For months now I’ve been stewing about how much I hate @HistoryInPics and their ilk (@HistoryInPix, @HistoricalPics, @History_Pics, etc.) – twitter streams that do nothing more than post “old” pictures and little tidbits of captions for them. And when I say “nothing more” that’s precisely what I mean. What they don’t post includes attribution to the photographer or to the institution hosting the digital image. There’s no way to easily learn more about the image (you can, of course, do an image search through TinEye or Google Image Search and try to track it down that way).
Alexis Madrigal recently wrote a piece for The Atlantic revealing that @HistoryInPics is run by a couple of teenagers who are savvy at generating viral social media accounts to bring in money.
In the pas few months, dozens of these Twitter accounts have popped up, all RT’ing each other for money.
If you run Windows on your Mac with Boot Camp, check out Winclone and Boot Runner. Winclone is an easy and reliable way to make an image of your Boot Camp partition so that you can quickly restore, migrate, and mass deploy Windows in Boot Camp. Boot Runner provides a powerful way for both users and administrators to switch between OS X and Windows on dual boot Macs.
When you get a new Mac or have issues with your Windows installation in Boot Camp, reinstalling Windows is time consuming and difficult. Winclone makes it easy to make a complete clone of the Boot Camp partition, and restore it back to the exact same state on your existing or new Mac. Winclone supports migration of Boot Camp partitions over the network, moving your Boot Camp partition to an external drive and making it bootable, and much more. It also works great for mass deployment so deploying Boot Camp is as easy as deploying a package to a group of Macs.
If you manage lots of dual boot Macs, Boot Runner provides a great way to manage the OS selection. People can decide which OS to use by selecting OS X or Windows prior to logging in. Network administrators can fully customize and manage the selection screen, and can even remotely select the OS through network policy. Boot Runner also includes a scheduling feature to make sure that the Mac is booted into Windows during your maintenance window. Check out the intro video to learn more.
Winclone and Boot Runner are available for purchase and download today at twocanoes.com and have full phone, email and forum support options.
Up until now, a 3D print run was based on a single material of a single color. You could print different parts in different colors for later assembly, but the Stratasys Object500 Connex3 printer makes it possible to use multiple materials in a single run.
Anyone who has watched the inkjet printer emerge and evolve could have seen this coming, but this is an important step nonetheless.
This is written with the US postal system in mind, but I suspect most of the techniques will work just about anywhere. Likely, I’ll still buy my stamps from the post office, same as always. But I did enjoy the read.
Follow the link for Marco’s take on long form publishing.
Skimming fluffy articles and social timelines all day is like eating junk food all day. Eventually, you feel horrible, burn out, and just want something real. After decades of evolution, experimentation, and testing, web producers have honed the formula for addictive junk content to perfection. We have infinite junk available to us on demand, on any subject, from small rectangles available in our pockets, all day, every day.
This prop is from one of my favorite movie scenes of all time, the opening of Jurassic Park. As of this post, 153 people have bid (on eBay) and the current price is $99,900.10.
Slingshots have been the signatory weapons of naughty boys for a very long time.
In this video, you’ll see a larger German man having more fun than you can imagine with a slingshot and snowballs. Canadians could learn a thing or two from this guy.
I have always been a little paranoid about my computer’s web cam and microphone. Here’s yet another reason why.
A user visits a site, that uses speech recognition to offer some cool new functionality. The site asks the user for permission to use his mic, the user accepts, and can now control the site with his voice. Chrome shows a clear indication in the browser that speech recognition is on, and once the user turns it off, or leaves that site, Chrome stops listening. So far, so good.
But what if that site is run by someone with malicious intentions?
Most sites using Speech Recognition, choose to use secure HTTPS connections. This doesn’t mean the site is safe, just that the owner bought a $5 security certificate. When you grant an HTTPS site permission to use your mic, Chrome will remember your choice, and allow the site to start listening in the future, without asking for permission again. This is perfectly fine, as long as Chrome gives you clear indication that you are being listened to, and that the site can’t start listening to you in background windows that are hidden to you.
When you click the button to start or stop the speech recognition on the site, what you won’t notice is that the site may have also opened another hidden popunder window. This window can wait until the main site is closed, and then start listening in without asking for permission. This can be done in a window that you never saw, never interacted with, and probably didn’t even know was there.
To make matters worse, even if you do notice that window (which can be disguised as a common banner), Chrome does not show any visual indication that Speech Recognition is turned on in such windows – only in regular Chrome tabs.
This is not the video we published this past Friday. That one was about five minutes long. This one is Steve Jobs presenting to a much more technical audience, the Boston Computer Society.
The video is about an hour and thirty six minutes long. It includes Steve talking about the Mac technology, then doing his “pull the Mac out of the bag” demo. But there’s so much more. There’s the 1984 commercial, along with a series of other commercials that ran at the time. There’s a slide show showing the Mac culture and marketing plans. There’s Steve pitching low cost networking, printing, compatibility with mainframes, file servers, and even Unix compatibility. Fascinating.
The story of how the presentation and this video came to be is also fascinating. Follow the headline link to read all about it.
This presentation, at Apple’s annual shareholder meeting on January 24, is the stuff of tech-history legend. What’s not so well remembered: Jobs did it all twice, in less than a week. Six days after unveiling the Mac at the Flint Center on the De Anza College campus near the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., he performed his show all over again at the monthly general meeting of the Boston Computer Society. His host, Jonathan Rotenberg, was a 20-year-old student at Brown University who’d co-founded the BCS in 1977 at the age of 13.
Over at YouTube, you can watch the Cupertino presentation, along with a sort of a rough draft held as part of an Apple sales meeting in Hawaii in the fall of 1983. As for the BCS version, all 90 minutes of it are there in the video at the top of this post, available for the first time in their entirety since they were shot on January 30, 1984.
The Cupertino and Boston demos may have been based in part on the same script, but the audience, atmosphere and bonus materials were different. In Cupertino, Jobs spoke before investors, towards the end of a meeting which also included dreary matters such as an analysis of Apple’s cash flow. In Boston, he presented to the kind of people who Apple hoped would buy Macs. You didn’t even have to pay the BCS’s $24 annual membership fee to get in, which meant that the meeting was the closest thing the computer had to a launch event intended for the general public.
Here’s the video. Big thanks to Cristofer Cruz for his help with the embed code.
Samson’s Resolv RXA 2-Way Active Studio Reference Monitors deliver the sonic elements that are essential to any studio setup. Featuring Samson’s newly developed Air Displacement Ribbon Tweeters, these monitors produce smooth, natural mixes that will sound great on any system. Sold individually in 5-inch and 6-inch models, Resolv RXA monitors can be used in pairs to provide precise stereo imaging for recording, mixing, mastering and other multimedia applications.
I talked to a few people at NAMM about these and they all liked them. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to check them out for myself.
Samson’s BT30 30-Pin Bluetooth Adapter transforms Apple 30-pin dock audio players, including select Samson Expedition Series Portable PAs, into Bluetooth-enabled receivers capable of streaming music wirelessly from smart phones, tablets and laptops. Ultra-convenient and easy-to-use, the BT30 lets you enjoy the latest in audio playback technology without sacrificing the useful accessories you’ve grown accustomed to for playing music, such as older iHomes, PA systems and more.
Not a bad idea. I have a few of these older speaker docking stations myself.
I’d definitely like to take one of these for a spin. There have been a number of times when I was on the road, my iPhone was running low on charge, and I didn’t have the right cable on hand.
My only concern is durability. Both ends of the cable are open to the elements and the cable will be riding around in your pocket, picking up all manner of little gunky bits and debris. Still, a terrific idea.
This guy picks the hot topics of the day and embeds them in short little songs. He writes up to 100 songs a day. He’s found a loophole in the system and he ekes out a living doing this.
This is a tough call. What he creates is his music, so hard for me to say he shouldn’t be doing this. And he’s pretty consistent, so you know what you are getting when you listen to his stuff. Just feels a little bit slimy to me.
Question is, is he taking money from other musicians? Certainly anyone who buys one of his songs knows what they are getting before they pay. Interesting.
Tired of the usual suspects, stock photo sites with no grit, no edge? Check out this list. There’s some good material on these alternative sites. Pass this along.
I just got done watching the ABC News one-on-one interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook. Though Craig Federighi and Bud Tribble were both there, this really was an interview with Tim Cook.
The interview opened up with this quote from Steve Jobs, a quote which is prominently displayed at Apple’s One Infinite Loop headquarters:
“If you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it too long. Just figure out what’s next.”
Muir started with a focus on the new Mac Pro, stressing the fact that the Mac Pro is manufactured in Austin, Texas. Tim mentioned that the Mac Pro was just the start, in terms of on-shore manufacturing, briefly touching on the sapphire glass effort starting up in Phoenix.
Next, a brief discussion of secrecy (locked doors, black drapes over unannounced products) segued into the topic of the NSA and surveillance. To me, this was the most interesting part of the interview.
Tim Cook stressed the need for transparency, saying “We need to say what data is being given, how many people it affects, how many accounts are affected, we need to clear. And, we have a gag order on us right now and so we can’t say those things.”
There’s a shot of Tim Cook in a large group meeting with the President.
He continued, “Much of what has been said isn’t true. There is no back door. The government doesn’t have access to our servers. They would have to cart us out in a box for that. And that just will not happen. We feel that strongly about it.”
Muir: “Do you think Americans, Tim, would be more at ease if you could tell them more?”
Cook: “I do.”
Muir: “Are you going to press Congress for more transparency?”
Cook: “Yes. Absolutely, absolutely.”
After a brief moment of Bud Tribble playing the piano (that was really the only non-Tim Cook moment), Muir said to Tim, “Steve Jobs said to you, I never want you to ask what I would have done. Just do what’s right.”
Tim replied, “But by saying what he said, for me, it relieved, I believe, a huge burden that would have existed, had he not said it. And so I think it was incredible of him to do that.”
This was not a long interview. It did not dive deep. But I did appreciate Tim Cook relating Apple’s position on government surveillance. He moved up two notches in my esteem by doing so.
The Mac has played an important role in paving the way for computing in many areas. I believe the iPad is playing an equally important role in the future of computing. It is interesting to think that in the future we may be celebrating the 30 year anniversary of the iPad while some manifestation of the product is still in the hands of many.
These type of multipurpose boxes are becoming more popular among amp makers. It gives them the chance to get an amp and a sound system in the hands of users, but I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about the trend.
Among the T5z’s distinctive design features are a 12-inch fretboard radius (compared to the T5’s 15-inch radius) and jumbo frets, which make bending strings easier. Otherwise the T5z retains all the great performance features of the original T5: a three-pickup configuration, five-way switching, tone controls that dial in a full-range of tonal flavors, from heavy riffs to delicate fingerpicking, and dual compatibility with acoustic and electric amps.
Our new ID:CORE series are the ultimate entry level guitar amplifiers. Incredible tone and flexibility is accessed by a simple and intuitive control set and delivered in SUPER WIDE STEREO to give an immersive playing experience that will have you hooked on playing guitar.
I stopped over to the Blackstar booth at NAMM, but I didn’t get a chance to hear these yet. I’m interested in the wide stereo sound and how they pull that off while keeping a solid tone.
Distinctive within the VOX amp lineup for its metallic mirror-finish exterior, the Night Train series provides an easy way to enjoy VOX’s traditional full-tube sound even in small private spaces, and now it’s been powered-up in a big way. High-quality reverb is a new addition on all models, making this the only unit you need to complete your sound.
Clearly this is a promotional video for Capo, but as a longtime user of the software, the video shows how people use the software in different ways. My workflow with Capo is not the same as theirs, but Capo is flexible enough to do both.
Join us as we live the time-traveler’s dream—the deep, lucid, Orwellian vision of hope, fear, and nostalgia that is 1984. Just in time for its 30th anniversary, we laid hands on an ’84 original: the Macintosh 128K. And, you guessed it—we’re tearing it down like it’s the Berlin Wall.
I guarantee iFixit will bitch about the fact it’s not upgradeable.
Ever wonder what the difference was between mechanical and soft keyboards, other than the feel of the keys? This article contains everything you could ever want to know about the mechanics behind the mechanical keyboard. I love the animated GIFs that show the different types of switches in action. [via TidBits]
