Macgasm

Double Fine, the company behind such beloved games as Psychonauts and Brütal Legend, has decided to crowd source their funding of a brand new adventure game through Kickstarter. Of course, if any company can make a fantastic adventure game, it will be Double Fine. Tim Schafer, the founder of Double Fine, is known for heading up production of Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango at Lucas Arts. Working with Tim is Ron Gilbert. Gilbert, as many of you know, pretty much invented the genre of adventure games with Maniac Mansion as well as the Monkey Island series. (more…)

The FBI has just dropped a slightly censored 191 page copy of their file on Steve Jobs. The file includes quite a few interesting trails of paper including background screenings for a position in the White House.

The file, which you can peruse yourself here, contains several uncensored bits of information that I found a bit odd. Steve’s social security number is found all over that file, and while it’d be hard to steal the identity of such a recognized figure, it leads me to wonder why they wouldn’t censor it just to be safe.

Among other interesting findings are details of an FBI investigation regarding a bomb threat made against the Steve, with the crazy man trying to solicit funds from the late Apple founder in 1985. The would-be extortionist made his threats from a phone booth in the parking garage of the San Francisco International Airport and demanded 1 million dollars.

Outside of those couple of things, the file is fairly lackluster. It would have been interesting to read about a “pre-Apple” Jobs and his exploits as seen through the eyes of a government agency. This really got my gears turning, as I hope my FBI file is way more impressive by the time I kick the bucket. Any suggestions?

Source: FBI <–Who’d a thunk?

Yesterday the news circulated faster than a bunk iPhone 5 rumor on a slow news day, Path, the sexy-popular social network for the iPhone, was automatically uploading your contacts to their servers. Today, Path CEO, Dave Morin, took to the web to post an apology and explain to the masses why things were happening the way they were. In the post, titled We are sorry, Morin states:

There’s doing it, and then there’s doing it right. It’s pretty clear that Dave Morin immediately realized Path’s misstep and took immediate action to clean up the security concerns that its users had with the company storing contacts. Starting today, in version 2.0.6, users are now being asked if they would like to upload contacts to the company’s servers. The process is now opt-in, not automagically uploaded behind your back. It’s a small win, but a win nonetheless for iPhone users.

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Netflix is seeing some heavy competition from Amazon. Today, the Seattle-based online retail behemoth announced that they have struck a deal with Viacom for a massive catalog of TV shows for their Prime service.

Netflix, which has long used its contract with Starz for a nontrivial amount of their available streaming content, will be in for a substantial problem when that deal ends at the end of the month. This move from Viacom clearly shows that not only is Amazon very serious about competing with Netflix, but also that Viacom doesn’t want Netflix to get too big. Dominant distribution channels scare content producers like crazy it seems, and this wouldn’t be the first time Amazon steps in to be the shoulder the content producers cry on. Back when music still had DRM, the music companies were very grumpy with Apple, so they took their ball to Amazon’s court. Netflix is clearly in for a bumpy 2012.

So, what happens to Apple fans? Netflix is very popular among us because not only does it work on the Mac, but iOS and Apple TV stream Netflix content beautifully. There isn’t any way to stream Amazon Prime videos on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. Would Amazon be willing to make an iOS streaming app? Is Apple willing to put Amazon Prime on the Apple TV? Let’s hope so, because soon it might be the only way to stream some of our favorite content.

Source: Amazon PR

Hey Beatlemaniacs! The “Sir” Beatle and Apple are teaming up to stream a live performance directly to iTunes and Apple TV.

Considering all of the tension between the two Apples, Paul sure does like to pimp his new work through Apple Inc.’s marketing channels. It’s an interesting way of promoting your album, but sadly, only a member of the most successful band of all time gets to take advantage. Think of a world where buying an album on iTunes was your ticket to see a band streaming live. It would make music less of a commodity and more of an event. We’re hoping that Apple does more events like this in the future with lesser known artists.

Are you planning on attending virtually? What if you had to buy the album first? Would you put up the $10 USD album cost to see the walrus live on the Internet? We’re curious if eConcerts could work, and if Apple would be willing to do them. Sound off in the comment section and hit us up on Twitter. Our handle is @macgasm. We want to hear what you think, so don’t hesitate.

Hat tip to MacRumors
Image Credit: Mike Krzeszak

Miniature iPhone speaker company Motz has created a nifty little wooden Apple logo-inspired speaker for your favorite iDevice. The speaker is 100% hand crafted, and contains a rechargeable Lithium Polymer battery so you can get some extra juice out of your music while you’re on the go.

The speaker lasts between 5 – 10 hours depending on how you’re using it. The speaker will set you back $55.00 and you can buy it on the Austrailian website ModLifeOnline.

To be honest, this probably won’t last too long on the market once Apple’s lawyers find it, so make sure you pick it up as fast as possible if you want it.

Just when you thought Apple rumors were getting out of hand, we’re now getting reports from major news outlets that Rogers, and Bell already have the rumoured Apple Television in their testing labs.

From The Globe and Mail:

That’s really the only new information in the entire article, which eventually goes on to rehash all the rumors we’ve heard around the Internet the last couple of months.

Curious about the veracity of the claims? We are too. If Apple is trying to get companies like Rogers and Bell to partner with the company to bring content to its new-age television viewing device, they would at some point have to get their hands on it. That being said, hands-on would be extremely limited, and only occur at the highests levels, making it unlikely that information would leak from Rogers or Bell. Apple sends out iPhone models to carriers before the phones are released on networks, but they’re extremely locked down, and provide very little detail about what the phones look like. The same would happen with these televisions, if they actually exist.

Rogers and Bell aren’t the first companies to be approached either. It was reported earlier this year that CBS’s CEO let it slip that Apple was approaching networks to get content locked up for the Apple Television. With all the chatter, it certainly sounds like Apple’s out there trying to make deals before an Apple Television gets released. It could be a while though; there’s no timeline or indication of when a product could ship.

Read Rogers, BCE vying for a bite of Apple’s iTV on The Globe and Mail

The New York Times has an awesome article and interview up on its website that features Stephen Wolfram, the founder of the search engine Wolfram Alpha. Perhaps not so surprisingly, Wolfram announced to the Times that Siri accounts for about 25 percent of all queries on Wolfram Alpha:

The quote has got me thinking a little bit about search engines and where that kind of technology is heading in the future. Aggregating results from the Internet and providing results to the webizens isn’t something that’s going to disappear any time soon, but the way we interact with a search engine is changing dramatically. With spam results both from SEO spammers and Google prioritizing its own results within a search, honest, unbiased, and valuable results are rarely being prioritized on the native Google search results page these days. Siri, and by extension, any application, can reach out and take advantage of multiple search databases, and provide users with relevant results, without ever having to visit the Wolfram Alpha website, or Google.

The steps taken by Apple to get Siri access to important information is pretty genius, and it’s undoubtably redefining the way we use search engines and get results. Instead of relying on one source, like Google, for all of your results, Siri could reach out to different services to gain access to search results. For instance, looking for a new music album? Siri could reach out to iTunes or Spotify, or any other service of your choice. Looking to rent a new movie? Siri could return results from Netflix. Want to read some new Apple news? Hell, Siri could reach out to Macgasm and search our database for results. In every one of these cases it would be almost impossible for SEO spammers to game the system for better search results, and in every one of these cases, Siri would get more accurate results directly from a service that specializes in the information Siri is looking for instead of relying on generalized services like Google. Siri is already reaching out to Yelp for its restaurant location-based recommendations, what’s to stop it from doing something similar for other popular requests in music, film, or news?

Apple is actually directly competing with Google doing what it does best, piecing together existing technologies into a more intuitive and usable service. Search just got a whole lot more interesting, if you ask us.

Read Wolfram, a Search Engine, Finds Answers Within Itself on The New York Times