As Seen Through PeriVisioN

Om Malik from GigaOm started a rumor (and I only say rumor to be safe) that Mozilla is planning something for the iphone. Now the first thought is; “Hey!  Firefox on the iphone! ” Yeah.  As sweet as that would be, and you bet it would be sweet because the browsing experience on the iphone could use an update, I don’t think  its going to happen.  We already know how protective Apple is about any functionality that comes close to what Apple considers ‘native’ functionality. So if there is not going to be a replacement for safari, then would could it be?  Well, what if it was an overlay of safari that brought Firefox functionality?  And what if that functionality was Weave and the AwesomeBar?  Sure, I can see that.  But lets go one step further. What if we had access to Xmarks? NOW were talking!  If Mozilla came out with just those 3 features; Weave, AwesomeBar and Xmarks, I would love it!  That still does not address other issues I have with the browser, like forcing a page refresh when I switch between pages, but I will call it an upgrade non the less.

Note: Does anyone out there know why sometime when switching between webpages on safari, it sometimes refreshes that page, and sometimes not?

I wrote this as a companion piece for an article that may show up in the next issue of iphoneLife, but I thought I would include it here and now since AR is getting more relevant.  Also, one of the things I said NEEDS to part of the AR toolkit for iphone (mobile) got a write up today in RRW.

This is still in draft form, so I’ll edit it again at some point..

Augmented reality for the iphone

A description/definition of Augmented Reality

According to WikiPedia – Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live
direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose
elements are merged with-, or augmented by virtual computer-generated
imagery – creating a mixed reality.  The funny thing is, we have had a
simple example of AR on the iphone already. Consider this application
iHUD.  In a way, this could be considered an AR application.  We have
virtual information overlaid on top of reality.  As our position
changes in the real world it is reflected in the virtual information
overlaid. However, for this article, lets refine the definition of AR
just a bit more to require that virtual information must contain a
spatial component that is dependent upon the view in question.  In
other words, as the reality changes based on what we see on the iphone
screen, the information should change accordingly. Now, this makes AR

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My nephew Jared turned me on to this app. DriveSafe.ly is still in Alpha and only on jailbreak at the moment.  At some point they will release it via the app store, but without backgrounder, I’m not sure how useful it is. The app is simple enough; every 5sec or 1min it checks for new SMS messages.  If a new message is found, it converts the sender’s name and message to voice and plays it on the iphone.  Natch!  The app is still a touch buggy and it does not always work for me, but in the one ‘real’ use case, it proved useful. I normally do not ride with earphones unless it a long ride and if that long ride is mostly freeway. However, I agreed to meet a friend at a Thai restaurant  in the Palo Alto after work.  I work in San Francisco. So I turned drivesafe.ly on, set it on background, pulled up my ‘ipod’ and took off.  BTW, I only use 1 ear plug when I ride, its the law in California.  So 2/3 the way down, I got an SMS asking ‘are you here?’  Seems I miscalced my riding time and had to pull over to SMS back that I would be 15 min late. Perfect!  That is EXACTLY what a SMS to voice app is great for.

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This is great news, and WAY faster then I expected it.  Right now, there is not a solution for real time collaboration for mobile devices, and given limitations of screen real estate , memory and CPU power, its not surprising.   The great part about flash, is how easy it is to build modules and swap between them. Now, not everything was included in this version, nor should it be (We are talking about a mobile device here), but the only things I really need is view of the desktop (or whatever is shared) and a means to communicate.  Right now, text seem to be the only option, while the shared view is visible, but I would love to see voice support during the presentation.  You can share voice and video as a separate  tab.  That’s not a big deal, but I can see that being annoying after awhile.

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Just showed up today, at least I noticed it today. When you do a google search on the iphone, you now get options like on the desktop. Its not full featured, meaning we still do not have an advanced option, but still, bit by bit, google is providing a rich experience through the mobile web browser.  I did a quick look on the interwebs and so far no sign on Blackberry or Android, but that is only a question of time.

This just came out today.  Its pretty fun.  You can edit a photo, crop, apply a filter, etc..  Pretty cool really. You can do the basics that you would expect: cropping, changing exposure, convert to black and white, change contrast.  There are some basic filters too; sketching, blurring, image border, I like the rainbow filter, and the pop filter. Best, you can rotate too as well as crop.  Did I say cropping twice? I did because that is pretty important to me.

You can also upload your images to photoshop.com (2 gig limit) and then share / email them out from there.

Now what will be interesting is the idea that they ‘could’ add more filters if they wanted. Right now the UI does not seem to support that, but that would be an easy fix.  Just allow the top panel to slide to expose more filters.  Next thing I would LOVE to see?  The ability to add text over the image.

Its a free app and very easy to get.  Just go to photoshop.com on your iphone and there is button waiting for you.

.. and now;  to the images!

Straight from the web site!  I will update as I learn more.

* I just tried one of the apps, and it works great.  And that is not surprising because is coco, but still, anytime you go from one language to another there are risks.  But so far, so good.

• 3 of the demo apps are free, 4 costs 99c.
• This is not Flash10.  This is to create installed apps written in AS3. So even though its not a true browser plugin (so STILL no flash video) at least we can reuse assets and code from other projects to create iphone apps.  I would expect TONS of flash games to come to the iphone as well as Android and Palm Pre.
• Also, this is not a true flash player where you can include other .swf files.  The code is native coco, so many of the tricks we used in Flash do not work here.  Figures.
• However, since it native coco, I would expect the SDK will give us access to the hardware, camera, accelerometers, compass, etc.. So I expect to see some really cool AR apps in the near future.

Something else to consider.. Think of all the little games that are out there in flash already, especially the flood of new games that have been coming to facebook.   All of those games can now port over to the iphone (and android and palm) quite easily.

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I saw this in TC and have not seen it myself, but I will keep an eye out over the weekend.  Basically, you could have a ad for beer or a bike shop or something based on the search.  Also, it SEEMS uses can inject items into maps, but I think its more of where an item on the map came from.

This could turn iphone google maps into a type of yelp I guess, and that may not be so bad, but my fear is when I search, say, sports bar, or car repair, I will get more ads then links to places I want to see.

What bothers me is there  is no way to turn this off!  THAT is the major issue here. Still its early.  We’ll see how this pans out.

I use Stitcher anytime I’m on a long drive.  Normally between SF and Sacramento. What I like about Stitcher is the number of offerings, but mostly because its the only place I can get BBC radio, short of downloading a podcast, which I will not do. So today I got a press release saying they have added location awareness, premium content, and an alarm clock. (huh?)  That is pretty useful if you are driving or flying to new areas and what quick local flavor discovery. I’m already set in my ways for how I use it, but its still a cool update.

Here are a few excerpts from the press release..

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From Gizmoto

I like Tweetie.  I wrote an article for iphonelife on iphone twitter apps (it not out yet, but here is a short version) and of all the apps I tried, I used tweetie the most when I’m not using twittFilter. (twittFilter is a web app and my fave given that I wrote it).  So Gizmodo, which seem to be the site to check now a days, broke a story on tweetie 2 which seems bring a new functionality to twitter iphone apps; offline twitter access.  There are some other improvements, but its the offline that sounds interesting.  I will wait for a few more reviews and update.

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