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 !
Monday, March 16, 2009
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.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Hate iTunes ? Use sharepod
I am a first time user of the 'i' family {ipod, iphone, itunes}. I own an iphone. Before iphone, I used other phones like Sony Erricson W800 and Nokia N80. One of the most common requirement is to store music on the phone. In those phones, it used to be straight forward. You just create folders/sub-folders and dump the music files there. The phone also carries the same concept of folder that we have on the PC. Once I add music to phone I can delete from my PC. I can delete music from my mobile whenever I wanted to do it.
When I came to iphone+itunes, its a new world for me. First of all there is no concept of folder in iphone and for that matter an ipod also. Apple might have thought that all its users are dumb asses who do not understand the concept of a folder. Next thing is the synching part. First you have to add it into itunes, organize in it and then sync it to the iphone/ipod. If there are music files in iphone and they are not present in itunes list, they will get deleted from iphone on sync. All the music files should have proper ID3 tags to be arranged according to albums. I can keep talking about many such nuances. In short, I hate itunes.
While I was looking for alternatives, I came across Sharepod. It is an alternative to the iTunes to load music files into iphone/ipod. Yes, you can put music into iphone also. Though it does not solve all the problems that I was talking about, it alleviates some of the problems. It has some nice features like dragging files from explorer and put in iphone, add and remove music from iphone etc.
But do not jump out of your chair yet. It has some problems too. First of all it does not have all the functionality of itunes. Say for e.g. podcast synching. So, if you are the type of person who want both music and podcasts, I guess sharepod is not for you. The problem is that if you add music with sharepod and try to synch podcasts with itunes, itunes will delete the files added from sharepod because the music is not in itunes list. I am a victim to this problem myself. I do not know a solution to this. Any help is appreciated.
When I came to iphone+itunes, its a new world for me. First of all there is no concept of folder in iphone and for that matter an ipod also. Apple might have thought that all its users are dumb asses who do not understand the concept of a folder. Next thing is the synching part. First you have to add it into itunes, organize in it and then sync it to the iphone/ipod. If there are music files in iphone and they are not present in itunes list, they will get deleted from iphone on sync. All the music files should have proper ID3 tags to be arranged according to albums. I can keep talking about many such nuances. In short, I hate itunes.
While I was looking for alternatives, I came across Sharepod. It is an alternative to the iTunes to load music files into iphone/ipod. Yes, you can put music into iphone also. Though it does not solve all the problems that I was talking about, it alleviates some of the problems. It has some nice features like dragging files from explorer and put in iphone, add and remove music from iphone etc.
But do not jump out of your chair yet. It has some problems too. First of all it does not have all the functionality of itunes. Say for e.g. podcast synching. So, if you are the type of person who want both music and podcasts, I guess sharepod is not for you. The problem is that if you add music with sharepod and try to synch podcasts with itunes, itunes will delete the files added from sharepod because the music is not in itunes list. I am a victim to this problem myself. I do not know a solution to this. Any help is appreciated.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Step-by-step guide to iphone 3G unlocking (link)
iphonehacks is running a nice tutorial on step-by-step guide to unlock 3G iphones. I find it very neat and elaborate. It explains the known conditions under which the unlock does not work. It also has the precautions to be taken before unlocking.
One more nice tutorial from iclarified.
[Off Topic]
There are some requests for link to unlocking 2G phones having 2.2 firmware. Here it is.
One more nice tutorial from iclarified.
[Off Topic]
There are some requests for link to unlocking 2G phones having 2.2 firmware. Here it is.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Installing Windows XP on Acer Aspire 4530
We recently bought a Acer aspire 4530 without any pre-installed OS. On top of linux, we decided to go for Windows XP as it is fairly stable and less resource hungry compared to Vista. When we tried to install Windows XP, we consistently encountered a failure with the fatal blue screen. Before the blue screen, the installation complains that it couldnt find disk drives. After googling around a bit, I realized that this is a standard problem. The main reason is that the Windows XP installation CD does not have native support for SATA hard disks with AHCI interface. So, the same problem can happen on any machine which has SATA hard disk. The following is the solution for the above problem...
There are two options.
1. Simplest method: Changing the BIOS setting
2. Advanced method: Adding SATA drivers to Windows XP installation CD.
Option 1:
In case of Acer, the BIOS settings allow you to change the SATA mode. It can be found in the "Main" section. By default it will be in AHCI mode. Change it to IDE mode. This makes your SATA disk behave like an IDE disk. Once you change to IDE mode, you are ready to go ahead with the installation of Windows XP as usual. This is the simplest solution.
There are couple of reasons why you might not prefer this solution over the next one. First, your BIOS settings might not allow you to change the SATA mode. In that case, you do not have an alternative other than to go for the next option. Secondly, you will not reap the full benefit of your SATA harddrive. SATA's AHCI interface gives better throughput compared to IDE in most of the situations. If you are more interested in this topic search for "Native Comamnd Queuing(NCQ)". This is a very nice article comparing AHCI vs IDE.
There is a way to change the mode to AHCI after installing the XP in IDE mode. I personally did not try this method but this article explains how to do this on machines with intel chipsets. Note that this method should not be followed if your chipset is AMD. I will update this article If I find a way to do this for AMD platforms.
Option 2:
This is a little complicated option in the sense that you have to create a new XP installation CD with SATA AHCI drivers included in it. This technique is called "Slipstreaming". Follow the "Internet and CD burner method" section in this article.
There are two options.
1. Simplest method: Changing the BIOS setting
2. Advanced method: Adding SATA drivers to Windows XP installation CD.
Option 1:
In case of Acer, the BIOS settings allow you to change the SATA mode. It can be found in the "Main" section. By default it will be in AHCI mode. Change it to IDE mode. This makes your SATA disk behave like an IDE disk. Once you change to IDE mode, you are ready to go ahead with the installation of Windows XP as usual. This is the simplest solution.
There are couple of reasons why you might not prefer this solution over the next one. First, your BIOS settings might not allow you to change the SATA mode. In that case, you do not have an alternative other than to go for the next option. Secondly, you will not reap the full benefit of your SATA harddrive. SATA's AHCI interface gives better throughput compared to IDE in most of the situations. If you are more interested in this topic search for "Native Comamnd Queuing(NCQ)". This is a very nice article comparing AHCI vs IDE.
There is a way to change the mode to AHCI after installing the XP in IDE mode. I personally did not try this method but this article explains how to do this on machines with intel chipsets. Note that this method should not be followed if your chipset is AMD. I will update this article If I find a way to do this for AMD platforms.
Option 2:
This is a little complicated option in the sense that you have to create a new XP installation CD with SATA AHCI drivers included in it. This technique is called "Slipstreaming". Follow the "Internet and CD burner method" section in this article.
Friday, December 19, 2008
New year gift: Software unlock for 3G
Iphone-dev team has an exciting new year gift. Its going to release software unlock method for 3G iphone on new year eve. They had been working hard on this project under the codename 'yellowsn0w'. It is in the final phases of packing in a user friendly user interface. They are going to release a video demo of the same on around Christmas time. See their blog about this update. There are a two pre-conditions on which you can unlock your phone. It should have a baseband of version 2.11.07 or prior. It should be jailbroken. Jailbroken phone is a requirement because the 3G unlock software is distributed using the cydia installer which is available only on jailbroken phones.
Happy Christmas and New Year
Friday, December 12, 2008
iphone screen output on TV
iphonehacks is running an article where it pointed out that the famous developer Erica Sadun has discovered that the recently released iphone firmware2.2 SDK offers an option to export video-out live to a connected TV screen. This is an undocumented feature in the SDK.
There is already a working prototype to prove that this thing works in real. See this video where the live camera is projected on a TV screen.
It does not stop here. Greg Hartstein developed an impressive prototype with on-screen controls where he can extend the iphone desktop to the tv screen. i.e you can use the tv-screen as additional space of your iphone. This is like extending the display of computer output to more than one monitors. Laptop users with windows operating system might be familiar how to extend their laptop screen to a standalone monitor. See this video which demonstrates the feature that I am talking about. Please be patient, it comes towards the end after showing some other interesting possibilites.
There is already a working prototype to prove that this thing works in real. See this video where the live camera is projected on a TV screen.
It does not stop here. Greg Hartstein developed an impressive prototype with on-screen controls where he can extend the iphone desktop to the tv screen. i.e you can use the tv-screen as additional space of your iphone. This is like extending the display of computer output to more than one monitors. Laptop users with windows operating system might be familiar how to extend their laptop screen to a standalone monitor. See this video which demonstrates the feature that I am talking about. Please be patient, it comes towards the end after showing some other interesting possibilites.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)