If you’ve ever dropped your iPhone or spilled a drink on an iPad you probably realized a little too late that getting these expensive devices insured is a good idea. There’s a lot of confusion as to what’s the best way to go about insuring expensive gadgets though, and there’s a million third party warranties and insurance plans out there that range from $100-$200/year that will cover the iPhone, iPad, your MacBook, etc.

Before you jump into any particular service though, check out something called a “personal articles floater” policy:

you can insure these types of items [iPhone, iPad] on a mini insurance policy known as an inland marine policy, or more commonly, a “personal articles floater”, and the cost is pennies on the dollar

I’d never heard of this until one of our readers sent us this link from an insurance industry blog that recommends the policy.

Apparently a personal articles policy can cover nearly anything, and often cost as little as $15-$20 per year. The other great part? There is usually no deductible, and they cover against any kind of loss: theft, damage, loss, you name it.

I imagine you just contact your general home owners or renters insurance agent to discuss adding this type of policy, and I must say this seems like good advice for not just your iPad and iPhone, but maybe your iMac, MacBook, and other expensive gadgets as well.

You can watch what a process is doing with your filesystem by using the opensnoop command. To try this out, launch the Terminal and then follow along to learn how to watch by applications, file usage, process ID, and more.

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Mistakes happen, and there are few mistakes more devastating to a geek than one that damages or destroys your favorite gadgets and computer hardware. So, how would you feel if you set your iPad on top of your car, and drove off on the freeway forgetting it’s up there? Pretty awful right?

This is the case of Chris Ainsworth, he set his iPad on the roof of his car and proceeded to drive 70 MPH down a freeway before hearing a thump and realizing that he forgot his iPad on the roof of his car… he turned around to recover the device, expecting the worst, and what happened next is remarkable:

I opened the case up. The screen was completely intact: no cracks, no shatter. It didn’t pop out of the aluminum housing. I took the iPad out of the DODOcase for inspection: not one scratch. Nothing. No dings. No scrapes. No bumps. No bends.

The iPad completely survives. Damage free. Now, it’s very important to note that the iPad was inside the third party DODOcase, which has an internal bamboo wood frame and it surely helped the iPad live through the incident trouble free. Here’s a picture of the DODOcase, which came out of the crash remarkably intact itself with just a few scuffs and a couple cracks in the wood:
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Have you ever wanted to work at an Apple Store? Do you wonder how much you’ll get paid? Here are the average salaries and hourly wages for Apple Genius, Apple Specialist, and Apple Concierge positions inside the Apple Store. These are self reported numbers so they should be considered pretty accurate.

Apple Specialist Pay

The Apple Specialist position pays on average $11.64/hour, with the pay rate ranging from $9 to $16, likely depending on location and overall experience. This data is from 334 salaries reported to GlassDoor.com:

From my research, it does not look like Apple Specialist positions pay a flat salary, although it does appear that they are eligible for standard benefits through Apple if they work over a certain number of hours a week (likely 40, but this is unknown).

Apple Genius Salary & Pay

Other than Apple Store Managers, the Apple Genius is probably the highest paying position at an Apple Store. Here’s the scale of how the Genius position pays: Read more »

Here’s your daily bad idea: shooting an iPad with a shotgun. Leave it to the internet for someone to shoot an iPad and record a video of the carnage. Interesting video in that ‘Myth Busters’ kind of way, but man, what a waste.

You can play any song or audio file directly from within the Quick Look windows of Mac OS X, and that means music can be played from Finder as well as Open and Save dialogs, or anywhere else you can use the Quick Look function.

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The battle for the mobile landscape is about to heat up: Microsoft is expected to barge right into direct competition with Apple and Google with the release of Windows Phone 7. Invitations sent out indicate that Microsoft will hold a launch event on October 11. The event will give attendees an insider look at Windows Phone 7 and provide a hands-on demonstration of the new devices that will go head to head with Apple’s iPhone.

Early videos of Microsoft’s new mobile OS seem intriguing and reveal a gesture and touch based interface with a rather unique look. With that aside, could they have picked a better name? iOS and Android at least sound modern and hip, but Windows Phone 7? Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue with much enthusiasm.

Earlier in the year it was revealed that Microsoft was paying mobile app developers to create for Windows Phone 7, which is just part of what is expected to be a massive push to grow Windows Phone 7 into a viable alternative to iOS and Android OS.

AppleInsider comically notes that the stakes are high for the Windows Phone 7 because loss of the companies mobile market share “had affected Steve Ballmer’s end of year performance bonus.” All jokes aside, it is indeed a high stakes game; more and more personal computing is being moved away from the desktop and into mobile devices, if Microsoft fails here it could spell bigger trouble for the companies long term prospects in an increasingly mobile world.

Buying an iPad just got easier, and in many cases cheaper. Amazon is now offering the iPad for sale directly through their website, and includes free shipping in the purchase. It’s also worth noting that if you purchase through Amazon, they do not add many local and sales taxes.*

Amazon currently offers the 32GB and 64GB Wi-Fi models, priced at $599 and $699 with free shipping. It is expected for the other iPad versions to be available soon.

The iPad was previously only available through resellers on the Amazon website, which often marked up the price beyond the MSRP. The expansion of the iPad onto the Amazon storefront is part of Apple’s continued retail expansion of the device, which also includes Best Buy and Target. Fresh rumors suggest that the iPad may even be available at Walmart stores soon, possibly in time for the upcoming holiday sales season.

*Note: in some states you are required to manually report online purchases for taxation. Be sure to know your local tax laws regarding online purchases.

Mac users can quickly get the bitrate of any MP3, m4a, or other audio file from the command line of Mac OS X.

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This is a really great terminal command that compresses every file within a directory, turning them into a zip archive. We’ll offer two variants of it; one that removes the original source file and leaves only the compressed files, and another command that leaves the uncompressed source files intact. This has been tested and works in Mac OS X and Linux.

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If you want to mass upload a ton of pictures to Facebook from your Mac, using the Facebook built-in photo uploader tool can be annoying. Another solution is to use Mac OS X’s highly customizable Services feature and download the Facebook Services automation scripts, which then allow you to select any number of pictures from your Mac desktop and upload them directly to Facebook via the Finder’s Services menu.

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The big mystery of when iLife ’11 will be released just may have been solved. An iLife ’11 book has been discovered on the UK Amazon store that lists its ship date as November of this year, which would be a fitting time to release the iLife ’11 software package as well since selling a book about software that doesn’t exist makes little sense.

The book is actually written in German, but the translation from 9to5mac reads as follows: “iPhoto, iMovie and more with apps for Mac, iPhone 4, iPod and iPad.”

An additional item on the Amazon UK store shows an iMovie ’11 guide that lists iDVD as part of the new iMovie app, this is interesting because iDVD has been assumed to have been abandoned by Apple.

The release date of iLife ’11 has been speculated at several times this year, with most of the claims surrounding earlier this summer. It even briefly appeared on the Amazon bestselling Mac software list before disappearing from the Amazon US site. A November release date makes sense if the new software is to be included in the holiday shopping season.

The desktop software package currently rests at iLife ’09, which was released in January of 2009, and has not been updated since. Rather amusingly, if you do an Amazon search for iLife ’11 your top result will currently be iLife 1.1, which was released in 2003.

The iTunes 10 player defaults to include the album art inside the playlist, the size of this album art is adjustable. All you need to do is click on the “Album by Artist” list header to pull down a menu where you can adjust the size to either Small, Medium, or Large.

The album art view is nice, but I think the best part about iTunes 10 is the new album art mini-player which lets you use album art as a desktop HUD to control and play songs.

How’d you like to run Newton OS on your iPad, iPhone, or Mac? You can with an emulator, and it actually runs on your iPhone, iPod touch, and Mac OS X too.

This is all done through an open source project called Open Einstein which now has a working iOS port.

It’s not exactly an easy achievement, but if you’re dedicated and can find yourself a Newton ROM image, you can pull it off and run Newton OS on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad.

Apparently the emulator runs at about half the speed of a real Newton, and is a bit buggy, but just the fact that you can do this is pretty interesting. You can check out a video of the Newton OS emulator running on an iPad over at Flickr, which is also where the above picture is from.

The video below helps to get this setup on your iPhone too!

How cool is this?

This has to be the most repulsive gadget accessory I’ve ever seen. Straight out of Japan, it’s an iPhone charger made to resemble an umbilical cord that twitches, pulsates, and squeals as it charges your iPhone. I don’t know if it’s for sale (would anyone want to buy it?), but it’s the creation of a Mio Iizawa, a Japanese artist who has some other rather… interesting and creepy… art pieces.

Now here’s an awesome Mac setup: a MacBook Pro, a beautiful iMac, and an external vertically aligned Dell display, plus a bit of voice recording equipment. Ok I admit I don’t know if that’s really a voice recording studio, maybe it’s for podcasts or radio or just making funny noises and emailing them to people. Anyway, a great looking Mac setup. I’m really digging the vertically aligned monitors lately… maybe I’ll get one!

[ via Flickr ]

If you’re looking for a discrete and barebones keylogger for Mac OS X, logkext will likely fit the bill. For the unfamiliar, a key logger does what it sounds like; it quite literally records every single key press and key stroke on a computer, and stores that typing data within an encrypted log file so that another user, perhaps you or someone else, can review all key presses and typed keys, characters, and sequences – basically anything entered into the keyboard will be recorded using a key logger app.

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More good news on the new Apple TV front, the new device actually does play 1080p content that is streamed to it, but it downscales the video quality to 720p. This means that your existing 1080p content is being decoded and will still work on the new Apple TV, although for now it is being downsampled to the lower 720p resolution for playback.

I suspect the new Apple TV hardware specs are strong enough to support 1080p output, but we may have to wait for the jailbreak to arrive before finding out for sure.

The 1080p to 720p downsampling has been confirmed by several users on MacRumors and Handbrake forums. We’ll keep you posted on any new developments.