Founder, Publisher and Editorial Director of the 9to5/Electrek/DroneDJ sites.
Seth Weintraub is an award-winning journalist and blogger who won back to back Neal Awards during his three plus years covering Apple and Google at IDG’s Computerworld from 2007–2010. Weintraub next covered all things Google for Fortune Magazine from 2010-2011 amassing a thick rolodex of Google contacts and love for Silicon Valley tech culture.
It turns out that his hobby 9to5Mac blog was always his favorite and in 2011 he went full time adding his Fortune Google followers to 9to5Google and adding the style and commerce component 9to5Toys gear and deals site. In 2013, Weintraub bought one of the Tesla’s first Model S EVs off the assembly line and so began his love affair with the Electric Vehicle and green energy which in 2014 turned into electrek.
In 2018, DroneDJ was born to cover the burgeoning world of drones and UAV’s led by China’s DJI.
From 1997-2007, Weintraub was a Global IT director and Web Developer for a number of companies with stints at multimedia and branding agencies in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney, Hong Kong, Madrid and London before becoming a publisher/blogger.
Seth received a bachelors degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California with a minor in Multimedia and Creative Technology in 1997. In 2004, he received a Masters from NYU’s Tisch School of the Art’s ITP program.
Hobbies: Weintraub is a licensed single engine private pilot, certified open water scuba diver and spent over a year traveling to 60 cities in 23 countries. Whatever free time exists is now guaranteed to his lovely wife and two amazing sons.
More at About.me. BI 2014 profile.
Tips: seth@9to5mac.com, or llsethj on Wickr/Skype or link at top of page.
I wonder if Apple was upset because of how stupid the spoof was? Seems like a waste of time going after Ellen. Yeah, it’s in Flash, you aren’t missing anything if you can’t see it. (here’s the orig)
http://wbads.vo.llnwd.net/o25/u/telepixtv/ellen/us/video/player/embed.swf
Youwch!
Dropbox for iPad(free) is out and the reviews are pretty good. Dropbox, if you don’t have it already, is 2.2GB of free space in the cloud that syncs with a folder in your Mac or PC’s Home directory. Using Dropbox for iPhone/iPad/iPod touch allows you to view these files on your iProduct. For instance, a Powerpoint in your dropbox folder can be opened in your iPad in Keynote.
Also, when you favorite a file, it stores that file locally on your iPad. The only flaws include lackluster PDF viewing and inability to zoom pictures. We’re hoping to see those improved in the next version..
Apple
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NFU0w9g5gA&w=640&h=385]
The Spirit Jailbreak for iPad has been released and from an early look, it’s pretty dead simple. Sprit is an untethered jailbreak which will hack any iProduct of yours on any 3.1.x or 3.2 release. The jailbreak is free and works instantly. You can download it for Mac or Windows here.
Before you proceed, read the warning notes on the official site. The video above is a full tutorial which explains everything and walks you though a complete Spirit Jailbreak on the iPad.
Steve Jobs recently responded to a customer’s email on video codecs by saying that the Ogg Theora Open Source format was about to be attacked by a pool of patent holders. Some disagree very strongly with this, saying that the statement is FUD.
Whether or not that is the case, are we, as Apple users, entirely happy with H.264 licensing terms? In a lengthy post entitled ‘Why Our Civilization’s Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA’, Eugenia Loli-Queru presents a very scary future where the patent holders can flip a switch and pretty much require us to pay them every time we record, edit or play back our videos.
Ed Bott at ZDNet has a pretty informed take on the whole thing, saying that in the end, it is in everyone’s best interests to keep H.264 free for casual users.
T-Mobile full-sized SIMs require some trimming but they do work in the iPad and will get you an EDGE (not 3G — different radios) data signal if you are so inclined. You probably won’t find a deal as good as AT&T’s, however. Instructions can be found here.
Bonus: If you jailbreak, you can send SMS’s from Tmobile (video below!), where on AT&T, the functionality is disabled. via MuscleNerd
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1P7Cya9wmM&w=640&h=385]
Many may be wondering why Apple chose the H.264 standard for Safari’s HTML5 video over Ogg Theora, which Firefox and Opera support in their HTML5 video implementations (Google’s Chrome supports both). Ogg Theora is royalty free while H.264 requires licensing which could come at a price. Wikipedia also uses Ogg Theora.
But for Apple and CEO Steve Jobs, the answer isn’t that simple. According to an email reply published last night, Jobs believes that Theora may infringe on other’s patents and those patent holders may soon be going after Theora:
As per usual, the answers are probably much more complicated than they appear on the surface.
As for marketshare, the graphic below from Encoding.com shows that H.264 adoption is outpacing Theora, while Flash encoding is dropping significantly.
Shipping part (left) vs. FCC part (right)
iFixit did a teardown of the 3G iPad and found that it is mostly the same as the FCC submission Apple provided a month ago. The only difference is that Apple has unlabeled some of the Infineon chips in the 3G module as you can see in the image above.
Some additional remarks from iFixit:
iPad 3G owners who were expecting to be able to watch ABC TV shows while on the move or expected to see SD movie trailers on 3G aren’t going to be happy with this news from iLounge.
It appears that Apple/AT&T are blocking some video apps like ABC entirely, while downscaling other videos, like Apple trailers significantly. It isn’t certain yet whether this is a result of their HTTP Streaming going over smaller pipes or an intentional effort because of licensing restrictions. (3G could be considered broadcast)
Some people like the unboxings…here you are. We liked the 3G maps usage at the end. Thanks Yaliutube.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYaOYtOdgB8&w=700&h=505]
Adobe is now shipping/offering downloads of its CS5 suite of products. Photoshop CS5, Flash Professional CS5, Illustrator CS5, InDesign CS5, Premier Pro CS5 and Dreamweaver CS5 have all been updated with 30-day free trials as well.
Besides ordering directly from Adobe, Amazon offers the suites and individual programs at significantly reduced prices, but don’t ship until next month. For instance, students and teachers can save up to 80% on CS5 products here.
9to5mac uses affiliate links whenever possible.
Wired reports that 21-year old Brian Hogan (pictured above) is the person who found the iPhone 4G that has been causing the recent stir, because he eventually sold it to Gizmodo for a review.
CNET reports that a middleman, Sage Robert Wallower, a 27-year-old University of California at Berkeley student, contacted technology sites to try to sell the device. Eventually Gizmodo bought it for $5000 and published a number of images and videos of the device.
Both are cooperating in the ongoing investigations into the matter.
http://online.wsj.com/media/swf/VideoPlayerMain.swf
Adobe’s CEO didn’t mince words on his feelings for Steve Jobs’ comments earlier today.
This is kinda weird. It looks like an iPad can simulate a sleep on a MacBook Pro somehow, probably with the speaker magnets.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT3j001uoWY&w=320&h=480]
Though the product has gotten mixed reviews (good for EDGE connections, not so much for everything else), Opera Software has something interesting to reveal today. In just two weeks since the release of the Opera Mini browser for the iPhone, installation on the device has eclipsed those of all other compatible mobile device platforms.
By which I mean, there
According to Engadget, some lucky guy has received his iPad a day before anyone else. This may be the guy who had his iPad 3G shipped two days before ours. You can tell this is a 3G iPad by the black bar on the top as well as the AT&T in the corner. Watch out for an unboxing tomorrow.
Well, what do you know? Ask and you shall receive. Adobe has released a new version of its Mac Flash player called ‘Gala’ which takes advantage of the new H.264 hardware acceleration. Download it here (BETA!).
Apple last week released a new Video Decode Acceleration Framework Reference for GPU acceleration of H.264 video files. A week later, Plex has a hotfix for NVidia 9400M and newer chipsets which will allow the media player to decode 720P and 1080P videos with much less CPU utliization. The code will be incorperated into newer builds soon.
It
Apple has at last announced the date and place for this year’s much-anticipated Worldwide Developers Conference – the most essential event for anyone involved in building products for the Apple ecosystem: Mac, iPod and iPhone OS.
Speculation: We’re pretty certain (ie. it isn’t impossible) this might be the first official public opportunity to take a look at the new fourth-generation iPhone.
What’s the saying? “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”…even if that new friend is also the enemy?
Microsoft, this evening, issued a press release saying that it and HTC had agreed to a broad patent-sharing agreement which would help HTC fight its patent battles (with Apple). But it isn’t just HTC’s Windows Mobile phones that the agreement covers. Microsoft is also specifically covering Google’s Android phones as well.
As we reported earlier, iPad 3G’s were preparing to ship. A few hours later they are shipping. Let us know in the comments your luck OK?. Us? Nada. Update: We just got prepped!
AdMob has released new data offering mutiple insights into the mobile ads market, not least the really rather curious statistic that nearly 30 per cent of first-gen iPhones are still in use.
Three devices
