Mac: Two Books on Steve Jobs

Here are two books about Steve Jobs that are on my wish list right now.

• Inside Steve's Brain
  
  
  

• Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, A Parody
  
  
  

The Music Mug

The Music Mug from I.D.E.A International is a speaker that’s in a form of a mug. It comes with a stereo mini plug that you can connect to portable audio devices such as the iPod.

What’s cool?

• It’s in a shape of a stylish white mug
  
• It doesn’t require any batteries or power source, so you can bring it wherever you want. 

The Music Mug comes in five colors and retails at 3,990 yen (around $35 to $40) in Japan. You can also buy it online for $69.00 at Generate.

Since it doesn’t require a power source, it doesn’t seem like the sound would be audiophile quality, but it sure does look good. 

Links:

• Coolest Gadgets
  
• Music Mug's website - click on the mug shaped icon to load the section for Music Mug (the site is in Japanese)
  

Mac Tip: Shut Down your MacBook with the Power Button

For those that don’t know, by pressing the power button on your MacBook or any other Apple notebooks, you can instantly bring up the Shut Down window.  On the Shut Down window, you can restart, sleep, or shut down your computer.  

I did a quick search and found out on this site that you can also bring up the window with Control-Eject. This is useful if you use a wireless keyboard with your MacBook. I also found out that by pressing S after your bring up the Shut Down window will make your computer sleep. Pretty nifty!  

So to recap:

• You can bring up the Shut Down menu on your MacBook by pressing the power button or control-eject.
  
• You can put the computer to sleep by pressing control-eject, and then S.
  

Compose Music in 20 Minutes with TENORI-ON

"You will be able to compose music in 20 minutes."

This is what a developer of TENORI-ON, a new digital musical instrument from Yamaha, told AFP.  The TENORI-ON, which translates to “sounds on your hand,” has a form factor of a square silver tablet. It comes with 256 LED buttons, which are arranged in a 16 by 16 matrix. By pressing the buttons, sounds will be played and buttons will light up. Yamha says that it “allows everyone to play music intuitively, creating a 'visible music' interface."

Some more info:
The horizontal axis represents the time and the vertical axis represents different musical notes. There are 253 kinds of instrumental sounds you can choose from such as violin and piano. In addition, you can also use your own original sounds with a SD memory card.

You can switch between six different modes while you play. More info about the modes and functions can be found on Yamaha’s website.

Videos
Here’s a demonstration on YouTube:

You can also see the Tenorions, a girl band, play the TENORI-ON in the following video:

What’s cool?

• It’s the Etch-A-Sketch of digital musical instruments. Not only can you draw with the LED lights, you can make and play music anywhere you go.
  
• It’s designed by interactive media artist Toshio Iwai, who also developed the interactive music game Electroplankton for the DS.
  
• The matrix of LED lights are double-sided, which means your audience can see what you’re playing.

Pricing and Availability
In Japan the TENORI-ON costs 121,000 yen, which is about 1,200 bucks. It's available in US, Europe, and Japan with limited quantities. If you are in the States, you can get on the waiting list at KEYFAX. 

Source:

• Tenori-on website
  
• AFP
• CNET Japan (Japanese)
  
• The Independent
  

Wake Up with Jinsei Tokei (Life Clock)!

Takara Tomy’s Jinsei Tokei, which translates to “Life Clock,” is designed to help us get up on time without pressing that snooze button with a Tamagotchi twist. 

What’s Cool?
A virtual character lives in your clock. The character’s quality of life is dependent on you getting up on time everyday.

For example, if you wake up on time day-by-day, the alarm sound will change from a rooster sound to a nice violin sound. Your character will become more successful and wealthier as well. On the contrary, if you snooze a lot, the alarm sound will become a clashing fry pan noise and your character will live poorly.

You can choose from three characters - a salary man, rock band member, or a young girl.  The clock comes with a backlight, and it can also work as a kitchen timer and serve as an alarm to notify you to go to work or school. 

You can purchase the Jinsei Tokei for 3,990 yen (roughly around 35 to 40 bucks) in Japan. You can also purchase it online at AudioCubes for $55.99.

Links

• PDF instructions of Jinsei Tokei (in Japanese)
  
• Source: IT Media (in Japanese), Takara Tomy's HP
  

Mac Tip: Paste and Match Style

Most Apple applications have the function, “Paste and Match Style.” It’s an extremely useful function in the Edit menu. What it does is that it pastes the text from your clipboard and matches the format or style to the context.

An Example
For example, let’s say you have a Pages document where the font is Arial, size is 12, and the alignment is centered. You copied some text from a webpage in Safari, which are Times Roman with size 18. If you use “Paste and Match Style” in Pages, the text will be pasted in Arial with size 12 centered.

Keyboard Shortcut
The keyboard shortcut for this nifty function is shift+option+command V.

How about Office applications?
This function is available in pretty much all of Apple’s applications (Mail, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iWeb, TextEdit, and etc.), but beware, it’s not in Microsoft’s Office 2004. Bummer. (Office 2008 might have it, but I’m not sure.)

Fun: Hey Ma! My MacBook and iPod Touch Screens are Transparent!

I remembered coming across a story about transparent screens. So I Googled for transparent screens and found these two links:

• Transparent screen illusion: set laptop's wallpaper to a photo of the wall behind it
  
• Transparent Screens
  

I tried it for my MacBook and iPod Touch. Here they are:

The Robotic Candle: HONO

Hono, which stands for flame in Japanese, is an electric candle from Metaphys of Japan.

What’s cool?

• The light of this electric candle mimics the flickering of real candles. (According to this Japanese website here, supposedly there is a CPU integrated with an algorithm built-in to mimic the flickering.)
  
• There is no switch on this electric candle. The Hono comes with a magnetic matchstick. By gently touching the electric candle with the match, you can turn the light on and off.
  
• Blowing into the candle will cause the flame of the candle to temporarily go out for 10 seconds.
  

Hono can light up for eight hours with one full charge. The electric candle comes with a magnetic match, stand, holder, and battery charger. You can pick one up in Japan for 9,975 yen (roughly 95 to 100 dollars).

The Eco-friendly Cup Noodle Cup

As an effort to make our planet greener, Nissin, the maker of Cup Noodles, started selling re-usable plastic Cup Noodle cups last year. So instead of throwing away containers for every serving of instant ramen you eat, now you can buy individual refills and make your ramen in washable cups.

Similar to Starbucks’ “Create Your Own Tumber,” you can create your own Cup Noodle cup by designing and printing your own cup liner. Nissin’s website also has an online tool (only in Japanese) that can help you create your own designs.

The cup is bundled in the Cup Noodle Refill Starter Pack, which also comes with a seafood noodle refill and an original Cup Noodle refill.  The Cup Noodle Refill Starter Pack can be purchased for 570 yen (roughly six dollars) in Japan. 

Sources: Treehugger, Nissin press release (Japanese), Cup Noodle Refill homepage 

The 10 Key Calculator by Ippei Matsumoto

The 10 Key Calculator designed by Ippei Matsumoto gets its roots from classic computer keyboards. Not only does it work as a standalone calculator, it can also connect to your PC and function as a number pad.

The calculator supports Windows 2000 Professional, XP, and Vista. No luck for Mac users here.

It comes in four colors: white, beige, red, and black, and this fancy calculator will set you back 5,250 yen (roughly 50 bucks) in Japan. You can also buy it from the MoMA store for $58.00. Yeah, design comes with a price alright.

Create music with a touch of a button

Kyouei Design of Japan has developed a CD containing 99 tracks. Each track contains a unique tone, so that when you play the tracks in random order with your CD player, an original melody is played every time.

The title of the CD is “Random,” and can be purchased from Kyouei Design’s website for 2,100 yen (roughly about $20 dollars).

Imagine if you imported the tracks to your iPod. Your iPod could become an automatic songwriting machine!

Welcome to Shiny White Gadgets!

Thanks for visiting Shiny White Gadgets (SWG)!  

I fell in love with shiny white gadgets after I bought my first 3G iPod (which is no longer working due to a hard drive failure) a few years ago.   Since then I've always wanted to start a blog about white gadgets, and after lots of procrastination, I finally got myself together to start this blog.  

This blog will be mainly updated on Wednesdays and Fridays in the US.  As the title of this blog implies, I will mainly be writing about shiny white gadgets. Since I spend half of my time in the land of the rising sun, I will also cover some gadgets exclusive to Japan.   And since I am an Apple fan, from time to time I may drop in with some stuff about Apple and Macs.  

Enjoy and I hope to hear from you soon!