Have you ever wondered why the coffeemaker in your kitchen doesn’t have a subwoofer attached to it? Us too! And if you’re going to put a sub on there, you might as well include a Mac mini, right? And when you really think about it, isn’t the only case worthy of holding all that stuff an iMac DV? It just makes sense.
That’s why, we’re guessing, tinkerer Klaus Diebel put together this incredibly useful device that will make your coffee, play some thumping tunes, and do your computing tasks as well. He tells us it was something like that — he really enjoyed the look of the gumdrop iMac, and has experimented with it a few times, creating both a mailbox and a birdhouse from the computer’s case. And this one just sort of snowballed — when he found that the Mac mini’s optical drive slot fit perfectly with the iMac’s slot, without any alterations at all, it had to happen.
Regular readers will know my affinity for Apple products. In general, they’re high quality, and I’m willing to pay a bit more for that. But a lemon is a lemon, regardless of who it’s made by, and must be labeled as such.
We recently wrote about gWallet, a startup that hopes to offer a legitimate virtual currency monetization platform, after OfferPal, and others have recently come under fire (a.k.a. “Scamville”) for scamming users of virtual games on social networks. The startup, which recently raised $10.5 million in funding, works directly with brands directly as opposed to adopting an affiliate leads model. gWallet claims that its proprietary technology and transparent platform allows game developers and social networks to see when and where exact offers are being presented within their ecosystems.
The startup wouldn’t reveal the details of what its platform would look and feel like, but today is giving us a little bit more insight into how it will work. gWallet is launching gLTV, a new metric that will aim to give publishers analytics on how they can measure and increase their lifetime value of users on their applications. gWallet says gLTV uses info about individual users to demonstrate specifically how it can increase the lifetime value of a user based on prior usage and transaction history. Currently, publishers cannot see how they are increasing the lifetime value of their users. Other virtual currency platforms can only measure yield through a CPM model, which measures how much revenue is generated after a thousand views on their offer wall.
Apple just dodged a bullet.
A New York federal judge dismissed a potential class action lawsuit which alleged that Apple propagated their popular iMac screens without disclosing certain manufacturing defects to its customers, saying that the allegations were too general to be considered.
Here’s something that’ll fix a bit of your 27-inch iMac ails. Apple just released a graphics firmware update 1.0. Order of the day? To “address issues that may cause image corruption or display flickering.” Download away, and let us know if you troubled souls have seen some relief.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
We hope this will provide holiday relief for many iMac owners: Apple just released a firmware update for the graphics chipsets in 27″ iMac models, intended to fix display issues. Apple states this download
Updates the graphics firmware on ATI Radeon HD 4670 and 4850 graphics cards to address issues that may cause image corruption or display flickering.
A controversial comment on Hacker News makes us wonder if hot U.S. startups are the new vanity purchase for rich Russians.
We weren’t the only ones surprised earlier this year when Facebook raised a new round of financing at a $10 billion valuation. Facebook itself apparently held its nose as it closed the round, but Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies was offering a far richer valuation than anyone else (and, importantly, they didn’t require a board of directors seat).
‘Tis the season shop until your brains melt (or skip it all entirely, depending on your interpretation of the term holiday). In that spirit, for the next few weeks we’ll be rounding up a dozen daily deals courtesy our friends at DealNews.com. Each afternoon tune in to TUAW for this handy summary. Keep in mind that while our posts will live on, the deals won’t. Each is lovingly generated by the deal-bot every day, so get ‘em while they’re hot. Enjoy!
iTunes Music Store: [iPhone / iPod Apps] App Store Freebies: File Ninja, Target WEIGHT, TomatoRoll, HyperBowl Classic, more
Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide! The team here is well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties of the seasonal shopping experience, and we want to help you sort through the trash and come up with the treasures this year. Below is today’s bevy of hand curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the holiday season.
Let’s face it, not everyone needs (or wants) to carry their computer around on the daily routine. Sacrificing portability can have its advantages, Nettops and all-in-one PCs have become a much more dominant force this year, but the traditional, highly upgradeable desktop tower is still a reigning champ, with few equals that provide the same bang for your buck. Just make sure your certain special someone has enough desk real estate for whatever potentially-enormous chassis you decide to take home and wrap.
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we’ve got questions about syncing photo libraries, compressing and transferring large files, creating a virtual PDF printer, increasing screen readability, and more.
As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you’re using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we’ll assume you’re running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don’t specify).