Le tour du monde en 80 secondes

Directed by Romain Pergeaux & Alex Profit. This route is a tribute to the famous Jules Verne's book. The making of the video, pictures of the trip and an interview of Alex Profit can be seen here.

Worth clicking through to youtube.com to watch it in high-definition.
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100-year-old woman uses iPad

Motz MusicBox

pinoytutorial.com reports: [edited]

This impressive minute gadget is manufactured by the Korean company Motz. Aside from being a FM radio tuner, it could also serve the purpose as a portable MP3 player speaker.

This wooden music box measures 37 by 19 by 26 millimeters. It’s quite unbelievable that inside such a tiny wood of a box is a speaker with a working power of one and a half watts supplied by its rechargeable Li-Po [Lithium Ion Polymer, Ed.] battery.

This tiny star is only available in Korea at a price of $35.

For a video demo click here.
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Predators

For the full trailer, click here.

Spotify upgraded

Gizmodo reports: [edited]

Available now if you live in Europe, Spotify's just released the latest version of the desktop client. iTunes libraries can be uploaded to Spotify for accessing anywhere, and social features added too.

Uploading your entire music library to Spotify, and being able to access it anywhere is a great move for them - particularly when some artists, such as The Beatles and Pink Floyd aren't on Spotify.

Spotify Social is the name for the integration of Facebook friends, where you'll be able to send playlists to one another easily and see what everyone's listening to.

See below for a demo video:


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Poach Pods

Poached eggs are one of my favourite breakfast ingredients. The only drawback is that the stray egg white take ages to scrape off the pan sides. Enter Poach Pods, silicone moulds that you break an egg into (don't bother about oiling 'em first, waste of time!), lower into a pan of simmering water, put the lid on and leave for five minutes, before scooping it out with a large metal spoon.

Barring a 'capsize' incident, there will be no mess in the pan, and if you leave the Poach Pod to dry, the egg white separates from the silicone of its own accord.
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Carr Mercury Amp

Wired reports: [edited]

Guitar amplifiers generally sound best with the volume cranked up, but this of course, is a great way to violate noise ordinances. What the Mercury does differently is allow you dial down the volume but still get tone that sounds like the amp is jacked to 11.

The Mercury accomplishes this with a 4-position power switch. Turn the output switch from 8 watts down to 2, 1/2 or even a 1/10th of a watt, then crank the volume up and the Mercury's 12-inch Eminence Red White & Blues speaker will hang onto the optimized tone of an amplifier at high volume. When we blasted its behemoth overdrive at 8 watts, then powered down to 1/10th of a watt, the amp produced tones that sounded nearly identical.

In the belly of this little beastie is an Electro-Harmonix EL-34 tube that packs a surprisingly beefy punch at full power. The 3-position boost switch increases gain, unleashing a range of growling, vintage overdrive tones thick enough to rattle your ribcage. Its spring reverb unit adds lush, deep reverberation to the clean tones of my Les Paul Classic so spacious I nearly nodded off mid-strum.

While the power switch makes the Mercury versatile enough for solitary shredding, band practice and recording, using it at any major gig is a bit of a stretch. And at $2,290 (plus an extra $150 for the cream/gator finish our demo came with), this boutique rig makes sense for only serious aficionados.

Price: $2440
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Awesomenessness...

Sharky tea-infuser

Via: Design Boom. Design by Pablo Matteoda.




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Next iPhone?

For full details, visit Gizmodo.
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Free font - Comic Serif Pro

Available for a limited time from FontShop. Registration required.
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Hipstamatic for iPhone

Hipstamatic is a £1.19 App that lends an 'analogue' feel to the iPhone's camera. The images it produces are surpringly 'authentic', and while I could live without the (deliberately) cloudy viewfinder, it is my favourite iPhone camera App.
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Crosley Revolution

Crosley reports: [edited]

It is a turntable of firsts. The first battery-powered Crosley turntable, the first with a platter smaller than a teacup saucer, and the first with a modern, rubberized finish for on-the-go use. Users can tote this two-speed turntable with them to vinyl swaps or to a friend's house.

Featuring a USB hookup for easy analog-to-digital transfer, the Crosley Revolution will allow users to free their favorites from the grooves for more convenient listening. This turntable also features dual headphone jacks, dynamic full range stereo speakers and a carrying case.

Price: $150

- - - - -

Brett's 2p'orth: I remember a similar item being released as 'competition' to the Sony Walkman. The Audio Technica AT-727 Sound Burger was a high-quality portable record player. Its sales were disappointing, and it is now a sought-after collector's item.

Thanks to Conrad for the link
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Yemuzip

yellowmug.com reports: [edited]

Drag, drop, done. Making zip files cannot be any easier.

YemuZip is an easy-to-use Mac application for making zip files. Just drag, drop, name your zip file and you're done.

The Finder's Archive function makes zip files that contains Mac-specific information that, when extracted on a PC, looks like garbage. YemuZip lets you choose between a PC-compatible format and a Mac format that preserves all the Mac-specific metadata.

YemuZip is free for personal use.
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Making a living from YouTube

npr music reports: [edited]

You can add the band Pomplamoose to the long and growing list of YouTube sensations, with its cover of Beyonce's "Single Ladies." Its members don't have a record deal or a publicist, but that song's video has been viewed almost 4 million times on YouTube alone.

"There's no hidden sounds, there's no lip-synching, there's no overdubbing. What you see is what you hear," Conte says. "Sometimes, there might be two or three Natalys harmonizing with herself, and then you'll see those three videos juxtaposed together on the screen."

The group has made no hard copies of its albums; no CDs have been printed. Nevertheless, they make their living on sales, having sold about 100,000 songs last year.

Pomplamoose is one of the first bands to be invited into YouTube's Musicians Wanted program, which is an ad-revenue sharing program. YouTube places ads next to or on a video, and then shares the revenue for that ad, 50-50, with the artist. Income sources like this allow for bands to survive without the help of a major label.

"If you can't just do ... the production, the instruments and everything all by yourself, then you do need help. That's something that labels are really good at," Dawn says. "If, for example, you're somebody who writes songs, like Lady Gaga, and you need everything that's gonna make you Lady Gaga, YouTube's not gonna be able to do that. You need a big fat label. But if you're just a band, I don't think we're in an era anymore where you need that sort of major backing."

According to Dawn and Conte, the process of creating a song, shooting and editing a video, and posting it on YouTube only takes about a week. The duo buys mechanical licenses for all of its covers online, which is a quick and easy process.

"That's the thing," Dawn says. "People think that all of these things have to be done by geniuses behind huge desks or at the top of skyscrapers, but you can just go online and do it yourself."


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iPad illustrations

behance.net reports: [edited]

Three illustrations for an article in Greek computer magazine 'RAM' about the future of publishing and media in the new era of iPad, iPhone and the other new smart devices.

Made with Synthetik StudioArtist and Adobe Photoshop with custom developed techniques and scripts.

- - - - -

Brett's 2p'orth: make sure to scroll down to the bottom of the article to check out the 'zoomed-in' images.
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Cat on an iPad

"Aww..." etc, etc...

Thanks to Shaun for the link
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Acorn

Flying Meat reports: [edited]

Add text and shapes to your digital pictures. Combine images. Work with layers to touch up your favorites or make something new from scratch. Do all this and more with Acorn.

Acorn provides the tools you need to alter and enhance your images. It won't drain your bank account, and you don't need a Ph.D. in computer graphics to use it.

Requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later. Free trial using all features for 14 days, after which advanced features are disabled. Purchase price $49.95.

- - - - -

Brett's 2p'orth: This isn't going to replace Photoshop any time soon, but for basic image editing, it beats the various online offerings by a long way. For a comparison of Acorn with a couple of its competitors (DrawIt and Opacity) click here.
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QlockTwo for iPhone/iPod touch

The original qlocktwo is a quirky, desirable 450mm square clock that costs £1,000. The iPhone version looks the same, and costs 59p. Marvellous.
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Apologies made easy

Click here.
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