The new P alm Touchstone Charging Dock:
Simply place your Palm Pre on the Palm Touchstone, and magnets quickly align your phone in the correct position for charging.
Sounds like something Apple would ship.
Category: Design
History of the Time Square New Year’s Ball
A fascinating look back by Gizmodo.
Espresso’s Beta Shows Up
Espresso, Macrabbit’s new suite of web-building applications, has hit beta:
As you may know, we planned to have Espresso ready in November. Unfortunately our schedule slipped and while we have an active private beta program, everybody else was getting a little antsy. With this in mind, we have decided to open up the Espresso Beta to everyone until we reach the final. Espresso is already a great editor — and we love using it ourselves — but we want to make more changes before slapping the official “version 1” seal on. This Public Beta allows us to do that without being an annoying tease.
Linux Users to Get Notifications
Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu guy) says that notifications should be simplified to completely eliminate the need for user interaction. To accommodate that goal, the new notification system will not support response buttons or any other interactive elements. This change is intended to reduce the disruption caused by notifications. He says that applications which require persistent notifications should use panel notification area icons and that conventional popups and other mechanisms can be used for messages that require an interactive response.
Lenovo Launches Dual-Screen Notebook
And it got beat to death with an ugly stick. I don’t see this going anywhere. The thing is 11 pounds and $3,600. And somewhat pointless.
Mac Plus + G4 Cube = Awesome
Flickr user charles_mangin:
Transplanting the innards of a G4 Cube into the body of a Mac Plus.
It’s as awesome as I hoped it would be.
[Via Newton Poetry.]
GUI Gallery Struts Hard to Find Stuff
I stumbled across this website last night that has screenshots of every graphical user interface I could think of, and a whole lot more. Highlights include Apple’s OS for the IIGS, BeOS, and Windows Bob. Seeing Bob brings back the pain.
The guy who hosts this site, Nathan Lineback, really hates Internet Explorer. So much, I wonder what it did to him when he was a kid.
On Silly Workarounds
Macworld, on the Office 2008 + Spaces bug:
Symptoms of this bug include: an inability to bring Word document windows to the foreground by clicking them, an inability to assign two Word documents to separate spaces, and plain old crashes of Office applications.
The work-around for now is to not use Spaces if you plan on using Office 2008. Or at least don’t start switching among different spaces while Office 2008 applications are open.
David Watanabe Unveils Ski Lodge, Plays With Our Emotions
David Watanabe, creator of the popular NewsFire RSS reader, has announced a new iPhone application called Ski Lodge ( iTunes Link). The application shows off his talent of making bold, sharp design choices, also seen in his other applications, Xtorrent, Acquisition, and Inquisitor.
NewsFire, while now free on the Mac, is expected to show up in the App Store at some point, based on a single teaser Watanabe posted on Flickr. Comments on the image show a strong desire among users:
Do You Hear What I Hear?
Back in September, Steve Jobs promised new earbuds at the event that unveiled the new iPod Nano and other goodies. They were supposed to be out in October, but things… well… didn’t work out, and the new buds just hit shelves this week. Here’s a nugget of CNET’s review of the $79 earbuds:
I’ve only been listening for a few minutes, but so far, it looks like Apple has delivered a worthwhile pair of headphones. They don’t quite have the crisp, high frequency detail of the Etymotic HF2 headphones I had at my desk, but they blow away Apple’s stock earbuds (not too difficult a feat) with a buttery low end and pleasant mids and highs.
Microsoft to Launch T-shirt Line
We’re not exactly sure if this is one of the worst marketing ploys ever, or one of the best. All we know for sure however, is that you can bet the bank that you will definitely find an MS DOS shirt added to our wardrobe once this new line kicks off. You hear that Microsoft? Hook it up! Microsoft is reportedly turning to seasoned ad vet Crispin, Porter & Bogusky to help it launch a line of graphic tees brilliantly dubbed “Softwear by Microsoft”. Cute.
Old New Stuff
Wired shows off some old prototypes that never evolved into anything real. Here’s a sample:
Legendary Silicon Valley design firm Frog Design lent Gizmodo a couple of Apple prototypes to display, including this MacBook Tablet mock-up…
…Although this portable tablet computer never saw the light of day, echoes of its design can be seen in the Apple IIc.
It looks like an Apple IIc, just flat. I don’t think it would have done well then.