There has been a lot of talk lately that Apple will be releasing something code-named "the Brick".

There have been many rumours and suggestions as to what "the Brick" may be. 9 to 5 Mac is reporting that, according to their sources, the "brick" refers to a new manufacturing process that would involve using lasers and jet cutting instead of the traditional method of pressing to construct new Apple MacBooks from bricks of solid aluminium. If true, this process would truly revolutionise the manufacturing process of consumer electronics. It would, yet again, put Apple several years ahead of the competition, and would ensure Apple gained control over even more of the manufacturing process.

However, let's pretend for a minute that we haven't heard that rumour. Let's think of "the Brick" as an actual product, rather than a manufacturing technique. What could it be?

No more Power Brick?

Initially, when I heard the term, my mind thought power bricks - the bulky blocks that ensure your laptop (or Mac Mini) gets charged when you plug it into the wall. If Apple could innovate a way that would mean we didn't need a power brick for our laptops that would be truly astonishing. It would put Apple's laptops a major step out in front of all competition. However, as much as this would be groundbreakingly cool, I simply don't believe it is possible yet. Sure, power bricks are getting smaller and smaller, and Apple's are looking better and better (See iPhone 3G), but to eliminate the power brick entirely is, as far as I know, not currently feasible.

New Mac Mini?

So, what else could "the Brick" be? Perhaps the Mac Mini. The Mini hasn't been updated for a very long time. It has almost been forgotten about. This means either a) it's going to be eliminated from the product line, or b) it's going to have a massive overhaul very soon. Personally, I think it is much more likely to be b). With the current state of the global economy, and the increased growth Apple has seen in the higher end of the computer market, their low end, affordable Mac is overdue a massive sales increase.

On the one hand, Apple could attempt to make the Mini even thinner, even sexier, and perhaps re-brand it to Mac Nano. This would be great, but it could well confuse consumers with the similarly sized, and similarly priced AppleTV. Instead, I believe Apple will need to differentiate the Mini in another way other than to make it smaller...

No more Computer?

Let's take a look at Neil Curtis's idea for what could happen to the Mac Mini. He proposes that we dispose of "the Brick" entirely. Instead, we would have our entire computer inside the keyboard that sits on our desk. This would look simply breathtaking if you imagine that all that would be sitting on your desk would be a strikingly thin Apple Cinema Display (they're also long overdue a design refresh), a keyboard, and a mouse.

It is arguable that this concept would be possible, but I reckon, with Apple's knowledge, the Macbook Air's internals could be re distributed and altered to fit within the constraints of a keyboard shaped computer. Let's not forget that there would be no need for a battery, a trackpad, or even speakers, already saving a large amount of space. Neil even suggests that an optical drive could be crammed into this design, just like on the MacBook.

View the video above to see Neil explain his ideas in full.

It will be interesting to see what Apple releases in the next few weeks. So far, the rumour is that October 14th will be the day of announcements.

We can't wait!

Read the Top 100 Requests on Dear Adobe and see if you agree.

Adobe has a lot of work to do to please their customers. This is a site that has been set up for us poor developers, designers, animators, and general creatives to vent our anger at Adobe - the company, the products, and their pricing. If Adobe ignores this site, and sees it as a small number of angered individuals determined to destroy Adobe's reputation they will be much mistaken. This site has comments from some of the most loyal users of Adobe products, from the people that genuinely care about their business, and these are also the most vocal - they are the core users that matter most to Adobe.

They are telling Adobe, directly, and in crystal clear English, exactly what is wrong with their current business. They're even telling them how to put it right.

Dear Adobe, Ignore this site at your peril.

With the latest version of iTunes - 8.0.1, the Genius feature introduced in the original release has made it into yet another area of the interface - the "Now Playing" screen.

Apple seems extremely keen to promote this feature throughout its music product line, almost as if there were a profit motive, but other than the iTunes Genius Sidebar, it would seem that Steve and co. simply want us to listen to and discover more of our music.

iTunes 8.0.1 addresses quite a few bug fixes, and is recommended for all iTunes users.

You can download the latest version of iTunes here.

Parallax is a really cool, powerful use of javascript from Stephen Band. Think of looking through a camera and having layers of objects at various distances moving around. Parallax achieves that effect using a combination static images, one for each layer.

"Parallax [is a jQuery library that] turns a selected element into a 'window', or viewport, and all its children into absolutely positioned layers that can be seen through the viewport. These layers move in response to the mouse, and, depending on their dimensions (and options for layer initialisation), they move by different amounts, in a parallaxy kind of way."

Like the look of Google Chrome, but waiting for its release on OS X? Wish you had something similar to meet your multi-tab-tasking needs? Meet Stainless, the (very early) development version of the same concept. Stainless breaks each tab into an individual process just like Chrome to ensure when one goes wrong, it doesn't screw up the whole browser.

It's still early days - there's no bookmarking, history, or download management, but this WebKit based browser has a lot of potential. It also looks pretty good, with minimalism on a par with Chrome itself.

Stainless is for Leopard only (sorry Tiger users, time to upgrade!), and is very (VERY!) early beta. Try it out at your own risk.

Regardless, this is a fantastic start, and I look forward to seeing it develop. If a small group of developers can get this together in a matter of weeks, why can't Google get something out the door shortly?

Still exchanging business cards on a daily basis? Surely there's a better way in this modern age of web communications. There is, in fact there are many better ways than exchanging small pieces of card, but the latest (and possibly greatest) development in this area is a new service called Hello My Name is e.

What is E?

There's no better description of the service than on their own site:

"E is a service that integrates all your existing social services into an E•ID, which you can share with anyone in the real world. To exchange E•ID's, you just need an internet-enabled mobile phone like an iPhone or Blackberry. When you exchange your E•ID's, E makes sure your contacts get added to your other social services like Netlog, Twitter, Last.fm, Soocial, automatically."

So, essentially, you sign up for E, get an E•ID (a simple 5 digit code), and when you meet someone you want to get to know better, you exchange E•IDs by typing each other's into your web enabled phones.

Very simple, very convenient. At this point, you may be thinking - WAIT! I can already do this with existing services such as Dropcard. The cool thing about E is that it automatically adds the contact's details to all available services, so will instantly be following them on Twitter, and checking how compatible their music taste is with Last.fm.

E Connector

There is also a hardware component, to make things even easier, called E Connector.

"Connector is a device designed specifically for the E service. Connector allows you to add somebody to E, and all integrated services, in one simple gesture: Press two Connectors together and you’ve exchanged E•ID's. It’s that simple."

Very Apple-esque in it's simplicity (and design). Nonetheless, I like it, and if enough people start joining the service, this could really take off. However, that is the crux of this concept - unless it gains mainstream appeal, they are going to struggle to survive.

I really hope this concept does well - it would be great to see it develop with more services (Facebook, are you listening?) and gain mainstream use. If I were working at E right now, though, I would be worried. What if Apple were to simply put this feature into a firmware update for the iPhone? Same with Blackberry. Touch two iPhones together, exchange vCards, add to all services on there. Sure there wouldn't be this level of cross compatibility, but if it ended up in the iPhone, it could turn out that other companies would follow to support the standard that Apple would set.

All together, it looks like a great service. I've signed up for the beta and can't wait to try it out.

Another change to the App Store that occurred over the weekend was the reordering of applications so that "Release Date" refers to when the app was first released, instead of when the last update was released.

Old App Store List

Here is another, slightly annoying (and hopefully temporary) change to the App Store. As you can see, the old left hand sidebar used to include links to view all applications, and then to separate those designed specifically for the iPod Touch and iPhone.

New App Store List

However, the new sidebar seems to have disposed of these links and just shows the list of categories, with apparently no way of viewing all apps.

We can only hope that this is a temporary change and that it gets fixed quick - it's handy being able to view all apps on one page.

Last.fm is a fantastic online service that monitors (scrobbles) the music you play through iTunes, and updates your profile with the latest song information. It then builds on this data by notifying you of trends - who you listen to most, what your favourite genres are etc. and goes a step further to suggest other artists you may like.

Last.fm itself, the website, has just been redesigned and lives up to a very high standard that could draw many similarities to Facebook. The desktop app is also very well designed, keeping the interface simple, only showing what is needed and nothing more. The desktop app also ensures that what is important - the song information - is clearly and prominently displayed.

That's why when the original Last.fm iPhone App was released, it had a lot to live up to. The original was good, but not amazing, with quite a few features missing, and a less than smooth interface.

However, almost all of the faults of the original have now been eliminated with the latest release of Last.fm for iPhone:

• Major improvements to the user interface all around (tap to zoom album art)
• Ability to tag songs
• Personal tag radio
• Calendar based events view
• Common artists when viewing a user profile
• Lots of other usability and back-end updates

Tag Songs

Probably the most requested feature of the original app was the ability to tag songs. You can now tag any song with as many tags as you wish, and are greeted with an instant search that autofills with suggestions for tags. You can also start a new "station" based on any tag you wish. This is brilliant - they have taken user requests seriously, and not just delivered on them, but have exceeded expectations.

Cover Art Zoom

A nice little UI feature has been added on the "Now Playing" screen - the ability to double tap and zoom in or out of the album art. Simple but sweet.

Beautiful Startup Screen

Normally, waiting for an app to start is an arduous task. However, with Last.fm, the start screen is truly attractive - black to dark grey gradient, with Last.fm prominently displayed in the centre in crisp white. There is also a subtle loading animation - the "as" of Last.fm (and AudioScrobbler) winds around to indicate the app is working. First impressions count, and this is probably the most understated attractive loading screen of any app I have used.

Calendar View

A new view for the Events screen is Calendar View. Essentially this is the same as month view in iCal, and it makes perfect sense to put it here. You can now easily see any upcoming events of the selected artist by simply browsing over a calendar view.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and highly recommend you try out Last.fm for iPhone. Best of all, it's free, so what excuse could you possibly have!

You could also read Last.fm's official release post here.

Download Last.fm from the App Store.

Both developers and consumers on the iPhone App Store will be glad to hear some good news coming out of Cupertino today: you can't review an app until you've purchased it.

This is great, especially for apps that have a high price tag (or even any price tag) as the reviews section would often become filled with users complaining and giving low ratings for the app due to its price without ever having used the app whatsoever.

This is a small step, but it's good to see Apple adjusting to the way the app store is used.

Now, all you need to do now Apple is to help out those poor developers that spend months working on apps simply to be turned down at the last hurdle because it competes with your own plans.

The Future of Web Apps (FOWA) Expo is back in London for October 8th-10th at the London ExCel Center and boy, it's going to be one hell of a show!

Speakers include Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Kevin Rose (Digg), Blane Cook (Twitter) plus many more from the likes of Google, Salesforce, AOL, and Mahalo. Also attending (and speaking) are the guys from 280North, creators of 280Slides and Cappuccino that we wrote about a while ago.

We are very excited as we were unable to attend last year's FOWA and will be there on October 10th ready to chat, share, learn, and party!

Kevin and Alex are also going to be there shooting a live diggnation from the main stage at 7:30pm on October 10th where Google will be providing the (alcoholic) refreshments. After which, the wrap party will get started with Facebook and Digg kicking things off. (I've heard that Facebook are going to be sponsoring an open bar.)

The celebrations are going to be epic. We hope to see you all there and look forward to meeting a wealth of interesting people that are changing the web as we know it. There will ofcourse be free wifi for all (probably provided by the Cloud) so you can keep those posts coming even while you're having lunch.

Get your passes for all 3 days of the event over at Carsonified's FOWA site.

See you there!