Filed under: Odds and ends

It's always a fun moment when a friend comes by to say "Yeah, I just got this Android 7" tablet, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to send it back." Not without letting us take a quick snapshot, you're not! This $199 KIRF tablet is a dead ringer for a squeezed, shrunk-down iPad -- there's even a little square on the Home button, even though it's a bit cockeyed.

The battery had run down on this unit (a hardware on/off switch! How quaint), but it's running a build of Android 2.1 that's fairly well convinced it's on a phone -- down to the non-functional signal bars on the screen.

Pictured here with the genuine article, the miniPad seems to be scaled for a smaller, cozier world. At least it might fit in a pocket.

If you've got pictures of ersatz Apple wannabe gear in the field, pop them in our Flickr feed and shoot us a note.

Thanks Christien!

We love iPhone/iPad vs. unwitting criminal stories, especially ones that end happily. Across this category, though, it's hard to hold a candle to the story of Jordan Sturm, Horatio Toure, and one particular purloined iPhone.

As reported by the Chronicle, Sturm was standing on the street in San Francisco's SOMA neighborhood this past Monday when Toure rode up on a bicycle, grabbed the iPhone out of her hand and sped away. Most of the time, the phone would be gone for good, or (with luck) tracked down by Apple's Find My iPhone service. In this particular case, though, there was an easier way.

The iPhone in question is owned by Covia Labs, and it was being used to test the company's Alert & Respond software for police officers and military personnel. CEO David Kahn had asked Sturm to step outside -- with a phone running A&R's GPS live tracking app -- so he could demonstrate the geographic tool to his PR folk. Moments after she walked out the door, the system came to life... and showed an indicator heading off down the street at high speed. Oops.

Sturm ran back inside, they called police; Toure was arrested ten minutes later and about half a mile away, in possession of the stolen phone. Unlucky for him, but lucky for Covia Labs; they saved the cost of a new iPhone and gained a whole bunch of free publicity.

Note: Several commenters are insinuating that this theft was set up as a stunt to provide exposure for Covia Labs. There is absolutely no evidence to support that theory at this time; the suspect was arrested and details on his arrest were provided by the SFPD, per the original SFGate story. The suspect was booked on felony charges and placed in jail.

[via Techmeme]

Photo by oedipusphinx | flickr: cc

Even though I haven't actually seen it in person, I've been a big fan of Apple's App Wall at WWDC every year; they've hooked up a bunch of servers and Mac pros in order to create an animated set of App Store icons that shows real-time purchases in a very visual way. Now, I can have a little piece of the App Wall on my Mac at home; a Polish developer named iApp has created an AppWall screensaver that's now available for a free download. We got in touch with App's Peter Tuszynski who confirmed that, while it doesn't work exactly like the official App Wall (it won't show you real-time purchases), the screensaver really does pull icons from top free or top paid apps by way of an option choice, and then it displays those icons on an ever-changing screensaver display.

It's very cool. I downloaded it on my MacBook, and while the saver does take a little while to load up (it has to pull in all of those icons every time it starts up), it's a reasonable facsimile of Apple's official display. And you don't even have to buy tickets to San Francisco to see it! The screensaver is available for free right now. If the site's being hammered, just give it some time to recover from the traffic. There are also icons on the site that hint that Apple will bring this to the iPhone and iPad "soon," so we'll stay tuned and see what they've got planned.

It's hard out there for a hip-hop star. Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas recently had a not so good, good night. Thieves broke into his parked Bentley and made off with $10,000 worth of loot including jewelry, other personal property and the singer's shiny Apple iPad.

However, law enforcement officials have honed in on the the perpetrator using the iPad's GPS functionality, and are close to making an arrest. The exact means they used for locating the iPad, however, is unknown -- i.e., whether it was an app or MobileMe's "Find My iPhone/iPad" feature.

Whether for a special event performance or music partnership, Apple has collaborated with many musicians in a variety of ways. Back in 2004 the Black Eyed Peas, and their hit "Let's Get it Started," were prominently featured in the launch of the iMac G5.

[via TMZ.com]

Apple ducked out of awarding Mac design laurels at WWDC this year in favor of iPhone and iPad apps, so the geeks at Ars Technica jumped into the pool with valor and distinction.

Ars Technica solicited nominations from readers, then used staff to cull the list to get some well deserved winners.

The winners in each category are:

Best New OS X App: Transmit 4 by Panic (FTP client)

Best Mac OS X User Experience: Tweetie for Mac (Twitter client)

Most innovative OS X App: Dropbox (file sync tool)

Best App for Education: Papers (digital document management)

Best student-created App: Schoolhouse 3 (student database)

Readers' Choice Award: 1Password 3 (password management)

The winners get a laser engraved cube which looks quite spiffy. It's nice to see these apps recognized. Apple seems to expending a lot of energy on all things iPad and iPhone. We love our Apple mobile gadgets, but we still love our Apple desktops and laptops too.

Apple products often spawn ecosystems of product categories to facilitate their existence. The iPod and iPhone, for instance, gave birth to speaker docks, FM transmitters and protective cases. And now an ecosystem of products is materializing for the iPad: they include cases of all sorts, bean bag lap rests and, yes, clothes. Suits, to be specific.

Upscale Manhattan tailor Mohan's Tailor Shop, which boasts a clientele including Barry Bonds, Walt Frazier and Gary Carter, recently unveiled a custom made suit with a jacket pocket to accommodate the iPad (as reported in the WSJ). The impetus for it was the result of several customer requests for the feature; since its unveiling, the tailor says it has received about "100 calls and scheduled several dozen appointments with customers over the next several weeks" for a fitting.

Mohan's must be pulling off some magic of its own to fit Apple's "magical" device in a jacket pocket. At 1.6 pounds, I'm guessing the iPad may pull one side of the jacket lower than the other, thus necessitating some kind of counterbalance.

Personally, I'd rather just use a bag.

[via Cult of Mac]

I'm a latecomer to the Safari party. I have used Opera and OmniWeb, but eventually, the siren song of Safari was too much to ignore. For the most part, I like it quite a bit, but there is one thing that has bothered me for a long time.

Safari has some ridiculous keyboard shortcuts. So, I made some better ones.

Exhibit #1: the Downloads window. By default, the keyboard shortcut to open the Downloads window is Alt+cmd+L. That's right, "L" for "Downloads." Does that make sense to you? Me neither. It should be "cmd+D" but ... that leads us to another problem.

Read on for more...

I've been on a bit of a Hazel kick lately. I wrote a short shell script that will sort my Crash Logs.

#!/bin/sh 

### Get the name of the app 
APP=`/bin/echo $1 | /usr/bin/sed 's#_.*##g'` 

### make a directory 
/bin/mkdir -p "$APP" 

### move the log into the directory 
/bin/mv -n "$1" "$APP" 

### done! 
exit 0 

Add this rule to the folder ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports. The rules above tell Hazel to only run on crash logs older than today, in case you need to do anything with it such as send it to the developer.

UPDATE: Note that the developer of Hazel left a comment below showing how to do this without a script.

In a move we all should have seen coming, Borders has announced the Kobo, its US$149 eReader and Kindle/Nook competitor. It will launch in June with an accompanying eBook store, stocked with more than a million titles.

There are iPad and iPhone apps out now, and both are free. The odd thing is that they both look gorgeous on the iDevices' color screens as compared to the Kobo's greyscale display, and offer wireless access to the store, which the reader does not.

The 8-ounce device features E Ink technology and tidy dimensions, measuring approximately 4.7 x 7.2 x 0.4 inches. The Kobo boasts 1 GB of memory and a battery charge that will reportedly last two weeks. It features Bluetooth, but book transfers are done via the included desktop software over USB.

The Kobo will be available starting on June 17th (Borders is accepting pre-orders now), just in time to make dad wonder why he doesn't deserve an iPad for Father's Day.

Sachin Agarwal, cofounder and CEO of Posterous, and former Apple employee who worked on Final Cut Pro, thinks that the Finder is dead. I wouldn't break out the sackcloth and ashes (or the champagne, depending on your feelings towards the Finder) just yet.

He has two main points:

1. We will no longer interact with applications or files on a desktop PC

2. The central point of syncing your data will no longer be your PC, it will be MobileMe (the cloud)

Let's address his second point first: bwahahahahahaha. OK, I feel much better. As anyone who has used iDisk knows, iDisk is terrible in its current form. It's slow, it's easily corrupted, and it does not handle sync errors well.

I've been waiting for Apple to get MobileMe and especially iDisk in shape for years, and every year I ship off my $100 for MobileMe hoping that this will be the year. We are no closer to it than we were three years ago. Or five years ago. Sachin says that "the Finder hasn't been updated with anything sexy in years." That may be true, but the same thing can be said of Apple's use of "the cloud" through MobileMe.

Read on for more thoughts...

Although the Apple blogging community is fairly tight-knit, we usually don't go out of our way to laud our competitors. This week, however, we're making an exception.

Back in 1990, Adam and Tonya Engst jump-started the online publishing world with TidBITS. Initially, TidBITS was distributed as a HyperCard stack filled with Mac news, reviews, and opinion articles. Later it became a text-based publication, then moved to the Web. Adam was responsible for getting many Mac users connected to the Internet in the early days through his classic book The Internet Starter Kit for Mac, which provided step-by-step instructions in how to connect to the 'net in the days before Wi-Fi and broadband.

Many of the writers at TidBITS are well-known names in the digital world, and TidBITS has also spawned its own publishing house: Take Control Books.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of TidBITS, and (fitting for a digital publication) issue 1,024 -- that's 2 to the 10th power for those of you who don't play with numbers. From all of us at TUAW to all of you at TidBITS, congratulations!

About six months ago, we wrote about two free Starbucks apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. myStarbucks got you to the nearest caffeinated outlet and let you build your coffee, and The Starbucks Card Mobile app replaced your physical card, allowing you to have a bar code scanned and pay for your purchases. When the card ran dry, it could be refilled with caffeine-free money. The Starbucks Card Mobile app was tested at 16 Seattle stores in the Silicon Valley.

Apparently, paying for coffee with an iPhone was a big success. Starbucks has expanded their test to all 1,002 outlets inside Target stores. The company is taking it one step at a time and currently has no plans to further expand it to the 11,000 Starbucks stores in the US -- yet.

You will have to update your app to version 1.2.1 to take advantage of the expanded roll out, but if you have a Starbucks Card Mobile app, you've most likely already done that.

So, the next time you find yourself at a Target, you'll have to find a way of justifying your purchase of a cup coffee that costs more than the shirt you just bought.

[via Computerworld]

Once upon a time, I worked for a major American retailer in its electronics department. The manager of that department, above and beyond all other considerations, wanted us to push extended warranties to customers. These warranties represented almost pure profit for the company, because they cost nearly nothing to implement while costing the customer anywhere from 10-40% the value of the item they were buying. The profit margin on a $2500 LCD TV was very slim, often gaining the company no more than $100 of profit; by contrast, the $549 extended warranty was nearly 100% profit for the retailer.

From the retailer's perspective, it's easy to see why they push these extended warranties. From a customer's perspective, though, it's a potential source of confusion or even animosity toward the retailer -- I had more than a few customers (usually older ones) ask me why they needed this warranty in the first place, why the company wouldn't just "stand behind their products." More interested in helping people than trying to BS them for either my own profit or the retailer's, often as not this meant I ended up not selling those extended warranties... it also meant I wasn't a salesman for very long. I won't say which retailer I worked for, but I will say that the memory of working there sears my mind to this day.

Most purchasers seem to think that extended warranties are a huge waste of money, and in many (if not most) cases they're correct. Like an idiot, I bought an extended warranty for my Wii back on launch day in 2006 -- that was $60 down the drain. I'll blame that one on standing in line all night in sub-freezing temperatures outside of Target to snag one. But when it comes to AppleCare, I have no hesitation about laying money down for that.

We've hit on the value proposition of AppleCare a few times on TUAW before. Sang related Megan's story of a dead MacBook, complete with a detailed analysis of why AppleCare is worth it. Robert made the case for AppleCare, and Cory's answer to the question, to buy AppleCare or not, was a resounding "Yes."

I'll add my voice to the chorus of TUAW writers in support of AppleCare -- not because I'm trying to sell it to you (despite the word "Apple" in "The Unofficial Apple Weblog," our only affiliation with the company is as fans and buyers of their products), but because AppleCare has saved me literally hundreds of dollars in repair costs, even though I live in a country without a single official Apple store. Read on to find out how AppleCare saved my bacon, and then decide for yourself whether it's worth it for you.