iOS Devices

The world’s largest software company today released their first iPhone app dubbed "SeaDragon Mobile".  Seadragon is an application designed to browse high quality imagery and is in the same realm as Microsoft’s Photosynth technology.  Get it here (iTunes link).  You can pinch and zoom around gigapixel images surprisingly fast according to Microsoft:

Seadragon is designed to provide next-generation visual experiences, regardless of the size of the screen, size of the file or speed of your network.  It’s already available on a number of platforms, including Microsoft Surface, and in Photosynth and Silverlight. Now we’re bringing that same graphical smoothness right to the iPhone in your pocket.

Create your own content with the Deep Zoom Composer or PhotoZoom and view it on your phone.  Or just look at our sample content. You can also browse Photosynth collections (yours or anybody else’s) with just a flick and a pinch.

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We expect Seadragon Mobile will soon be available for download in the iTunes App Store. Until then we are making it available to a limited number of people on an ad hoc basis. If you’d like to try it out, send us an e-mail and if you’re selected, we’ll send you the information you need to get it up and running.

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We will continue to experiment with bringing Seadragon to other platforms as we move forward, exploring different ways to use this functionality to improve the way users explore the digital world. 

Interestingly, Microsoft expects to release more apps in the near future according to their website.

As a Microsoft tech notes below, the browse Photosynth is broken – which is most of the app. So there isn’t much to see just yet.  You can still find friends by name and add synths (just not view?!).

The Slingbox app for iPhone which has been in beta testing for while is said to be waiting on approval from Apple. Perhaps AT&T isn’t quite ready to stream that much data across its networks?  Here’s a video of it in action. 

Yes, you read right.  The Pull My Finger app has made it to the Apple Store according to Giz.

Sam, the developer, says that Apple didn’t want to reject it initially, but they were still trying to figure out how to organize these types of apps—the slightly lewd but not really full-on porn apps—into the marketplace. The Apple rep claimed they’d be lifting the restriction on more of these types of apps soon; the ones that were previously rejected for decency-type issues.

What are you waiting for?  Download it from the App store, stat!

Us?  We’ve been "rockin" iPootz from the Jailbroken Cydia store for months!

Here’s a great new ad campaign that "breaks" Yahoo’s page a la Wii ads from a few weeks ago. Via Adage.

http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1543292789

AT&T now does home activation again. It feels like 2007 again doesn’t it? Good news is that you could theoretically pretty much pick up an iPhone anywhere (*cough Walmart*) and activate that thing.  As of now AT&T only, not even the Apple Store.

Gadgetell via BGR

Well, this is a hack in the most literal of senses but it could be useful in a handful of circumstances…

Unlike other approaches, it works with the two apps that matter most, Mail and Safari, and gets around Apple’s onerous App Store terms through a clever combination of javascript bookmarks and web services.

In fact, it doesn’t require anything to be installed, so it avoids the App Store altogether. As you can see in the video, Pastebud–as the service is called–works using two bookmarks in Safari. One prepares and loads the page you are viewing, ready to select text at the touch of a finger. From there, you can copy any text you want and create a new mail message with that text in it. In addition to that, you will be able to copy and paste in the text field of a different web page.

While this is not full copy and paste capabilities, I, for one, welcome the ability do exactly this, which is basically what I want to do 95% of the time. According to Jed Schmidt, creator of Pastebud, they have been testing it for about a week and they are now "putting the finishing touches on the web site before launch".

via Gizmodo.AU

(sorry about the title)

The mystery of the missing iTunes Movies has been solved by Greg Sandoval at C|Net.  "Release Windows"

"Release windows" is the term used to describe periods of time a certain type of media is allowed to show a movie. Typically, a feature film is first released in theaters, then on DVD, followed by pay-per-view channels and finally on broadcast TV.

Normally, release windows don’t affect retailers or video-rental services after they’ve begun selling or renting films. Warner Bros. doesn’t go into Best Buy and pull DVDs off the shelf when Comcast airs Casablanca. The corner Mom and Pop video store doesn’t surrender copies of Gladiator to Universal Studios when the film appears on ABC. But Internet stores are being treated differently. What this means for iTunes and Netflix customers is that movies will pop in and out of the services.
Spokesmen for Netflix and Apple confirmed that they pulled titles due to these licensing requirements.

Even when you think the media companies are starting to "get it", they don’t.  Obviously.  People who would have paid for the movie will now be more likely to download it illegally.  The TV channel’s revenues (and therefore influence) are likely so strong that bowing to their whims is all that the movie studios and iTunes/Netflix can do.

At some point, the money from iTunes, etc. will be enough to fight for their movie distribution rights.

Sprint’s Instinct unleashed a big Internet ad campaign against the iPhone (and AT&T prices mostly) today. Long on drama and short on details, it, most likely, won’t help sell any Instincts. Here’s some unsolicited advice to Sprint: Take every extra penny you have left and put it into WiMAX. Now.

On the other hand, these types of ads put AT&T’s prices and practices in a bad light – which isn’t such a bad thing.

Videos below

http://instinctthephone.com/share/player.swf?dl=side_by_side

Computerworld’s Ryan Faas offers a great 10 step program for eliminating waste on and optimizing your Mac. You don’t have to hit them all, but even a few will do you a world of good.  Especially on lower powered, older Macs with less storage…  Slim down, speed up Mac OS X

• 1. Get rid of extra languages
• 2. Cut out non-native code
• 3. Trim down media libraries
• 4. Clean out logs
• 5. Delete unused apps
• 6. Reduce login items
• 7. Do without 3D effects
• 8. Remove unused fonts
• 9. Find large files and folders
• 10. Increase RAM

..a quick laugh from Penny Arcade.

..guess there is the obvious financial motive..
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57Y1bi3Qsco&hl=en&fs=1]

Update: C|Net refutes the claims..we’ll have to wait until Macworld it looks like

Well, we saw a preview a few weeks ago (and a week before that).  For a brief period of time, you could update some of your Sony, Warner and Universal iTunes to high quality DRM free version.  But that capability was taken down as quickly as it was put up.  Likely just a false start.

If the end of Music DRM is tomorrow, Apple doesn’t plan on having a big event for it.  You’d think this would be a big show, but no invitations mean no party or liveblogs or anything fun.  French website Eletron Libre has the goods:

…The signals are clear today. iTunes should offer catalogs of three majors Universal Music, SonyBMG Music and Waner [sic] rid of technological protection measures next Tuesday, Dec. 9. The transition to DRM Free should be at a global level…

If it ain’t tomorrow, it will by Macworld.  We wonder if this has anything to do with the Netgear announcement?

Will you miss DRM?  Will you cry?  How about when Apple turns off those validation servers and all of the old, DRM’d music is orphanned?

[Electron Libre via AppleInsider via Gizmodo]

Brain hurts

Surface meets the iPhone.  Check it out here.

I had a long talk with Bob Morris, director of platform enablement for ARM’s mobile processor group.  While he wasn’t able to mention Apple specifically, he did go into many reasons why a company like Apple would choose the ARM architecture over Intel (performance/Watt – sound familiar?).

He also left me with some internal Powerpoint slides which seemed to tell more of the story.

Read the Computerworld article

So the Walmart thing is still going on.  Bloomberg today confirmed (it’s hard to keep Walmart’s employee’s mouths shut it appears) that they will indeed be pushing the iPhone.  Interestingly and contrary to other reports, they do say there might be a $99 model:

Analysts say Apple may offer a discontinued 4-gigabyte version through Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart and sell it for $99. Apple currently sells two models at $199 and $299.

They go on to quote Shaw Wu:

“A $99, Apple-branded cell phone is inevitable,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst for Kaufman Brothers in San Francisco. “One of the key things Apple needs to do to drive broader iPhone adoption is to build a more complete product line” with low- end, mid-range and high-end products, Wu said in a Dec. 5 note.

Which means there is absolutely no chance there will be a $99 iPhone.  Ever.

Image from Macrumors

You think your government is backwards and behind the times (and corrupt!)?  Well, it probably is, but maybe not as much as Egypt’s.  The NYTimes today covers the fact that Egyptian iPhones don’t have use of the GPS chip.  Apple modified its phone without any public acknowledgment. 

Mr. Gabr described in his e-mail message what he considered to be the faulty rationale for the policy in Egypt.

“From a technical point of view, this is totally pointless because Google Maps works flawlessly here — you can even get a clear snap (with accurate coordinates) of places you’re not supposed to see.”

As an aside, he said that months ago he “bought an American iPhone 3G via eBay” with full functionality. “Cheaper, earlier and without compromise,” he wrote, signing his note with a self-satisfied smiley-face.

Although, not a big deal in itself, the question has to be asked how far handset makers will go in order to appease governments.  There is a slippery slope.  If you scroll down a bit, you’ll get the summery laid out nicely:

“We may not know what the maximum impact of openness is,” he said. “But we do know that in the most closed places the worst things happen.”

The iPhone’s best (probably) long term competition is the Android platform.  We’re guilty of being just a little bit interested in what those Google people are going to do with their platform.  A little birdy told us that some Netbooks would soon be arriving with Android as the OS.  But that’s for a different day.

Today, Android is definitely stepping up the "openness" quotient in their ecosystem by offering a SIM unlocked G1 phone "to developers".  It is available in the US with free shipping for $400.  Not bad really.

It will soon be available in UK, Germany, Japan, India, Canada, France, Taiwan, Spain, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Poland, and Hungary.  Other countries will follow.

Note that Android Dev Phone 1 devices are not intended for non-developer end users. Since the devices can be configured with system software not provided by or supported by Google or any other company, end users operate these devices at their own risk.

Yeah, right.

Erica Sadun over at Ars found a little tidbit of programming joy in the form of an undocumented way to push iPhone video to an external TV display.

Freeverse, makers of Moto Chaser (iTunes link), took this information and got their application working on the external display in a few hours.   This obviously opens up the possibility for more gaming opportunities although, for many, the Apple Composite AV Cable on the iPhone/iPod touch is cost prohibitive.

The hidden libraries, documented below:

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2354974&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=ff9933&fullscreen=1

Want to learn a language?  Want to do it for free?  iTunes U has you covered (iTunes link).

Harshes on iPod at about 2:10. "Just a music player (this is a PODcast!)". "Its part of the reason we are in the situation we are in now".  He’s obviously very up on recent developments.

Don’t even try to sit through all of it.

var so = new FlashObject (“http://natalie.feedroom.com/bizweektv/player/Player.swf”, “Player”, “320”, “240”, “8”, “#cccccc”);so.addVariable(“skin”, “player”);so.addVariable(“site”, “bizweektv”);so.addVariable(“fr_story”, “844fc277b0fdc8dbf2fd68b00344c508df816ae2”);so.addVariable(“hostURL”,”document.location.href”);so.addVariable(“videoratio”, “43”);so.addParam(“menu”, “false”);so.addParam(“quality”,”high”);so.addParam(“allowFullScreen”,”true”);so.addParam(“allowScriptAccess”,”always”);so.write(“flashcontent”);

Also loves that he tries to talk slow to us, like we can’t…understand..people…who…talk…at…normal…speed..