Monday, August 11, 2008

Multi-touch 3D holographic projection system

This is simply mind blowing. We are going closer and closer to the "minority report" style of user interface. Engadget is running an article about a 3D holographic projection system developed by a company called "Obscura digital". They developed a technology where you control the projected objects in thin air with hand gestures. Really hats off them. You should see the video to appreciate it.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Iphone 2.0.1 firmware updates 3G baseband

There seems to be lot of confusion around the latest 2.0.1 firmware from apple in relation to unlocking. It seems that this firmware updates the baseband only on 3G phones and not on 2G phones. However, both the 2G & 3G iphones cannot be unlocked(as of now) with the latest pwnage 2.0.1 tool.

What this means is that you cannot unlock the 2G/3G iphone with the existing tools if you upgrade firmware to the latest 2.0.1. Apple released this firmware fixing the bugs in 2.0 firmware and making some performance improvements. The 2.0 firmware does not upgrade the baseband even on 3G phones. Firmware 2.0 on 2G iphones can be unlocked using the latest pwnage 2.0.1 tool, but 3G iphones on 2.0 firmware cannot be unlocked yet. See the blog of iphone-dev team which have clarification on the above confusion.

The earlier vulnerabilities exploited by the tools like ziphone, pwnage etc will be fixed in the new baseband. So, apple threw one more challenge to the hackers keeping itself ahead in the catch-up game. The hackers need to find new vulnerabilities to hack the latest 3G baseband in 2.0.1 firmware.

What can you expect ?
- For 2G iphones, hackers will shortly release unlock tools for 2.0.1 firmware
- For 3G iphones, hackers will shortly release unlock tools for 2.0 firmware(not 2.0.1)
- For 3G iphones, hackers will take some time to release unlock tools for 2.0.1 firmware

Monday, August 4, 2008

Iriver spinn: music player with touch screen and spin wheel

It seems that touch screen for gadgets is becoming standard after iphone showed it to the world. Engadget is running an article about the new music player from iriver named spinn. It has a cool user interface sporting a touch screen and a spin wheel. See the video that recently surfaced giving a demo of this cool gadget.

Besides the common features, it has bluetooth capability, TV, picture browser etc. This is not yet available world wide. It is going to be released in south korea shortly. Moreover, this is not going to be easy on the pocket. Pre-order pricing indicates that an 8GB model costs $299, which is same as 8G ipod touch model.