Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

Sure, push notification is nothing new for iPhone users. But when was the last time that you received notification that real-live mail — the kind made of atoms, not bits — has shown up in your mailbox?

One of the new evil geniuses at Make Magazine online, Matt Richardson, decided he’d like to get notification when the flesh-and-blood mailman delivers something to his mailbox. Using a standard USPS-approved mailbox, he installed a snap-action switch that signals when the mailbox door has been opened. That switch is connected via wire (yeah, I was also surprised that it wasn’t wireless) to an Arduino. Some simple code watches for the mailbox door to be opened and closed, and then grabs a piece of PHP code from a web server that also has to be running.

The PHP and web server are necessary since Matt is using the Prowl: Growl Client app (US$2.99) to get the push notifications. Prowl requires an SSL connection, which that Arduino can’t make. As Matt notes, the end product is something that can send push notifications to your iPhone whenever some physical state changes — when the garage door is left open, when home power usage exceeds a certain level, etc… Any switch or sensor connected to the Arduino can send a push alert.

There’s video of the construction and use of the setup on page 2.

[Tip of the hat to Boing Boing and Gizmodo]

Continue reading iPhone receives push notifications from real-world mailbox

iPhone receives push notifications from real-world mailbox originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

9to5 Mac and others have suggested that the Calendar app icon in the iOS 4.3 beta hints at a release date for iPad 2. Unfortunately, it’s not likely.

A Springboard preview image in the latest iOS 4.3 beta shows the Calendar app with a big number 9 front-and-center. Remembering that the original iPad showed a 27, and that it was released on the 27th, some wondered if that 9 was a bit of foreshadowing.

If so, we missed the hint long ago, because the same 9 can be found on original iPads running the latest iOS. To see it, tap Settings, then Brightness & Wallpaper. Two wallpaper thumbnails appear, one of which shows the Calendar icon with a big ‘ol 9. In other words, it’s nothing new.

If an iPad is released announced* on February 9 (where did the February come from, by the way?), that icon will have had nothing to do with it.

*Reader James O’Leary notes that 9to5 and others claim the 9th suggests an announcement date, not a launch. Fine. Still, the “9″ has been there for a long time and quite likely isn’t meant as a hint.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

Don’t believe the icons: iPad 2 unlikely on February 9 originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

There’s bad news for those anticipating multi-touch gestures in iOS 4.3. It seems that the feature won’t be a part of the public release. Engadget and others have confirmed that the feature is just a developer preview, so no ninja-level pinching and swiping for us normals.

That’s unfortunate, as it looks very cool. After the break there’s a video demonstrating some multi-touch features on an iPad running an iOS 4.3 beta. In a nutshell, gestures let you use pinches, swipes and so on to move between applications, history, etc. on your iPad. We saw a patent application for multi-touch gestures back in April of 2010.

While cool on the iPad, gestures are somewhat troublesome on the iPhone, as your hand easily covers the entire screen. Would you want to do that with your iPhone? The question is moot, as we won’t be getting the feature for a while.

Continue reading iPad multi-touch gestures will be withheld from iOS 4.3

iPad multi-touch gestures will be withheld from iOS 4.3 originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Back in October of 2010, we told you about iDOS, a 99¢ software emulation of good old DOS. The universal app was able to even run an ancient version of Microsoft Windows (3.0), and came with a handful of “freeware / abandonware” applications like Ms. PacMan PC and DigDug. Unfortunately, the app was yanked from the App Store very quickly.

It’s back in the App Store again, this time for free and with a vastly simplified setup. iDOS now comes with Wolfenstein 3D, the original Duke Nukem I and II, Major Striker, SuperNova, and Kingdom of Kroz II. You can apparently move other DOS applications (if you can grab the code from those old floppies) into the /Apps/iDos/documents folder to run them in iDOS.

The app features a PC compatible soft keyboard, a virtual mouse, gamepad, and joystick, and it’s possible to force a 4:3 screen aspect ratio (640 x 480).

We don’t know if Apple will yank iDOS from the App Store again; the fact that it was allowed back into the store is amazing in itself, so the developers must have changed something just enough to keep the powers-that-be at Apple happy. In the meantime, if you’ve got a hankering for some hot DOS action, download this app fast.

[Via Engadget]

iDOS 2: The return of the emulator originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

John Cassidy of The New Yorker took a deep dive into the balance sheets of both Apple and Goldman Sachs to see which company offers the best return on the capital it employs. Using the latest earnings reports from the two American companies, Cassidy calculates that the two firms share similar profit margins but vastly different economic returns. Cassidy looked at each company’s return on assets (ROA) and calculated that Apple is twenty times more profitable than Goldman Sachs.

According to Cassidy, Apple is more profitable than Goldman Sachs because it makes a line of extremely desirable products that people want to buy. The demand for its products allows Apple to charge an amount that is well over the cost of manufacturing. For each iPod touch, iPhone or iMac sold, Apple is making a lot of money.

Apple also reportedly pays its employees significantly less. Apple does not publish its labor costs but Simply Hired, a job search website, calculated that Apple pays its employees an average of $46,000 per year. This figure includes employees both in the Cupertino headquarters and in Apple’s retail stores.

Goldman Sachs, on the other hand, pays its 35,700 employees an average salary of $430,700. Though Apple has a similar profit margin and generates a much higher return than Goldman Sachs, the Cupertino company pays it employees significantly less than its fellow American company. Before you start finger-pointing at Apple, keep in mind that the high executive pay at Goldman contributes to that average salary. Apple also employs a lot of mid to low-wage employees like janitors, sales associates and others.

Average Apple salary is only $46k originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

They’re not just rumors any more, or Apple’s setting us up for a big April Fools Day.

The developer release of iOS 4.3 Beta 2 has a home page icons image that’s used in the wallpaper settings, showing the standard icons on your choice of wallpaper to show you how your choice will look.

This new overlay file, aptly named Home Screen Overlay Facetime ~ iPad, has three more icons: FaceTime, Camera, and PhotoBooth.

FaceTime will let iPad 2 owners video chat with their iPod Touch, iPhone, or Mac toting friends. PhotoBooth will make a lot of social photo sharers happy, as the beta already includes photo filters such as Thermal Camera, Mirror, X-Ray, Kaleidoscope, Light Tunnel, Squeeze, Twirl, and Stretch.

Camera could mean a front or back facing camera, and will presumably work much like the iPhone or iPod Touch app, but the big rumor here is a “photo streaming” service called PhotoStream that will upload your last 30 days of photos to MobileMe and sync them across all your MobileMe devices, or shared with other people.

Taking pictures with your iPhone 4’s great camera but sharing them around the table on your iPad or MacBook is a common wish. This rumor gives all of us something to look forward to, not just the iPad 2 dreamers.

[Via MacRumors]

iOS 4.3 rumored to have PhotoStream service, iPad FaceTime, PhotoBooth apps originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

We’ve been doing a week of experimental indie games in this space, and here comes Strange Rain today, from the creator of previous iOS indie title Ruben & Lullaby. Like the other games featured, Strange Rain is really more of an experimental art piece than an actual game. Rain falls on your iDevice’s screen as the app plays, and it’s really just an opportunity to sit, relax and experience things as they happen. There are some extras and secrets to go through — a mode called Whispers Mode adds some words to the mix, and a Story Mode actually tells a story as you interact with the screen.

What’s fascinating about the app is that while it starts out as a rain simulation, following through with the experience turns things a bit, well…strange, and it’s up to you, the player, to discover and find what meaning you want. Like the other experimental games, this means that the experience is a little more open-ended than just earning points (though there is Game Center integration in this one — that’s a fun bit). It’s up to you to figure out how you’ll react to a “game” like this, and for some players, that can end up being very fun as well. Strange Rain is US$1.99 for the universal version on the App Store.

TUAW’s Daily App: Strange Rain originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The Guardian has released a brand new version of its iPhone app on the App Store, this time featuring a subscription model for UK customers. Lots of publications have been trying to get Apple to approve a subscription model for apps, but The Guardian went ahead and did it themselves, offering up a six-month subscription to the content for £3, or a full year subscription for £4. The full app will still have content even without the subscription, but the subscription offers features like offline browsing and search, as well as some extra audio and video content.

Americans can still download and use the app for free, and while it has all of the subscription features unlocked, the app is populated with ads. Interesting model for The Guardian, but theirs is a big organization, and the app is probably just a line item somewhere in a gigantic budget. If the subscription model works well for them, it could influence both Apple and other publications in terms of how they appear on the App Store.

Guardian iPhone app debuts, subscription available to UK customers originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

It could be partly because of Apple’s 71% year over year revenue growth reported in yesterday’s first fiscal quarter 2011 earnings report, or it could be the result of the 17 million iPads shipped in 2010. But either way, Boy Genius Report just let us know that RBC Capital Markets has revised their Apple stock price estimate, raising it from last week’s $395 to $425 today following the earnings report. They are expecting Apple’s revenue for 2011 to come in at just a shade under $100 billion, and 2012 looks to come in at $108 billion.

With the first quarter showing Apple selling 16.24 million iPhones, 7.33 million iPads, 4.13 million Macs and 19.45 million iPods while revenue rose to $26.7 billion, 2011 looks to be off to a solid start — and yet another year that I think back to 2005, when I could have bought Apple stock at around $65.

RBC ups its target price for AAPL to $425 originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

This is fascinating to me — musician Matthew Irvine Brown has compiled a set of 18 musical tracks, about an hour of music total, designed to be played in random order on the iPod shuffle. There was a lot of care and thought put into this as he designed the music to be atmospheric pieces. Even when shuffled, they’ll work together no matter which order they’re played. He also designed the sound of the music to fit with the iPod shuffle, hiding the glitch heard as the iPod switches tracks. As a final bonus, Matthew designed separate cover art for each track, so as a tune plays in iTunes, the cover art shows a very rough “animation.”

You can see a two-minute sample of the work after the break, and download all of the music for free in a zip file if you want to give it a shot. Brown also says that the work is an example of “skip button as instrument,” too. You can hit the skip button whenever you want to jump to the next track and change tempo or tone as you see fit. It’s a cool composition meant specifically for Apple’s smallest iPod.

Continue reading Music for Shuffle features music designed for the iPod shuffle

Music for Shuffle features music designed for the iPod shuffle originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Apple posts beta.
Beta by Apple.

Do you like green eggs and beta?

Will you download over here?
Or will you download over there?

You will not download over here.
You cannot download over there.
The servers are all crazy there.
You cannot download betas there.

I will download with my mouse.
I will download from my house.

You cannot download with your mouse.
You cannot download from your house.
The servers are quite overwhelmed.

Will your service vary then?
Yes, your service varies then.
You may not have a download stall.
You may not have any woes at all.

But if your downloads are long and slow[1] …
You at least won’t be alone.

[1] If they don’t start at all, try quitting your browser first, re-launching it, and then re-submitting your download requests. (Thanks, @vanish)

iOS 4.3 Beta 2 ready for download originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 19:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

TUAW music blogger Matt Tinsley covered the details of Griffin Technology’s StompBox product earlier today, but here’s a video we shot at CES to show you how it works when playing guitar. Griffin made the cable especially for the StompBox, designed by a guitarist and called the GuitarConnectCable. It comes with the StompBox. Also, the iShred Live app is thus far the only one set up to work with the StompBox. While that may limit some early adopters, there should be nothing preventing other developers from supporting the StompBox in the future. Also seen in the video holding the iPad is the Mic Stand Mount, which Matt also wrote about earlier.

Video demo of the Griffin StompBox originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Showing us that there is, in fact, a much more useful application for an old Mac Plus than a DJ using it as a helmet, Macenstein reader Dean Gray has turned his 1986 Mac Plus 1 MB into a Time Machine Server. By using an Intel Atom motherboard and replacing the screen with a 10″ digital picture frame, Gray has taken an important piece of Apple’s history and made it into what could be the coolest 2.3 TB-capacity Time Machine server we’ve seen yet. Sure beats using a run-of-the-mill Mac mini as a server on style points alone!

While I do both online backups with Backblaze and local backups using Time Machine, Gray’s Mac Plus server would look a lot better in my office than my boring Western Digital drive looks now. But even if you don’t have a Mac Plus to call your own, if you aren’t yet incorporating backups into your daily life, you may want to read Erica Sadun’s piece about why Time Machine holds a special place in her heart, or Steve Sande’s Mac 101 on backup basics. The most important thing is that you start backing up your computer today, no matter the method.

Mac Plus reused as a Time Machine server originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

This morning, my Apps runneth-ed over. This afternoon, after a brutal once-over, not so much. I just deleted over a hundred applications from my iTunes library, and storage-wise, my iOS devices are breathing a little easier for it. To delete an app in iTunes, you can select one in Apps, press the Delete key and click Remove when a dialog appears asking if you are sure you want to remove the app from your iTunes library (you can also right-click an app and choose Delete). Then you should get a dialog asking if you’d like to keep the file or move it to the trash. I keep these files so that they no longer appear in iTunes, because apps tend to be tiny and I’ve got plenty of storage. You can always trash them, however, and get them back via Time Machine — provided that you back up your machine regularly. Another neat trick is going into your iTunes account and checking your purchase history, although this can take a while to load and isn’t searchable or sortable.

As a blogger for TUAW, I collect a lot more paid apps than most people. But contrary to what you might think, it wasn’t the review apps that were clogging up my app collection. I’m actually pretty good about testing, writing-up (or giving feedback about why I’m not writing-up) and then tossing promo-code apps. The apps that were clogging up iTunes were the “Lite” ones. All those demo items that I decided to give a try just to see if I wanted to go for the whole shebang or not.

I truly wish iTunes had a “Delete all lite apps” option, because it took a while to sort through those guys, figure out what I had (and had not) tested, and what I had (and had not) upgraded. I had more cruft than I remember downloading (I think I’m going to blame my kids for that) and quite a few that we had already bought in their “pro” or “full” versions. You can, of course, search your apps for “free” and “lite” words, but you will have to remember which ones you bought as full versions.

Continue reading iOS devices filling up? Try deleting some apps

iOS devices filling up? Try deleting some apps originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Perhaps, like me, you find most financial news and statistics boring. Perhaps, like me, when the AAPL liveblog came up yesterday, you decided it was probably time to go get some lunch instead. Fortunately, we have access to Business Insider, where they’ve compiled a quick and easy list of truly interesting items from the call yesterday, in plain English, with nary a mention of terms like “general allocation accounting” or “high-interest stock targets” (yawn).

The long and short of it: There was no mention of Steve Jobs’ illness, but Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer impressed, as did the company’s standing in general (not surprising — that’s been the case for a while now). Apple’s revenue grew 70% year over year, an astounding feat in an otherwise down economy. iTunes is now a $4 billion dollar industry in itself, and in just the first year of its life, the iPad has replaced 7% of all PC business. That’s incredible, as are most of the other things on BI’s list.

Oh, and that $40 billion in cash that Apple’s had to throw around for the past few years? Make that $60 billion. Yowza! Now that’s worth paying attention.

The most interesting things from Apple’s Q1 earnings call originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments