When apple released iphone 3.0 firmware(unofficial youtube version), it claimed that it has about 100 new features and 1000 new APIs but listed them nowhere. I was hunting on the web to get a list of new features. This link is the best so far that I found. It has about 81 items. I hope that the list is accurate. I do not think that I understand all of them. You can see this video that demos some of the features.
I am an iphone 2G (first generation) user. I am a bit unhappy that some of the new features are not being offered for 2G phones citing hardware limitations. The following list of features in 3.0 firmware are not available for 2G phones. i.e the limitations for 2g phones in 3.0 firmware.
- No MMS (says radio is not capable)
- No A2DP. i.e stereo audio over bluetooth.
I am very unhappy about A2DP limitation for 2G phones. Atleast they should have supported normal audio, if not stereo audio, over bluetooth. I am sure normal audio is possible as we can use bluetooth headset to receive calls.
By the way, you might have heard that iphonedev team already did jailbreak the 3.0 beta firmware. These guys are amazing. I hope unlock is not far way.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
SixthSense: Wearable Gadget
Its truly amazing what this gadget can do. This what the author wants to define it as... "SixthSense is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information". I am not sure if you guessed it right what this gadget can do. Here is the deal.
The gadget is worn on the body. It has a built-in camera and projector. With the camera it can detect the motions or gestures done by the person wearing it. Depending on the gesture it performs appropriate action. The gesture interface is more or less like the one in the minority report movie, where the users makes gestures with fingers. But what puts this device much ahead of minority report is its ability to project on any surface using the built-in projector. And what puts this far ahead, is its ability to get information from the web about the object being seen and project that information back on the object in appropriate manner.
If you are in a bookstore and if you have the cover page of the book in front of you, this gadgets detects the book title, get the rating and reviews of this book from amazon, and project this information back on the book. It provides menus to get more information. Isnt that amazing ? Not impressed ? I am sure you will be thrown off your seat if you see this video. I just talked about one of the innumerable possibilities. The following video lists a bunch of them.
The genius behind this masterpiece is "Pranav Mistry". Here is his personal website and his description about the project. Here is an interview with him about the project. He is currently doing PhD from MIT. He had done his masters from IIT Bombay, intrestingly not in computer science but in design. The prototype costed them only $350. Once this goes to commercial production, I am sure this can cost much lesser. I guess that this will be a revolutionary product given it potential. Great job dude !
The gadget is worn on the body. It has a built-in camera and projector. With the camera it can detect the motions or gestures done by the person wearing it. Depending on the gesture it performs appropriate action. The gesture interface is more or less like the one in the minority report movie, where the users makes gestures with fingers. But what puts this device much ahead of minority report is its ability to project on any surface using the built-in projector. And what puts this far ahead, is its ability to get information from the web about the object being seen and project that information back on the object in appropriate manner.
If you are in a bookstore and if you have the cover page of the book in front of you, this gadgets detects the book title, get the rating and reviews of this book from amazon, and project this information back on the book. It provides menus to get more information. Isnt that amazing ? Not impressed ? I am sure you will be thrown off your seat if you see this video. I just talked about one of the innumerable possibilities. The following video lists a bunch of them.
The genius behind this masterpiece is "Pranav Mistry". Here is his personal website and his description about the project. Here is an interview with him about the project. He is currently doing PhD from MIT. He had done his masters from IIT Bombay, intrestingly not in computer science but in design. The prototype costed them only $350. Once this goes to commercial production, I am sure this can cost much lesser. I guess that this will be a revolutionary product given it potential. Great job dude !
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Bluetooth file transfer from iphone: iBluetooth
One of the biggest things that I hate about iphone is its inability to transfer files to other devices over bluetooth. See my earlier post expression my anguish. I feel that this is a serious limitation given the fact that this is a basic functionality. By default, iphone bluetooth capability is only limited to the headset. i.e You can take calls on a bluetooth headset. There is some more stupidity in this. Even though iphone supports bluetooth headset, you cannot listen to the songs or video using the headset. Nonsense !! Anyway, lets get back to the topic of this post.
Few days back an application called 'iBluetooth' is released via the cyida installer for jailbroken phones. The provides the functionality to transfer files over bluetooth to any other bluetooth enabled device like another mobile or PC. It has an in-built file browser which will allow you to browse through the OS filesystem. Moreover, it has a image viewer also which can be used to browse the photo folder. i.e You can visually browse the pictures taken with your camera, and send them over bluetooth. However, I found that the pictures sent in this method are having less resolution than the actual images. It seems this method sends only the thumbnails and not the actual images. Actual images are located in the folder "/private/var/mobile/Media/DCIM". Here you can get the full resolution images taken with the iphone camera. I cannot give technical details like data transfer speed and all but the performance is quite good according to my experience.
There is one catch though. This is a paid app and charges $3.99. I feel its totally worth it as gives a jump to the iphones functionality. In the future there are plans to support the itunes music library also. So, instead of hunting down the OS filesystem, there should be and easy access. The developer behind this awesome utility is MeDevil. In his blog he explains why he is charging money for the application. He has plans to buy a commercial ready-made full bluetooth stack implemented for generic devices and its quite expensive. Once he gets a hand on that he want to put that into a daemon and provide much more functionality using this software. So, we can expect things like ablity to send contacts, bluetooth serial port etc.
Enjoy bluetooth on iphone.
Few days back an application called 'iBluetooth' is released via the cyida installer for jailbroken phones. The provides the functionality to transfer files over bluetooth to any other bluetooth enabled device like another mobile or PC. It has an in-built file browser which will allow you to browse through the OS filesystem. Moreover, it has a image viewer also which can be used to browse the photo folder. i.e You can visually browse the pictures taken with your camera, and send them over bluetooth. However, I found that the pictures sent in this method are having less resolution than the actual images. It seems this method sends only the thumbnails and not the actual images. Actual images are located in the folder "/private/var/mobile/Media/DCIM". Here you can get the full resolution images taken with the iphone camera. I cannot give technical details like data transfer speed and all but the performance is quite good according to my experience.
There is one catch though. This is a paid app and charges $3.99. I feel its totally worth it as gives a jump to the iphones functionality. In the future there are plans to support the itunes music library also. So, instead of hunting down the OS filesystem, there should be and easy access. The developer behind this awesome utility is MeDevil. In his blog he explains why he is charging money for the application. He has plans to buy a commercial ready-made full bluetooth stack implemented for generic devices and its quite expensive. Once he gets a hand on that he want to put that into a daemon and provide much more functionality using this software. So, we can expect things like ablity to send contacts, bluetooth serial port etc.
Enjoy bluetooth on iphone.
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