May 24, 2012 world of men's style / fashion / grooming RSS
“iPhone”
06/08/09
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Gadgetry

Playing Telephone

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Apple just finished their annual developer conference, where they rolled out a new line of MacBooks and the iPhone 3GS, but otherwise the pickings were pretty slim.

There were a handful of new features that non-Apple firms have been refining for years (voice commands, MMS, and remote medical tech among others) along with a long string of incremental updates, but the most impressive function was something they picked up from a 30 Rock episode. Absent-minded techies: your time has come.

Find out why»

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05/27/09
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Gadgetry

Getting Sirius

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Radio has had a lot of fun jumping into the internet age, but Sirius XM has come surprisingly late to the game. Their satellite radio app is gradually making its way to the iPhone, which is good news for anyone who’s already a subscriber, but the timing could be a bit better.

By now, Pandora and a few web radio apps have already staked out the iPhone’s music section, along with the iTunes, which enjoys a pretty serious home-court advantage. Sirius has volume on their side—hundreds of channels broadcasting 24 hours a day adds up to a lot of tunes—and enough resources to put together something genuinely exciting. As to what they’ll come up with…we’ll have to stay tuned.

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05/19/09
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LinkOut

…But Only This Once

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Principles: In this one case, we will relax our no-tolerance stance on ripped jeans. [Denimology]

Obie, Won: The Off-Broadway theater awards are much, much saucier than we thought. As in, NSFW. [Gawker]

Yes We Cannes: The Moment’s Cannes Diary, as we see it, reads something like this. Pedro Almódovar is fantastic, Willem Dafoe is very cool, and Lars von Trier has lost his damn mind. [The Moment]

Sound Bombing: An iPhone app takes music generative and viral at the same time. We’re not sure what that means either. [PSFK]

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05/08/09
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Art Threat

The Streets is Watchin’

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Street art has always been a bit too politically prickly to fit in with the web 2.0 crowd…but that’s no reason to stop trying. After all, populism is populism, and if street artists managed to make nice with auction houses, who’s to say they can’t fit a few iPhones into their repertoire?

Adidas’s new Urban Art Guide (via NotCot) is one of the first tries, and it handles it as well as could be hoped…at least, if you live in Berlin.

More on the Urban Art Guide»

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04/08/09
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Good Idea

The App Race

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We’re used to buying complete packages, and the iPhone certainly looked like one. Lately though, it seems more and more like what we bought was just an empty box waiting to be filled up with awesome. And they’re finally getting around to it.

Exhibit A: the Coachella app that keeps you up to date with all the showtimes and lets you plot your own course through the madness of the festival. If only there were some kind of social network…

Exhibit B: The best work we’ve seen from Trent Reznor since those videos that terrified your parents. We’re talking about the Nine Inch Nails iPhone app, which brings together just about everything you could want.

Let us count the ways»

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01/28/09
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The Past

Rose-Colored Glasses

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Style has moved fast enough for long enough that no designer would have trouble making an outfit to perfectly signify 1983, 1974, or 1962. In fact, more than a few designers have contented themselves to do just that. The technology of photography has been moving just as fast, but while fashion has been dealing in nostalgia for upwards of 30 years, the photographers are just starting to catch on.

Here’s a hint: iPhones are involved»

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01/06/09
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Bad Idea/Good Idea

The Future

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For a while there, we were genuinely excited about internet culture. Smart phones like the iPhone and the gPhone were going to spawn small-scale apps that would be smart, entertaining, and elevate humanity forever.

But today we learned that the top-selling app on the iPhone is iFart. When you click the buttons, it makes farting sounds. And according to VentureBeat, it’s selling more than 10,000 copies a day.

Sigh.

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12/01/08
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Object

On the Phone

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Blackberry’s touchscreen model (the poorly named Blackberry Storm) is finally out and, while we knew they were aiming for the boring-businessman demographic, we have to say, it’s a lot less remarkable than we thought.

We understand the appeal of stripped-down utilitarianism as much as anyone, but once you’re throwing in a camera and media player, there’s no good reason not to have a Pandora application and a bubbly generative music program. And, you know, a map or two.

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11/18/08
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Ad Rock

Apples to Apples

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As it turns out, this doesn’t come from Apple itself but from a very devoted Japanese farmer who put stickers on them halfway through the season. Still, it’s only a matter of time before the marketers of the world get their hands on our fruit.

Maybe we’ll just eat the logos first.

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10/09/08
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Sound & Vision

In Bloom

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Although we love a good Blackberry now and then, our heart belongs to the iPhone for one simple reason: the programs.

We got an extra boost today, when our favorite tech-savvy producer weighed in. The last time we checked in he was putting out an album with his old Talking Heads chum David Byrne, but this time around he’s taking the experimental route. He’s put together a music program called *Bloom* for the iPhone that creates music based on the user’s touch. (Those are the high-tech controls on the left; each bubble plays its own sound.) It’s an example of Eno’s pet project of generative music, but all you really need to know is that it’s a musical toy that could only exist on a touchscreen phone, and it’ll only set you back four dollars.

Just the thing to keep you occupied until Google gets its act together.

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10/08/08
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Object

Oranges

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The touchscreen-only phone was a good idea. A very good idea, in fact. So it’s only natural that the rest of the world is still catching up.

Blackberry’s latest model is definitely riding in the wake of a certain much-heralded, much-reported, Jobs-endorsed model we won’t bother to mention, but it has a certain charm all its own, including a remarkably solid email platform. Which was supposed be the point…right?

Plus, you won’t have to bother with AT&T.

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09/08/08
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Good Idea

Dropping Math

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Remember those carefree childhood days of assembling kites and replacing fan belts? Yeah, us neither. Apparently we were missing out.

Popular Mechanics has a “you kids” piece (via Neatorama) about the erosion of manual skills, most notably changing tires. It’s true that we’ve rarely seen it in the relatively frequent “things every man should know” circulating through upscale men’s mags. At the same time, PSFK is warning we’re counting on computers to do too much of our thinking for us. Maybe it’s time to bust out the slide rule. We’ve got some brushing up to do.

We’ve always assumed there was nothing wrong with a dedicated follower of fashion slipping an iPhone into his jacket, but it may be time to revise that opinion. Sometimes it helps to know where you are without having to check Google Maps. And if you happen to get a flat, you can break out the real tools.

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05/16/08
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Good Idea

Diamonds Are Forever

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The phone wars have been heating up for a while, resulting in a bumper crop of cool gadgets and racking up a few casualties along the way. First the RAZR, then the iPhone…then the Diamond?

With Motorola’s phone division a distant memory and Apple looking surprisingly shaky, Microsoft is aiming to clean up with its Diamond, a new handheld that handles all the usual webbery but possibly with slightly more panache. And a full ounce lighter, which is what has the gadget-heads excited.

More on the Diamond»

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05/01/08
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Ad Rock

Grand Design

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Today, PSFK points us to another web gem. This time it’s a post about pre-experience design. That’s (apparently) what brainy ad folk call your expectation of the product, built up by the various things you’ve heard about it. The shining example is the ubiquitous iPhone ads that made everyone want to be able to turn their phone sideways and “pinch” to zoom. Creating the experience starts before anyone buys an iPhone, the argument goes. If you really want to enjoy that wine, he suggests, you should start by buying an expensive glass.

What all this has to do with style»

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