GlitchNYC

Headphones don’t fit in your new iPhone? Hack ‘em!

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 03:31:26 GMT

The iPhone is one of the best thought-out devices ever made, but that doesn’t stop if from having a shortcoming here and there.

One of it’s more obvious flaws is that the metal around the headphone jack is so damn slim that you can’t fit most 3rd party headphones. Sure, the iPhone headphones have a mic built in, but they’re really not that comfortable in even my big ears, and they’re downright painful in Sara’s.

So, I did what any enterprising (read: cheap) geek would do, and hacked a super comfy and great sounding pair of Sony Fontopia headphones to fit. They’re only $30, so the risk here was pretty low, but that doesn’t make this first picture any less scary. Here’s the step by step photos with their captions.

An iPhone, some headphones, and knife. It’s going to get ugly.

The jack is too small for normal headphones

The adaptor itself fits, but the casing is too wide

These little Sony fontopia earbuds are super comfy and deliver great sound, for about $30. Lets make them fit.

The L jack only needs to be trimmed a little.

You can easily cut through the rubber casing trimming off about 1mm

Then whittle down the grey plastic a little

Final product

Perfect fit!

It now sits perfectly flush

And music sounds great!

Originally published at GlitchNYC. Please leave any comments there.

Just try not to click that link!

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:07:07 GMT

clipped from www.flickr.com

We’ve got a TwitterFeed set up to post a popular clip from clipmarks to twitter every few hours or so. (http://twitter.com/clipmarks/).

I’m always amazed by the great clips that find their way there, but this one literally made me guffaw here in the office. That’s got to be one of the most clickable links I’ve ever seen. Something behind that link is exciting, but you don’t know what!

Here’s the link for the curious (SFW)

Originally published at GlitchNYC. Please leave any comments there.

A Beach Party, Fireworks, and Music

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 03:37:22 GMT

We’re currently taking a summer hiatus from our podcast, The Alternative Music Show, but we’re still evaluating new music. Crazy Fraizer’s song “Crazy (City Lights)” has been stuck in my head, and seemed to fit really well with these pictures in iPhoto, so I set about making a little music video.

You can download this promotrack for free, but if you enjoy it, please support the artist and purchase the full album!

“Crazy (City Lights)” (mp3)
from “After Autumn”
by Casey Frazier
(Cul De Sac Records)
Buy at Casey Frazier Music
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at eMusic
Buy at Rhapsody
Stream from Rhapsody
Buy at Napster
Buy at GroupieTunes
More On This Album

Originally published at GlitchNYC. Please leave any comments there.

Bacn can be good for you - save hours with smart email filters

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 02:45:14 GMT

There’s a new term being tossed around twittersphere like crazy this weekend: “bacn”. Originally written about by Andy Quayle, the term got a lot of buzz at Podcamp Pittsburgh, and for good reason. Sure, we don’t really need another buzzword, but bacn describes a problem we all have, and defining that problem will help bring about solutions.

Bacn refers to emails that you want, but don’t want to deal with right now, like that newsletter that you signed up for that you never really have time to read, or notifications that the umpteenth user followed you on facebook.

If you mark these emails as spam, you’re likely to never see them again. Deleting them isn’t much better, and even leaving them unread still breaks your attention to see if an email is worth dealing with.

That attention-breaking ability is the sneaky evil of bacn. Even services that I adore like twitter and flickr can be a little obtrusive at times. All of those little flow-interrupters mean that you spend a lot of your day getting back up to speed on whatever you were working on before you… hang on, there’s another email… eh, more comments on my photos, back to… wait, what was I doing?

Luckily, theres an easy solution to the bacn problem!

About a year ago, I merged all of my email accounts into one giant gmail account purely for their bacn filtering. I’ve still got all my old email addresses, they just forward to one inbox.

The beauty of gmail’s filtering, and the reason I believe it beats any other email solution hands down, is that the filtering happens before the mail hits your inbox. When I get a new notification from facebook, it comes in, “skips the inbox”, and gets labeled facebook. Most importantly, I never get the little growl popup that notifies me of new mail, and my flow continues uninterrupted.

Once or twice a day while I’m taking a ‘brain break’ I’ll flip through my labels and take care of any pending friend requests, comments, and any other bacn that’s come in during the day. I save at least 30 minutes a day by batching all those little requests, and probably a good deal more.

I’d be very interested to hear about other people’s bacn management techniques. Are there any mail programs other than gmail that allow you to filter before inbox and notifications?

Originally published at GlitchNYC. Please leave any comments there.

What’s your house’s Walk Score?

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 20:18:29 GMT

How walkable is your place (or that dream house you’ve been thinking of)?

When Sara and I look at getting a place, not needing a car for every little errand will be high on my list of wants.

clipped from www.walkscore.com

Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. Check out how Walk Score doesn’t work.

Your Walk Score is a number between 0 and 100. The walkability of an address depends on how far you are comfortable walking—after all, everything is within walking distance if you have the time. Here are general guidelines for interpreting your score:

90 - 100 = Walkers’ Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car.

70 - 90 = Very Walkable:

50 - 70 = Some Walkable Locations:

25 - 50 = Not Walkable:

0 - 25 = Driving Only:

clipped from www.walkscore.com

1. Type an address

2. See a walking map

3. Get your score

Originally published at GlitchNYC. Please leave any comments there.

New Media wonks are jumping on the Clip-to-blog bandwagon

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 17:32:19 GMT

I’ve been working hard on some new stuff for Clipmarks and admittedly haven’t been paying as much attention as I’d like to the quiet traction that Clip-to-blog is gaining in the New Media space.

Clip-to-blog lets you clip the best parts of a web page and easily post them to your blog, and I’ve always hoped that my new media friends would see it as a great tool for keeping your blog up to date with fresh, relevant content. Recently, the awesome Adam Broitman wrote me for a little help getting clip-to-blog running on a.mediacirc.us, and he’s now clipping up a storm. Podcaster extraordinaire C.C. Chapman has also posted a few clips, and now new-media mavens Julia Patricia Roy and Amanda Mooney are going to town as well.

I’d love to hear from anyone else using Clip-to-blog - how it worked for you, if you liked it, what we can do to improve, etc. One thing that we’re definitely looking at is adding the ability to post to a specific category, what else should we add?

Originally published at GlitchNYC. Please leave any comments there.

Track the price of crude oil on your iGoogle page

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 22:24:58 GMT

To get the oil price, please enable Javascript.

After reading way too much about the price and supply of oil, I’ve kept a watchful eye on the price of crude. It peaked around $78 a barrel last year, and after sliding down to the mid sixties, it looks like it is poised to set a new record, standing at $77 today.

I got sick of going to the Bloomberg energy page every time I wanted to see today’s price, and really wanted a graph of past activity.

I found oil-price.net and their nice javascript widget, and they agreed to let me make a google gadget from it. I whipped one up and added it to my page. You can add it to your google start page by clicking here

Originally published at GlitchNYC. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve played this game!!

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:28:36 GMT

Back in college I worked in the theatre’s sceneshop, there were inevitably downtimes between projects, so bunch of us would have this exact contest. You’d be surprised how far you can extend one of those metal tape measurers before they bend!

clipped from xkcd.com

GlitchNYC

Headphones don’t fit in your new iPhone? Hack ‘em!

Just try not to click that link!

A Beach Party, Fireworks, and Music

Bacn can be good for you - save hours with smart email filters

What’s your house’s Walk Score?

1. Type an address

2. See a walking map

3. Get your score

New Media wonks are jumping on the Clip-to-blog bandwagon

Track the price of crude oil on your iGoogle page

I’ve played this game!!

funniest talking cat in history

You never know what’ll come out when you’re testing a text field.

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