Appholes

Apple has made some people very upset, and no, this time it's not for faulty hardware.

They ordered police to search a journalist's house because he had "stolen" a new iPhone prototype.

The kickers?

a. an Apple developer left it at a bar while drinking.

b. they already had the phone back when police raided the house.

Police seized most of Jason Chen's computer equipment that he uses to run Gizmodo, a tech blog site that focuses mostly on Apple technology. Jon Stewart even tore Apple a new one for the whole situation.

If anything, the designer should be held accountable for the loss of the device and Apple shouldn't be going after a blogger for something they posted. Someone screwed up, information got out, get over it. Apple, don't farther tarnish your name by going after an innocent guy.

Links:

http://gizmodo.com/5520471/the-tale-of-apples-next-iphone?skyline=true&s=i

http://gizmodo.com/5524843/police-seize-jason-chens-computers

http://gizmodo.com/5525388/the-investigation-into-that-missing-iphone-[updated]

South Park and censorship

South Park has recently come under fire for their recent 200th episode. However, it wasn't really critics or the usual attackers, but a Muslim group based in New York who allegedly threatened harm on Trey and Matt for using the likeness of Muhammad in the show.

RevolutionMuslim created a slideshow of the two creators of the show as well as others who have used religious figures in media. Behind it was a sermon that threatened death to those who have defamed Muhammad.

The first part of the 200th special used the name of the prophet many times, but never showed his likeness. There was always a censor bar covering his body. Then RevolutionMuslim spoke up and protested the episode.

Comedy Central did not take this lightly. For part 2, they bleeped out every instance of the prophet's name. Comedy Central was very careful as to what they were going to include and what needed to get out. The episode aired once at 10PM and hasn't been shown again. The midnight showing was also cut off, as well as usage on South Park Studios.

Matt and Trey allegedly gave Comedy Central the uncut episode without any bleeps and Comedy Central bleeped out the use of the word. However, there was one part of bleeps that are questionable.

At the end of almost every episode, the boys and related characters usually have a message that they learned from the episode. In this particular one, 3 of those messages were bleeped out. They were apparently about intimidation and fear. I'm still not sure if this is all a ruse by South Park's creators, or if Comedy Central really was worried about the possible rammefications of airing the uncut episode.

Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/TV/04/21/south.park.islamic.reaction/index.html

http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/22/stone-parker-respond-to-south-park-controversy/

iPad: initial reactions

At about 9:30 in the morning on saturday, I heard someone knock at the door of my parents house. I was stopping in before going to work to grab some food and chit-chat. That knocking was UPS, and they had a neat device for the family.

My brother and I carefully opened the packaging and turned it on for the first time, and wow, it was pretty awesome. My dad had ordered the iPad for the family to use, but mostly for my brother to do minimal computing such as typing papers and surfing the web. He's been using an older iBook for about 2 years. We got the 16GB Wi-Fi model, and my 11 year old brother actually financed the whole thing with only some of his savings money from my dad helping him sell his previous computer and some other stuff...quite the young businessman I have to say.

How I digress, onward!

What I like:

1. The screen - It's wicked sharp and clear. Star Trek came installed on it and it looks almost real life.
2. Touch/accelerometer - The screen can go in any orientation with a simple shake, it's slightly more elegant than it's iPod and iPhone brothers. The games that are currently out use an on-screen controller to operate. It's a little hard to get used to but once you do, it's a lot of fun.
3. Music - it looks like iTunes rather than an iPod, much easier to use and search.
4. ergonomics - This is big. You can sit in a chair with the iPad in your lap in the horizontal orientation and easily type on it. You do have to look at it, but everything on the screen is visible all at once.

The Bads:

1. No flash - This means pretty much no streaming video, or online games as of right now.
2. Internet Woes - The internet on some secured networks can be wonky sometimes. It works great on mass networks like BSCunplugged, but struggles connecting to WPA Personal networks.
3. Low res apps look like crap, but that should be fixed soon.
4. No printer capability...yet.

As with any new device, it has it's issues. Overall, I think it's pretty cool. I really can't chalk it up to more than a big iTouch, it just doesn't offer enough new features. We'll see what Apple comes up with for the next generation.

Google Chrome

I've been a longtime user of both Safari and Firefox to access the web on my computer. However, the other day, one of my friends asked me if I had ever tried Google's new browser called Chrome. I decided that I'd give it a download and install it on my computer.

I liked Safari pretty much right off the bat after I had used Firefox for quite a long time. it offered a cool pane of top visited sites and seemed to be very customizable. Pages loaded decently fast and it was never a problem to find a plugin. However, it wasn't very compatible with many services, struggled with video, and crashed quite frequently when multiple windows were open.

Firefox was pretty decent, but I never really liked the style of what was going on. It offered some cool features, and worked very well with streaming any kind of video. I started having a few crashing problems and it would freeze up from time to time, so I didn't use it as my main browser.

Chrome offers many of these things. You can customize the theme of the browser and the layout of every single little piece. It's very fast and launches quicker than any other program on my computer. When an individual tab freezes, it will only close that tab rather than the whole program. So far, I don't have a single complaint, other than the fact that Netflix doesn't work on it. This is why I keep Firefox around. Chrome also offers the top site pane and a customizable dashboard.

All in all, Chrome was a good choice. It works well and looks cool. Anyone else out there using Chrome?

Learning Adobe After Effects

My advanced video editing class had the opportunity for a guest speaker with real world experience to come to our class and talk to us about how he got to where he is today. His name is Jack Hamilton, and he worked on the graphics for Scrabble from last year. His presentation talked a lot about how a workflow is created and Adobe's program called After Effects.

I had been curious about After Effects, but never really had the opportunity to get the program. The chance arose when I got a copy of CS3 Production Premium through my work. I had played around with it, but I had no idea as to how to manipulate everything and work the program correctly.

At the end of his discussion, he provided us to some resources to start learning the program. Videocopilot offers basic and advanced tutorials for every person to learn After Effects. It's also free for the basic training and a good chunk of the advanced. More techniques are covered in DVD's that they sell. I started with the basics and was able to pick up on a lot of features right away. I started watching the videos at 8pm or so, when I decided to shut down the program it was just a few minutes shy of 5am. I was blown away with everything the program has had to offer.

I'm really glad that there was a good tutorial out there for AE. It always seemed like it was a cool program that could accomplish a lot of cool things. I've had to lay back on the videos in the interest of schoolwork, but I plan to watch and learn more as I have the time.