Iphone Updates

Filed under: Software, WWDC

Apple has posted a listing of the sessions which will be offered at this summer’s World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco.

There are three tracks to choose from: Mac, IT and new this year, iPhone. Of course, the Mac track has the greatest number of sessions available, and poor IT is dead last.

Early bird registration has begun, so purchase your ticket and make your hotel reservations. And if you’re an iPhone developer, we’re really waiting to see what you come up with.

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Last year, we pointed out this cool campaign for iPods with video in South Africa. Tiny boxes of movie popcorn, posters and even a miniature “trailer” announced the idea of “Movies in your pocket.”

Today, Creative Bits describes another iPod campaign from South Africa. It features a set of earbuds that lead not to an iPod, but a pocket full of music, if you will. In one ad, a rock band does its thing in a woman’s purse. In another, a boy band croons on a desk and a hip-hop act features a microphone wire that leads to the wearer’s earbuds.

The images are great, and quite different from the silhouette ads we see in the US. Have you seen an interesting campaign or ad in your neck of the woods?

Here’s a great trick from Macosxhints.com — set up your Mac to automatically preview all downloads with Quick Look.

It’s a simple two-step process. First, install the Quick Look Droplet, a simple application that displays any file with Quick Look. Next, set your browser preference to automatically open certain file types (say, PDFs, Word documents and JPGs) with the droplet. It’s much snappier than launching Preview or Word.

Earlier this week, Karelia released Sandvox 1.2.7. If you’re unfamiliar, Sandvox is a great WYSIWYG website development application. It’s really fun to use, and features .Mac and iLife integration, templates you’ll actually want to put up on your site and a great user interface (in fact, it was the runner up in Apple’s 2007 Design Awards for Best Mac OS X User Experience).

Version 1.2.7 is a minor update, but includes some important changes, like

• Improvements to iMedia Browser, including new movie thumbnailing code
• Graphical Title Text replacement now works again under Leopard
• Updates to the Digg pagelet

There’s more, of course, and you can get the full run down here. Once you’ve got your Sandvox site up, share it at Sandvoxed.

Sandvox now requires 10.4.11 or 10.5.x, is a Universal Binary and comes in both pro ($79US) and “regular” ($49US) versions. Version 1.2.7 is a free upgrade for registered users.

Today Apple has released an update to their photo workflow app, Aperture. Aperture 2.1, a free update for all Aperture 2.0 users, adds a new, and open, plugin architecture to Aperture. This means it will now be much easier for developers to extend Aperture’s builtin capabilities by writing little bits of codes that plug into the Aperture frameworks (hence the name).

Apple is already working with some developers, and is including a dodge and burn plugin of their own with Aperture 2.1. Aperture 2.1 is available now, and if you don’t already have Aperture it will cost you $199 (or $99 to upgrade from Aperture 1.0).

It’s not often that we get to do an advice column here, but let’s see how this goes. An email arrived at the office just the other day…

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I work in the engineering college of a large private university, where I manage 6 Mac-based labs. I just tried to order myself a brand new Mac Pro to replacing my aging PowerMac G5 and was told by my dean that the college would no longer be buying Macs because they had absolutely no place in the engineering industry. He said that from this point forward, the college “would only be buying Windows computers, period!”

I know that he is wrong and that there are engineers that use Macs professionally and I can give a few examples to support that. If I am going to win this argument I’m going to need a lot of proof.

Signed,

Mac-lorn Admin

Dear Mac-lorn Admin,

Darling, didn’t you realize the Mac Pro is a Windows machine, and a darned speedy one? Last time I checked, Boot Camp + Mac Pro = a Windows dream! The adult in us loves the reliability and UNIX backbone, but the kid in us loves the GUI and tasty frosting! Having a single machine that can do double or triple duty with Mac apps, BSD/Linux engineering power and Windows compatibility would be the envy of any right-minded academician.

Still, we know that logic isn’t going to sway that mean ole dean of yours. TUAW readers, can you help Mac-lorn? Leave us your testimonials about using Macs in your professional lives — particularly in engineering or in higher ed — in the comments.

Love,

Auntie T.

Once the second-day rules went into effect for the PWN2OWN competition, allowing browser or email exploits to be used, it didn’t take more than a few minutes for Charlie Miller, Jake Honoroff and Mark Daniel from ISE to get their 0day vulnerability to work on the target MacBook Air; they walk away with the laptop and the $10,000 prize.

Since the rules of the contest ensure that the vulnerabilities are immediately turned over to the Zero Day Initiative and the vendors are notified, this hole (presumably in Safari, although possibly in QuickTime or Java as last year’s was) should be patched in due course, and users are no more or less secure today than they were yesterday. It is a little troubling, however, that the other two laptops (Vista and Ubuntu) are still standing.

No one escapes the TUAW visitation. Our methods are fear, surprise, and a fanatical devotion to the Apple! Under the best of circumstances, management can use our Reaper-like presence to convince everyone they need to get the hell out of Manhattan. In the case of Freeverse Software, the Exodus moment arrived. The entire crew has packed up their East Side offices and headed over to Brooklyn’s fashionable DUMBO district.

We wish the Freeverse crew well in the new office — with luck, those line extensions (like Airburst and Marathon:Durandal for XBox 360), iPhone games, new apps built on legendary engines, and killer vector graphics tools will keep on pumping out of the shop once the river has been crossed. We are particularly eager for an iPhone version of Jared.

A couple of months back, president Ian Lynch Smith and marketing director Brian Akaka were kind enough to show us around the old shop and let us take a few pictures for posterity before the move (gallery below). If you have questions about any of the mystery objects in the pictures, let us know and Brian can clear up any confusion. As for other independent Mac software developers? If you’re in NYC, Denver, Philadephia, Chicago, Atlanta, LA, Knoxville or the UK, let us know when we can visit. We promise not to poke you with a soft cushion.

Doesn’t “Cherry Hill” sound lovely? It will sound even sweeter for Cherry Hill, New Jersey-based Apple fans this weekend when a new Apple Store opens on Route 38, next to A|X Armani Exchange and Mo.Ao.C Cosmetics (that’s right, a Mac store next to a MAC store). The doors will open at 10:00 AM on Saturday, March 29th. You can get full travel directions here. This will be The Garden State’s 10th Apple Store.

Residents of Philadelphia will also benefit, as this store is about 5 miles away from town (for some reason, Philly itself still lacks an Apple Store).

As usual, we ask any TUAW readers who visit the store to share their stories and/or pictures.

Thanks, Rico!

What do you get when you combine 332 iPhones and 2 crooked Apple employees? Felony theft charges, apparently, after a luckless pair of underhanded but enterprising Apple Store workers decided to set up their own iPhone shop using purloined stock from Uncle Steve. Now one is in the slammer, and the other is facing extradition to New Hampshire (from Massachussetts, not from the French Riviera — too bad for him). This all goes to show, crime does not pay — especially when you get caught with $132,000 of hot iPhones.

There is no official word as to what color t-shirts the thieves wore in their day-to-day work, or whether either of them could be reasonably classified as Apple Geniuses.

ComputerWorld posts that ChangeWave Research has studied satisfaction levels for corporate users of Leopard and Windows Vista. As you might expect, the Leopard users are altogether more satisfied than Vista users — up to 5 times more likely to report that they’re “very satisfied” with their operating system — but you might not have known the following:

• Leopard reinforces tooth enamel and ensures brighter, happier smiles.
• Leopard users are more likely to find attractive mates.
• Vista users are subject to early hair loss.
• Leopard helps eliminate embarrassing halitosis.
• Vista users are five times likelier to be audited by the IRS.
• Leopard washes your windows and leaves lemon-scented stacks of pre-folded laundry around your house.

Okay, well maybe not. Consult the ComputerWorld article for the (far less amusing) statistical results. One worthwhile number to note: while 7% of respondents said they’d be buying Apple laptops in the next 90 days, a hold-steady from the previous survey, the likelihood of most other laptop purchases went down since the last time they asked. A MacBook Air effect?

After a brief false alarm earlier today, it looks like beta 2 of Xcode 3.1 (including the iPhone-ready version of Interface Builder) is actually released. A word of warning: Apple’s servers are getting hammered right now, and it may pay to wait a while before downloading the 2.1 GB package.

While you wait, you can peruse the release notes for Xcode and for Interface Builder. Never hurts to read the documentation. Have a good weekend, all you iPhone coders!

P.S. One of our loyal tipsters, PJ, noted that he sent us an email about 36 hours ago with his surmise (based on a link he saw, behind the Apple developer site login wall, to a Beta 1 -> Beta 2 diffs manifest) that the revised iPhone SDK might be imminent. PJ, for the record, you guessed right.

Thanks Nik + PJ

If you fondly remember last year’s CanSecWest hacking challenge — won by researcher Dino Dai Zovi with a Java/QuickTime exploit that allowed him to take over the target MacBook Pro, thereby claiming it as his own — you’ll want to keep your ears open for results of the current challenge, now underway for the 2nd day in Vancouver. This year’s PWN2OWN competition extends the target space to three road warrior laptops: a MacBook Air, a Sony VAIO running Ubuntu and a Fujitsu machine running Vista.

No winners were declared on the first day; that’s no surprise to contest organizers, as the initial set of rules were the most restrictive. Today the ruleset allows for browser and other built-in application exploits by visiting a malicious URL, so it could get more exciting in a hurry.

Update: The MacBook Air has been claimed, per Macworld.

In the rather rarefied atmosphere of web standards compliance, the Acid3 suite of browser tests is like a pro wrestler’s chair to the back of the head: if you can take it and keep standing, that’s very impressive. The Acid3 suite, first released at the beginning of this month, pushes browsers to the very edges of their rendering, SVG, CSS and DOM scripting capabilities — all necessary for a consistent and interoperable Web 2.0 experience.

As with the earlier Acid2 test, there’s been a bit of a horserace among browser development teams to be the first to the finish line with Acid3, including the WebKit squad responsible for Safari’s underlying engine; Acid3 dev Ian Hickson gives major props to Apple and the WebKit devs on his blog, including efforts to clear bugs in the test suite itself (he had to work quite hard to find standards compliance issues in WebKit). On Wednesday evening, both the Opera and WebKit teams declared a 100% score — not a full pass, as there are minor issues to clean up, but nevertheless the test looks like it should. With the Mac nightly build of WebKit available for download, you too can feel the power of this fully operational web standards battle station.

[A quick clarification: While both Opera and WebKit have claimed 100% on Acid3, only one of the browsers -- WebKit -- has a publicly downloadable version right now that can make that score. Opera's build won't be released for another week or so.]

Thanks Adam

Almost a year after those two photogs first tried to bring a class-action suit against Apple for supposedly underperforming colors on MacBook and MacBook Pro LCD screens, our own Mike Rose has been proven right — Apple has “quietly settled” the suit, and presumably Apple didn’t have to pay much: the plaintiffs apparently had trouble finding other people who had purchased the laptops solely for the “millions of colors” claim.

Which makes sense — why would you need any more than a few hundred thousand colors on a single screen? Of course, the drawback here is that we’ll never find out if you really can get millions of colors on a MacBook screen, as the photographers wanted. For all we know, they might actually be technically correct — widely recognized as the very best kind of correct.

Codeweavers has released CrossOver Games, a games-specific version of CrossOver, their Windows emulation software. Jeremy White has the story behind the release over on their blog — apparently the application team wasn’t working quite as quickly as they wanted, but the games team was chugging right along in terms of compatibility, so they decided to go ahead and ship what they’d done with games on its own.

The compatibility list isn’t bad (most of the Steam stuff is on there, which is great, although it is a little weird that they brag about World of Warcraft and EVE Online, considering that those two run natively on Mac just fine; guess you Linux folks need your MMO fix, too) but nothing really jumps out here that might encourage you to use CrossOver rather than just, say, Boot Camp-ing the game up yourself. DirectX 10 is apparently causing problems, too, since neither Crysis, Gears of War, or Unreal Tournament III are on there.

Still, a valiant effort, and if you’re desperate to get one of these games working and playable on your Mac (and don’t have a spare copy of Windows sitting around to install with Boot Camp), CrossOver Games might be just what you need. TUAW is working on getting a copy of it, and as soon as we do, we’ll run it through the grinder and see what we can get to come out the other side.

Just as many of you thought the Mac mini would die off in favor of a new class of consumer Macs, the rumor mill starts up again. AppleInsider is reporting that the Mac mini may receive an upgrade — and fairly soon, too.

According to AppleInsider, the Mac mini may receive the following upgrades:

• 45-nanometer Core 2 Duo mobile chips starting at 2.1Ghz
• 800MHz front-side bus
• Stepped-up Intel graphics processor (comparable to the one in the consumer MacBook)

AppleInsider remains speculative on a release date, but they’re sure of the forthcoming upgrade. They go on to say that “Penryn-3M-based systems reportedly remained within the engineering build stage as of mid-month.”

Today Mac OS X hints offers an easily overlooked internationalization hint. You’re probably well aware of the trick where you hold down an iPhone button on the keyboard to view accented variations on the letter being tapped. What you might not have know about was the regional domains. In settings, choose General > Keyboards and enable some of those international keyboards.

Next go to Safari and start to enter a new URL. Tap the globe to switch the active keyboard from US English to some other nationality. (French is shown here.) Finally, tap and hold the .com button. After a second, a regionalized version of .com appears just to the left of the default.

Are you a browser fiend? The sort of person who loves Safari, yet can’t quite live with some of its peculiarities? If you hadn’t guessed, I certainly am one of those people. I love the speed and simplicity of Safari, but it never worked as well as (say) Camino, particularly when it came to persuading links from the likes of Gmail to open in the same window. No number of SIMBL hacks (yes, hacks) seemed to persuade Safari to open links in the existing window - driving me away from Safari, and instead swear by Camino.

But that’s about to change, as Apple has added a hidden preference to Safari 3.1 that allows you to tell Safari to stick to one window. Even in Gmail. Tipster Dennis Stevense, explains in a blog post that through a simple Terminal command, true one-window mode is finally, finally, here for Safari. All you need to enter is the command below into Terminal, hit enter, and you’re sorted.

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Thanks Dennis!

Update: If you want to reverse the change, it’s a simple matter of entering the following into Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool false

Are you a browser fiend? The sort of person who loves Safari, yet can’t quite live with some of its peculiarities? If you hadn’t guessed, I certainly am one of those people. I love the speed and simplicity of Safari, but it never worked as well as (say) Camino, particularly when it came to persuading links from the likes of Gmail to open in the same window. No number of SIMBL hacks (yes, hacks) seemed to persuade Safari to open links in the existing window - driving me away from Safari, and instead swear by Camino.

But that’s about to change, as Apple has added a hidden preference to Safari 3.1 that allows you to tell Safari to stick to one window. Even in Gmail. Tipster Dennis Stevense, explains in a blog post that through a simple Terminal command, true one-window mode is finally, finally, here for Safari. All you need to enter is the command below into Terminal, hit enter, and you’re sorted.

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Thanks Dennis!

Update: If you want to reverse the change, it’s a simple matter of entering the following into Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool false

Two big TUAW snaps up to reader Timothy Colburn for tracking down this fab iPod nano offer. Between now and June 30th, when you buy a refurb nano, Apple is going to throw in a $15 iTunes gift card. Sweet! Make sure to read through the how to and the terms and conditions because they’re significantly longer than the offer itself.

So does this mean that Apple is readying itself for an iPod refresh? We have no idea — but a nano in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Update: Just got back from my son’s school play and found several notes in my mailbox about this offer. Apparently, Apple sales associates are not honoring this promotion any more and the promo has been removed from the website.

TUAW reader Rowan Pope pointed us to this insane MacBook Air hacking post. How many USB ports does the Air support? Apple says just one; this post says up to 7. Apparently, the Air has a few extra live USB port connections built into that thar skinny little computer. How do we know this? Because the guy downloaded developer documentation for the ICH-8 chip, which offers 5 low-speed and 2 high-speed USB controllers.

He popped open his Air and measured the voltage at each pin. He then used a hacked memory key with a modded USB extension cable (with an extra resistor just to be safe). After connecting the memory key to one of the pins, his MacBook Air system log reported a USB error. A few more tests and adjustments later, he actually got his laptop to recognize the drive. In total, he found three working USB connections plus an unused SATA controller.

TUAW is awed. Be sure to check out the other mod on this much-opened Air: a carbon-fiber bottom case. Sleek!

If you run iTunes or QuickTime on your Windows PC, but not Safari, you might have seen an uninvited guest show up in the Apple Software Update earlier this week. Yes, Apple thinks you need yet another browser. They tried to slip the new Safari 3.1 in for iTunes owners, a move that has some Windows users up in arms.

Cybernet reminds us that this wasn’t quite unexpected — Steve did say that Apple had made inroads on Windows with iTunes, and that they planned to use those inroads to send Safari around. The only problem is that, while yes, the button and the text do say “Install,” the program is usually used for “updating” software, and so getting new software with the deal wasn’t something a lot of users expected. And users who don’t do anything but the default (I can guarantee you that, since I bought my mother an iPod for Christmas, my parents now have Safari 3.1 installed on their PC, despite the fact that they still aren’t quite sure how that Firefox I installed for them works), are basically getting software they didn’t plan to have.

Sneaky unwanted software scheme, or just a not-so-subtle hint to Windows users that they could be using a better browser? You decide. I just know that I’m going to be paying a little closer attention to exactly what my Software “Update” is updating (or “installing”) from now on.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

If you were one of those people who were excited that Adobe was going to apparently fight to get Flash on the iPhone, get ready to be unexcited: Adobe has decided that despite what they thought earlier, they’re not actually going to be able to get Flash on there using only the SDK from Apple. Nope, Adobe has admitted that they need Apple’s help to get it working (not a big surprise there), and since Apple isn’t really keen to help at all, odds are it’s just not going to happen.

Adobe then announced that they didn’t need your iPhone anyway, Apple, and that they hate you, Apple, and that you never let them have any fun, and that they wish you’d just die! And that they’d never been born! Then they ran to pout in the corner for a good 20 minutes, only to be seen a little while later playing with their trains like nothing had happened.

America’s favorite ex-con (that’s Martha Stewart, not her dog Sharkey, as seen above) just loves her new MacBook Air, according to her blog. Like most MBA owners, she’s “amazed” by how thin it is, and is thrilled that the trackpad “works much the same way as the Apple iPhone” — in fact, her whole writeup reads exactly like an ad from Apple, complete with the link to the Apple Store at the end. Who knew Martha was such a Mac-head?

Although she does settle that debate about whether the book counts as a laptop or a laptop support unit: Martha still keeps her HP right next to the Air, not only because she likes to keep up with both platforms, but apparently because when aides come by her desk to work, she wants them to have choices. And we all know what choice is: a good thing.

In this edition of Ask TUAW we’ll be looking at questions about migrating to a new Mac, full screen video, saving disk space on a notebook, coping data from an iPhone back to a Mac, viewing facing pages in Pages, making audiobooks and more.

As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you’re running and which version of OS X, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we’ll assume you’re running Leopard if you don’t specify). And now, on to the questions!

Continue reading Ask TUAW: Migration questions, saving disk space, making audiobooks and more

iPhone hacker Niacin has just released his version of iBooter. Running on Mac, Windows and Linux, iBooter offers an interactive diagnostic and customization tool that talks directly with Apple’s iPhone bootloader. With it you can set environmental variables, write a custom picture to the display (faboo if you’re tired of that USB plug and the iTunes logo), run USB commands and diagnose why, for example, your iPhone isn’t booting correctly.

Full installation instructions are available at the iBooter website as well as downloads for all three platforms. If you need to send commands directly to the baseband, iBooter is the tool you’ve been looking for.

CIOs and IT pros pay money — a lot of money — for the opinions of the Gartner Group. Since I’m not shelling out $95 to buy “Gartner Changes It’s iPhone Enterprise Recommendations,” even though I’m sure it would be worth a giggle or two, I’ll just point you to some folks who have read the new report. Short summary: author Ken Dulaney acknowledges that the circumstances leading to Gartner’s original “burn it, it’s a witch!” stance on the iPhone for enterprise use have changed, and with the additional support for Exchange and ActiveSync coming in June there are far fewer reasons to take a strict stand against iPhones in corporate settings.

Since Dulaney was the principal author of Gartner’s first report, we commend him for sticking with the issue and setting the record straight. Now, about all those C-suite folks who already have iPhones… well, as Gartner describes the support levels required to handle idiosyncratic devices, there’s “concierge,” “appliance” and “platform” levels of support, with “concierge” being the most hands-on and resource-intensive (the iPhone is moving from “concierge” to “appliance” status with the June 2.0 update). How much do you want to bet that CEOs, CFOs and CIOs who go off the reservation and buy themselves iPhones and MacBook Airs are already getting, and will continue to get, “concierge”-level support from their IT departments? Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

If you happen to be a photographer who likes to take digital photos using the RAW format, then Apple has just released an update you might want to take a look at and, perhaps, even apply. Appearing today in Software Update is what Apple calls the “Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 2.0.”

According to the notes in Software Update, this new update “extends RAW file compatibility for Aperture 2 and iPhoto ‘08 for the following cameras:

Hasselblad CFV-16
Hasselblad H3D-31
Hasselblad H3D-31II
Leaf Aptus 54S
Leaf Aptus 65S
Nikon D60
Olympus E-3
Pentax *ist DL2
Pentax *ist DS2
Pentax K100D Super
Sony DSLR-A200
Sony DSLR-A350

If you’re curious, you can also find more info on this update, which according to this page seems to be a bit of a security update as well, by going to the Apple support site. Of course, as always, if you decide to apply this update and your Mac explodes or something, be sure to let us know.

The cloud storage and sync offering from Sharpcast, SugarSync, has released a public beta of its OS X client today, complementing the existing Windows, web and mobile (WinMo + Blackberry, iPhone coming soon) clients. The Mac client and the Windows client appear pretty much the same, but once you set up your sync you don’t have to look at the client UI very often.

SugarSync is a for-pay service that extends your local files seamlessly to your other computers, to a secure webpage, and pretty much to anywhere you think they ought to go. CEO Gibu Thomas describes SugarSync as “get my stuff everywhere,” a supercharged and cross-platform version of .Mac iDisk synchronization. Our colleagues at Download Squad have checked out the service in detail, and there’s a good writeup at webware.com as well.

To use SugarSync, you can define a set of folders to sync, photos to share, “Magic Briefcase” files that live in the cloud and sync down on demand, click and go — then the defined content will be available on all your computers. With both “full sync” and “light sync” modes, you can leave rarely used files on the SugarSync side and only retrieve them as needed (great for those MacBook Air users hungry for storage). You can also selectively share photo galleries or other content via the web UI.

Once you get past the 45-day, 10 GB of storage trial period, you can use the discount available through 4/15 to get a half- off data plan (starts at $25/yr for 10 GB, up to 250 GB for $250/yr).The advantages of SugarSync for backup, specificity of synced items, and a supported client may make you give it a look as an alternative to iDisk, or to cloud solutions like OmniDrive, JungleDisk or other clients for Amazon’s S3 that require you to roll your own synchronization plan.

Evernote has plans for your brain. More specifically, a vision for the the augmentation of your memory. Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote and a recent Mac convert (who’s been enthusiastically replacing his relatives’ PCs with Macs to cut down on tech support calls) filled us in on Evernote’s big plans.

Originally, Evernote was a Windows desktop application for taking notes, and it was (and is) top-ranked in its class. Then they decided that a broader array of input options and more accessibility could take Evernote light years beyond the initial plans. This included creating a Mac desktop client and a web application to interface everything. It can take your text notes, web clippings, pictures and more, organizing them with a tagging system and attribute filter. The ultimate goal of Evernote is to be, as Phil puts it, a “universal human memory extension.”

The Mac desktop client is being developed from the ground up, not ported from the Windows client. This makes for a true Mac experience and a beautiful interface. Feature parity will eventually be maintained (Windows users currently have a slightly different feature set), but the two clients are being developed separately. Read on after the jump to find out what makes Evernote different from your current system for tracking all the information in your life (and find out how you can get in on it!).

Continue reading Evernote: universal human memory extension

With the megapixel race already past the point of noticeable benefit to consumers, it looks like the next camera arms race will be the number of lenses your rig sports — a team at Stanford is working on a 3D camera that uses 12,616 micro-lenses to generate high quality 3 megapixel images with self-contained “depth maps” that measure the distance to every object in the frame. The system works by focusing each lens above four different overlapping sensor arrays, which work in concert to determine depth — just like your eyes. Unlike similar systems, the Stanford rig is able to use that data to create a depth map without lasers, prisms, or even complex calibration, which will allow the team to shrink the tech down to compact and cellphone camera size. Once it’s ubiquitous, the teams says depth map information can be used to do anything from enhancing facial recognition systems to improving robot vision, but there’s still a long way to go — the team has just started trying to work out how to manufacture the system.

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There certainly hasn’t been any shortage of XPERIA X1 details to emerge since the desirable device was first announced back in February, but those still looking for something to whet their appetite until they can actually get their hands on one can now get their fix courtesy of a new white paper released by Sony Ericsson, which packs a bundle of interesting new tidbits. That includes details on the pre-loaded XPERIA panels, along with word of DLNA-compatible media sharing via ActiveSync or WiFi, details on the video recording recording options (30fps MPEG-4 and 30fps H.263, both VGA), and confirmation that the only browser included will be Internet Explorer. Also according to the white paper, you can expect Google Maps and Java ME to be installed by default, and you’ll get Exchange Direct Push email built-in, with setup wizards provided for Gmail, Yahoo, and Live Hotmail. What’s more, as Inxperia points out, there is also a noticeable lack of 1700MHz support, although we doubt that’ll be a deal-breaker for too many folks.

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The University of Michigan’s COM-BAT most definitely isn’t the first mechanical animal to get its inspirations from the bat, but it’s probably the best equipped to play a vital role in modern day warfare. A select group of Wolverines have been blessed with a $10 million grant from the US Army in order to concoct a “six-inch robotic spy plane modeled after a bat [that] would gather data from sights, sounds and smells in urban combat zones and transmit information back to a soldier in real time.” Purportedly, the critter will eventually boast a bevy of sensors, miniature microphones and detectors for picking up nuclear radiation and poisonous gases. Even more interesting, creators are hoping to implement “energy scavenging,” which would enable the bat to stay charged from wind / solar energy along with vibrations and “other sources.” So much for being nocturnal, eh?

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Just a week after we laid hands on a pair of new multimedia powerhouses from Acer, along comes ASUS to keep things interesting. Announced today, the 15.4-inch M50 packs quite the punch, with options for Intel’s latest smattering of Penryn processors, an optional Blu-ray drive and an available ATI Mobile Radeon HD3650 with 1GB of VRAM. The unit also comes with your choice of WXGA, WXGA+ or WSXGA+ panels, any Vista flavor you like, WiFi, up to 4GB of RAM, HDMI and a built-in hybrid TV tuner. Also included is a dual-function trackpad, which enables users to flip through tracks or playlists and adjust the volume of the Altec Lansing speakers when not mousing about. Regrettably, ASUS has yet to dole out any accompanying pricing information, but we doubt this bundle of joy will be anywhere close to a bargain.

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We still don’t know what happened in the 700MHz auction, but Verizon’s going full steam ahead with its open-network policy, holding a press conference today to detail the “Any Apps, Any Device” plan announced back in November. Things should get rolling retail-style by the second half of the year, and it looks like all hardware manufacturers have to do is get their devices certified by Verizon, which characterized the technical requirements as being only slightly stricter than industry standards — the goal is to allow access to the network without causing problems, but other than that there aren’t any UI rules or anything like that. Peace out, BREW. Only FCC-approved devices will be taken in for testing, and there’s a fee for certification, but in return manufacturers are promised a four-week turnaround (eight weeks for the “best practices” cert), with mandatory re-testing every 36 months. As far as apps go, it’s a free for all — customers can do as they wish. Verizon said that the open policy will still be in force when LTE rolls out — the big push into EV-DO was a winning bet, so it’s going to try and be aggressive with 4G as well. The best part? A new flat-rate, multi-device service plan is being considered that would allow all your mobile devices to connect for the price of a single subscription. All in all, a surprising set of announcements for Big Red — in one fell swoop, it’s gone from the most locked-down carrier being at least on par with the GSM networks, and potentially even more flexible if these pricing plans actually pan out. Hmmm, is that a mad rush of Android devs we hear?

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While solid-state hard drives are still only just beginning to catch on, if a group of researchers from Thorrn Micro Technologies have their way, there could soon be another solid-state laptop component headed your way. That component in question is a microchip-sized fan, which boasts no moving parts but is apparently capable of keeping a laptop or other electronic devices cool. To do that, the fan reportedly makes use of the same technology found in household air purifiers, which results in a flow rate three times greater than typical small mechanical fan, not to mention lower power consumption and completely silent operation. Of course, the fan is still in the early testing stages, but the researchers see virtually no end to its potential, with them boasting that it’s “one of the most significant advancements in electronics cooling since heat pipes,” and adding that it could “change the cooling paradigm for mobile electronics.”

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While we’re likely still quite a ways away from having nuke detectors in every cellphone, the Department of Homeland Security is apparently at least making some progress in other somewhat portable options, with it now showing off a radiation-hunting Chevy Suburban XL built with a little help from Raytheon. Intended specifically for the DHS’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, the SUV boasts two sliding panels that can swing out for maintenance but remain neatly concealed when on duty, as opposed to current systems that are mounted in the back of pick-up trucks. That, of course, gets paired with a laptop, which provides a full spectroscopic analysis, and the entire system can be configured to trigger a number of different alarms, including a simple vibration alert to a dedicated PDA, or a scare-the-wits-out-of-everyone approach that involves setting off the car alarm, lights, horn and siren.

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We’re used to seeing fashion-centric devices bedecked in jewels all the time, but the E90 is pretty much exclusively the domain of the business set, and we’re having a hard time imagining Joe Stock Broker going, like, totally crazy over this pimped version. The Nokia phone has been set with 408 diamonds and an 18 carat white gold shell by Peter Aloisson and retails for around $80k. Yeah, Joe Stocks is really going to flip. We have nothing more to add, other than our traditional, time-worn plea to Nokia: please release a 3G version of this in the States, we swear it’s not too late.

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Still mourning the passing of the Foleo? You and the other couple of dozen people on earth that need something like that might find a winner in the REDFLY Mobile Companion unveiled at CES this year. The device offers external control of Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices over Bluetooth 2.0 or USB, with a full keyboard, 8-inch 800 x 480 LCD and some USB and VGA plugs for tapping into external drives and an external monitor. ZDNet’s Matthew Miller got an early beta version of the device to test out, and while he admits he’s in the minority of people willing to shell out $500 for something like this, he was fairly impressed by the build quality and usability of the device. The biggest drawback is that you can’t use the device on its own without a phone, but if you’re a heavy browser user or need to do some serious text input, but aren’t doing anything serious enough to demand a real laptop, the REDFLY might just hit some sort of sweetspot for heavy Windows Mobile users. Or it could sell 12 units, it could really go either way.

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