Apple Sells Funk’n iPods

By
14 September 2003
2 min read
In Technology
630 views

Apple has released new iPods with 20, and 40Gb capacities. Apple has also managed sleekify and shrink these new portable beasts ever so slightly.

Along with the new models comes the new ads/imagery Apple has gone with to tantalise the general trendy public with disposable income. Vector silohuettes of young hip dudes and dudettes grooving out with their prized iPods against one of five trendy vibrant colours. The American Apple site actually lets you switch and choose between a banana cadmium, must-have-magenta, terminally hip turquoise, livid lime and of course (& my favourite,) a gorgeously violently vibrant violet, depending on which particular shade of funk you feel like. Bastards didn’t do so for the Australian site.

The vector work is really nice, with a good balance of solid simple form and finer intricate lines for curly hair for example. The design of the iPod itself lends itself incredibly well to this sort of illustration style. Bright white pods and headphone cords add just the right contrast, while reminding us these ads are meant to sell iPods not funk*.

I like ’em and if I wasn’t already the proud recipient of an iPod implant myself, I’d probably feel as though I’d really need to buy one now. Yes that’s right, I’m in the 18-30 demo, and a designer. These ads were tailor made for moi.

BTW Apple has also upgraded the flat panel iMacs to 1 and 1.25GHz.

* Funk is an optional extra at no charge — Yet. The level of funk may vary between individuals.

Beer-Coated CDs

By
14 September 2003
34 second read
In Food, Technology
713 views

Cameron Jones, a DJ and scientist in Melbourne whose research is in the area of communication through biological cells, serendipitously created an ‘optical biocomputer’ when he spilled beer on his CDs and left them over night. The resulting fungus that formed distorted the sound of the CDs in interesting and meaningful ways

What RIAA Gets Out of File Sharing

By
11 September 2003
57 second read
In Business, Entertainment, Rights, Technology
688 views

A company called BigChampagne sells regional P2P download statistics to most of the major record labels. When the labels know what people are downloading, they know what to put on the radio, and sales in the area increase. The record industry’s lawsuits against file sharing companies hang on their assertion that the programs have no use other than to help infringe copyrights. If the labels acknowledge a legitimate use for P2P programs, it would undercut their case as well as their zero-tolerance stance

The Hague Rules That Linking is Legal in Scientology Case

By
9 September 2003
1 min read
In Politics, Rights, Technology
566 views

The Court of Appeal in The Hague rejected all of Scientology’s claims in appeal in Scientology’s action against XS4ALL, Karin Spaink and ten other internet providers. As a result, Karin Spaink’s web site, which Scientology sought to remove from the Internet based on copyright claims, is entirely legal in the Netherlands. The court also overturned two lower court rulings, one of which said that linking to material that infringed a copyright was itself actionable. The other ruling said that ISPs that failed to act on credible notification of a copyright violation could be held liable for that. The Appeals Court felt that this was too vague a standard, and thus posed a threat to free speech

Using GPS to Prevent Train Crashes

By
8 September 2003
29 second read
In Technology
528 views

There are plans in India to use GPS technology to alert train drivers of obstructions on the tracks, automatically stopping the train if the driver fails to take action. This sounds like a good use of cheaply-available technology to provide a safer train network

Everyone Needs a Personal Server

By
8 September 2003
49 second read
In Technology
542 views

Intel Labs is prototyping a potentially revolutionary new personal server. The tiny device comprises a hard disk, BlueTooth, a Web-DAV enabled HTTP daemon, and other technologies enabling the user to access and modify their files from any enabled PC within their ‘Personal Area Network’. In theory, this would allow the worker to access their own data — essentially to have their own PC — at any suitable workstation as long as the personal server were nearby

ISP Recovers in 72 Hours After Levelling by Tornado

By
6 September 2003
36 second read
In Technology
505 views

An ISP in Tennessee, whose main facility was completely levelled by a tornado, recovered in 72 hours. The story is a great recounting of how they executed their disaster recovery plan, what they found they had left out of that plan, data recovery from destroyed hard drives, and perhaps the best argument ever for offsite backups

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