Daily Loaf

So it’s a week out and you haven’t shopped, planned a menu or sent invitations. Good. There’s hope for you, unlike those annoying ’plan ahead’ types.  Here’s your task list for a green, somewhat sustainable Thanksgiving Day.

1. Send email invitations – granted it’s too late for real paper ones sent snail mail, so your fail to plan has paid off.

2. Make your shopping list on the back of one of those useless return address envelopes you get with bills you pay online anyway. Now would be a good time to make sure you change your billing preference to paperless. Do it Today! points for you here. Oh and you Super Geeks who have eliminated paper billing, use the iPhone iHost app for Thanksgiving.

3. Know the people you invite to dinner. That will eliminate 99.9% of your Facebook friends, but this allows you to avoid serving food that won’t get eaten. So what if creamed pearl onions have been on the table since the Buccaneers’ throwback uniforms were worn by Lee Roy Selmon, bag it and go with another tradition like….

4. Serve locally grown veggies. If you’re lucky enough to be a Sweetwater Organic Community Farm member, skip to number 5. If not, the market is open this Sunday from 12 to 4pm. (Or check out one of these other farmers’ markets around Tampa Bay.)

5. Shop with a reusable bag. It doesn’t have to be one of those bought for that purpose, use the old beach bag  (it’ll love you for the change of scenery).
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You only need $100 and a Mac to develop apps for the iPhone. If it’s Twitter, games, email, GPS navigation or Facebook, “there’s an app for that” on the iTunes App Store. The iPhone’s success is largely owed to the developers, ranging from big name studios to a few guys in a garage (a la Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak) who have made the device the Swiss army knife of phones.

Since its launch in July of 2008, the iTunes App Store has reached over 2 billion downloads and now has more than 100,000 unique applications available. What has made the rapid growth and success of the App Store possible are the more than 125,000 developers in Apple’s iPhone Developer Program.

What’s it like developing for the iPhone? Why are developers gravitating towards it? Where do developers see mobile gaming going? The Daily Loaf sat down with a few iPhone developers last week to answer these, and other, questions. Read the rest of this entry »

Technology gets more amazing every day. Satellites guide us from our driveways all the way to a grocery store in Ohio. A webcam enables a soldier in Afghanistan to talk face-to-face with his wife in Nebraska. And a new wave of iPhone apps allows individuals with disabilities to communicate with others — some, for the very first time.

At 235 megabytes, Proloquo2Go turns a standard iPhone into a fully functional augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device. Co-designed by Penn State doctoral student Samuel Sennott and carried by iPhone app developer AssistiveWare, Proloquo2Go “provides a full-featured communication solution for people who have difficulty speaking,” such as individuals with autism, Lou-Gehrig’s Disease, Down syndrome or cerebral palsy. Like any other AAC device, it combines symbols, words, sounds and technology (source) to guide its user through an intuitive, hierarchical system of sentence-building software. Added to that, it hosts a minimum vocabulary of 7,000 words and life-like voices — and, at approximately $150 (not including the iPhone), costs a fraction of the $8,000- $10,000 families pay for cumbersome text-to-speech machines. Read the rest of this entry »

I know I am not a tech guru and I am the basic of most girls when it comes to technology, but sometimes technological things will peak my interest. Let preface this by saying I have been out and about in many sexual situations. I have seen women bring personal vibrators with them to clubs to add to their pleasure and I have seen men holding remote control vibrators that are nicely tucked into their partners’ panties.
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After countless conversations about sex with friends, I was sad when I realized that a lot of people don’t try anything out of the ordinary in the bedroom. I can remember when I suggested something obscure to my boyfriend and how excited he was to know that I was on the same level. This brings me to my point: stepping outside your comfort zone with sex can make your sex life and everyday life much better.

I have thought of five creative suggestions to bring more pleasure in your sex life.

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Craigslist personals ads are clearly the future of mating. Admit it, some of those cell phone shots of dudes spreading their cheeks in the mirror are of you. Being the virtually promiscuous young man that I am, I not only browse the personals for my own entertainment, I post absurd ads under the “Casual Encounters” section to see if anyone will respond. No matter how strange or perverse the post, my email inbox always fills up.

Yesterday I was feeling rather feminine, and decided to pose as a forty-seven year-old woman with a somewhat normal fetish, at least for Craigslist standards. Below is the actual ad, followed by the best of the over one hundred and twenty-five responses it received.

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tampa bay area craigslist > casual encounters

Fill my vagina – w4mm – 47

My vagina feels empty.  I want it to be filled.  I don’t want to have sex, but I want it to be filled.  You can put anything in my vagina.  The choice is yours.  I will lay on my bed and spread my legs.  I’ll leave the door open.  You casually creep in and insert your offering into my vagina.  I’ll be doing this all day Sunday.  Just come in and stuff my vagina with whatever you have.  I want my vagina to be filled to the brim with glorious things (but not penises sorry).  You can jack off too me if you want or bring a partner.  I will be getting stuffed all day.  Please avoid using sharp or very harmful metal objects.  Other than that, you can put whatever you want in me.  Stuff me! Read the rest of this entry »

Every week Apple comes out with new applications that iPhone users hold over the heads of the technologically disadvantaged, like me, still trying to turn on our blackberries. The first wave of applications featured technology like the lighter, beer pour, or light saber. These features were cool, but they were little more than toys. However, Apple is increasingly coming out with applications that are actually useful. While I wouldn’t necessarily use the new Grindr application, which is geared towards locating gay and bigay men in the area, I know I’m going to miss out on the next wave of futuristic jedi-phone tricks: the breathalyzer, lie detector, x-ray vision, orgasm ray, pick-up-line generator… basically all the things that can turn a technosavy metro sexual into a nerdy superhero.

While privacy is an issue for all location based social networks, it is of the utmost importance Read the rest of this entry »

A new iPhone application called Locavore promises to be more in tune with the natural world than you are. Which, to be honest, shouldn’t be hard for most.

Locavore uses GPS to determine your location, then feeds you information about what’s currently in season in your area and what will be coming out of the ground in the near future. The developers expect people to utilize the app while perusing a local farmers’ market to help them make decisions about what they should buy.

If you never find yourself with that dilemma, Locavore will also direct you to the nearest farmers’ markets so you can then experience the problems their app solves. Convenient.

It’s backed by some decent information sources – some of Locavore’s partners include LocalHarvest.org and Natural Resources Defense Council – and the interface seems simple enough to be useful.

Let us know if there are any other food and drink apps you find useful.

Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0 “advance preview” event took place today at 1 p.m.

Here are the highlights of the new iPhone features, what Apple is calling a “major update”:

100 new features, 1,000 new APIs.

• In-app purchases
• P2P connectivity
• built-in Maps for developers
• Push notifications finally arrive
• cut copy and paste
• landscape mode for Apple apps
• Messeges app for MMS
• Voice memo app for recording audio files
• Search across all apps and iPhone OS with Spotlight

This new operating system, expected to launch in the Summer, will work for all iPhones as a free update. To see the complete recap of the presentation, follow the jump.

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Copy and paste, data tethering, and now Flash support — it looks like the yet-to-be-released Palm Pre will fill a lot of iPhone’s missing features. Palm has joined Adobe’s Open Screen Project. From their press release:

The Open Screen Project will help deliver Adobe Flash Player for smartphones on the new Palm webOS platform.

Meanwhile , Apple is getting its legal team together in case they decide to sue Palm for ripping off its touchscreen patents.

If you’ve been looking forward to getting your Sim on later this month, I’m afraid EA has some bad news for you. The February 20th release date originally announced last year at the Leipzig Games Convention has now been pushed back to June 2nd.

Several interesting changes are coming to Sims 3, evolving the game play from previous iterations. According to Ben Bell, Executive Producer of the game:

“The Sims 3 is an incredible game that lets you play with life, create art and show off your creations. In the game, players are inspired by endless creative possibilities like the new Traits and Lifetime Wish features which allow players to create Sims with real personalities and destinies. Players can then take their Sim into town to interact with other Sims in the game and capture the action on video to show off online.”

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I’ll have what he’s having.

• Eric Holder confirmed as Attorney General. Let’s hope a memory test was part of the vetting process.
• And the new Speaker of the Florida House is …

It gets a little dark after the break folks. You’ve been warned …

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Here’s a great piece on the impact of the recession on this year’s Super Bowl. (From Al-Jazeera, no less!) Tampa looks great in the video, and looked stunning in all the overhead shots during the game. Nice job, Bay area. See you in 2014, NFL.

• The Steelers win one for the other thumb.
• NBC does a super job with the Big Game.

Lots more after the break…

• Super Bowl excitement taxes cell phone systems to the limit.
• Jennifer Hudson nailed it.
• Incidentally, I paid no attention to the ads this year. Guess what: I don’t feel like I missed anything.
• Hot Obama nominee trend: screwing up you taxes.
• OMG, Michael Phelps smoked some weed! The whole fucking world is going to end!!!!
• Over the weekend, Google decided every other website was a virus.
• A new iPhone in the wild around San Francisco?

Courtesy of Design Zen

Sometimes it’s handy to watch a short movie or live streams on a mobile phone. But, getting the viewing angle just right isn’t always possible without having to hold it. Then you need something that can solve this problem – or come out with creative DIY pencil iPhone stand just like what Roland Hutchinson from Geeky Gadget do. Make your own iPhone stand using a regular pencil’s and elastic bands.

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Have you ever wondered if your significant other was lying to you over the phone? Or if your parents really did send your Christmas gift in the mail over a month ago? How about figuring out whether that kid across the street really did egg your house on Halloween?

What if there was a way you could carry a polygraph test with you at all times?

You know where this is going.

I present to you the Agile Lie Detector application for iPhone. This software turns your iPhone into a virtual polygraph by using voice stress analysis. And from what some users say, it actually seems to work. For only $7.99!

Get it here.

Turns out that President-Elect Barack Obama can still pack ‘em in post-election. His appearance Sunday on 60 Minutes netted the news show its highest ratings in nine years.

• Can Bill’s dealings derail Hillary’s appointment as Secretary of State?
• Who’s driving that supertanker? Somali pirates, of course.
• Congress is back in session. Woo!
  
• Checking in on the Franken-Coleman recount.
• After 18 years and multiple studies, it turns out Gulf War Syndrome is real.
• “Save the Ybor chickens.”
• Does the future of the Rays include Tampa Bay? Signs point to no.
• …and their ticket prices are going up, if just slightly.
• As newspapers die, there is an alternative.
• A whole lotta “burrowing” going on in Washington.
• Inauguration tickets, by the numbers.
• John Lennon was not a very nice man; he consoled himself on Richard Nixon’s 1972 election night by banging a woman he picked up at Jerry Rubin’s apartment while his friends and wife listened from an adjacent room.
• No Flash for the iPhone. Ever.

And now for something completely different. Nature includes many oddities, but few as counterproductive (evolutionarily speaking) as this: Fainting goats.

• In memorial …
• Obama goes on Letterman, clarifies that “the failed policies of John McCain” are actually the pig.
• Sex with underlings, bribes, buying coke at the office — is the Interior Department hiring?
• Ike preps for a visit to Houston.
• Walter Sobchak is a neocon who doesn’t roll on Shabbos.
• Will the sad quality of AT&T’s network doom the iPhone?
• The Rays get a season-defining win.
  
• This week’s ESPN NFL power Rankings are out. The Bucs slip five spots to number 20.