iHome is a favorite of mine when it comes to finding a good bedroom clock/radio & speaker for my iPod touch. Expanding the line to include Apple’s iPad, you can expect a whole slew of iHome gadgetry to arrive later this year to support your army of iDevices you likely received over the holidays. A couple products really stuck out to Federico and I, so instead of going through iHome’s entire catalogue of product-sauce which you can review at iLounge, we’ll share our favorites past the break.
Life Size Designer iPhone Cookie A Huge Success In Japan
While I can bake some mean snickerdoodles when Christmas comes around, I hate to admit than anything even related to frosting is a bit of a sore point in my baking expertise. Which means I probably could never work for the Green Gables bakery in Japan, whose intricate artwork on their iPhone cookie look-a-likes has become a popular hit. Individually packaged as to not damage the cookie, presentation is everything – the creator wishes that you’ll admire this tasty piece of art before indulging yourself to the unique tasty treat. The cookies have been around for a while, and pictures shared on the Internet fueled everyone’s inner geek to buy these one of a kind cookies that Apple Inc. themselves could have baked. I can imagine Johnny Ive in an apron mixing the dough and baking batches of these things.
My request is that Apple themselves import these cookies overseas and sell them at the mothership if possible, but even Cupertino might have trouble since there’s a 2 month waiting period. Just look at this way: that iPhone cookie has a wait time as long as the real iPhone when it first came out!
Going Back To Windows Has Taught Me I Could Live Off A Chrome Notebook
This is a bit of an off beat story for MacStories, but I’d like to talk about my experiences from moving to the Mac onto a PC desktop I’ve tossed together in the past week. It irks me that even going into 2011, you still see the age old arguments of software availability, familiarity, and often other non-issues when people partake in with the Mac vs. PC debate. I’d like to discuss software availability, because this is where I think PC advocates are highly mistaken in their perception of what we have available on OS X.
Unity Turns Your Living Room Into A Giant IR Blaster
It’s not that I hate IR blasters, but most of the time they’re ridiculously annoying. I’m somewhat of an iHome fan, but I swear I’ve never been more frustrated with a remote than with the one for their now outdated mid-2000 iHr5 model. The unit itself is very nice, but that remote? My god, if the stars didn’t align you could not change the volume with that thing. When IR blasters go giant (like on television remotes), they’re usually okay because I stand in the kitchen and change the channel, aiming it at the ceiling if I want.
So of course Unity seems pretty bad ass right? It sits presumably on your coffee table, firing off a plasma cannon of infrared rays in hopes of triggering some benign sensor in your home theater equipment. And the best part is that it connects to your iPhone over WiFi so you can control all of your devices with a single touchscreen interface. If you’ve an iPhone this seems like a great idea, but I don’t know how many of you would settle for the $99 Unity over a good Logitech Harmony.
Short URLS Suck, OS X & iOS Malware To Become More “Sophisticated” According To McAfee
When short URLs first arrived on the scene, I was rather excited at the prospect of simply using a good looking “designer” URL to vainly share links on Twitter. Short URLs provide brand reassurance: MacStories, Engadget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, and other sites now sport custom short URLs that verify the links we share lead back to our site. However, links from Bit.ly, CloudApp cl.ly links, and Twitter’s t.co links have become nothing more than a nuisance. If I use a service like TinyGrab, I know their short URLs will most likely lead to a snapshot someone has taken of their material. With more anonymous (everything) URL shorteners, there’s no way to verify its trust without using software that allows you to preview the long URL before you click through. We’ve seen their validity ruined plenty of times on Twitter through various attacks such as the cross-site request forgery attack that amused us for a few hours earlier this year, but I’ve simply lost trust in these “brands.”
While I didn’t need McAfee to be skeptical of weird Twitter users asking me if I want a free iPad, they predict short URLs will continue to annoy the tech savvy as the computer-illiterate continue to click through short URLs to whatever tomfoolery exists on the other side. McAfee’s other big claim: OS X could be the next target for malware kiddies.
The Nose Knows No Phone Like iPhone
Ever try smelling an Android phone? No? Some might say it smells like plastic. Smitten iOS graphic designers will tell you it smells like failure. But have you ever tried smelling an iPhone? It smells like Lucky Charms right? If it was anyone else other than me, it would be just plain disgusting. At least using your iPhone as a handkerchief isn’t as disgusting as using your iPad as a sushi plate (plus, boogers simply taste better), though I have yet another reason to keep my hands off your handset.
If you’ve an iPhone and busy hands, NoseDial assumes that the oleographic Retina Display is the perfect place to shnoze dial 911. Seriously, we can’t promise this kind of intimate nasal fondling won’t lead to anything more than an “app with benefits.” Perhaps it could be useful if you’re wearing more than biker gloves – those thick socks you yankees call mittens certainly aren’t very app happy. NoseDial allows you to tilt and scroll all with your face, but at the risk of looking ridiculous and triggering one of Apple’s sensitive liquid sensors with your snot, we ask you refrain from this $1 German utility just as you avoid taking your iPhone into the bathroom. On the contrary, you could buy the app and just use your fingers – but that wouldn’t be any fun now would it? NoseDial is an interesting concept, though when you need your fingers to just pull the darned thing out of your pocket, I can’t see it being very useful via the utensil between your eyeballs. Unless you’re a gymnast – that I’d like to see.
[via TUAW]
No More Hidden Fees: We’re Giving Away Wallet Dilemma So You Can Shop Safely Overseas With Your Credit Cards
Perhaps there’s a beautiful French woman waiting for you overseas. Boarding the next International flight and armed to the teeth with your Visas and MasterCards, you’ve found the perfect place in Paris to buy her that beautiful diamond ring. While I am stealing a page out of a Google commercial, spending money overseas is no joke when credit card fees are involved. Don’t be caught off guard: Wallet Dilemma for the iPhone accurately approximates just how much those Euros will end up costing you in good ol’ USD.
Bringing Google Calendar To The iPad, Cloud Calendar Just Works (And We’re Giving It Away)
The simplicity of iCal should be transcended to our Google Calendars. Wrestling iCal and Google Calendars to work in harmony has been somewhat of a challenge because I have completely two different sets of calendars and events that need to be merged, and currently I can’t risk the time (or expense) to sit down and ensure my mid 2011 dates aren’t hacked to pieces because of conflicts. What I need isn’t a syncing solution, but rather a completely new app that allows me to separate my personal life from my business life. Cloud Calendar from Clean Cut Code delivers all of my Google dates to my iPad with the familiarity of iCal.
Because Everyone Needs A Second Monitor, We’re Giving Away 10 Copies Of DisplayPad
Thinking about buying a monitor for the holiday? How about a multi-touch monitor that doubles as a computer when it isn’t sitting in a dock next to your iMac? DisplayPad for the iPad was reviewed yesterday as the multi-touch champ that is drop-dead simple to set up. Who doesn’t want a whole second monitor dedicated to iTunes or Reeder for OS X? DisplayPad is currently on sale for $.99 in the iTunes App Store, but Christmas penny pinchers may want to click past the break for a MacStories-to-Ten chance to win DisplayPad for your iPad.