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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Developer Achieves iPhone-to-iPhone Connection Over Bluetooth

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iPhone developer Ralf Ackermann has achieved a working device-to-device Bluetooth solution, according to a report at ArsTechnica.

Building on work developed by Matthias Ringwald, who has put together a user space bluetooth stack, Ackerman has built external adapters that plug into the iPhone’s connector port, accessing the phone’s bluetooth stack in a way that could possibly even comply with the standard iPhone SDK, according to developer/blogger Erica Sadun.

With such capability developers could theoretically build games and utilities that allow phones to transfer data without having to be on the same WiFi network or connect to a server as an intermediary. Users could transfer photos, play chess against each other, shoot over a vcard, and more, using software that could be sold on App Store.

While the iPhone ships with Bluetooth capabilities, they are a limited subset of its normal features. You cannot, for example, connect your Mac to your iPhone and transfer data files.

Don’t hold your breath for Apple to take Ackerman’s lead in this arena, but this, as Sadun notes, is pretty big news and a great step forward for the effort to make iPhones communicate directly with each other.

Via ArsTechnica

About the author

Lonnie Lazar

Lonnie Lazar is a writer, musician, web designer attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

Email the author | Read more posts by Lonnie Lazar.

2 comments

    That photo is of two first generation iPod touches….

    Yes iPod touch and not iPhone…

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