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.
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…
