It’s not really a giant iPod; and no, there was no high-stakes poker game between Kerry Packer and Steve Jobs, I made that bit up.

Space really does “begin” at 100Km high, so the dam really could be visible, but is most likely indistinguisable.

What’s also true is that it’s Apple‘s 30th Anniversary on April 1st 2006 – and in Australia it already is April 1st, ’cause Brisbane is 10 hours ahead of GMT, so although this server’s time zone tells me it’s still 31/3, I have no doubt Dad is (probably at this very moment) attaching an exploding cork to someone’s hat and hiding a plastic novelty spider under a toilet seat.

See it in Google Earth (Free Mac & PC versions available here).

Thanks

If you believed; if you wanted to believe, or if you blogged it or reported it, thanks!, it was fun to watch a small April fool that was intended for a few family and friends as it went global!

Getting mentioned in Engadget, Gizmodo, the Grauniad, CNN Money and InternetNews was great. There are too many others and I’ve not had time to see them all yet.

A special mention is also due to Leon who kindly contacted me and put me straight thus:

I already read this somewhere, I cant remember where but when I saw this and read that it was an exclusive story; I have to correct you, it isn’t, I already read it and that it was aquired in a poker match, and saw it on google maps, sorry mate.

Having someone believe the story so much that they let me down gently about not being an exclusive, especially highlighting the bit about the poker; that made my week.

Thanks are also due to Apple afficionado Steve Woolley for proof reading the original article and also to the people kind enough to point out that the structure is a tailings dam (there were remarkably few of you). I didn’t know this when I made up the story, but assumed there was some kind of evaporation happening because of the pattern.

Tailings

So you may well ask: since it’s not an iPod, what is a tailings dam?

There are an estimated 300 tailings dams in Australia, but fewer than 100 are in operation.

The exact content of a tailings dam depends on the geological composition of the ore that is being mined and any chemicals (explosives, corrosives and catalysts) that are employed in the mining and extraction process.

Paddington is actually a gold mine (not a disused mineral mine at all, I made that up too), so the tailings will be commensurate with a gold extraction process. Close up, the (highly acidic) tailings dam in Paddington looks like this.

The general cosensus is that tailings dams are among the most toxic man made areas on Earth. As liquids are absorbed into bedrock or evaporate, the dessiccated tailings can become airbourne, leading to long-term widespread pollution of the area surrounding a tailings facility.

Discovering the iPod

Several people have asked how I came across the thing in the first place, and that’s down to the fact that searching for locations in Google Earth is sometimes a bit hit and miss. I was looking for Paddington, a residential area of Sydney which I now know is about 2.5K SSE of Sydney Opera House.

I tried entering “Paddington, Sydney, Australia” into the GE search bar and it came back with no match. So then I tried “Paddington, Australia“.

If you have GE installed, give it a go, you basically land slap bang on top of the Paddington gold mine with the iPod (tailings dam) in full view.

Apple

So there you have it. Sadly there’s no gargantuan iPod, but we can at least be happy that Apple make lovely looking machines, and have contributed immensely to the public understanding that Human-Computer Interaction should have a strong emphasis on the “Human” side of the equation, so thanks and happy 30th anniversary to everyone at Apple, past and present.

I wonder what they’re really going to announce.

Today I learned from a trusted source that Apple is poised to make history next Saturday when it unveils the worlds first advertisement that can be seen from space.

Apple had hoped to keep their creation secret until the grand unveiling, however, after I was tipped off, and with just a little bit of lateral digging, I was able to uncover enough background information to get a clue of the location.

From there, it was just a matter of firing up Google Earth, and hunting for it! The pictures are a few months old, but clearly show the advert well on the way to completion.

The sheer size of the publicity stunt is difficult to comprehend. It covers 893240 square metres; roughly equivalent to eighty football pitches.

The ad, which depicts Apple’s flagship iPod product has been constructed on the site of an abandoned mineral mine in remote western Australia. It has been in development for almost two years since Apple’s founder Steve Jobs acquired the location during a game of poker with (the late) Australian publishing and gaming tycoon Kerry Packer.

Aliens need not worry about advertising regulations however; the general concensus is that the edge of space is at a height of 62 miles (100Km), and once you go much higher than that, the ad will very quickly shrink towards invisibility. It’ll look like an iPod nano for a while, then maybe a tictac.

Speculation is currently rife that the grand unveiling will be coordinated with the launch of a touch screen Video iPod.

Apple have a press meeting scheduled at the start of next month when more details will be revealed – you heard it here first.

See it in Google Maps.
See it in Google Earth (Free Mac & PC versions available).

This launch took place in daylight in order to maximise the possibility of filming any hiccups during launch that could affect the re-entry, with more enginering cameras deployed than on any previous shuttle mission.

The extra cameras provided a fascinating new viewpoint on the launch for the casual observer, and the most intreguing of these was certainly the rear facing camera mounted at the top of the fuel stack.

The camera operated flawlessly throughout the launch, and kept transmitting right through the fuel-tank separation, showing discovery appear to gently soar away towards Earth orbit. A magical moment to behold.

Film from the stack camera will now be analysed frame by frame to check for cracks on the underside of Discovery prior to it’s re-entry. Initial comments from NASA suggest that debris that could be seen during SRB the separation is not a cause for concern.

Looking back at the fuel tank and the underside of discovery.

The moment of separation.