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What Is This Psychedelic Macintosh Helmet?

Matt “Kid Chameleon” Loniero is an audio engineer / graphic designer / DJ who creates visual experiences for live performances of other DJs and bands. He also likes to experiment with stuff. A lot. And his latest experiment, a Macintosh Plus helmet with an embedded iPad connected to a Bluetooth keyboard, is one of the coolest things we’ve seen in a while.

The visualizer helmet is made of a Macintosh Plus bought on eBay, which had its inner parts removed. A bicycle helmet was then placed inside the case together with an iPad. In the live performance you can watch below, this was the setup:

For this specific performance, we used an iMac connected to several projectors and televisions around the room and above the bar. The iMac was running Resolume Avenue and the video was triggered using a MIDI keyboard and a Wiimote. The iPad was connected to a bluetooth keyboard which allowed me to press play on the iPad video and press the B button on the Wiimote at the same time Kid Chameleon started his set.

If you missed the first DJ set in Phoenix, you can get the chance to see Kid Chameleon perform live again tonight at the LA Art Mix at the Gallery Godo in Glendale, CA. Check out the video below, and more photos here.
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App Store About to Hit 10 Billion Downloads, Apple Celebrates

Nearly 10 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store, which was launched in 2008. In January 2010, App Store downloads topped 3 billion; during Summer 2010, Apple reached the 5 billion milestone. Now, it’s time to get to the 10 billion figure, and Apple wants to celebrate and “say thanks” by giving away a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card (also valid for the Mac App Store) to a lucky user who will download the 10 billionth app.

Check out the contest’s official rules here, entrants have to be at least 13 years of age and resident in a country where the App Store is available.  You can also enter without a purchase or download by filling this form.[9to5mac via iSpazio]

The Future: Thought-Controlled iPad

When I was a kid and I tried to imagine what “the future” would look like, I have to admit I could only think of flying cars, spacecrafts and thought-controlled objects. As I grew up and realized flying cars were a no-no and the year 2000 didn’t bring anything new except for a weird computer bug people were scared of, I lost my faith in space exploration (well, at least in the short term) but I kept hoping for thought-controlled gadgets. Because I knew manufacturers and scientists were playing around with the idea and a few prototypes had been demoed at, say, videogame-related conferences.

So what does this have to do with Apple? Fair enough, good question. At the latest CES, InteraXon (a Canadian company) has announced and demonstrated a headset that can connect to iPhones and iPads and allows you to control apps and games with your mind. There, I said it. Technically, this custom EEG headset pairs with a thought-controlling framework that has been added to the popular iPad game Zen Bound 2 game, letting users control the wooden shapes on screen with their brainwaves.

Now the real question is: are you willing to put a headset on to control stuff with your brain? Doesn’t it look a little bit, well, weird? The project is in its early stages, we have time to put some thought on it. Literally.

Video after the break. [via iSpazio]

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Twitter for Mac: ‘Tweet’ from Anywhere in OS X

Just a few days ago everyone (including us) was talking about a simple bookmarklet for Safari that sends the site title and link to Twitter for Mac (Tweetie 2). Last night, I even found a Safari extension that did the same thing but also adds a tweet option in the contextual menu (right click) within Safari. Right after I tweeted the link, @SebastienPeek told me “who needs that when you can highlight anything, right click and it’ll show Tweet?” I had no idea what he was talking about, do you? I asked him if it was Safari only and he went one step more and said that it’s system wide, you can do it with a right click and highlight of any text. @BoltClock is credited with pointing me to this discovery. It’s system-wide for all apps that support Mac OS X’s contextual menu item additions. Here’s some visual goodness:

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Rumor: iPhone 5 with “Apple A8” Dual-Core Processor?

According to the latest rumors coming this morning from Digitimes and Apple Daily, the next generation iPhone, the “iPhone 5”, will adopt Qualcomm’s chipsets, which use substrates from Kinsus IC. Similar rumors surfaced months ago after Intel acquisition of chipset maker Infineon.

According to this report, the iPhone 5 is set to come out in the second quarter of 2011 (announced at the WWDC, we guess?) and will include a new “A8 processor”. Currently, the iPhone 4 is based on the “Apple A4” processor, which is a combination of a ARM Cortex-A8 CPU and a GPU. From the reports of this morning, as also noted by Slashgear, it is unclear whether these rumors of a new A8 processor are pointing to an upgrade of the current Cortex-A8 or a new, rebranded Apple version of the CPU that might suggest a move to a dual core processor, like two Apple A4s combined.

Today’s reports don’t tell much about the details of this new processor, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple taking existing technology and rebrand it to their own name like they did with the Apple A4. Furthermore, a dual-core processor in the iPhone 5 would help Apple stay relevant considering what manufacturers are doing on Android with the Tegra2.

The Daily Won’t Be Announced Next Week

Looks like we called it: citing “sources familiar with the companies’ plans” All Things Digital reports that The Daily, the joint venture between Apple and News Corp. for an iPad-exclusive newspaper, won’t be announced next week:

Apple and News Corp. have made a joint decision to push back next week’s planned launch, according to sources familiar with the companies’ plans. The delay is supposed to give Apple time to tweak its new subscription service for publications sold through its iTunes platform.

Plans to hold debut the iPad newspaper at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art next Wednesday have been tabled “for weeks, not months,” I’m told.

As we expected, the issue seems to be lying in app subscriptions for iTunes, which aren’t ready at the moment. And with such a feature supposedly being scheduled to ship with a software update to iOS, it appears that we’ll have to wait for weeks before actually reading The Daily. iOS 4.3, in fact, was released as “beta 1” only yesterday.

News Corp. PR confirmed the delay, and Apple declined to comment. Apple is reportedly tweaking the iTunes subscription feature that will allow publishers to push new content to users automatically, with recurring billing in iTunes.

App Store Updates: “Previous Picks” for Apps Of The Week, More Sections

Just like every Thursday, Apple has updated the homepage of the iPhone and iPad App Stores to include this week’s featured apps, updated New & Noteworthy sections and staff picks. This week’s refresh, though, comes with a few more surprises.

First off, we’re one week into the Mac App Store: Apple started refreshing the homepage of the new Store as well, although no custom sectionshave been launched. Guess Apple is still waiting for more Mac apps to become available. Anyway, go check out the updated Mac App Store homepage, as some sweet apps and games like Compartments and The Incident are being featured. Read more

Get Lion’s Launchpad On Your Mac Now with QuickPick

One of the most intriguing features of Lion that Apple previewed at its “Back to the Mac” event in October was, in my opinion, the Launchpad. In pure iPad fashion, Launchpad will be “a home for your apps”, with fast and easy access to software downloaded from the Mac App Store, or folders created to better organize these apps. It all looks like an iPad’s Springboard brought to the Mac, with pages and iOS-like folders.

QuickPick, a $9.99 app available on the Mac App Store, brings some of the features we’ll see on Lion’s Launchpad this summer to OS X now. QuickPick lets you access apps and folders through an overlay interface that will sit on top of your currently opened apps, Finder windows and Spotlight searches. Once installed, QuickPick can be invoked either through a keyboard shortcut, a click on its dock icon or an active OS X corner. As QuickPick’s grid comes in the foreground, you’ll be able to arrange apps and create pages for your most used apps, folders or documents. Almost any file that can be dragged out of the Finder can be taken into QuickPick’s grid. In the app, you can adjust the grid’s spacing and text size. You can even create multiple pages of apps / documents thanks to a “Page Dock” that allows you to set up as many “grids” as you want. Alternatively, you can move between pages with a three-finger swipe. Again, just like the Launchpad in Lion.

QuickPick, of course, doesn’t bring all the features and details we saw demoed in Launchpad, such as the iOS folders or page indicators. If you drag a folder from the Finder to QuickPick, in fact, that folder won’t open in-app but will launch a new Finder window instead. I guess it’s a fair trade-off, considering that this app is running on Snow Leopard and we haven’t seen enough of Launchpad anyway. Still, everything’s smooth and works just as advertised.

QuickPick is available at $9.99 in the Mac App Store, and it gives us a taste of things to come in Lion by providing an alternative solution for OS X 10.6. Will Launchpad be different and more refined come Lion’s public release? For sure. But until then, you should give QuickPick a try. Check out our brief demo video of the app below.
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