Or, as Apple puts it, “Hello, tomorrow.”

Back during the keynote at WWDC 2006, when Jobs and co were introducing (Mac OS X.5:) Leopard, I remember one moment when everyone in the packed room quieted down in a moment of anticipation. This was when Scott Forstall (who was at the time, speculated by the Mac press as being an heir apparent) was down to the final item on his initial ten item preview of Leopard features. Number ten. Time Machine. After letting its name build itself up through the audience over a few minutes of expert simmering and vague narrational introduction, Scott clicked on a little icon in the dock, and the screen fell away to reveal one of Leopard’s most guarded and revolutionary features: that all of our Macs, come October, will gain the ability to travel back and forth through our personal timeline in a mysterious and star studded realm that the people at Apple called Time Machine. Continue reading…

Exam Week at Dartmouth

It’s that time of year, and the house library has pretty much become a home. Peopple have been sleeping, eating, studying, and taking study breaks over the past few days. The result: natural chaos, as only college students can create. Taken with the old iPhone, so excuse the quality. Continue reading…

Anyone who’s spent time in any major city will have inevitably run into the age-old conundrum of where and what to eat when they feel like going out. Chinese or Pizza? If you’re going to do something Asian, why not that new Thai place? Even the most decisive of folks can be turned into blubbering infants when faced with so many options.

Things only get worse when you’re eating with others. Steve likes Italian, but Joe really wants a Burger. Inevitably, someone isn’t going to get their way, creating a rift between friends that will lie dormant until sometime in the future when it leads to the two of them never speaking to each other again. What we really need is an impartial Solomonic arbiter to assist us in these difficult decisions. Some kind of automated computing machine, perhaps… Continue reading…

After a few weeks use, I can say for sure that I love my iPhone. There is simply no other phone out there that does as much so well, and the multi-touch interface is so skillfully and intuitively harnessed that even a 1 year old can use it.

I just wish it had some more applications.

Yes, I know that there are tons of web apps for iPhone out there, but I’m talking real apps, instead of glorified web page bookmarks. (And though there are some pretty awesome native apps that have been created for the iPhone, it involves a lot of hacking on the user’s part, which is something I’ve avoided doing every since I botched up my iPod nano trying to get it to run Doom. Though this little gem by Lucas Newman and Adam Betts is tempting.)

But since I’m not a member of the iPhone team, all I can do is dream. Here are five iPhone applications I’d like to see from Apple, along with mockup realizations by UI designer and friend, Josh Pyles, of Pixelmatrix Design. Enjoy!

An Archive.org/Ebook Reader

I know what you’re thinking to yourself. Books? On the iPhone? Come on, who reads these days?

In all seriousness though, the iPhone’s high resolution screen not only displays photos, videos and album art brightly and crisply, but renders text like a champ. And for the skeptics, I can attest that the iPhone renders text so well, I’ve browsed the web for hours on the little device without loss of vision, headaches, or eye soreness. In fact, it was actually a surprisingly pleasant experience.

Admittedly, the iPhone is not ideal for reading. And tackling a length novel on the iPhone’s tiny, portable screen is in something like reading Harry Potter on thousands of sticky notes. But since Josh and I couldn’t figure out an effective way to miniaturize the latest Harry Potter book into a pocket-sized version, we focused on the easier route. Dreaming up an interface for reading ebooks and Archive.org books on your iPhone that would one-up carrying around an actual book while traveling.

We looked towards the Apple Design Award winning media cataloging app, Delicious Library, for UI inspiration for the display of your library/downloadable books. DL pioneered an immersive, intuitive, and delicious looking interface for digital media browsing, and we love it, and it works. (Oh, and at the request of chief monster, Wil Shipley, here’s my one word review of his app: buy.):

Click me to view in full size

Bookmarks, check. Intuitive navigation (tap the corner or slide to the next page), check. One tap definitions. “Skimming” scroll options by dragging around on the right side of the screen, ala iPod functionality in the iPhone. Browsing, purchasing, and downloading of books from anywhere. Check, check, check.

We live in a fast paced, busy world of fast food, on demand, one click buying, and twittering. I think I’d find myself reading more, in smaller chunks at a time, if this app was packed in by Apple.

Continue reading…

“MacThemes’ Theme For a Week Contest’s first act has drawn to a close, and now it’s time for the user’s involvement. 55 titillating entries are competing for a chance to be one of the three winners of a software cornucopia worth over $1000. With such a grandiose prize at stake, we want to make sure that the winners are deserving, and so half of the total score of a theme will be based on the popular vote, so come one, come all, and vote for your favorite and most deserving theme. Starting today, August 8th, voting opens to MacThemes frequenters and outsiders alike, and to give the indecisive among us as much time to ponder their choice as they need, voting runs until Wednesday, the 15th.” from the contest page.

I’ll be judging these over the next few days, but from my initial peek at the over fifty theme mockups submitted, there are some pretty promising themes in the batch. (The top three winners will be fully created into a working ShapeShifter system theme.) A few of my initial favorites below (personal judge commentary coming soon on the contest page): Continue reading…

Yep. This is a one year old baby using the iPhone. Very cute, and reason enough for me to buy some more Apple stock.

And on a related note, for all of you happy iPhone users out there, check out SeeqPod via your phone. The first potential killer app for the iPhone, and an utter pleasure to use on wi-fi networks. This app alone makes the iPhone a better music player than the iPod.

Update: Found a Business 2.0 blog entry with this video along with a couple of others of babies using the iPhone. But the best part about the blog entry is probably a link to a hilarious Fake Steve Jobs post. (Excerpt: “ Check out this video showing a two-year-old figuring out how to use an iPhone. I wept when I watched this. It was like seeing the future.“) And Dugg!

Who would you trust more: a sincere pirate or a dishonest thief?

Parlay?

A. Aye, let me at the loot!
B. Can you explain this a tad better?
C. Let me walk off the plank

Courtesy of the MacHeist skunk works community.

Pownce. About 14 hours ago, news of Kevin Rose’s new startup (partnering with, according to the Digg, Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, and Shawn Allen) hit Digg and the rest of the internet. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check the website out for the basic details. In summary, it’s like the recent Web 2.0 darling, Twitter, but with some solid additions and improvements.

Lucky for you guys, unlike most other current Pownce members, I was able to rip myself away to write up some first impressions. Without further ado…

The Initial, Initial Impressions

I think a lot of other people shared my knee-jerk response:

I mean, the thing is, Twitter’s a pretty awesome idea. I actually first heard of that little gem reading some article on Digg about how Twitter was going to fail, and my reaction was immediately signing up and diving right into a several weeks long addiction of voyeurism and friend/fan gathering. (That’s one of the great parts about social networks, right? You feel great creating friendships, and a lot of times, recreating friendships, with a click of a button.) Continue reading…