Macgasm

If, like me on a bad day, you’ve ever wanted to know what your MacBook would look like with a massive bullet hole through it…now you can.

Artist Michael Tompert (who from these images you wouldn’t take as a huge Jobs fan) hosted an exhibition of his finest battered and mauled Apple products — boy can an iPhone still look beautiful smashed into a million pieces. At Live Worms Gallery in San Francisco, Tompert’s images are enough to make a fanboy weep, showing various Apple products in states of utter destruction. Even though it hurts my very soul to see a MacBook in such a state, no-one can deny these images are fascinating. Whether you think they show our subconscious frustration in the projection of technology on our otherwise free lives, or if you just think someone got bored with a handgun one afternoon — they’re pretty interesting! Anyone fancy nail-gunning this Time Machine?

Article Via Cult of Mac

In another step towards keeping your wallet in shape and your pace through life that little bit faster, Visa has unveiled the idea behind their payWave app, which allows you to access the Metro by simply waving your iPhone over a pay-point. No more fiddling around for that card in your pocket – or in my case, trying to locate my ‘always hiding’ Oyster card in the endless void that is my handbag.

Visa is trialling this right now in New York with plans to open it up to all sorts of payment types, including a collaboration with the Bank of America. We’ve heard of this sort of thing before with Barclaycard’s contact-less payments in the UK, so consumers can pay for the littlest things, like lunch and coffee, without having to count up the pennies. Having it as a way to pay for your public transport seems like a really handy idea, and will definitely make it much easier to keep everything in one place – i.e. your iPhone.

It’s not completely clear whether you have to pay for your usage online before you travel, like topping up a travelcard, or if you foot the bill afterwards, but either way it’s still a brilliant idea. Have a watch of the Visa video and let us know if you’ll be using this app when it’s finally rolled out nationally.

If you’re anything like me, sometimes you’ll be busy working and suddenly take a big step back, hands on head, brain ticking away trying to find the right answer…what’s the shortcut to undo what I just did?

Oh yes, command+z. It’s easy to forget Apple’s shortcuts – after all, there’s hundreds of them. So Hu2 have made a handy reminder on the one’s so frequently forgotten so you’re never in a muddle again! You just stick them on the leg of your iMac or even on the front of a Macbook, acting as a little reminder that’s always there.

You can get this for £19 in the UK ($30 at today’s exchange rate) and I have to say, it seems worth it. Saves having all the shortcuts in a text file on your desktop, right?

(I don’t do that….promise…*ahem*)

Via applegazette.com

I had never heard of these little instruments before, but apparently the Otamatone is a “genius singing machine” from Japan. Not being a natural musician, I do like pretending I’m the next Beethoven with a bit of app magic, so I tried out the Otamatone ($2.99) in a heartbeat.

It looks a little strange, a round smiling face which (when you realize it – took me a while) turns out to be a quaver note, looking all cute. You have to move its mouth up and down or pinch its cheeks together to make the sounds come out, then tilt your phone around to change the notes. the iPhone’s gyroscope functionality really comes out in this app, so I’m sure it’ll give you plenty of practice getting to grips with that too. The otamatone will squeak out the weirdest sound, but you’ll get used to that as time goes on! It took me a while to get the hang of tilting to get the right notes, but I think if you’re musically inclined it’ll come naturally and you’ll be belting out the show tunes in no time. I think I managed to get out a quick rendition of Happy Birthday, but I’ll save you the wails — it wasn’t a masterpiece.

You can use the settings to adjust the volume, the octave, and the color of your instrument (only black or white available at the moment though), as well as record your tunes by tapping the yellow bar and starting to play once the stick swivels round to face the other way. It might take a few goes to get the hang of how to use it, but it’s pretty fun to learn! I think all it needs to take it to the next level is to bring in some sort of songbook like Magic Piano or Leaf Trombone, so there’s certain places to hold it and way to tune it – that way you can really learn how to play it through levels and different difficulties.

I enjoyed playing it and think it could also be fun for little kids, simply because they’d find the ‘waah waah’ sound amusing. Recording songs allows you to see your progress as you learn to play the instrument, but it would be a longer investment to have a songbook and those stages to work at getting better at playing.

Have a look at the video, which shows the otamatone in action:

Remember those orange and blue tinted photos from the Seventies, filled with moustached men in flares and women with daisy chain headbands? Ever thought they’d end up on the iPhone? Nah, me neither. They have though, in the form of the Hipstamatic app ($1.99).

Hipstamatic allows you to take photos through your iPhone camera, choose which lens you want, flash, and even film type — there’s even an in-app store (of course) to purchase more styles of each at 59p/99¢ each.

Once you load the app, you’re greeted with that familiar plastic back, bright yellow button and flash slider, as well as a small viewfinder — you’re almost tempted to put your eye up to it! I took a few pictures with the standard setting first, giving me a fifties style picture — light blue and green hues with plenty of shadows. Not being a photography buff, I have to say everything in this app impressed me. After seeing plenty of friend’s pictures in Facebook made by this very app, I wasn’t up for taking any old picture. I wanted interesting photos that really brought out the nostalgia in these old photographic styles.

Selecting the lenses, the standard choices are John S, Jimmy, or Kaimal Mark II — with the extra options being Helga Viking, Lucifer VI, and Roboto Glitter (that one sounds interesting). I had good fun finding out the different styles of these, eventually settling with Jimmy as my favourite — producing a real old style 70’s effect. Then with the Flash you only get two standard options — Standard (there we go, pretty self explanatory) and Dreampop which adds even more colour into your finished photo. The extras include a bigger range of gels and a Berry Pop multi-coloured pack including a lens and film. The films are a bit less exciting. There’s Blanko, Ina’s 1969, and Kodot Verichrome as standard, then Black & White, SuperGrain, Pistil, and Float as extras. I tended to stick with the Ina’s 1969 as I really liked its polaroid style.

Once you’ve picked your bits and pieces, you’re ready to bring all the memories flooding back. A notice states the camera is ‘warming the transistors’ before you get to slide the flash on and I noticed when you first open the app you’re greeted with ‘wiping off the lens, please wait’. Oh iPhone, I’m not used to you being so…dated! Then after taking your picture you have to wait for it to be “developed and printed,” which I did get quite impatient with. It’s not like your classic iPhone camera where it’s instantly in your gallery. You have a wait a couple of minutes for it to “develop” the photo into your library. From there you can share by emailing or posting to Facebook, as well as creating albums to separate all your styles.

For me the app is a bit of fun but I’m pretty sure I’ll get bored with it soon, after its novelty has worn off. For the more serious of fans, you can enter a monthly contest to win prizes for your best HipstaPrint at their community.

The app is, of course, not as good as the real deal but it’s certainly cheaper than buying a hipster cam in a trendy store and a handy way of keeping your prints together to upload in batches. We’re all tired of scanning polaroids aren’t we? Hipstamatic is available on the App Store for $1.99.

We all love a bargain, but with the influx of group buying sites in the last year offering up to 90% off your favourite kinds of treats, the taste is becoming a little bitter. It was all going quite well for Groupola – the MD Mark Pearson is the founder of MyVoucherCodes, giving them a quick-step into the already saturated world of discounted online deals, and they boasted over 1,000 fans on Facebook and Twitter even before their first deal debuted. That was until they decided to use  the iPhone 4 as a pretty pawn in their email harvesting game.

When I got the email announcing they were going to sell the deal of the century, unlocked and SIM-free iPhone 4s for £99, I sent it round to my colleagues, family and friends – well done Groupola, you got them to sign up for an account with their emails. An 80% saving isn’t going to repulse anyone, and their great reputation led many to believe this kind of deal would be a blast, including The Guardian who ran a story on the deal that same day. So on Friday 2nd July, we and, according to Groupola, 5 million other people tried to purchase the new iPhone for £99 from their site — if we could get on it. People started to get angry. People started shouting they only had 3 iPhones. People started wondering if this was a legitimate deal at all. They took to Facebook and Twitter in their frustration, creating hate groups and asking Groupola to make a statement to reveal if they ever had any iPhones in the first place.

By this time it all started to click into place. They had just created the biggest hype for their company as well as Apple and gained (according to their figures for the number of users entering their site that day) millions of emails from new users. Even though the hype backfired and many tried to unsubscribe from the company, I’d be interested to know the stats for the providers selling the new phone in the UK as to whether they got more visitors whilst the offer was going on, and what Apple has to say about the hype. I knew that Apple would never have agreed to sell the phones with Groupola at such a discounted price, which started off my concerns that the deal was a little fishy. I worked out that with 200 phones sold (as they claim) Groupola was working off a 90k loss at the start. Wow, risky!

What seems to be the most interesting is how they managed to get 200 iPhone 4s in their possession, or perhaps they’ll be handing out vouchers to the lucky buyers instead. The limit of 2 per person by Apple would have taken a while, so I’m interested to hear from anyone who was lucky enough to get one from Groupola – if they even exist in the first place. I ended up not being lucky enough and like 4,999,800 others I’ll be hanging around my provider for an upgrade. Even if it doesn’t save me 80%.

So you’ve bought your brand spanking new iPad, look at it all shiny in its box. Isn’t it beautiful? You want to pick it up, hold it, kiss it a little bit. Then you place it where it’s always intended to go…as a bookend.

Wait, what?

Yes, a bookend. Brought to you as a concept by Dominic Wilcox on he site Variations on Normal, this seems like a very ‘novel’ way of using your brand new iPad in the home (sorry, couldn’t help that). He states that:

My idea this week is an accessory to transform the whizzbang iPad into a simple practical object that may be useful around the home, in this case a bookend.

Just think about it. You’ve finished browsing and sorting your photos, had a little go on Star Walk and now you’ve noticed all your Dean Koontz’s are all wonky. Best way to sort that is making your new iPad into a stylish new bookend to sort all your paperbacks into one shelf of tidy books. Amazing.

If you look at it on the one hand – what a spectacular way of wasting money, but on the other hand it’s a particularly interesting way of making a brilliant new tool just a notch more handy than it already is. Let’s make this a real product already!

Some might say it’s romantic, some might not care and some might think it’s the most ridiculous thing they’ve ever seen. Me? I think it’s both sweet and completely memorable. What I’m talking about is the marriage of Ya Ting and Joshua Li on Valentine’s Day 2010…at New York’s Fifth Avenue Apple Store.

Their rings were attached to 1st Gen iPhones, wrapped in silver and red ribbon, and their vows were written on Letterpress cards with ‘I love you more than this:’ and a picture of an iPhone below it. (Incidentally, you can buy those on Etsy if you’re quick enough). Plus, they had their own Steve Jobs minister dressed in jeans and black turtleneck! Most interesting wedding of the century? I think so!

Apparently, the couple met at that same store whilst buying iPhone cases (or iPods some are reporting) and so saw it fit to return to that same place to take their relationship to the next step. Congratulations Mr & Mrs Li! Watch the youtube video below: