award posts

Macworld is reporting that Steve Jobs is one of the recipients of the Jim Henson Celebration Honor – one of four Jim Henson Honors. Established in 2005, the awards program acknowledges organizations, individuals, or products that reflect the core values and philosophy of Jim Henson and the company he founded. Criteria used in the evaluation process include: a commitment to creativity, innovative applications of art and technology, and inspiration of others.

Four people are honored every year. In addition to Steve Jobs, this year's other honorees are:

• The Jim Henson Community Honor – 826 National, a tutoring, writing, and publishing organization
• The Jim Henson Creativity Honor – Neill Blomkamp, director of the movie "District 9"
• The Jim Henson Technology Honor – YouTube Symphony Orchestra, the world's first collaborative orchestra

From the official press release [PDF link], The Jim Henson Company stated that the Celebration Honor "goes to an individual, organization or product that makes the world a better place by inspiring people to celebrate life. A co-founder of Apple, Jobs has led the company and the creation of its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, iPod media player, iTunes media store and Mac computers."

CEO Lisa Henson went on to say, "Steve Jobs has continuously broken new ground with technologies that allow existing media in all forms to be easily enjoyed and also by providing fantastic tools for artists, photographers, musicians and filmmakers of all skill levels."

Jim Henson was one of the individuals featured in Apple's 1997 Think Different Campaign that many believe was central in rebuilding Apple's image in the minds of computer users.

Not too long ago we told you about an artist creating a cover for the New Yorker magazine using a paint program on the iPhone. Now an Australian photographer has won an award for a photo he took on his iPhone.

Steve Turner created a rather striking collection of images he put together, and manipulated to create a print that caught the eye of the judges at the Photo Marketing Association show in Sydney.

I tried to contact the photographer, and we had a brief email back and forth. He's traveling so I don't have too many details and the time difference between us has made communications spotty. His messages, of course, are all coming via iPhone. Steve says he has about $200,000 worth of camera equipment but loves shooting on the iPhone. He used CameraBag for the effects, and scaled the photos up on his Mac at his studio. If you go to Steve's web site you'll see the photo pop up. It's the photo with 9 small images and a larger image of a car. His non- iPhone work is pretty impressive as well. My guess is the image was taken with the older 2MP camera, allowing for time to submit his photo for consideration, but it is impressive.

There's just no predicting how creative people can be even if the equipment is not top notch. As I remember learning some years ago from an instructor in a photography course when I was complaining about my little camera, 'If Ansel Adams uses my camera, he gets great pictures. If I get his camera, not so much.' Great lesson for us all, and congrats Steve.

Thanks to photographer Gavin Blue for the tip

We've posted about Starmap before -- it's a full-featured map of the sky on your iPhone that will let you find stars, constellations, and "deep sky" objects in the blanket overhead. Despite a few glitches and slowdowns, the app is pretty popular, and now it could be the only iPhone app nominated for a Sir Arthur Clarke Award. The yearly awards ceremony recognizes notable contributions to space exploration, and this year's list of nominees includes Frederic Descamps, creator of Starmap, for Best Individual Achievement. He's got some rough competition: Richard Garriott, creator of videogames like Ultima Online and Tabula Rasa, is also in that category, presumably for his recent trip into space. But Garriott's in quite a few other categories, so the iPhone developer has at least a fighting chance.

But we're sure that, as the creator of an iPhone app, it's an honor just to be nominated. It's doubtful this is the last non-software award something released for the iPhone will be winning.

Thanks, Howard B!

That is to say, John Hodgman as PC and Justin Long as Mac in Apple's Get a Mac campaign have brought home the bacon. The bacon being the Garfield "Bobby" Award for best male performance in a commercial. As always, Apple's main campaign from TBWA/Chiat/Day is generating lots of buzz, both good and bad. It seems like pretty much no matter what they do, where Apple leads others will follow. As we just mentioned there is a new Christmas ad out. Our congratulations to the Mac pitch men.

[Via Digg through Spymac]

I just received another email from ADC reminding developers that the submission deadline for Apple's 2006 Design Awards is coming up - June 16th to be exact. While I'm willing to bet that most of you TUAWers aren't developers, I thought I would pass on the reminder to you just in case your favorite 3rd party app's developer could use that extra motivation to submit their product.

Every year, Britain awards influential Britons Orders of the British Empire, such as Knight, Commander, and Officer. The highest order is Knight, but also well-known and prestigious is the Commander of the Order of the British Empire, or CBE.

Jonathan Ive, Apple's creative designer behind many of its revolutionary products such as the families of iMacs, and the iPod, has become a CBE on this year's New Years Honours List.

Thanks to all those who sent in this news item.