512 Pixels

I’m happy to announce a new project today: the 512 Podcast.

Produced in conjunction with 70Decibels, and co-hosted by my pal Myke Hurley, the weekly show will cover roughly the same things I do here on the site — Apple, journalism and design.

Episode 01 “Genesis” is available for download now. On it, Myke and I talked about the start 512 Pixels (RIP, Forkbombr), having a voice, goals for the show, blog comments and more.

If you have an app, service, or company you’d like to share with a handsome audience of listeners, you should check out the sponsorship page for 70Decibels.

Here are our subscription options:

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This wouldn’t be possible without all of you guys. ¹ Thanks so much in advance for checking it out.

The company told the NYT that the story was “based on inaccurate rumors and speculation. We have no further comment.”

Office for iPad is exactly what Microsoft should be doing, though. Ridiculous.

With talk of the Things beta today, I decided not to spend much time with it, and instead re-work my OmniFocus theme. I’m pretty happy with how it came out:

(Click on the image to see a larger version.)

It’s all set in Helvetica Neue, and uses burgundy and brown for due and “due soon” items. You can download it here.

Abdel Ibrahim:

There’s no question that the iPro Lens takes better pictures, and its handle gives it a leg up on videos, too. The Olloclip, on the other hand, comes in a much smaller, more convenient package that outshined the iPro when I was on the go. But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

From the interview:

What was your first job growing up?

My first job was cutting grass for people in the neighborhood. I made enough money when I was 15 to buy a car with cash when I turned 16. I learned about being responsible, taking care of my belongings and how to be respectful to customers.

Also, I learned that if you hit a frog with an edger by accident it’s messy as hell.

I can confirm that this works.

It’s here. Not sure what else to say.

ABC’s Bill Weir:

Apple promised complete access, no dog-and-pony, no Potemkin Village, but they denied my repeated requests to interview Apple CEO Tim Cook or the senior vice president of industrial design, Jony Ive.

In a three-golf-cart convoy, both Apple and Foxconn reps took us around to a half dozen production lines in Shenzhen and Chengdu, and there were always five to six people with us as we toured the factories and dorms. But aside from suggesting a visit to the counseling center or canteen, they never steered us to interviews and never interrupted.

I honestly believe Apple is doing everything it can to help workers in China. At least, far, far more than other companies. I can’t wait to watch the whole report.

via Shawn Blanc

Fraser Speirs:

I stand by my earlier analysis that iBooks Author and iTunes U were the two most important parts of Apple’s recent education announcement. With iBooks Author, we now have a very simple way to make high-quality electronic texts for use in the classroom. It will be to course materials what Keynote was to presentations.

iTunes U is a massively powerful tool for running a classroom full of iOS devices. It’s extremely simple to use for teachers and the overhead of adoption is as close to zero as you can get: install iTunes U, upload some materials and post class messages and assignments as you go along.

Rene Ritchie:

Recently there’s been a dramatic rise in the number of fraudulent apps getting attention — even top sales positions — in the iPhone and iPad App Store. Some scam apps are copy-cats that duplicate as closely as possible the name and icon of popular games in order to confuse consumers and get them to buy a scam app instead of the real thing. This costs the consumer money for the scam app and developers money for the lost sale. Others scam apps appear to be byte-for-byte copies, stolen whole-cloth and offered for sale side-by-side with the original. This still costs the developer money for the lost sale, and while consumers get a functioning app, it’s likely not one with any support going forward. Still other scam apps rip off the copyright of a popular brand (like Pokemon) for bogus apps that do nothing but cheat customers out of their money.

Apple really needs to pay attention to this. When I was on Android, this sort of crap clogged up the Market. It’s one reason Android felt so unruly to me. With Apple reviewing apps, there’s no reason this sort of thing should happen.

There’s some great stuff in here.

Keep these in mind.