also.known.as “spvn”

Once again, the announcement of a new iPhone by the venerable Jobs is upon us. But the release of the iPhone 4 is particularly stinging for me.

In the past, I at least had the glimmer of hope of “Maybe I can get one of these!” But being in NS now means there’s absolutely no way I can get an iPhone. No way am I going all Frankenstein on it and plucking out the camera, especially not when it can now even record HD video (720p, 30fps on a mobile phone camera!). I’m just going to have to sit on the sidelines patiently, watching as everyone else snatches up one of these. I’m going to have to sit through another new iPhone announcement next year (assuming Apple keeps to its current trend of refreshing the iPhone hardware every year) without being able to actually own one of them. One thing’s for sure though, my next phone is going to be an iPhone.

As for the announcement itself, I have to say this 1.5 hour long keynote is probably the most entertaining one in recent times. Packed with pretty meatty announcements (thought there was that lull in between of inviting developers up on stage at one point), it sure was entertaining when Jobs essentially went “TURN OFF ALL YOUR WIFI, NOW!!!” Poor live-bloggers.

However, this occasion’s “One More Thing…” sure was disappointing, especially compared to the announcements that preceded it.

Now I’ve watched some Apple keynotes that date back to the 1990s (wow we’re actually in the ’10s) and Steve Jobs’ “One More Thing…” announcements back then were usually mind blowing to say the least. Or at least they were genuinely exciting or intriguing. This time though, their “One More Thing” turned out to be nothing more than video calling.

Seriously? Video calling? My SE Z610i from 4 years ago could do that. Sure, the iPhone 4 does it better. But 4 years on it had jolly well do a better job. Even worse, Jobs didn’t even bother trying to show off any hidden features of video calling. All the iPhone did was simply that, video calling, and nothing more. Yet the way he sold it was as if video calling was something completely new to the world, which it is obviously isn’t. I’m still mystified as to why they decided to market video calling (and seriously, calling it FaceTime doesn’t make it cool) as something that’s “revolutionary”.

Apart from that though, some of the stuff is pretty revolutionary IMO. Can’t wait for 2 years later when I can finally actually get an iPhone. Oh wells.

So I saw the app Rising Card make it to the “What’s Hot” list on the iTunes App Store and thought the description of the application sounded pretty cool. For those who don’t know, Rising Card is a magic application for the iPhone and iPod Touch, created by magician Chris Kenner. For those who dabble a little into magic, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that this guy invented Threefly (coin trick) and the Sybil cut (card flourish). For those who don’t give a crap about magic, meaning the only name you know in magic is David Copperfield, well this guy has been David Copperfield’s executive producer for the last 16 years. Seriously.

Obviously, this guy is no small-time magician. But I still wanted a few opinions on what the app was like or at least a hint as to how it worked (set-up time, difficulty, etc.) but I couldn’t find a single thing about it. Just official video demonstrations about the app which aren’t exactly the most reliable source. Besides, they didn’t even provide much useful information. Regardless, I eventually got it, hoping that it’d be good. Boy was I not disappointed.

For those of you who’re hear searching for the secret to Rising Card app, you’re in the wrong place. I’m not going to give out the secret. I hope no one does. This blog post is more for people who are thinking about getting this app but aren’t quite sure yet.

Anyway, on to the app. For those who don’t know the effect, I’ll briefly describe it here. Spectator thinks of any card (or chooses a card out of a deck, etc.) and tells you. You then take out your iPhone (or iPod Touch), unlock it, open the Rising Card app upon which you should see a hand holding a deck of cards face up. From here, you can either shake it yourself or hand it over to the spectator and tell him to shake your device. Either way, the named card will rise out of the deck.

It’s a really simple effect, but still pretty mind blowing. I’ve been pretty busy with school stuff recently, so I haven’t used this app with a particular routine or with any form of presentation yet (my bad, I know). But I’ve been getting pretty good reactions. Just to be clear, all I do is tell someone to name any card, I then take out my iPod Touch, open the app and hand it to them, tell them to shake it, and they’ll see their card rise out. Simple as that. I’ve gotten all kinds of reaction. A few of them smirked or sat there in (stunned) silence before asking how it was done. Most of them were completely shocked when they saw it rise out of the deck (I did not tell them what to expect beforehand), their jaws just dropped and they stared at me with huge eyes asking how the hell I did it. Then there are those who just freak out when they see the card. One of my friends almost tossed my iPod onto the table as if it were burning him. Not to mention he enquired as to how I did it with a significant number of expletives. All in all, I’ve gotten really good reactions for a trick that I never practiced beforehand and didn’t even bother to add ANY presentation whatsoever to the effect itself (please don’t do that )

Anyway there are certain limitations that anyone considering purchasing this application might want to know. First, you have to know the card (either they tell you, or force, or they pick a card and show you, etc. you get my point). One more thing is that really observant spectators might notice something amiss, but whether that happens really comes down to how well you’re able to present the trick. Other than that, I can’t really think of other limitations.

The trick itself is really easy learn and requires little practice to master the moves themselves. How you present it is obviously a different thing altogether. Even if people spot the secret move you’re making, they can take your iPhone and try it out for themselves and even if they copy your actions it won’t work for them (that happened to me once, it’s when I realised how awesome this app is). The sacred rule of magic that states “never do the same trick twice” can actually be bent slightly, at least from my experience. I’ve done this trick five to ten times on one of my friends and she never could figure out how I did it even when I did it in slow motion without any patter. Even for say groups of five people I can do this trick at least twice without them realising how I did it. In fact I’d think doing this trick at least two or more times makes it more effective because then spectators will stop thinking that you somehow set it up the first time. Yes, this trick is that strong.

The unfortunate thing about a magic app on the iPhone is that people automatically think you’re cheating the moment you pull out something that has a computer in it. Even if they don’t figure out the secret to the Rising Card app they’ll just chalk it up as you doing something fishy with a device. Unlike sleight of hand or even gimmicks where their brains just can’t think of any logical explanation for a trick. However, as far as iPhone magic apps go, this is most probably the best one out there right now.

Anyone who owns an iPhone or iPod Touch will undoubtedly know the 2.2 OS update finally got released a few days ago. There has been much speculation about it, especially about the feature which would allow users to download new episodes of their favourite podcasts directly onto their device through Wifi or 3G. In the past, one had to download the podcast on to the computer through iTunes and only after which sync them to the device. It sounds a lot more troublesome as compared to this new feature, but in reality, I’m thinking that I’ll stick with downloading my podcasts through iTunes for now.

My main gripe with it? For some reason the Wifi music store won’t let me open it  at all because it realises that I don’t live in the US (which is true) which is a real pain. Why? Not that I want to purchase music through my iPod, but rather, I can’t even access the Podcasts section of the program most of the time. Sometimes for some reason I can magically enter that category, but if I even try to search for any podcast, the program immediately kicks me back to the home screen stating that I don’t live in the US, thinking that I was trying to search for music.

For heaven’s sake what’s the problem with me opening the Music Store app anyway, I can do so in iTunes on my computer and even listen to those 30 second song previews, so why not let me do it on my iPod/iPhone as well? It’s not like I’d be breaking the law or anything by doing so. I would have expected Apple to at least have allowed non-US citizens to easily access the Podcast section, as there are many of us who don’t really care for the Music Store anyway, but would really like to download our podcasts directly on to our device rather than having to sync them with iTunes.

I managed to download a grand total of one podcast episode before I got so frustrated with the system that I just decided to give up on it.

There is an alternative out there though: Podcaster. It’s a third party app that got rejected by Apple awhile ago before 2.2 was released because it supposedly “duplicated a current feature of the iPhone”. I’ve only played around with it for awhile thus far, but it seems like a better version of the system Apple has introduced, though the search function is obviously bugged because I can’t find many popular podcasts. Still, there’s one pretty useful feature: the ability to stream podcasts. Regardless if they’re audio or video podcasts, podcaster gives you the option to stream them to your device instead of having to download the entire podcast. This is really convenient, especially when you’re surfing around for new podcasts and only want to see what the podcast is like. The only setback for most users: Podcaster can only be installed on a jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch.

All in all though, I’ll ditch the idea of downloading podcasts directly to my iPod Touch for now and stick with iTunes. However, for others who rely heavliy on podcasts and aren’t US citizens, you might be a little let down by this new feature in the iPhone’s latest OS.