Digital Technology for Digital Living.
May 27, 2006
Free iPod Travel Guides
According to our friends at iPastudio.com, a company called Rough Guides released a series of downloadable travel guides for 10 major cities in iPod format. These full color gudies, called PodScrolls, even come complete with pictures and page numbers for easy navigation.
Here’s a blurb from the Rough Guides website:
“We’ve kicked off with eating and drinking guides to ten of the world’s great cities, drawing reviews from our acclaimed Directions guidebook series. Best of all, we’re giving these PodScrolls away for free. Bon appetit… PodScrolls work on all colour-screen iPods.”
The first 10 Podscrolls are available for download now and cover the following cities: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dublin, London, Madrid, New York City, Paris, Prague, Rome, San Francisco.
If you own an iPod and plan on traveling to one of these cities, how can you go wrong? It’s free.
methodshop | Comments (0) | General, Music, Portable
May 25, 2006
NBC News Added to iTunes
Tired of all the drama and entertainment shows offered on iTunes? Feel like iTunes isn’t informative enough? NBC and Apple apparently feel the same way.
Apple has officially made NBC the first news organization to offer their content in the iTunes Store. Previous news related offerings from other networks were only available as Podcasts.
As of this morning, Apple added the following NBC News pages to iTunes:
- NBC News Specials - a mix of big news events
- NBC News Time Capsule - older news from the NBC archives
- Tom Brokaw Reports - several of the special reports Brokaw has done since leaving the Night News anchor chair
- Meet the Presidents - interviews with presidents and world leaders from Meet the Press
- Dateline: Crime & Punishment - kidnappers, serial killers, and psychopath… Oh my
- CNBC Specials - Mad Money with Jim Cramer and CNBC documentaries
Interesting stuff from NBC and Apple. Will it sell well on iTunes? Are people hungry for news content on their video iPods? Time will tell, but kudos to Apple for trying.
methodshop | Comments (0) | General, Music, Software
May 24, 2006
Rocket Launch Ringtones
The rocket scientists over ReallyRocketScience.com have come up with a clever way to promote their blog - free rocket launch ringtones. They combined a launch “countdown” with actual audio of an Atlas rocket liftoff and converted it into a mobile phone ringtone.
In case you are curious, the countdown heard in the ringtone wasn’t recorded live. There were too many other voices and static to get a clean recording at the time. So while in the studio for the ASTRA 1KR launch last month, Don “The Voice of Atlas” Spencer sat down and recorded a clean countdown for the ringtone, which was later combined with actual liftoff audio.
The ringtone is actually pretty funny. The next time your cell phone rings, you’ll feel like you only have 10 seconds to get it before it launches into voicemail.
You can get your free rocket launch ringtones at ReallyRocketScience.com.
methodshop | Comments (0) | General, Music, Portable
May 20, 2006
Copy Videos off YouTube
YouTube.com is a great resource. Not many sites allows users to freely upload, view, and share video clips like YouTube does. YouTube even lets users easily post videos on their blogs and personal web sites. But because anyone can upload a video clip on YouTube, copyright violations are rampant.
In an effort to prevent the widespread distribution of illegal copied video files, YouTube encodes its video files in the Macromedia Flash format, which prevents viewers from downloading files and making digital copies.
Here’s a step-by-step MethodShop.com tutorial on how to rip video files off YouTube.com and convert them for an iPod Video. This trick will work on Mac or PC using Firefox or Internet Explorer.
methodshop | Comments (2) | General, Broadband, Video, Software
May 17, 2006
MacBook Has Replaceable Hard Drive
On Tuesday, Apple announced their new consumer laptop called the MacBook (prosumer users should check out the MacBook Pro). This new laptop features an Intel Core Duo processor and a 13″ inch glossy widescreen display.
But what really has people excited about the MacBook is a new user replaceable hard drive feature. According to Apple Insider.com, MacBook owners will find that upgrading or replacing the computer’s hard disk is as simple as adding more memory. Just flip over the MacBook and pop out the battery. You will immediately see the RAM slots and the MacBook’s hard drive. Previous Apple laptop models required the skilled hands of an authorized service provider to perform a hard drive replacement. Now, any savvy MacBook owner (with some guts) will be able to upgrade their laptop’s hard drive without completely disassembling the computer.
Beyond the replaceable hard drive feature, the stats for the new MacBook are great. Take a look:
13″ inch widescreen; 1280×800 display- 2 colors: sleek black and bright white
- 1 Firewire 400, 2 USB 2.0 ports
- Built-in iSight camera
- Integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics with 64 MB shared graphics memory
- mini-DVI with extended display support
- Airport Extreme + Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR) Standard
- Front Row (remote control media center)
- 512MB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300)
- Intel CoreDuo chips: 1.83 - 2 Ghz
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Low prices: $1,099 - $1,499
The new Intel MacBooks can be purchased directly from Apple’s website.
Learn More: Hard Drive Recovery Using proprietary methods we can often recover evidence from severely physically damaged media files re-formatted disk/tapes re-initialized disk.
methodshop | Comments (0) | General, Portable
May 15, 2006
Steve Jobs kills Disney Happy Meals
Apparently toys are off the menu when it comes to promoting Disney movies in McDonald’s Happy Meals. The two companies are ending their 10-year, $1.3 billion cross-promotional deal at the end of the 2006 movie season.
What ended the relationship? Disney board member Steve Jobs doesn’t care much for the food at McDonald’s and wants to stop using it to promote Disney/Pixar films like Finding Nemo and Cars to kids. According to the LA Times, Steve Jobs expressed his uncertainty about using Happy Meals to help promote films in a conference call last year [read more].
Related Website: Cheap Disney tickets for sale from tickets2you.net.
methodshop | Comments (0) | General, Toys
May 12, 2006
iTTUSB Turntable
Need a reason to pull your records out of storage? A company called ION has created a USB turntable called the iTTUSB. The company claims that this is the world’s first USB turntable.
The iTTUSB allows you to convert your old vinyl collection directly to CD or MP3 with the included recording software (Mac/PC) and is a must have for people who don’t want to deal with clumsy adapters or mismatched audio formats.
The iTTUSB comes with Audacity, a recording application that works with both PCs and Macs, as well a trial version of Bias Soundsoap 2 to clean and restore vinyl recordings.
As an alternative, the turntable also works with any other software that supports USB audio input sound cards. Once connected, the turntable transfers both 33-1/3 rpm albums and 45 rpm singles to digital formats in mere minutes.
The iTTUSB is great for all those obscure releases that never made it to CD.
More info on the iTTUSB:
methodshop | Comments (0) | General, Music, Toys, Software, Peripherals
Remove iPod Nano Scratches for only $4
So the story goes something like this: You save up a couple hundred bucks to buy your new iPod Nano. You take it home, open the box, and load your music. It’s a beautiful thing.
Then disaster strikes! You decide to carry your iPod Nano in your pocket! Your pocket! How could you?! What were you thinking? An item as precious and delicate as the iPod Nano was not meant for portability. And the ungodly amount of scratches seen on my iPod Nano prove it. After a few failed attempts to get Apple to help me out, I decided to fix the scratches myself.
Here’s how to remove the scratched from your iPod Nano for only $4.
methodshop | Comments (0) | General, Music, Portable
Comet Craters Found with Google Earth
Emilio Gonzalez found two asteroid craters.
He didn’t use a special satellite, NASA telescope or anything only available to high level scientists. Believe it or not, Emilio began his asteroid impact search with a home computer and a free satellite imaging program called Google Earth.
After reading an article about an asteroid crater in the Middle East called Kebira, Emilio decided to get a closer look at the crater for himself. He launched the Google Earth application and pointed it towards the Egypt/Libya border. Sure enough, after a couple minutes he found the Kebira crater. He studied the shape of the crater and then decided to check out the rest of the area.
After a quick search Emilio located two more craters. Did anyone else know about these craters? He decided to check an earth impact database. But there was no record of them. No one had reported these craters before. Was this really possible? Emilio was still unsure of the validity of his findings and asked a few experts to check out the craters for themselves… Believe it or not, two geologists have confirmed his findings. Emilio actually found two asteroid craters using only Google Earth.
Is it really possible for the average person to make a major scientific discovery using just their home computer? It’s hard to believe, but yes.
Emilio was amazed as everyone else was. “It could not be so easy! Was I suffering such excitement that I was seeing impact craters everywhere?” he said.
Just think, Google Earth can make you famous. All it takes is a keen eye and the patience to cross check your findings. Want to follow in Emilio’s footsteps? Think you might have found a crater impact? Here’s a few tips to help you avoid “crying wolf” with geologists.
1) Make sure you cross check any potential impacts with the Canadian Brunswick University impact crater database.
2) Avoid confusing asteroid craters with volcanos. According to Fernando Claudin, one of the curators of Impact-Structures.com, “Circularity doesn’t mean anything by itself for identifying an impact structure.” Anything from a landfill to a volcano could have a circular shape. When searching for asteroid craters, you want the layers of the external ring to be inclined outwards and the internal ring to have a central elevation.
3) Still think you found something? Organize our findings and contact your local geologist.
Good luck.
methodshop | Comments (0) | General, Broadband, Software
May 10, 2006
Fox Shows Added to iTunes
Despite contradicting reports, Fox has put several of their TV shows in the iTunes Music Store.
You can now purchase episodes of 24, Prison Break, Unan1mous, Stacked, and several other “Fox Television Classics” including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and Lost in Space for $1.99 each. However, several Fox cartoon standouts like Family Guy, The Simpsons and Futurama are missing from this current offering.
Being able to download the latest episode of 24 (that your TiVo forgot to record) is an awesome convenience for fans of the show. 24 has a major presence on underground P2P networks like BitTorrent [tutorial link] and Fox needed to make a legal download option for the show ASAP. However, for older shows like Firefly, you might want to shop around before buying episodes on iTunes. The Firefly DVD box set can be found for $20 at some places. Think about that before spending $28 for the iTMS versions.
Link: Fox shows on iTunes
methodshop | Comments (0) | General, Video
May 09, 2006
Beatles lose Apple battle
The battle of the two Apples is over…. for now.
Apple Corps, The Beatles record label, lost their ridiculous court battle with Apple Computer over its iTunes download service on Monday. The Judge ruled that Apple Computer used its logo in association with its store, not the music, and was not in breach of an earlier 1991 agreement between the two companies. If Apple Computer had lost today’s court battle, iPods and iTunes products would no longer be able to carry the Apple name and logo.
If you are unfamiliar with the Apple vs Apple saga, the two companies have been in legal battles since the 1980s. Apple Corps believes that there is consumer confusion if both “Apple” companies are engaged in audio or music related business.
Part of the lawsuit involves a disagreement in the similarity between the two “Apple” logos. Let’s take a look:
Apple Computer Logo:
Apple Computer was founded in 1976 and helped launch the personal computer industry with products like the Lisa and the Macintosh. The Apple Computer logo is an abstract apple with a section removed from the right side. The Apple looks like someone took a physical bite (or maybe a byte of data) out of it.
Apple Corps Logo:
Apple Corps was set up by The Beatles in 1968 and is represented by a green Granny Smith apple (without a bite). The Apple Corps logo was designed by Gene Mahon and based on a Rene Magritte painting owned by Paul McCartney.
Honestly, Apple Corps is a joke. Koo Koo Ka Choo. They are a small time record company founded by The Beatles in 1968. The Apple Corps website is nothing more than a single page placeholder with a phone number on it. When you hear the name Apple, who do you think of… iPods or The Beatles? There is no consumer confusion over Apple Computer products and Beatles CDs. This lawsuit was just about greed and the judge made the right decision.
If only The Beatles could just “Let It Be.”
methodshop | Comments (0) | General, Music
May 06, 2006
Trapped Miners Get iPod Relief
UPDATE: The miners were rescued at approximately 9PM US EST [May 8, 2006].
If you were trapped underground for a few days, what would you want more than anything in the world? Probably not to be trapped underground… Anyway, to help relieve the extreme boredom of two trapped Australian miners, rescuers have given them iPods.
According to The Age, two iPods and food were slid down a plastic PVC pipe to these poor guys while rescuers try to come up with a rescue plan.
The miners are trapped inside a Beaconsfield gold mine in northern Australia. A cave in trapped the two men beneath several meters of rock and killed a fellow miner. The two surviving men, Todd Russell and Brant Webb, are trying to keep their spirits up. They have been trapped underground since April 25th. Matthew Gill, the mine manager, had this to say in a statement; “They remain in good health and have now received iPods so they can listen to their favorite music…”
So what would you put on their iPod playlists? Here are a few suggestions from an iTunes iMix.
- Home Sweet Home - Motley Crue
- Above Ground - Norah Jones
- Baby I Just Wanna Go Home - Kevn Kinney
- Come On Home - Franz Ferdinand
- Theme from “Shaft” - Isaac Hayes
- Coming Home - Cinderella
- One Last Breath - Creed
- Let Me Go Home - Camera Obscura
- Mama, I’m Coming Home - Ozzy Osbourne
- Safety Dance - Men Without Hats
- Down Under - Men At Work (Colin Hay)
- Staying Alive - Bee Gees
- Every Breath You Take - Police
- New York Mining Disaster 1941 - The Bee Gees
- Working In a Coalmine - Science of Sound feat. Lee Dorsey
- Trapped In a Box - No Doubt
- Digging the Grave - Faith No More
- Mine Shaft - The Truffauts
- Coal Miner’s Daughter - Loretta Lynn
- Don’t Fear The Reaper - The Blue Oyster Cult
- Canary In a Coalmine - The Police
- Gold Digger - Kanye West
- Down In a Hole - Alice In Chains
methodshop | Comments (0) | General, Music, Portable
