Thursday, June 9, 2011

MobileCrunch

MobileCrunch

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eyeSight Plans To Bring A Touch-Free Experience To iOS

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 01:30 PM PDT

When the touchscreen first appeared, I felt like I had been launched into the future, until they started showing up everywhere. Now that touchscreens are pretty much the norm, the next logical step would be the no-touch screen, which is basically what eyeSight Mobile Technologies is looking to do. The same folks that developed Touch Free Interfaces have now added the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4 to its list of supported devices. Android, Windows, Meego, and Linux are already supported by eyeSight's Hand Gesture Recognition Technology.

Without needing any extra special hardware, eyeSight's software-based technology lets the user make hand gestures instead of physically touching the screen, with the help of the device's front-facing camera. This could certainly come in handy in situations where you're driving or cooking. So far there is no iOS app that uses eyeSight's technology, but the company promises that one should be launching soon.

[via IntoMobile]

Look Out, Lodsys: Apple Begins Asking Developers If They’re Having Legal Issues

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 01:30 PM PDT

What to make of this? When James Wilson of LithiumCorp (makers of the iPad app Tweed) went to submit an update last night, he noticed a new question lurking about in the process:

Are you updating this app because of a legal issue?

This one should be particularly interesting for anyone following the Lodsys patent debacle (tl;dr: a bunch of iOS developers get legal threats from Lodsys over patents they claim the developers are infringing. Apple sends an open letter to Lodsys declaring that iOS developers are covered under licensing agreements between Apple/Lodsys — and Lodsys responds by turning their prior legal threats into actual lawsuits). We’re all still waiting to see how Apple plans on dealing with all of this — they’ve got to do something, else risk losing their App Store’s momentum to a hungry horde of patent trolls picking away at their developer’s pockets.

This question seems to be Apple’s first pass at figuring out who exactly is under fire. While it’s pretty easy to figure who Lodsys has sued by searching through filings, it’s much more difficult to figure out who has merely been threatened. Might Apple be considering putting some of that 30% cut they take on app sales towards legal counsel for those involved?


Is This What Your Smartphone Will Look Like In 2013? We Hope So

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 11:30 AM PDT

We're all aware that smartphones could potentially replace a lot of the technology we depend on today, but that can't happen until someone develops some better processors, which is exactly what Qualcomm is claiming to have done. In fact, the chipset maker promises that in the next two years, your smartphone could act as a 3D set-top box, a game console, and a cloud-based computer with way longer battery life than any of us imagined. Sound good? We think so, too.

At last week's Upling conference in California, Qualcomm demoed what its next generation of processors is capable of, and it's kind of mind-blowing. First off, the company believes that in two years, its processors will be able to handle pretty heavy 3D tasks. The demo showed a phone relaying high-def 1080p video to both active and passive 3D TVs, as well as converting 2D video to 3D. Of course, a smartphone with support for HDMI out is hardly impressive. We already have a few of those on the market today. The difference here is that, instead of looking at photos and videos taken from the phone, the phone will be processing downloaded or streamed 3D HD films and relaying them to the TV. In other words, your phone could become a micro-PVR.

And if a smartphone can take the place of a 3D set-top box, why can't it go ahead and replace your game console? According to Qualcomm, it can, in a couple years. At the Upling conference, Qualcomm demoed the streaming game service OnLive on an HTC Flyer, which is powered by a Snapdragon processor. Basically, OnLive works by taking all the heavy lifting off of the shoulders of the processor, so the game is actually being played on OnLive servers, with the results streamed to the phone's screen.

If that wasn't enough, go ahead and throw out your Chromebook, too. Apparently Qualcomm is hooking up Android with enough extras to put your mobile web browser on par with your computer's. In Qualcomm's demo, an HTML 5 site streamed four different videos simultaneously with 1080p output to a TV monitor through an HDMI connection. For those of you who aren't yet HTML 5 converts, Flash support will be included on lower-end chipsets, so cheaper Android phones can enjoy as much HomeStarRunner as you can handle.

Still not impressed? A boost in battery life should change your tune, which is exactly what Qualcomm is promising. Apparently the new dual-core and quad-core Snapdragon processors can flip their cores on and off to match the power demands of various apps and games. They call it asynchronous architecture, and in a demo playing a sample game of Ilomilo, power saving hit at the 70 percent mark.

[via CNET]

Google Maps Navigation To Get A True Offline Mode This Summer?

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 11:01 AM PDT

Google already has one of the best turn-by-turn navigation systems around built into their Android Maps app — especially considering that it’s free. Still, there’s one key feature it lacks when put up against the competition: true offline navigation, for those times when a data connection just doable.

According to Dutch blog All About Phones, though, that very feature is on the way. Citing a “Dutch telecom industry source”, they say that the Navigation system should be able to direct you around sans connectivity as soon as this summer.

With Google already storing Maps as vectors (as opposed to massive, downloaded images) and handling all of the turn-by-turn voice generation on-device, much of the system already can work offline. Alas, once they manage how to pack everything else into an offline-friendly package, you’ll never be able to blame your lack of punctuality on at AT&T outage again.
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