Macgasm

[Download] [01.1 MB] [0:02:10]
Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner

In this episode, Josh talks about the use of Macs in the production of advertisements.

Attention all Apple lovers with a little bit of drawing ability: Apple is holding a contest for their newest store in Chicago, IL. The new location sits on a strangely-shaped land, so they need to create a new and innovative store: a three-sided Apple Store.

What is the prize? The architect gets a $100 Apple gift card. Only $100! I am designing an Apple store, and all I am getting is $100? The most you can get with that money is an iPod shuffle. They really need to rethink the prize. In a way, the person also gets bragging rights and can put on his/her resume that "I designed an Apple store!"

All submitted graphics will be considered to be under the Creative Commons license, allowing publication on the IFO Web site with attribution (indicate how you want to be credited). E-mail two to four views of the final design (any graphic format, high-res, any size) so viewers can see the full impact of your work. Send the e-mail to gary@ifoAppleStore.com

Source: ifoAppleStore

Photo by:Tony Shi, NY-N

I’ve never really understood people who are anti-environmentalists. Sure there’s a great deal to debate about the state of the environment, but reducing energy consumption and litter is a bit of a no-brainer, no matter how you look at it.  Playing in garbage isn’t really something we should enjoy. So when I hear of applications that are going to help us lower our energy consumption and live a little less off the grid than we did previously, I get pretty excited about it.

Today I was tipped off about an iPhone application that’s in the making that will allow us to access wifi sensors and control them.  The article talked about being able to control temperature settings, and any other device that has wifi capabilities. It looks like the future is know.

It’s only a matter of time before we have the ability to turn on and off lights, start the microwave, turn off the slow cooker, and start the hot tub from our phones.  I fully welcome the change. A company called Gainspan , a wifi semiconductor leader, has teamed up with Our Home Spaces to develop some iPhone applications that will let us do these types of things.

Pretty soon we’ll all be living like Bill Gates.  Man, I’m excited.  The times, they are a changing.

[via Sensormag]

I was advised today by Mr. Macgasm that native builds of Chrome were finally being released by the fine folks at Google. Naturally, being a huge fan of the new browser, I rushed straight off to download (after I opened a new browser to replace the Firefox session that had just crashed on me again).

Upon installing I discovered, as is always the case with me and a new browser, that the shortcut keys weren’t to my liking. Luckily, as a Mac user, this is not a problem.

Apple gives easy instructions for how to fix this problem, but they lack.. well.. graphics. I love instructional graphics (yet, I hate screencasts. Go figure).

So, I thought I’d throw together a quick Macgasm how-to for those of you who want to fix this pesky problem in a new browser, or just any program that has keyboard shortcuts that you’d like to bend to your will (this also worked on Camino, which I have recently switched to as my “œbrowsing” browser – Firefox being reserved for dev work – yes, I’m a complicated person).

Firstly, I open the offending application and check out the menu option I’d like to assign a keyboard shortcut to (yes, it must be an existing menu option). Then, I make a note of the exact text, capitalization included. As such:

You can see that the current shortcut is option-apple-left-arrow (that’s right, I’m an “œapple-key” holdout). This, for me, is particularly pesky, as I have this set globally to go to the previous track in iTunes (thanks to SizzlingKeys). So, having made a note of the exact menu option “” “œPrevious Tab” “” I’m now ready for the next step.

Next, I open System Preferences and click on “œKeyboard & Mouse”, click on the “œKeyboard Shortcuts” tab, and scroll down to “œApplication Keyboard Shortcuts”.

I click the “œ+”, which brings up a dialog to add a shortcut (go figure!). Clicking the “œApplication” drop-down lets me select an application to add a shortcut to (in my case, Chromium).

Then, in the “œMenu Title” entry field, I type in the text I made a note of earlier, then click on the “œKeyboard Shortcut” field, and perform the keyboard shortcut exactly as I would when using the program.

Lastly, clicking “œAdd” saves the new shortcut. I’ve had mixed results with having to restart the affected program after creating a new shortcut. Basically, I just try it out and restart if need be.

That’s it! Now, my “œPrevious Tab” shortcut is the same in Chromium as it is in several other programs, including the venerable MacVim. I’m not actually sure where I first started using that shortcut, but it’s really stuck with me. I seem to swap tabs a lot, so it comes in very handy.

Enjoy, and let me know if you have any issues or find any programs that seems to be immune to this process.

You know that ultra sexy Google chrome everyone has been waiting to get their hands on? Well it’s gone native.  It appears that it no longer relies on wine or other virtualization type madness.  It doesn’t feel very Mac-like, but it certainly is ridiculously snappy.  Processes per tab or window is working as advertised, and it seems like the application is well on its way to a full feature release.

I haven’t paid much attention to the Chrome talk, so I’m not too sure what stuff has yet to be moved to the mac release, but from messing around with it, I have to say it’s seriously contending to be my browser of choice.  Thank god browser wars there days don’t mean writing code specific for each like it did in the 90s.

Chrome has been built upon both WebKit and V8 (both are open source goodness), so web developers will rejoice in the fact that they should have most of their bases covered if they stick to standard based layouts that work in a web kit framework.  The last thing we need is another style sheet specifically for Chromium.  Oh man,  the thought of that makes me shiver, can we kill IE 6 off yet? Please?

Download the native chrome release here.

I’ve been waiting since the dreaded Seinfeld ads for a good PR fight between Apple and Windows.  I’m on file as saying that a fight on point between the two heavyweight OS options is what the tech world needs.  It’s starting to heat up.  It started with the Get A Mac ads then it moved on to the Laptop Hunter ads and now Apple has tossed another doozy of a commercial back at Microsoft.  Looks like it’s war”¦again.

Click the link to watch the video.

[Download] [01.2 MB] [0:02:20]
Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner

In this episode, Grant talks about MetaX.

AT&T finally got around to releasing an application that will allow an AT&T subscriber to manage their account from their iPhone OS device.

The AT&T My Wireless application allows for any AT&T user to access their account without having to login to the website. Within the application you have the following options: Bill & Pay, Usage, and Features.

The Bill & Pay section of the application allows you to view your Last Payment, Last Payment Date, current payment amount, Current payment date. view your full bill as a PDF or even make a payment. The Payment option pulls your current information straight from the AT&T website, so there’s no need to add your information locally. This is quite convenient.

The usage section is probably the most useful out of the entire application. This allows you to see exactly how many minutes your account has used. In addition to minutes, the amount of data as well as text message usage. Now this can be viewed individually, or as a group (if you have a Family plan).

The last section is is ‘Features’. This is where you can add additional features to your plan. I guess this can be useful, but I don’t know how many people will be regularly adding options to their accounts.

There are some oddities with the application though. Mostly just odd visual things. For instance, there are two navigational options. A Tab Bar, and menu buttons. Now, this in and of itself isn’t the problem. The problem is that the navigation is not carried out throughout the entire application.

The second is the login page. See the image below. There are two options, ‘Done’ and ‘Go’. Now using the option of ‘Done’ would mean, to me anyway, that you are just finished, do nothing when I hit this button. Go, on the other hand, would say, ‘Log Me In’. Not in this application. They both do the same damn thing. So why not just take out the ‘Done’ button, or have it do nothing.

Overall the application is a good choice if you want to manage your AT&T account while on the go away from a web-browser. My only question is, ‘Why wasn’t this the absolute FIRST application that Apple showed off when the iPhone OS SDK was announced? It’s a good price, free, as $0.00 and available from the app store now.