A few weeks back I posted the TV commercial for the new MacBook Air on this site. It was shortly after I got my own 13 inch model (and for the record I still think it's THE COOLEST MAC I have EVER owned). Now an Israeli comedian called Pini and his mates have produced a very funny parody of that commercial selling....nail clippers. The Nail Clipper Air. The actual video it spoofs can be seen here.
This is cool. The video below was produced in 1994. You will see a group of people dreaming up what a Tablet Newspaper would look like. The idea back then was that somewhere around the year 2000 people would be using such tablet computers to consume news. Once you realise that these people were dreaming all of this up just as the internet was coming to the fore and at a time where things like embedding YouTube videos wasn't even conceivable, it's pretty interesting. Listen to how the concept of hyperlinks is described and you realise how far we have come in a very short time. In any case, as we now know, it would take about 10 years more, until the advent of the iPad, for the tablet computer trend to really take off.
A while back we wrote about a Kickstarter project that looked kind of cool. As it happens this particular project did not get sufficient support and has therefore been shelved. Hey, happens, what can you do.
Now a new story emerges about a group of designers trying to combine the beauty of a Leica camera and the functionality of the iPhone4. Check out the designs shown on their site. Could be quite a product if it ever actually sees the light of day.
Using the front-facing camera of the iPad 2 to track the head of the user, a couple of French guys at the Engineering Human-Computer Interaction Research group have created this little wonder: glasses-free monocular 3D display on an iPad2. For now they have achieved this without using the accelerometers. Just imagine the applications we might see if these guys go commercial with this tech.
I have been enjoying my JAMBOX by JAWBONE for a few days now. Really cool little piece of gear. But today I realised that the little rascal was actually having a good time all on his own. While I wasn't looking the little guy decided to get his groove on and dance to the beat. I discreetly caught the action on my iPhone and here it is in all its glory. Look ma, no hands.
OK, I'll admit it: the primary reason for showing this video here is the accent. It is without a doubt my favourite accent ever. Those of you who know me have heard me do the Dutch accent countless times. It just so happens that the product shown is really nice as well. These guys clearly got to work really fast after the iPad 2 announcement. Assuming I actually broke down and went for an iPad 2, I would give this little accessory a long, hard look. The company behind it is Miniot. Geweldig.
I had previously posted a story about Kickstarter and how it acts as a funding platform for creative projects. Here is a new one. The saying goes that the best camera you own is the one you have with you when you need to take a picture. For iPhone 4 users there now is a new way to carry your phone around: as a camera. The video explains it best and details are available on the Kickstarter website. Still about one month to go to get in on this one so if taking pictures on your iPhone 4 is your "thing", go for it.
Take a couple of 2 year olds, give them each an iPad and let them play around with it. Before you know it you realise two things (1) Apple owns these kids for life and (2) when this current crop of 2 year olds grow up I am not sure we will even be able to communicate with them anymore given our old-fashioned ways of doing things, out thinking, our language and whatever else is bound to change over time as they grow up and acquire skills we can't even start to predict. Check out these two videos and let your imagination roam a little. You'll understand what I mean.
You knew it was only a matter of time (and very little of it) before someone produced a music video using only iPads. Remedy Films apparently produced this clip in 25 hours: 8 hours in line to purchase the four iPads, 5 hours of filming and 12 hours of editing (they shot the whole thing on iPads but I have a feeling they used pro editing software after that). The result is not bad at all considering the limitations of the equipment. Chances are we will see a lot more of these homegrown projects as people start getting the hang of the hardware and more video-specific iPad software gets published. Should be interesting.
A few weeks before the actual release of the iPad 2 these Scandinavian guys seem to have gotten their hands on a top secret prototype model. This is actually a very cute video with a lot of cool masking effects to achieve the desired result.
As it turns out my predictions in a previous post were ALMOST on the money. The MacBook Pro line DID get updated today, LightPeak technology did make it in there, but no SSD or doing away with traditional hard drives...yet. Apparently the machines are a little lighter, contain a new chipset, have a new type of front-facing camera and are generally more powerful. Apple calls its version of the LightPeak technology Thunderbolt (after FireWire I guess it kind of makes sense).
Now we wait patiently for the March 2 announcement.
OK, so this is all Apple will show us. We are to infer from this that on March 2 the iPad 2 is coming out. Nice use of the number 2, and that calendar page is strategically ripped so as NOT to show us that front facing camera we have all been waiting for (or have we ?).
Patience, my friends, patience. All will be revealed in due course.
The rumour mill is working overtime. The latest one has to do with the MacBook Pro line. Supposedly on Thursday we will see an update to that line of computers at Apple. Most of the rumours stem from the fact that orders of new MacBook Pro laptops have been put on hold for a few days (imagine you buy a computer today only to find out three days later that a brand-new model came out).
As I mentioned in a previous post I have been using one of the new MacBook Airs these past few weeks. This baby is slowly becoming my favourite laptop of all times (and I have owned quite a few of these in the past 20 years). The general feeling is that the entire MacBook Pro line will take on elements of the Air line: whether it is the lack of hard drives or the overall thinness and lightness of these beauties.
But there is another rumour making the rounds. This one has to do with a new high-speed connection technology that might replace USB (1, 2 AND 3), Firewire (400 and 800) and who knows what else. A couple of years ago Intel revealed LightPeak. This technology is supposed to transfer data at 10 Gbps (compared to Firewire 400 at 400 Mbps, Firewire 800 at 800 Mbps, USB 2 at 480 Mbps and USB3 at 3.2 Gbps). Some people are speculating that the new MacBook Pro line might already have LightPeak technology onboard upon its release. Others still are somewhat negative about the technology in general since, contrary to the video appearing below in which we are told that LightPeak will use high-speed optical cable technology, it appears that the current "production" version will still be using copper cable, meaning the tech will be "compromised" for now.
Well, only 72 hours or a little more to go before all these speculations can be laid to rest. Somehow, however, we get a sense that if there is a hardware update this week, it won't just be a "speed-bump" of some sort. Stay tuned.
Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 1:42AM 
