Fox News Charlotte Gives Us a Glimpse of Apple’s Server Farm

By Cody Fink

If the Apple data center speculation wasn’t enough, Charlotte local news channel WCCB-TV took a news anchor out to cover the Apple datacenter, which they erroneously report was intended strictly for iTunes and will take on Netflix in the video streaming business in part because of the massive scale. “That’s just too big to house only music files,” exclaims Israel Baldares. I don’t disagree that Apple will move into streaming video, however, to state it as fact is whole a different case of the Fox News crazies. Out of the speculation, however, comes a couple glimpses at the scale of Apple’s datacenter (and the outside of the building is probably all we’ll see for the time being). Couple this with Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s accompanying video, and we get a sense of the sheer size the server farm. As far as the inside goes, we do know that Apple has ordered an insane amount of storage, and has specific orders for custom equipment related to cooling and power. Tack this on to the fact they just pulled data center scalability expert Kevin Timmons from Microsoft, and you have yourselves some wild speculation concerning what Apple might do with lots of unused land.

Apple is only using a third of the 180 acres they own, not including the 70 acres they’ve purchased across the street. It’s speculated Apple could build an East Coast Apple campus, and build a data center in parallel to the building that’s constructed now, giving them a million square feet of space to work with. Apple’s data center is readying to launch, and in the meantime you can get a glimpse at the current state of their data center via the video after the break.

[Fortune via TUAW]

AppSumo: Circus Ponies NoteBook Giveaway

By Cody Fink

One of the greatest things about owning a Mac is having access to some really splendid, nay, spectacular software that can really do wonders for your workflow. Students in particular have it incredibly easy, especially if they are utilizing the application I’m going to gawk about today. You may have heard about Circus Ponies NoteBook through one of my favorite podcasts, the Mac Geek Gab, and today AppSumo is giving anyone who signs up with their email one hell of a discount at 50%. This isn’t cheap software: NoteBook 3.0 is some of the most powerful note taking software you can download for your Mac, and what’s regularly $49.95 for a regular license is half off for $25 for the next couple of days.

Now, you could get by with a combination of free applications, burying word documents in Dropbox, or maybe you’re just stuck in plain text. But until you’ve tried NoteBook, let’s wash away these perceptions of what a great notes application really is. Imagine having a table of contents that’s focused on search, organizes your topics, indexes everything you write, dates it, stamps it, you can sticky note it, you can add documents, create to do lists, and organize just about anything on styled paper, and that isn’t even half of it. I’d say it’s kind of like the Mac’s own version of Microsoft OneNote, but organized in such a way that it works more like an outlining tool, and we can combine that with files, graphs, and all of kinds of starting templates to really create the perfect set of notes. This is one information silo you shouldn’t be afraid of, and past the break we’re going hands on to see everything that you can do with NoteBook, and how you could want one of ten copies.

QR Code Reader Scan for iOS is Fast

By Cody Fink

Scan for iPhone & iPad

If I have to pull out my mobile device to read QR codes, I want an app that’s fast, locks on, and scans codes quickly without any fuss. While there’s a plethora of QR code scanners on the App Store, one in particular I’ve fallen in love with is Scan. Maybe it’s because Barcode Scanner on the Android Marketplace is so damn slow (I’m tired of how long it takes the camera to focus), and I was blown away by how fast Scan was… on an iPod touch (which comparatively has a pretty crappy camera). As soon as I opened the app, I simply placed the QR code inside of the sights and just as instantly it opened a web page in its own browser. If it can’t scan a QR code (which is rare), Scan won’t complain. Just relocate your device or find a higher quality image: how painless Scan is to use is fantastic. Plus, it saves a history of everything you scanned in a simple list that’s perfect for how often I use it. Sure there are other apps that let you generate QR codes or offer a lot more features, but for sheer simplicity and fast scanning, Scan has become the mainstay reader on my device. You can download it for free on the App Store.

Robick: Visual Audio iPhone App for Learning Music By Ear

By Cody Fink

Previously, we’ve covered the Capo range of apps for the iPhone, iPad, and desktop that help students learn music by ear via setting repeating segments, altering the tempo & pitch, and giving students the ability to adjust an equalizer. When we previously covered these apps, the Capo mobile applications were more limited in some respects compared to it’s older desktop sibling - not a bad thing, but it would be nice to bring over the ability to adjust highs and lows for example instead of just only pitch and tempo. Robick is an alternative take on plugging in tracks from your iPod’s library, and altering them in such a way that helps you learn parts of a song. The developer noted to me it was primarily designed for learning Jazz (I’m assuming for Japanese students), and the interface reflects a modern edge and a shifting paradigm that’s quite neat.

Twitterrific 4.1 for iPhone & iPad Unifies Mac, iOS Experience

By Cody Fink

Launching late last night, Twitterrific 4.1 is now available in the App Store for immediate consumption! I’d consider this a milestone update for the iOS version of Twitterrific, as it greatly improves usability on the iPhone and continues the march towards feature parity with the desktop app. I’d say now, Twitterrific has unified their ecosystem such as that replies for example are now handled similarly. This change is most noticeable on the iPhone, where users are no longer taken to the single tweet view to perform actions. Quite frankly, that change alone should address the main complaint many had when wanting to perform simple actions: what used to take three taps now only takes two. 4.1 is a significant update and brings much requested features into the spotlight.

Is Apple “The Least Green?”

By Cody Fink

While it’s not obvious to consumers, the backend (those giant server farms) required to serve social networking websites, Google Documents, and soon iTunes media, facilities from giants like Twitter, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple have gone under the scrutiny of Greenpeace in a recent report which evaluates the companies’ transparency in energy usage, the decisions that go into choosing a location and how those facilities are powered, and willingness to correct and pursue green technologies. At the heart of the conversation is king coal, nuclear energy, and the argument of cheap energy sources vs. more expensive, albeit cleaner technologies.

The recent influx of mega utility-scale data centres intowestern North Carolina (Facebook, Google, Apple) was influencedby the attractive electricity prices offered by local utilities (DukeEnergy and Progress Energy), which had extra capacity of dirty coaland nuclear power following the departure of the region’s textileand furniture manufacturing.

Apple’sdecision to locate its iDataCenter in North Carolina, which has an electrical grid among the dirtiest in the country (61% coal, 31% nuclear), indicates a lack of a corporate commitment to cleanenergy supply for its cloud operations. The fact that the alternativelocation for Apple’s iDataCenter was Virginia46, where electricity isalso comes from very dirty sources, is an indication that, in additionto tax incentives, access to inexpensive energy, regardless of its source, is a key driver in Apple’s site selection.

That’s obviously true. Apple has been approved $46 million in tax breaks, with an 85% cut in property taxes and a 50% slash in real estate taxes. Apple has gotten a nice plot of land for dirt cheap, but just how much power will this datacenter suck up on the “dirty grid?”

Apple’s new $1bn US dollar‘iDataCenter’ in North Carolina is estimated to require as much 100MW of power, equivalent to about 80,000 US homes.

Apple could soon consume 200MW of power if they build a second datacenter in parallel with the first, taking advantage of the generous tax breaks. Thus far, Apple ranks the lowest in energy efficiency with over half (54.5%) of their total power consumption reliant on coal energy. Apple’s Clean Energy Index scores a paltry 6.7%, and while Apple has increased their efforts to pursue green technologies, the company hasn’t set any renewable energy or greenhouse gas targets to further a transition to renewable energy sources.

[Greenpeace Dirty Data Report via Huffington Post]

Verizon CFO Fran Shammo Hints At Global iPhone 5

By Cody Fink

When iFixit tore down the Verizon iPhone 4 back in February, they found a Qualcomm Gobi that’s dual-mode GSM/CDMA capable, which indicates to us that the next iPhone on the CDMA spectrum would go global. During yesterday’s conference call, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo indicated that the next iPhone to be released on the network would be a global phone, allowing the next iPhone to become a world-phone as GSM capabilities are enabled. From Barron’s,

Verizon CFO Fran Shammo, asked about the sluggishness of the company’s ARPU growth in Q1, when the iPhone was introduced — growth was just 2.2%, compared to 2.5% in Q4, remarked:

The fluctuation, I believe, will come when a new device from Apple is launched, whenever that may be, and that we will be, on the first time, on equal footing with our competitors on a new phone hitting the market, which will also be a global device.

While Verizon could be poised to obtain an iPhone that was world-phone enabled, it might be a good time to rehash the universal SIM. Previously, Bloomberg reported that Apple is working on the ability to toggle between CDMA and GSM networks with a single SIM that would allow customers to willfully switch between CDMA and quad-band GSM. The iPhone 5 is also rumored to have a bigger display, NFC capabilities, but otherwise is expected to utilize a similar design to the iPhone 4 as a product refresh amongst other reports of an aluminum design with an internal antenna.

[Barron’s via MacRumors]
Image source: iFixit

Giveaway: Remix the Beat with djay for iPhone & iPod touch!

By Cody Fink

Let’s cut to the chase: djay is polished, good-looking, and a downright handsome virtual mixer that’ll have you scratching virtual vinyls like it was made all tiny for your thumbs and stuff. You’d think djay’s miniature client for the iPhone & iPod touch would be too small to get a proper remix of your favorite rap attack and guitar jam, but that little iPhone can instantly become the party superhero when equipped with an amateur DJ such as yourself and some stereo output to the nearest boom box. Choose any two tracks from your iPod’s library, adjust the equalizer to your liking, pump the gain, and position the needles to start laying down Scratch n’ Sniff quality beats. It’ll take some practice to get good, but all of the tools are available with a quick tap to help you combine tracks, and there’s even an automixer if you want to let djay do some the hard stuff. I couldn’t resist buying my own copy of djay for $0.99 in the App Store, currently on sale from $4.99. That’s a steal, but you can risk it all on one of two copies we’re giving away past the break.

Doodle Over Your Desktop with Deskscribble

By Cody Fink

Deskscribble in use Example

If you want to mark up, highlight, or simply doodle on your desktop and all of its open windows, Deskscribble for the Mac is a nifty onscreen utility for sketching over interface elements and sharing your drawings to Facebook, CloudApp, or Flickr. While I don’t find Deskscribble as useful with a trackpad or a mouse, those with a Wacom tablet in hand (the simple Bamboo would do) could have available a palette containing a highlighter, marker, and sizing tools to quickly sketch and note items on top of open windows. See a paragraph you want to emphasize? Circle it - highlight it - and upload it using a the quick shortcuts provided in the corner-positioned utility. Deskscribble offers a fullscreen implementation which hides the menubar and Object Dock, can be hidden when not in use, and allows you to doodle in any color you desire thanks to quick color shortcuts and the color wheel. While doodle’s don’t transfer between open spaces and resizing your pen size is tricky (large by default and the sizing tool is small), you can erase mistakes, undo & redo drawings, and upload a screenshot to Mac friendly online services. Deskscribble is fun to use, and lets you easily regain control of your pointer when finished so don’t have to quick the app to browse around. If you’re familiar with Cockpit and related Green & Slimy software, you’ll see how the developer’s stylings translates into new this new creation with futuristic & round design cues, and friendly icon highlights. The sketch anywhere app will set you back a cool $9.99 in the App Store.

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