Inception explained for Mac users
From JonahRay comes this awesomeness:
Well done… well done.
MacBook Air transplanted into Mac Keyboard/Magic Trackpad combo
What you see above is a 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo Mac with 2GB of RAM and 80GB hard drive. Don’t believe me? I’m not so sure I believe it either but here’s a look at the innards.1
As the story goes, Bart Reardon ( @bartreardon ) was given a broken MacBook Air.
Bart had seen the motherboard for the MacBook Air way back when Steve Jobs first held it up at the announcement keynote and thought it should fit in one of those old white plastic Apple keyboards. Now he had his chance to find out!
You can follow Bart’s progress on his blog.
Tell me; is this Mac awesomeness? Would you dig a Mac/Keyboard combo? Leave a comment and we’ll chat.
- yes, that’s black duct tape …aka gaffer’s tape [↩]
Secrets Revealed: Amaze your friends with magic on your iDevices
Any of you who know me, know I’m a closet magician. I’m pathetic at it actually, but the few times that I can pull a trick off and actually fool someone, it makes me feel awesome. Even the times I do an effect and the people pretend to be fooled can be pretty fun.
I’m going to show you a few ways to amaze and delight your friends with magic using a few apps but I’m also going to pull back the curtain a bit and show you quite a few professional effects used by real magicians.
Are you ready?1
Abracadabra
by MacEnvy.com (iPhone, iPod touch)
Abracadabra2 is the first of a series. It consists of a collection of instructional videos that are easy to learn and geared at the beginner level. Each trick includes a performance of the trick as well as step by step instructions by Angelo Oddo. The videos aren’t of the highest quality but the magic and the teaching are solid—better than I’ve seen on other apps of this type.
For US99¢ you’re getting a great deal with Abracadabra.
Magic Card
by Renditions Design (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad)
Though it’s a bit pricey in the iPhone App Store marketplace at US$2.99, I like Magic Card because the effects it allows you to perform are simple and take advantage of the particular device you’re using. You buy it once and get three versions of the same effect (find the chosen card) geared especially for each device. The iPhone version is the most amazing to me in that it allows you to take a photo of the face down chosen card and the iPhone will magically transform that photo to show the card face up revealing its secret identity.
Invisible Deck
by Ellusionist (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad)
The original, physical Invisible Deck is the trick I recommend to anyone getting into magic… now Ellusionist has taken that effect and made “an app for that”.
The effect is classic. The participant takes an imaginary, invisible deck of cards, shuffles them, takes the top card, looks at it3 , remembers the card and places it face up in the middle of the face down pack. The participant then puts the imaginary cards in their imaginary box and tosses it to you, the magician. You catch the cards in your iPhone—trapping them there. Does the participant remember the card? The participant names the card they chose. Magically, you show that the cards on the iDevice can still be moved with the touch of a finger. You hand the iDevice to the participant and invite them to drag the cards around…dealing them out to the edge of the screen. Then the participant comes to one card that is face down in the face up pack…the card won’t leave the screen. You tell the participant to double-tap the card…it flips over…it’s their chosen card.
The Invisible Deck app sells for US$2.99 from the iPhone App Store.
Crack the Government Conspiracy
from Scam School (iPhone… or any phone for that matter)
This is a great mentalism effect where you get the participant to choose a card and then you phone someone who then inexplicably tells them the card they chose. As host Brian Brushwood ( @shwood ) explains, your patter4 is that you have a friend who works at the FBI or you can pull out all the stops and just tell your friends you’re calling God. Whatever your explanation, you just need to come up with an entertaining reason why someone on the other end of the phone knows the card your participant chose freely.
The price on Crack the Government Conspiracy is free, just watch the video, check out the sponsors and use the coupon codes when you can.
Interested in magic?»iKnow
by Jason Palter (any current iPod)
This one can use pretty much any iPod. It might be a bit clumsy on the iPad and, in fact, this might be the only effect on the list where a standard click-wheel iPod will be the best choice.
The effect is simple: the participant dials through the songs on your iPod and listens to a few—they’re all different…they put the iPod behind their back and they dial through the list up and down until they couldn’t know where they are on the playlist…they stop on one song and listen to it5 …when they’re ready, they stop the song…and “just from the reverberations on the song running inside their minds” you begin humming and then identify the exact song they were listening to.
This is not an app, it’s instructions and performance tips on DVD and iKnow will set you back about US$19
Digital Conviction
by Robert Smith (iPhone or any camera phone…in fact, it’s best if it isn’t even your phone!)
This is mind freaking, Criss Angel-caliber stuff. You have the participant choose a card at random. It’s lost in the deck. The joker from the deck is marked with the participant’s initials. You borrow a camera phone from the participant or an audience member and snap a picture of the initials on the joker. The joker is then magically transformed into the participant’s chosen card (cool) with their initials on it (very cool) and then after you give the participant a moment to let that sink in, you remind them of the photo you snapped. They check their phone, and the photo has now changed into that of the chosen card with their initials on it (freaking awesome). The photo of the joker is nowhere to be found.
Digital Conviction sells for about US$25 and is not an easy trick to pull off. It requires some skilled card manipulation and a lot of practice.
Performance by Chris Ballinger
Ghost Vision
by Andrew Mayne (another one that works with a borrowed camera phone…might as well be an iPhone though)
This is a creepy one that would be good for a Halloween party or if you’re with a group of friends at a historic site somewhere and want to freak them out. The effect is that with a borrowed camera phone, you take a picture that seems perfectly normal as you take it. But when viewed on the phone, the image shows a ghostly human shadow that wasn’t there before.
Ghost Vision
…if you have and perform Ghost Vision, you might also investigate Ghost Vision Reload
iPhoneTrick.com
by Andrew Mayne (your victim’s iPhone)
As we all know, there can be few things more dangerous than a friend who thinks he knows the best way you should be using your technology. Mayne plays upon this fear by offering a bunch of ways for you to make it look like you’ve done unthinkable things to your friend’s iPhone right from iPhoneTrick.com. Here’s a video Andrew made to explain his pranks.
One of the tricks is really disturbing and is also right on iPhoneTrick.com. It’s called Spirit Photography and using your friend’s iPhone and some American money, you’re going to give them a haunting little scare. Check out this video for Andrew’s explanation…
iDeck
by Noel Qualter (…this one doesn’t need anything)
The previously mentioned iKnow is basically a card trick done with songs…iDeck is a song trick done with cards. An iPod-like deck of cards is produced with 52 songs printed on each card. A song is freely and secretly chosen and lost in the deck. You bring out a set of magnetic earbuds and hit the play button on the box of cards. Magically a song starts playing and, sure enough, it’s the card the participant chose.
Because it is a big deck of technology in and of itself, iDeck doesn’t come cheap…US$74.
Rap it up…
That’s my list. I warn you, magic takes practice. The more money you spend on an effect sometimes, the more time you need to spend on practicing it. So before you spend a bunch of money on any of these professional tricks, make sure you’re committed to practicing, performing and making them awesome. Magic is made to be performed in front of live people—not YouTube.
And if you do buy one of these effects and you find out the secret is something really “silly” and “stupid”—don’t give up. Remember, before you knew what the secret was, you though the effect was pretty darn cool…and so will your audiences.
What do you think? Are you impressed with the selection of magic that is out their for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad? Did I miss anything? Did I include anything you think is absolute crap? Leave me a comment and let’s discuss.
- why does Criss Angel say this? If someone said “no,” would he wait? [↩]
- though the app is called “Abracadabra” on its splash screen and in the videos, it’s listed as “Magic!” in the iPhone Apps Store. So just follow my link. [↩]
- this is all imagined, you realize [↩]
- magicians call the stuff they say to build up an effect and give it context “patter” [↩]
- you can be out of the room for this [↩]
DRM Interoperability Consortium challenges Steve Jobs to “Join the Club”
The Coral Consortium today announced that it had posted a letter to Steve Jobs on its website in response to his letter, “Thoughts On Music”, dated February 6, 2007 that asked the music industry to consider abandoning the use of DRM technology. The letter points out to Mr. Jobs that there is an additional alternative to the three described in his letter, namely DRM interoperability. The Coral letter suggests to Mr. Jobs that the best way to achieve a truly consumer-friendly interoperable digital distribution marketplace that balances consumer needs with those of the content industry and in which DRM itself it virtually invisible to the consumer, is for Apple, Inc. and other key players to join with the existing members of the Coral Consortium in their efforts to deploy the DRM interoperability solution developed by the Coral participants.
The Coral Consortium’s letter follows…
Coral Consortium Letter to Steve Jobs
February 9, 2007Dear Mr. Jobs,
The directors of Coral Consortium were pleased to hear about your interest in interoperability. We agree with you that this is a big problem for consumers. They should be able to acquire content from a wide variety of competitive service providers and play their purchased content on a range of devices and platforms from different manufacturers. This is an issue that is very important to our membership.
It would appear from your “Thoughts on Music” that you may not be familiar with our organization so we would like to take this opportunity to brief you.
We have been wrestling with the issues around interoperability for some years and have concluded that it is not so much a technology problem as a business problem. We have completed the development of a suite of technical specifications for interoperability and these can be downloaded from our website, http://www.coral-interop.org/. We think that your engineers will find it very straightforward to integrate this framework into your iTunes service. This technology would enable you to interoperate immediately with Microsoft based Janus devices and services, and with OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) based devices and services. Of course the secrets in FairPlay remain safe — adopting the Coral technology does not require you to share them with anyone else.
This does not just address music. The Coral Interoperability Framework works for video as well. We know that, as a major shareholder in a very successful film studio, it is important for you both to protect your film assets, and to provide for their widest possible distribution. Coral can enable that.
Finally, if you are worried about the content industry being comfortable with the Coral solution you should know that many parts of that industry have been involved in the development of these specifications. Though most of Coral’s membership comes from technology companies and service providers, the members from the content community include:
- EMI Music
- International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)
- Motion Picture Association of America
- NBC Universal, Inc.
- Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
- Sony BMG Music
- Sony Pictures Entertainment
- Starz Entertainment Group LLC
- Time Warner Cable
- Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.
- Universal Music Group
- Warner Bros. Technical Operations Inc.
- Warner Music Group
We offer Apple, Inc. a warm invitation to join Coral’s ranks and help provide interoperability and the increased choice that it will bring to all of our customers.
Yours sincerely,Jack Lacy
President, Coral Consortium
On behalf of the Coral Board of Directors
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Macworld Expo attendees look to online news sites for information first
Extensis asked Macworld Expo attendees "When seeking product information, where do you start?"
More than half (51%) of all people surveyed in the Extensis booth agreed the initial place they look for new product information was from online news sources.
When seeking product information attendees also go direct to the product developer/manufacturer (25%), or turn to an industry contact or colleague for product expertise and information (13%).
Attendees also look to industry publications for knowledge (8%).
Even though attendees first head online for product information, they do not rate blogs and forums as a leading provider of trusted product news as only three percent of attendees surveyed selected such sites as their primary supplier of information.
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NewerTech’s ‘No Battery Left Behind’ encourages environmental responsibility
Newer Technology (NewerTech) makes proper battery disposal easy by including a Free Return Shipping Label with every NuPower laptop replacement battery sold. As an added measure of convenience, no extra packaging materials are needed as that the NuPower battery box is designed to be reusable for the battery disposal return.
By making it as simple as taking the NuPower battery out of the box, putting the expired battery from the laptop in, and affixing the prepaid return shipping label, NewerTech continues its leading position in providing a no-cost means for customers to ensure that old PowerBook and iBook batteries are properly disposed of and that recoverable materials are responsibly recycled.
NewerTech’s battery return programs assure proper recycling of recoverable materials and prevent toxic elements from leeching into land and groundwater. Further, every NewerTech battery currently in production is manufactured Mercury-free. And, NewerTech’s line of Intelligent Battery Charger/Conditioners extend the useful life of Apple, NewerTech, or third party laptop batteries, reducing the number of batteries consumers need to discard.
NewerTech also proactively hosts information on its website for local disposal options available to technology users. Information on the no-cost NewerTech recycling program as well as local disposal options can be found here.
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Help get Flash Player 9 on the PPC Macintosh-friendly Linux distrobution, YDL
Help Get Flash Player 9 on the PPC Macintosh-Friendly Linux distrobution, Yellow Dog Linux–Adobe needs to hear from you TODAY!
Flash Player 9 Beta is now available for Linux, but not for the Power (PPC) architecture. Fortunately, Adobe offers a ‘feature request’ form. Kai Staats, CEO of Terra Soft Soutions, makers of “Made-for-Macs” Yellow Dog Linux asks each and every one of you to submit your request for Flash for Yellow Dog Linux in order to showcase the strength of our user base with enthusiasm for the forthcoming Yellow Dog Linux v5.0 for Apple Macintosh PPC and Sony PlayStation 3 computers.
Note:Rally on, you geeks.
Mac Whacking– switching between desktop environments is a slap!
From this post by Tom Krazit at CNET we learn of Erling Ellingsen who has developed a way to use the motion sensor in modern Mac laptops to allow him to tap the side of the screen and bring up different desktop environments. He has posted a video of this amazing feat as well as all the geeky details on on how to get this stunt to work.
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The May/June issue of Communication Arts semi-prophetic cover
The May/June issue of Communication Arts may be seen to have a semi-prophetic cover in the light of today’s announcements from Apple and Nike. The image, entitled “Brand CaChe” depicts Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (aka Che Guevara or simply el Che) the Marxist revolutionary and Cuban guerrilla leader wearing a Nike cap and the telltale white earbuds of Apple’s iPod media player.
Today Apple and Nike announced a partnership in making running Nike shoes that interface with Apple’s iPod nano and Nike’s website resulting in a unique method of monitoring one’s workout. Did Communication Arts see this coming? Maybe, but probably not: I don’t picture Che as a recreational runner. “Brand CaChe” was a work of art commissioned by Communication Arts to help illustrate their article on graphic design in post-Revolution Cuba but I couldn’t resist pointing it out.
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The sun rises on a new Apple Store…and a man in love…who is Uschi Lang?
Sometime after sunrise in Manhattan, outside the shiny new Apple Store, an unknown man stood in front of the webcam Apple had set up, he expressed his love for someone named Uschi Lang and proposed marriage. (video here…server may jam…keep trying)
So, dude, what was the answer? Are you and Uschi Lang getting hitched?
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