Yesterday we posted about the possibility of Magnetosphere being the visualizer that Rose mentioned a week back and last night via Twitter, Rose confirmed this.
Confirmed: This was visualization I saw in a build of iTunes 8.0 - http://tinyurl.com/67m3pv
I just wanted to remind my fellow Mac users that they really aught to be using Plex to play back all their movies. (And I do mean movies—a quick clip here and there, you’re best served by VLC or mplayer.) A new version, 0.5.15, was released two days ago, and includes all the usual bug fixes that you’d expect. What’s unexpected, though, is the complete revamp of the application’s branding: new logo, splash screen, default skin, etc. (Again, I recommend the skin Aeon, though it’s a bit of a pain to set up.)
In conclusion, Plex is neat. Use it.
The Dell Mini 9 appears to not completely suck, which is good news for the netbook crowd, I suppose. But—and I’m sure you’ve all been wondering about this—what does it look like on the inside? How does Dell manage to fit so much into such a tiny space?
As luck would have it, Dell actually has provided photos and illustrations of the Mini 9’s interior. Unless you’re one of those folks who hang out at Radio Shack for fun, they’re probably only worth a “oh, cool, that’s what it looks like,” which is exactly what I said.
Flower children,
It looks like Volkswagen is considering bringing back the Microbus, a symbol of your generation I think I read once. The company wants more of a presence in the North American market; suggestions that it re-make the Microbus (or Kombi, depending on where you’re from) quickly followed.
And here’s the business, straight from a senior VW official:
We’re looking at ways to produce the Microbus that will make it competitive in North America. At the moment there is no firm decision but, with the exchange rate the way it is, there is no way we could entertain building it in Europe.
So there you have it, VW wants to bring her back, maybe.
Now, does this news appeal to anyone not a product of the 1960s?
via squob
Get ready for the latest Internet scandal: fake e-mails from Steve Jobs. Well, real e-mails that weren’t sent by Steve Jobs, if that makes any sense.
Wired looked at three e-mails purportedly sent by Steve Jobs in recent weeks: one posted by a MacRumors user, which addresses iPhone 3G connectivity issues; one sent to Gizmodo addressing possible iPhone tethering options; and one addressing the iPod touch.
In Wired’s estimation, these e-mails were not sent by Steve Jobs. We’ve all been had.
Working with the head of the UC Davis linguistics department, along with copy staff, Wired compared these e-mails to those known to have been sent by Jobs himself, including that “MobileMe stinks, we’re sorry” e-mail sent not too long ago. Noting irregularities in the examined e-mails’ grammar and syntax, Wired now believes that the three aforementioned are fake as can be. Incorrect usage of “which” versus “that,” unusual parting words (Jobs doesn’t say “best” or “sincerely” when he concludes e-mails), and the like all point to those e-mails being false. That, in turn, casts doubt on the veracity of the e-mails’ claims, obviously.
What should we call this scandal, JobsGate, EmailGate, LeaveSteveAloneGate?
Hot damn, how did we miss this? Activision released the source code of the Raven-developed Heretic and Hexen two days ago. The source is GPL’d, and is therefore totally free (as in beer and freedom) for you to mess around with.
Weekend project?
Well, it seems Facebook is wildly insecure and none of those third-party applications should ever be trusted. Who would have guessed it?
Specifically, there’s an app out there called Photo of the Day that ostensibly displays photos of the day ::cough:: from National Geographic. It does more than that, though, and sends unwanted traffic to a chosen Web site. Then that chosen Web site is dealing with a denial of service attack.
Photo of the Day is merely a proof of concept and doesn’t actually target any Web sites. Developed by a team of researchers (“hackers!” in CNN talk), its main purpose is to demonstrate how easy it easy to wreak havoc by using Facebook.
As I’ve said time and time again, Internet security is largely a myth, and pretty much the only way to keep your data safe is to never interact with anyone ever. Failing that, be alert.
Some speakers sound divine, other speakers sound pleasent, then there are these five speakers, that given the chance, will instantly violate local noise ordinances and your grandmother, all at the same time.
Here we are, friends: a semi-possibly-real picture of the iPod Nano 4G. As we see, it’s fairly blurry and it’s similar to the leaks we’ve seen so far so this either means we’ve got a good Photoshop on our hands or we’re going to be like kids on Christmas on Tuesday.
via Nowhereelse
DVDO has been around a while, pimping AV scalers to the affulent around us. Previously, those scalers, or upconverters, used third-party processing to accieve the amazingly, upgraded picture. Those models cost up to $3,499 though. So when the $799 Edge dropped last week, the first thing that came to mind is what the hell did they exclude. It turns out that besides component and RS-232 outputs, not much was left out thanks to an in-house made processor. What used to cost a great deal of money per chip tp buy, can now be made by the company at low cost. The booth guys said that the processing is the same and we shouldn’t notice any difference at. The Edge is aiming at the Best Buy / Circuit City crowd and the company is even hoping to drop the price if the accountants allow later on.
Wait; they’re industrial vacuums…at the same trade show as 150k projectors….alright.
In the grand tradition of Apple and Motorola, Canon is now asking that CanonRumors.com, a site dedicated to little but Canon rumors, stop using the domain name and the Canon logo. These things never end well - usually they just gank the domain - and Craig at CR is taking it pretty well.
Understandably I have to get rid of the Canon Logo at the top, which is fine. I also have to get rid of the domain name with the word “canon” in it. That’s OK too. So people, you can start emailing me new ideas for a domain name. I have 10 days to comply. It can’t infringe on Canon’s trademark.
My biggest issue with these sorts of C&Ds is that they strike right to the heart of an enthusiast community and enemies out of the same marketers think they are targeting i.e. the “thought leaders.” The average Joe could give two lumps about the new Canon 5D or a rumor about a mini-PC (aka the Mac Mini, the PC that killed ThinkSecret). Heck, Canon is lucky if people even think of then when it comes to point and shoot cameras. A little buzz and excitement can go a long way to building a brand - just ask Zune - but this simply encourages rancor. Here’s hoping Canon can convince the HQ in Japan to pull back on this C&D. I’d hate Craig to have to switch to Nikon.
Not reading MobileCrunch yet? Why the heck not? While a MobileCrunch post or two make the jump over to CrunchGear each day, there’s a ton of good stuff each day that you’ll only see on that side of the fence.
Here’s some stuff you may have missed on MobileCrunch today:
Congratulations to Sean R. for winning a copy of The Guild Season 1 (signed by cast members Felicia Day and Sandeep Parikh) during today’s CrunchGear Live podcast.
Sean was selected at random from the pool of folks who sent in the secret passphrase we announced during the show. There’s a good chance we’ll be giving away all kinds of goods in future podcasts, so tune in each week!
Sony took a beating in the market on Friday, touching upon a 3-year low. The sell-off comes after an announcement yesterday about the voluntary recall of 438,000 VAIO notebooks worldwide (73,000 in the US).
The problem stems from irregularly positioned wires near the computer’s hinge that can cause a short circuit and overheating. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said Sony “has received 15 reports of overheating, including one consumer who suffered a minor burn.” Worldwide, over 200 cases have been reported.
The affected computers were sold from July 2007 through August 2008. The recalled model series are the VAIO VGN-TZ100, VGN-TZ200, VGN-TZ300 and VGN-TZ2000.
So everybody’s talking about Chrome and how fast it is, and Google is talking about keeping it open and all that. Well, just how open is the sucker? How about super open. This savvy gentleman took Chrome apart and found evidence of 25 open source project libraries being used in its code. They really did take a bite out of everybody. And I bet they’re taking bits from OpenMoko and the LiMo group for Android-Chrome.
Check it out and see if you’ve got some code in there. There’s a pretty good chance, like 25 in 8,000,000,000.
