Photographer skins his iPhone 4 as a Leica M9

San Francisco photographer, Joey Celis ( @joeyjoeyjoey ) has turned his iPhone 4 into a Leica M9 with this ingenious skin. I had to look this up, not being a photography geek, but the M9 is “the world’s most compact full-format digital camera system” according to Leica. So, I would imagine that this skin would be highly sought after by every iPhone-4-using Leica fan.

With this skin, the photographic “business end” of the iPhone 4 is quite convincing as the compact M9 at a passing glance and can actually take pictures…although, not from the Leica’s lens. If you follow along with Celis’ iPhone 4 Leica M9 conversion photo set on Flickr, you’ll see how it looks in the wild as well as its humble beginnings as a Photoshop document.

While, at first, Celis had no plans to produce the skin for sale, response has been so positive that he posted this along with the picture you see above hinting that ordering information would be on the way soon:

Been getting lots of emails on when I’ll be taking orders for the Leica M9 skin and I think I finally settled on how I would like to release this and it will be in the form of donations to NF¹ .

I’ll post information here and here once I skin the other phone.

Stay tuned and thanks for the support!

1. Neurofibromatosis [↩]

Automated DVD and Blu-Ray backup, encoding and tagging… right to iTunes

First written back in October of 2009, this post on the Handbrake forums is the backbone of my AppleTV home theater setup.

While it takes a bit of fiddling to set up, it allows me to use my old MacBook Pro as a “Media Mac” that backs up my DVD collection while also making that media available via iTunes and shared across my network to my AppleTV.

Using the system is simple: I insert a DVD and the Batch Rip Dispatcher Automator action asks if it’s a DVD of a movie or a TV series¹ , it copies the contents to an appropriate Batch Rip Folder and renames it automatically. Then, in the wee hours of the evening, an iCal action springs into…well…action and summons Handbrake to encode everything for iTunes. An Automator action kicks in to add metadata, cover art, and the correct title for the resulting files and then Hazel moves it all to my backup folders and adds the movies to iTunes. Once in iTunes, the regular update process propagates the media to my AppleTV making them available for viewing.

It all works like a well-oiled machine. Every time I slide in a disc, my mind reared on Looney Tunes cartoons can’t help but start me humming this tune:

1. this can be set to auto-run if you plan to rip a bunch of movies [↩]

Inception explained for Mac users

From JonahRay comes this awesomeness:

Well done… well done.

Awesome Mac-based video guestbook for your wedding

This is how fast I’d like to be able to bring you the awesomeness on my constant quest for it: I literally just saw this tweet by @LelaNewYork and I had to share this very cool idea with you.

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For $99 US, Thrilled For You sells software for a customized themed video guestbook. You install the application and run an iMac or similarly iSight equipped Mac in kiosk mode at your wedding or reception. Then, as the emotion moves them, your guests, your family, your friends, your former lovers will take turns standing in front of the camera and expressing just how happy they are for you… or how drunk they are.

It’s a brilliant idea and you can download a demo for free. [Via Lela New York Wedding Blog]

25 iPhone 3G How-Tos

While I’m temporarily distracted with other things, have a look at this great list of the 25 (Most Wanted) Tips For IPhone 3G.

I found the item on “How To Switch Punctuation Keys To Alphabet Keys Quickly” to be very useful.

[ Via Digg ]

While your flexing your iPhone muscles, did you know that you can Use iPhone headphones as a remote for Keynote?

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Merlin Mann explains what he keeps in his menu bar

Merlin’s First Desktop Tour from Merlin Mann on VimeoMy hunch is that the people who devote most of their time to productivity are the ones for whom the act is a constant battle. These are the people who have high demands on their time but have the most trouble staying on task and “getting things done.” I think this may be true of productivity guru Merlin Mann of 43 Folders fame. And it is because of this that I think Merlin is so effective: he’s not an authority on which productivity methods work because the processes comes easy to him, but because they do not. It’s as if, if Merlin can use this method/gadget/application and be more focused, it should work for everyone.

So, when I found that 43 Folders had posted Merlin’s First Desktop Tour, I was hooked. In the video, he goes icon by icon and explains what each application or menu item does and why it’s great.

After watching the tour, I’ve committed myself to looking in to BusySync and FuzzyClock, but I’d like to offer an alternative to Spirited Away in the form of Desktopple Pro which has all of its functions and then some.

[ Via Lifehacker ]

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WALL•E + EVE hard drive icons posted at Iconfactory

Iconfactory artist, Louie Mantia, has submitted an icon set inspired by Pixar’s robots WALL•E + EVE. The set of 18 hard drive icons contrasts the industrial design of the sleek Apple-like EVE with the “industrial accident” look of the garbage bot WALL•E.

The icons are freeware so go download them and check them out. And if you find that you don’t like them, you can feel free to toss them into space.

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MacMerc.com’s Rick Yaeger interviewed on Typical Mac User and Mac OS Ken Day 6

I had the honor of being interviewed twice last week about the launch of MacMerc.TV. The first interview was with Victor Cajiao of the Typical Mac User Podcast. He allowed me to plug the show and also share a few of my favorite Mail.app add-ons. Typical Mac User is a great audio podcast for any Mac user looking to learn new tricks and tips and expand your “Mac horizon.” Victor also does a lot of great interviews with cool people in the Mac community. Such a great show and a great host.

The second interview was with a good friend from back in the Wizards of Technology days, Ken Ray. Ken has his regular 5 day a week free podcast, Mac OS Ken, where he covers all the Mac news that matters in a way that makes it accessible and fun. My interview appears as part of Ken’s Day 6 which is the pay side of his podcast. A subscription costs $10 per month and it helps support all of Ken’s podcasting efforts. Day 6 gets you a recap of the week’s news, as well as conversations around Apple’s past, present, and future. It also gets you interviews with people like me or, better yet, super-awesome-cool people like Greg Grunberg from NBC’s Heroes. (As much as I want you to check out Ken’s interview with me, his interview with Greg Grunberg about Band from TV is one you simply must hear…seriously…pay the $10).

Thanks to both Victor and Ken for welcoming me on their shows. I had an awesome time and I’m really proud of the way the interviews turned out.

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MacUpdate Holiday Bundle offers $450 worth of software for $49.99

MacUpdate recently posted their latest bundle of Mac software. Included among the $450 worth of software in the MacUpdate Holiday Bundle are must-haves like Drive Genius 2, DefaultFolder X 4, LittleSnitch 2 and WhatSize 4. If it included only those four items, it would still be a savings of $126.90…but it also includes 6 other apps. Here’s the full list:

• Drive Genius 2 ($99): Currently the highest-rated disk utility on the market and used by Mac Geniuses at Apple Stores, Drive Genius diagnoses and repairs problems with your hard drive, optimizes your system, and much more. Buyers will receive a link to download a bootable DVD image of the software to burn, which can be used to boot and fix any Mac that can run Mac OS X 10.5, including Apple’s newest laptops.
• DefaultFolder X 4 ($34.95): Fly through Open & Save dialog boxes at lightning speed.
• VirusBarrier X 10.5 ($69.95): Fast, simple, and non-intrusive anti-virus software for your Mac and iPhone
• RapidWeaver 4 ($79): Create powerful, professional-looking Web sites quickly and easily.
• MacGourmet Deluxe ($44.95): Like iTunes for food, track recipes, plan meals, manage wines, and more.
• LittleSnitch 2 ($29.95): Monitors your network connection to make sure your Mac only sends out what you want it to.
• KeyCue 4 ($27): Displays full keyboard shortcuts for all your applications; learn them and work faster.
• MacPilot 3 ($19.95): Access hundreds of hidden features to customize and improve your Mac OS X experience.
• WhatSize 4 ($12.99): Effortlessly identify files that are hogging disk space and that you don’t need anymore.e
• iVolume 3 ($29.95): Ensures all your iTunes tracks play back at the same level, so you never have to adjust the volume individually.

My only reluctance in buying these bundles lately has been that I already have licenses for so many of the applications already. I’m sure you have the same problem if you’ve bought a few MacUpdate bundles or MacHeist bundles in the past.

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For the shortcuts masters, Lifehacker has few you might not know about

I need to get better at using keyboard shortcuts. I spend entirely too much time dragging my cursor hither and yon when I’m sure there are key commands that could more evenly distribute my input abuse between the mouse and keyboard.

I caught this article by Adam Pash on Lifehacker today and it gave me a few more key commands to practice and work into my repertoire.

Worth a look.

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