Digital Photography on the iPhone

Digital photography on the iPhone is becoming more popular.  Although the iPhone is limited by it’s 2MP resolution, the vividness of color captured is very impressive.  What makes the iPhone different than all other phones is the availability of immediate sharing capabilities as well as quick access to apps to touch-up and modify photos on the fly right from the iPhone.  Check this out:

http://www.justwhatisee.com/

This guy is making money by selling prints from pics he takes on his iPhone.  Pretty cool.  According to the maintainer of the website, “Raw images out of the [iPhone] camera are 1600 X 1200 pixels, which will easily lend for a very sharp, very clear 4″ X 6″ or 5″ X 7″ print.”

Below are some of the most popular apps that are being used to create cool photography on the iPhone, you will probably undestand these descriptions better than I do.

• CameraBag, currently on sale for temporary price of $2.99 from Nevercenter Ltd. is an app that simulates five classic camera photographic qualities. It accomplishes this using filters, crops, etc.
• “Helga” mimics the Holga camera, an inexpensive medium format film toy camera that was first released in 1982. Photos take on a surrealistic, impressionistic scenes for landscape, still life, portrait and street photography according to the Wikipedia entry.
• “Lolo” mimics the Russian LOMO LC-A Compact Automat camera, known for its overly colorful, vibrant, and sometimes blurry picture pictures. See the Wiki entry for Lomography for more information.
• Ansel converts your photo into the black and white photography just like the artist of the same name is famous for Ansel Adams offering a smooth gradient from black to white.
• Magic Touch, currently on sale for $4.99 from Nick Drabovich is described as “simple photo retouching” app for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
• Photogene, currently on sale for $4.99 from Omer Shoor is an app that offers many features for photo adjustment that has a good set of features and a functional interface that makes it fun and easy to use.
• Picoli, currently on sale for $2.99 (regular price is $4.99) from Alazar GmbH & Co. KG is an app that allows you to perform different types of adjustments to your photos.
• Panolab, free from Originate Labs, is an app that claims to be the first to enable photographers to capture and assemble multi-frame panoramas and collages directly on the iPhone. All these can be created using photos from the iPhones photo library or captured on the fly.
• hotoboard, $.99 by Zest Prod is an app that allows you to manipulate and build collages of photos on your iPhone and iPod touch. This app emulates the interface of the Microsoft Surface.
• Collage, $1.99 by John Moffet is an app that allows you to manipulate and build collages of photos on your iPhone and iPod Touch.
• ImageTouch, available at $2.99 and as a free reduced-feature version by Intellcore, is an app that like Photoboard and Collage makes collages, but adds some features, including geotagging. It also has self-contained training video that was a nice touch.

——————–
Sources:
http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/10/20/turning-the-iphone-into-a-digital-photography-tool/

Read Full Post »

iPhone sales grows 527% Year-over-Year

The iPhone is slowly moving from a niche product to more of a mainstream product.  There are even rumors that Wal-Mart will begin selling it the second week of November.  I haven’t yet concluded whether I like the fact that everyone and there mom will soon have an iPhone…but I suppose this will give Apple even more capital to enhance the iPhone’s technological advancement.  Anyway, the T-Mobile G1 was released yesteraday, and we should be getting some real world feedback on Android.  My feelings are that 1 year from now, we will see some pretty good competition to the iPhone.  Apple has a few things up there sleeve I’m sure though.  What is interesting is that now the Apple iPhone is the single largest contributor to Apple’s bottom line, surpassing their computer and iPod products.  Here are the sales numbers as of Q3 2008 of the iPhone:

Yesterday Apple announced that iPhone 3G sales surpassed Research in Motion’s Blackberry by approximately 1.5 million units in Apple’s fiscal fourth (calendar third) quarter. Today, AT&T announced that it saw 2.4 million iPhone 3G activations in roughly the same period.

Apple sold 6.3 million iPhones in its just-reported fiscal fourth quarter. That compares with 1.1 million iPhones (of the original variety) sold in the fiscal fourth quarter of 2007, which was the device’s first full quarter of sales. That represents year-over-year growth of 527%. iPhone sales more than doubled from the fiscal fourth quarter of 2007 to the fiscal first quarter of 2008, which encompasses the holiday season.

• June 2007: 0.3 million (it was only on sale for two days in this quarter)
• Sept. 2007: 1.1 million
• Dec. 2007: 2.3 million
• Mar. 2008: 1.7 million
• June 2008: 0.7 million (limited stock, as the channel was being cleared for the 3G)
• Sept. 2008: 6.9 million

——————-
Sources:
http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/10/21/iphone-sales-grow-527-year-over-year/
http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/10/22/iphone-3g-gives-att-nearly-one-million-new-customers-in-q3/

Read Full Post »

Skype now works on the iPhone

A little bit more competition in the VoIP iPhone market.  Fring has brought Skype to the iPhone, which means ultra cheap calling.  According to Skype’s website, it is only $2.95/mo for 10,000 minutes. Not a bad deal at all.  The downside, is there still is no solution to incoming calls.  But this is very positive. 

After 6 months of not-quite-official availability for those of us with jailbroken iPhones, Fring, a free mobile Voice-over-IP service (VoIP), has made its way to the App Store. With that, a day that some said would never come has arrived: Skype calls can now be made on the iPhone, no hacks required.

Beyond the Skype functionality (which I imagine would be its most popular use), Fring also lets you chat (and call, where appropriate) friends over MSN, GoogleTalk, AIM, Yahoo, Twitter, ICQ, and of course, Fring’s own service.

The App also brings all your contacts into one searchable list including all the instant messaging buddies mentioned above. You can then easily see who is online and the best way to reach them before making a call or talking to them in a live chat session. The list also includes the contacts on your iPhone. Fortunately you are not limited to paging through the list with your finger, which might take a while since there is a way to perform a search. This helps, but does not alleviate the need for an improved scroll bar.

With the release of the new iPod Touch, which accepts microphones, you should be able to make VoIP calls with the iPod Touch when connected to WiFi.

————–
Sources:
www.skype.com
http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/10/03/fring-brings-skype-skype-out-and-sip-calls-to-iphone/
http://www.fring.com/support/user_guide/fring_user_manual_iphone.pdf

Read Full Post »

gPhone vs iPhone Preview

Here is a quick preview of the differences between the upcoming gPhone and the iPhone. One interesting note is that iPhone actually patented the dual finger pinch and pull motions to resize the screen size, so Android will have to use zoom-in and zoom-out buttons.

 

Take a look at a patent filing by Apple earlier this year for a dual touch screen on a phone.  They also patented a similar technology for a laptop…cool stuff.

—————————
Sources:
http://lifehacker.com/5052054/what-to-expect-from-google-android-and-what-were-hoping-for
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/17/apple_exploring_dual_sided_translucent_touch_screen_panels.html

Read Full Post »

9 other VOIP apps (article)

This is an article that evaluates 9 apps that implement VOIP for iphone.  Let me know what you think.  this just may be the thing that finally sways me.

————————————-

Chris’s Comments:

I didn’t realize there were arleady this many options for for VoIP on the iPhone.  That rocks!

According to iCall, “Apple has explicitly stated that VoIP is allowed, just not over Edge networks. Steve himself answered this question in the Q&A session after the last keynote speech.”

The two best products in my opinion are Truphone and iCall. The others rely on your contacts having Skype, GTalk or some other online IM service.  I don’t use any of these.

Truphone:

• Outgoing Calls: 1.5 cents/min or 500 min for $7.50, you only get charged as you use them though which is really nice
• Incoming Calls: “iPhone users can’t currently receive calls via Truphone, but we’re working on it. We promise that when inbound calling does become available on the iPhone we’ll never charge you a penny to receive calls”
• International Calling: Pretty good rates on this as well.
  
• Awesome technology.  You use your own phone number all the time unlike iCall.  When free Incoming Calls are available, this will kick ass.

iCall:

• Some of the other apps on the page require linking through GoogleTalk, Skype, MSN, etc IM contacts. This works with your existing phone book, which I like.
• Subscription fee based, but you get UNLIMITED minutes.
• Outgoing Calls: The downside is that it looks like it requires a call transfer, so a minute of call time will be used to answer the calls initially, then they can be transferred.
• Incoming Calls: Again the downside is that a minute will be used to receive the call initially, but also this: “Additionally the call must be received at the new iCall number that we have assigned you.”
• Overall, it seems like a great technology, if I am understanding correctly, it looks like it will require giving your friends/family you iCall assigned number instead of your regular cell, which I don’t really like.

Overall, it sounds like there are some downsides to each technology.  I haven’t personally experienced the call quality, although people say it is pretty decent.  The fact that Apple is approving VoIP is very positive though, we will likely see even more improvements on these apps in the future.

The other big event to watch out for is when Apple releases support for “background push” for 3rd party apps on the iPhone (It was supposed to be released with this months iPhone updated, but they pushed it back due to developmental issues).  This will allow 3rd party apps to run as a background process which right now only official Apple Apps can do.  This would allow a VoIP client to detect calls automatically.  There is quite a bit of potential in this space.

Read Full Post »

iCall-VOIP for Iphone

This is an interesting App.  It allows you to utilize a wifi connection to route your calls through. essentially you answer the call (using 1minute) and switch the call over to the wifi connection.  Once it is over wifi, you are no longer on the clock for the call with your minutes.   www.modmyi.com has this to say:

“The first time you open the application you’ll be asked to pick a get a free local number to make and receive calls using the application.  Once you’ve got your number go in and enter your cell number which assists in making the switch from cellular network to iCall’s VoIP

.  one must have forwarding enabled to your iCall number in settings to switch from a cell call to VoIP.

Andy of iCall explains –

Quote:

In order to transfer calls from GSM to WiFi, you must have forwarding enabled in “Settings”. Additionally the call must be received at the new iCall number that we have assigned you. Below is a sample scenario: • You receive a call at your iCall number, but you are not logged into iCall • The call is automatically and transparently forwarded to the “My cell number” you have configured in iCall • You answer the call and initiate the conversation • You start iCall and are prompted to switchUnfortunately, last time we called AT&T and said “Hey, can we connect directly to your call switches and radios?” they said no  We’ll call again next week.

Individuals are charged for the call by AT&T, I would assume other carriers as well, for the initial connection of the call (so one minute if you transfer the call immediately/before 60 pass).

ATT

Quote:

Call Forwarding is included on all*AT&T and former AT&T Wireless rate plans. Forwarded calls are billed airtime from the time the call is answered until it is ended. Each call forwarded may receive, depending on your location, per minute/per call or interconnect charges based on where the call is forwarded. Long Distance charges apply if the call is forwarded to a long distance number. If you are on a former AT&T Wireless rate plan, call forwarding minutes*may not apply to your included minutes.

Andy in response to my question, “So, when we enable forwarding in Settings are we charged the fee AT&T charges for normal forwarded calls or not?”

Quote:

Only for the portion of the call that is spent on your regular cell. Once the call is transferred to iCall, AT&T is not even aware of the call.

Every call I have made with iCall, save for one, has been crystal clear for me and the recipient and vice versa on my family’s internet in Kansas City (I believe it is a 3Mbps connection from Time Warner, but I live in Chicago with Crapcast so what do I know).

The application pulls all of your contacts (or you can do that lame dialing thing) up which makes it really easy to use and make calls with. Voicemail is also included with the application so you can get message while you can’t answer the phone – awesome. When I get back to Chicago where WiFi is more ubiquitous I’ll definitely be checking it out.

One of the iCall founders, Arlo Gilbert, took the time to respond to a few questions I had –

Kevan (Me): When do you plan on submitting the app to Apple?

Arlo: We intend to submit to Apple in the next week.

K: What are you going to charge for the application? For the service?

A: [For] The service [we] will offer a free trial period, 29.95 for the first month, 9.95 per month thereafter. The application download from the store will be free.

and a very important question –

K: Any hope of getting the app to work with an iPod Touch + Mic (we are a modification site after all )?

A: We won’t officially support any 3rd party or hacked hardware, but I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work, somebody would have to be the brave soul to try it out though at their expense and risk.

Risk. Expense. Hacking. These have never stopped us before.

In the interim before the app is submitted, If you would like a call to hear how it sounds feel free to PM me with your phone number and I’ll give you a call.

Check out the video demo

 

source: http://www.modmyi.com/forums/iphone-news/316841-icall-first-voip-appstore-app.html

 

Read Full Post »

Dream vs Iphone?

So the word on the street is the new HTHC dream (1st android powered phone) will be released October 20th.  Looks kind of funny huh?  I was surprised there was a fold out keypad instead of all touch, but I guess people who are hooked on sidekicks would love it.  I wonder if it still has a touch interface for messaging, texting, etc.

 

What do you think, is it worth holding off on getting a new phone until I see what this ones like?

Read Full Post »

GPS System made for Motorcycles

Came across this as I was perusing through the blogosphere.  Sweet little gadget that we may be using some day.

When you’re cruising down the highway on your hog, wind in your face, hair trailing behind you, teeth covered with insects, you probably want a GPS unit that’s as rugged and unafraid of dying as you are. That’s where Becker’s Crocodile (AKA Traffic Assist Z 100) comes in. Nothing says “fearless badass” like a crocodile-skin satnav, replete with a 4.3-inch touchscreen, 2GB on-board memory, 3D terrain and city views, and 42 country maps pre-installed. The device is rubber coated and water resistant, and features turn-by-turn directions optimized for motorcycles, making it ideal for your cross country biker gang meet-ups, or just long weekends cruising the coastlines. The Crocodile will be released in October for €300 (or around $438).

 

Read Full Post »