With less than 24 hours left in ourPaintbrush/Backblaze Contest, we need more entries!

We’re really looking for some awesomely cheesy drawings here, so don’t feel like you need to be a pro artist. The cheesier, the better!

As a reminder, we’re giving away two 1-year subscriptions to Backblaze to the most badical drawings! The contest ends tomorrow (Friday) at 1PM MST, so get to it!

Hello fellow Apple lovers. I have recently joined TheAppleBlog as a contributor. Allow me to give you all a little background as to who David Klein really is…

My first computer was a Macintosh LC, and I have since been a Mac enthusiast. My latest purchase was a Dell Mini 9 on which I installed OS X (very cool). In high school I worked at an Apple retail chain in Northern California called Computerware. After my first year at Cornell University, I had an internship in Apple’s hardware engineering department in Cupertino’s HQ. Yes, I sat near Sir Stevie several times in the cafeteria. Yes, he is extremely intimidating.

I worked in Cornell’s IT department supporting Mac users over the phone (I don’t recommend ever working tech support over the phone). I was the president of the Cornell University Mac User Group for a couple semesters. Now, I use Macs exclusively as a user interface designer at a startup in Palo Alto, CA. When I needed a few extra dollars to pay for student loans I worked at Palo Alto’s Apple Store nights and weekends. At that store you never know when Sir Stevie will walk in and sniff around to make sure everything is running to his standards.

I was a reviews editor at Powerpage.org for some time, but now I write all about Apple here. My goal is to make you all think about and use Apple’s products and those of its competitors in new ways. Whether or not you agree or disagree with my thoughts or how-to instructions, you should leave comments. I’ll do my best to respond to everyone.

You can get a feed of my articles here: http://theappleblog.com/author/tehdik/

Also, you can find me on Twitter and Flickr.

Below is a picture of me riding the cable car in San Francisco.

Around when I first got my iPhone, I used to use Simplify Media to really wow anyone who cared to listen to me gloat about my new toy. The app, if you’ve never heard of it, allows you to stream your home iTunes library from any computer with the desktop client installed directly to your iPhone. You can browse your library and change tracks, all remotely. Very handy if you have a 40GB library, but only 8 to 16GB of storage on your iPhone.

I stopped using it shortly after, because I missed a lot of the features from the iPhone’s built-in iPod app, especially playlists. Simplify Music 2.0 is a completely different app, and while the new features probably could’ve been introduced via an update to Simplify Media (which many downloaded as a free release when it originally came out), they are significant enough to justify the $3 (on sale, $6 starting May 14) purchase price.

What specifically makes it worth $3? Playlist creation and modification, for one. And you’re not limited to your own library for tracks to add to that, either, so long as your friends also have the Simplify desktop server app running, and have given you share permissions. You’ll be able to browse any library you have access to, search them all by artist, track title, album, etc., and tag any song on any library as a favorite. Taking a cue from a new iPhone OS 3.0 feature, there’s also a scrub bar built in to the app that allows you to search through tracks.

If you’re not interested in these features, and just want the basic streaming capabilities, the original Simplify is still available for $4. As someone who has at least a couple different libraries running on multiple computers, I’m very interested in the new features in Simplify Music 2.0. Frankly, they should’ve been (and still should be) offered by Apple as just something the iPhone can naturally do, but if they’d rather leave it to third-party solutions, Simplify Music will do just fine.

Ever wonder how being included in one of Apple’s iPhone and App Store ads affects sales? Positively, would be my uninformed guess. And it looks like in this case at least, my gut feeling is an accurate reflection of reality. A recent blog post by Michael D. Jensen, developer of Analytics App for the iPhone/iPod touch, reveals specific details behind a sales spike following his app’s appearance in an Apple print ad.

Analytics App, which provides on-the-go access to all of your Google Analytics data via your iPhone or iPod touch, was recently featured in an ad for Fortune magazine with the tagline “Helping you run your small business, one app at a time.” In total, the ad featured 12 third party apps (a full page), showing each on the springboard linked to a brief description. For Analytics App, the caption reads: Want to see how your web sites performing? Analytics App shows you your sites unique visitors, page views and other statistics using a series of customizable reports. The same ad appeared in the Wall Street Journal more recently, and the Analytics App icon showed up in Apple’s “Thanks a billion” celebration ad on the WSJ’s website, among others.

Image courtesy of Michael D. Jensen

Jensen took a look at his sales figures to work out the effect of the print ad on his revenue. He found that in the week following the appearance of the initial print ad, sales of his app rose an impressive 53 percent over previous weeks. That’s a nice spike, considering the advertising is free (unless you count Apple’s 30 percent cut on every app sold). As Jensen points out, he definitely gets better media presence via Apple than he could ever hope to fund on his own.

Way back in February, Hit Tennis developer Mark Johnson noted a similar spike following the appearance of his app in an iPod Touch TV advertisement. His sales improved a whopping 500 percent, but then dipped back down steadily. It makes sense that TV would have a more significant effect on sales, thanks to its much wider reach.

So, not surprisingly, being backed by Apple publicly lends you some serious street cred. The stat to watch is how it affects sales over the long haul. I’m willing to bet the halo effect is a lot more shortlived than some might expect, and is probably directly tied to the run lifetime of the ad itself.

Going on vacation used to be such a quaint exercise. Tou took your camera (plus batteries and rolls of film) and, if you wanted much more than that, you took a notebook to jot down your thoughts. If you had a bit more money you might have dragged a camcorder with you (do you remember how big those things used to be?) plus the spare tapes, batteries and back-brace for when you wanted to shoot without a tripod.

(If you dont get the joke, and really, you wont unless youre over 30, you have to appreciate that those things used to weigh a lot.)

Today, going on vacation is much the same. There’s still a healthy checklist of media essentials, but theyve changed in form and function quite considerably.

So, I went to Scotland last weekend, and, like any good geek, I spared little thought for appropriate clothes and footwear, but instead filled my case with only the most crucial gadgets. Heres the rundown.

Hardware

• Canon EOS 450D
• Assorted lenses for the Canon
• Tripod
• Sony Handycam HDR-TG1
• MacBook Pro
• Airport Express
• iPhone 3G

Storage

• Memory Stick Pro Duo Mk II
• SDHC

Miscellaneous

• Card adaptors (x2)
• USB cable
• HDMI-USB cable
• Ethernet cable
• Battery packs (x3)
• Chargers (x4)
• Multi-adaptor

I could have traveled a bit lighter had I taken my MacBook Air instead of the Pro, but the Handycam records in 1080i HD and the first-generation Air just cant handle HD video without slowing to a terrible crawl.

Also, the Canon DSLR spits-out gorgeous, RAW-format photos in glorious 10 megapixel resolution, and that demands the power of a machine at least as competent as the MacBook Pro. Choosing the MacBook Pro certainly added weight to the journey (significantly so, when compared with the Airs feather-light three pounds) but you just cant argue with the gain in graphics performance.

At the End of the Day…

Each day in Edinburgh yielded hundreds of photos and dozens of videos. In the evenings I dumped the data from the camera storage cards to the MacBook Pro hard drive — a convenient and fast backup solution which allowed me to keep the used-space on the cards as low as possible. In addition, I used iPhoto and iMovie to import the day’s captures, making them easily available to the entire iLife and iWork suites.

Sadly, the hotel offered a horrible pay-per-hour broadband service with a customer portal so convoluted it rendered my Airport Express utterly useless. I was looking forward to creating a small private wireless network the MacBook and iPhone could enjoy, instead, I was permanently tethered to the wall.

So, why couldnt all this media management wait until I got home? I suppose it could have, but I wanted to enjoy the immediacy of getting back to the hotel room and, after a few minutes of importing-and-sorting, email my photos to friends and family. I also had an opportunity to test the ecosystem of iPhone, MacBook Pro plus Cameras to see how well they worked together.

More than anything, it was an opportunity to test my Apple gear on-the-road, to see how well Leopard and iLife did in-the-field. It should come as no surprise then, when I say they performed admirably. What can I say that hasnt been said already, iLife rocks. iPhoto and iMovie make media asset management simple and sexy. I didnt just look forward to reviewing my photos at the end of each day — I looked forward to using iPhoto to do it!

Simply Heaven

There were some (small) drawbacks. The MacBook Pro sports only two USB ports, which is usually fine when Im at my home office or in a Starbucks somewhere. In a hotel room, where Im connecting cameras and iPhones (both for syncing and for charging) those two ports feel suddenly meagre. Maybe thats my own fault for not bringing a hub, but looking at the PC laptops out there, many of which feature four or more USB ports as standard, I found myself wishing Apple hadnt been quite so minimal in their designs.

After being spoiled by the exceptional battery life of the Air, its a real shock to the system to get only two hours out of the MacBook Pro. Sure, disabling the discreet graphics card helps, as does turning off the Bluetooth radio. And lets not forget that two hours is still an hour and a half more than most other laptops can hope to offer!

But the thing that was missing — most obviously missing — was the place of my iPhone in all of this. I took no photos on the iPhone because the built-in camera is a joke. I recorded no video because I dont want to jailbreak my phone.

The combination of MacBook Pro, Mac OS X and iLife 09 was symbiotic heaven. Everything worked perfectly together, and I never once had any issues with drivers, required updates, missing codecs or any of the myriad issues that so often plague other systems. I just really wanted my iPhone to be a part of that beautiful symphony. Instead, it just sort of sat there, desperately seeking a decent signal (usually missing in Edinburgh, it seemed to me).

The bottom line — and this is coming from someone who has been traveling far and wide for many years, usually with non-Apple solutions — is that the MacBook is a far better device for road-warriors than I imagined. IBM ThinkPads, Acer TravelMates and other traveller-friendly laptops are crammed-full of software and gimmicks that make them apparently near-indispensable for those who find themselves traveling between hotels most of the time. PC manufacturers spend much time tweaking their laptops to be ultimate tools for road-warriors, but this usually means skimping on performance in favor of energy efficiency and battery-life. (And in those cases, six, ten or fifty USB ports are worthless when the machine is so hopelessly underpowered it could barely cope with one attached device!)

Until now, I never had much confidence (or patience) in the other laptops Ive owned to want to use them in the field…well, nothing beyond simple document creation or email correspondence. But I never once doubted that the MacBook would be a true workhorse — reliable and consistent.

As though the point needed hammering-home, a friend of mine also spent the weekend away, taking his Acer TravelMate with him. While he was away, connected to his hotels Wi-Fi, Windows Update pushed some patches to both his network adapter and his email client (in this case, Windows Live Mail). After a restart, his network adapter failed to initialize. One painfully slow driver-rollback later, he got back online, but his email client wouldnt load — not until he had completely removed Windows Live Mail and installed a fresh copy of Windows Live Essentials (because Essentials is precisely the right word to communicate Email and Photos to everyone, right?)

This means he never got the photos I emailed him while I was in Scotland. He had to wait until he got home and could solve his software problem. And because MSN Mobile wouldnt recognize his live.com email address, he couldnt use his phone to stay in touch, either. Ouch.

Im off on vacation again soon — a week in Turkey this time — and boy am I glad Im taking a MacBook with me. If you havent made your MacBook a standard part of your vacation packing-list, I heartily recommend it. Youll wonder why you never did before.

It’s only fitting that a serious crossword puzzle app has a seriously verbose title.

The daily puzzles offered up by The New York Times are a classic staple in many crossword puzzle players’ diets. Kicking off each week with Monday’s easy offering, the puzzles get gradually more difficult each day, peaking with a fiendishly difficult grid on Friday.

The New York Times Crosswords Daily 2009 is the official NYT crossword app. The app features daily downloads of the latest New York Times crossword puzzle, alongside leaderboards and player profiles.

Sophisticated and Stylish (6 letters)

The game opens with a seriously smooth New York vibe: the Big Apple’s skyline sits atop the menu, rendered with a newspaper-style aesthetic, all backed with light-hearted jazz.

The cheery music and mellow tone was initially off-putting, perhaps due to my current diet of awful iPhone action games. After a few minutes though, I had adjusted to the breezy pace of the game and started to appreciate the gorgeous menu animations.

Zipping through the different menu screens, the animations are utterly gorgeous. Before even setting a single letter on to the grid, it was clear that this is a different breed of iPhone game — it’s smart, paced, and incredibly classy.

To Make A Link (7 letters)

Prior to playing, you’ll need to set-up a profile, which enables you to access the game’s array of community features and downloadable puzzles. Even though the registration process takes place within the app, it’s still a bore. I resented having to give my e-mail address away, simply to access the game content.

Another issue with the registration process is that you’re automatically given a Magmic Profile. Magmic, the developers of the app, had, quite unexpectedly, created a profile for me on their site. It seems somewhat inappropriate for Magmic to be harvesting user-data for the game, in order to create unrelated public profiles on their site (and without prior warning too).

Once registered, the app is given an injection of content. You’re immediately able to download and play the latest daily crossword from The New York Times. There’s also a small archive of puzzles available to play, dating as far back as 2002. And best of all, downloading happens in a snap, which means you can be playing a fresh puzzle only moments after opening the app.

Corbijn’s Directorial Debut (7 letters)

Once a crossword has been opened, the timer starts ticking, giving the game a sense of pace and competition. Navigating each crossword is surprisingly intuitive. I expected clumsy navigation and yet the interface design is solid and incredibly easy to grasp.

To select a square on the grid, you simply tap it. The clue is then displayed at the bottom of the screen. Tapping the same square again toggles between Across and Down, while using the left and right arrows (which flank the clue text) scrolls through the clues sequentially. You’re even able to zoom in and out of the grid by pinching, Mobile Safari-style.

Separate to the main crossword grid is an excellent clue view screen. The clue view screen is a useful tool when attempting to solve a grid; it’s a space where the clues are clearly laid out, enabling prolonged perusal and consideration. Plus, solutions can also be entered on this screen too, enhancing its usefulness.

Summing Up

Magmic say that the app “includes access to daily and archived puzzles until the end of 2009.” It’s not clear exactly what this means though. Does the app stop downloading all crosswords — even old ones from the NYT archives — when we hit 2010? The lack of clarity is an issue, if the app is essentially a subscription, it should be made clearer from the offset.

Setting the app’s description discrepancy aside, despite it’s overly verbose title, The New York Times Crossword Daily 2009 was an unexpected pleasure to play. The app’s design is classy and the excellent user interface means that solving the crossword on iPhone is just as engaging as the real thing.

The real joy of this app is the way in which it stretches your mental capacity. And taking on such a challenge — giving your brain-box a thorough testing — really does make you feel immediately smarter.

It would seem Jeopardy has taken over TheAppleBlog for the day!

Jeopardy is one of those “classics” that I remember watching at grandma’s house growing up. Unfortunately, I was absolutely horrible at getting any of the questions right.

Regardless of my inability to answer who forged the Potomac River in 1801, playing this app on my iPhone brings back some great memories.

Jeopardy for iPhone boasts 360 different categories and thousands of possible answers. And with multiple levels of difficulty, there’s some pretty serious re-playability here.

You can snag Jeopardy for iPhone now for $4.99…not the $2,000 the subject line might have hinted at. I just needed a good headline.

This week saw Apple hiring not one, but two former ATI/AMD chip designers. Just one would be enough to arouse speculation, but two in the same week is being seen by many, including the Wall Street Journal, as nothing short of a public declaration that they do indeed intend to start building their own chips.

Note also that these hires coincide with Mark Papermaster’s official return to work at Apple, which was delayed owing to the legal settlement between them and his former employer, IBM. Papermaster was instrumental in developing the PowerPC architecture with IBM.

One of the new hires this week was Raja Koduri, who was formerly chief technology officer at AMD in their graphics group. The other person brought on board, Bob Drebin, held the very same title before Koduri. Aside from these two high-profile hires, Apple also has ongoing active job postings for various chip-related positions, including some that actually admit to involving “testing the functional correctness of Apple silicon.”

The WSJ article also reminds readers that Apple acquired chip maker P.A. Semi last year. They suggest that the chip company was then tasked with designing a brand new, more energy-efficient ARM processor for the iPhone (which has terrible battery life, as anyone who has one can attest), and that the new hires represent a continuation and extension of this strategy.

But what reason could Apple have for wanting to develop their own chips? After all, outsourcing is more cost-effective, and a preventative measure against corporate bloat. In Apple’s case, however, bringing the development of that core component of their computers and media players in-house might actually make more sense. The WSJ points out that in building their own chips, Apple (which is notoriously secretive) would have to share far less information with chip suppliers. Third-party suppliers are probably the source of most of Apple’s early product leaks, as reports from DigiTimes and other Asian news sources repeatedly indicate.

Internal chip development would also stop the flow of information from Apple to chip makers, and through them to other computer/electronic device manufacturers. It’s basically the same reason Willy Wonka used Oompa Loompah labor, which was to hamper corporate espionage. Don’t get your hopes up for catchy, cautionary song and dance numbers, though, since it looks like Apple is still limited to boring old human workers.

If Apple is working to develop their own chips, they’re going about it the right way: hiring lots of experience, and not rushing a bad or underdeveloped product out the door. The Journal expects a 2010 date for the introduction of any proprietary Apple chips, but don’t be surprised if it takes longer than that for desktops and notebooks to get Apple-designed brains.