MacSanta!

Today, December 1, is World AIDS Day—an internationally recognized day designed to raise awareness of the people who are affected by the AIDS virus every day.

I’m sure you’ve seen PRODUCT RED special edition products that, when bought, the manufacturers donate a percentage of the profits to the Global Fund to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. (Apple’s red iPod nano and shuffle are good examples—if they would let us carry them, we would!)

We must all come together in supporting the Global Fund and the fight against AIDS. …I applaud (RED) and its partners for their vision and commitment.
-Nelson Mandela

NIGHTS, the Concert Series that Saves Lives.

(RED)NIGHTS is 27 nights of music performed by musicians you love that is fueled by your posts to Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Check out (RED)NIGHTS here# and get started… all of this raises money to keep people living with HIV in Africa alive.

• Goes Mobile.*

There’s also an iPhone app for (RED)NIGHTS that includes a visualizer and an equalizer to “show the audio spectrum in real time.”

Download the (RED)NIGHTS app here.
Shop (PRODUCT) RED.

It’s here! Watch live streams now of this historic event: Cnn.com Hulu.com

So everyone is on the same page, there is an Apple Media Event tomorrow at about 1pm our time. Around here this is…

President Obama just marked his 100th day in office, so I thought we’d take a look back to when Apple’s own Steve Jobs…

About 6 years ago, I was a sophomore in high school and just starting to become interested in graphic design. My school had…

British artist David Hockney, known for his contributions to the Pop Art movement of the 1960’s has found a new medium for creating as well as displaying his creations: the Apple iPad. Hockney, aged 73, began making doodles on his iPhone in 2008 using the application Brushes http://www.brushesapp.com/ and began emailing them to a small group of friends. By the end of 2009 he had created around 1000 images, including a series of paintings of the rising sun that he made without leaving his bed. Hockney praised the convenience of using a mobile device to create art:

“It’s always there in my pocket, there’s no thrashing about, scrambling for the right color. One can set to work immediately, there’s this wonderful impromptu quality, this freshness, to the activity; and when it’s over, best of all, there’s no mess, no clean-up. You just turn off the machine. Or, even better, you hit Send, and your little cohort of friends around the world gets to experience a similar immediacy. There’s something, finally, very intimate about the whole process.”

With the release of the iPad this year the artist was provided with a larger canvas to work on, which he says “takes it to a new level.” The iPad’s 9.7 inch screen allowed Hockney to create even more intricate paintings. The culmination of his experiments in this new medium is his current exhibition in Paris called Fleurs Fraiches (Fresh Flowers). http://www.fondation-pb-ysl.net/fr/Accueil-Fondation-Pierre-Berge-Yves-Saint-Laurent-471.html Perhaps the most interesting thing about this show is that the images were not only created on the iPhone and iPad, but they are being displayed on them as well. This allows the viewers to see the images as the artist intended, rather than rendering them onto paper or using a television or projector. Hockney also uses the iPad to periodically change the images displayed, allowing him to refresh the flowers.

Another element of this story that I love is how Hockney carries his iPad around. His coats already had large pockets on the inside that he formerly used to carry drawing pads around. These have been repurposed to carry around his new favorite drawing tool: the Apple iPad.

Come into one of our retail locations http://www.smalldog.com/retail and give the iPad a test run. Maybe you can be the next Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, or David Hockney!