Impact of ‘iSlate’ Could Rival iPhone

By ALICE RAWSTHORN

Published: January 3, 2010

LONDON — You don’t need a crystal ball, seer stone, scrying pool or any other spooky stuff to guess what one of the most talked-about design projects of 2010 will be. The tech blogs have been buzzing about it for months. It’s the iSlate, iTablet, iProd, Magic Slate, or whatever else Apple finally decides to call its new tablet computer.

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Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple, held the iPhone in San Francisco in 2007.

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Fuseproject

One Laptop Per Child showed how cute a small version of the laptop could be when it unveiled the first prototype of its XO machine in 2005. Pictured is the latest prototype, the XO-3.

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Nissan Leaf’s digital meter. The zero-emissions vehicle is slated for launch in 2010.

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VitraHaus, a model modern house by the architects Herzog & de Meuron, which is slated to open at Vitra’s headquarters in Weil am Rhein, Germany in 2010.

We’ve been here before: three years ago, to be exact. The drill was the same. Months of frenzied blogging culminated in ecstatic cheers on Jan. 9, 2007, when Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, brandished a prototype iPhone before an adoring audience of Apple nuts at a convention in San Francisco.
What’s happened since? Not only has Apple sold tens of millions of iPhones, it has pulled off a stunningly successful exercise in design democracy whereby thousands of D.I.Y. designers have developed applications, or programs, for them. Some 100,000 “apps” have been invented, and more than two billion downloaded from Apple’s App Store. What’s almost more impressive is that Apple has achieved this despite its own history — and instincts — as the consummate corporate control freak.
Mr. Jobs is expected to show off the iSlate (as we’ll call it, if only because that’s the latest rumor) in San Francisco later this month. If the bloggers are right, it will hit the stores in March. At the risk of party-pooping, we should note that not every new Apple product has been a hit. Remember the Newton PDA? Or the G4 Cube computer? But if the iSlate is another of the company’s successes, it promises to have as much impact as the iPhone, if not more.
It’s that tantalizing possibility of “more” that puts it on the top of the design agenda for 2010. There are other contenders, despite the recession. The automotive industry will discover whether its investment in electric cars has paid off when the Nissan LEAF and other zero-emissions vehicles go on sale. Vitra, the Swiss furniture group, will experiment with new ways of designing the home in the VitraHaus, a model modern house built by the architects Herzog & de Meuron at Vitra’s headquarters in Weil am Rhein, Germany. And a proposal to help consumers monitor their environmental impact by introducing a global system of identifying the carbon and water footprints of products and their packaging is to be discussed at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, later this month.
Even so, the iSlate is particularly interesting, not only because of that promise of “more,” but because it sums up so much of what’s happening in design now.
The iSlate would probably be successful simply by dint of being Apple’s first tablet computer. Ever since the non-profit organization One Laptop Per Child showed how cute a small version of the laptop could be when it unveiled the first prototype of its XO machine in 2005, tablet computers have been one of the fastest growing areas of the computer market. That wasn’t OLPC’s intention. Fuseproject, the San Francisco design group that develops its hardware, reduced the computer’s size in the hope of making it cheap enough for developing countries to buy for their schools. Spawning a profitable new product category for the I.T. industry wasn’t part of the idealistic agenda.
Accidental though it was, consumers have leapt at the chance to buy computers that are not only smaller than laptops, but lighter and cheaper too. Apple may be a late entrant to the market, but there is no reason to believe that its designers won’t be able to replicate their past success at battling against the laws of physics to produce a tablet that’s sleeker, lighter and generally hotter than anyone else’s, so much so that people will be willing to pay more for it.
The outcome of that battle will be even more important when it comes to the “more” element of the iSlate. Like many new digital devices, it will combine several products in one. An extreme example is the iPhone. It fulfills the functions of dozens of products including a watch, diary, alarm clock, barometer, satellite navigation system, Internet browser, dictionary, DVD player and MP3 player as well as a phone, and that’s before we come on to those 100,000 apps. The iSlate will do lots of that stuff too, as well as basic computing. Critically it will also act as an electronic reader, like Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader.
Many people like their e-readers (not least because they save them from having to haul around books, newspapers and magazines) but I’ve yet to meet anyone who loves them. That’s the key. If a really great e-reader appeared, the market would explode. The e-reader is waiting for a killer product, just as the MP3 player was before Apple’s iPod. Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player, it made such a sexy one that many more people wanted to buy it. That’s what it is promising to do again.
If it comes through, demand for electronic books, newspapers and magazines should soar. This will create an exciting design challenge for their publishers to develop seductive ways of presenting their content on e-readers. In theory, e-newspapers could combine the convenience of the printed product with the dynamism of their Web sites. And e-magazines should be more visually compelling with higher resolution images than their Web versions. As well as helping publishers to tackle the thorny problem of how to make money from the Internet, it could enable them to create dazzling new e-media.
That’s why an important element of the iSlate will be another contemporary design essential — a great service design concept. For the iPod, that’s the iTunes music store, and for the iPhone, the App Store. The iSlate’s equivalent will be a fun, simple system with which we can download e-content.
There is, of course, another increasingly important area of design where Apple has fared less well — sustainability. Will it do better with the iSlate? Hopefully we’ll find out soon.


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Google Nexus Offers Little Competition to Apple iPhone

Whether the marketplace is ready or not, the Big Guns in consumer electronics are about to make their move at the dawn of the New Year.

Screenshots sent to Gizmodo from an anonymous source reveal the possible price and tariff details of the Nexus One Google phone, along with some extra hardware details.

(Courtesy Gizmodo.com)

Next Tuesday, Google is expected to announce its long-rumored Nexus One smartphone. It is undoubtedly designed to run the Google Android operating system for cellphones, which the search giant introduced more than a year ago. Android was envisioned as a major breakthrough in cellphones because it offered an "open" operating system – i.e., one that other companies could use and design applications for. At the time, this strategy was compared to that of Microsoft Windows, which broke the market hegemony of Apple's decidedly non-open OS in the mid-1980s and within a decade, turned Apple into a niche company. This time around, the new Android phones were supposed to break the hegemony of the Apple iPhone.
So far, it hasn't quite worked out that way with Android. A number of cell phone companies – notably Motorola, HTC, and Samsung – have adopted Android and seen impressive sales. However, this time around Apple, though still exhibiting much of its old "closed" and proprietary ways, has learned some important lessons over the last 20 years.
For one thing, Apple understands, better perhaps than any company on the planet, the importance of being not only perpetually innovative – but with a vast and loyal army of Apple fanatics behind it – to regularly take category-busting risks. Thus, the amazing run, beginning a decade ago, of the iMac, MacBook, iPod and iPhone. These landmark (and in the case of the iPod, historic) products not only were ambitious in their goals and beautifully designed, but they also exhibited multiple features that were so innovative that they forced the competition to spend years catching up – and by then, Apple had already moved on to the next breakthrough.
Military theorists like to say that the goal of combat is to get inside your opponent's "decision horizon" – that is, to move so quickly that the enemy can't respond in time before you have moved on to the next victory. That's exactly what Apple, at its best, has done to the consumer electronics world … and in the process has left competitors reeling, loyal customers thrilled, and not least, Apple regaining its lost market share and making its shareholders wealthy.

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The Apple iPhone is a classic example of that. It has taken nearly two years for Apple's competitors to field products that are even close to the iPhone; to identify weaknesses in the device (such as the lack of a real keyboard for texters, its commitment to AT&T as service provider) and respond. Apple, meanwhile, has used that time to continuously improve the iPhone – the result being that the company now dominates the smartphone world to a degree Apple hasn't enjoyed since the early years of the Macintosh.

If that was the sum of Apple's advantage, the door might be wide open for Google and the rest to pull a Windows Redux strategy. Apple, after all, is still all about controlling the operating system and suing anyone who tries to copy it. This would seem to open the door for yet another Open Systems assault, pulling together the entire intellectual capital of the entire rest of the phone industry to simply overwhelm Apple's defenses.
But, as I said, even if Apple hasn't reformed its bad old ways, it has grown a whole lot wiser. And, in one of the most brilliant strategic moves in its history, the company opened the door more than a year ago to outside developers to create their own proprietary application programs for the iPhone (and iPod Touch) to be sold through the Apple Store. Here, too, serendipity has been Apple's friend: economic downturns are always times for a burst of entrepreneurial energy as the unemployed and underemployed use the downtime to start new enterprises and then give them a running start. But this crash has been unique in high tech history not only for its depth and duration, but also because, for the first, time, the venture capital industry (largely because of government regulation) is paralyzed and little investment money is available.
This entrepreneurial energy needs to go somewhere … and where much of it has headed is toward the design of iPhone apps. The sheer number of these apps that have been created in just 18 months is absolutely mind-boggling: more than 100,000 different programs, from guitar tuners to restaurant ratings to burp generators, and everything else you can imagine. It is one of the greatest outpourings of small, independent entrepreneurship in American business history, and all supported by the Apple Store. There have been more than 1 billion iPhone app downloads.


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2010's Top Security Threats: Facebook, Twitter, and iPhone Apps

2010 will see increasing security threats to users of social networking and media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, a security vendor predicted.

"In 2009 we saw increased attacks on websites, exploit cocktails thrown at unsuspecting users, infrastructure failure via natural and unnatural causes, and 'friendly fire' become a larger problem than ever."

"With Facebook reaching more than 350 million users, we expect that 2010 will take these trends to new heights," security vendor McAfee said in its "2010 Threat Predictions" report (PDF).

"Malware authors love following the social networking buzz and hot spots of activity; that will continue in 2010."

The report warns that as Google and other providers crack down on "search engine poisoning", Twitter and similar services will increase in appeal for such purposes.

Twitter has been a major driver in the use of abbreviated URL services, such as bit.ly and tinyurl.com.

Adobe to surpass Office is biggest hacker target

McAfee suggests that these services make it easier than ever to mask the URLs that users are asked to click.

"This trick will play a more predominant role in 2010; it's the perfect avenue to direct users to websites that they would normally be wary about visiting," states the report written by Dmitri Alperovitch, Toralv Dirro, Paula Greve, Rahul Kashyap, David Marcus, Sam Masiello, Franois Paget, and Craig Schmugar of McAfee Labs.

"As users expectations of their Web 2.0 services evolve, we expect to see many rogue services set up with the hidden purpose of capturing credentials and data."

The phenomenal success of Apple's iPhone is driven in large part by the diversity of applications available to it.

Apple iPhone 3GS review

The audience is there: Facebook boasts more than 350,000 active applications and Apple's App Store recently reached the 100,000 mark.

"Users blindly distribute applications; with the widespread availability of stolen credentials it could become very easy to launch and share these rogue apps across a wide population."

"Wherever and whenever a trusted mainstream website distributes or promotes third-party content, attackers seek to abuse the trust relationship established between the site and their users."

"Users often let down their guard when clicking hyperlinks sent from their friends, or when installing applications offered by well-known sites," warn the report writers.

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When Even Your Phone Tells You You're Drunk, It's Time to Call a Taxi

DENVER -- Heather Poli wasn't quite sure how to react when her friend's cellphone informed her she was drunk.

The 27-year-old ad-agency worker had been at a bar here with her buddies. It was late; she was about to catch a ride home. Then a friend pulled out an iPhone, and the gang took turns entering their weights and what they had imbibed into an app called R-U-Buzzed?

Bing! Up popped estimates of their blood-alcohol content. Ms. Poli's designated driver turned out to be hammered. Ms. Poli wanted to take the wheel herself, but to her indignation, the phone told her no: "I got the big red 'Don't even think about driving' result." Her hangover the next day confirmed the phone's assessment, she says ruefully. "But at the time, it was very surprising." Still, she obeyed the phone and called a cab.

State officials hope tens of thousands of her peers will follow suit tonight.

A new iPhone app called R-U-Buzzed aims to help you decide if you're too drunk to drive. Neil Hickey reports.

New Year's Eve may mean champagne toasts and midnight kisses to many Americans, but to law enforcement, it means trouble and, too often, tragedy. The nation records an average of 54 alcohol-related traffic fatalities on New Year's Day. The rest of the year, the average daily toll is 36, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The problem is especially acute among younger drivers. Federal statistics show that 65% of drunk drivers involved in fatal crashes last year were 21 to 34 years old. An additional 17% were under the legal drinking age of 21.

These are precisely the age groups least likely to tune into the radio spots, billboards and newspaper ads traditionally used to warn about the dangers of driving while impaired.

So state officials are trying new -- and, they hope, hip -- ways to reach out to the Twitter-iPhone-Facebook generation. Some safe-driving advocates fear the new strategies, often lighthearted in tone, will undermine the stern message that has been the gold-standard for years: Don't ever drink and drive.

But state officials say they have to meet their target audience on its own turf.

In the fall, Washington state's Traffic Safety Commission spent $50,000 to embed virtual billboards in online videogames. The ads show cuffed hands and the warning, "Drive Hammered, Get Nailed."

Maryland's highway agency posted a YouTube video of heart-rending testimony from relatives whose loved ones were killed by drunk drivers. A Facebook page launched last week by California's Office of Traffic Safety is sponsoring a contest for the best nonalcoholic "mocktail." The winner gets a two-night hotel getaway.

In New York, the Governor's Traffic Safety Committee has been taking to concerts and football games a drunk-driving simulator and goggles that mimic various levels of intoxication. "The kids love it, especially the goggles," says Ken Brown, a spokesman. "It's, 'Look at Johnny, he can't walk straight, hee, hee, hee.' But it gets the point across."

In Colorado, the state Department of Transportation hosts an interactive Web site that shows partygoers where to park their cars safely overnight and points them to bars that hand out vouchers for free taxi rides.

But officials were looking for something more dynamic. When their marketing team, Webb PR, suggested an iPhone buzz-o-meter, they bit, spending $8,000 to develop the program.

In the month since its debut, the free app -- which is designed to look like a slot machine -- has been downloaded nearly 40,000 times from Apple's online store, with a noticeable spike in traffic on Christmas Day.

The calculator comes with a disclaimer that it isn't definitive: Impairment can vary greatly depending on how much drinkers have eaten, whether they are on medication and how much sleep they have had.

Still, based on the user's input of weight, gender, hours drinking and a tally of beer, wine and liquor consumed, the calculator spits out a blood-alcohol content number that looks very precise -- for example, 0.058%. It's accompanied by a color-coded message: "No hangover expected," printed in sober gray; "You're buzzed!" in yellow; or, in cautionary red: "Don't even think about it!...Designate a sober driver."

In major Colorado cities, an added feature uses GPS technology to let the user call a cab with a tap of the phone.

Pocket breath-analysis devices, some so small they fit on keychains, have been sold for some time, for as little as $15, though experts warn that they aren't always accurate. There are also several online blood-alcohol calculators. Colorado officials hope that bringing the issue to the iPhone will make it even easier -- and more socially acceptable -- for young adults to keep tabs on their intoxication.

But some have found another use: "It could definitely become a drinking game," says Brad Brown, a 23-year-old bank teller.

Mr. Brown pulled out the app at a recent party and started punching in each drink as he downed it: One shot of vodka. Two. Three. A mixed drink. A beer. It became a challenge, he says, to watch the blood-alcohol content climb and see when he could tip the color bar from gray to yellow to red. He didn't drive home that night, but he credits his common sense, not the app. "It's just a cool thing to mess around with," he says. "It gives you another excuse to drink."

That is worrisome to safe-driving advocates. Another concern: Users might trust their phones to pronounce them fit to drive when they really aren't. A blood alcohol content of 0.058% is below the legal limit of 0.08% but can still slow reaction time and blur judgment.

Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, says the app may undermine her group's message that the safest approach is never to drive after drinking. "Reaching young people is a great idea," she says -- but depending on a phone to judge intoxication isn't.

Then there is the question of whether revelers will accurately recall and input their alcohol consumption. Or whether they will remember to consult their phones. Tim Kilgannon, who owns a Denver bar called the Blake Street Vault, has doubts. "If someone's that messed up, they're never going to pull out an app," he says.

Social networking is also a double-edged sword: Drivers in some areas have begun using Twitter, text messages and iPhone apps to broadcast the locations of sobriety checkpoints, allowing those who have been drinking to choose another route.

For all its shortcomings, the new technology does at least raise awareness of drunk driving, says Christy Kruzick, a 29-year-old TV producer in Denver.

"When you're out at a bar, no one wants to talk about it," Ms. Kruzick says "It's too serious. You don't want to bring the party down."

Yet when she pulled out the iPhone app at a bar the other night, her friends all clamored to take a turn -- and the subject was suddenly very much on the table.

Ms. Poli, who was taken aback when her friend's phone pronounced her drunk, sees another advantage: She's more apt to listen to her phone, she says, than to a friend who tries to take away her keys. The app "felt very solid and mathematical and trustworthy," Ms. Poli says. "And nonjudgmental."

Write to Stephanie Simon at stephanie.simon@wsj.com

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Apple Orders 10 Million Tablets? Sounds Fishy

Jeff Bertolucci, PC World

Jan 1, 2010 6:08 am

Today's Apple tablet rumor has an optimistic zing to it--and maybe that's a great way to close out a dreary 2009. According to a blog post by former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, Apple plans to produce nearly 10 million tablets in the still-unannounced product's first year. Lee worked for Apple more than ten years ago and left Google earlier this year, according to published reports.

That figure--10 million--seems awfully high for a consumer product that's charting unknown territory. The tablet (or iSlate or iPad, if you prefer) would target an untapped market, if rumors of the device's form and functionality are true. True, a few tablet-style browser/media players are either already on the market or are arriving shortly, but none has garnered anywhere near the attention of the Apple tablet.

I did some checking at Apple's site to see what sales figures were like for the iPhone in its first year. Here's the breakdown:

Q3 2007: 270,000 units

Q4 2007: 1,119,000

Q1 2008: 2,315,000

Q2 2008: 1,703,000

Add up the quarterly numbers, and Apple sold just over 5.4 million iPhones in the handset's first year. (I also tried to get first-year numbers for the iPod, which launched in November 2001, but Apple's financial reports didn't break down iPod sales back then.)

If Lee's blog post is to be believed, Apple plans to sell nearly twice as many tablets as it did iPhones in the product's first year.

Call me a pessimist, but that's hard to believe. Remember, the iPhone was entering a well-established cell phone market when it debuted in 2007. People had used cell phones for years. They liked cell phones and understood their value. Apple's pitch back then: The iPhone is better than any other cell phone on the market. Millions of customers agreed, and the rest is history.

The tablet? Well, that's a much harder sell. The iSlate is sort of a big iPod, but not really. It performs a lot of notebook-like functions, but it's not really a notebook either.

My point is that Apple will need to educate its target market. And that's why I seriously doubt the company expects to move 10 million tablets within a year.

Then again, Apple has proven the pundits wrong before. What do you think?

Contact Jeff Bertolucci via Twitter (@jbertolucci ) or at jbertolucci.blogspot.com.

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To beat Apple, RIM must stop favoring AT&T

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10080181-62.html

I was checking out the Gizmodo review of the new BlackBerry Curve 8900 (formerly Javelin) and wondering why Research In Motion insists on putting the majority its new devices into the clutches of AT&T, the exclusive iPhoneprovider, first.

RIM recently announced an application store, as well as the new Storm, which is the BlackBerry rival of Apple's smartphone, and plans to soon release this Curve 8900. The products (and soon services) have never been better, and yet it would seem logical to use one of the carriers that doesn't have the iPhone as the point of entry.

Wouldn't it make more sense to launch the majority of devices on Verizon Wireless or Sprint, where there is no iPhone competition? Or at a minimum create some exclusivity like AT&T has with the iPhone?

Verizon is getting the Blackberry Storm first, but that's still not enough. Network issues (GSM, CDMA, etc.) can all be resolved if RIM wants them to be. This seems to be more of a marketing and product strategy issue than a technical one.

I suppose the argument is that in order to compete with the iPhone, BlackBerrys have to also be available from AT&T, but I'm not sure that such a strategy makes sense.

Anyway, Giz likes the new Curve, but the Bold still seems like a better device.

The Bold is more substantial, exuding "executive" to the Curve 8900's "middle manager," or "normal person." It's clearly more powerful, and has a bigger screen. The keyboards are way different, too--personally, I prefer the Bold's larger, squishier keys to the Curve's smaller, stiffer ones. But obviously, the biggest thing is 3G. The Bold has it; the Curve 8900 doesn't, and we missed it sorely.

Storm aside, the Bold will be on AT&T first. And users will be stuck with GSM as their only option (which I've found to be surprisingly bad in the US.) Verizon announced the BlackBerry Storm, with global 3G, to be launched this fall, there is no word on when it will actually land.

Meanwhile, the iPhone continues to get better, and people care less and less about switching to AT&T just so they can have the device. When was the last time someone switched to Verizon or Sprint to get a BlackBerry? I am sure the Storm will do well, but I doubt Verizon will get the iPhone uplift that AT&T saw in the last quarter.

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Konami Silent Hill and DDR for iPhone Launched

Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. today announced the release of Silent Hill: The Escape and DanceDanceRevolution S Lite, now available in North America for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Based on top-selling franchises, these titles have been re-designed to take full advantage of the iPhone’s capabilities, including the innovative Multi-Touch Interface and accelerometer.

"Konami Mobile is pleased to deliver some of our most beloved franchises to the iPhone while providing a range of gameplay depth that casual and hardcore gamers alike are sure to appreciate," said Anthony Borquez, Vice President of Konami Mobile and Online. "Whether players are looking for a nail-biting survival horror experience or some music and rhythm, our lineup of iPhone titles promises to appeal to all consumers."

Silent Hill: The Escape
Silent Hill: The Escape features original gameplay, detailed graphics and spine-chilling sound effects created specifically for the iPhone. In this first-person, 3D shooter survival horror game, players navigate through various levels from an abandoned hospital to a cold subway with a dull flashlight while fighting off monsters and faceless nurses. The battery of the flashlight slowly dies throughout the game, limiting the player’s vision as they search for a key to escape the monster-infested labyrinth. Players also carry a gun for protection to ward off the trail of chasing monsters. Taking full advantage of the iPhone’s capabilities, players must employ the tilt sensor and skillfully tap the bullets to reload the revolver. Silent Hill: The Escape is available for $7.99 from the Apple App Store.

DanceDanceRevolution S Lite
The worldwide sensation that started the dance game craze doesn’t miss a beat on the iPhone. DanceDanceRevolution S Lite is the first installment in the popular videogame franchise designed exclusively for the iPhone and iPod Touch. In this addictive music rhythm game,  players tap the arrows on the control pad as they appear on the screen. Featuring 3D characters and simple controls, DanceDanceRevolution S Lite provides an on-the-go DDR experience for iPhone gamers of all ages. DanceDanceRevolution S Lite is available for free download from the Apple App Store.

Silent Hill: The Escape and DanceDanceRevolution S Lite are now available from the Apple App Store on iPhone and iPod Touch.




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Apple explores auto iPhone audio

What if your iPhone could set its own volume?
Today, the US Patent & Tradmark Office published an Apple patent application for an intelligent sound sensor that would adjust a device's audio volume level in relation to the ambient sound in its environment.
Originally filed in July 2007, the application - prosaically entitled "Method and Apparatus for Using a Sound Sensor to Adjust the Audio Output for a Device" - mentions four specific types of devices that could benefit from the proposed sensor technology: a mobile phone, laptop computer, music player, and "automotive environments." But the system could just as well be used in desktop or tablet computers.
The sensor could, for example, turn up an iPhone's ring-tone volume in a noisy convention hall - or turn down the boot chime of a MacBook when it's midnight and your partner is asleep in the bed next to your desk.

Can you hear me now?

One goal, as stated in the application, is to "ameliorate[s] potentially-disruptive audio outputs." To guard against an eardrum-shattering boot chime the next time you reboot after cranking up volume on your iMac to listen to Slayer's Reign in Blood, the sensor system could kick in at boot time, "prior to powering on other portions of the device."
The sensor could determine an environment's minimum, peak, and average sound level; frequency and "characteristic" of the ambient sound; and keep track of "the elapsed time since a previous volume setting adjustment." It could also be smart enough to not be fooled by percussive bursts of sound, either in the environment or produced by the device itself when, for example, it's playing your Afro-Cuban Percussion playlist.
As might be guessed, the sensor would be user-adjustable. You could dial in your preferred signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio or simply override the sensor, adjust the volume of your "device" - read iPhone, iPod, iMac, or MacBook - to your preferred S/N ratio. The sensor's brains would learn and remember your preferences for multiple environments.
You could also tell the sensor whether you want it to adapt to a preset S/N ratio or ignore the N and focus on the S. For example, you could enable the sensor to automatically detect whether you're using headphones and adjust the signal relative to the volume of the music you're listening to, ignoring the ambient sound. Or not. Your call.
In the event that other users of your device have different volume or S/N preferences, the sensor system could learn and remember each user's preferred settings.
Finally, the application states that the system could employ "a 'hacker-proof' sound-sensor digitization circuit" to prevent "malicious entities from downloading instructions that can take control of the sound sensor and record audio without the user's knowledge."
Or, for that matter, from someone overriding your preferences for a deafening April Fools' joke. ®


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Rumors flying that next iPhone will run on Qualcomm's chips

Qualcomm Chief Executive Paul Jacobs generally has the latest and greatest cell phones. But he's never owned the uber-trendy Apple iPhone.

“Not until they put a Qualcomm chip in it,” Jacobs said in a September interview.

It could soon be time for Jacobs' first Apple phone. The company is widely rumored to be planning an iPhone Nano, a smaller touch-screen version of its popular phone. One industry analyst says it will run on Qualcomm chips.

The weeks leading up to the annual Macworld conference are typically filled with rumors of expected product announcements. This year, there has been much speculation in advance of next week's Macworld that Apple will announce a smaller version of the iPhone, dubbed the iPhone Nano by bloggers.

Two iPhone accessory manufacturers, Vaja and Xskn, briefly listed protective cases for the iPhone Nano on their Web sites. Both companies have removed those listings.

Further fueling the rumors, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group analyst Craig Berger said in a report Wednesday that industry sources told him there will be a smaller version of the iPhone in the second half of the year and it will “apparently” run on a Qualcomm chip.

Qualcomm declined to comment, but industry observers say there's no question that Qualcomm would love to add Apple to its list of customers.

“It would be a big deal for them,” said semiconductor industry analyst Will Strauss of Arizona-based Forward Concepts. “I've heard nothing credible at this point from Qualcomm or others. But there's no doubt that Qualcomm has been knocking on (Apple CEO) Steve Jobs' door for a long time.”

Strauss said that in the competitive phone chip business, Qualcomm recently added Taiwanese manufacturer HTC as a customer, a deal that led to a Qualcomm chip inside the first Google Android phone. But Qualcomm lost some of its business with key customer Samsung when the company recently said it would buy some chips from competitors Broadcom and Infineon.

Business with Apple, which currently buys iPhone chips exclusively from Infineon, could help Qualcomm maintain its status as the top wireless chip maker.

Strauss questioned the logic of a Nano version of the touch-screen phone, which would not be as good at Web browsing with a smaller screen.

“The trend seems to be toward bigger screens, not smaller,” he said.

Others say it's likely that Apple will follow a game plan that worked with the iPod music player: multiple products aimed at various market segments.

“With the iPod, Apple had a fragmented approach, with different devices, features and price points,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy for Jupitermedia. “It makes sense that they would do the same thing with the iPhone.”

Apple fans tend to circulate a lot of rumors. Some hit the target. Some miss. The iPhone was rumored for years before it materialized, Gartenberg said.

On the other hand, first word on the supposed Nano leaked from manufacturers of cases, which lends credence to this year's rumor, he said.

“I'm not going to try and predict what they'll announce next week or next month,” Gartenberg said. “I do think it (a lower-priced iPhone) would make a lot of sense in the current economic slowdown.”

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The iPhone 3G Unlock Chart: Will Your Carrier Work?

David Murphy

Jan 3, 2009 5:31 pm

COMPLETE PCWORLD COVERAGE

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Apple iPhone 3G

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Online forums have been filling up with the cries of iPhone 3G users worldwide. You can thank The Dev Teamfor that. The group's latest iPhone hackery came in the form of an beta unlock tool for 3G devices two days ago. And while the instructions are easy enough to allow anyone to rip the AT&T exclusivity off of their mobile device--we've even given you a step-by-step guide for unlocking your iPhone 3G--not all has been well in the iPhone 3G world as of late. We've counted two iterations of the Dev Team's unlocking tool thus far, each promising to fix issues, errors, and does-not-work problems that have been plaguing would-be unlockers over the past 48 hours.
We've searched through countless forum posts, angry criticisms, and pleas for assistance to come up with the best methods for getting that unlock to stick. Before we give you the tips, you'll want to hit up The Yellowsn0w Report to check out the general status of the iPhone 3G unlocks and your carrier of choice. If a lot of people are striking out with your carrier, you might be out of luck. But if there's confusion--or better yet, a large number of successful unlocks--then you'll want to turn to one of the two following methods for getting the 0.9.4 beta unlock (as of this article's writing) to stick on your iPhone. These come courtesy of Lostfaith over at the Modmyi forums, who did a painstaking job of tracking down these seemingly arcane techniques:
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Method #1 (from Youtube's reda92)
1. Install Yellowsn0w thru Cydia, keep your Third-Party Sim in the iPhone
2. Reset Network Settings. 99% of your success rate will depend on this. (LF: you can find this in settings - general and to the bottom you'll see a "reset" menu in which you can find this)
3. Reboot your iPhone
4. Wait a little over a min.
5. Remove your SIM card and re-insert it back in
6. Wait 30 sec.
7. Turn on Airplane mode and wait 10 sec. (This is important as well)
8. Turn of Airplane mode, you should see "searching." Start smiling, as the T-Mobile carrier will start appearing.
9. Make a call!
Method #2 (from to Deli_gt at hackint0sh):

1. Recover your iPhone to the 2.2 firmware.
2. Quickpwn it with Installer and Cydia installed
3. When phone is ready, connect to your Wifi. Got to Cydia. When it opens, ignore the update for Cydia and install Mobileterminal and, after that, Sbsettings.
4. Turn off data roaming and 3G in Sbsettings!
5. Install Yellowsn0w from Installer.
6. Slide your finger from the top-left to right on the screen to get Sbsettings open
7. Press the power button in Sbsettings and from the popup restart button.
8. When the iPhone resets, wait for 20-30 seconds and open up Mobileterminal
9. Go to terminal and type:
yellowsn0w -c
yellowsn0w -q
airplane mode on
airplane mode off

If you get "open: Resource busy" just repeat the command where you got it from.
If the command "yellowsn0w -q" keeps loading for more than 20sec and your terminal looks similar to pics fromFlickr: deli_gt's Photostream then move to next step.
10. Go to Settings. Turn Airplane Mode on. Wait 10 secs and it should start searching for the network. It should find the network and everything should be ok.
If not, and the iPhone still shows the four dots for the signal, repeat steps 8 and 9 but first exit mobile terminal totally by holding down the home button until it closes. If that doesn't work either try the following:
Open up the Terminal and type:
yellowsn0w -c
yellowsn0w -r
yellowsn0w -q
airplane mode on
airplane mode off




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