Chill Sector

Good idea.  For some people, their laptop is their net worth.  They probably don’t have renter’s insurance (which is cheap by the way), and if their laptop gets stolen, it’s all over.  To help alleviate some of this paranoia comes this unsuspecting laptop sleeve from Urban Outfitters that looks like a weathered old shipping package. Upon closer inspection of course, it will reveal its true identity, but from afar it really looks like a piece of mail that’s been sitting around for a while.  The shell is water and tear resistant and has expandable velcro closures for a secure fit for most any laptop.  On sale now for $32.

Apple, Computer, Computers, Laptops, Undercover, laptop, sleeve, travel, urban outfitters

The new Belkin Bluetooth Music Receiver should be a cool addition to your home theater set-up.  Anybody that’s used the Remote Control App through an AirPort Express knows how cool it is to wirelessly change the music on the stereo.

Using Bluetooth to move the music wirelessly, the Belkin receiver plugs into your amplifier via RCA or 3.5mm jacks and connect up to 6 devices simultaneously that will transmit up to 33 feet away.  On sale now for $50.

Apple, Belkin, Belkin Bluetooth Music Receiver, Music, Wireless, bluetooth, transmitter

Finding an iPhone case that’s attractive and utilitarian isn’t always easy.  It is now.  The iSkin Solo FX is a totally swank iPhone case that will have onlookers gawking uncontrollably at what they think is an absolutely unknown phone. 

3G, 3gs, Apple, Cell Phones, FX, Review, Reviews, case, iPhone, iSkin, solo

The HypnosEye Projector is a completely wireless projector and is a cheap and easy way for you to display visual media from your iPhone.  It actually works with any phone that has an adjustable brightness as it uses a special mirror with a reflection agent at the top of the glass instead of the bottom making for a more clear image.

Apple, Cell Phones, Cheap, HypnosEye, Portable, Projectors, Wireless, iPhone, iPod Touch, japan, projector

It was only a year ago that blogs were joking that the innovative Apple Company would eventually release a toilet that they might refer to as The Air Poo.  Today, having a toilet plastered with the Apple logo is possible with the company Rival Toilets.  Rival Toilets creates custom-made toilets and have managed to create an Apple toilet. The company first specialized in toilets for sports fanatics, and has been creating commodes for basketball and football fans. In addition to sports fans, Rival has also created toilets for the politically minded as well.  The company can create a specialized toilet to fit any personality and Rival is the perfect place for fanatics or children to fully decorate their bathrooms.

Apple, Apple Toilet, Novelty

Doubling as a hacky-sack, the MovieWedge is a convenient way to view media horizontally on your iPhone or iPod touch.  The MovieWedge is lightweight and portable beanbag-esque cushion that supports your iPhone for prime viewing. Embracing a brutally simple design aesthetic, the MovieWedge can effectively adapt to most any surrounding.  Capable of changing shape to a small degree, the MovieWedge can easily fit in where ever you need it.  From a stiff but moving airplane tray table, to your bed or your grassy backyard, the MovieWedge is unlike any iPhone stand you have used before.

Apple, Cell Phones, Cushion, MovieWedge, PMP, Review, Reviews, Stand, iPhone, iPod Touch, movies, pillow

Gadget patents are a strange lot. Is that dual handed interface for an iTablet, or something else? Will my remote really Tweet someday? Probably not, but this patent from Nokia had me thinking of a touch- and, more importantly, pressure-sensitive future:

Now, touch screens are nothing new, obviously. The iPhone’s an obvious example, as are the multitude of touchscreen handsets that have done their fair share of pinch zooming, screen swiping and touch typing in its wake.

Add in pressure sensitive gestures, however, and a new level of control descends on the venerable touchscreen. Again, Apple’s been here before—at least with a 2007 patent—but nevertheless it’s interesting to see a giant like Nokia weighing in with some ideas too (let’s just hope they get their homework handed in before doomsday though, right?).

Like I said, the Apple one is going on two years old, and we haven’t seen anything yet. Our expectations with these things must remain in the realm of the real and the grounded. Still, as we explained earlier, touchscreens are our future and the added functionality provided by a pressure-sensitive screen seems an inevitability. Question is, who’s going to be first to successfully drive this tech to where it really counts: Into the mainstream consumer market?

Apple, Cellphones, Displays, Nokia, Patents, Phones, Touchscreens

Don’t hold your breath for the ZFS filesystem to appear in any future Snow Leopard updates. A message yesterday on the project’s homepage very clearly acknowledges that development has stopped completely.

A message on MacOS Forge tersely states,

The ZFS project has been discontinued. The mailing list and repository will also be removed shortly.

There have been multiple explanations as to why Apple dropped ZFS support in Snow Leopard, and now there’s more speculation to add into the mix. This time the story goes that when Oracle bought Sun, Oracle didn’t want continue development on ZFS because they already had their own filesystem (BTRFS) in the oven.

ZFS was also apparently facing patent suits at the time. It all sounds like a complicated legal and political mess, which is probably why Apple just dropped it.

Whatever the true causes behind ZFS’ sudden fall from grace may be, it’s disappointing that we’ll have to wait longer for a true filesystem upgrade in OS X.

10.6, Apple, Btrfs, Mac, OS X 10.6, Oracle, Os X, Snow leopard, Sun, zfs

In this week’s incidentally infringing app roundup: NASA enters the iPhone’s orbit, Earthworm Jim is ALIVE, your handset learns two tricks it should’ve known already, rhythm gaming goes pro, and Loopt users crudely proposition one another.

The Best

NASA: NASA’s really stepped up their online presence in the last few years, giving armchair astronauts more media, stats and news than they could ever want. Nasa’s iPhone app, matter-of-factly named “NASA app for iPhone,” aggregates it all, including Twitter feeds, orbit trackers, images, video and mission updates. Free, unless you count income tax.

GameCenter: A free encyclopedia of games, GameCental taps into GameFly’s massive database of titles to immediately spit out everything from release dates to platform availability to screenshots to reviews. It’s a field guide for games, essentially—a type of tool which lends itself well to the iPhone.

Pet Semetary: A gored-up mobile take on Stephen King’s eponymous book and film, Pet Sematary is proudly straightforward: You shoot zombies; the zombies are often cats. It’s a slow-build game, with short stages that get progressively harder, and accordingly, it’s great timekiller. A dollar.

Wolfram Alpha: For this week’s obnoxiously contrarian pick, how about a calculator app that costs $50, and doesn’t do a whole lot more than the web-based version, available for free through the iPhone’s browser? Yes, perfect. I don’t totally buy that whole “graphing calculators are $100, this app is just $50″ reasoning, but the mathematical shortcut keyboard as well as a streamlined interface are pretty great. In other words, if (and only if) you can somehow expense something like this—ie, you work at CERN—totally do it.

ReelDirector: This is as close as you’re going to get to iMovie on your iPhone (which is still not very close, at all). Video stitching alone, though, will be worth the ($8) price of entry for many people, at least until Apple builds it into their camera app.

Rock Band: Despite the obvious success of games like Tap Tap Revolution, the big rhythm game players have generally steered clear of the App Store. Until this week! Rock Band, late as it is, is pretty good, with caveats: the control scheme isn’t ideal; the singing mode isn’t actually a singing mode; and it could stand to include a few more than the base 20 songs. Which are licensed, popular songs, by the way—not lame mashups or no-name material like you see in some other rhythm apps. $10.

SongSift: It’s easy to let your iPhone library get cluttered with odd singles, poorly-tagged strays, and one-off playlist refugees. The real solution is to sort your freakin’ colllection, you slob, but until you do, SongSift lets you filter albums by length, so if you’re setting out on a run, or want to set-and-leave your iPhone for a while, you’ll be able to find large, contiguous chunks of music with a simple slider. A dollar.

NFB: Canada’s National Film Board funds all kinds of interesting films, documentaries and miscellaneous video projects, which their new iPhone app offers up for free. It’s hard to argue with that, so I won’t.

Earthworm Jim: The iPhone-ified Earthworm Jim could be a little cheaper, and the controls could be a bit more refined. But really, it’s hard to imagine a more authentic port for this game, especially to a platform without buttons.

Loopt Mix: Loopt doesn’t just keep track of friends now, it finds new ones. With the “Mix” feature, you can send any nearby Loopt users a friend request. And from the looks of the promotional shots, you’re supposed to parlay that request into an entirely different kind of request, which we’ll talk about after the kids go to bed.

Honorable Mentions

The Colbert Report’s The Word: To be fair, The Word is a highlight of every episode of the Colbert Report. It just seems like, you know, you’ve made this nice video app an all, so why not throw in rest of the otherwise free ColbertNation.com content as well? Oh well. A dollar.

SuicideGirls: A video choose-your-own-adventure story in which one of the possible ending is engaging in light petting with an angry, tattooed, seminude lady. Remember when Apple used to ban dictionary apps for swearing?

Gucci: A free promotional tool for a company I have a feeling our readers aren’t all that in to, Gucci’s iPhone app actually has some neat features, including a in-app DJ tool, local restaurant/bar/whatever recommendations, and, uh, some stuff about clothes, or bags, or something.

Apple, Apps, Software, The week's 10 best iphone apps, Top, iPhone, iPhone Apps, the week in iPhone apps

Atten-shun! The new Apple TV 3.0 is out. As rumored, it includes iTunes Extras, iTunes LP, and Genius Mixes, but also a surprise: A new user interface. Question: Is Steve Jobs too busy overseeing the tablet development? This looks uggghsome:

Conceptually, it reminds me of the PS3. More straightforward than the previous version. Graphically, it seems very unlike Apple. In fact, it looks like crap. I guess His Steveness is too busy doing the funky tablet shaking and whipping the iPhone OS people.

Update 1: We are downloading the update now and it’s huge. Actually, our connection is just crappy. And then, the updater needs to update before updating the software. So not only the update brings all this new stuff, but it also opens worm holes in the spacetime fabric.

Update 2: It is taking ages.

Apple Introduces Apple TV 3.0 Software With Redesigned User Interface

Enjoy iTunes Extras, iTunes LP & Genius Mixes on Your HD TV

CUPERTINO, Calif., Oct. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple® today introduced new Apple TV® 3.0 software featuring a redesigned main menu that makes navigating your favorite content simpler and faster, and makes enjoying the largest selection of on-demand HD movie rentals and purchases, HD TV shows, music and podcasts from the iTunes® Store even better on your TV. You can now enjoy iTunes Extras and iTunes LP in stunning fullscreen with your Apple TV, as well as listen to Genius Mixes and Internet radio through your home theater system. The new Apple TV software is available immediately free of charge to existing Apple TV owners, and Apple TV with 160GB capacity is available for just $229.

“The new software for Apple TV features a simpler and faster interface that gives you instant access to your favorite content,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “HD movies and HD TV shows from iTunes have been a huge hit with Apple TV customers, and with Apple TV 3.0 they get great new features including iTunes Extras, Genius Mixes and Internet radio.”

The redesigned main menu on Apple TV gives you instant access to your favorite content. Recently rented or purchased movies, as well as other content including TV shows, music, podcasts, photos and YouTube, are accessible directly from the new main menu. The new software also allows Apple TV users to enjoy stunning fullscreen iTunes Extras and iTunes LP, including great new movie titles such as “Star Trek” or classics like “The Wizard of Oz” and albums such as Taylor Swift’s “Fearless (Platinum Edition)” and Jack Johnson’s “En Concert.” iTunes Extras gives movie fans great additional content such as deleted scenes, interviews and interactive galleries. iTunes LP is the next evolution of the music album, delivering a rich, immersive experience for select albums on the iTunes Store by combining beautiful design with expanded visual features like live performance videos, lyrics, artwork, liner notes, interviews, photos, album credits and more.

Now Apple TV users can enjoy Genius Mixes through their home theater system and listen to up to 12 endless mixes of songs that go great together, automatically generated from their iTunes library. Customers can also enjoy Internet radio, allowing them to browse and listen to thousands of Internet radio stations, as well as tag favorite stations to listen to later. Apple TV’s support of HD photos is enhanced with iPhoto Events, which simplifies finding your favorite photos on Apple TV, as well as iPhoto® Faces, which gives access to photos organized by people identified in iPhoto.

Apple TV users have direct access to a catalog of over 8,000 Hollywood films on iTunes including over 2,000 in stunning HD video available for rent or purchase. Users can also choose from a selection of 11 million songs, 10,000 music videos and over 50,000 TV episodes to purchase directly from their Apple TV or browse and enjoy the iTunes Store podcast directory of over 175,000 free video and audio podcasts. Purchases downloaded to Apple TV are automatically synced back to iTunes on the user’s computer for enjoyment on their Mac® or PC or all current generation iPods or iPhones.* iPod touch® or iPhone® users can download the free Remote app from the App Store to control their Apple TV with a simple tap or flick of the finger.

Apple, Apple TV, Apple TV Software, Top

While tearing down the new Apple iMac the folks at iFixIt got requests for wallpaper quality images. They most certainly came through with this stunning shot of full-frontal openness. I’m almost blushing.

If you want the above picture as a wallpaper, you can get it right here and but if you want just the up close and personal insides, go right here.

Apple, Imac internals wallpaper, Imac tear down, Image cache, Wallpaper, Wallpapers, iMac, internals, tear down

The good news: for those of you who want it, the TomTom iPhone car kit can be ordered for $120 at the Apple Store. The bad news: while TomTom originally promised the device for October, it’s still not shipping for “2-3 weeks.”

Apple, GPS, TomTom, iPhone, tomtom iphone car kit

Compact yet powerful, the DLO Portable Speakers for iPhone let you enjoy your music and videos in stereo sound without any threat of TDMA interference. Featuring an extra-wide sound stage and bass vents for delivering powerful sound, these small speakers pack a powerful punch.

AV Gadgets, Apple, Ipod Gadgets, Smart phone, Speakers, iPhone, iPod