We're not 100% convinced of the safety of his approach, but Kevin Miller's determination to recover his lost iPhone -- combined with the power of MobileMe's new Find My iPhone feature -- led him on a wild chase across Chicago, which he visited while he was attending a LEGO convention in nearby Wheeling, IL.

After leaving his phone in a bar, Kevin tried to get FMI working (via a friend's laptop & broadband adapter, ironically from Sprint; as Megan & Michael pointed out, you can't access the MobileMe page from the iPhone browser anyway) with no luck. The next morning, however, the phone began responding and Kevin's three-man team began the hunt. With laptop in hand and a succession of more and more specific location details, the guys began tracking down the errant phone.

We won't spoil the end of the story for you; Kevin's post is quite entertaining and worth a read. Still, once you do know how the plot turns out you may want to consider enlisting the police for a missing phone, rather than choosing to use their methods.

At the Austin Maker Faire last month, careful observers noted a small addition to a miniature main street created by the Texas LEGO User Group: An Apple retail store, complete with products inside.

TexLUG created a town and space-themed layout that included working trains and motors. Other photos of their impressive handiwork are available on Flickr. You might also enjoy this attempt at a Lego Apple Store, accessories sold separately.

It's many bricks, technically: Lego Bricks. Students at the San Francisco Art Institute used 2,588 bricks to build an enormous Mac Pro case.

The design wasn't without its problems -- partway through the movie, three "Lego engineering catastrophes" forced the addition of a support beam under the middle of the case, presumably to support the weight of the hardware inside.

The exterior design isn't the only thing impressive about it: On the inside, it's a Mac Mini that's FireWire-linked to a PC Hackintosh. Nice.

The case was submitted for the 2008 MacMod Challenge.

It has been awhile since I posted about Bricksmith, it looks like Allen Smith hasn't spent all his time pining for more TUAW coverage. Nay! He has been working on Bricksmith 2.0, which brings some new features to this open source Lego modeling app. The renderings have been improved, part search has been beefed up, and new addition to the Help file will aid those looking to create nifty models.

My favorite part of this app has to be the Minifig generator (which I used to create the image that accompanies this post). You can use it to create more aesthetically pleasing minifigs, to be sure, but this guy has got character I tells ya.

Bricksmith is free, but if you find yourself using it often a donation would be nice.

If admiration of an iPod-powered Lego vehicle indicates that one is a nerd, then buy me a pocket protector and hike my pants up to my ribcage.The folks at BattleBricks have constructed just such a creature. Here's (briefly) how it works. There are two iPhones involved. The one on the vehicle displays certain colors based on commands issued from the 2nd controller iPhone via a Safari app written with Google's Web Toolkit. The vehicle executes a command based on the color it "sees."

You can download the source code for yourself from Battle Bricks. Think of the applications! Frighten children and small animals, attach a small brush and clear away dust bunnies or deliver very small parcels.

Good work, guys. We love it.

[Via Ars Technica]

A long time ago, in a squarish galaxy far, far away... Aspyr media, in an effort to save Mac users of the planet Earth from certain doom and boredom, released a Universal patch for LEGO Star Wars.

That's right: it's been a while since we've had to write about an app (finally) going Universal (Adobe CS3 notwithstanding), and even longer since I've had the opportunity to make a Star Wars pun, so there it is. All joking aside though, Aspyr apparently released this patch earlier in the month, but I just caught it in today's newsletter. You can snag the 4.71MB update from Macgamefiles.com.

It would seem that some people just can't want to get their fingers on an iPhone (I'm looking at you, Dan). If you are a little crafty you can make yourself a placeholder iPhone to get you over the hump. Try this iPhone cake, which I am sure is much more delicious than Apple's iPhone (and I have it on good authority that the cake does not require a 2 year Cingular contract).

If you aren't a baker, why not whip up a LEGO iPhone? You know you want to (well, I know I want to and I assume we have similar interests).

[LEGO iPhone via brilliantdays]

You may have noticed that we seem to have a bit of a thing for LEGOs here at TUAW. We previously told you about the open source LEGO design program Bricksmith, but now LEGO themselves have released version 1.6 of the LEGO Digital Designer. This cool little app lets you generate HTML building instructions for your design, check the cost of your raw materials, and perhaps best of all, upload your creation to an online gallery.

LEGO Digital Designer is a free download from LEGO.

[Edit: it "runs on Intel Macs" but is not a UB]

[Via FreeWareMac]

It has been awhile since we have heard from PodBrix, purveyors of Apple-centric LEGO creations, and now we know why. They were hard at work in their secret labs creating the 1984 playset. Immortalizing the immortal 1984 commercial in LEGOs seems a worthy addition to the PodBrix line.

As usual this is a limited edition work, only 100 sets will be created and they will cost $198.99 (I would have gone with $198.40. Get it?). While that might seem like a steep price keep in mind that this set features a backlit movie screen (though you'll have to get your own batteries). This set goes on sale on August 2nd promptly at 9pm EST.

Bricksmith is a cool app that let's you tinker with a set of virtual Legos on your Mac. How cool is that? Plus, it is now a Universal Binary so Intel and PowerPC Macs can join in the fun, natively. Check out the tutorial to see all the cool stuff you can do with Bricksmith.

Bricksmith is donationware, so if you find yourself heavily using it kick in a few bucks to support the project.

Behold, ladies and gentlemen: the Top 10 strangest Mac mods at TechBlog. Johnathan Ive's blood would surely boil if he were to feast his eyes on such mutant Mac modifications as the NecroMac of the PowerMac G4 Aquarium!

I know we've linked to a few of these in the past as we heard about them, but it's nice to see them all in one big list - and ranked.

Podbrix, creators of great Apple collectibles like the Woz Lego minifig and the Podshirt, which is an integrated T-Shirt/iPod shuffle holder (how long before Apple asks them to remove "pod" from their name?), have announced the 1K Brix Macrofig. It's a 7" replica of the original 1K minifig, the very first product they sold. The limited run of 50 units ships in a signed and numbed tin that includes the figure and a T-shirt. They go on sale at 9:00PM EST on April 6th for $89.99US each. The little minifigs usually sell out in just a few minutes, so you may want to log on early (though it may be interesting to see if the higher price of this particular product has an effect on sales).

Podbrix has also released another T-Shirt featuring the 1K figure, and this is in unlimited supply. You can pick one up for $17.99US.

The folks at PodBrix have done it again. PodBrix occasionally releases limited-run, Apple-themed Lego minifigs. Previous releases have included Woz, Steve delivering a keynote and "Mr. Brix," which is a small figure that attaches to your headphone cord. On January 17th at 9:00 PM EST, they will release the Wozwear 6502 T-shirt. According to PodBrix,

"...the Wozwear 6502 and is a custom made shirt featuring an image of our previous Woz minifig holding a 6502 processor chip. The interesting aspect is that we use an actual 6502 processor chip and attach it to the shirt with a magnetic clasp."

Here's the best part: It's a working chip, and if removed from the shirt and popped into an old Apple machine, it would work (you may remember that this is the chip used in the Apple II's).

These things usually sell out in a matter of minutes (they sold out of 270 Woz minifigs in less than two minutes in August), so have your credit card and mouse ready. Podbrix will make 300 Wozwear 6502 shirts available for $34.99US each starting at 9:00PM EST tomorrow night. Good luck.

[Via Cult of Mac Blog]

Just when I thought there wasn't any new hobby that could arise and completely eat up any paltry free time I might have, they make LEGO robots Mac-friendly: "The heart of the new system is the NXT brick, an autonomous 32-bit LEGO microprocessor that can be programmed using a PC, or for the first time in the retail offering, a Mac. After building their robots, users create a program within easy-to-use yet feature-rich software, powered by LabVIEW from National Instruments."

Engadget has a great video up of the different robots on display at CES that you should definitely check out.