Back in February, President Obama surprised Steve Jobs with a question of what it would take to make the iPhones in the United States, rather than China.

Jobs replied that the iPhone could never be made in the United States ... and no, it's not because American labor costs (in fact, labor cost is a tiny fraction of the cost of making an iPhone). It's because America simply doesn't have the manufacturing might anymore:

“Apple’s an example of why it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,” said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House.

“If it’s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher wrote this intriguing article over at The New York Times about the death of manufacturing and the disappearing American middle class - if you read only one thing today, make it this one: Link | TLDR? Here it is in video summary

Finally! A toilet worthy of Apple fanboys. Meet the iPoo Toilet, which sadly only exists as a conceptual design.

Designer Milos Paripovic said:

Unlike some Apple products, this toilet fully supports Flush. This toilet has exactly the same function as any other toilet and costs only twice as much for the same performance; but you will agree it is all about style and taste, and you will look a lot cooler in your friends' eyes when you say you use the iPoo Toilet ...

Thank goodness for that! Link - via digsdigs

The tech world is talking about the new Steve Jobs action figure from Inicons that is eerily realistic. It comes with a ton of accessories, but no iPhone or iPad. The figure should be available in late February for $99. See a lot more pictures at Gizmodo. Link

When the Apple company was just beginning to take the home computing world by storm, they apparently thought it would be a good idea to try their hand at designing clothing as well.

These clothes are the ultimate in computing comfort, and nothing says 1986 like wrapping sweaters around yourself in strange places.

Link

These Apple-themed cake pops will be part of the Steve Jobs Inspired Cake Shop, a fundraiser in London next Wednesday for the organization Pancreatic Cancer UK. It’s part of series of events called Internet Week Europe. Oh yes, they’ll have candied apples, too! Find out more at Cakehead Loves Evil. Link

Montreal, Canada, based artist Olivier Lefebvre created this portrait of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs out of ... yes, real apples: Link - Thanks Yan!

(Replace that apple with a poptart, add a cat, and what do you get?)

We know, we know. Apple is cool. In fact, it has always been cool as the photo above clearly shows.

Black Harbor has the scan of Apple's gift catalog from way back. Waaaay back for some of you Millennials. It's from 1983: Link

The hard-driving executive pioneered the concept of the personal computer and of navigating them by clicking onscreen images with a mouse. In more recent years, he introduced the iPod portable music player, the iPhone and the iPad tablet — all of which changed how we consume content in the digital age.

More than one pundit, praising Jobs’ ability to transform entire industries with his inventions, called him a modern-day Leonardo Da Vinci.

“Steve Jobs is one of the great innovators in the history of modern capitalism,” New York Times columnist Joe Nocera said in August. “His intuition has been phenomenal over the years.”

Jobs’ death, while dreaded by Apple’s legions of fans, was not unexpected. He had battled cancer for years, took a medical leave from Apple in January and stepped down as chief executive in August because he could “no longer meet (his) duties and expectations.”

CNN has the highlights of Jobs’ eventful life in the obituary. Link

(Image credit: Apple)

Everyone’s seen their fair share of Apple lovers, but there are those that take it beyond an admiration and into a religious-like obsession. Mental Floss has a great look at the many levels of Apple fandom. Do any of you fit into these categories?

Link

Joseph Tame has only been an Apple product-owner for five years (since he purchased a 5th gen iPod Classic) but he’s happily professed his love of the company’s tech since. Tame claims that “[h]aving an iPhone really has changed [his] life,” and as a tribute to Steve Jobs after the recent news of his resignation, Tame used his iPhone’s Runkeeper app to record his 21km logo-shaped marathon through the streets of Tokyo. To read more about the tribute and see other works of GPS art, check out Tame’s Art of Running. Link

Love your iPhone, but wish it had a homier feel? Never fear – now you can use your best needlework skills to cozy up your case. For just $18, you get an embroidery-friendly case, plus embroidery thread in the appropriate colors to make whichever design you choose. You can also just use their grid paper to make your own design, if you want to take your DIY-ness to the next level. I think the kitties are hilarious, but you could also go more geek-like with Mario or the Apple or Superman logos.

Link via Design.org

Fruit Jackets Trio – $27.95

Are you looking for a fun way to protect your sweet summertime fruit?  You need the Fruit Jackets from the NeatoShop.  This fantastic little trio comes with a apple, banana, and pear cover.  This item was recently featured on the Today Show as one of the hot summer items you’ll be lovin’.

Fruit Jackets are also sold individually.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fabulous Kitchen Stuff.

Link

I’m not sure who would want to buy this, but the idea of a Steve Jobs figurine for sale if not neat, you will have to agree is pretty odd. I could see this becoming a whole collectible set of tech industry leaders including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Who do you think deserves an action figure?

It’s true, there’s a 12-inch Steve Jobs replica accessorized with miniatures of the Apple Store’s best merchandise. Whether or not the real Mr. Jobs will let the Steve Jobs Limited Edition 12-inch Collectible Figurine see its way into production is another story altogether, but for now it’s fun for an Applehead to dream that someday, for the low-low price of only $160, he or she too can own a tiny inanimate clone of the only guy on the planet who can rock the same outfit every day of the week because he just wants to.

Link

That’s right – it’s a wee little Apple Store that fits neatly inside a shoebox. “Why?” you’re probably asking, but I think the real question is, “Why not?” The tiny store (complete with Genius Bar, of course) was made by Gary Katz, who also made this diorama with a working iPad that’s supposed to make you feel like you’re at a concert.

Awesome? Weird? Or both?

Link via Geekologie

Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, teamed up with Apple in 1989 to try and sell computers to college kids. The artwork for the “Who Needs a Computer Anyway?” booklet came from Groening’s book, School is Hell. It seems an odd pairing, but it was reprised later by an Etsy seller’s unauthorized Homer Simpson iPhone decal. There are a few more of the pages from “Who Needs a Computer Anyway?” on The Daily What. Link

If you didn’t have time to watch the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) the other day, here’s a chance to get a summary of the most important new features in OS X Lion and iOS 5 wrapped together as a song.

via Pusha

(A)ll technology evolves from sometimes cruder predecessors, and tablets are no different. People have been playing with some of the technologies underlying tablet PCs for over a century: In July 1888, for example, inventor Elisha Gray (pictured) received a US patent for an electrical stylus device that captured handwriting.

Link via Slashdot

In a study of 160 women who ate either dried apples or prunes daily for one year, the women who ate apples saw their low-density lipoprotein cholesterol – the “bad” kind known as LDL – drop by 23% after six months. At the same time, their “good” high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, or HDL, rose about 4% over the course of the study.

Women in the dried apple group ate 2/3 cup of the fruit each day. Though the apple slices added 240 calories to their daily diet, these women wound up losing weight – 3.3 pounds, on average. These women also saw their levels of C-reactive protein (a measure of potentially dangerous inflammation) and lipid hydroperoxide (which can signal higher risk for cardiovascular problems) fall.

Link

The Playmobil Apple Store is a preschool geek’s dream toy! It features the Genius Bar, kid’s corner, sales floor, and a conference room -and comes with over 60 accessories! And get this -you can slip your iPhone in place behind Steve Jobs and animate his presentation! The Playmobil Apple Store is a new item introduced today at ThinkGeek. Link

While Apple mastermind Steve Jobs is on a medical leave of absence, designer Charis Tsevis has created a tribute to the man behind iEverything. Check out this stunning portrait of Jobs, composed of a collage of his many creations.

The collage features all the products Jobs was credited as having a hand in—from the revolutionary (iPod and iPhone) to the less-than-inspiring (Apple TV and eMac).

With Jobs currently on indefinite medical leave, Fast Co Design calls Tsevis’ effort the “ultimate get well soon gesture”.

Link via Fast Co Design

Susan Kare, a San Francisco-based computer iconographer who has “designed thousands of software icons that have become familiar to anyone who uses a computer”, has now made her famous classic Macintosh icons available as prints for all the Apple fans out there.

Link – via switched and technabob

Natania of Geeks Are Sexy is a decades-long Mac user … but recently she came to the dark side. Here’s how a Mac lover turned against Apple:

Price me out. My MacBook can’t hold its weight anymore. A new MacBook starts at about $1,000. Other laptops, however, with far better specs, running Windows or Linux, can be purchased for half that much. So, with the Mac, what I’m really paying for is the logo and the shiny factor, not the performance factor. And since I’m doing a lot of graphic design these days, not to mention gaming (which will be addressed below), specs are a lot more important than they used to be. There’s a point where you examine the specs of the machines side by side and really have to ask yourself how much the Apple software is worth. Because that’s where the price tag is.

[...]

Make it difficult for the gimpier geeks. I’ve got carpal tunnel. I can’t use a normal keyboard. Typing on the MacBook is a special kind of torture for me, so I have to buy ergonomic in order to avoid the pain. Does Apple have a version of their delightful aluminum keyboard with a gentle, ergonomic curve to it? Nope. And the newest Magic Mouse… don’t get me started on the kind of pain involved using that (seriously, did they try to make it painful? Is this some strange torture device?).

Link

In the bootleg markets of Shanghai, you can purchase an ePad, a iRobot, or an iPhono. You can even get an MP5 player! But I was really impressed by this guitar peripheral for the Wü game console. See these and more in a gallery of good at Classy Hands. Link -Thanks, Lee!

Oh, this should be good. Apple has had a good and long run wow-ing the public with their hip iPhones and iPads in their oh-so-sleek Apple stores in malls, and Microsoft isn’t going to take it anymore: the boys of Redmond are opening up their own store (bigger, in fact) in the Mall of America, directly in front of the Apple store.

Techi’s got the story (and the video clip):

I can see it now: Apple’s ‘Geniuses’ folding their arms and glaring across the hallway at Microsoft’s … ‘Experts’, or whatever they end up calling their employees (do they already have a name?), who glare back in kind. What I’d really like to see, though, is all sorts of Spy Vs. Spy shenanigans happening between the stores. If life were only like that.

Link

What do you think the Microsofters that work there should be called? I propose Best Servicepeople On Demand. T-Shirt from the NeatoShop for the best entry (write down what you want along with your comment, otherwise you forfeit the prize, mmkay?). Have fun!

Update 10/29/10 – Fishbowl wins with “Paperclip,” but forfeited the prize.

You would think today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss would be easy -if you’re an Apple fan. Test your Apple knowledge with ten questions about the history of the company and its products. It’s not easy -I’ve used nothing but Apple computers for twenty-five years and I only scored 40%! I bet everyone who beats that score will leave a comment about it. Link

The next time your iPhone G4 drops a call, don’t blame Antennagate – it’s probably Homer nom nom nomming the connection.

Nerd Approved has the larger pic: Link or go to apjam’s Etsy shop

Geeks Are Sexy blog has got this one covered in Patrick Biz’ post about the 10 Must-Read Books for Geeks. The two part series began with a bang:

iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It

If you want to understand how the Apple fairy tale began in the seventies, then iWoz is a must read. This is the personal story of Steve Wozniak, inventor of the Apple computer. This book explains the long process that led Wozniak to create the first affordable computer, how he met Steve Jobs, and how they founded the Apple empire. This easy-to-read book reveals a captivating story aimed at everyone interested by the debut of personal computing.

Link

That’s the conclusion of a new study of the psychological profile of iPad owners and iPad critics:

Consumer research firm MyType conducted the study, in which opinions of 20,000 people were analyzed between March and May. The firm’s conclusion was that iPad owners tend to be wealthy, sophisticated, highly educated and disproportionately interested in business and finance, while they scored terribly in the areas of altruism and kindness. In other words, “selfish elites.”

They are six times more likely to be “wealthy, well-educated, power-hungry, over-achieving, sophisticated, unkind and non-altruistic 30-50 year olds,” MyType’s Tim Koelkebeck told Wired.com.

96 percent those most likely to criticize the iPad, on the other hand, don’t even own one, although as geeks, they were slightly more likely to do so than the average population — and far more likely to have an opinion about the device one way or the other (updated). This group tends to be “self-directed young people who look down on conformity and are interested in videogames, computers, electronics, science and the internet,” said Koelkebeck.

Link

The undying devotion of fanboys to Apple is nothing new, but researchers have reframed Apple’s relationship to its consumers/fans into something else: religion.

There are scholars who study Apple’s consumers as religious devotees. Consumer behavior specialists Russell Belk of York University and Gulnur Tumbat of San Francisco State, even put together a framework for assessing Apple’s mystical mythology. The company
was built on four key myths, they argued.

Here are the four narratives, as summarized by media scholar Texas A&M’s Heidi Campbell, who distilled their work for her May paper "How the iPhone became divine":

- a creation myth highlighting the counter-cultural origin and emergence of the Apple Mac as a transformative moment;

– a hero myth presenting the Mac and its founder Jobs as saving its users from the corporate domination of the PC world;

– a satanic myth that presents Bill Gates as the enemy of Mac loyalists;

– and, finally, a resurrection myth of Jobs returning to save the failing company…

Link – via kottke

This guy dropped some food on his iPad and came up with the idea of the iDish. Nothing revolutionary; he’s just using his iPad as a dish, often with some appetizing food or fancy dishes displayed on the screen to make the meal look better. However, I got more and more tickled as his photographs just kept coming. The poor fellow had to buy sushi at 50% off because it was about to expire -probably because all his money went for an iPad! Link -via Metafilter

You know what they say -when you find a look that works, stick with it. However, if you look back far enough, you’ll see that he’s tried other styles as well. Link -via J-Walk Blog

What if, instead of buying an Apple computer or iPhone back when they were released, you used the money to buy Apple stock? How would you have made out?

Kyle Conroy, a student at UC Berkeley was wondering just that and figured out just how tech stocks and tech gadgets compare as investments.

If you had bought an Apple Power Book G3 250, it was originally priced at $5,700. And today in stock value, that would actually be $330,000.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by timcanny.

In a blog post on Monday detailing how it obtained the phone, Gizmodo said it was left by an iPhone software engineer at Gourmet Haus Staudt, a German specialty store and beer garden in Redwood City.

The person who found the phone peddled it to Gizmodo, which bought it for $5,000, Nick Denton, chief executive of Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, said by instant message.

His company’s sites have had a longstanding practice of paying for scoops, and the windfall was tangible. Traffic spiked on Monday, and at midday more than one million visitors stopped by the site in one hour to see pictures of the coveted gadget.

By late in the day, reports began to surface on the Internet that Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, had called Gizmodo to get the device back. Mr. Denton declined to comment, saying any conversation between Mr. Jobs and Gizmodo would most likely have been off the record.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by tylerthevideoguy.

Eating fruits every day is healthy, but the trip to the office can be downright dangerous for your fruit. So to help save your apples, bananas, and pears from bumps and bruises, you need this: Fruit Jacket, a form-fitting neoprene "jacket" for fruits! (Bonus: it also protescts your fruit’s modesty!)

Silly? Absolutely! Useful? Perhaps – but if it gets you (or your loved ones) to eat their serving of fruit a day, then I’m sure it’s worth it!

Links: Apple Fruit Jacket, Banana Fruit Jacket, Pear Fruit Jacket | All Three at the NeatoShop

BTW, we’ve added a lot of new and neat items to the NeatoShop. Please take a look

Why serve a cheese ball when you can serve Steve Jobs’ head on a platter? Ken carved this from mozzarella cheese for his iPad launch party! See the process in pictures at The Cook’s Den, with recipes for the other foods served with the Apple “head cheese” (strangely, I see no apples, but you’ll find iPad Thai). Link

Of course, it was only a matter of time before someone would do a remake of the popular “I’m on a horse” Old Spice Manmercial that was covered here at Neatorama a couple of weeks ago. This first(?) one has an Apple theme. I’m sure more clips will follow.

Link [YouTube] – via iPhonefeber

What this sounds like to me is Seele trying to save face because Apple is furious that they were irresponsible enough to relinquish ownership of the tread. Though it may be embarrassing for both corporations, it may simply be a lesson learned at a high price. Let me put it this way: If you caught a foul ball at a World Series game, got it signed by a player, received a high five from the security guard on the way out of the stadium, and went home, that ball is now yours, right? It started as one entity?s property, and through a series of consensual transactions, it ended up in your hands. Now, let?s say a year and a half later, the player who signed it is huge, and you decide to put it up for auction. If the MLB reached out to you and said, “Hey! No way, buddy. That was OURS. Hand it over!” Guess what? That wouldn’t fly.

Burstiner put the step back up on eBay. No doubt publicity about the case brought more bids to the auction, which is at $6,300 at the time of this post. Link to story. Link to auction.

Josh and Ting Li of New York City got married on Valentine’s Day inside an Apple Store, in honor of the company that makes their favorite products:

The pair, who met in the Apple store, had their priest dressed as Steve Jobs, the company’s chief executive, read their vows from their iPhones, while the rings were tied to a ribbon wrapped around a first generation iPod.

Part of their vows included a passage from the Apple CEO that said: “You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down.”

Mrs Ling, dressed in a strapless wedding dress, had her vows written on a card that said “I love you more than this” followed by a picture of an iPhone.

Link

As they say, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” With this calendar, you get an apple every day of the month and it helps you keep up with the days as well. The Serviceplan advertising agency of Munich, Germany created the apple calendar for AOK health insurance. Every month, fill it with 28, 30, or 31 apples and adjust the numbered calendar behind the transparent tube. Then eat one apple each day and see the calendar advance. Too bad the calendars aren’t for sale, but you may see them in AOK branch offices. Link -via bookofjoe

Can’t decide what kind of pie to serve after Thanksgiving dinner? Make them all in one pie pan! Cakespy at Serious Eats experimented with pecan, apple, and pumpkin pie recipes to make this triple threat. The best results came from the pie divided into sections, as seen in the picture. The recipes are included. Link -via Unique Daily

The Australian programmer who claims to have created the world’s first Apple iPhone virus as a prank has told Computerworld he does not regret writing it.

The worm, ‘Ikee’ changes iPhone owners’ wallpaper and replaces it with a photo of ‘80s pop star Rick Astley and the message “ikee is never going to give you up”.

Twenty-one-year-old Wollongong resident Ashley Towns, said he created the virus out of curiosity and boredom.

“I had just formatted my iPhone and it told me to set the password in bold, big letters and I wondered how many people have actually done that," Towns said.

“So I ran a scan on my [Optus] 3G network and there was 26 phones running the service that’s vulnerable, and out of that 26, 25 hadn’t changed their passwords.”

Link – via Buzz Log

Carl Sagan with a model of the Viking Lander. Photo via Wikipedia

I miss Carl Sagan. Sagan's enthusiasm for science and his knack for translating difficult scientific concepts into simple explanations that many can understand, made him a popular figure. He was an ambassador for science, if you will, as he had inspired many people to study science (yours truly included).

Today would've been his 75th birthday, so in honor of the great astronomer, scientist and author, Neatorama presents 10 Neat Facts About Carl Sagan:

1. Carl Sagan's First Book About Stars

When Carl was five years old, he wondered about the stars: what were they? Unsatisfied with the answers he got from his friends and from adults he knew, Carl went to the library and asked for a book about stars. The librarian handed him ... a book on celebrities! In Keay Davidson's Carl Sagan: A Life, Carl explained how his fascination with the cosmos began:

I gave it back to her and said, "This wasn't the kind of stars I had in mind." She thought this was hilarious, which humiliated me further. She then went and got the right kind of book. I took it—a simple kid's book. I sat down on a little chair—a pint-sized chair—and turned the pages until I came to the answer.

And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light.... And while I didn't know the [inverse] square law of light propagation or anything like that, still, it was clear to me that you would have to move that Sun enormously far away, further away than Brooklyn [for the stars to appears as dots of light]....

The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. [It was] kind of a religious experience. [There] was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.

2. Sagan vs. Apple

In 1994, Apple chose the internal codename "Carl Sagan" for its PowerMac 7100. Though it was meant as an homage to Carl (and an in-joke that the computer would make Apple "billions and billions" of dollars), they also used the codenames "Piltdown Man" and "Cold Fusion" for the Power Mac 6100 and 8100, respectively. When Carl found out that he was being put alongside scientific hoaxes, he sued Apple. Though Apple won the suit, the codename was changed to BHA (Butt Head Astronomer) ... which prompted yet another lawsuit from the p.o.'d astronomer! Apple won again, but their lawyers demanded the engineers change the codename one more time, which they did. The PowerMac 7100 was known by its final codename LAW, which stood for "Lawyers Are Wimps."

3. Spaced Out ... On Pot!

In 1969, Carl Sagan wrote under the Pseudonym "Mr. X" about the virtues of cannabis. Harvard Medical School Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry Lester Grinspoon has the article in his website Marijuana Uses:

It all began about ten years ago. I had reached a considerably more relaxed period in my life - a time when I had come to feel that there was more to living than science, a time of awakening of my social consciousness and amiability, a time when I was open to new experiences. I had become friendly with a group of people who occasionally smoked cannabis, irregularly, but with evident pleasure. Initially I was unwilling to partake, but the apparent euphoria that cannabis produced and the fact that there was no physiological addiction to the plant eventually persuaded me to try. My initial experiences were entirely disappointing; there was no effect at all, and I began to entertain a variety of hypotheses about cannabis being a placebo which worked by expectation and hyperventilation rather than by chemistry. After about five or six unsuccessful attempts, however, it happened. I was lying on my back in a friend's living room idly examining the pattern of shadows on the ceiling cast by a potted plant (not cannabis!). I suddenly realized that I was examining an intricately detailed miniature Volkswagen, distinctly outlined by the shadows. I was very skeptical at this perception, and tried to find inconsistencies between Volkswagens and what I viewed on the ceiling. But it was all there, down to hubcaps, license plate, chrome, and even the small handle used for opening the trunk. When I closed my eyes, I was stunned to find that there was a movie going on the inside of my eyelids. Flash . . . a simple country scene with red farmhouse, a blue sky, white clouds, yellow path meandering over green hills to the horizon. . . Flash . . .

4. The Politics of Science

Anyone who has ever worked in a university or an academic institution would know this, but most people assume that because science relies on logic and careful reasoning, scientists would behave in a clinical and dispassionate way. Nothing is farther from the truth.

Carl's popularity had backfired on him not once but twice. In 1967, he was denied tenure at Harvard because his colleagues bristled at "what they perceived as self-aggrandizement and pandering to the public."

In 1992, Carl was again disappointed when his application for membership at the prestigious National Academy of Sciences was denied. Ironically, he received the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the Academy for "distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare."

In both instances, Carl persevered and succeeded to overcome setbacks resulting from the politics of science.

5. Billions and Billions

Carl Sagan actually never used the term "billions and billions." His exact words on the series Cosmos were "billions upon billions" (which, for all practical purpose, is pretty much the same thing).

So how did "billions and billions" came to be? We can blame Johnny Carson:

[YouTube Clip]

Carl was a good sport - his final book, titled Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, opened with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of the catch phrase and noted that Johnny Carson himself was an amateur astronomer.

6. The Sagan Unit

A sagan is defined as at least 4 billion (the smallest amount in "billions" is two billion, so "billions and billions" equal 4 billion). It is estimated that the Milky Way galaxy has 100 sagan (400,000,000,000) stars.

Previously on Neatorama: Fun and Unusual Units of Measurements

7. Pioneer Plaques

Many people know that Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecrafts carry metal plaques that carry a message from mankind. But not many know that it was Carl Sagan, together with Frank Drake (yes, the man who came up with the Drake Equation that attempts to estimate the number of alien civilization in our galaxy), that designed the plaque. The controversial artwork, which featured a nude man and woman, was drawn by Sagan's then-wife Linda Salzman Sagan.

After the Pioneer Program, NASA put a Golden Record aboard the two Voyager spacecrafts, which included a greeting "Hello from the children of planet Earth." That was recorded by then six-year-old Nick Sagan, Carl's son.

8. Carl Sagan Memorial Station ... on Mars!

Nick Sagan grew up to become a novelist and screenwriter. He wrote an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise titled "Terra Prime," which included a CGI of Carl Sagan Memorial Station plaque on Mars.

Image via Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki

The plaque above is fictional - but the Carl Sagan Memorial Station is real. It's the formal name of the NASA Mars Pathfinder lander, which delivered the Sojourner rover that explored the Red Planet.

9. Sagan Asteroid

Just in case a unit of measurement and a memorial station on Mars aren't enough, Carl had another thing named after him: a small asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter was named the 2709 Sagan.

10. Sagan's Last Interview

In 1996, not long before his death, Carl Sagan was interviewed by Charlie Rose, in which he discussed the rise of pseudoscience in the United States. He looked gaunt in the interview, but as you can see, he remained as sharp as ever:

[Google Video]

Bonus: Carl Sagan A Glorious Dawn Auto-Tune

This has been on Neatorama before, but it's so good that we just have to feature it again for those of you who might've missed it. Behold, Carl Sagan's A Glorious Dawn auto-tuned:

[YouTube Clip]

__________

I'll be the first to acknowledge that this is a woefully inadequate post about one of the most brilliant scientists who ever lived. We didn't talk about Cosmos (because it's so popular, I opted for the more obscure Sagan trivia), his books and Pulitzer Prize, Carl Sagan Day and so on. If you have a Sagan story, please share it in the comments.

Because you can’t out-tech the sleek iPod and iPhone, it’s much better to go low-tech when showcasing Apple’s coveted gadgets. Behold, the log dock by Woodtec:

Again from Woodtec, the dual iPhone/iPod docking log takes the single log dock and adds room for another device. Now you can charge your iPhone and iPod simultaneously via a single length of tree limb. Unsurprisingly, as there’s more wood and an extra connection, the dual dock comes in at a higher price but for something so unique, $119.00 is surely money well spent.

Zoombits got more on wooden iPhone accessories: Link – Thanks Dave!

Every geek knows that "A" is for Apple, but I bet not many know that Apple had a "third founder" who gave up his stake for $800 (it would've been worth at least $17 billion today). Or that Cisco was named for San Francisco. Or that Twitter used to be called twttr? Let's take a stroll through the A to Z of computing trivia, Neatorama style!

If you think that Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, think again: there was a "third founder" of Apple. In 1976, Ronald Wayne gave up his 10% stake of the fledgling company for $800 because he was worried that the company would fold and that he would be liable for debts incurred by the other partners (at the time Apple wasn't a corporation yet). Of course Apple became the big company, and Wayne's stake could've been worth as much as $17 billion today.

Originally, Research in Motion wanted its wireless messaging device to have the word "e-mail" in its name. When RIM hired Lexicon Branding to do a little research, they found out that people associate "e-mail" with work and therefore can raise blood pressure. Someone said that the buttons look like small berries, so they decided to name it BlackBerry.

Evolution of Cisco logo, by Design Maven via Speak Up

Cisco System was named after the city San Francisco (the founders of the company worked for Stanford University, which is just a couple of town over). Indeed, first Cisco System's logo was the Golden Gate Bridge. (See also: Evolution of Tech Logos)

Ben Curtis, in his very first Dell commercial

In 2003, after three years of playing the Dell Dude, actor Ben Curtis was arrested while attempting to buy a bag of marijuana. People immediately parodied his tag line "Dude, you're getting a Dell" to "Dude, you're getting a cell." Though charges were dropped, Dell canceled the Dell Dude commercials. Curtis was working as a waiter in 2007 but he's making a come back with a (supposedly) upcoming play "Dude! I'm Going to Hell"

In 1977, the US Postal Service recognized that email would pose a serious challenge to its monopoly on delivering mail. At first, it wanted to ban emails (like it did mails delivered by underground pneumatic tubes), but the FCC objected and the Postal Rate Commission refused. So it created an experimental email service called E-COM ("Electronic Computer-Originated Mail"). The idea was simple: You send the emails, which the post office would then print out and deliver as physical letters at the price of 26¢ each (it was said that it actually cost the USPS $5 to deliver the message). Oh, and the service was one-way. If something went wrong, you'd get an error message delivered two days later ... in form of a letter! Needless to say, E-COM failed.

John Backus, the inventor of FORTRAN programming language, said this about his invention: "Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs."

When Paul Buchheit started the Gmail project at Google, he named it "Project Caribou" after a Dilbert cartoon strip.

HP could've easily have been PH. In 1939, when Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard formed HP in a Palo Alto garage, they flipped a coin to decide the name of the company. Packard actually won the toss, but decided to name it Hewlett-Packard instead of Packard-Hewlett.

In 1999, Al Gore was asked by Wolf Blitzer what distinguished him from other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, and he famously said: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Gore was immediately ridiculed for claiming to have invented the Internet. Not to be outdone, Dan Quayle said "If Al Gore invented the Internet, I invented spell check."

JPEG stands for the Joint Photographic Experts Group, who created the method of compression for photo images. Like all image processing algo, JPEG was tested on the standard test image of "Lenna", a cropped photo of a 1972 Playboy magazine centerfold Lena Soderberg.

Knuth reward check, photo via Upto11.net

Legendary computer scientist Donald Knuth offers to pay a reward of $2.56 for the first finder of errors in his books. Why $2.56? Because 256 pennies is one hexadecimal dollar, which is sort of a joke that only a programmer can appreciate. But that's okay since that's Knuth's target audience anyhow. Indeed, Knuth reward checks are "among computerdom's most prized trophies," according to MIT's Technology Review. If the name Don Knuth sounds familiar, that's because we've featured his Potrzebie System of Weights and Measure before on Neatorama. (see also: Fun and Unusual Units of Measurements)

At first, Linus Torvalds wanted to name his new operating system Freax, a portmanteau of "freak," "free," and "x" (for Unix). A co-worker thought that it was a horrible name and renamed it Linux without telling him.

In 1996, Monty Widenius and David Axmark created MySQL, a relational database management system that would later become one of the most widely used software in the world, powering many of the web's largest sites (WordPress, Neatorama's blogging engine, uses it). What most people don't know is that the "My" in MySQL doesn't refer to "me" - it's actually the name of Monty's daughter My.

The term newbie or noob, originally thought to be from British public-school and military slang "new boy," was first spotted in the Usenet newsgroup talk.bizarre as an insult to a clueless newcomer. (N is for Newbie Onesies/Kids T-Shirt at the Neatorama Shop)

In 1977, Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates were working on a CIA-funded project codenamed Oracle (because the CIA believed that it would give them answers to all questions). The project failed, but Larry and friends took the idea and used it to create a company that would later become the Oracle Corporation.

The most common passwords in the world are:

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. link182
10. (your first name)

And you thought you were clever to do a derivative of Blink-182 as your password!

The keyboard you're using now is most likely set in a QWERTY layout (named for the first 6 characters of the top row of letters). This layout was invented by Christopher Sholes in 1874 because people were typing too fast on typewriters back then, thus causing the machine to jam. Sholes did frequency analysis on letter-pairs and separated pairs of letters that tend to cause mechanical jams when typed in quick successions like TH. Sholes' new layout was designed to slow down typists (technically, he aimed to improve typing speed by reducing jams - and indeed, that's exactly what happened.)

ROT13: Jung qbrf Whyvhf Pnrfne unir nalguvat gb qb jvgu zbqrea qnl Vagrearg? Pnrfne vairagrq n fvzcyr rapelcgvba zrgubq gung orpnzr dhvgr cbchyne va Hfrarg arjftebhcf nf n zrna gb uvqr fcbvyref, chapuyvarf naq chmmyr fbyhgvbaf. Gur vqrn vf fvzcyr: ercynpr n cvrpr bs grkg jvgu yrggref 13 cynprf shegure nybat va gur nycunorg ("ebgngr ol 13 cynprf" be EBG13). Gur travhf bs gur zrgubq vf gung orpnhfr gurer ner 26 yrggref va gur Ratyvfu nycunorg, gur fnzr rapelcgvba zrgubq jvyy qrpelcg n ebgngrq grkg!

Before Digg, there was Slashdot. The technology-related news website was so huge that getting linked from it meant a massive increase of traffic that would cripple smaller web servers. Webmasters call this the Slashdot effect, which is the granddaddy of similar terms Digg effect, Farked, or Drudged.

The very first Twitter message was sent by its co-creator Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006: "just setting up my twttr." That's not a typo - twttr was the original codename for the project (inspired by Flickr). At least twttr was better than one of the first names they were considering for it: twitch.

I'm including USB (Universal Serial Bus) here so I can play this awesome "Intel Star" commercial starring Ajay Bhatt, the co-inventor of the USB. Watch it and weep:

Before the World Wide Web, there was Gopher (note: it's gopher://, not http:// - you'd need Firefox to see it) and Veronica was its search engine. Why Veronica? It's because the first search engine of the Internet, a tool that indexes FTP archives, is called Archie. Officially, Veronica is an acronym for "Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computer Archives."

Call it user-generated content, Bubble 2.0, millionth-word in the English language or whatever you want, but know this: Web 2.0 is trademarked by CMP Media (who partnered with O'Reilly in producing the Web 2.0 conference) in 2004. In 2006, they sent a cease-and-desist nastygram to the Irish non-profit organization IT@Cork for using the word in the name of their conference and sparked a kerfuffle over the ownership of "Web 2.0"

What's the company that invented the personal computer, graphical user interface, the computer mouse, but didn't bother to market them because it couldn't see their commercial potentials? Yep, Xerox. In 1979, Steve Jobs of Apple visited Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and saw the Xerox Alto workstation. Several years later, Jobs brought the Apple Macintosh to market.

When YouTube was sold to Google for $1.7 billion, the spotlight was on Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. But did you know that there was a third YouTube founder? That's right: Jawed Karim left the company to become a graduate student at Stanford University. He did, however, fare better than Ronald Wayne - Jawed got about $64 million worth in stock. Jawed also uploaded the very first video on YouTube on April 23, 2005:

If you own a PC in the late 80s/early 90s, then you're savvy about the ZIP file format. Back then, disk space was at a premium (a regular 3-1/2" HD floppy disk can only hold 1.44 MB worth of data) so compression was a big thing. In 1986, Phil Katz created PKZIP (Yep, PK is his initials) and released it as a shareware. He chose the name "zip" to imply that his software was faster than other compression formats available at the time. Sadly, Phil, the alcoholic computer genius, died alone in a cheap hotel cradling an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps.

John Breach, chairman of the British Independent Fruit Growers Association, said: ‘I’ve never seen this happen before to a Golden Delicious. It is extremely rare. It is an extreme mutation.

‘There has been the occasional case of this type reported. If there was a whole branch of apples with the same colouring then fruit experts would get even more excited.’

Jim Arbury, fruit superintendent at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey, said it was probably the ‘result of a random genetic mutation’.

‘This is known as a chimera where one of the first two cells has developed differently giving rise to one half of the apple being different,’ he said.

Morrish is keeping the apple in his refrigerator because so many people want to see it. Link -via J-Walk Blog

(image credit: Archant Devon)

A cool Steve Job portrait was made with common Apple fonts. The artist, Dylan Roscover  explains:

This is a typeface-driven design based on the “Here’s to the crazy ones” ad campaign from Apple in the 90s, using Motter Tektura, Apple Garamond, Myriad, Univers, Gill Sans, and Volkswagen AG Rounded, fonts present in Apple branding and products.

Link – via walyou

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by talsiach.

Until recently, the big target always was Microsoft Windows, and Apple computers were protected by "relative obscurity," [Kevin Haley, a director of security response at Symantec] said.

But blogs are buzzing this week about what two Symantec researchers have called the first harmful computer program to strike specifically at Mac.

This Trojan horse program, dubbed the "iBotnet," has infected only a few thousand Mac machines, but it represents a step in the evolution of malicious computer software, Haley said.

The iBotnet is a sign that harmful programs are moving toward Mac, said Paul Henry, a forensics and security analyst at Lumension Security in Arizona.

Link

Consider Apple (yes, that Apple, fellow fanboys), whose lawyers are pursuing the "Pod" trademarks:

What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if its name ended in "pod," it might attract the ire of Apple’s shark-like legal team.

Apple’s obsession with the blockbuster success of its iPod has driven the corporation to chase down many companies attempting to use the media player’s three-letter suffix in their product or business names. Names that have come under fire include MyPodder, TightPod, PodShow, and even Podium. On Monday, Sector Labs, a small business whose Video Pod trademark has been blocked by Apple, took legal action to fight back.

"It appears that Apple is not only trying to put an iPod in everybody’s hands and white earbuds in everyone’s ears but to control the use of our language and most particularly the word ‘Pod,’" Sector Labs’ lawyers wrote in a 239-page response to Apple’s trademark opposition, which has blocked Video Pod’s development. "If we are not careful, in Apple’s quest for dominance, they will soon attempt to take over the words ‘Phone’ and ‘Tunes’ — let us hope they do not attempt a coup over the exclusive rights to the letter ‘i’."

Link

Hello, everybody! After writing about 100 articles for Neatorama in the past couple of years, I can't bear to write another Top 10 article - at least for a while (other Neatorama authors undoubtedly will pick up the slack). So, please let me try something new. In what I hope will be a regular feature, I'm going to take a regular object and try find the neatest nuggets of knowledge about it.

Let's start with the letter A ... say, apple. So without any further ado, here is Neatolicious Fun Facts: Apple.

1. The Wild Ancestor of All Apples: Malus sieversii

Today, there are some 7,500 different cultivars of apples that are derived from a single wild ancestor from Central Asia: Malus sieversii. In fact, that species still grows in the mountains of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Xinjiang, China.

Photo: Malus sieversii, as collected by the 1996 Kazakhstan Apple Collection Mission of the USDA Agricultural Research Service

2. Apple: The Forbidden Fruit?

From The Fall of Man by Titian (c. 1570)

In the Bible, God forbids Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. When they eat the fruit anyway, Adam and Even are expelled from the Garden of Eden.

But why apple? The Book of Genesis never mentioned the fruit as apple - in fact, early interpretations pointed to fig, grapes, citron (a lemonlike fruit), carob, and pomegranate (the most likely culprit), but never apple.

The bad rap for apple began when Christians translated the Bible into Latin. Malus, the Latin word for bad or evil is very similar to the word for apple (malum). It seems like the assignation of apple as the forbidden fruit was the result of a pun. Source

3. "An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away"

The first version of the proverb is actually from Pembrokeshire, Wales. The first recorded use was in the February 1866 edition of Notes and Queries magazine: "Eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread." (Source)

It became popular, however, when fruit specialist J.T. Stinson used it in his speech at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

Apples do have a lot of good nutrients and pythochemicals that may help reduce the risk of heart disease, colon cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, and even tooth decay. But don't eat the seeds; they are mildly poisonous.

4. The Big Apple

Why is New York City called The Big Apple? Parking ticket judge by day and amateur etymologist by night Barry Popik tracked down the first use of the term "The Big Apple" back to the 1920s by journalist John J. Fitz Gerald, a horse racing reporter for the New York Morning Telegraph.

Fitz Gerald overheard stable hands in New Orleans racetrack talk about the "Big Apple" racing circuit, meaning "the big time" where a lot of money could be won (Horses love apples, by the way). He liked the term, and wrote a column called "Around the Big Apple" on February 18, 1924:

The Big Apple. The dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred and the goal of all horsemen. There's only one Big Apple. That's New York. (Source)

5. Bobbing for Apples

The game bobbing for apples comes from Celtic festival of Samhain, the precursor of Halloween. As apple is associated with love or fertility, the winner of the game - the person who catch an apple with his or her teeth first - is supposed to be the first to marry. (Photo: calebdzahnd [Flickr])

On February 19, 2008, Ahrita Furman of Brooklyn, New York - who has set 216 official Guinness records - set the world record for bobbing for apples: He bobbed 33 apples in a minute.

Oh, and remember that tradition of throwing rice at weddings? Well, that came from the tradition of throwing apples at newlyweds (yikes!)

6. Record-Breaking Apples

In 2005, Chisato Iwasaki of Hirosaki City, Japan, grew the world's heaviest apple. At 4 lb 1 oz (1.849 kg), it's the size of a small pumpkin!

The world's longest single continuous apple peel was created in 1976 by Kathy Wafler Madison at the tender age of 16. It measured 172 feet, 4 inches long. Kathy grew up to run her own apple tree nursery!

7. Newton's Apple

Legend has it that Isaac Newton was inspired to formulate his theory of universal gravitation when an apple fell on his head. Though that was apocryphal, the part that the physicist was inspired by the apple was actually real. Newton himself wrote that he witnessed the falling apple while staring out the window of his house at Woolsthorpe Manor.

Purported offspring of the Newton’s Apple Tree in Woolsthorpe Manor (Image Source: Mathematical Association of America)

What happened to the apple tree? Various places claim that they have the tree. The King's School in Grantham claims that they bought the tree, uprooted it and transported it to the headmaster's garden. The staff of Woolsthorpe Manor, of course, disagreed: they claim that the tree is still present in their garden. Trinity College in Cambridge claimed that they have a descendant of the original tree growing outside the room Newton lived when he studied there.

Oh, and what kind of apple was it? It's a green cooking apple called the Flower of Kent: a pear-shaped, mealy, and generally of poor quality of an apple by today's standard.

See also: Neatorama's 10 Strange Facts About Newton

8. How Did Apple the Computer Company Get Its Name?

Steve Jobs worked summer jobs at an apple farm and liked the Beatles' record label, Apple. So, when he and Steve Wozniak was trying to figure out a name for their new computer company, they decided that if they couldn't think of a better name, they'd name it Apple. Apparently, they couldn't! (Source)

... and talking about Newton, would you know it that Apple's first logo was of Sir Isaac sitting underneath an apple tree?

See also: Neatorama's Evolution of Tech Logos

Do you know more apple fun facts? Please add them to the comment ... and while you're at it, what should we do for "B"?