Retrieving my old videos has been a bit of an issue. I uploaded the Smackbook video to a young Youtube 12 years ago. I had forgotten what I titled the videos and forgot which one of my email accounts I used to upload them. Needless to say I eventually found them. I remember uploading the video from my home in Rancho Cucamonga California. That seems like a million miles away today. It seems like a lifetime ago. Anyways…”Smackbook” was an AMS (anti-motion-sensors) hack discovered by Amit Singh. After I saw the original version of his youtube video I decided to modify the hack and created the “Karma Smackbook by utilizing the ALS (ambient light sensor) located on the top left of the Powerbooks. You can see that here in this updated post. This hack was later written about in a book titled: Big Book of Apple Hacks by Chris Seibold, albeit there is no mention of me or my nicer Karma Smackbook
I decided to modify the hack and created the “Karma Smackbook” by utilizing the ALS (ambient light sensor)
While both methods were useful (for me at least), the original smackbook method retains more appeal since you cannot transition left-to-right and vice versa with the light sensors (something to do with the right side sensor is not constantly active).
My best use for this (as you can see in the original youtube video) was to quickly switch “desktops” and apps, roughly a decade before UI/UX devs adopted the “swipe” and visual interface for desktop switching. However if you’ve watched my SuSe 10.1 video utilizing Xgl/Open GL you can see that I’ve long been interested in rich visual graphics utilized when displaying desktop shortcuts, functions, and actions.
I’m not sure if you can still get smack book or karma smackbook up and running today. The link to the original libraries isn’t working when I checked but hey…maybe it’s hosted on somebody’s home server.
-David Leach