Karenism » apple

Macworld 2010: smaller and still fun

Karen — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 03:30:21 +0000

Macworld was tiny this year in comparison to previous years. I was able to see all the booths in about an hour, and that included dawdling longer than needed at many of them. The above statue is Atlas. Despite all the depictions of Atlas carrying the Earth, in Greek mythology, Atlas held up the heavens & separated it from Earth. I’m not exactly sure what the artist is trying to say with this piece — the iPod could be a representation of heaven (which was divine and far from perfect), or this sort of technology weighs us down. There was a time when I wanted to major in classical mythology.

Anyway…

I made a few videos of all the stuff I saw.

Macworld videos on Youtube

By far the best things I saw was the minidv->HDMI cable from Kanex. It’s not sexy or showy, but this connector allows me to use a mac mini as a media center that I can connect to my HD tv. Hot.

The other noteworthy gadget was the universal remote app for the Iphone. It’s very new and I don’t think it’s out yet. The app will require an infrared iphone case. Without getting into the techy dorky details, some media devices use IR to communicate with the remote, so in order for the iphone to become a universal remote it needs an extra accessory. I have a universal remote at home and it’s pretty confusing to use. The demo of the iphone app makes it look super easy.

Where to purchase the toys in the videos:
Bone flash drives
Joby’s Gorillapod – This is a *must have* for anyone who owns a camera. You can wrap this tripod on anything which makes it much much much easier to take self portraits and long exposure night shots.
Trexta – can’t find a place to buy those amazing little man ipod cases! I really want one
iKit kickstand cases – will be available in about a month.

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More vids from the iPad launch

Karen — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:28:41 +0000

This one’s from iJ of us “begging” in front of the apple announcement. It was so much fun!

Oh and she got to go to the reception and TOUCH IT! I went to work. I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these things. I can’t stop thinking about it.

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The iPad is here!

Karen — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:21:35 +0000

I was hanging outside the Apple announcement today with Justine. We tried but nobody gave us a press pass. Even though we didn’t get to see anything, I’m esploder over the product. They call it the iPad.

hanging out at the announcement on youtube

I’m absolutely thrilled about the new iPad. The wi-fi model is coming in 60 painful days, but I’d have to wait even longer for the 3g model- 90 days! I’m bathing in the kool-aid. Isn’t it lovely?

The skinny:
1/2 inch thick
1.5 pounds
9.7 inch IPS display (some fancy pants type of LCD)
1GHz Apple “A4″ chip
speaker & microphone
bluetooth
802.11 wifi
accelerometer & compass

Detailed specs at Apple

What I want to know is, why no camera?

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ReelDirector allows editing on your iphone

Karen — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:17:06 +0000

Fantastico! on youtube

I made edited this movie in 10 minutes on the bus on my iphone. I know you’re impressed.

ReelDirector video editing iphone application ($7.99)

Wins:
holy crap, you can string a series of clips together on your freaking phone
good variety of transitions, although you only really need fade and dissolve for most movies
rendering was pretty fast

Room for improvement:
clipping or expanding a clip after the first trimming
overlay audio – either a song or a voice over
include pictures
preview the entire movie before rendering
split a clip – turn one clip into two

Sad panda:
My movie rendered in tallscreen mode. I’m really disappointed the program didn’t correctly detect the orientation of the videos.
Can’t change to high quality option after you start adding clips

Verdict: Not worth $8 yet, but hopefully they’ll have less buggy versions soon.

In depth:
When you open the app, you are presented with a list of your projects. It takes some experimentation to figure out what each field does, but it all makes sense after playing with it.

Be sure to select high quality mode when you start – you can’t select it later. I can’t imagine why you’d want a low quality version, since the iphone camera is pretty low resolution to start with, but the default is off.

Once you’re in the edit screen you’re presented with a mostly intuitive interface. Select the add button and you are presented with the videos from your library. The trimming feature on the clip is well done. Hold down the ends of the timeline and the filmstrip expands to allow you to crop with more precision. You must do your cropping in this screen. Once you chose the clip, you cannot re-crop or expand it (pity).

In the filmstrip screen you can easily reorder your clips and add transitions to the beginning and end. The little ball allows you to scroll through all your clips, but it’s so hard to actually touch and drag it that it might as well not exist.

Back at the project screen, I was ready to export my movie. “Create” is a confusing option – I initially thought it meant I wanted to create a new project from my current project screen. Since the other two available options were “Delete” and “Properties”, I decide to try out “Create”. It actually renders the movie. I assume they chose the term “Create” because most users might not know what “render” or “export” means. You can’t share, play or save until you create. Once you “create” the movie, you could preview the entire thing. “Save” writes it to your photos area. This button seems completely unnecessary. Whenever I create a movie, it should save it to my photos area. I don’t need to save a photo every time I take a picture.

The thumbnails on my clips were all upside down. I hoped it was a preview bug, and my movie would be oriented correctly once I “created” it. No such luck.

Aside from the orientation bugs, which hopefully be smoothed out in the future, this is a darn cool application.

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Suprise naked baby

Karen — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:03:22 +0000

After many years of living in San Francisco, I finally had the chance to explore Japantown. One of the bookstores had a display of mystery toys. Each box contained 1 of a series of toys. The naked baby series was just too creepy to pass up.

Naked baby on youtube

I love Japanese tchotchke. Lately I’ve been collecting Re-ment food, but now I’m into the naked babies. I currently have 3. I guess that makes me creepy too.

———————————–

<~~~~ feed me, om nom nom

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A little macworld update

Karen — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:35:00 +0000

Youtube booth at Macworld

Macworld has been pretty fun, even though there weren’t many big announcements. I didn’t find anything that really excited me at the event. The little youtube booth had a computer and a soft light on the ceiling so I played a little song in the booth.

Turner (one of the guys from Smule) taught me a few notes.

Gonna make you work work, make you work!

I got to meet Lisa. She’s Canadian. I love Canadians, and their ketchup chips.

While hanging out with Justine I didn’t take too many photos. She had that lovely Nikon D90 that took such puuuurdy photos. It makes me want to get a dslr.

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Exclusive interview with Steve Jobs!!!

Karen — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:49:27 +0000

Exclusive Steve Jobs Interview on Youtube

It’s Justine‘s dream come true. She finally gets to talk to Steve.

Just a little peck on the cheek.

I got to shake his hand! I almost fainted.

PS. Check out that hot HD action on Youtube. Very nice.

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Halloweeeeeenie!

Karen — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:31:27 +0000

it is full of the happies.

I cut this pumpkin up. It fought me but I won. In case you can’t tell (I’m working on the carving skillz) this is a macbook pro. You can tell it’s one of the new ones because the trackpad has no mouse button. It also pukes hearts. I can type and click really fast on it.

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Replacement power

Karen — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:04:51 +0000

I’m really glad that Apple is offering free replacements for mac power adapters. It’s a good thing I didn’t throw them away when they started fraying. I have two that I’m taking to the mac store tomorrow, which means I will then have four power adapters. Although I would rather have the $150 it cost me when I replaced the broken ones.

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Nap time at WWDC 08

Karen — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:03:22 +0000

The group workout is my favorite part. I love making movies with Justine.

A big thanks to the guys who were willing to be fun and silly on camera. They got adorably excited when they found out Micah designed the new comment system at Digg. Many of the guys in the video developed Tooble. They’re high school kids! Quite impressive. I didn’t try the app, as I have little interest in downloading shitty quality content off youtube. It would be cool if they could hook up rss subscription to it so you don’t have to individually pick each video. With all the rss converters out there you could make youtube feeds for any interest. Neat.

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