TV on the ceiling! I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with Treehugger, who suggest you “say no to faux.” I humbly counter-suggest you say “yes” to Sky Factory’s SkyV, if only for the sake of all the tricks you could play on people who came to your place. You could anything on those screens. Space, an ant farm, or perhaps something more provocative…

And after all, not everyone has the luxury of having real skylights for an option, or indeed, having anything worth looking at through one. Here in Seattle we hug trees perhaps more than anyone south of the Canadian border, but our sky is often featureless and empty, like your mom’s face. Plus, and I just thought of this right now — oh my god, I’m such a genius — are you ready for this? Full-spectrum TVs. Get your daily dose of sunlight from the tube! I can’t believe no one’s invented this yet.

So I just updated the AppleTV and fired her up. There were no visual changes in the interface except for a message encouraging you to hold down the Play/Pause button to bring up other options. The options are, in order, Start Genius, Add to On-The-Go, and Cancel. Starting Genius brought up a big honking error. I’d like to take a closer look at the methods used by Genius to take a song’s “pulse,” as it were, because clearly this metadata doesn’t make it from iTunes proper and into other devices. Why, Apple, do we have to reproduce work? Aren’t we using computers?

Not only did Apple update iTunes overnight, but it also updated Apple TV. That must be good news for, I don’t know, maybe a dozen of you.

In addition to the usual security and bug fixes (including one that sounds pretty ominous: “maliciously crafted movie file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution”), there’s now a Genius playlist feature.

In a way, Genius Apple’s way of heading off services like Slacker and Pandora. By creating a well-mixed and thematic playlist of out of your music collection you bring songs to the fore that you may not have listened to in years. While that’s not very impressive in an 8GB device like the Nano but fairly impressive in a 100GB collection on a desktop. The Genius Sidebar, connected to the iTunes Store, is also a “big, fat iTunes money tree” and is even more visible than the old iTunes Store bar that appeared at the bottom of iTunes. By suggesting thematically linked music choices every playback could turn into a sale.

We all know how what Genius is all about, but now it can be accessed on your Apple TV holding down the play button while a song is playing.

Either grab the update manually via Software Update, or wait for your Apple TV to prompt you.

Just a quick note regarding iTunes. Apple has updated it to version 8.0.1, and this release fixes a few quirks that no doubt annoyed some of you. The bug that caused iTunes to copy over HD versions of a TV show with an SD version is now squashed. Genius also sees some attention: when creating a Genius playlist, the song you’re basing the playlist on no longer stops playing.

Just “Check for Updates” from within iTunes and you’re good to go (so come on Davey sing me something that I know).

The Joy of Tech presents, How the iTunes Genius Really works…

Cute, I guess. Then again, my sense of humor is so warped that what makes the average geek laugh may not have the same effect on me.

What I would like to see is a proper, investigative piece into how Genius works. Apparently Apple isn’t too forthcoming on the ins and outs of it, so we may just have to accept the Joy of Tech’s explanation for the time being.

Ads have invaded iTunes 8 and I hate it. Suddenly, on the right side of iTunes, the Genius Sidebar now displays at least 23 one-click buy links for me to spend my hard-earned cash through. What Apple calls a friendly recommendation is more like impulsive music buying. 

Back in iTunes 4.x, the software was a music jukebox. It correlated and organized all of your tunes in a nice, light package. Overtime though, Apple added the iTunes Store, the TV shows, followed by movies, audiobooks, and thanks to the iPhone, ringtones. My light music organizer is now a bloated, resource whore.

But, just like any true Apple fanboy, I downloaded the latest iTunes right out of the gate only to discover that this latest flavor is the slowest of them all. It took over an hour to generate all the Genius data and that’s when the horror sunk in.

To the right of the music, sits a recovering compulsive buyer’s nightmare: a bunch of $.99 one-click buttons. Stevie claims that these are here to help us, but we all know they are there to help him; to help pad the deep coffers that is the iTunes Store. He claims they are there to recommend new music and I am stating that they are there to help pay 1 Infinity Loop’s energy bill.

Thankfully, the sidebar can be turned off. I can only imagine the amount of impromptu purchases that these ads are going to create. Unknowing ‘rents are going to leave their account signed in, only to have their kids purchase more Hanson – or whatever crap kids listen to.

Prediction for iTunes 9: subscriptions service paid for in pancreas donations.

One of the new features of iTunes 8 is Genius, a preposterously named playlist creator that seems, to me, completely overhyped. What does it do, really? Apple’s highly detailed instructions (above) say all you have to do is play a song, click the Genius button, then off you go. It scans your iTunes library for songs that “go great together,” then creates a playlist of those songs. Wonderful.

Nearest I can tell, all Genius is doing is going through my library and picking a bunch of songs of the same genre or artist, then grouping them together. How is that different from a smart playlist set up to select 25 hip-hop or classic rock (or whatever) songs?

Like, check this out. I tell Genius to make a playlist based on “Energy Bomb (Alex Gold, Adam K & Soha Mix)” by Alex Gold, a progressive house song (you can listen to it here, if you dare!). What does Genius do? It makes a playlist of a bunch of progressive house songs. (That’s when it doesn’t throw me a bunch of error messages.) Wow, thanks. I couldn’t have done that on my own.

In my estimation, Genius is a wildly over-hyped smart playlist generator. Thank you.

Where was this gadget when I was in the blur I sometimes confusingly refer to as my 20s? This thing is amazing, and I need to get one.

It’s a beer cozy with a built-in beeper. Can’t remember where your beer is? Use the included remote to page it, it responds with a burping noise, so you can locate your can like a bat locates prey, only maybe you’ll have a shirt on. Maybe.

For $20, this is a lifesaver. If you can keep track of just five half-racks of PBRs, it’s paid for itself. Look for it in the stockings of future AA member this Xmas.

Remote control beer pager [Lighter Side, via Shiny Shiny]

Product Page

This is the Softflask. A plastic pouch — essentially a large toothpaste tube — that you fill with your favorite hooch and stash anywhere you can. Because it’s soft and flexible, you can hide this flask in places that normal flasks would cause unsightly bulges. Like inside your pants.

This kind of innovation is what defines a generation, and I want to be the first to say that I’m a proud member of that generation.

Softflask – sneak your drinks anywhere [Slashgear]

It’s a black bra with sewn-in bladders for wine, beer, vodka, Jager, you name it, featuring a handy drinking tube. No, this is not a joke. Yes, we fully expect people we know well to use it. No, we won’t feel dirty sucking hooch out of their hooters, we’ll feel grateful, as we should.

No pricing yet, and the release date is still aways out, but if this thing hits this summer, then we think we’ll buy those tickets to that giant festival with the crappy headliners we were ignoring. But if you can’t wait, the Thrillist is helping look for beta testers (no, really). Check the link for details, and happy booby bootlegging.

Winerack [Thrillist, via Gizmodo]

While the theory of “shotgunning” a beer has been around since Einstein first published his famous “beer goggles” paper in Modern Drunkard, it’s been a minefield fraught with dangers such as the ingestion of unwanted bubbles and the threat of sharp aluminum (from the beverage’s casings). Finding a safe way to shotgun was thought of as impossible at the most, and impractical at the least.

Fortunately, James Beam, PhD has developed the Shotgunator system, which acts as a standard bottle opener and can opener as well as a revelutionary new “shotgun opener”. When the shotgun portal is established in the side of the aluminum vessel, and the traditional tab is lifted, the liquid inside is evacuated to the drinking facility within the user’s face, creating an easy-going, drunken state, without the cutting of fingers or lips, ideal for the mating ritual known as the “first date”.

Beam’s Team, from Drunksalot Labs, will next tackle the quandry known in scholarly circles as the “hangover paradox”, likely with more success. When Nobel Prize season comes around, fellow enthusiasts, look for mention of Beam and his Shotgunator in several categories.

Shotgunator [Thesis Page]

A lot of analytics packages already offer the ability to track user behaviors on websites. The difference with SalesGenius is that it requires absolutely no IT integration on the company side, and ties actions to specific leads. The method that they use to do this is actually quite clever.

If you are a sales professional, you use the SalesGenius Outlook plugin or web based email product to send an email to a lead. Any URLs back to your corporate website are automatically converted to Genius URLs, which are served through a proxy and allow Genius to track their clicks and subsequent actions on the site. The sales professional can then contact leads with the additional information that Genius provided to them.

This isn’t a consumer facing application, but a lot of sales people read this site and I think this may be very relevant to them. The basic product is $49/month per user and includes a 30 day free trial.

There are aspects of the service that trigger questions of privacy. For more, see Dan Farber, who says it’s “Not exactly a stroke of genius, but useful” and Rafe Needleman, who calls aspects of the service “disturbing”.