Anything that the Apple and its fan club are irked with is the “Everything iDont, Droid Does” campaign by Verizone. Amongst all iPhone competitors the most strident campaigner has been the Motorola Droid. With such a charming relation and competition it would be surprising if an iPhone application named after Droid makes it through Apple’s approval policy. Would not it be?
image: BOSE QC15, noise reducing headphones
That’s definitely a good news for those who are having trouble with the noise around them. I have found it to be the most annoying thing if you want to listen to the songs with a low volume but the surrounding noise get mixed up and ruin the music. So, BOS QC15 has just come to a rescue.
QC15 distinguishes the noise with the actual sound you want to hear. So, you can hear people talking (Very low voice) while not listening to the traffic sound effectively. But, I would never use it for that purpose, by the way, since you seem like operating an airplane while wearing these giant headphones. However, in terms of listening to the music, it is no doubt a classic.
iPhone application developers has always been angry due to Apple’s strict policies defined by iPhone App Review staff. But, lately, Apple has project a different stance on the process of app approval by not making it a process rather than making the App store family friendly with the third party applications.
For the last few weeks, the debate was on for why the App store should exist, and Phil Schiller tried his best to convince the app developers on it. Steve Jobs intervening to approve a rejected app and Apple getting the New York Times project a more humane look at the company. Although these steps looks like more of an eye wash than anything else, but recent development at Apple demonstrates that there has been a visible change in the App store policies.
On the AppleInsider it is written about an app called iSimulate which had violated many app development rules and still it was accepted. However, Apple has warned the developers (through email) of the app that although the update has not been rejected, still the developers have to fix the violation until their next update. The email read:
Close on the heels of the iPhone getting its first video calling service from Fring comes another app that enables live video streaming between iPhones.
Video calling service is next in line from apple right now but first there is something else, another application that has enabled live video streaming between iPhones.
Pointy heads Software are the first ones to develop Live Video Streaming application for iPhone called ‘Knocking Live Video’. They are the first ones to get their application approved even after using private APIs.
Apples application approval policy is against the use of private API by the application developers, if you may remember. Apple even introduced an additional layer of automation to make sure that the applications using API are sieved. An interesting story lies behind the approval of Knocking Live Video. Initially this application too was rejected on the same grounds sometime around October because of the same reasons but the co-founder of Pointy Heads was determined to take it to the Apple’s application store. He wrote a fervent email to the man incharge, Steve Jobs. He writes,
News that has been around in the recent past is regarding application approval policies of Apple. Apple has been inconsistent and rigid in its policy making regarding its applications and has faced the biggest opposition from the developer community. The issue came into light once again after leading developer of Facebook application for iPhone quit to highlight the problem with Apple’s policies.
During an interview with Business Week, Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing at Apple reasoned why the process to review the applications must exist. His main concern is to make the application store a family friendly place from where the entire family may download known well trusted applications which are safe and abide by the laws and morals of the society. In his words,
"You and your family and friends can download applications from the store, and for the most part they do what you’d expect, and they get onto your phone, and you get billed appropriately, and it all just works. There have been applications submitted for approval that will steal personal data, or which are intended to help the user break the law, or which contain inappropriate content"
Not so long ago the thought of keeping all your data at one place and be able to take it along seemed difficult. Backups of all your office files, pictures of your one week family holiday and your entire music collection traveling with you all the time sounded impossible.
But as it is said nothing is impossible. It took decades to develop but fortunately today we can keep all our data with us in a small memory storing devise.
Even now it is difficult to keep large amounts of high definition or huge amounts of data on a single chip called the “Flash”. Where you are reading this article, around the world work is being done to overcome this problem and our dreams to keep extremely heavy data on a single chip can come true.
To accomplish this few hurdles have to be covered by the technology developers.
A new modified version of a normal LCD screen has been developed that can see the world in front of it in 3D, thus giving the viewer the power the control the options/objects on screen without actually touching it or using a mouse a conventional remote control. More over it can also work as a 3D scanner.
The technology has been developed by an Indian scientist Ramesh Raskar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology media Lab. He states that “This is the level of interaction that nobody has ever been able to do before.” He along with his colleagues presented a prototype 20” screen at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. They call it the Dubbed Bi-Directional Screen or simply Dubbed BiDi.
A 3D image will be made on the screen if an object is spinned in front of it. BiDi Screen is an example of a new type of I/O device that possesses the ability to both capture images and display them. BiDi screen is capable of capturing both touch and off-screen gestures through the use of embedded optical sensors.
|
|
|
image: Floating Apartments in Holland
As we know, Holland is a country whose 27% of the area and ,amazingly enough, about 60% of the population lives below the sea level. Truly speaking, water is something which brought wealth to this country but at the same time it is a threat to the population since they face difficulties of flooding. Now, they have a good solution to their problem — floating apartments. Yes, WaterStudio is planning to built floating apartments in Holland.
The interesting fact is that these apartments will be 25% more energy efficient as compared to traditional apartments as they will be using surrounding water as a coolant. Interesting! right? We can hope they will be able to solve the problem of ever-rising tides, ideas save this world!
Here are a few snaps of what we can expect out of this seemingly crazy idea!
images: Floating apartments in Holland
Write an email to the author of this post at adnan@techskipper.com
image: Facebook Gadget for your desktop
Sometimes my friends complain that I don’t even have time to reply them on a facebook. Yes, that’s true to some extent because about two months ago I was in mess since I had a lot of tasks to do and no time, you can say mismanagement. So, I decided to cut the time from facebook, twitter and all that stuff on internet. It wasn’t long when I started losing friends.
But now again I am pretty much active all over again and this has been made possible with the Facebook gadget where you receive all the updates right on your desktop. But remember, it’s a creepy stuff and take my advice on that, use it efficiently to save your time not to intrude your work.
The download link to gadget is provided at the end of this article. After you install the gadget, right click on your desktop and choose “Gadgets”.
image: Right click on your desktop to open up the installed gadgets
In the coming screen, double click the “fVgadget” and that’s all. You will be able to see the gadget on your desktop. Login to your account and enjoy!
Write an email to the author of this post at adnan@techskipper.com
image: Photojojo’s Video Glasses
Photojojo has recently released glasses which allow you to record with a little camera embedded in the bridge of the spectacles. The spectacles record a video having a resolution of 320×240, that’s pretty much when saving in 3GP format. The video recording starts with just a click of a button on the spectacles.
The video is recorded at 25fps (frames per second) and is recorded in a 2GB built-in RAM which is enough to store a video lasting 5 hours. Interesting enough, the rechargeable battery also lasts for about 5 hours. So, you can just turn on the camera and forget about it!
If you are too lazy to transfer your videos to computer memory, then you will have to buy an additional memory since these glasses have a MicroSD slot for additional memory. Most critics would be saying, the additional memory will extend the video length but that’s only possible if you recharge in the middle, that’s not pretty cool stuff for me, so I would be going for a 5 hours movie only!
Write an email to the author of this post at adnan@techskipper.com
