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iPad Portraits: The Woz

David Newman is one of the most talented artists that use the iPad as a canvas for their creations. We covered David’s impressive portraits before, but his latest is just too great and geeky to not deserve another spot here. I mean, it’s the Woz!

That’s right, a portrait of Steve Wozniak while using a MacBook with his custom white iPhone 4 sitting on a Glif. The portrait was entirely realized on an iPad and Steve set it as his new profile picture on Facebook. It can’t get any geekier than this.

Check out the animation video of the portrait below. As usual, Newman doesn’t disappoint.[via RazorianFly] Read more

CNN Releases Official iPad App

CNN released its first official app for the iPad earlier today, and it’s a solid first iteration on the tablet. It’s available now for free in the App Store.

The CNN app is meant to let you enjoy the full CNN experience with stories, insights and videos directly on your iPad. Being the iPad both a personal and communal device, the developers over at CNN thought it would be appropriate to build sharing features and a commenting system right into the app. You can share stories on Facebook and Twitter, send them via email, save a story for offline viewing (as you can guess, very useful on iPad WiFi devices). Read more

MobileMe Goes Down For Maintenance Tonight→

MobileMe Goes Down For Maintenance Tonight

Apple has announced that MobileMe’s account page and sync services will be down for maintenance later today. MobileMe account will be down from 10 PM until 11 PM Pacific Time. MobileMe sync will be unavailable from 10 PM until midnight Pacific Time.

Due to scheduled maintenance, MobileMe members will be unable to access me.com/account.

Due to scheduled maintenance, some MobileMe members may be unable to sync between their computers, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch or view their contacts and calendars at me.com.

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Fotopedia Heritage 3.0: Instant Slideshows, Suggestions, iOS 4.2 Support

Fotopedia Heritage is one of those iOS apps (universal, free) that keeps on getting better on each release. First they released a 1.0 version that aimed at becoming the digital encyclopedia for humanity. Version 2.0 added support for the Retina Display, 25,000 more photos and shuffle mode. Today, with the release of Fotopedia 3.0, the developers re-imagined the app from the ground up and redesigned the whole experience to make it more intuitive, fast and beautiful. Read more

Buddies for iPad Adds Facebook Chat

Buddies for Facebook is a neat app for the iPad we reviewed in November which provides a quick and easy way to check on your Facebook friends. With an interface based on a “split view” aimed at letting you navigate across all the sections of Facebook, there’s no doubt Buddies is one of the most curious and innovative way to use Facebook on the tablet.

The latest 1.15 update, released last night, improves the app’s integration with Facebook by adding support for Chat. To access the chat interface, you have to tap on an icon in the upper right corner in the main page. The app will “rotate” its UI to accomodate a new page with all your online friends. To start chatting, you tap on a contact and tap again to initiate the conversation. That’s it. The app allows you to switch back and forth between your friends lists and it’s pretty fast at switching between the main screen and the chat UI, too.

At $2.99 in the App Store, Buddies may not have all the features of Friendly (which happens to have a free version available now) but it’s got the feel of something new and specifically geared towards iPad users. It’s not just a webpage wrapped around an app, it’s a native version of Facebook that now comes with Facebook Chat integration.

Give it a try.

More On Cydia For Mac→

More On Cydia For Mac

Ok, so Cydia is coming to the Mac. But what will it bring to the OS X platform, which starting January 2011 will have not one, but two ways of installing software? Just as I assumed last week, it’ll bring easy installation of mods and tweaks without having to do those things manually, through the Terminal, and keep them updated after that. The unification of desktop hacks.

Chris Foresman over at Ars Technica reports:

Freeman created a new version of MobileSubstrate which has calls simply “CydiaSubstrate.” This new version can run on both iOS as well as Mac OS X on the desktop. “Just like you can make all these modifications on the iPhone, you can make these same modifications on the desktop,” Freeman said. “Until now, there has never been a way to easily install modifications to the system or third-party applications, as well as keep them updated.

True. Installing themes have been a complete mess (remember Magnifique?), not to mention those neat hacks and mods (to the Finder, for example) that magically disappear on every OS update. But there’s more:

CydiaSubstrate-based modifications can also target a particular application for modification, as well. “For instance, users that have jailbroken iPhones would like to have a modified version of iTunes that does not ask to update iOS when the device is plugged in, since the update might overwrite jailbreak modifications,” Freeman said. “Or perhaps you want to change the frequency that TimeMachine performs backups to something other than the stock settings. CydiaSubstrate makes this possible in an easy way that average users could install and update them.

This is exactly what tinkerers on OS X wanted, and needed. Cydia for Mac will simply be the iOS version brought to the desktop.

Back to the Mac.

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First (Public) Mac App Store Rejection?→

First Mac App Store Rejection?

LittleIpsum is a neat utility for Mac OS X we covered a few months ago here. By sitting in the menubar, it allows you to quickly copy Loren Ipsum text to the clipboard. The developers tried to submit the app to Apple for Mac App Store approval, and it got rejected. Why?

LittleIpsum v1.1.1 has been officially denied at the Mac App store due to not meeting the following guideline:

2.8   Apps that are not very useful or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected.

I’m sure many applications have been rejected so far, but this is the first public post from a developer I’ve seen talking about it. Seems like it’s going to be a very different store than we first thought. [via]

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Notational Velocity Alt→

Notational Velocity Alt

nvALT is a fork of the original Notational Velocity with some additional features and some interface modifications. It is a work in progress.

This fork by Brett Terpstra comes with widescreen layout, a shortcut to collapse the notes panel, Markdown, Textile and MultiMarkdown support, HTML source code tab in the Preview window. It’s really a highly customized version of the original NV, possibly inspired by Elastic Threads’ mod. The Preview window is amazingly useful.

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Trickle: The “Passive” Twitter App That’s Perfect On Your Desk

Twitter clients for iPhone and iPad, in spite of their substantial UI differences, are basically all geared towards the Twitter power user who wants to be able to do a lot of stuff with his Twitter timeline: check on users’ profiles, retweet, save to Instapaper, search, access lists, and so forth. Most Twitter clients for iOS are aimed at enabling you to enjoy the full Twitter experience.

Trickle, released a few days ago, is different. It runs on the iPhone and iPad as a universal app, but instead of bringing many of Twitter’s features to mobile devices, it focuses on turning your Apple device into a minimal, Helvetica-based, constantly up-to-date Twitter widget. Perfect for your desk, possibly with your iPhone or iPad in a dock. Read more