A new YouTube video demonstrates a hack which purportedly takes over the video display of Times Square’s massive screens using an iPhone. CBS posted the story saying, “First off I’m going to state that I do not know if this is in fact real or fake. My gut is telling me it has to be fake… but if it’s real, I’m so going to buy one!”
Here’s how the poster describes the hack…
the way it works is pretty simple: plug in my transmitter into the iphone 4 and play back any video clip. you can play it through the ipod feature or through the camera roll. the transmitter instantly sends the video signal to the video repeater and the video repeater overrides any video screen that it’s being held next to. it doesn’t matter what shape or size the hacked screen is because the hack video will simply keep its correct dimensions and the rest of the hacked space will stay black.
I chose times square for my demo because it has lots of video screens to try it on. it is also one of the most monitored and secured areas in new york city and that made it that much more fun :). you can see in my video that the repeater is pretty powerful but the signal is not very stable yet. i’m working on that. i will post a new video later this week explaining how i made this prototype.
Even if the hack is fake, the video is pretty impressive.
Rovio has released a trailer for their upcoming game Angry Birds Rio which was produced in collaboration with Fox.
Rovio and 20th Century Fox join forces to create a new game, Angry Birds Rio! The game will launch with 45 dedicated levels based on the highly-anticipated motion picture, with regular updates lined up for the future. The game will be available for download on smart phones and tablets worldwide.
Craig Hockenberry, one of the developers for Twitterrific, has written a post on Stack Overflow estimating what it costs to develop a similar iPhone application.
We worked some pretty long hours. Let’s be conservative and say it’s 10 hours per day for 6 days a week. That 60 hours for 9 weeks gives us 540 hours. With two developers, that’s pretty close to 1,100 hours. Our rate for clients is $150 per hour giving $165,000 just for new code. Remember also that we were reusing a bunch existing code: I’m going to lowball the value of that code at $35,000 giving a total development cost of $200,000.
Anyone who’s done serious iPhone development can tell you there’s a lot of design work involved with any project. We had two designers working on that aspect of the product. They worked their asses off dealing with completely new interaction mechanics. Don’t forget they didn’t have any hardware to touch, either (LOTS of printouts!) Combined they spent at least 25 hours per week on the project. So 225 hours at $150/hr is about $34,000.
There are also other costs that many developer neglect to take into account: project management, testing, equipment. Again, if we lowball that figure at $16,000 we’re at $250,000.
I sometimes wonder what monsters haunt the nightmares of Apple’s resident designer, Mr. Jonathan Ive. He’s so prim, so meticulous, so clean and proper, but on those nights when he has a slice of pepperoni pizza a little too close to bed time, what horrors does he dream up? Some horrible Cenobite iMac dragging itself bloodily across the floor whispering “Make way for the new flesh:” a biomechanical monstrosity of Foxconn components crammed into the pulsating sack of some skinless, cancerous stomach?
Or is it something more like this cardboard box Hackintosh, put together by the guys over at One Block Off the Grid — a cooperative for buying photovoltaic solar panels at a group discount — after one of their Macs proved too slow to run Adobe After Effects?
To make this Hackintosh, the One Block Off The Grid chaps simply ordered $900 worth of components from Amazon, including a 2.66 Intel Core i5 CPU, a 1 TB hard drive, 8 GB of 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM, and an XFX Radeon HD 5770 1GB DDR5 Graphics Card, and installed it inside the cardboard box in which it had all arrived. They installed Snow Leopard on the finished machine using iBoot Multibeast.
The end result? The performance equivalent of a $2700 Mac Pro in a $900 ghetto package. Jonny Ive must feel invisible insects crawling all over his body right about now. Some things were not meant to be.
Apple has gotten very predictable in how it schedules its rollouts, with new iPhones being released during the summer, new iPods and Macs in separate Fall events. And like clockwork, Apple just announced it will hold a media event called “Back to the Mac” on October 20 to let us know “what’s new for Mac,” as well as “a sneak peek of the next major version of Mac OS X.” Since the graphic for the event shows a lion peeking out from behind a tilted Apple logo, it’s probably safe to assume that Mac OS X 10.7 will be known as Lion.
Not much is known about what might be announced for 10.7, which has been appearing with increasing frequency in web server logs over the past year. Rumors that 10.7 would require apps to be signed with an Apple root certificate – effectively ‘jailing’ Mac OS X and creating a desktop App Store – were denied by Steve Jobs. There has also been some buzz about a revolutionary new feature, “something that has never been done before and will truly amaze everyone,” referred to in a job listing Apple posted a few months ago. Though the details about the change in the “very foundations” of Mac OS X were left vague in the listing, the software engineer Apple was searching for needed experience with Internet technologies and services, and especially “up close and personal experience with the HTTP protocol as well as other protocols layered atop it.”
Of course, many observers will be looking to see if the long-rumored 11-inch MacBook Air shows any sign of actually being released. Fall is the traditional time for new Mac announcements, and the Air hasn’t seen a refresh in over a year. The supposed “mini” Air, which is claimed to be manufactured by Quanta Computer and feature a 32nm Intel Core processor, has been talked about for months, and may well be announced next week… if it’s not total vapor, that is.
The event will be held a week from today on Apple’s Cupertino campus at One Infinite Loop.
UNBELIEVABLE!! Finally Justin TV have released their iPhone App… and let me tell you.. it was well worth the wait. This App allows iPhone users to watch live streaming channels and real time chat comments on the actual video player in a NEAT way
This is a MUST have for Content Streaming Online & Broadcasters…
A Great advantage for me as I have my own channel set up & broadcast on JTV every now and again… Take a look at the Video…
