FoundFootage posts

Adam Kontras, a comedian who claims to have the longest running video blog ever, has updated his comedy act for the iPad and is now The iPad Comic. Adam's act used to include four TV's that he interacted with. This was sort of video ventriloquism, timing everything perfectly so the screens would seamlessly speak with him on stage. He's now ditched the four TVs and changed his act over to talking with himself on an iPad. Getting the timing right must have been quite difficult, but it really works. His act is not only clever, but pretty funny. This shows a new use for the iPad: performance comedy. Adam is probably the first one to do this, but I'm sure he won't be the last since the idea is a really good one.

Enjoy the video. I thought it was pretty impressive and his delivery is just about perfect.

[thanks to Jeremiah Rich for sending this in]

In honor of the Italian release of the iPad, iPadItalia has created one of the best Apple-oriented videos I've ever seen. In 10 minutes (yes, it's quite long for this type of thing), the video lovingly covers Apple from its origin in 1976 right up to today when those in Italy, and many other countries, can finally get their hands on the magical and revolutionary iPad.

The video is totally professional and really deserves recognition. With frenetic energy, just about every Apple product is displayed. It is a valentine to Steve Jobs, even showing him age from 15 to 55, and ending up with rejoicing over the European introduction of the iPad. This is a video that will warm every fanboy's heart and really captures the excitement that we've felt about Apple over the last 34 years. Enjoy!

When space-age technology meets magical and revolutionary, the results are quite delightful. Jesse Rosten produced this video combining his love of the iPad with the power of everyone's favorite hook-and-loop fastener, and I have to say it's a sticky combination.

Jesse notes that this is an exploration of what's possible, not a recommendation for every iPad owner. I'm not sure I would trust Velcro to hold my iPad solidly in a moving vehicle, but certainly the window or photoframe applications would work pretty well.

Thanks Flint!

Video from Vimeo. Click link for iPad/iPhone version.

When it comes to unexpected functionality on Apple devices, the current leader is the iPad's Camera Connection Kit. The USB adapter dongle has been found to work with plenty of unsupported peripherals, from audio headsets to external storage. Keyboards, in particular, are popular partners; not all of them will work, but quite a few do.

We can now add "entire separate computer" to the list of working keyboards, as the video above demonstrates. Eolake Stobblehouse (who was the benefactor behind TidBITS' staff getting iPads) figured out that his Alphasmart Neo behaves just like a powered external keyboard when connected to the iPad. The Neo is the spiritual descendant of one of the original 'tablet' computers, the legendary Tandy Model 100 series. A week's worth of battery life on a few AA batteries! Those were the days.

Granted, it may seem a bit weird to carry a second machine along just to type into your tablet, but to each their own. Now, if we could get an import utility that would take text files from the Neo and put them on the iPad... Update: Thanks to commenters who point out that the Neo's 'Send' function will work with any iPad app that supports text input.

Direct link to the video for iPhone/iPad is here. This video (not produced by us) is hosted on Vimeo, which supports HTML5 playback on their site but does not support embedding.

Thanks to Peter for the tip.

Going down the Apple history path for the second time today, we thought those of you who might have a soft spot in your heart for the old "rainbow" Apple logo would love this piece of bling.

It's an iPhone case (works with 3G / 3GS) that is covered with more than 1,000 Swarovski crystal bits for that extra sparkly look. For only US$184, you can be one of only 100 people on the entire planet Earth to own one of these ostentatious blingy things. It's sparkly! Did I mention that it's sparkly?

If this got your attention and you must have one, head on over to Distinctive Style to nab one of these limited edition glittery rainbows for your very own. You know you want one. After all, it is "perfect for parties and balls," and you'll be able to "represent yourself with luxury & confidence."

[via iPhone Savior]

Considering the number of iPhones around the world, I have this sinking feeling that we're going to start seeing a lot of people wandering looking like fools. Well, they already look like fools, but when people start swinging imaginary golf clubs in public they're going to look even more foolish.

Gigaputt for iPhone (US$1.99), from Gigantic Mechanic, is an augmented reality app that lets you play golf anywhere. You grab your iPhone, fire up Gigaputt, and it lays down a virtual 3-hole golf course wherever you may be. That could be in the middle of Manhattan, in a suburban shopping mall, in the swamps of Louisiana, or on a mountainside in Colorado.

Gigaputt includes support for OpenFeint as well as Twitter and Facebook integration. For two bucks, it looks like a great way to get some exercise and lose all your dignity. Now, where did I put my plaid golf pants?

The video you see here was in my inbox this morning and I really liked what what I saw. IUGO, a long time player in the mobile entertainment arena, is in the process of releasing four new games for the iPad platform.

What made these games stand out for me was how well they leveraged the iPad hardware realities for both cooperative and competitive game play. Several of these games highlight multi-handed multi-player interaction on the same device. That's a feature that's specific to the iPad. The iPhone's size doesn't allow that kind of two player interaction, except through online game play with virtual opponents. What IUGO's games are doing is expanding play from an iPhone-style one user at a time paradigm into a two-users-at-once iPad experience.

Read on for an exclusive discussion with IUGO Mobile Entertainment.

It didn't take long for the iPad to get tortured, blended, and now, microwaved.

Yes, in this YouTube video, a brand spankin' new 64GB iPad 3G is lovingly unwrapped, registered, and loaded with data, then popped into the Amir9000 for a journey into flaming oblivion. Just sad. And we're crying about it not just for you broke American friends who haven't gotten one yet, but for many of our international friends, who would pay a king's ransom just for a device like this.

These purveyors of microwave-inflicted iPad violence will apparently be selling the cremains of the iPad on eBay soon, likely in an attempt to recover a bit of their investment.

[via Crunchgear]

Leave it to Jon Stewart to put things into perspective. In this segment from The Daily Show, Jon satirically cops to being an Apple user since the 80s and takes Apple to task for stealing the evil empire crown from Microsoft in their handling of the Gizmodo lost iPhone incident.

After Giz gave back the iPhone, the cops busted down its editor, Jason Chen's door. "Don't they know there's an app for that?" Say what you will, I think Jon nailed it.

Watch the full clip after the break.

[via iPhone Savior]

Dave at Magic Jungle Software wanted to turn the iPad into a video game console. So he got on his thinking cap and did a little bit of development to turn his idea into a reality. The video you see here shows an iPad running a demo of his game, Chopper 2 (currently in development), while connected to a 42" TV via Apple's component cable.

Even better, David notes that he used all public APIs to accomplish this feat. As of the 3.2 SDK, Apple now offers App Store-safe ways to send video out through a VGA connector or through a component video or composite video adapter cable. You can get an idea of some of the details behind this technology in the slides from this 10-minute impromptu talk given by Erica Sadun over the weekend at the Voices that Matter conference.

But wait! There's more! The super fun part is that he's controlling the game with is iPhone via Bluetooth. He's using a GameKit two-device connection, effectively turning the iPhone into a wireless controller for the iPad. It's very cool, and the first we've seen an iPhone controlling an iPad game in this way. Connecting it to a TV was the cherry on top.

This isn't the first time this kind of gaming on the TV using an iPhone has been done. Freeverse engineer created a proof-of-concept system using private APIs to achieve video out with an iPhone back in 2008. You can watch the video they created, using routines that Erica published over at Ars Technica. Magic Jungle isn't using any private calls, however. Their software is publishable, which means unlike that early demo, the chances of this ending up in your hands so you can try it out on your actual device are pretty high.

All in all, this is pretty neat. Games often suffer from your hands being in the way (I'm looking at you, Resident Evil). On-screen smudges can diminish a real immersion experience. You simply don't experience those issues when the device itself is merely a controller.

Here's hoping we seem more of this.

I can't wait to play.

Here's a great video from technabob that shows an Apple IIe displaying archived Tweets from a 5.25-inch floppy disk, complete with lo-res graphics.

Here's how it works. Modder Yergacheffe uses a PC for interacting with Twitter. He hacked together a PC-to-Apple IIe interface for moving data to the Apple from the PC's USB port. Next, he wrote some custom 6502-assembler code that displays Tweets on the Apple IIe and also converts users' Twitter avatars into those gorgeous, chunky lo-res graphics.

Finally, tweets are saved to the floppy for later playback. Too busy to attend to Twitter? Capture the action and play it back later, retro-style. We love it.

Chinese pianist Lang Lang headlined a concert at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall on April 19th. For the first of three encores, he played The Flight of the Bumblebee on an iPad. To accomplish this, he used the Magic Piano iPad app. This is just one example of how amazing apps can allow people to do amazing things, and the party has just started.

[To clarify, the Magic Piano app does do a lot of the work in playing a piece like that; it drops down indicators for the correct notes, so the pianist has to get 'pretty close' and have the rhythm correct. Still impressive. –Ed.]

[via 9to5Mac]

Those iPhones! They take a licking and usually come up ticking.

In this case, Swedish radio-controlled airplane enthusiast Robehome decided it would be fun to capture some video from his plane as it flew over Löberöd in the south of Sweden. The solution? He stuck his iPhone into the airplane and let the video roll while going through a set of maneuvers. The video is fun, particularly when he crashes the aircraft into a lamppost.

Don't worry -- it appears that the iPhone survived, although the plane was completely totaled.

In case you've ever wondered what it would be like to smack into something while flying and crash to the ground, there's now a video for that, thanks to an iPhone. If you want to watch the long version, click here.

[via Allt om Mac, thanks Peter]

Nate and Biagio over at jokeandbiagio.com have come up with a Pages hack for writing screenplays on the iPad. At this time, there are a few iPhone apps for writing screenplays, but none of them exist in an iPad version... yet. As you can see in the video above, the solution that these two Hollywood hotshots have come up with is not perfect -- they gripe about the lack of the toolbar in landscape mode in Pages for iPad as much as I do -- but it proves that screenwriting on the iPad can be done.

Nate came up with a template in the Mac version of Pages '09 that includes a bunch of screenplay styles, such as CH for character, PA for parenthetical, SL for slug, AC for action, TR for transition, etc... You can download the template here -- note that if you're reading this on your iPad and have Pages for iPad installed, you can open the template directly in Pages and get started on that Oscar-winning screenplay today.