There were some good cameos in Adam Sandler’s guffaw-fest “You Don’t Mess With The Zohan,” like Charlotte Rae, (Mrs. Garrett in “Facts of Life”) as a superannuated, sexed-up hair salon client, but Mariah came through with a spot-on Mac endorsement.
Mariah plays herself in the movie. While she’s in her dressing room, Zohan comes in to fight nemesis Phantom there when Zohan gets a phone call. The dialogue detours into product placement territory, starting with the make of his phone, then this gem, about two-thirds through the scene…
Mariah: “I can never figure that Bluetooth shit out though.”
Zohan: “Mariah, it’s very simple you stick it to your PowerBook. Go ahead, Phantom will tell you.”
Phantom: “Mac or PC?”
Mariah’s assistants, in unison: “Mac.”
Spotted a Mac in a movie or magazine? Let me know.
Written by nicole_martinelli on October 13th, 2008 with no comments.
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TidBITS Publishing Inc., publisher of the Take Control electronic book series, is celebrating the 5th anniversary of the Take Control ebook series with a 50%-off sale. Cult of Mac readers are invited to take advantage of this special offer by following this link to access the discounted pricing. Discounts apply to all ebooks and are calculated once items are added to the shopping cart. The sale runs through October 14, 2008.
The Take Control series launched in October 2003 by publishing Joe Kissell’s “Take Control of Upgrading to Panther” simultaneously with Apple’s release of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Since then the series has grown to include 58 titles and numerous free updates, bringing together nearly 8,000 pages of professional content from some of the top names in the Macintosh world: Joe Kissell, Glenn Fleishman, Matt Neuburg, Sharon Zardetto, Ted Landau, and Take Control publisher Adam Engst.
Take Control ebooks use carefully designed layout and typography for easy onscreen reading and printing. They also include bookmarks, clickable links, a feedback channel to authors, and a Check for Updates button that readers can click to access free updates. Print-on-demand versions are available for most titles, and steep discounts are available for classroom and library copies.
Engst is grateful to have been able to keep the series alive for five years and commented, “the people who really deserve credit for Take Control’s success are the readers who trusted us enough to buy our first ebooks and who kept coming back for more. As much as we put a huge amount of thought and design work into making our ebooks more than just digital versions of print books, we know it was leap of faith for many people to try a PDF-based ebook.”
Written by Lonnie Lazar on October 6th, 2008 with no comments.
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Interested in trying out a cool media center for use with your Apple TV? Cult of Mac readers are invited to receive expedited applications for testing the alpha release of Boxee, a music, video and picture management solution to let your Apple TV play practically any DRM-free multimedia file. Follow this link to receive your alpha testing invitation.
Boxee for (Intel based) Mac works on OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard). Boxee for Linux is supported on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) or 8.04 (Hardy Heron) x86 (not x86_64) operating systems. The Boxee patch works with the 2.2 update to Apple TV, but remember to install the update before you install the Boxee patch.
Detailed instructions for installing the Boxee patch after the jump.
Boxee integrates with your Apple TV via a flash drive that, if not configured as “bootable” out of the box, at least must be able to be made so. You don’t have to do that yourself, the Boxee patch creator will handle it. Keep in mind these notes from the people at boxee.tv: no need to format the flash drive, the creator takes care of that. A 1gb thumb drive is more than enough. smaller will work too (even a 256mb should work). The unit MUST support being made bootable. The creator will take care of enabling the flag, but there are some units that might not work. To quote Scott Davilla (the creator creator) on this, “even same brand units may not have the same capabilities, geometry, etc. If the stick does not work, get a another one.”
Step 1
Download the ATVUSB-Creator.
Step 2
Insert a “bootable” USB drive into your Mac.
Step 3
Run the ATVUSB-Creator and select your Apple TV version number (e.g., 2.1) and Boxee for Mac.
Step 4
Remove the USB drive and plug it into your Apple TV.
Step 5
Power on your AppleTV. The patchstick will run the ATV bootloader.
Step 6
After the bootloader finishes, remove the thumb drive from your AppleTV.
Step 7
Restart your AppleTV
Step 8
Click Boxee on the main menu. Then select update (this will download Boxee from the Internet).
Step 10
Once Boxee is done installing, restart your AppleTV.
Step 11
Click Boxee, and then select Boxee in the sub-menu to start the interface.
Written by Lonnie Lazar on October 6th, 2008 with no comments.
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Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
There is no end to the creative wonders made possible with Apple gear, it seems. Combining a variety of techniques including tilt-shift and time-lapse photography, Sydney-based photographer Keith Loutit uses his iMac to produce short films like those presented here, which turn ordinary places into scenes worth a second look.
Loutit also employs Apple software in his workflow, using Automator for file management and preparation; QuickTime pro for assembling stills onto video format; Aperture for archiving of frames as higher quality stills; and Final Cut Studio - mostly final cut pro, for color, compressor and motion for editing, toning and export.
Beached from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
Asked how he gets the stunning effects, Loutit is unwilling to give away the store, but allows that “I use two lenses, one Medium format, both converted to tilt further than most manufacturer lenses will tilt on a 35mm body.”
Written by Lonnie Lazar on October 6th, 2008 with no comments.
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Thanks to an iPhone app called Stereoscope, iPhone users will be able watch a giant interactive art show played across the façade of Toronto’s City Hall buildings this week.
A free download, Stereoscope is an amazingly fluid 3D rendering of the Toronto City Hall’s two curved, opposing façades. With your fingers, you can zoom in and out and move around the giant buildings, Matrix-style, on your iPhone’s screen.
And starting October 4th, the Stereoscope app will replay a live light show playing across the surfaces of each building, generated using lights in the buildins’ 960 windows. The Stereoscope app will stream the light show live, replaying it on the rendering of the buildings.
“Reaction to the iPhone application has been overwhelmingly good as many people were surprised what 3D on the iPhone could be like,” said project director Tim Pritlove.
The light show is part of an all-night art event called Nuit Blanche that will turn the landmark buildings into a giant computer screen.
Created by Project Blinkenlights, the unique art show will feature animations and interactive games.
The full story after the jump.
Building on past exhibitions in Berlin and Paris, Project Blinkenlights has developed new technology to wirelessly control lights placed behind the windows of the Toronto City Hall building, allowing for a large-scale visual concert. The team recently did a calibration test of the Toronto installation and it looks like it’s going to be pretty cool.
The public is invited to be a part of the installation using the creative tools and the Stereoscope iPhone app, according to Pritlove, who said, “we are opening [the website] for submissions today or tomorrow.”
The project’s Stereoscope simulator went live on the iTunes AppStore this week, providing an excellent example of 3D rendering on the iPhone and a preview of what Stereoscope will look like in Toronto.
Pritlove told Cult of Mac, “Interactivity will be open to all mobile phones just by dialing a certain number that will activate a game on [the iPhone's] screen.” The phone number will be posted to the Blinkenlights web site prior to the Nuit Blanche event.
The project also includes Stereoscope creation tools that allow Mac users to create beautiful animations that can be sent to the simulator program, converted to Blinkenlights Movies format and submitted for playback on the Stereoscope installation in Toronto.
Created by the Chaos Comupter Club in Berlin, the first Blinkenlights project brought the famous Haus des Lehrers building in Alexanderplatz to life for over 23 weeks between September 11, 2001 and February 23, 2002, as thousands of people played Pong, spelled out love letters and sent artworks in light across its distinctive facade.
The name “Blinkenlights” is part of hacker history. If you look it up in the Jargon File, you’ll find it defined as “front-panel diagnostic lights on a computer”. The original wording derives from a funny sign computer people liked to put on the door of the rooms housing their technical equipment, which said, basically, “Don’t touch anything, just enjoy the blinking lights.”
Blinkenlights was back, in Paris, on September 25th, 2002 running eleven nights until the official Nuit Blanche happening on October 5th/6th. The installation, titled Arcade, presented an ever-changing kaleidoscope of animations and interactive applications on the facade of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Arcade promoted a new series of classic computer games to run on the building, allowing people to play games on the building’s face. Among others, the all-time favorite pixel puzzle game Tetris could be played using nothing but a mobile phone.
With its newly designed light control technology, the Blinkenlights team was able to smoothly dim the brightness of each pixel, sending sophisticated, large-scale animations glowing into the Paris night.
Check out the short documentary videos of the Berlin Blinkenlights and the Paris Arcade linked below, or download hi-res versions of longer clips here and here.
Written by Lonnie Lazar on October 2nd, 2008 with no comments.
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