Lite and Light

The rumour mill is working overtime. The latest one has to do with the MacBook Pro line. Supposedly on Thursday we will see an update to that line of computers at Apple. Most of the rumours stem from the fact that orders of new MacBook Pro laptops have been put on hold for a few days (imagine you buy a computer today only to find out three days later that a brand-new model came out). 

As I mentioned in a previous post I have been using one of the new MacBook Airs these past few weeks. This baby is slowly becoming my favourite laptop of all times (and I have owned quite a few of these in the past 20 years). The general feeling is that the entire MacBook Pro line will take on elements of the Air line: whether it is the lack of hard drives or the overall thinness and lightness of these beauties.

But there is another rumour making the rounds. This one has to do with a new high-speed connection technology that might replace USB (1, 2 AND 3), Firewire (400 and 800) and who knows what else. A couple of years ago Intel revealed LightPeak. This technology is supposed to transfer data at 10 Gbps (compared to Firewire 400 at 400 Mbps, Firewire 800 at 800 Mbps, USB 2 at 480 Mbps and USB3 at 3.2 Gbps). Some people are speculating that the new MacBook Pro line might already have LightPeak technology onboard upon its release. Others still are somewhat negative about the technology in general since, contrary to the video appearing below in which we are told that LightPeak will use high-speed optical cable technology, it appears that the current "production" version will still be using copper cable, meaning the tech will be "compromised" for now.

Well, only 72 hours or a little more to go before all these speculations can be laid to rest. Somehow, however, we get a sense that if there is a hardware update this week, it won't just be a "speed-bump" of some sort. Stay tuned.

British...Extremely British

The crime movie genre has seen a rebirth of sorts with, for the past few years, a sub-genre most usually identified with Guy Ritchie's earliest movies: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. The guys over at SNL came up with the following fake preview for a "new" movie in that sub-genre. Hilarious stuff.

Don' you GO Rounin' ROUN to RE RO from Carl Jung on Vimeo.

Airline Food

Having now been on the road for a while, hopping on and off planes, I thought I would share this little telling bit from the 3rd episode of the always hilarious new BBC series "Come Fly With Me". 

More on bird addiction

As I posted earlier, the Angry Birds addiction is still quite prominent out there in the mobile world (as well as on less mobile equipment ever since the introduction of Apple's App Store on the Mac with its own version of that famous franchise's game). So last week we heard of an interesting development: another famous iOS game, apparently the "Top Paid App Of All Times", Doodle Jump, will get a Hollywood tie-in. Universal have announced that the main character of their movie Hop will feature in Doodle Jump as a promotional download. 

Now the makers of Angry Birds, Rovio, will release a version of the game set in Rio. Why Rio you ask ? 20th Century Fox will be releasing a movie by that name and some of the characters from that movie will appear in the game as well. Check out the trailer below for more on that.

This new trend of Hollywood-iOS tie ins is interesting. While for now it seems to center on "games to cartoons" connections, it would be interesting to see what other forms such tie-ins might take. Other than that, so long as we get new birds to fling at pigs, who are we to complain ?

Who still uses fax ?

Some institutions just can't get rid of the "fax" concept. Here we are, deep inside the internet era, where so much gets done almost instantaneously whether via email or the web, at a time when communication is purely digital and immediate, and yet banks and other organizations are demanding that you confirm things by actually dialing a phone line, stick some paper into some sort of scanner and listen to weird beeping sounds to confirm that your communication has gone through.

And yet, over the past few years we have seen the internet step into the world of fax as well. Personally I have been using the efax.com system for a long time and have been very satisfied. In essence the idea is that sending a fax should be as easy as sending an email message, and receiving it shouldn't require more than checking your email inbox. 

Recently however this innovative way of using the old-fashioned fax system has once again been rejuvenated. You guessed it: there's an app for that...as well. I had occasion to test the efax iPhone app yesterday. I took a picture of a document with my iPhone camera and proceeded to send it as a fax straight from my iPhone. I did not expect much. Great was my surprise when I realised that the fax came in as an extremely clear document, certainly not worse than had I sent it through a fax machine the old fashioned way.

So then once again we are in a position to take old technology, one that will clearly die off in the coming years only to be replaced by something way more exciting and new, and give it a new twist. Suddenly every person with a smartphone in his pocket becomes a walking fax machine, and one that, maybe surprisingly, works quite well.

Droolworthy

I can just imagine musicians worldwide drooling over this little baby. While this product is still not out yet and the software still hasn't been approved by Apple, the idea that you could use your iPad as the "brain" for your music creation attached to a dock that happens to be a 49 keys full size velocity sensitive, drum-pad accessorized, USB/MIDI sporting keyboard with more bells and whistles than you can shake a stick at is going to fire up the imagination of a lot of people. AKAI's product webpage still states "Pending certification from Apple" and no price is shown yet so it is difficult to predict how successful this product will end up being however I am willing to bet that while this product is probably the first of its kind, it certainly won't be the last. Music is one field where we have seen the iOS environment take off dramatically and I have a feeling that we will continue to be amazed at the ingenuity of both hardware and software developers as things progress.

What to expect with iOS 4.3

Check out this entry on jehudasaar.com for a video of some of the new features we should be getting soon on our iPads.

Nano Time 2

Back in December I described a project born on Kickstarter that turned iPod nanos into fancy watches. The products keep on coming, and today I found this cool little product by a company called iWatchz that I thought was worth mentioning because of the cool video they came up with. Enjoy.

Be heard

Back when I tested the Amplitube iRig in the Summer I never imagined IK Multimedia would do much beyond updating the software every once in a while, add an effect here and there etc. But they managed to surprise me when I realised that what they had done for certain instruments, they were now going to do for the microphone. They just announced the iRig Mic and I, for one, am looking forward to testing this little beauty. Lately I have been doing a lot of vocal recordings and this little arrangement would provide a cool portable multitrack recording studio to take with me when I travel. If I get my hands on it anytime soon I'll post my impressions of it here or on jehudasaar.com

Travellin' Light

I have just spent a week traveling with a MacBook Air 13 inch in my bag. For those of you unfamiliar with this little beauty, we are talking about one of the lightest, thinest laptop computers ever created as a consumer product. Leaving beauty and elegance aside for a moment, what is amazing about this baby is that you don't even notice you have a computer with you until the moment you need it. The machine weighs about 1.3 kg, is super thin (1.7 cm at its thickest point) but once on you notice that the screen real estate is identical to the MacBook Pro 15 inch. The fact that it only contains flash storage means your bootup time is cut to a minimum and starting Word or Excel, which can otherwise take forever, is now a matter of a couple of seconds. No compromise as far as the keyboard is concerned: we're talking full size here. I won't attempt to edit a movie or do much music production on this baby, but that's not the purpose it serves either. 

So far I am having a ball. I'll occasionally dip back in and let you know how I make out with this little gem.

Pilgrimages

Individual visits to Apple Stores in Geneva and Covent Garden, London as documented on jehudasaar.com

Under pressure

Once again an innovative use of the iOS platform, this time for medical purposes: iHealth allows you to check your blood pressure with either your iPhone or iPad. The video says it all. Impressive if it is really as simple to use as what is shown here.

The Prime Directive

Sorry Trekkies, this post is NOT about your favourite subject. For Star Trek fans the words "Prime Directive" have a very definite and precise meaning. The term refers to a Starfleet guiding principle banning interference with pre-warp societies. No, this post is about my very own "Prime Directive", one I have come to appreciate more over the past few days.

I go back to the very beginning of my professional life. Back in 1987 one of my first bosses, bitten by the Mac bug the same way I had been a little earlier, made me come out to his house in New Jersey on a Sunday to set up an Excel spreadsheet on his Mac. We essentially created a basic inventory system for our business, entirely from scratch (templates were not very hot in those days or else we were simply unaware of their existence). His Mac (I can't remember whether it was a MacPlus or SE) was seated on top of a surge suppressor that also had power switches to control individual sockets. 

It took us a few hours to set up this gem of a spreadsheet. At the end of a long day, satisfied that we had just created the coolest thing since sliced bread, I dramatically pushed back the keyboard away from me in order to lift my hand up in the air and declare that we were truly a couple of genius software developers. The keyboard touched the main power switch on the surge suppressor, and the computer shut down. Of course, genius that I was, I had not even once saved the file we had been working on so diligently all day.

Hence the Jehuda Saar Prime Directive: ALWAYS SAVE YOUR WORK. ALL THE TIME !!!

I have been screaming that mantra from every roof. I have been pestering anyone I have ever come across sitting at a computer doing work for as long as I can remember. My kids have been hearing this since the day their little fingers every touched their very first keyboard. And yet, over the span of two days last week, I was guilty not once, not twice, but three times of violating this most sacred of principles myself. I had been working on a few music files in Garageband for an upcoming presentation. There were a few hours worth of voice recordings in the can, and suddenly while moving some music portions around, Garageband decided to say "bye bye". The last time I had saved the file had been a couple of hours earlier. Needless to say all that work had been for nought. What is inexcusable though is that, knowing Garageband was running into some problem, I then repeated this mistake twice more.

Leaving aside for a moment the "why" of this occurrence in Garageband (I am working on the solution), the key is that the Jehuda Saar Prime Directive is there for a reason and that this guiding principle cannot be violated in any way...EVER. SAVE you work, ALWAYS save your work. Whatever key combination is used to achieve this action on your particular flavour of computer or OS, use it. If recent developments in iOS, and some of the hints we have had of future MacOS releases are any indication, automatic saving of files will most likely become the norm in future software releases, and maybe this learned habit of constantly saving files is something that our children will have to worry much less about one day. It is possible they won't even understand what this post was about since saving will no longer be a feature they will have to think about. But for now, put on those Mr Spock ears and set your phasers to "stun" cause its time to SAVE !!!

(From jehudasaar.com)

Set Design of the Past

It is remarkable how far computer technology has gone when it comes to movies and TV shows. You don't have to be a fan of the HBO show Boardwalk Empire to appreciate this little video. A bunch of people sitting around a computer and some blue/green screens spread around a set, and the job is done. Set design as we traditionally know it, the kind that still wins Oscars every year, may be going the way of the Dodo. Not to mention make-up, as you'll see in this clip.

Boardwalk Empire VFX Breakdowns of Season 1 from Brainstorm Digital on Vimeo.

More than a toy

Here is one that is both cool and cute. In trying to prove to family and friends that the iPhone and the iPad were more than toys, Ellen Hinton combined these "toys" with a midi interface, some apps and iMovie and performed a mashup of Train's "Hey Soul Sister" and Yael Naim's "New Soul". The result is here for all to enjoy.