On The Radio

So its been a while since I’ve posted anything here, almost two months unfortunately… that’s been in small part because nothing particularly striking in the area of Macs or technology had struck my eye… but in large part, I’ve been designing furiously and writing frantically to bring a second (and most likely final) weblog online that covers pretty much any subject matter not covered here on the showsite… that weblog is called theScroll… and you can visit there, from here.

So who’s a fan of stop-motion animation? Its been one of my addictions for the last 20 years or so… which is why I went out of my mind when I first set eyes on the following movie. Made at Fame Festival 2009, this video is a collaboration between Blu and David Ellis, produced by Studio Cromie with music by Roberto Lange… Makes me wish I had an ancient building with an interior piazza lying around… thanks to Anne K. for the link…

Facebook’s new World Headquarters in pictures… for a company that is yet to turn a profit… how on earth can they afford this? I guess if I knew the answer to that I’d be rich too… Just completed in Palo Alto, California by Studio O+A… Dezeen Magazine takes us on a tour…

As I’m in a stop-motion animation mood… another fantastic piece of work by Bang-Yao Liu that he executed for his senior project at the Savannah College of Art and Design… what could you make with nothing but a camera, your dorm room and a truckload of post-it notes?

And finally, for the Cult of Mac folks… have a new baby? love your Apple gear… look no further than this… hurry up though, they’re going fast…

So after writing laboriously to cover nin:access a month or so back… Trent Reznor has announced that he’s pulling out entirely from social networking sites… Twitter, Facebook and most likely his own forums at nin.com, although considering his heavy involvement there in the past, I can’t imagine boycotting his own forums would be a permanent thing… One way or another, Trent says he’s “tuning out of the social networking sites because it’s now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result… Idiots rule”.

Trent’s issues become easily recognizable to any of us that have spent even the least bit of time on forums or social networking sites… In a nutshell, there will always be people that have the sole intention of ruining things for everyone else. Apparently Reznor has a few people registered to the NIN forums that send him 50-100 messages a day filled with “delusional, often threatening nonsense”. Any attempts to delete their accounts just results in the offenders re-registering under a different email address and continuing on… Just handling my non-celebrity data flow when it comes to social networking can sometimes be daunting… I can’t imagine what it must feel like to try and have a ‘real’ presence when your forum has a quarter of a million registered users… I wouldn’t wish that on an enemy.

One way or another… NIN has been broken… a guy that went way beyond the call of duty in terms of online engagement just can’t take it any more. The godfather of goth angst has actually been brought to his knees by a few select shit birds… so thanks guys, time to move on to your next target as you continue not to live your own lives choosing instead to make other peoples less fun…

You know who you are… we know who you are… you suck.

Read the complete Trent kiss off here.

Fun With Apps at the WWDC

One fact that temporarily eluded me as it pertains to this years WWDC was that this has historically been a conference for developers that wrote software for the Macintosh… This year that focus appears to have shifted in large part to App Developers for both the iPhone and iPod Touch… with the lure of low start-up costs and potential windfalls if your App ends up catching on, legions of developers have retooled a bit and are giving the App Store a shot.

To this end, Apple figured out a stunningly cool way to both showcase their new technologies (slated for Snow Leopard this coming September) while at the same time visually illustrating how popular the App Store has become. They set up an installation of 20 synchronized 30″ Cinema Displays blanketed with over 3000 icons representing the App Store’s most popular apps… In real time (albeit a 5-minute delay), every time an app was purchased on the App Store, its associated icon would kerplunk and then ripple on the pond of icons. The whole thing was programmed in Quartz Composer using new OpenCL API’s and was powered by 20 Mac Pro towers running OS X Snow Leopard.

Plus a pretty cool set of still pictures can be found here.

Is Conan a Hater Too?

Got this one from friend of the show Mike Reid. Married to that U.S. 30 Dragstrip vibe, this one emphasizes the hype and shines a light on a concept destined from birth to jump the shark… if you’re finding value in Twitter, all the power to you… I find the occasional nugget perusing it as well… But at the end of the day…

Bro’s a no-no for coco… Easily inside the 140 character limit. Such a small space to be clever in huh?

First things first… this post is worth reading whether you’re a fan of Nine Inch Nails or not… Distilled down, this is about technology first and foremost, the latest tools in the hands of artists and innovators. Personally, I’ve been a fan since that cold, dark Halloween night back in ‘89 when I listened to Pretty Hate Machine for the first time… and as revolutionary as that album was at the time, it’s amazing how far Trent Reznor and company have come since then.

Most notably, every move they make these days can be considered nothing but extremely “fan friendly”, altruistic even… and as a big fan of both live and recorded music, unprecedented in my experience. NIN has shed any ‘major label’ affiliation, has given music away for free while making other offerings available digitally far below current market pricing… they’ve gone out of there way to keep ticket prices down and out of the hands of brokers… and on their current tour, which starts this Friday (05/08) in West Palm Beach, FL, have instituted a “relaxed” policy regarding cameras and audio recorders that I’ve simply never heard of before…

But that’s not what this post is about… Instead, what I’m interested in here is the recently released nin : access free application for the iPhone, which I’ve been playing around with since it came out mid-April and find totally intriguing… not just as a NIN fan… but for the possibilities it both implies and inspires.

nin : access is really an application in two parts. The first side of things, although cool, isn’t that revolutionary… it merely serves up nin.com to the iPhone in a consolidated interface independent of Safari… which is nice because it’s pre-optimized for the small screen… But what Reznor was really interested in trying to engage were the quarter of a million registered users of the nin.com forums in the context of taking his band on the road this Spring/Summer… this leads us to the second half of the application which is where the innovation really takes flight.

Apparently the idea was born last Summer when Reznor was backstage before a show fooling around with his iPhone and noticed that fans outside waiting in line were posting photos of the scene to the nin forums… in response he started posting photos from backstage. The awesome interactivity of this experience got him thinking… what would it take to put an interface on this process? The result, less than a year later is nin: access, a mobile window into all things nin: music, photos, videos, message boards and even, thanks to a GPS-enabled feature called Nearby… the fans themselves.

Nearby is “kind of like Twitter within the Nine Inch Nails network,” says Rob Sheridan, Reznor’s long-time collaborator. “You can post a message or a photo by location, and if you’re at a show you can see conversations between other people who are right there.”

Check out this Wired video if you’re interested in a tour of the application from its creators… the first half of the video covers the more garden-variety features of the application… the explanation for the really cool GPS-enabled features start at the 3:20 mark…

What ends up being the coolest aspect of the nin : access approach to me… is that the entity is not trying to control the experience of the masses. They’re more or less simply harnessing existing technologies and API’s… and allowing the legions of dedicated fans to converse, populate, market, influence, etc… It’s Trent Reznor’s vision of where popular music is headed… and I’ll be damned if he’s not on to something… I know he’s making me more of a fan… I’m happy.

And last, you don’t need an iPhone to check out how this all works… it can be experienced right on the web at access.nin.com… although you will need to download and install the Google Earth plug-in… and your home computer is most likely not GPS-enabled, so you’ll also have to pinpoint your location on the planet to hone in on local conversations… but those two things will just take an extra few minutes and are well worth the result… I’ve tested this on Safari and Firefox within MacOS and all works fine. I’m sure a suitable experience will be had by our PC brethren as well.

Check this out if you have the inclination… GPS-enabling could easily turn out to be a significant part of where social networking is headed. I’d write about some of the ideas I’ve been having… but currently, patents are still pending ;-) Enjoy!

On March 17th, Apple unveiled details about iPhone OS 3.0 software and released the new iPhone Software Development Kit to developers. The presentation went down at the Apple Campus in Cupertino, CA. and was hosted by Greg Giles and Scott Forstall of Apple Computer. If you’d like to view the entire presentation, you can do so here in Quicktime format… be aware the entire preview is 90 minutes long… if you’re into the iPhone though, it’s cool to have running on your desktop while you’re doing other things.

Here’s a quick laundry list of the new features your iPhone will sport once the update hits.

Copy & Paste Text > This works across all applications… Double-tap over text and a ‘cut, copy or paste’ bubble appears… double-tap again and a ‘paste’ bubble will appear if you have anything on your clipboard. Expand selections with your thumbs… and if you inadvertantly paste something, shake the iPhone to undo it.

Copy & Paste Photos > You’ll be able to copy and paste pictures now as well. Select multiple photos by tapping the action button, copy some of them, and paste them in an email, ready to send.

Search Full Monty > Any Mac Spotlight fans out there? I don’t know how I ever existed before Spotlight… and much to my delight, it’s coming to iPhone with v.3.0 across all Apps that are native, in other words, created directly by Apple. This capability is included in the latest revision of the iPhone OS SDK as well, which means the makers of your favorite Apps now have what they need to make them Spotlight-ready… so stay tuned on those…

Also worth noting is that Mail, iCal and iTunes each have their own specific search interfaces… Mail does not yet support searching the content of your emails. What? Why not? But it does support searching on IMAP servers… which will really be handy for all you gMail users.

3G Tethering > This will allow you to connect your iPhone 3G to your laptop and use it as a modem… which is really a nice thing to be able to do if it ends up either free with your AT&T contract or extremely cheap… initially it might not work at all as it involves the carrier… but we’ll see.

Landscape Keyboard > Apple has added the larger landscape keyboard to more Apps including Mail, SMS Texting and Notes… a boon to all the sausage-fingers out there.

Multimedia Messaging (MMS) > I can’t see wanting this… it seems to miss the point of the medium… but you’ll now be able to attach images, sound and vCards to “text” messages… the jury is still out on video though.

Extended Calendar Support > You’ll now be able to subscribe to calendars on the web in both calDAV format which is used by Google and Yahoo as well as .ics format which is used by Apple’s iCal.

Improved “Stocks” Application > which now includes embedded links to related content on the web allowing you to witness your 401k tanking in much more vivid detail.

Stereo Bluetooth A2DP audio > You will now be able to pair your iPhone 3.0 with stereo Bluetooth A2DP devices like headphones or speakers.

Automatic Login with Safari. The new version of mobile Safari will remember login values for the sites you visit requiring them. Your iPhone will also now automatically login to wi-fi spots that you frequent, such as (outside) the local Starbucks, as well… And for the security-minded, your mobile Safari will also now warn against phishing or possibly malicious sites.

A New Native Voice Recording App > Although this feature is currently available via 3rd-party Apps… why not save yourself $6 if you haven’t already spent it (I did)… If you’re prone to forgetting all those brilliant thoughts you have throughout the day (I am), this little puppy becomes indispensable…

Beyond the scope of this post is all the improvements that have been made to the development kit given to developers as well as the features those improvements will enable… if you’re interested, follow the link I gave up top and watch the presentation by Apple…. cool stuff.

This update to iPhone OS 3.0 is going to be free to all current iPhone owners including 1st generation iPhones, although those original iPhones won’t benefit from any of the 3G enhancements. iPod Touch owners are going to be able to upgrade for $10 which has me scratching my head… why wouldn’t the upgrade be free for those folks as well? If anyone has the answer to the logic behind this… post to the comments.

Start salivating… it’s coming soon.

After 3 decades of servicing all those looking to record their favorite TV show, family memories or dirty bits… We’ve finally reached the end of the line for those formerly ubiquitous pop culture objects… the VHS tape. Back in the early days, much was written about the competition between the battling VHS and Betamax formats… very similar to the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD battle that was recently won by Blu-Ray… Many a videophile thought Betamax was the superior format, but VHS won the battle anyway… Why? Well check this out to get the gist…

I can tell you that I was hopelessly addicted to the VHS tape back in the day for sure. The picture to the right pretty much sums up what the top of my television looked like for many years… I was the undisputed king, the go-to guy amongst my set for knowing how to program a VTR… my machines were definitely never found with a blinking 12:00… I even had three TV’s all with their own VTR’s for a while so that I could record multiple stations simultaneously (an early version of TIVO). The only thing I failed to accomplish was to train cats to swap out full tapes for blanks when I wasn’t home… but I learned ways around it… I was determined back then…

Anyway, on a crisp Friday morning in October, the final truckload of VHS tapes rolled out of a warehouse in Palm Harbor, Florida… a warehouse run by a guy named Ryan Kugler, the last major supplier of VHS tapes.

“It’s dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt,” said Kugler, 34, a Southern California businessman. “I was the last one buying VHS and the last one selling it, and I’m done. Anything left in warehouse we’ll just give away or throw away.”

Kugler has sold more than 4 million VHS tapes over the last couple of years. In the end, mostly to discount outlets and dollar stores… he estimates that there are still a couple million tapes sitting on shelves around the world… but they’re the last analog soldiers in the lost battle against the digital invasion. “I’m not sure a lot of people are going to miss VHS,” he said, “but it’s been good to us.”

Well… I can’t say that I’ll miss ‘em… at least not as much as I’d mourn the loss of the two dual-channel TIVO’s that I have now… but I’ll certainly maintain a bit of nostalgia, considering the massive amount of archival footage I have, I’ll have a VTR wired up in my studio for years to come…

So, my sweet VHS tape, with 2008 you will be retired to the great trash heap of technological progress… We all know you’re not going to biodegrade gracefully, but rest in peace anyway… you’ve served us well old friend…

(Ed.note; portions of this post were blatantly plagiarized from a story by Geoff Boucher in the Saturday online edition of the Chicago Tribune)

Apple released Mac OS X 10.5.6 today, a recommended update for all who are using any version of Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.x. The update includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of Macs. The easiest way to grab the update is to choose Software Update… from your Apple Menu and let the update run automated…

Otherwise, if you’re currently running version 10.5.5, download the 373MB update here… or choose the 668MB download here for those running older versions.

Here’s the laundry list of enhancements with this latest OS update…

Address Book

• Improves reliability of Address Book syncing with iPhone and other devices and applications.

AirPort

• Improves the reliability of AirPort connections, including improvements when roaming in large wireless networks with an Intel-based Mac.

Client Management

• Improves reliability of synchronizing files on a portable home directory.
• Fixes an issue in Mac OS X 10.5.4 and 10.5.5 in which managed users may not see printers that use the Generic PPD.
• Client computers that use UUID-based ByHost preferences now respect managed Screen Saver settings.

iChat

• Addresses an issue that could cause an encryption alert to appear in the chat window.
• Setting your iChat status to “invisible” via AppleScript no longer logs you out of iChat.
• Resolves an issue in which pasting text from a Microsoft Office document could insert an image rather than text.

Graphics

• Includes general improvements to gaming performance.
• Includes graphics improvements for iChat, Cover Flow, Aperture, and iTunes.
• Includes fixes for possible graphics distortion issues with certain ATI graphics cards.

Mail

• Includes overall performance and reliability fixes.
• Improves Connection Doctor accuracy.
• Fixes an issue that could cause messages identified as junk to remain in the inbox.
• Fixes an issue that could cause Mail to append a character to the file extension of an attachment.
• Addresses an issue that could prevent Mail from quitting.
• Improves reliability when printing PDF attachments.

MobileMe

• Contacts, calendars, and bookmarks on a Mac automatically sync within a minute of the change being made on the computer, another device, or the web at me.com.

Networking

• Improves Apple File Service performance, especially when using a home directory hosted on an AFP server. Important: If you are using Mac OS X 10.5.6 (client) to connect to a Mac OS X Server 10.4-based server, it is strongly recommended that you update the server to Mac OS X Server version 10.4.11.
• Improves the performance and reliability of TCP connections.
• Improves reliability and performance for AT&T 3G cards.
• Updates the ssh Terminal command for compatibility with more ssh servers.

Printing

• Improves printing for the Adobe CS3 application suite.
• Improves printing for USB-based Brother and Canon printers.

Parental Controls

• Addresses an issue in which a parentally-controlled account could be unable to access the iTunes Store.
• Includes general fixes for time limits.
• Resolves an issue that prevented adding allowed websites from Safari via drag and drop.

Time Machine

• Fixes issues that could cause Time Machine to state the backup volume could not be found.
• Improves Time Machine reliability with Time Capsule.

Safari

• Improves compatibility with web proxy servers.

General

• Includes Mac OS X security improvements. See this website for more information.
• Addresses inaccuracies with Calculator when the Mac OS X language is set to German or Swiss German.
• Improves the performance and reliability of Chess.
• Improves DVD Player performance and reliability.
• Performance improvements for iCal are included.
• Fixes an issue when running the New iCal Events Automator action as an applet.
• Adds a Trackpad System Preference pane for portable Macs.
• Improves compatibility with smart cards such as the U.S. Department of Defense Common Access Card.
• Updates time zone data and Daylight Saving Time rules for several countries.

For those of you running Mac OS X Server… all the info you need to update can be found here.