I have been thinking about the recent release of iPhone OS 3.1 Beta 3 to the iPhone development community and the fact that there is now the framework and APIs for “augmented reality” applications available for programmers. What are “augmented reality” apps? Basically, applications that use the iPhone’s camera as well as GPS, compass and accelerometer to produce visual interactivity based on what the camera “sees.” What that means is you could point your iPhone at a city street, for example, and within your iPhone’s display, you would see store information or business that are in a building that the phone is “looking at.”
Recently, there has been a lot of hype around a New York Subway app called “Nearest Tube” by developer Acrossair. Their applications allows you to “look” around the various tunnels in the subway, and as you do so, you are given visual indicators as to where certain street exits are or train tube entrances. If you take a look at the video below, you can get a feel for what it is all about.
This opening of these APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) means that developers now can essentially look beyond what is simply contained within the device. The camera becomes an eye to the outside world.
So what will become of this? That really depends on how open Apple will be and how much of the underlying infrastructure will be available for developers to interact with…there are some fantastic possibilities. Let’s work through the logic here: [click to continue…]
I was originally going to have the title of this review be “Hands On with the Dell Adamo 13” but I realized that laptops, notebooks and netbooks are really a dime a dozen these days. While the innards of a laptop can be very similar, what I think sets many laptops apart are their design, functionality and aesthetics. There are very few laptops that truly excel in these points, I think that Apple and Sony are ones to look at as good examples.
Then I laid my hands, I mean eyes, on the Dell Adamo. Now Dell is part of that list.
So, to get this out of the way first, I’m not going to write a complex and detailed review of the technology that is under the hood or the device’s performance. There are plenty of those reviews out there and they will probably do a much better job at it. Nor am I going to write a post on how to change the Adamo into a Hackintosh nor install other flavors of Linux on it (to replace Vista that came installed). I definitely think that a Windows 7 upgrade would be in order though. Windows XP would simply not have good enough eye-candy to warrant running it (while it probably would perform better than Windows Vista).
The nice thing about cell phones and MP3 players these days is that they hold a ton of music and they are extremely portable and functional. But the problem is, most players either don’t have a speaker or if they do, it is only good for a conference call now and then and not really for playing your music or video library.
This all changes with the ultra-portable Altec Lansing Orbit MP3 Speaker (the full name is the iM-237 Orbit Ultrapersonal Speaker). I recently received a, well I can’t say pair since it is a single speaker unit, of these for review from a PR firm and had very low expectations. I mean how good could a tiny battery-powered speaker actually be. To my surprise, the Orbit was actually quite good given its compact size.
Slightly smaller in circumference than a CD-Rom disk and no taller than a couple of inches, the Orbit does manage to pack quite a little punch in its single-speaker design. The package comes with the speaker and a handy cases which makes for easy portability. There is an integrated headphone plug that curls up on the underside when transporting.
If you are like me, you have your wireless router tucked away in a closet, at the top of a shelf or under a desk somewhere. I have one of mine on top of a kitchen hutch because it’s in the center of the house, high up (for better reception) and close to the DSL connection. The other is tucked under my desk. I have placed my wireless routers where they functionally would be better. We don’t think of routers as display pieces, at least I didn’t until Belkin sent me a N1 Vision Wireless router for review.
We all know the saying “Form Follows Function” – essentially that people should worry about how something works before what it looks like. In this case, Belkin, after building a high-speed, functional draft-N router, kept going and wrapped it in a design worthy of front and center placement, not on the top shelf of bookcase somewhere. It looks right at home being at eye-level on a bookcase:
The N1 Vision is a solid entrant in the cluttered wifi router market. It has many of the features required of any wireless router. There are a few notable features which should be called out as they differentiate this router from others in the pack. For one, it has an innovated front panel display that can show a variety of helpful information including connection and bandwidth speeds, what devices are connected, download meters, date and time as well as a handy configuration area where you can set up guest access quickly and easily. Another unique feature is the fact that the user does not need a CD to get the router configured. Belkin calls it the “Plug-and-Play CD-less setup”. Lastly, the distinct upright display allows for easy placement on smaller shelves or thin spaces.
The N1 Vision specification are fairly typical for draft N routers. Below are the specs: [click to continue…]
How many times have you had a bad customer service experience? More than 50% of the time? I will bet that you think that it’s much higher than that even. Most of us tend to remember poor customer service experiences than good ones. It’s easier to gripe and complain about someone NOT doing something to [...]
I am a hard-core iPhone data user. My AT&T account shows that I have downloaded 5.4 GB and uploaded 1.1 GB worth of data since I received my first iPhone. I suck through batteries like there is no tomorrow, so much so that I actually had to return my first iPhone because the battery just [...]
I have been playing around quite a bit with my new iPhone 3GS and the apps and firmware therein. I can’t say enough positive things about the release so I wanted to write about a few items that people might not know about because they are buried away or not immediately apparent. I’m sure there [...]
Avid technologist, blogger, social media pundit (@HighTechDad on Twitter), loving husband and father of 3 beautiful girls. I write about technology, consumer electronics, gadgets, software, hardware, parenting "hacks," and other tips & tricks. I'm a fan of all technology that is new, exciting and valuable. See my About page for more details.
Professionally, I'm the Technology Evangelist for GoGrid, the #1 pure-play Cloud Computing Infrastructure hosting provider in the world where I write regularly about Cloud Computing on the GoGrid blog.
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