I'll be honest and admit to trying this as soon as I saw it. Point Mobile Safari to http://38i.biz/tricorder and view an iPhone-optimized web page that resembles a Star Trek Tricorder.
So, what does it do, you ask? Why, it scans a given area, interprets and displays gathered data and records all findings to isolinear chips.
Actually, it doesn't do to much. Once you "turn it on" by clicking the power button, you can switch between three functions and view related animations. Every minute or so, a window pops up with a snide remark like, "The Federation is shocked. The Enterprise actually ferried an alien VIP from one place to another without serious incident." It's even got a snazzy webclip icon.
Sadly, there are no sounds to accompany the visuals. It might not offer much more than a little entertainment, but one thing is certain ... it will definitely help you pick up chicks.
America's favorite ex-con (that's Martha Stewart, not her dog Sharkey, as seen above) just loves her new MacBook Air, according to her blog. Like most MBA owners, she's "amazed" by how thin it is, and is thrilled that the trackpad "works much the same way as the Apple iPhone" -- in fact, her whole writeup reads exactly like an ad from Apple, complete with the link to the Apple Store at the end. Who knew Martha was such a Mac-head?
Although she does settle that debate about whether the book counts as a laptop or a laptop support unit: Martha still keeps her HP right next to the Air, not only because she likes to keep up with both platforms, but apparently because when aides come by her desk to work, she wants them to have choices. And we all know what choice is: a good thing.
I believe that a good percentage of our staff here at TUAW is married, female, or both, so being the bachelor that I am, I'll be the one to post the news that Apple Stores are a great place to meet single men, sent to us by reader Naveed (and I do believe this might be the first and hopefully the last time that TUAW has ever linked to Cosmo). Yes, Cosmopolitan ranks the Apple Store as the number one place for women to meet guys (although it is on the same long list as political rallies and steakhouses, so maybe Cosmo has no idea what it's talking about).
But hey, the single male bloggers of TUAW can't help but agree that yes, if you're going hunting for us, there's no better place to go than your local Apple retailer. Not only are us male Mac-heads intelligent, green, and playful, but when you single ladies want to know how to share your iTunes media, or hook up your new Time Capsule, we'll be right there with the answer.
A long time ago (three years!), we linked a cute series of photos on Flickr that photographer pinkbeltcalled "The iPod Family." Basically, she arranged her beloved iPods in domestic scenes that were pretty funny. After three posts from us, however, she stopped uploading new shots in the series.
Today, she's back and the iPod Family has some new members: A green nano and a silver shuffle. We're glad you're back at it, pinkbelt!
While we're all in the mood, here are some additional iPod parodies we've enjoyed
The fake lips in the copy and paste demo (and the stealth declaration of love at the end) had me laughing out loud, but this one has me rolling -- who knew the iPhone demo guy was such a hip hop mastermind? Pete Miser was the one who put the song together, and apparently Merritt Duff edited the video. I especially like the dance at the end, and the lyrics are perfect. I've never bought a Bluetooth headset because I think they just plain look dumb, but people have thought I was crazy on the bus as I talked directly into the little mic on the headphones.
I love it. John from the MacBook Air demos should do a dis song, and we have a mobile computing rap feud!
Is anyone else worried about Apple's obsession with being thin? This issue has come up before, but while last time around it was supposed to be serious, this time it's just plain silly. While Apple is crowing about releasing the world's thinnest notebook, nobody's thinking about the self esteem of all those other laptops and notebooks out there. Instead they're left... well, you can see above. Hilarious.
Has anyone considered the feelings of these bulky notebooks, growing up in a world that values computers so small and thin that they fit in envelopes?!? Worry not, little laptops. God Dell, Lenovo or HP made you just the way you are, and it's possible to be big and beautiful all at the same time. Well, not Apple beautiful (come on now-- you could definitely stand to lose that optical drive), but beautiful in your own big, bulky way.
The holidays. A time for joy, a time for gathering, a time for product smackdowns. So which is the better buy? A Mac mini or a festive honey baked ham? Let TUAW do the comparison work for you.
Mac mini/Ham Smackdown
Feature
Mac Mini
Honey Baked Ham
Winner
Availability
Apple and a few select vendors
Widely available
Ham.
Cost
From $600, although the $800 model is far superior
$50 or so
With over an order of magnitude difference in price, the ham is the clear winner.
Environmental impact
Contains lots of chemicals but can run on relatively green energy sources, meeting Energy Star requirements.
Completely organic but may produce lots of emissions after a large meal with all the trimmings.
True geek heroes are made, not born. Well, the truth is, they're drawn -- by Nitrozac, in the perennial fan favorite Joy of Tech webcomic. The tech luminaries that have cartoon avatars include Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates... and now, disguised as a young Carrie Fisher, our own iPhone-hacking Rebel Alliance undercover leader Erica Sadun. You have to see the full version to really appreciate it. (Might as well play the theme while you read.)
I'm not sure where this ranks on Erica's list of life achievements (after all, she was quoted by the Associated Press this week), but it's a nice tribute to her hard work and dedicated efforts on behalf of iPhone users everywhere. From all of us at TUAW, thank you Erica and way to go, Joy of Tech!
Gosh, I love Woot.com. Not only are they based in my original hometown (St. Louis, MO, also home of Fried Ravioli and the Bowling Hall of Fame), and not only do they have some great deals on their site (they sell just one item per day, usually at lower-than-normal prices), but they are insightful and funny people. Take, for example, today's item-- it's a Zune (that non-Apple mp3 player that you may have heard of). When Woot offered the Zune a little while ago, not only did they make headlines, but Apple fans really enjoyed it-- it took Microsoft's mp3 player a full 23 hours to completely sell out, even at the low price of $150.
And now, as reader Jon points out, Woot is giving Apple fans another chuckle. Not only is today's Zune on sale for $130 ($20 less than before-- and it is sold out as of this writing), but their description text is a pitch-perfect parody of another mp3 seller who's had to announce falling prices on one of his products. And they've even offering a coupon back to their previous Zune customers-- as they say, "we want to convincingly pretend to do the right thing for our valued Zune customers."
It's Jobsian parody worthy of Fake Steve. Very nice job, Woot. Thanks, Jon!
There are tons of iPhone wallpapers out there by now, but this set is extra special-- it's a set of satirical wallpapers, designed, says Josh, to "show off the true power of the iPhone" by replacing the standard loading screen with one of your own. Did you know your iPhone could attract total strangers, create Universal Healthcare, or even resolve global warming? It can-- just as soon as the loading bar completes.
I think my favorite is the one shown here, though. Sure, since it's just a picture, you could say that the bar will never finish, so the iPhone will never be obsolete. But as one of the people waiting for v2.0 to buy an iPhone, seeing the bar past halfway at least inspires a little hope that we're almost there.
That's right. Our Woz. Steve Wozniak. Kathy Griffin. The mind boggles. Not so much because it's wrong or anything (good for both of them), but just because-- how could that possibly happen? Apparently Woz met her after seeing her stand-up show, and they hit it off. What a weird world we live in. And did you ever, in a million years, think you'd see Woz on Perez Hilton's site? Me either. What's next, Ive on TMZ?
Of course, if you're anything like me, your second thought after hearing the news was wondering WWFSS? And here you go.
So, say you're watching Pirates of the Caribbean. Mmmm... Did somebody say, "Calamari?"
Before there was the iPhone, there was iHome. And strangely enough, it worked pretty much the same-- just a little slower, and you could only do it from home, and you had to decide who was going to get the phone book out and look it up. My only question is what exactly he's doing at the beginning. Is he pretending to drive the ship?
As he even points out, this isn't the first time this has been done, but Quag7 has written up a very detailed, simple, and often hilarious (I feel the same way about Michael Bay!) guide for converting that old Apple ][e you've got sitting around into a Linux serial terminal. In this case, he runs a serial connection between a modern (everything is relative here) Gentoo distro and the ][e using ADTPro as a go-between. Hook up ADTPro on both, get the serial hooked up and running on both, install a term program on the ][e and then make sure everything can talk to each other (at 9600 baud-- remember baud? Oh those were the days), and voila, you've got an Apple ][e that can run a Linux distro. Why would you want to do this? No idea.
But why else do we do this kind of crazy stuff (like hook an Apple ][e up to a game machine, or even an actual Mac)? We do this, my friends, because we can.
iPhone eye candy (or should that be iCa... oh never mind) is starting to roll in.
Wes (thanks!) dropped us this "very nice selection" of specially sized wallpaper. Most of it seems to be about birds, but there are a few cool non-bird shots included as well. And Sarah from SuicideGirls says she's a fan of TUAW (hawt!) and pointed out their iPhone wallpaper packs-- one is supposedly a pack of "PG13" desktops (they say it's work safe, but not if you work in a monastery), and there's a pack of R-rated desktops as well as a pack of SG logos which also, upon inspection, turn out to be R-rated. But they all look pretty good (if you like looking at geeky cool chicks), and of course they're all fitted for the iPhone.
Also SG and iPhone related, Sarah mentioned that Rob Corddry (of the Daily Show and Frank Wrench fame) has also written a short piece for their site about his experience buying an iPhone, which turns out to be very NSFW as well. But hey, it's the holiday-- kick back and enjoy a little iPhone-related adult humor.
Back in February I humbly introduced the Skymall Index -- a highly unscientific, completely unofficial, 90% tongue-in-cheek metric for determining the scale of the iPod ecosystem by checking the Skymall catalog for iPod appearances and dividing that number by the count of old stock photos of obsolete Macs. On a flight from NYC to Detroit recently, I figured it was time to review the SI and check out the late spring 2007 catalog (is anyone else slightly weirded out by Alexander Innovation Wizard's gadget fist of power, or is it just me?). To keep the formula normalized (like that matters) I'm not going to factor in the appearances of old iPod models in charger photos; however, I am counting any Mac with the Apple logo redacted out as a 'vintage' stock photo, just out of spite. Anyway, on to the tally sheet:
iPod peripherals, not counting multi-device chargers: 16, with the coolest being the Viewsonic PJ258d projector with built-in iPod dock, perfect for those nights on the deck with your inflatable screen. For what it's worth, almost every device that supplies electricity shows an iPod as one of the charging targets; even the Power Dome II utility generator is billed with "charges almost anything -- even your iPod!"
Stock photos of old or obscured Macs: (including a Titanium PBG4 and a Wall Street PBG3 on facing pages of the Improvements section... yikes!): 5, but with a couple of MacBook Pro machines to bring things up to current spec. The trend of wiping out the Apple logo seems to be on the rise, but the machines are easily identifiable regardless.
A bit of scrawling on the back of an envelope later, we come up with a current Skymall index of 3.2, compared to 1.83 the last time around. Not too shabby. Also worthy of note in this pass through the Skymall catalog: while a couple of vendors already advertise compatibility with the iPhone, there are exactly zero peripherals that say they work with the Zune.
Set phasers to Huge Frakking Nerd.
A long time ago (three years!), 
True geek heroes are made, not born. Well, the truth is, they're drawn -- by Nitrozac, in the perennial fan favorite 
Gosh, 
There are tons of 
As he even points out, this isn't the first time this has been done, but Quag7 has written up a very detailed, simple, and often hilarious (I feel the same way about Michael Bay!) guide for converting that old Apple ][e you've got sitting around 
iPhone eye candy (or should that be iCa... oh never mind) is 
Back in February I humbly introduced the 
