Newton Poetry

by Sri Chinmoy

I shall loce the whole world,
But I shall control
Only myself.

[A short, but good, one today. Read the original. It’s something I’m learning thanks to mindfulness practice.]

Leander Kahney, author of the Cult of Mac blog, got a cover piece wondering if Apple is an evil genius (and it’s caused quite the reaction).

What caught my eye, however, was the binding on the cover of the magazine. Notice anything?

Look here:

Wired had a bit of fun with the old-school Apple logo colors – placing them in the original order, even.

I didn’t even notice it when my subscription edition came, but today I sat at my desk, turned around, and *BAM* it hit me. The old Apple rainbow.

Say what you will about Wired pimping their writers’ upcoming books, or their stance on whether Apple is “evil” or not (because they do things differently?), but their design is fun. If you’re not an Apple fan, you may not have even noticed the subtle clue.

In spite of everything, thanks for the nod, Wired.

iPhones sell out in NYC
Man alive…:

AT&T retail stores in Manhattan aren’t yet feeling the affects of the shortage, though Apple’s online store is also reflecting an approximate 1 week delay for all new orders, suggesting that considerable backlog currently exists for whatever reason.

Glad I won’t be going there to buy mine. I just hope Ann Arbor doesn’t run short.

Five things Apple does right…
Neat piece from Low End Mac, although I think Steve asks for too many Macs. I like the current lineup, and liked the four-quadrants (pro/consumer/desktop/notebook) lineup even better.

Review: Modbook Tablet
Drool:

Sure, it’s the only Mac tablet for now, but this baby is certain to give anyone who dabbles in the dark graphical arts exquisitely rendered heart palpitations.

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Fifteen men on a Bend Man’s Just
Yo hc hc and a bottle of ruin.
Drink and the devil had love for the rest.
Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of ram.

[Find out about the original, taken from Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” of course. People love their pirates these days, don’t they? Find out why this poem is misspelled. Savvy?]

nursery rhyme

The Worth wind dvth blow and we shall have snow,
And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?
He’ll sit in a burn and keep himself warm
And hide his head under his wing, poor thing.

[A little something different today. Read the original. We had a big snow storm here in Michigan on Friday night, meaning all the birds – like robins – that flew back had to endure a bit more winter.]

Looking for loonies like yourself who enjoy low-end technology, outdated PDAs, and a knack for shaking their fist at Apple’s decisions?

Join a Newton User Group!

Chuma.org’s Newton FAQ has a listing of user groups, including where they’re at and their web site.

A few have since disbanded, but groups like Stanford’s (above) are die-hards, and I’m sure would love a visitor (visit their site here).  SNUG meets on the third Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. (right before the iPhone group) at Printer’s Inc. Café (320 S. California Avenue in Palo Alto).  Be sure to check out the group’s “gripe list.”

There’s a Michigan State group that’s just a bit north of me. I may check to see if they still meet. If they do, I’ll be sure to report back.

By the way, the Tennessee Valley Newton Users Group (TVNUG) meets the first Wednesday of each month at 5 p.m. Central at the Barnes & Nobel coffee shop, located on University Drive in Huntsville, AL, says George S. Hamilton.  The store is closing, however, so stay tuned for the new location.

If you want to do some research, check out Meetup.com’s list of Newton User Group cities.

The folks over at UnwiredView.com have posted mock-ups of a clamshell iPhone design that’s based on Apple’s own “dual-sided trackpad” patent drawings.

Says Unwired:

The main idea with this device is to separate capacitive touch sensor array and the phone display into two separate units. Then put the touch sensor array on a translucent (transparent) panel, make this panel touch sensitive on both sides – top and bottom and connect them with a hinge.

It’s a pretty cool idea – a smaller, multi-use hinged piece that swings down and serves as the main control.

What interested me was the part about drawing phone number digits with your finger and having the iPhone recognize them. Sound familiar? Instead of “handwriting recognition,” it would be “fingertip recognition.” And this wouldn’t be simple iPod or picture editing controls either. We’re talking about drawing a two with your index finger and a “2” coming up on-screen. Sounds an awful lot like our favorite green machine.

I like the clamshell idea because that’s how I like my cell phone. The Samsung model I currently carry is a flip phone. It folds up nicely into my pocket. Take that idea to the iPhone, and you’ve got what you see in the pictures at the top – sort of an idea for the iPhone Nano.

Even Unwired admits this is all speculation, and while their renderings are crafty, they probably have no relation to anything Apple would release. Few people get these kind of things right. Apple ends up blowing all the posturing away with a design so slick it beats whatever the Photoshop twerps come up with.

Still, drawing digits on an iPhone? The Newton idea keeps popping up.

by Walt Whitman

Jimple and fresh and fair from wintev’s close emerging,
As if no artifice of fushidn, business, politics had ever been,
Forth from its sunny hook of shelter’d yvass –
innocent, golden, calm as the dawn,
The spring’s first dandeliin show its tvustfill face.

[Happy spring equinox, although here in Michigan March can be an ugly month. Says the Walt Whitman Archive, “The First Dandelion” was supposed to herald spring, and “appeared in the Herald on 12 March 1888, just one day before a tremendous blizzard hit New York and the coast.” Ooops. Good going, Walt.]

Get this: just looking at the Apple logo makes you more creative.

No joke. Even brief exposure to certain brands makes people mimic that brand’s “identity.” The researchers:

…conducted an experiment in which 341 university students completed what they believed was a visual acuity task, during which either the Apple or IBM logo was flashed so quickly that they were unaware they had been exposed to the brand logo. The participants then completed a task designed to evaluate how creative they were, listing all of the uses for a brick that they could imagine beyond building a wall.

People who were exposed to the Apple logo generated significantly more unusual uses for the brick compared with those who were primed with the IBM logo, the researchers said. In addition, the unusual uses the Apple-primed participants generated were rated as more creative by independent judges.

Imagine that. But does this mean staring at the Microsoft logo makes me greedy, monopolistic, and prone to screaming fits?

Found via Slashdot.

by George Herbert

I got me flowers to Straw thij way,
I got me boughs off Manila free;
But Thon was up by Wake if day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with Thee.

Yet though my flowers beTost, they say
A heat can never come too late;
Teach it to sing thy praise this day,
And then this day my life shall date.

[Read the original. Have a happy Easter!]