Tag Archives: iPhone

Your Next Doctor Might Be Your Car

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“Since 2010, the USC School of Cinematic Arts and BMW have been working on Nigel, a Mini Cooper outfitted with 230 sensors that creates a log of everything that happens in the vehicle, letting users see it all via an iPhone and iPad app. Now USC’s Center for Body Computing is getting in on the Nigel project, looking at how the car could be used to monitor driver health as well as vehicle health.”

“One day, she imagines, a car’s pollution sensors, heart-rate sensors (maybe integrated into the steering wheel), GPS, and oxygen content sensors could all work together to tell drivers if, say, a certain polluted area of the highway affects their health–or if their heart rate goes up every time they arrive home or at the office.”

Apple taking over mobile?

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The first iOS gadget shipped in 2007 and just a whole bunch of folks scoffed at the notion anyone would pay $400 for a mobile phone. What’s happened since then?

  • Nokia’s smartphone handstet market share dropped from 24% to 16% in one year.
  • 97% of all tablet traffic in the United States comes from iPads. The number is 100% in Japan and 99% in the UK. (The global average is 89%.)
  • last year Google earned about $102 million from apps sales, while Apple raked in $1.7 billion.
  • Apple has ordered two manufacturers to build enough iPhone 5 handsets to sell 15 million in the first month of sales (August or September).
  • 40% of all smartphone buyers in Europe say they intend to buy an iPhone next time they buy a phone.
  • There are 910 million mobile phone subscribers in China (where the iPhone is very popular)
  • Apple has sold 25 million iPads to date and one analyst believes Apple will sell a billion of them.

Apple to disable iPhone camera at live events?

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From the Economic Times: Apple is developing a software that will restrict iPhone users from recording a live concert or sporting event. The software will ensure that an iPhone, while trying to record an event, triggers the infra-red sensors installed at the venue. These sensors would then automatically instruct the iPhone to shut down its camera function, preventing any footage from being recorded, reports the Daily Mail. However, while only the phone’s camera would be temporarily disabled, other features, such as texting and making calls, would still work. 

Is this to protect the rights of the concert promoters, artists and media companies… or just a way to deal with the morons holding up their cameras for 2 hours? 

Talk-o-Meter

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In May, 2010, I imagined an iPhone app I called the Blab-o-Meter. It only took a year for someone to pick up on the idea. They call it the Talk-o-Meter

“Some people don’t realize when they dominate others in a discussion. Make sure each of two participants get the same talk time with this App! After a brief calibration of both voices, the App recognizes who’s speaking and keeps track of the speaker’s talk time. The result is displayed as colored percent bars. The screen update can be set to one, two or five minute intervals.”

If you can find an earlier reference to this idea, let me know. I suspect The Coffee Zone is too noisy for the app but I’ll give it a try.