Discovery News:
They’re a pair of jeans with a set of speakers, a wireless mouse and a keyboard embedded into the upper thigh regions. Imagine typing — literally — on your lap and you get the picture.The jeans were designed to “combine fashion and technology”.
If you wear these, don’t be surprised if someone punches you in the FGHJ.
The Wall:
Whether it is uploading photos, that we then allow another entity to have control of, or granting access to our Facebook or Twitter account to a third party – we are, often unknowingly, giving away data, and, in certain instances, giving away certain privacy rights associated with that data.Admit it, when that long, boring box of detailed legal information pops up when you download an app or sign up to a website, you just hit “I Agree” and don’t actually read it, don’t you? Well maybe there are a few things you should be paying attention to.
While some of the information may be location (UK) specific, the article does serve as a reminder that the “social media” space can be scary and have real word consequences. Thanks to Colin Crawford for the heads up.
iPhone Savior:
Each lithograph will retail for $75 and then Norman intends to sign the back of the initial run of 300 and sell them for $125 each — the dimensions measure 26 x 34 inches. For this piece Seeff added color to the Apple rainbow logo on the front of the Mac. It’s a wonderful bit of detailing that adds a special quality to the black and white image.
Make sure you read the story of the image’s creation.
Lifehacker:
Mac OS X has a ton of great features, but there’s always room for improvement. Many developers have felt the same and created a bunch of great apps to enhance OS X’s capabilities. Here are our top 10 apps that can power up your Mac to the next level.
TIME:
To set the record straight, today isn’t actually Presidents’ Day. It is still known as Washington’s Birthday, according to the federal government and section 6103(a) of title 5 of the U.S. Code.
Apple PR has taken a few knocks this past week from journalists with an enormously inflated sense of self-entitlement.
Three congressmen on both sides of the aisle want the FTC to investigate Google for allegedly violating Mobile Safari users’ privacy.
Flavorwire:
We’ve taken a look at gorgeous bookstores and amazing college libraries, so we thought it was time to bring you a little inspiration for the home library — though we admit, not too many of these designs would fit in our own NYC apartments. Click through to check out our collection of beautiful private and personal libraries from all over the world
It’s hard to believe some of these beautiful libraries are found in someone’s home. Then again, some of these homes are probably as big as your high school.
Serious Eats:
Consumers and even some bartenders have a misconception that single-malt Scotch is not a blended whisky, but this is a myth. Single-malt scotch is a blend, but it’s a very specific type of blend. In fact, nearly all whiskies on the market today are blends—bourbons, ryes, Tennessees, scotches, etc.—although in this article I’ll focus on Scotch.
This article and its follow up, “The Serious Eats Guide to Single Malt Scotch”, are well written and really interesting examinations and explanations of what Scotch is. It’s an acquired taste but once you acquire it, you’ll enjoy it!
Eli Hodapp for TouchArcade: Unsurprisingly, so far the game has been met with overwhelmingly negative iTunes reviews as users who are wise to this whole fiasco post their feelings on the game. Not everyone hates the game though. Zynga Senior … Continued
ABC News:
Apple has given “Nightline” anchor Bill Weir exclusive access to their suppliers’ factories in China, amid reports of safety problems, hazardous conditions and underage workers. Weir is the first journalist go inside the factories to see these life changing gadgets get made. He traveled to Shenzhen China to see firsthand what life is like for factory workers, most of whom have never used an iPod, iPhone or Apple computer.Weir’s report airs on a special edition of “Nightline” Tuesday, February 21 at 11:35 p.m. ET on the ABC television network.
Cool Material:
We’ll try any beer we can get our greedy hands on. If a friend says he just picked up a sixer of something crazy, we’d expect some craft brew that’s hopped out of its mind or an imported stout that tastes like biting into chocolate cake, and we’d gladly partake.
We’re all big fans of beer here but most of these brews would make us think twice about reaching for the bottle opener.
BoingBoing:
The Blast Lab at Imperial College, London, is a place where scientists study how explosions affect the human skeleton, and try to find ways to mitigate some of those effects. As you can imagine, this involves blowing stuff up fairly regularly and The Blast Lab is a pretty loud place.But the team of students behind PLoS’ Inside Knowledge blog noticed something cool about that. The sounds in The Blast Lab weren’t just loud noises, they were loud notes. Edit them together, and you could reproduce a whole song, using nothing but sounds recorded in a working scientific laboratory.
The Next Web:
If there is one aspect of Apple’s iDevice ecosystem that deserves a ton of credit for both growing and cementing its user base, it has to be the way developers flock to it. Apple wants developers on that line, Apple needs developers on that line.That’s why it’s not surprising, but still pleasant, to see Apple making an effort to onboard new developers with a beautiful and simple new introductory document called “Start Developing iOS Apps Today“.
For many, the announcement of OS X Lion was viewed with a great deal of negativity. Perceived as subverting the complexity of OS X, Lion was painted by many as an unwelcome agent of change – an entity seeking to castrate the strength of the Mac. Boasting nascent implementations of iOS features, many were quick to point accusatory fingers at the budding mobile operating system. OS X was courting a younger, sleeker companion, and its personality was starting to change – starting to dress a little better and clean up its act. Many felt betrayed. […]
AllThingsD:
Proview, the foundering Chinese company battling with Apple over the iPad trademark, originally wanted millions of dollars for the rights to the mark in China. Now it wants billions.As for allegations that Proview is breaching its iPad trademark deal to squeeze Apple for more money, Proview CEO Yang Rongshan says that’s not the case at all. “We own the iPad trademark in China,” Yang said. “If you were in my position … you would try to protect your rights.”Apple, however, argues that it’s not Proview’s rights that need to be protected.
OS X Mountain Lion vs Mountain Lion, full of LOLs.
CNET’s MacFixIt:
If you’ve taken a look at Apple’s sneak peek of its upcoming revision to OS X, you might wonder if your system will be able to run the operating system. In recent versions of OS X, some requirements have resulted in older hardware no longer working properly, including the drop of PowerPC support in Snow Leopard, and Lion not installing on some of the earliest Intel-based Mac systems.Unfortunately Apple has not yet officially released the system requirements for the new OS, but the developer release that is being issued to members of its Mac development community does contain a list of supported devices.
Diesel Sweeties:
You remember the dark times. Back when having to learn 90s Linux or Windows 95 was a very scary possibility. When it was possible to sit in a Starbucks for twenty whole minutes and not see an Apple logo. If you told me Apple would get this huge back in the beleaguered era, I’d ask if you were a time traveler from an alternate future.Image is about nine inches wide and professionally silk screened in white ink on 100% cotton black shirts.
You know you want one.
PC Mag:
The Department of Transportation has proposed guidelines that would block all in-vehicle communications by a driver, including texting, dialing, Internet browsing, and even entering a GPS address by hand.The regulations, if imposed and enforced, could dramatically alter the future of connected vehicles within the United States, as well as how U.S. drivers use devices like GPS navigation systems and cell phones.
As a motorcyclist, I’m all for anything that forces drivers to focus and pay attention to actually driving and eliminating as many distractions as possible.
Asymco:
Here is a plot of each major computing product Apple sold throughout its history shown as a cumulative total since product launch.
The Next Web:
Ken Segall served as Apple’s agency creative director under Steve Jobs from the NeXT years on through, including some years under John Sculley’s disastrous reign. Now he’s written a book, called Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success.If you’re unfamiliar with Segall, he runs an excellent personal blog Observatory, the parody site Scoopertino and was the guy who came up with the name iMac. He was also involved in the seminal Think Different ad campaign. So yeah, he knows a few things about Apple and the way that Steve Jobs worked.
“Insanely Simple” will be available April 26th and you can pre-order at iBooks, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others.
Panic Software:
As Mac users, we’ve mostly enjoyed a life free of the worry that has followed Windows users for years. Mac OS X is pretty damn secure. But it could be more secure. As Macs enjoy increased popularity, they become a more attractive target to identity thieves and other criminals. Sooner or later, bad people ruin every nice thing. It’s an immutable law of humanity.
So, what to do about this? Code-signing, although it can’t single-handedly fix the problem forever, is a vital weapon in the fight against malware. But many folks are unclear on how it works, or how it helps. Let me try to explain in as close to plain English as I can.
You can read and get more details on Gatekeeper from security expert Rich Mogull on TidBITS and Securosis.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt at CNN Money: By the time Christmas sales were over, Apple had shipped more than 15.4 million iPads and Amazon nearly 3.9 million Kindle Fires, passing the Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and Barnes & Noble’s (BKS) Nook to take … Continued
Dornbracht:
At Swissbau 2012, kitchen and bathroom fittings manufacturer Dornbracht presented an expansion of the groundbreaking shower technology Ambiance Tuning Technique with the addition of a new application: the Horizontal Shower.With the Horizontal Shower, showering with the Ambiance Tuning Technique can be enjoyed lying down.
Wait, what? How lazy do you need to be that you have to shower lying down? It does look kind of cool though.
PAX East will remain in Boston until at least 2023, according to an agreement reached by the show’s organizers and the local convention center authority.
Wired’s Raw File:
With some well-placed wire, creative lighting and a provocative sense of visual puns, sculptor and photographer Terry Border has given life to everything from peanuts to pill bottles. His cleverly cartoonish scenes are often viral hits on the internet and they’ve brought his blog, Bent Objects, a global audience.“I don’t mean for everything to be funny,” says Border, who lives in Indianapolis. “We all have different perspectives and my perspective happens to be kind of strange and twisted.”
“Strange and twisted” in a hilarious way. Be sure to read the article to get the link to his more NSFW stuff, “Really Bent”.
Photoshop Content Aware Sneak Peak:
Adobe is previewing CS6 features prior to release. In a video posted to its YouTube channel, Adobe demonstrated an update to the CS5 content-aware fill tool but the cool comes with “content-aware move”. It adds the ability to move any piece of a photo with little disturbance to the pixels around it and replaces the background in a very natural way.
Cracked:
As e-book sales overtake paper-book sales, it seems like everybody is crying and wringing their hands about what it means — serious, society-changing ramifications like the end of ownership, or ease of piracy, or environmental impact, or whether it makes things easier or harder for publishers or aspiring authors.Like most important issues, those are boring. What are some effects of going to an all e-book world that haven’t been talked to death? I dug around and tried to find some e-book ramifications that would appeal to the type of people who spend more time preparing for a zombie apocalypse than like, unemployment, or retirement, or something. You know, realists.
Terril Yue Jones for Reuters: Working conditions at Chinese manufacturing plants where Apple Inc’s iPads and iPhones are made are far better than those at garment factories or other facilities elsewhere in the country, according to the head of a … Continued