sundance

Best of the Web: Smell your Facebook updates & Google gets jiggy wit it

Google Music: Yesterday, Google launched its first music sharing and downloading platform, “Google Music,” as a direct competitor to iTunes. Yes, you have to buy the songs (drag), but users can share whatever they purchase with friends for one free listen…

Get your doodle on with a scrapbooking iPad app

I have a thing for notebooks. But after years of notebook accumulation, no real pattern or trend has emerged. I collect them indiscriminately—a pink Moleskine here, a cool, cloth-wrapped volume there, some funky vintage find from a flea market. Sadly, most of them sit blank and dusty on a bookshelf in my office, silently pleading for a simple doodle or To-Do list. Alas, my fascination with notebooks doesn’t seem to have come with any real dedication to journaling.

But the creative minds behind new iPad app, Clibe, have come up with a space-saving digital solution for notebook nerds…

IMDB’s Captcha is less annoying and actually kind of cool

Little Big Details is a slightly esoteric website but one I think would be very interesting and useful for my designer friends and really anyone who lives and breathes in the digital space. It posts user submitted examples of how the tiniest detail in a website, software or user flow can have a disproportionately huge impact on the user experience. A lot of the submissions are from the Apple ecosystem and can be traced back to Steve Jobs, whose obsession over the smallest details resulted in a superior overall user experience…

Remembering Steve Jobs: 6 reasons why he rocked

Steve Jobs’ death has inspired an outpouring of grief and impromptu tributes from all over the world (among our favorites: MintDigital’s portrait rendered in motherboards and the Sad Mac homepage on The Oatmeal). Here, a six-item salute to what made him amazing.

313 patents of Steve Jobs

I was stunned when news of Steve Jobs resignation as head of Apple reverberated across the news and social wires last Wednesday. The deterioration of his health was one of the worst kept secrets over the past few years, in contrast to the notoriously tight-lipped Apple culture, and I hope that relinquishing the controls will allow him to focus on his health. As someone who grew up in a Mac-only household, the genius of Steve Jobs had a daily impact on my life. This New York Times infographic of the 313 patents that Steve Jobs was involved with gives an insight into just the influence he’s had “…ranging from from the company’s iconic computer cases to the glass staircases that are featured in many Apple stores.”

How Twitter was almost named Twitch, and other titles that suck

Earlier this week I heard a story on my local NPR affiliate about how Twitter – a word that has transcended the confines of a brand name to become part of our everyday vernacular, even spawning its own verb conjugations of the infinitive to tweet – was almost named Twitch. Co-founder Jack Dorsey explains, “We wanted a name that evoked what we did. We wanted something that was tangible. And we looked at what we were doing and when you received a tweet over SMS, your phone would buzz. It would jitter. It would twitch. And those were the early names, Jitter and Twitch. And neither one of them really inspired the best sort of imagery.”

Steve Jobs reveals Apple’s new campus

Cheekily dubbed the iBuilding, the plans for Apple’s latest and greatest undertaking – its new campus in Cupertino, California – have finally been revealed. At a city council meeting last week, Steve Jobs unveiled some pixelated but nonetheless exciting renderings that take “office building” to a whole new level. The eye-catching structure (just see the satellite image below) is a ring-shaped building reportedly spearheaded by architect Norman Foster, whose super slick design ethos can be seen in projects the world over, including the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site in NY.

Green tech finds (6/9/11)

The original electric cars, a solar-powered train tunnel, and geothermal energy harvesting that also sequesters carbon… your green tech finds for the week.

• Big battery breakthrough?: Researchers at MIT are redesigning batteries as “semi-solid flow cells,” which could eliminate charging time issues for electric cars, as well as provide viable storage of energy generated from renewable sources. (via Grist)
  
  
• Solar-powered train tunnel opens in Belgium: A two-mile stretch of train tunnel near Antwerp is now covered with solar panels, and will provide electricity for both high-speed and inter-city rail links, as well as a train station. (via AOL Travel)
  
  

Nervous 23-year-old Steve Jobs prepping for first National TV appearance

The Internet time capsule unearthed this old video of a young hirsute 23-year-old Steve Jobs nervously prepping and getting miked up for his first national TV appearance. Clearly the Apple grasshopper grew up to be master of media appearances and control.

Steve Jobs’ business card

From the Internet time capsule, here is an early business card of our Dear Leader.

Jane Lynch’s Apple spoof

Jane Lynch is funnier than pretty much everyone on TV. Actually, she is far and away funnier than just about every working actor today. This is a fact in the gay world, where Ms. Lynch, a married lesbian, is becoming a camp icon. Move over Gaga, Sue Sylvester is in town. She’s perfectly terrifying on [...]

iPad magic show

Japanese magician Uchida Shinya posted this YouTube (subtitled) video where he uses an iPad with some magic tricks to briefly describe and explain the past, present, and future of human communication. The slight of hand tricks are pretty cool, but if you want to ruin the fun, just read the spoiler comments or watch it [...]

I ran into the biggest bunch of Utah Trannies last night

Paula Froelich and Utah Trannies in Park City to support 8: THE MORMON PROPOSITION
I feel like a gang of roudy elephants held a party in my head last night and forgot to clean up. Some musings after the jump…

David Hockney paints with iPhone

Andrew Hearst previously talked about David Hockey’s iPhone paintings here. His Daily Mail link appears to be dead now, but I came across another article about the prolific artist and his new painting medium. Using the Brushes application he’s created gorgeous iPhone paintings that look like watercolors. The New York Review of Books’ Lawrence Weschler documents [...]

A 24″ touch-screen iPhone?

In honor of today’s launch of the iPhone 3G S… this video, which purports to show a demo of a hacked Mac running the iPhone operating system using a giant touch screen, is a hoax, but it’s still fun to watch: The Unofficial Apple Weblog writes, “How’d they do it? It’s most likely just a [...]

The amazing app wall at Apple’s WWDC

At this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where Apple announced the new iPhone models, among other things, a big array of monitors displayed an “app wall”–a giant matrix of iPhone app icons that pulse when they’re downloaded from the App Store. The effect is monumental and hypnotic. Visit AppleInsider for video of what the app wall [...]