Mobilious

“The Apple tablet is threatening to approach Yeti status, but here’s an indication that it will turn out to be real: The company has told some of its key developers to prepare versions of their iPhone apps that will work on a device with a larger screen, in time for an event next month.

Add this to the news that Apple has reportedly booked the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco “for several days in late January,” according to the Financial Times, and it’s pretty easy to connect the dots: It’s a very good bet we’re getting a look at this thing within the next 30 days or so.

A mobile industry source tells me developers have been told that while the mystery device will be shown off at the event, it won’t be ready to ship (Dan Frommer at Alley Insider relays the same news).

Announcing a product before launch used to be unusual for Apple (AAPL), but it’s a pattern the company has practiced more recently, notably with the first iPhone. And if Apple is indeed coming out with a new product that will require developers to rethink their approach, it makes a lot of sense.

I’ve asked Apple for comment, but I’m not holding my breath.

My source says Apple’s instructions to developers indicate that the tablet–or at least the thing the company is showing off next month–will be based on the iPhone OS and rely on the same iTunes Store that has moved two billion apps in a couple of years.

If so, it will mean that some people who have been guessing at what Apple is planning may need to go back to the drawing board.

Magazine publisher Condé Nast, for instance, has been working on a digitized version of Wired magazine that would run on Adobe (ADBE) software. But the iPhone’s OS doesn’t work with Adobe’s Flash platform, and if that holds true here, Condé Nast (and Adobe) is going to have to think of something else. Same goes for many Web video distributors who rely on Flash.

But first things first. Let’s take a look at this thing, whatever it is, and see what it actually can and cannot do before we get too far ahead of ourselves….”

This news was picked from AllThingsD.com

“Twitter creator Jack Dorsey Wednesday gave the first public demonstration of his hotly-anticipated latest venture — a device to allow credit card payments by cell phone — and revealed it would be given away for free.

Details of “Square” — a card reader which plugs into the headphone socket of most mobile devices — have been circulating on the Internet since it was announced earlier this month, but little has been known about how it works or who it was aimed at.

However, Dorsey — whose microblogging Web site has proved hugely popular but not hugely profitable since launching in March 2006 — gave no explanation on how he would make money from his new creation, beyond revealing there would be a per-transaction charity donation.

Square, a tiny cube about an inch in length, contains a magnetic strip reader that allows users to swipe and read credit cards, then deduct payment on or offline through a downloaded application that communicates with card issuers in the same way as retailer devices.

Customers then use their finger on the phone’s touch-recognition screen to sign their name to the transaction.

Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and chairman, says the device, scheduled for launch on iPhones and iPods in March 2010, was inspired partly by the “immediacy, approachability and transparency” of Twitter and by the global economic crisis which has exposed a need for a radical rethink of the financial sector.”

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“GOOGLE search is getting eyes and ears, moving beyond typed key words to let people scour the internet with mobile telephone cameras or spoken words in multiple languages.

Google has unveiled “Goggles” software that lets people search online using pictures taken with cameras in mobile phones based on its Android operating system.

“When you take a mobile phone camera and connect it to the internet, it becomes an eye,” said Vic Gundotra, Google mobile search vice president of engineering, during a demonstration in Mountain View, California.

“Google Goggles lets you take a picture of an item and use the picture as the query.”

An experimental version of Goggles will be available for people at the Google Labs website. Goggles already recognises books, wine labels, CD covers, landmarks and more, according to Mr Gundotra.

He demonstrated by taking a picture of a wine bottle label with a smartphone and almost instantly getting reviews, pictures and other internet data about the vintage in a Google search results web page…”

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“Cornell University led by electrical and computer engineering professor Sheila Hemani, has developed prototype devices and is testing them with about 25 American Sign Language (ASL) speakers in the Seattle area.

From the press release:
“We completely take cell phones for granted,” said Sheila Hemami… “Deaf people can text, but if texting were so fabulous, cell phones would never develop. There is a reason that we like to use our cell phones. People prefer to talk.” The technology, Hemami continued, is about much more than convenience. It allows deaf people “untethered communication in their native language” – exactly the same connectivity available to hearing people, she said.

The challenge was to make the phone’s video process enough frames per second for test subjects to have conversations in real-time, despite low bandwidth, while not draining the phone’s battery.

Now the researchers are working to make the phones “as user friendly as possible,” while reducing the cost of integrating mobile ASL software into the devices.”

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Imagine the Possibilities!

“The human eye is a perceptual powerhouse. It can see millions of colors, adjust easily to shifting light conditions, and transmit information to the brain at a rate exceeding that of a high-speed Internet connection.

But why stop there?

In the Terminator movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character sees the world with data superimposed on his visual field—virtual captions that enhance the cyborg’s scan of a scene. In stories by the science fiction author Vernor Vinge, characters rely on electronic contact lenses, rather than smartphones or brain implants, for seamless access to information that appears right before their eyes.

These visions (if I may) might seem far-fetched, but a contact lens with simple built-in electronics is already within reach; in fact, my students and I are already producing such devices in small numbers in my laboratory at the University of Washington, in Seattle [see sidebar, "A Twinkle in the Eye"]. These lenses don’t give us the vision of an eagle or the benefit of running subtitles on our surroundings yet. But we have built a lens with one LED, which we’ve powered wirelessly with RF. What we’ve done so far barely hints at what will soon be possible with this technology.”

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And here is an interview with the guy behind the scenes:

“An adult app marketplace for smartphone users has opened up shop online, exploiting the open architecture of a new generation of mobile phone handsets.

MiKandi, which claims to be the world’s first adult app store, is only currently servicing devices using Google’s Android operating system, but says the wares in its marketplace will be available on other devices soon.

Unlikely to figure among these, though, is Apple’s popular iPhone platform. The company keeps a tight rein on all applications, and does not distribute adult content through its iTunes store, meaning many users resort to “jailbreaking” their iPhones so they can download non-Apple-approved content.

In spite of its strict approval process, one app that did slip by the iTunes censors was the “passion” app that uses the phone’s built-in accelerometer, microphone and timer to rate a user’s sexual performance. High scores can even be uploaded and compared with those of other iPhone users around the world.

The MiKandi market will work in a similar way to the Android app store in that developers will submit their own free and paid apps for others to download without the approval process required from proprietary systems, but it will not be hosted within Google’s own Android market.

Instead it is offered as a free download to an Android web browser for users aged 18 years or older.”

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