There are iPhone-controlled cars and beds — now one company plans to integrate iPhones/iPods in its wheelchairs for a new kind of accessibility.
Dynamic Controls developed a system to connect an iPhone or iPod Touch to the wheelchair system via Bluetooth; it mounts on an adjustable arm and has a recharger, too.
In addition to music and all the other stuff you can do with an iPod/iPhone that might come in handy — compass reading, maps — it has an app that can be used for some controls on the chair, showing chair information in real time, including speed, and a diagnostics feature for when things go awry.
“We recognized the iPhone has revolutionized the way people communicate and saw the opportunity to develop this solution for wheelchair users, taking full advantage of Apple’s ‘Works with iPod / Made for iPhone’ developer program,” Charlotte Walshe, CEO of Dynamic Controls, said in a press release.
Lee Kwok, a wheel chair user in Christchurch, New Zealand was also quoted in the presser, saying says he thinks it will be fantastic to be able to buy an off-the-shelf product that has so many features for powered wheelchair users: “Having access to mainstream technology via a wheelchair is a huge advantage.”
The new feature is expected to launch in April, 2010.
Apple’s mythical tablet computer reportedly will be delayed because the Cupertino, Calif. company has added a second model with an OLED display, pushing an expected March 2010 launch date to later next year. The report by a Tiawan hardware news site cites anonymous Apple partners.
The company “has decided to switch some components and plans to launch a model using a 9.7-inch OLED panel from LG Display,” according to Digitimes. The OLED panel would be in addition to a 10.6-inch TFT LCD display. LG Display reportedly has a $500 million panel purchasing contract with Apple.
By now you’ve probably seen the viral clip for the Nude It app originally posted at whoisthebaldguy.com (if you haven’t, brush off that cave dust and watch it now).
The clip shows a mind-blowing iPhone app being used that employs augmented reality to de-clothe unwitting victims being viewed through the iPhone’s camera. Seems like great idea, judging by the 650,000-plus hits the clip has garnered in the five weeks it’s been up on YouTube.
Cult of Mac spoke briefly with the the clip’s creator, Michael Krivicka, a video editor living in NYC.
This probably won't happen at the contest, but who knows. Photo: Donato Accogli/flickr
They’re calling it the first “iPhone reality show,” and it was likely inevitable; with TV saturated by the likes of The Apprentice and Biggest Loser, the genre of reality show had to find a new home somewhere.
So for one week, from December 6-12, Italian-based Command Guru will stream all the shenanigans that result when a bunch of iPhone app developers stop being polite and start getting real.
Contestants will assemble from all over the world with the goal of developing a free, open source social-networking iPhone app, from idea to final product at the iTunes App Store. The contest will also let developers from around the world can chime in at any time to help, which should prove interesting.
More pre-contest excitement can be found on the contest’s Twitter feed, where Command Guru says it’s giving away one iPhone 3GS per week till the contest begins.
From the press release:
“There are over 100,000 Apps and millions of users who do not have any idea of how they are developed,” said Alessio Zito Rossi, founder and CEO of Command Guru srl. “The stork doesn’t deliver iPhone Apps! We will show the world how they are really born – live and streaming!”
Gizmodo’s Brian Lam tested the new 27-inch Quad-Core i7 iMac and found it’s a beast. Geekbench benchmarks showed a 2x to 3x improvement over the Core 2 Duo model, but most impressive was a real world DVD ripping test, using Handbrake:
On the Core i7 iMac, it took 43 minutes to rip a DVD, Storm Riders, a surfing film from the ’70s featuring Gerry Lopez (my favorite) and others. On the Core 2 Duo machine, it took 147 minutes! I know this is basically a DVD read test coupled with decoding and video conversion, but the results have me excited because this is a real task that takes my computer a long time to do, performed by a program that hasn’t been revised in a year.
Does your digital camera take extreme photographs? Ever wish you had a camera that could take more punishment than falling off a coffee table? Maybe Casio’s EX-G1 is the camera for you. Introduced Wednesday, the brightly-colored EX-G1 is more than just another flashy digital camera. Casio bills the EX-G1 as the world’s first waterproof and shockproof digital camera.
The EX-G1 is part of the company’s Exilim G line of “endurance” cameras aimed at athletic and adventuresome photographers. As such, the $300 EX-G1 is 0.78-inches thick and able to withstand drops from 7 feet. Casio also claims the camera can withstand being 10-feet underwater for up to a full hour.
Microsoft Wednesday introduced discounts for the Mac version of its flagship Office 2008. The offer reduces the price of the Home and Student Edition, Business Edition and Business Edition Upgrade between $20-$50.
South Korea regulators have given iPhone sales a green light in this gadget-hungry Asian nation. The move by the Korea Communications Commission clears the way for the country’s second-largest carrier to offer service plans for the popular handset.
While recent interest has been focused on China, Apple has long wanted into the South Korean market, where young tech-saavy consumers might flock to the iconic cell phone. South Korea’s government, however, has had long-standing barriers to foreign competition with home-grown handset makers, such as Samsung and LG Electronics, the world’s second and third-largest cell phone makers. Reports say 93 percent of South Koreans subscribe to cell phone services.
The hunt is on for a new codename for Mac OS X 10.7
Just months after releasing its latest Mac OS X 10.6 operating system, Apple began work on its successor, 10.7, according to reports. Indications of a new build number in an OS component and a new error message lead some to believe the Cupertino, Calif. company has begun development.
A database for Mac OS X’s boot software “launchd” mentions “11A47,” causing some to feel the Cupertino, Calif. company is at work on a new version of its operating system. MacRumors, which first reported on the hints, suggested the “11A” portion means Apple is working on an early version of the OS. The “47″ portion indicates the company has been working on the new version “for at least the last month or two.”
Russell Davies does lots of things that are interesting, including, um, Interesting and Newspaper Club and a bunch of other stuff, but the other week he did a talk at the Playful event in London, culminating in this fabulous mock-up of an augmented reality game using an iPhone.
The idea is genius: you start playing the game with one tap, and after that you don’t have to look at the device at all. You walk around with your earphones in, and it alerts you with sounds when there’s stuff to interact with. This video explains it better:
For those of you reading this on a Mac IIvi, I have excellent news for you: Twitter is finally available for Macintosh System 6. And 7. And 8. And even 9, for those of you mad cats who have installed a PowerPC upgrade card.
It’s called Grackle68k, and it’s awesome. First, it allows you to post things to Twitter. Second, it allows you to learn that your post has gone through successfully. Genius.
Uh, oh. Looks like there’s trouble in Android land. The rapid growth of Google’s smartphone OS is causing developers conniptions as they struggle to support multiple versions of the OS and different hardware configurations. With more than a dozen Android phones on the market, all the different configurations are leading to serious platform fragmentation, Wired.com reports:
“A slew of problems have made managing Android apps a “nightmare,” they say, including three versions of the OS (Android 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0), custom firmware on many phones, and hardware differences between different models.”
For users, it means buggy apps that sometimes won’t work on their hardware at all. One developer tells Wired.com that instead of concentrating on adding new features, he spends all his time making sure his apps work on all the different hardware and software configurations.
Looks like Google might be wandering into Microsoft territory. Microsoft had exactly the same problem with it’s now-discontinued “Plays For Sure” music-player platform, which became known as “Plays For Shit” because of the difficulty supporting multiple hardware and software configurations.
Just goes to show that there’s distinct advantages over owning both the hardware and the software, like Apple. Apple has released just three different hardware versions of the iPhone, and does a pretty good job of making sure most iPhone owners are running the latest software. In addition, the tightly-controlled App Store ensures a high-level of software compatibility. Even Android developers say its a good idea, according to Wired.com:
For developers, Apple’s autocratic ways may be frustrating, but they can pay off.
“Apple maintains an iron grip on what they do and there’s an advantage to that,” says Kelly Schrock, owner of Fognl, which has three apps on the Android market. “IPhone developers don’t have to worry about fragmentation and creating apps for the iPhone is much easier.”
The app looks as if it has the bells and whistles of its standalone Roadmate brethren, like turn-by-turn directions, highway lane guidance and voice guidance with spoken street names.
In fact, its siblings might be a little jealous as the iPhone version adds a pedestrian mode, in-app music control and direct navigation to contacts on your address book.
The icing on the cake is an iPhone car kit Magellan is releasing in December with a GPS receiver that improves accuracy over the iPhone’s, an amped speaker and Bluetooth capability
The app costs $79.99 and the car kit will set you back a further $129.99
Threadless, the online tshirt company best known for its community-designed apparel, is expanding into iPhone cases.
Threadless has teamed up with Griffin, the long-time maker of fine Apple accessories, to offer a pair of iPhone cases designed by members of its community.
The two limited-edition cases — Clouds within the Thunder by Joe Van Wetering; and Birds of a Feather by Ross Zietz — are both available now at Apple Stores for $34.99.
No word though on whether Threadless is going to open up iPhone case design to the masses. I’ve put in a call to Griffin PR to find out, and will update here.
