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The Desillusion Magazine is working on a film feature of the michael jordan of skateboarding; eric koston.

Full Movie & Online premiere 25 May. While waiting you may want to buy his current pro-shoe from nike here 

Starting June 3rd, stopping at eight shops

From San Diego to Santa Cruz

Music is what started it all for the modern Apple with the iPod back in 2001.

Today, the consumer electronics giant released a new video, posted on YouTube, entitled ‘Music Every Day.”

In it, beautiful piano music soars over images of people listening to music while exercising, traveling, dancing, connecting, sharing, going to school, and studying. People jump rope, tap their feet, sing quietly to themselves on the commuter train, or dance in their own backyards. iPhones and their ubiquitous white earbuds ear pods are seen in clubs, back pockets, hands, backpacks, and on bathroom tiles. It’s a gorgeous, well-delivered montage.

At the end of this powerful advertisement, a narrator says, gently, “Every day, more people enjoy their music on the iPhone than any other phone.”

See the full ad on Apple’s YouTube channel.

Source: YouTube

Have you ever wanted to introduce two super interesting people from different circles of friends, but never really knew how to go about it? Tinder, a new app that helps you discover new people around you in real time, has just updated with an added feature: Matchmaker.

“Introducing two people, whatever the purpose, can be time consuming and often times socially awkward,” says Sean Rad, CEO of Tinder. “Matchmaker gives you an extremely easy and socially acceptable way to make that introduction, while furthering Tinder’s vision to be the platform people use to meet new people.”

Logging into Tinder the first time, you’ll need to sign in with Facebook. Once you do so, you’ll be presented with people nearby that the app feels you might be interested in. Tinder will automatically pull your location data and connect you to other folks who are also using the app in the same location as you, similarly to apps like Highlight.

The new Matchmaker feature lets you choose two folks from your Facebook friends list, and introduce them via a Facebook message, making the process simple, easy, and–best of all–easily avoided by the recipients of your largesse.

If you want to connect with someone, either nearby Tinder users or folks recommended to you by another Tinder user, you can do so with a quick tap. If both you and the person are interested in a connection, you’ll be introduced via Facebook. If you’re not interested, or busy, or just don’t want to meet anyone new, you can pass just as anonymously. Thank goodness for that.

You can also set up matchmaking preferences to filter for only male, only female, or both gender matches, as well as entering an age range of people you might be interested in meeting. While this all sounds like a clever dating app, it seems like it could be useful to mee potential friends and/or business partners, too.

Tinder is a free app, and available in the App Store right now.

Source: App Store
Via: Tinder

Google is considering a buyout of Waze, the mapping app for iPhone and Android that specializes in crowd-sourced information. Waze’s asking price is around $1 billion, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Other big tech companies have been courting the map startup, most notably Facebook.

“None of the bidders is close to clinching a deal and the talks may fall apart,” says the report. There have been whispers that Apple has also considered an acquisition, but nothing concrete has surfaced yet.

Waze would be a good asset for any of the three aforementioned companies. The service has more than 40 million users that report valuable information like traffic incidents and wrecks. At this point, Apple Maps could probably use the functionality more than Google.

Source: Bloomberg

The makers of Whale Trail, a popular iOS game where you fly a whale through a psychedelic skyline, have a new game out in the App Store. It’s called Blup, a new puzzler that aims to be an “addictive conundrum of coloration.”

iPhone games like Letterpress have started setting the trend of more flat, squared interface aesthetics. It’s something Apple is expected to do in iOS 7. Blup falls right into that category, and it looks pretty interesting.

Here’s how you play:

- Tap a tile to start a pulse of colour, which spreads outwards.

- Colour all tiles in as few pulses as possible.

- Game-changing “trick” tiles alter your pulse’s path, so think ahead to succeed!

Gameplay looks a little more complicated than apps like Letterpress. Luckily, there’s a handy tutorial when you first open the app. There’s also iCloud and Game Center to sync progress between devices and access leaderboards.

Blup is available for free in the App Store. £1.49 unlocks all of the levels. Check out the creators’ blog for a detailed look at how the game was made.

Source: App Store

Earlier today, Microsoft released a new ad that attempts to show how much better the ASUS VivoTab is at getting stuff done than the iPad. A similar TV spot was aired last night with Siri being used to mock things like the iPad’s lack of Powerpoint (a Microsoft product).

Alongside its TV ads, Microsoft has put up a new webpage called “iPad vs. Windows.” At the bottom of the comparison it says that the ASUS ViviTab “has a bigger touchscreen” than the iPad.

False.

Elliot Temple did some calculations on his blog, and he was able to determine that Microsoft skewed the numbers to say that the ASUS tablet had a 10.1-inch display vs. the iPad’s 9.7-inch display. “This is not to scale,” according to Elliot. “Microsoft has drawn a 10.1 inch tablet 36% larger than a 9.7 inch tablet (140×78 pixels vs 102×79). This is so far off you can visually see it’s wrong.”

The ASUS screen is actually smaller than the iPad’s:

The iPad screen is 7.76 by 5.82 inches. The ASUS screen is 8.8 by 4.95 inches. ASUS is larger in one direction but smaller in the other direction, and has 3.55% less area than the iPad, not 36% more as Microsoft depicts.

How can the screen with a larger diagonal measurement be smaller? Because it’s a different shape. Long and thin gets you a bigger diagonal but a smaller screen, for the same diagonal inches.

The Surface hasn’t sold well at all, and now Microsoft is restoring to cheap (inaccurate) shots at the iPad to try and sell Windows tablets (like saying the iPad can’t run software made by Microsoft).

Microsoft also says that the iPad costs $699, which is only true of the larger 64GB model. But hey, $499 vs. $449 would make for boring marketing.

Source: curi

Via: Daring Fireball

Surfers: Daniel Karren, Tom Salvesen, Gezza McCallum

A road trip south in search of a cold water slab

24 hours later, they arrive

Where do I put the betamax?

Ok, so if you’ve been paying attention to the gaming space today, you’ll know that Microsoft unveiled its new gaming console, the XBox One. This next generation console is going to play video games, control your TV (sort of), and act as a DVD/Blue-Ray player. It’s got a Kinect motion sensor box on top, which can not be disconnected and it won’t play XBox 360 discs.

This is all well and good, and represents a step forward in Microsoft’s quest to own the living room, even though a lot of us don’t have the time, space, or extra cash to spend on a huge entertainment hub these days, anyway. That’s really not what bothers me, though.

The XBox One is just uglier than anything I could have imagined.

Heck, my ten year-old son, not a maven of design in any way, saw pictures of the new XBox, and chuckled. “Why is it bigger than the XBox 360?” he asked. “It looks the same, just more square.”

Which really made it all hit home for me: design matters. The case design of the XBox One is firmly rooted in the past. Which makes a lot of sense if you consider the reveal today, full of the same games and the same brands with better graphics.

Take a look at this beast. It looks like a relic of the early 1990s, with the squared corners, tall, thick profile, and those odd cross hatching lines that must be for cooling purposes but just end up looking like a 1980s science fiction author’s idea of a cyber-deck.

I suppose I could live with such a big fat presence in the living room if it didn’t completely remind me that the days of the monolithic gaming console/entertainment hub are coming to an end. Microsoft showed its hand today–echoed in the flat, unimaginative design of the XBox One. The looks of this monstrosity are shouting loud and clear, “We’ve run out of ideas, so we’re going to do more of the same.”

What Microsoft, and to a lesser degree, Sony and Nintendo, really needed to do for this new generation of consoles was take a quick look around them at what’s already happening. These mega-gaming corporations have missed something essential.

The gaming population is no longer congruent with the console population. We connect Apple TVs and Roku boxes to our huge HDTVs to watch on-demand shows while we multitask on our iPads. We fund innovative startups like Ouya because we want something different, dammit, and the XBox One just isn’t it.

Same as the old boss.

The design of an electronic entertainment hub says a lot about its purpose. Microsoft wants to dominate the space in our hypothetical living rooms, and the XBox one says so loud and clear, with the immensity of its casing and the huge Xbox logo front and center on each component piece. Do we even have stereos like that anymore? Maybe audiophiles do, but not the rest of us.

If the console makers want to expand their business, this is not the way to do it. Hire someone like Jonathan Ive, or–better yet–someone brand new and fresh, who knows that the way a product looks will define what that product feels like to the consumer.

Design a console that reflects our current and near-future gaming and entertainment reality, full of mobility, openness, and choice. Bring a console to life that gets what Ouya is trying to do, that understands the as-yet-unfulfilled promise of Apple TV and iOS gaming, that can breathe new life into the Steam ecosystem and play well with others.

Sadly, I don’t hold any hope for this to happen withint he big three gaming companies of the last few generations of console hardware. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are treading water, paddling for dear life to stay afloat in a rapidly changing world.

Will Microsoft sell a lot of these fugly XBox One consoles? Probably. Will the current conservative model of gaming and design inspire the next generation of gamers and developers to reach new heights and explore innovative ideas? Probably not.

Image: Wired

Walmart’s video on demand service, Vudu, just rolled out a new update for its iOS app. Version 2.0 of Vudu now lets you download videos from the service, and then watch them even if you’re offline. The player itself is streamlined, and Closed Captioning–already supported on the iPad version of the Vudu app–is now available on the iPhone, too.

Vudi is a Netflix-style video on demand service that is owned by Walmart that lets users stream videos to Mac, PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Roku, various Blu-Ray players, Android phones, and iOS devices. Vudu claims its advantage over Netflix is that Vudu movies come out the same day as the DVD versions, and users can access their UltraViolet codes via the service, as well. Plus, there’s no monthly fee; you only pay for the movies you rent to stream, with a rate of two dollars per two night rental period.

The new update is only for iOS at this time, leaving Android users wishing they had an iPhone or iPad.

What’s New in Version 2.0
• You can now download and watch your collection of movies and TV shows offline.
• We’ve listened to your feedback and made the Player easier to use.
• Closed Captioning for the iPhone is now supported. (Closed captioning is already supported for iPad).
• General bug fixes have been applied.

Source: iTunes App Store
Via: TUAW

Badger is a new jailbreak tweak that lets you access unread notifications from an app icon. Instead of opening Notification Center, swiping on a specific icon can reveal a list of notifications. From there, you can clear individual messages and even respond to texts.

Convenient.

Once you install Badger, the tweak’s preferences can be customized in the Settings app. The animation style is totally up to the user, but I prefer for the notification window to fade in and fade out. There are several activation methods that can be selected. I found that the swipe up and down gestures felt the best.

Swipe on an individual notification in the Badger window to delete, clear, or open the app to view the notification in its native environment. If it’s the Messages app, the left arrow lets you quickly respond to a text without leaving the window. Tap on a specific notification in the Badger window and the text will start scrolling to show you the rest of the message.

Badger is very similar to another recent jailbreak tweak called Velox. They both attempt to supercharge app icons, but Velox does a lot more than just handling notifications. But for only notifications, Badger is a better tweak.

Badger is available now in Cydia for $1. Make sure to check out Velox as well for $2.

Apple has published the opening statements read by CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer earlier today at the U.S. Senate Subcommittee hearing on corporate taxes. The hearing lasted several hours and was televised live on CSPAN.

Senators like Carl Levin, John McCain, and Rand Paul were present to lead the committee and hear from industry experts. Apple was called to the stand to explain why it stores a large percentage of its billions in cash overseas.

Apple was adamant that it obeys all corporate tax laws, including the “spirit of the law.” Instead of critiquing Apple for using loopholes to avoid heavy taxation, Cook and Oppenheimer urged the committee to see need for policy reform, a sentiment that was echoed by Senator Rand Paul.

Senator McCain and Levin (especially Levin) accused Apple of cheating the U.S. tax system, and Apple said the tax code is so broken that it puts the company at a competitive disadvantage against other international companies, like Samsung.

You can read Cook and Oppenheimer’s statements in full here and here for a concise look at Apple’s arguments.

Image: Jason Reed/Reuters

Today Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One at its Redmond, Washington campus. As the battle for the living room rages on, Microsoft has won a decisive victory that puts it well ahead of the competition.

The Xbox One is just as much for all-around entertainment as it is for gaming, perhaps even more so. It’s designed to be the one box that sits below your TV and does everything: games, movies, live TV, music, surfing the web, messaging, and even video calling. Minority Report-style gestures control the experience, it can recognize your face when you walk in the room, and you can talk to it like Siri on steroids.

Should Apple be worried? The answer is no, at least not yet.

The Xbox One demonstrates how to play to an audience. And that audience isn’t the same as Apple’s.

“Microsoft has included everything but the kitchen sink.”

While the Xbox One certainly looks like a fantastic entertainment hub, it would totally overwhelm my mother. Microsoft has included everything but the kitchen sink. To go from a traditional remote + controller combo to pinch and pull gestures with voice commands is quite the leap, even for a tech nerd.

If you use Netflix, get pumped for the new Call of Duty, and are hooked into Xbox Live, then the One console is a no-brainer. It’s a product that will instantly appease hip, young techies and gamers. The entertainment system aspect is definitely there, but the Xbox is still based on the foundation of console gaming. That won’t change, and that ultimately limits Microsoft’s reach.

“Content is king for Apple.”

On the other hand, the Apple TV is for everyone. You can mirror iOS games to the big screen, but the crux of the product is not built around gaming at all. Playing games is just one part of the Apple TV experience. The Apple TV is ultimately designed for watching and listening to stuff. Content is king for Apple. It always will be.

Xbox One owners will have little need for an Apple TV, unless the ability to use AirPlay is of great value. But most people won’t be buying a more expensive Xbox One instead of a $99 Apple TV.

If the Apple TV doesn’t get new features or replaced entirely over the next couple years, there are going to be problems. Competitors like Microsoft are piecing together what it takes to create a modern living room experience. Apple hasn’t solved it yet, and today Microsoft got closer.

One of the Xbox One’s coolest features is the ability to instantly recognize a person’s face and track command gestures with the Kinect sensor bar. That combined with voice support for navigating creates a pretty compelling, futuristic experience. We reported that Apple was prototyping the same kind of features in a HDTV last year. Little is known about Apple’s current plans for TV, other than the fact that the company has desperately been trying to secure licensing deals for streaming live programming. A standalone ‘iTV’ panel could be involved, or the current Apple TV could be turned into the internet-connected, app-ready, TV guide/DVR you’ve always wished you had.

The Apple TV hasn’t received a major, fundamental change since it was released in 2006. Sure, the box has been made slimmer and sleeker. The interface has changed, and a few app-like channels have been added, but the hockey puck is still pretty much the same. Apple has called it a “hobby” for years, although recent comments from Tim Cook suggest that something more is brewing.

This living room stuff takes time. It’s been nearly eight years since the Xbox 360. I wonder how long it will take Apple.

Photos: Jimmicane

Isn’t it funny how everyone has that little voice inside their head? And how that voice talks with you, back and forth, all day long? Just a tiny little dialogue from a tiny little voice. Sometimes it’s a delusional rant, but other times, it takes spectacular shapes of pure honesty between you and, well, yourself. These bits and pieces define what we see and perceive as humans. And we saw plenty on our trip to the Caribbean, but the perception, well, that’s up to you…—Dane Gudauskas
 

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