What you're looking at is actually nine computers: five Macs, three PCs and one Linux machine. (Check out the Flickr page, to see what's what.) According to its owner, it's all driven with one keyboard and mouse, and switches seamlessly between machines. Incredible.
Thinking about the cable management for this thing makes my head hurt.
As we recently showcased here at TUAW, filmmaker Dennis Liu's Mac-inspired video for the group The Bird And The Bee combines his love of music, filmmaking and the Mac to create a very entertaining and innovative piece of work. In fact, we liked it so much here at TUAW, that we decided we wanted to know a bit more about Dennis and his creative process.
I spent some time talking with the filmmaker recently and got some info on how he made the video, why he made it, what he hopes to gain from it and what's next for this very talented guy.
CHRIS ULLRICH: Tell me a bit about how you came up with the idea for the video? What inspired you to do it?
DENNIS LIU: I'm a 23 year old college grad trying to become a full-time director/creative. Right now, I'm a producer at an ad agency, but I've always had some ideas for Apple commercials and always wanted to shoot one. Apple has some of the world's finest advertising, and I wanted to play at their level.
The film industry is so competitive these days, that you really need to do something innovative and different to stand out, and I wanted to really make something that would get some attention from my peers. So the result was this viral video for my reel, Apple, and one of my favorite musicians - The Bird & the Bee.
For Apple, I figured it was a cool idea that shows the beauty, style, and most importantly - the function of Apple computers. People think they're really cool looking, and I totally agree, but they are also wickedly powerful machines.
With apologies to Carole King: "Now it's too late, bayyybeee, now it's too late, though we really did try to make it..."
If you were waiting until the last minute to get your reservations in for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, aka WWDC 2008, you're out of luck. All available spaces at Apple's annual developer love-fest have been taken, so you'll have to wait until next year's event to get your fix of sessions and labs.
That also means you're going to miss out on the Steve Jobs keynote address, which you'll hear about within minutes of it happening anyway. Don't procrastinate for WWDC 2009!
This is my favorite story of the week. Major League Baseball fans probably remember the New York construction worker who buried a David Oritz jersey underneath the New York Yankees stadium in an attempt to jinx the team. It seems he unwittingly started a trend.
Back in April, Michael Oh (Tech Superpowers founder and president) crossed the street to the Apple Store's construction site with a shovel and one of his company's T-Shirts. A short time later, the shirt was buried underneath the concrete, where it remains today. Since the story of the Ortiz jersey was breaking at the time, the members of the construction crew thought the idea was funny, and let him do his thing.
Oh points out that he isn't trying to jinx the store, but create a connection between the two retailers.
"We're doing it with a wink ... We are in business because of the great things Apple has done ... This T-shirt in the sidewalk is a symbol that there's a connection between the two sides of the alley." It was Oh who set up the Boston Apple Store Webcam at ifoAppleStore to share the construction process with Apple fans everywhere.
We can only imagine what's next
Burger King buries a cardboard crown under each new McDonald's
Dunkin Donuts leaves a bag of French Vanilla under each new Starbucks
So when you visit the store this weekend, tread lightly. You might be standing on a buried treasure.
Yesterday, I wrote about AT&T's new $20/month unlimited data feature pack. Today, my daughter was home sick from school. Why is that important? Because we gave her a cheap AT&T Pay As You Go phone, which she uses to keep in touch when her bus is late or if she needs to contact us for some reason. Pay As You Go plus idle phone = Data Plan Experimentation!
Many months ago, I wrote about adding data packages to AT&T Pay As You Go accounts. I had hacktivated my iPhone to use the PAYG SIM to see how long it took to go through an entire 5MB data feature package. Answer? A few minutes. In case you don't see where I'm going with this, let me add that I just got off the phone with AT&T a few seconds ago. They have now officially added a new feature data package: for $19.95 you get unlimited data for 30 days.
The way this works is as follows. You go to an AT&T store and buy a $100 prepaid SIM. This SIM is good for one year of use. You get a phone number, you get $100 of credit. Calls cost you either $0.25/minute or $1/day of use plus $0.10/minute. You pick which one when you set up the account.
Last week's talkcast was a lively evening's chat, as Dave, Erica and I diverted from Mac geekery into Trekker nerd bingo (yes, that's not a $6 cab ride away, so no big surprise). Download the show from Talkshoe, play it from the Flash player in the continuation of this post, if you like, or pick it up on iTunes.
Tonight we'll be welcoming at least a couple of our newest team members to the Sunday night festivities, along with your veteran favorites, so do drop by and join us for all the fun at 10pm ET / 7 pm PT. Bring your Mac and iPod/iPhone questions along (no, we don't know when the 3G phone is shipping -- yes, we will be talking about the availability constraints) and we'll do our best to tackle them live on the show.
As many of our intrepid readers have pointed out, iPhones are unavailable at the online Apple Store in both the US and the UK. As we mentioned earlier in the week, cell carrier and Apple retail stores on both continents are reportedly facing shortages as well.
With all the buzz surrounding the 3G model, the international rollout and the SDK, this is just one more sign that the release of a new device is right around the corner.
While I'm obviously not privy to any official dates (or even unofficial speculation), my past experiences in the cell phone retail world lead me to believe that an early June release seems very, very probable.
A digital filmmaker named Dennis Liu has made an amazing video for The Bird And The Bee's lovely song "Again & Again". The set? His Mac desktop. You sort of have to see it for yourself to understand; luckily, Dennis has dropped it on YouTube so that the world can see it in low-res glory:
Innovative, and definitely cool. It doesn't seem to be an "official" video for the song...but if it isn't, it oughtta be. (Hey, Bird! Bee! Y'all paying attention?)
Planning some activities out on the town this weekend, or searching for a Mother's Day dining option? The fine folks at Schmap have a treat for you -- they'd like TUAW readers to have the first whack at their new iPhone City Guides and Local Search before the Mobile Safari-optimized site goes into official beta on Monday, May 12.
Point Safari on your iPhone or iPod Touch to www.schmap.com, then enter the pre-launch preview access code: 724627. Once you're in the site, pull up a Schmap Guide for your favorite city for info, maps, and more. Some of the search features aren't wired in yet, but they should be done soon.
Schmap's website has several Flash demos of the features of the Schmap Guides for iPhone. Check it out!
Thanks to Donald at Schmap for the invitation, and Kyle for the tip.
Adium, the tasty multi-client Mac chat app, is about to get even tastier: developer Evan Schoenberg announced today on the Adium blog that he's adding Facebook Chat to the ridiculously long list of instant messaging protocols already supported by the app. He even included a screenshot of the new protocol in action, seen on the right.
No word on when the new release will be available, unfortunately, but you can keep track at the Adium blog. Thanks, Chris!
After her apartment was burglarized, the victim received a call from a friend while she was at work (conveniently enough, at the Apple Store in Westchester, NY). The friend noticed her stolen computer was online. The victim then quickly used another Mac to connect to the stolen laptop.
The article doesn't mention the technical details, but I reckon she activated screen sharing, and started Photo Booth (or another app that activates the laptop's built-in iSight camera). After a while, the perps showed up, and the victim's roommate recognized one of them as an acquaintance who had attended a party at their apartment some weeks before.
Armed with names and photos of the alleged thieves, police quickly arrested two men, who were in possession of most of the property stolen in the burglary.
If that isn't worth her year's subscription to .Mac, I don't know what is.
(Update: The New York Timeshas a story with some more details. She used Photo Booth, too. Who called it, baby?)
If you're like me, you probably spend a great deal of time using your Mac. From checking email, working with photos, surfing the web and paying bills to writing posts just like this, my Mac serves me well in so many ways. Using it every day as I do, I tend to create a massive amount of files, photos, emails and all of the other items that go along with daily Mac use.
The items that are created, modified and used every day are very important. So, to make sure I have access to them and that nothing bad happens to them, they need to be backed up so they're safe no matter what. But even though I know these files, folders and more need to be backed up, how do I do it in the most simple, effective and least time-consuming way?
Fortunately, there are several solutions available to Mac users to help ensure that their precious data is preserved. Most are simple to use and all provide an automated backup solution that once set up, doesn't rely on the user to make sure it works -- it all happens automatically on a particular schedule.
But which solution to choose? Here are the three simplest, cheapest and most reliable backup solutions for your consideration:
A little birdy told us about some unusual happenings at Apple. According to our anonymous tipster, .Mac will undergo a complete revamp that will coincide with the iPhone 2.0 launch (which everyone expects to occur at WWDC 08). We posted about the .Mac push e-mail coming to iPhone 2.0 last night, but according to our tip, that's not all .Mac users are going to get.
According to our little birdy, .Mac could undergo the following changes as soon as next month:
Full over-the-air syncing including calendars, contacts, and email (similar to Exchange)
.Mac syncing on Windows
This makes sense, since why would Apple make using an iPhone with Exchange a better experience than when it is paired with .Mac? If these rumors turn out to be true, then the $99 price tag on .Mac could seem a whole lot more worthwhile in the coming months.
An avid reader of TUAW, Chris Thomson, sent us a link to a Flickr picture (being the nosy people we are, we clicked the link). What we found surprised us -- a Twitter Quartz Composer composition was included as a part of the Mac OS X developer tools for Leopard. "Twitterverse," when tweaked right, can be used as an OS X screen saver and display all of your friends tweets in a graphical way.
You can find this Quartz composition in the ~/Developer/Examples/Quartz Composer/Compositions/XML/The Twitterverse/The Twitterverse.qtz. If you want to add it as a screen saver, just drag it onto the preview in the "Screen Saver" part of the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane (in System Preferences.app). You can then add your username / password in the screen saver options.
As we recently showcased here at TUAW, filmmaker Dennis Liu's Mac-inspired video for the group The Bird And The Bee combines his love of music, filmmaking and the Mac to create a very entertaining and innovative piece of work. In fact, we liked it so much here at TUAW, that we decided we wanted to know a bit more about Dennis and his creative process. 
With apologies to Carole King: "Now it's too late, bayyybeee, now it's too late, though we really did try to make it..."
This is my favorite story of the week. Major League Baseball fans probably remember the New York construction worker who buried a David Oritz jersey underneath the New York Yankees stadium in an attempt to jinx the team. It seems he unwittingly started a trend.
Last week's talkcast was a lively evening's chat, as Dave, Erica and I diverted from Mac geekery into Trekker nerd bingo (yes, that's not a $6 cab ride away, so no big surprise). Download the show from Talkshoe, play it from the Flash player in the continuation of this post, if you like, or pick it up on iTunes.
Planning some activities out on the town this weekend, or searching for a Mother's Day dining option? The fine folks at Schmap have a treat for you -- they'd like TUAW readers to have the first whack at their new iPhone City Guides and Local Search before the Mobile Safari-optimized site goes into official beta on Monday, May 12. 
Adium, the tasty multi-client Mac chat app, is about to get even tastier: developer Evan Schoenberg announced today on the Adium blog that he's adding Facebook Chat to the ridiculously long list of instant messaging protocols already supported by the app. He even included a screenshot of the new protocol in action, seen on the right.
If you're like me, you probably spend a great deal of time using your Mac. From checking email, working with photos, surfing the web and paying bills to writing posts just like this, my Mac serves me well in so many ways. Using it every day as I do, I tend to create a massive amount of files, photos, emails and all of the other items that go along with daily Mac use.
A little birdy told us about some unusual happenings at Apple. According to our anonymous tipster, .Mac will undergo a complete revamp that will coincide with the iPhone 2.0 launch (which everyone expects to occur at WWDC 08). We posted about the .Mac push e-mail coming to iPhone 2.0 last night, but according to our tip, that's not all .Mac users are going to get. 
