httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLZRNVzKGAQ
This iPhone 3Gs video camera stabilizer is probably too extreme a DIY project for anyone to actually carry out, but if you choose to brave Google Translate’s gobbledygooked English translation ofthese Japanese instructions, you should be able to get the jist and make your very own iPhone steadicam… just the thing to make your own backyard Evil Dead remake.
Just like my fascination with the bulbous iMac G3 series, I tend to be fascinated by the shapes of gadgets, and in my explorations at the local Berlin flea market, I have a habit of picking up delightfully non-conformist pieces of obscure and obsolete retro technology, never quite knowing what I’m going to do with them.
That’s why I love this guide over at Unplggd explaining how to convert a vintage 8-track player into an iPod speaker dock.
It’s not really very hard: all you do is take an 8-track cassette adapter, plug a regular cassette adapter into it, and plug in your iPod.
It’s intuitive, but not particularly ingenious or elegant. The real reason I’m delighted with this DIY, though, is because I just picked up almost that exact same 8-track player a couple of weeks ago, and now I can turn it into something more useful than an overly precious conversation piece. If you’re over 30 or 35, you’ve probably still got an 8-track player just like this in your garage: do some digging, and you’ll probably find that you can do the same.
The Internet can always be counted on to promptly deliver simulacrums of the latest announced Apple product created in two distinct geek mediums: LEGO and papercraft.
Last week, we had the inevitable LEGO iPad, so it was only a matter of time we got the origami version. Here it is, courtesy of Obamapacman: a DIY iPad papercraft mockup.
It’s a pretty simple project. Just print the model out on a color printer at 150 DPI, cut along solid lines, fold on the dotted lines and glue the yellow seams together; then off to the local cafe, prowling for Apple-loving geek girls, gullible suckers or both!
Google’s Chrome Operating System is a Google’s answer to Mac OS X or Windows 7 — a lightweight operating system designed for netbooks and other portable devices. It’s also designed for an always-on connection. The Net is as much a part of the system as the software installed on the computer.
It’s also lightweight, fast, and easy to use. Boot up in just a matter of few seconds, log in and get onto the internet instantly. No distractions at all. Moreover, everything remains in the cloud so you never have to worry about running out of the disk space.
It’s also fun to play with. Here’s how to install it on a Mac using Parallels Desktop 5 virtualization software. Be aware that Chrome OS is currently in pre-alpha developmental stage. Install at your own risk!
‘Tis the season to get and give presents, and with prices through the floor, many will have gotten new digital cameras this year. If you’re one of the lucky ones who received a nice shiny new SLR camera, here are 10 tips that will help you become the next Ansel Adams.
I hope you’ll never have to use these tips, but in the freak moments when you just can’t go back and pick up your iPhone because you have a plane to catch and you just realized you left your iPhone at home while parking your car in Lot B at LAX these steps might come in handy.
Consider it a Holiday Blessing
Though I think everyone should own and use an iPhone because it’s the most powerful computing tool you can fit in your pocket, it’s nice to take a break for a while. My wife was able to hold conversations with me and I didn’t google something or check to see what made my phone vibrate.
It was also entertaining to see how many times I would try to reach for my absent phone. I use it for everything. So when I needed directions to a restaurant or wanted to know the time, I had to use the Yellow Pages and a GPS or find a clock. Not fun, but I felt like I was being all nostalgic or something. Using a clock… that’s old school.
Another fun activity is noticing how many people are consumed by whatever is happening on their smart phone. For the past five days, I was able to look down on these people as the poor addicted souls that they were, and I felt pity. I wanted to drop a couple coins in their empty starbucks cups and tell them to buy themselves a life, or a better marriage/relationship. Then I would ask them for the time and if they could pull up a terminal map so I could find the nearest McDonalds.
News To Me: Call Forwarding is Free
The last time I used call forwarding AT&T charged me $.75 a minute and I ended up paying $125 in fees. When I arrived in Cleveland, I called them up and asked to set up forwarding and Customer Service Associate Matt told me the forwarding is free. Minutes are charged twice, but other than that my calls went to the wifey’s phone penalty-less. This doesn’t help with SMS messages, but your incoming calls are covered. You might want to change the voicemail on the phone you’re forwarding to so you don’t confuse people.
When you get back to your forgotten iPhone, you can turn off call forwarding in Settings>Phone>Call Forwarding.
If You Use Google Voice, You’ll Be OK
If you receive incoming calls and SMS through Google Voice, you can just add another phone to your account and direct incoming activity to the newly added phone. Once you add the number, Google Voice will call the phone and ask for a confirmation code. Just dial the numbers (mine was two digits) and you’re good to go.
It’s a good idea to just embrace using your Google Voice number as your one and only number. Sure, Google owns another part of your communicative life, but convenience is worth it even if you’re bringing the apocalypse one step closer with every call/email/document/wave/search/checkout.
My MBP Saved Me
I don’t like to bring my notebook with me on trips involving family because I’ll typically ignore people when I’m using my phone and I don’t want to double ignore them while on my Mac. But since I forgot my phone, my Mac gave me just enough of the internet to hold me over. My nephew scored an iPod Touch for Christmas and I was able to show him my app library in iTunes for ideas on what to download. I didn’t have to open the Yellow Pages for an address to plug into the GPS–thank you baby Jesus. And photo and video sharing ends up being more enjoyable on a 15″ screen rather than 2″x 3″.
Hopefully, this article is useless to you because you’ll forget clean underwear before you leave your iPhone at home. That said, I think I enjoyed my time at the in-laws a bit more without my iPhone ant it’s nice to know that life is ok without it.
Through a glass viewed darkly, if not even muculently: the iPhone camera stinks.
To be fair, that’s not entirely Apple’s fault. While there are certainly better camera sensors out there than the one Apple chose to install as the retina in their little iBall, there’s a clear correlation between sensor size and image quality when it comes to digital cameras, and you can only make a cell phone’s sensor so big.
Nothing to be done about the sensor then. But like a fly hovering over hamburger, gadget tinkerer Bhautik Joshi had a seemingly stupid question buzzing around in his brain meats: can you improve the quality of the images the iPhone takes by attaching an old Canon SLR lens?
The festive season is so close you can almost taste it. The kids are pestering to put up Christmas decorations; so why not give them something fun to do this year?
SymmetriSketch is a great free vector drawing application (also available for Windows and Linux users) that lets you play around with symmetry across a 2D plane.
If you jailbreak your iPhone, the first thing you ABSOLUTELY MUST DO is change the default filesystem password.
When you jailbreak, the filesystem’s password is set to the common password “alpine.” As people usually don’t bother changing this password after performing a jailbreak, it’s really easy for hackers to get access to any jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch on a public network.
EDIT: Just confirmed with GeoHot and it seems that at least blackra1n doesn’t install SSH by default, therefore this should not be a problem if you used blackra1n to jailbreak, unless you installed the OpenSSH package from Cydia.
An Australian hacker called Ashley Towns demonstrated this by circulating the first known iPhone worm, known as Ikee, which replaces your lockscreen wallpaper with an image of Rick Astley. Luckily Town’s Rickrolling is benign. He wrote the worm to demonstrate how easy it is to break into jailbroken iPhones.
Changing the password is quick and easy — after the jump is a tutorial showing how to change the SSH password.
Note: There is no need to follow this guide if you haven’t jailbroken your iPhone/iPod Touch.
Convert your mild-mannered Mac Pro into a hard drive speed demon. Stuff it with drives fast enough to work with full-quality, uncompressed video. Get more than 300 MB/s on your internal drives! It’s so easy even I can do it!
I’ve been working in video production for the last 20+ years. When you’re working with video you need as much storage space as you can afford. You need a badass computer with big fat hard drives that scream.
You think you might wanna Hot Rod your Mac Pro? This easy, step-by-step guide will show you how.
A couple of weeks back, I wrote Temporarily Get More iPhone Home Screens Via Cunning Bug Exploit, but had heard staying away from the iTunes Applications tab within my iPhone was probably a Very Good Idea. Reader Larry Pressnell noted that since the most recent iTunes update, his extra screens have been accessible in iTunes.
Since I needed to add some apps to my device, I decided to take the plunge earlier and, sure enough, my experience mirrored Larry’s: 11 home screens were shown, and extra ones were dimmed—see the grab above. Interestingly, items could be dragged from these ‘extra’ screens to the standard ones, with no problems, and a full sync didn’t find my extra pages vanishing into the ether. Whether this has anything to do with Voice Memos (the app used to get extra screens in the first place) being the last app on my final page, or the fact I’ve yet to update my iPhone OS to the latest point release, I’ve no idea.
Are you having fun with extra pages and managing to successfully rearrange your apps in iTunes? If so, let us know in the comments!
Warning: This method no longer works. To jailbreak the latest firmware, check out greenpois0n/limera1n/Pwnage Tool
George Hotz a.k.a GeoHot has released blackra1n RC3, which is an update to a 1-click jailbreak that adds activation options and an add-on blacksn0w, which unlocks latest iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS baseband version 05.11.07. To use blacksn0w, make sure you have this new baseband (check under Settings –> General –> About –> Modem Firmware) and if not, then update to a stock 3.1.2 firmware.
It is pretty easy to use and worked perfectly with my iPhone 3G. Besides the tool, there’s a blackra1n application that gets automatically installed on the iPhone after jailbreak, which gives you option to install Cydia and some other alternatives like RockYourPhone and the ‘sn0w’ option to use blacksn0w unlock solution as well.
Please note that if you have an iPhone 2G, you can still jailbreak using blackra1n but blacksn0w will not unlock for you. You must use BootNeuter available in Cydia for that purpose. Also, if you purchased an iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch (any capacity) in October or later, there is a high probability that you have a new model. Blackra1n currently performs only a tethered jailbreak for these new devices, which means you need to use blackra1n every time you boot the device, otherwise all your jailbreak data gets wiped.
Here’s see how it works.
Our recent preview of Lightroom 3 – Beta has generated a lot of buzz about the future of digital processing. One of the questions that keeps coming up is: how do I migrate from Aperture to Lightroom?
Well, it’s not has hard as you think, as long as you’re willing to invest a bit of time up-front to do it right.
Follow us after the jump, and we’ll have you loving Lightroom in the amount of time it takes to get a pizza delivered.
Warning: This method no longer works. To jailbreak the latest firmware, check out greenpois0n/limera1n/Pwnage Tool
George Hotz a.k.a GeoHot has released the Mac version of blackra1n, his 1-click jailbreak solution. Just like the Windows version, it is pretty easy to use and worked perfectly with my iPod Touch 2G and iPhone 3G. Besides the tool, there’s a blackra1n application that gets automatically installed on the iPhone after jailbreak, which gives you option to install Cydia and some other alternatives like RockYourPhone and Icy.
Here’s see how it works.
Apple’s products are generally well built and very dependable. When things do go wrong, Apple normally backs its products with excellent technical support and warranty service. Normally, if your Mac or iPhone develops a problem, Apple’s return policies or warranty service will make it right.
In spite of Apple’s best efforts, some Apple products manifest chronic problems — they’re “lemons.” What follows is a guide, which details some of your options should you get stuck with a lemon.
With Apple’s recent ridiculous app store refusals, now is the perfect time to free your phone. Jailbreaking your device might seem too difficult to take on, but by following the steps below you can easily add a video camera to your 3G, or tether your Macbook to your 3GS. This How-To will guide you through jailbreaking your specific device using either Pwnage Tool or Redsn0w. Also included are simple instructions to unlock your device, letting you use it with different carriers.
Note: 3GS, 2nd gen and 3rd-gen iPod Touch owners who have recently updated to firmware 3.1 cannot jailbreak their phones unless they revert back to 3.0.1.
Google has added push Gmail to the iPhone/iPod Touch via its Google Sync service.
“Using Google Sync, you can now get your Gmail messages pushed directly to your phone,” says the Google Mobile Blog, which announced the change. “Having an over-the-air, always-on connection means that your inbox is up to date, no matter where you are or what you’re doing.”
Google Sync also syncs contacts and calendars, or any combination of contacts, calendars and Gmail.
Push Gmail works in the iPhone’s/iPod’s native Mail app, but you have to set up your Gmail account as an exchange account. Full instructions after the jump.
AT&T is bringing Multimedia Messaging to the iPhone on September 25. But if you can’t wait ten days or so, here’s how to get it now.
Steve Jobs made a welcome return to the public eye last week at a special music event to introduce Apple’s 2009 holiday iPods.
“The September music event was classic Apple. It marked the return of the world’s greatest corporate storyteller,” says communications coach, Carmine Gallo, author of The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience.
Gallo’s book will be published later this month by McGraw-Hill and can be pre-ordered now from Amazon. Gallo’s written some insightful analyses of Steve’s presentations in the past, so we asked him to take a look at last week’s event. After the jump, Gallo breaks down his top ten presentation tips from Jobs’ latest speech.
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If you have a Google Voice account, you can make free VoIP calls on your iPhone. You’ll need to sign up for an account at Gizmo.com and download the free Fring app for your iPhone, but after that you’re done. You can make free outgoing calls to (up to three minutes) and receive unlimited incoming calls through Google Voice.
Hit the jump for instructions.
OK, this one’s a bit niche, but some of you might find it useful. For the benefit who’d rather read than watch a video, here’s an explanation.
Many of you will already be familiar with OS X’s built-in zoom feature (which you can reach via the Mouse or Trackpad prefs in Snow Leopard). Hold down Control (by default; you can change it to Option or Command if you wish), then two-finger scroll up or down on your trackpad, or use a mouse wheel if you have one. Your display will zoom smoothly in and out.
And many of you will also have heard about the new QuickTime screencast recording feature in Snow Leopard, which offers does a fine job but lacks the bells and whistles found in full-scale screencasting apps like ScreenFlow.
Combine the two, and you have a neat way of calling out or highlighting details while using QuickTime to record a screencast.
A lot of people will be upgrading to Snow Leopard this weekend. There’s the right way to do it, and there’s the wrong way.
Here’s how to do it right.
Displaying an impressive level of tech savvy, Ice-T took a claw hammer to an old PowerBook he’s getting rid of.
In this 4-minute video, you can watch Ice-T smash his old PowerBook to bits. At first, it seems the former rapper is getting revenge on a glitchy machine.
“This Mac gave me a lot of hell,” he says. “It’s kinda like payback.”
But as the video goes on, it’s clear Ice-T is trying to remove and destroy the hard drive, which he’s afraid might fall into the wrong hands.
“I’m gonna get this hard drive out of here, make sure none of my secrets are in here, if somebody should find this computer,” he says.
In the comments, Ice-T takes a lot of flak for destroying the machine (and a bunch of racist garbage). The geniuses on YouTube rip him for not taking the machine to an eWaste facility and releasing toxins into the environment.
While the toxins criticism might be on target, Ice-T was right to destroy the hard drive first. Data is incredibly easy to pull off old hard drives, whether the drive has been erased or not, even in multiple passes. There are plenty of cases of identity theft from old machines. And just weeks ago, journalism students were able to buy a drive full of government secrets from a dump in Ghana.
As the actor knows, the one sure-fire way to destroy all data on a hard drive is to destroy the hard drive. “There’s probably a better way to do it, but i just said, ‘fuck it,'” the Law & Order actor says.
In fact, if recycling an old laptop, it’s a good idea to drill several holes into the case and right through the hard drive before taking it to an eWaste facility (Only if the drive can’t be easily removed obviously, which is the case with many older PowerBooks and iBooks).
Porno director Matt Morningwood, who shot the first adult scene on an iPhone 3GS, made the mistake of shooting in portrait mode, or “tallscreen.”
The vertical video format presented Matt with problems when it came to displaying the video at 16:9, but here’s how he figured out how to use iPhone video with Final Cut Pro.
If you feel there’s no such thing as too much screen real estate, you might want to recycle your old Mac as a display for your laptop.
Popular Mechanics suggests downloading ScreenRecycler (there’s a gratis or $29 version) a driver that creates a virtual display that is then shared via VNC so you can multitask with two displays.
You can even use an old PC monitor (gasp!) for display as long as the main computer’s a Mac.
As someone who tends to keep old machines around long after they’re useful, I love this idea.
Anyone tried it?