As an entertaining Friday afternoon aside to our discussion earlier this week about how to recover data from a dying hard disk, it turns out there's plenty of uses left for the ones that have finally stopped pining for the fjords.

• With this tutorial from HacknMod, you can turn your hard disk into a grinder or sander.

• You can make a windchime and a keychain out of the parts inside the hard disk. Classy!

• You can turn it into a speaker.

• Years ago, my dad used to make clocks out of the huge 14-inch disk platters he used in old HP 3000 minicomputers. Turns out you can do this with the smaller drives of today, too.

• Finally, if you acquire enough expired hard disks, you can make a huge domino set out of them.

Practical? Probably not. But hey, it beats throwing them away.

Gizmodo's Jesus Diaz has a wonderful solution to the problem of videoconferencing on your 3G iPhone: compact, convenient and battery-free!


Okay, we get it: a camera on the front of the iPhone is probably a pretty useful idea. Although there's something oddly compelling about turning a videoconferencing session on the iPhone into a Morris Day and the Time concert....

The great Mental Floss blog actually did the research on something that occurred to me as soon as Steve said "Snow Leopard" during the keynote -- naming an OS after a cat "sometimes known as the ounce" might not be the best idea.

File this stuff in the "didja know" column: snow leopards aren't actually leopards -- they're actually closer in family to cheetahs, which means that the new OS might be a little closer to Aqua than we're all comfortable with. Also, they're pretty timid -- not only can they not roar (so new audio features in the OS are out), they're known to hide behind their fuzzy tails. We'll put it this way: you wouldn't exactly want to call your football team The Snow Leopards, so we're not quite sure why Steve decided to use the moniker.

Finally, the weirdest tie here is that the snow leopard as a symbol is already taken -- by the Girl Scouts of Kyrgyzstan. Of course, Steve's naming capabilities haven't really been up to snuff lately, and maybe he just didn't want to go with Cougar -- even though Apple owns it, they may not have been ready to take on all the connotations associated with that particular nomenclature. Then again, maybe this will be good for the snow leopard's image -- after seeing all these pictures of cool cats, if you feel you'd like to help them out, we're sure the Snow Leopard Trust would be happy to hear from you.

If you enjoyed Mystery Science Theater 3000 as much as I did (and still do), this clip from 1991 should warm your precious little heart. We find Servo having problems with his PC, and pining for the Mac that he used to have.

Bonus references to WordPerfect 5.1, Amiga, and autoexec.bat! And System 7? "It's coming, OK?!"

Over at Cognitive Daily (part of the ScienceBlogs network), as part of a larger informal survey, Dave Munger contends that Mac users are less likely to let friends try out their new gadgets than users of other platforms.

Munger noted, "in this context, the fact that Mac users (and 'other' -- mostly Linux users) are so dramatically more stingy with their new gadgets is truly a striking finding, even acknowledging the fact that our readers may not be representative of the public at large."

Now, I know we're all one, big happy family here at TUAW, and playing well with others is second only to "intelligent, thoughtful discourse." But really? Not sharing your toys? That I just can't see.

For your weekend amusement, I'm going to take matters into my own hands, and see how our readers fare given the same questions as Munger's survey.

The survey, and results, after the jump.

Engadget has a silly, but mildly humorous post up on a German MacBook Air user who claims his elbow was sliced open by the sharp front edge of the Air. In addition to his sliced up elbow (bis aufs Fleisch!), he says that his couch was ruined by all the blood. Just what we need, another reason for the TSA to ban the Air: it's a deadly weapon.

So Air owners out there, have any of you been attacked by your ultraportable Mac?

Update: As one of our commenters pointed out this story was generated by a mistaken translation. The guy's elbow was cut by a regular MacBook, not an Air.

I purchased an iPhone during the refurb sale that AT&T had last week. In two working days I got my 16 gig iPhone, times two. Two identical boxes, two identical iPhones and two identical charges on my debit card. Given the good deal, I decided to keep both (yes, despite the impending update). Imagine my surprise when my wife called me at work the next day to report that a third box had arrived from AT&T via DHL 2-day shipping, and that it was twice the size of either of the iPhone boxes. Given the previous day's spoils, I couldn't wait to get home.

Arriving at my house, I located the box and sat down with it on the couch. It was very, very light, but I've become accustomed to good things not weighing much. Pulling out my trusty Swiss Tech Utili-Key, I carefully sliced open my unexpected delivery. Inside was a packing slip with a single line item:

75011 MISC iPhone PPA BAG ... $0.00

Yes, it was an unsolicited, rush delivery, plastic iPhone bag. This is definitely not a first for AT&T and the monetary waste involved in packing and shipping a completely unnecessary plastic bag is, I assume, passed back to the consumer. Next time you look at your AT&T bill, you can think about my MISC iPhone PPA BAG ... which I'll be cherishing forever. Or at least until the novelty wears off.

We've all seen our fair share of Photoshop, whether we know it or not. The PhotoshopDisasters blog, however, is compiling the most bizarre (and funny) examples of extra limbs, flipped text, and heads that don't belong to their associated bodies. Not that I'd know anything about that.

Apparently, Australian iPhones will run Windows XP. Who knew?

[Via It's Nice That]

Hot on the heals of the GTA IV iFruit parody comes another console gaming nod to Cupertino, though this time with considerably less snark. The upcoming PS3 presumptive blockbuster Metal Gear Solid 4 will apparently feature some interesting equipment to augment Solid Snake's already impressive arsenal: a 5th generation 30GB iPod. The French video game site JEUXFRANCE has high resolutions images (front and back). It now remains to be seen if Snake can execute his signature stealth kills with an iPod headset garrote.

[via iLounge]

Obama and Lindsay Lohan are far from the only people rocking the iPhone lately -- a new site called "Coolspotters" claims to track brands and the celebrities that use them, and the iPhone is pretty cool lately. 32 celebrities have been spotted -- everyone from Mike Tyson to Heidi Klum to Rose McGowan (pictured, though that really could be anyone, couldn't it?). In fact, the Apple iPhone is actually the most popular product on the site right now -- one spot above something called the Omnipeace t-shirt (yes, but does it have a multitouch screen?), and two spots above the MacBook Air.

Because everyone knows you need a site to tell you that what you own is cool, right? Of course, they are cheating a little bit -- I don't think the fact that Steve Jobs is using something necessarily makes it cool. Otherwise, we'd all have seen celebs toting around Newtons.

Still, if seeing celebs use the same product you have is your thing, the iPhone's got you covered there, too. Can't say it influenced my purchase much, but good to see that the rich and famous are catching on to what's been TUAW's favorite tech-cessory for a while.

[via Kottke]

This is my favorite story of the week. Major League Baseball fans probably remember the New York construction worker who buried a David Oritz jersey underneath the New York Yankees stadium in an attempt to jinx the team. It seems he unwittingly started a trend.

On Thursday, Apple's newest retail store will open in Boston with a small gift from neighboring store Tech Superpowers buried underneath the sidewalk.

Back in April, Michael Oh (Tech Superpowers founder and president) crossed the street to the Apple Store's construction site with a shovel and one of his company's T-Shirts. A short time later, the shirt was buried underneath the concrete, where it remains today. Since the story of the Ortiz jersey was breaking at the time, the members of the construction crew thought the idea was funny, and let him do his thing.

Oh points out that he isn't trying to jinx the store, but create a connection between the two retailers.

"We're doing it with a wink ... We are in business because of the great things Apple has done ... This T-shirt in the sidewalk is a symbol that there's a connection between the two sides of the alley." It was Oh who set up the Boston Apple Store Webcam at ifoAppleStore to share the construction process with Apple fans everywhere.

We can only imagine what's next

• Burger King buries a cardboard crown under each new McDonald's
• Dunkin Donuts leaves a bag of French Vanilla under each new Starbucks

So when you visit the store this weekend, tread lightly. You might be standing on a buried treasure.

[Via Andy Ihnatko's Twitter stream]

Recently, several of you tipped us on this video of US Senator Barak Obama quickly checking something on his iPhone (it happens around the 1:00 mark). It got us thinking of our favorite celebrity Apple product sightings.

• Back in July of 2006, it was reported that Pope Benedict XVI had received an iPod nano from employees of Vatican Radio. The phrase "To His Holiness, Benedict XVI" was engraved on the back.
• Britain's Queen Elizabeth II purchased an iPod mini back in July of '05.
• U.S. Presidential adviser Karl Rove was seen using his iPhone in August of last year.
• Actress, singer and all-around role model Lindsay Lohan whipped out her iPhone shortly after they were first released in the U.S.

So welcome to the club, Senator! You're in good company. We think.

Today in 1983, "Beat It" by Michael Jackson may have topped the charts, but a slight bug in the *dir() library was found only a few days ago by OpenBSD developer Marc Balmer (no rela -- oh, wait). OS News has the entire amusing tale of the bug in BSD (the UNIX foundation of Mac OS X) that's been alive and kicking for nearly 25 years. Balmer contacted Marshall Kirk McKusick, the original developer of the *dir() library, who confirmed the error.

Thankfully, the fix was simple, but Balmer kidded, "[s]orry that it took us almost 25 years to fix it."

Thanks, Cameron!

A digital filmmaker named Dennis Liu has made an amazing video for The Bird And The Bee's lovely song "Again & Again". The set? His Mac desktop. You sort of have to see it for yourself to understand; luckily, Dennis has dropped it on YouTube so that the world can see it in low-res glory:



Innovative, and definitely cool. It doesn't seem to be an "official" video for the song...but if it isn't, it oughtta be. (Hey, Bird! Bee! Y'all paying attention?)

Thanks, Ted Roddy!

[via MacRumors forums]

Not only does being shown in an iPod commercial lead to fame and fortune for many artists, but Canadian singer Leslie Feist apparently got something else out of the deal: she got American citizenship. We have no idea how that works, but she says as much in this clip of her appearing on Stephen Colbert's show. When he mentions that she's from the Great White North, she says that she's actually a dual citizen now. Colbert asks if Steve Jobs really stepped up to make her an American and she says yes, that's pretty much how it worked: "They offered me citizenship, that was part of it."

Is she joking? Or has Jobsy actually got the ear of the government now and is giving out citizenships as part of Apple contracts? Either way, we know this: Leslie Feist rocks. We'll have her as a citizen any day, via a backroom Apple deal or otherwise.