Corps have been in legal battles since the 1980s. Apple Corps believes that there is consumer confusion if both "Apple" companies are engaged in audio or music related business.

When you hear the name Apple, who do you think of... iPods or The Beatles?

According to Starpulse, The Beatles' entire back catalog is being remastered and will be distributed in the iTunes Music Store. The information was revealed in court by Apple Corps Records CEO, Neil Aspinall.

"We're remastering the whole Beatles catalog, just to make it sound brighter and better and getting proper booklets to go with each of the packages. I think it would be wrong to offer downloads of the old masters when I am making new masters. It would be better to wait and try to do them both simultaneously so that you then get the publicity of the new masters and the downloading, rather than just doing it ad hoc."

Normally when an artist gets added to the iTunes Music Store it isn't a newsworthy event. However, Apple Computer and Apple Corps have been in legal battles since the 1980s. Apple Corps believes that there is consumer confusion if both "Apple" companies are engaged in audio or music related business.

When you hear the name Apple, who do you think of... iPods or The Beatles?

Apple may be phasing out the 60GB iPod Video, according to analyst Shaw Wu from American Technology Research. He believes Apple could release a wide-screen video iPod with Bluetooth headphones as early as the June quarter.

What exactly Apple has planned for the next version of the iPod is still a mystery, but Apple has told its distributors that the 60GB iPod is at "risk" of being discontinued or replaced until the end of April. Amazon has already dropped the price of the 60GB iPod Video by $15-20.

The current 60GB iPod Video came out over 150 days ago (October 12, 2005) and is probably due for an update. The average product cycle is about 145 days. This is consistent with Apple's warning to its distributors about the 60GB iPod being discontinued or replaced sometime in or after April.

Many rumor sites believe that the next iPod will have a touch screen that covers the entire face of the iPod and a virtual click wheel. Apple recently filed a patent for a multi point touch screen technology. This type of technology would normally be used in a tablet computer but many believe that Apple plans to adapt it for the iPod.

What about the Bluetooth headphones? Is that prediction too far-fetched?

UPDATE: Audi took the page down because they were flooded with requests.

Want a free USB keychain? Auto manufacturer, Audi, is giving away a free 32MB USB keychain drive with each online brochure request for the A3 sedan.

A 32MB USB keychain normally retails for around $15.00, so why would Audi give these away for free? Here's the catch: The 32MB USB drive contains an interactive A3 brochure (which you can delete) and of course you will get added to the Audi mailing list.

If you are actually in the market for a new car, this free USB drive is a nice incentive. However, if you just want the free USB keychain, being added to the Audi mailing list might be more trouble than it's worth.

The free keychain is only available for residents of the US and Canada. Use these links to request the Audi brochure: USA or Canada.

Make sure you select the "A3 (USB stick)" option to get the free USB keychain. Enjoy.

Maxim Magazine celebrated their 100th issue in a BIG BIG way. They decided to print a massive 75-by-110-foot billboard of their January 2006 magazine cover featuring Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives).

However, you won't see this 75-by-110-foot billboard in Times Square or while driving down the highway. It's laying flat on the ground in the middle of the Nevada desert and can only be seen from the air or by satellite. If you are having trouble picturing what a 75-by-110-foot billboard would look like, just take a look at the image to the right. If you look carefully, you can see a tiny pickup truck parked under Eva Longoria. The poor guys in the truck are probably responsible for sweeping the sand off the billboard everyday.

In case you are wondering, the tagline printed above the Maxim cover says "The only magazine big enough to be seen from space - and only in Vegas!"

If you have Google Earth (Mac or PC) installed on your computer, click on this KML link to check it out. Otherwise, if you are in Las Vegas during the next week or so, rent a hot air balloon and fly it into the desert. The billboard is located just outside the town of Primm, near the California state line. Have fun.


methodshop

Labels: internet, pics

In the age of the iTunes Music Store and iPods, why should we even care about vinyl records? In fact, many kids under 20 haven't even seen a turntable before. The truth is there's a lot of music that doesn't exist in digital form or even on CD.

The people who collect records don't just buy music, they rescue it from obscurity. These vinyl junkies go 'elbow deep' into discount bins and scour garage sales for rare record finds. It may be unintentional on their part, but their efforts to spin the black circle are keeping discontinued recordings from becoming extinct.

Guardian reporter Dorian Lynskey delves into the dusty underground world of the 'vinyl diggers.'

Not too much to say at this point, except that the gauntlet has been thrown down.

From Apple.com

More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Intel Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today.

Boot Camp lets you install Windows XP without moving your Mac data, though you will need to bring your own copy to the table, as Apple Computer does not sell or support Microsoft Windows. Boot Camp will burn a CD of all the required drivers for Windows so you don't have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them.

Once you’ve completed Boot Camp, simply hold down the option key at startup to choose between Mac OS X and Windows. (That’s the “alt” key for you longtime Windows users.) After starting up, your Mac runs Windows completely natively. Simply restart to come back to Mac.

It looks like it wasn't just Narf and Blanka who were "thinking different". Mr. Gates, the game is afoot...

- AH StationA.net

If you have an Intel Mac, which sadly I do not, you can download the beta of "Boot Camp" here. Oh, and GeekBoy....I don't even have to say it do I? We'll be waiting on your report.

[Via StationA.net]

NERD ALERT: Love numbers and weird chronological oddities? At 1:02 AM and 3 seconds on Wednesday, April 5, 2006, it will be the 1st hour of the day, the 2nd minute of the hour, the 3rd second of that minute in the 4th month and the 5th day of '06... or just 01-02-03-04-05-06 for short.

Can't stay up until 1:02 AM? There is a controversial second chance to observe this event at 1:02 PM. The only problem is most countries and the US military consider 1:02 PM to be really 13:02. Feel free to debate this at your next local science club meeting, but any hardcore math nerd will probably say that it doesn't count.

Speaking of nerds, take a closer look at the time this blog post is dated. Did I stay up late and submit it at exactly 01 02 03 04 05 06, or did I schedule it... hummm.

[Source: AP News]

I am not a developer. Nor am I a security guru. And quite frankly I don't know my way around Unix, WebKit or Core Image. But I do know when there is an issue involving the aforementioned areas that needs to be addressed.

This.....whatever this is, needs to be addressed by Apple. And quickly.

The lowdown; apparently drunkenbatman, of drunkenblog.com fame, has brought to light a flaw/vulnerability/hole/giant boo-boo in the way apps based on WebKit and WebCore handle certain images. It crashes them. Completely, unapologetically, and without prejudice, smacks them down like a red headed stepchild.

Drunkenbatman does a better job than I ever could of expounding on why discoveries like this one hint at an OS that may not be quite as secure as we all like to believe. So rather than stumble around attempting to provide my own explanation of what this is all about, I will paraphrase his post on the subject below (please keep in mind the image referenced in the following bullet points is not included in this post, for reasons that will become apparent to you soon enough);

• the image below crashes anything webkit-based in a very hardcore way. Actually, it crashes anything using ImageIO in a hardcore way, which includes the Finder and Preview.app and apps based on Webkit and WebCore...
• It's remarkably similar to the Safari Image of Doom™ from awhile ago, although this time ImageIO seems to be choking during an EXIF routine, so I won't rehash what I said there. However, a few thoughts...
• This particular image (and ones like it) are already floating around on the web. It wasn't "created" to show off a flaw.
• While it's hard not to notice that an image is once again taking out Safari (and it isn't as though the Finder needs much of an excuse to trip over itself) and there is inconvenience there, it should be thought of as a security issue first and foremost.
• Applications out there which aren't hitting the crashiness have all basically rolled their own support instead of using what Apple provides. You are able to open the image with Photoshop, and Graphic Convertor, and of course things like Camino and Firefox will view this page just fine. If a developer can't trust Apple's included solution to be robust, there's little point in throwing it in aside from bullet points.
• Don't underestimate the above, nor how widespread the problem is throughout OS X. As an example, I have yet to encounter a developer needing to use SOAP services in a serious way on OS X that hasn't given up on what Apple's provided to the point where they just write their own stack.
• I haven't met anyone within Apple that's been around awhile who wouldn't admit over beers that they'd be mighty nervous dropping OS X as it currently stands into the orgy Windows swims in, so I'm always amused at what shows up around the web, and less amused by the pundits feeding it to them.
• I haven't dropped a lot of time into this since I came across it, but did ask around and was told it'd been reported as bug #4485821 in Apple's system. No clue as to the status/resolution.

DrunkenBatman's post has already elicited a wide range of responses from his readers, many of which I assume are just upset that DB saw fit to actually include the aforementioned "Image of Death" directly in his post, crashing countless instances of Safari, NetNewsWire and the like (count me among the afflcited, as my NetNewsWire promptly crapped the bed as soon as I clicked the link to his post).

From drunkenbatman;

"I'm aware many people who have the site in their feeds will be trying to access it via something based on WebKit/WebCore. Safari may have crashed, and you lost all your open tabs. You may have had your RSS reader up, and opened up some links in tabs, and down it all went. Read whatever you will into the fact that while these things did occur to me, I'm attaching it inline instead of linking to it separately anyways."

I will not include the image in question, as I rather not tempt the regular readers I do have to delete StationA from their list of RSS feeds as retribution for my transgressions. But if you just have to see the bug in action click (Let me be clear; Safari WILL crash if you click the following links, there, consider yourselves warned) here or here.

It may be naive of me, but despite the unsettling ease with which a graphic can bring to its knees some of the very core applications in OS X, namely the Finder, Preview, and Safari, I am still unconcerned about the overall implications of such a flaw. Don't get me wrong, I understand just how significant a discovery this is. And how in the right, or wrong hands depending on how you look at it, coding bugs such as this one can be manipulated in ways that could conceivably result in security breaches Mac users have, to date, felt invulnerable to. But I am not worried. Maybe it's because it has been a long day, I'm beat, and I am finding it hard to muster up enough concern to be afraid of flesh, or OS, eating images on the web. Maybe it is because I have become one of those unreasonably smug Apple users I hear so much about on pro-Microsoft websites (no seriously, there are some). Perhaps it is because I rubbed the bald head of my pure ivory Steve Jobs statue three times this morning for good luck. I really can't say.

What I do know is that Apple has assigned this vulnerability a bug number, and that # is 4485821. Which means the people who need to know about it, do. We're in good hands. In fact I have no doubt that his Steveness deprived some engineer well deserved quality time with the family to address this unfortunate occurrence as quickly as possible, and is more than likely doing so as I write this post. That Steve, what a guy!

Maybe when I wake up in the morning I will feel differently about how secure OS X is. Maybe. But honestly, I don't see that happening.

- AH

[Via StationA.net]

On April 1, 2006 Apple celebrated it's 30th birthday.

Having created one of the first personal computers and the graphical mouse-and-menu interface most PCs now use, it is now reshaping the music industry with the iPod and iTunes.

To celebrate the company's birthday, Wired News has a series of special features this month that can be viewed here.

One of the Wired features is a photo evolution of the Apple OS from Lisa and the MultiFinder to OS X.

In this video clip from 1991, Steve Jobs shows off Release 3 of the NeXTSTEP operating system.

Here are a few things to look for while you watch the clip:

See anything familiar? Many of the advanced features/applications in NeXTSTEP, like Mail, the Services menu, and the Dock, are now part of Macintosh OS X.

Jobs repeatedly talks down both Macs and PCs, but Macs get the brunt of his jabs. Jobs left Apple in 1985 and founded NeXT Computer because of a power struggle with Apple CEO John Sculley. This is why he's personally showing off a computer system other than a Macintosh.

Jobs sends an email to a coworker about Ross Perot. In addition to running for president in 1992 and 1996, Ross Perot invested $20 million in NeXT and personally owned 16% of the company's total stock.

The NeXT operating system lived a brief life but was responsible for several noteworthy achievements such as the following:

A NeXTcube was used in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee when he created the first web browser and web server. This was the beginning of the World Wide Web as the world knows it today.

In the early 1990s, John Carmack used a NeXTcube to build two of his pioneering games: Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.

NeXT Computer designed Display PostScript (DPS), a display system for their series of Unix-based personal computers, for Adobe in 1987.

Does anyone else think it's weird to hear Steve Jobs talk bad about Apple?

The gang at Necromanc turned us on to this. If you look up Area 51 on Google Earth today, you will see some strange creatures on the roof of one of the hangers. Just Launch Google Earth, search for "area 51." Move a little west and you will find some alien tourists having a BBQ.


methodshop

Labels: holiday, internet, pics