Archive for the ‘iPhone’ Category

DIY Friday: Charge Your iPhone With AAs or Solar Power

Limor Fried’s MintyBoost project is a great example of DIY and commercial tech working together. Take an Altoids tin, a couple of AA batteries, and some very smart hackery, and you’ve got a lightweight USB charger that you can use to charge/run your handheld iWhatever, or almost any other phone, camera, or small device that can take a charge off USB power. About a month ago, she released this video outlining the Apple hackery needed to make this work.

Reverse engineering Apple’s secret charging methods from adafruit industries on Vimeo.

Clive Thompson profiled Fried and her company Adafruit Industries as part of a 2008 feature in Wired on “open source hardware.” The idea is that hackers like Fried can use what they find out about consumer devices to make and sell their own products, but also to produce DIY kits and share information with others who then build their own projects.

As a case study in the value of sharing this information, consider Rob Scott. Before he took his son on a week-long bike trip this summer, he used Fried’s schematic to hack together what turns out to be a really striking-looking solar charger for his son’s iPod.

It’s always nice to see what the maker community is doing to accessorize their retail gadgets; the results aren’t always super-polished, but they generally solve real problems in important use cases that don’t get addressed by manufacturers, either because they’re too unusual or they can’t be easily solved by more plugs, more peripherals, more complex devices that cost a lot of money. And in turn, we all find out a little bit more about how these magical devices get put together and how they work.

See Also:

• DIY Graphing Calculator Is Built From Open Source Hardware
• Why Arduino Is a Hit With Hardware Hackers
• Beautifully Hypnotic Video Details Canon Macro Lens Hack
• Hacker Stuffs MiFi Inside iPad, Ruins it in the Process

Stats Show iPhone Owners Get More Sex

Gadget lovers have long held to the secret belief that the right camera, smartphone or large-aperture lens will make them sexier.

Now dating site OK Cupid has proof.

According to OK Cupid’s survey of 552,000 user pictures, digital SLRs make you look more attractive, Panasonic cameras make you sexier than Nikons, while using a flash will make you look 7 years older, and large-aperture lenses make you hotter.

And iPhone users have more sexual partners than BlackBerry or Android owners. By age 30, the average male iPhone user has had about 10 partners while female iPhone users have had 12. By contrast, BlackBerry users hover around 8 partners and Android users have a mere 6.

As the blog’s author’s wryly observe: “Finally, statistical proof that iPhone users aren’t just getting fucked by Apple.”

That should give iPhone and iPad users some comfort for being considered ‘selfish elites,’ as another recent survey found.

OK Cupid has been analyzing the behavior of the site’s millions of users for some time, and has discovered many interesting tidbits: People tend to lie on their profiles, people’s political preferences change as they age, and men can increase their chances of getting a date by being open to older women. The site’s massive dataset, huge volume of activity, and interesting slicing and dicing combine to produce some keen observations on human nature.

But for gadget heads, there’s no more pertinent observation than (hard) data. The Panasonic Micro 4/3 camera will make you look far more attractive than a Canon DSLR, which in turn is better than a Nikon or Sony DSLR. And forget about cameraphones: Android, Nokia, BlackBerry and Windows phones all make you look less attractive, with Motorola phones at the absolute bottom of the list.

Similarly, the type of camera you wield makes a big difference. There’s a dramatic illustration showing how the same woman looks photographed with a cameraphone, a point-and-shoot camera, and an SLR. That makes sense: As we’ve explained before, larger image sensors give you better-quality images.

Along the same lines, a larger-aperture photo lets you put the background out of focus, increasing the apparent attractiveness of the person you’re taking a picture of.

So if you wanted an excuse to buy a fancier camera with a bigger lens, OK Cupid’s got all the rationale you need.

As for switching from Android or BlackBerry to an iPhone? Well, that’s up to you. Unlike with the photos, it’s hard to tell whether iPhone use is the cause, or the effect, of having more notches in one’s bedpost.

OkTrends, via EthanZ

Image: via OKCupid

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iChatr: Chatroulette for the iPhone

Oh, Internet, is there anything you can’t do? iChatr, a new app for the iPhone, is essentially Chatroulette for the iPhone. It’s pretty barren right now – I saw the same people once or twice – but the quality is pretty good and if you have a Sing-a-ma-jig, you can actually make dour iPhone 4 users smile. To move to the next person you simply swipe their face.

The app is free and was made by SKJM. It uses the iPhone 4’s front camera and makes an ad hoc connection with another camera on the network. It works over Wi-Fi.

Give it a try right now before it becomes a haven for masticators.

iTunes Link
via Giz

AgaMatrix WaveSense Cable Will Let Diabetics Connect Their iPhone To Their Blood Glucose Meter

By Andrew Liszewski

AgaMatrix, maker of the Jazz blood glucose meter, already has an extremely popular free database app for the iPhone available that lets you manage and track your diabetes ’scores’ which is an important part of managing the disease. But until now, or very soon at least, users have had to manually enter the results from the meter into the application. Not a giant inconvenience mind you, but one that’s soon to be a thing of the past thanks to the company’s new WaveSense Direct Connect Cable which allows the glucose meter to transfer the results directly to their app on the iPhone, iPod Touch or the iPad. The cable is currently pending review and approval from the FDA, but when available it will sell for around $25-30. Until that time you can sign up on the AgaMatrix website to get a notification when the cable is finally ready for sale.

[ AgaMatrix WaveSense Direct Connect iPhone Cable ] VIA [ DiabetesMine ]

Burger King Introduces A ‘Musical Shower’ Booth At Their New Restaurant In Tokyo

By Andrew Liszewski

Apparently the American fast food giants haven’t had the best of luck in Japan, but after withdrawing from the market a while ago, Burger King is back with a new ‘upscale’ joint in Tokyo that also introduces their first ‘Musical Shower’ booth. Instead of a jukebox you’ll find an iPod/iPhone dock embedded in the wall that let’s you play your own music as loud as you want it. But what makes the system particularly neat is the use of a special speaker/reflector hanging above the table which pretty much ensures that only the people sitting in the booth can hear the music being played. Hopefully Burger King will start installing these special booths at other locations because it seems like a fantastic idea, and if it catches on maybe restaurants I’d actually be willing to eat at will install them too!

[ Walkerplus - (Translated) Burger King's first musical shower seat ] VIA [ Japan Trends ]

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