Sent from Newegg. All that wasted box and absurbed amount of paper to ship a soft notebook sleeve. Seriously, this thing could have just gone in an envelope.
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The Find My iPhone feature? It works, as evidenced by Kevin and his two friends, who went an adventure that involved Lego, a dive bar and some fast urban walking. Read on to see how everything played out. – JC
Myself and two compadres, Ryan and Mark, are in Chicago (each of us for the first time) to attend Brickworld, the world’s largest Lego convention. Yes we’re a bunch of dorks. Yes you totally wish you were here too.
Last night, after seeing Second City improv, we ate at a pleasantly sketchy dive bar in uptown Chicago, where the food was mediocre and the characters were questionable. I definitely had my iPhone while at our table, and I definitely did NOT have it (whoops!) when we were 100 feet down the street.
I raced back into the bar, not even particularly concerned, but it was gone like baby. In less than five minutes, with very few people in the small place, my beloved JesusPhone had managed to vanish into a black hole. Our waitress was sympathetic, and I left a number, but I was immediately glum about my prospects of seeing it again.
So I felt like about zero cents, but then we giddily realized that I had *just* activated the brand-new Find My iPhone service. Even better, Mark had a Sprint (yes, Sprint) USB dongle giving him Internet access over 3G on his MacBook Pro. Excited to try it out, we hopped onto me.com and clicked the Find My iPhone link.
“Your iPhone is not connected to a data network or does not have Find My iPhone enabled.”
Well, crap. I guess all bets are off if the thieving person has the bright idea to turn the iPhone off. Oddly the phone still rang when we called it, suggesting it wasn’t off; but, one way or the other, it was unable to broadcast itself to Apple so I could track it down. We sent a message to the phone - “CALL 512-796-xxxx” - but no luck. The MobileMe website said it would send me an email when the message had been displayed, but no email arrived.
Dejected, we prowled the bar one more time, but it wasn’t that big a place and there weren’t any places for the phone to be hiding. Game over. We went back to the hotel and I was disconsolate. This morning we checked again with no additional luck, and when Mark tried dialing the phone around noon, it *did* go straight to voicemail. The odds of ever seeing the phone again were slim to say the least.
After lunch, while at the Lego convention, I checked my email…
Holy crap! I jumped back to me.com and clicked Find My iPhone again, and to my absolute shock and amazement, it displayed Google Maps and drew a circle around Medill St.:
The block was about four or five miles west of the bar. It was too perfect to be a random glitch.
I sent a second message to the phone, slightly more to the point: “This phone is missing. Please call 512-796-xxxx to return it. $50 reward.” Almost immediately I received a second confirmation email that it had been displayed on the phone. And yet, the minutes ticked by and no call was coming. I kept refreshing the location, and though the circle varied in size, it kept floating around that same block, five miles west of the bar.
The Lego convention was drawing to a close and it was time for the closing ceremony. But I wasn’t about to spend an hour sitting through awards and Lego-themed thank-you speeches while my poor lost iPhone sat in some random Chicago neighborhood. So we packed my Lego creations, tossed them in the rental car, and drove from Wheeling back into town. Mark reestablished his trusty Sprint connection and as we drove, every five minutes, he refreshed the location. The phone wasn’t moving. It appeared to be in a row of buildings on the north side of Medill St.
We parked along Medill and hopped out. It was a Puerto Rican neighborhood. On the south side of the street, an outdoor birthday fiesta was convening, and some of the participants eyed us three honkeys questioningly. Now at this point I had no fricking clue how we would find the phone; did I think I’d find it under a bush? I certainly didn’t plan to go door-to-door, nor did I expect the cops to regard a blue circle around the entire block as sufficient cause for a search warrant. I sent a third message to the phone that I’d been formulating in my head: “We have tracked the phone to Medill St. and are locating it. Please call 512-796-xxxx to help us and claim a reward.” Short version: WE KNOW WHERE YOU ARE.
In a burst of inspiration, I took Mark’s computer with me as we walked down the block, figuring the recipient of the message might see us prowling the area with an open laptop and realize we meant business. I kept refreshing; the circle kept hovering; but it still stretched across the entire block, and worse, this included a big apartment building.
Suddenly Mark called my number - the umpteenth time he’d tried - and to our shock, somebody answered! He immediately passed the phone to me, but by the time I could say hello, the person on the other side had hung up. DAMMIT! I knew we were on the trail, but as we walked up and down that block of Medill for the third time, I had no idea how we’d get any closer. I pictured the possibility of driving away from the neighborhood knowing my iPhone was around. It was more frustrating than having had no idea where it was. I pulled up Google Translate, and sent a 4th message to the phone: “Por favor, devuelva el teléfono o nos pondremos en contacto con la policía.” The email confirmations were arriving immediately in my Inbox, meaning our threats were showing on the phone’s screen in real time.
Then an amazingly lucky thing happened. I refreshed the iPhone location and the circle moved, to the corner of the block, and shrunk in size to maybe 100 feet across. I waited a minute and refreshed again. The small circle had shifted southward down Washtenaw.
“THAT WAY!”
Us three skinny white guys walked at a rapid pace in the direction of the circle. We moved past the birthday party, curious if one of the participants might be culpable, but the circle again shifted farther south. I was ready to break for our car if the phone started moving away faster than we could catch it, but it hovered at the very end of the street, at the corner of Washtenaw and Milwaukee:
Ryan and Mark raced ahead, literally making a flanking maneuver to the left and right, as I approached the intersection.
I clicked Refresh. The circle moved again. It was directly over the bus stop on the south side of Milwaukee Avenue.
I yelled and pointed.
Now, put yourself in the shoes of the iPhone thiever who will momentarily be entering the story. You might have told yourself, “Hey, free iPhone!” the night before. You might have seen the gently-threatening messages and ignored them, maybe even scoffed. Then the phone told you it was on Medill St. It talked to you in Spanish. And you saw three skinny white guys prowling in the street with a laptop computer open.
So you take off down the road, and to your shock and horror, the honkeys follow you. You stand at your local bus stop, expecting to lose them. And they converge on your location from across the intersection, the bald one with the laptop yelling and pointing at you. You probably think the angels of death have found you.
He sheepishly waved me over.
“Have you got it?” I asked as I marched up to the guy, acting far more intimidating than I felt. Our iPhone-pilfering friend apparently works at the sketchy bar, and as he fished around in his bag, he gave a questionable alibi about having found the phone, intending to return it, but being intimidated by “all these scary-looking messages” that kept popping up on the display. “Um, yeah, those were from me,” I replied curtly. He pulled my phone out, totally unharmed, and handed it over. I resisted the urge to giggle.
I shook his hand - Lord knows why I did that - and the three of us walked off. We laughed triumphantly, adrenaline racing, feeling like the Jack Bauer trio. (Disregard the fact that we’d just left a Lego convention.)
I’d been amazed that the phone had enough battery life to make it through the night and still beam its location; the moment its battery was dead, then it would be game over for our little scavenger hunt. I unlocked my phone and saw almost 20 missed calls. And then, at that very moment, the iPhone shut down and displayed the “Connect to power” icon. My phone’s battery literally hung on until the second it was in my hand. I wuv you, iPhone.
All said and done, it was almost worth losing the phone just for the thrill of finding it like this. We want to pitch a reality show to the Discovery Channel: “Phone Hunters.” It certainly felt like we were in one there for a second.
And that, my friends, is why the MobileMe service is worth the damn money. It’s been around for just over seven years and it FINALLY got a killer feature.
" Kevin Miller via Happy Waffle via Gizmodo View →
It’s late, I just got home from watching Star Trek, and I have to get up in just over 5 hours. However I felt the need to post my thoughts (who knows who will hear it) concerning this $20 Imax experience in which I certainly want at least half back.
Star Trek the move (2009) was a mediocre to decent action blow’em up film at best and perhaps the worst Star Trek movie at worst. That’s right, I’d much rather watch TNG based Insurrection or Nemesis than go through this film again. The worst part was perhaps the gross amount of CGI and action/explosion scenes. A close second was the cinematographer who must of had only a zoom lens and a tripod with a broken leg. It felt like Transformers, however somewhat more redeemable. Perhaps this is a situation where watching it in the Imax was a poor move since the action was so intense it overshadowed any highlights.
The way the film starts out is unlike most (but not all) Star Trek movies and episodes. Mass amounts of action and explosion in pure melodramatic fashion. I felt thrusted into a confusing and over stimulated experience. We then turn to two very very short lived life scenes of Kirk and Spock at both pre-teen and pre-starfleet academy eras. Both could have been rather entertaining, but just as we started to warm up to their characters, we’d jump 15 or 3 years over the good development. They are thrusted into commanding positions which just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, in real life or Star Trek life, and begin their ever exploding set of events.
Listen, I’m a huge Star Trek fan. I always have been since I was a kid and my Mother and I would watch it every late night. I haven’t revisited the original series in years, but I’m re-watching TNG for like the 12th time, seen DS9 through about 10 times, and just finished Voyager for about the 8th time. Oh, and the ever so criticized Enterprise (which got it dead on but unfortunately at the end of it’s lifespan) at least 6 times through. And while the original Star Trek cast movies also haven’t been revisited often recently, I’m still a huge fan of Generations and First Contact, and hell, I’ll watch Insurrection and Nemesis if it’s on TV, considering it as just a double episode and not a movie. Point being, I love Star Trek and I’ll even sift through the bad ones in knowledge that it make the story complete.
So we’ve established that the film is action packed, mostly visually. Quick cut scenes, overly close-up head shots, truncated character developments, confusing protagonists, and non-Star Trek-esque style gave to this film’s failure. I at this point need to gripe with the last comment (along with some just…uh what the hell moments). Some spoilers may follow, however I will make them vague enough as to not ruin watching the film:
1. What is with the Romulan ship from the future having self-boring torpedoes. I’ve never seen those before…ever! Sure, by the time they reappear later in the film, they could create them, and sure they are from the future, so they’re stronger than most ships (hell a basic plasma weapon from a transport ship from 150 years in the future could destroy the old Enterprise) but in the first scene, come on! Make the battle a little more difficult for them, then they can have time to perfect their weaponry and I’ll bite.
2. What is with the Romulans. This must have been taken from a page out of Nemesis where Piccard’s clone and his subordinates (a Romulan faction of some kind) are wearing this weird jumpsuit and have this odd ship that looks like it came from the other dimension from the movie Sphere. They do not look nor do they act as the Romulans I grew to loath. Shaved heads and tattoos can be forgiven for a miner crew if not for the fact that the Romulans had never deviated from their formal presentation in the TV series.
3. Spock’s mother was blonde…and she certainly wasn’t played by the still young Winona Ryder. His father was a dead on though.
4. The whole basis of the story and the motive of the Romulan’s never made any sense and they never really tried to explain it. Sure, their anger could have been misdirected at Spock, but why was the Federation to blame?!!
5. What the hell was Uhura doing with her choice of intimate male. I don’t want to ruin to much, but where the hell did they get that coupling?! (I suppose I could be missing something from early episodes/movies but I don’t recall it).
6. How can a little shuttle make up light speed to the Enterprise doing max warp in time to do a warp to warp transport?
7. What’s with the “Warning” texts that appear over the viewscreen? It so obvious that it was for the audience and not the crew. Same goes for Spock’s ship giving warning stating in very laymen’s terms what will likely happen if this and this happens. I’d much prefer subtitles. I never needed those handicaps to understand shit’s going down before, just decent dialogue.
8. There was no conference on what to do in the ready room, no plan really made, no exchanging of ideas among senior staff. Just bickering, fighting, and action! Not the intellectual exchange of ideas Star Trek has grown to express.
9. There was ZERO investigations on humanity, philosophy, or equality. Everything that Rodenberry envisioned was all but vanquished, in place of some blockbuster-popcorn-summer flick. Sickening!
10. Does anyone making the movie know anyting about black holes? I know Star Trek gets physics wrong a lot, but while they were near the event horizon for so long, the Federation would have been extinct by the time they exited.
11. Ok, so space time may or may not have been disturbed here ;-). But if it was, and it changed the timeline significantly, all of us Star Trek geeks know that the Temporal Directive would not have stood for it (especially if it significantly altered the Federation) and one of those ‘out of time monitoring ships’ would have came and corrected any major discrepancies at the end of the film. This was my #2 pet peeve.
12. And the #1…Where was the love? I don’t mean sex or romance, but there was no heart to this movie. Just another formula for a franchise.
Ultimately, if they wanted to do an ‘origins’ film, I’m all for that. However, like many other origin films for first films of famous cartoons, comics, or series, they were rushed. Batman Begins as the first example. While showing Bruce Wayne’s growth to Batman is counterintuitive on how his history is unfolded in the comics, it could have been a very involved movie in itself. But they then had to rush a whole other plot in the second half where he’s wearing a bat suit and fighting crime. Then they redo a perfect Tim Burton and Jack Nicholson movie, luckily they hit it out of the park. X-Men and Spiderman also have to do the how-to creation story and still find time to fight an evil villain. Both do well, but both continue to fade with each successive movie. Iron Man follows and does a surprising amount of back story in the first part of the movie, then quickly changes gears to good ‘ol regular Iron Man. My vote goes to Iron Man for orchestrating so much in the first film of a franchise. With Star Trek however, we not only have so many movies of the Kirk generation, but many many episodes. We know so much about them already, so I had hoped that they’d take this time and just focused on how they became them without throwing them into the commanding of the Enterprise. For once I’d like to see a franchise (either new or reinvented) spend the first movie on just the ‘beginnings’ of the characters. Just because we know they grow into something so much more doesn’t mean we don’t nor won’t sit through 2 hours to see in detail how they got there. History is sometimes the most interesting element of our present.
Bonus, my two favorite things:
1. I’m glad they put one of Kirk’s GF’s (or one night stands) in. Not just because we saw a busty girl in her undies, but because she was an all green Orion. Very cool.
2. Karl Urban’s portrayel of ‘Bones’ McCoy was hands down the best character recreation. Zachary Quinto’s Spock was perhaps the worst (though not awful).
Overall it’s stunning how it received a 96% positive review on Rotten Tomatoes and how we as a culture will base a film on how it’s visually appealing and let the content ride that tidal wave. Star Trek fan’s should be insulted if not for the fact that the commercial success may have saved Star Trek movies. I still want to see DS9, Voyager, and TNG movies (especially to know what happens with the new Data) but that will never happen, at least not as what we know as Star Trek. The name will probably be forever tarnished.
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“Hot of the presses is forthcoming design documentary Objectified’s awesome by Build, which is a veritable visual history of industrial design. How many silhouettes can you name?”
via gizmodo
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“Designers Squidspot created the table, with fonts arranged roughly into related group columns showing (although Akzidenz Grotesk and Helvetica not being in the same family! Ok, I’ll stop). They’ve also ranked each roughly according to popularity according to a number of sources.”
Click on the picture for the full resolution.
via gizmodo
View →“Pornography has several values beyond serving as a test-driver for new media. As suggested above in the Betamax-VHS battle, porn, with little cash to spare and its nose to the ground, is often first to sniff out the practical uses of new media, leading the way for profitable investment by the mainstream”
Read the whole paper by law prof. Peter Johnson here (yes, his name is Peter Johnson).
View →The most I’ve ever seen Stewart really go after a guest, with no mercy. Keep watching.
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View →The most I’ve ever seen Stewart really go after a guest, with no mercy. Keep watching.
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View →The most I’ve ever seen Stewart really go after a guest, with no mercy. Keep watching.
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View →WOZ! You ain’t seen nothing yet.
View →YES! YES! YES! YES!
View →Sixth Sense…a sign that when I die, hopefully beyond the age of 70, I will go in a technology rich wet dream of mine. I envy the generation that’s behind me.
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Macstein mac chic of the month (july ‘08). Check them out, several pics per girl per month….per awesomeness!
via macstein
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