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iPods And Other Gadgets Could Be Charged By The Mere Movement Of Your Body

Ah science, where would we be without it? Well it turns out that in a few years time we could all be using iPods and mobile phones that don’t even require batteries or mains power for their source of power. Instead they could rely on the movements of our own bodies to generate electricity – whether it be our heart beating, our legs moving or the pinch of our fingers!

A team of scientists presented their findings at a National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, in which they used zinc oxide nanowires to generate electricity when strained and flexed.  Dr. Zhong Lin Wang of the team said of their findings:

This development represents a milestone toward producing portable electronics that can be powered by body movements without the use of batteries or electrical outlets.

Our nanogenerators are poised to change lives in the future. Their potential is only limited by one’s imagination.

Their latest development of the concept was thousands of times more powerful than their previous attempts and Dr. Wang is hopeful that if they can sustain the rate of improvement the nanogenerator could be used for a “broad range of other applications that require more power.” Five nanogenaroters can currently produce a cumulative total of about 1 microampere at 3 volts, which is equivalent to 2 AA batteries – a substantial increase from previous versions.

[Via The Telegraph]

 

BlackBerry Messenger for iOS Coming On April 26? [Updated]

According to a rumor posted by BGR a few weeks ago, RIM was looking for a way to expand its BlackBerry Messenger platform to iOS and Android devices, with a release coming soon in the App Store. RIM apparently wasn’t happy about the hundreds of apps clearly inspired by BBM available for iPhones and iPads, and decided to develop a version of Messenger that doesn’t have all the features available to BlackBerry owners, but still allows iOS users to communicate with their friends and family. A compromise, that is, to have BlackBerry Messenger available on as many platforms as possible.

A poster on MacRumors Forums now suggests BlackBerry Messenger for iOS may be launching in the App Store on April 26. At a “social media conference” in Toronto, RIM’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie allegedly revealed that BBM and “other services” will come to the iPhone on April 26 through the App Store. Balsillie also confirmed that they plan to release an update “this summer” with a new notification system, which may or may not suggest RIM knows something about iOS 5 and the improved notifications Apple has been rumored to be working on. But, then again, it is unclear why would RIM know about such an important aspect of iOS and Balsillie’s statements might just be speculation on his side.

Looking back at BGR’s report, however, it sounded like the Android version was set to come out first:

Right now, we have heard that Android is definitely a go. But again, we’re not sure on timing, though our sources are confident that it will launch some time this year. RIM chose Android first because of the fact that it could develop and integrate something like this much easier with an open platform, but the plan is to build and deploy an iOS version at some point as well.

So it is possible that in the next few days an Android version of BBM will be unveiled, with the iPhone app scheduled for a late April launch. The rumor hasn’t been confirmed by RIM, but chances are they are really looking for a way to rise among the competition in the App Store (made of apps like WhatsApp, Textie and Ping) by releasing an iOS counterpart of BBM, which counts millions of users worldwide. [via TUAW]

Update: BGR now reports they have contacted RIM and, apparently, Jim Balsillie didn’t speak at any conference in Toronto this week.

RIM tells us that the story, reporting that BlackBerry Messenger would arrive as an app for Apple’s iPhone on April 26th, is false. “RIM did not hold a conference in Toronto this week, and Jim Balsillie did not speak at any event in Toronto this week.

Apple Announces Q2 2011 Conference Call For April 20

As widely anticipated in the past few days, Apple has scheduled its q2 2011 earnings call for April 20, 2011. The conference call will be streamed live on Apple’s website (audio-only) here.

Apple’s conference call webcast discussing Q2 - 2011 financial results will begin at 2:00pm PT/5:00pm ET on Wednesday, April 20, 2011.

Please note that comments made during this call may include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements.

In Q1 2011, Apple posted a record revenue of $26.74 billion with 7.33 million iPads sold, 16.24 million iPhones and 4.13 million Macs. The company posted record net quarterly profit of $6 billion, or $6.43 per diluted share. 19.45 million iPods were sold during the quarter. In the year-ago quarter, Apple posted revenue of $13.50 billion with 2.94 million Macs sold, 8.75 million iPhones and 10.89 million iPods sold.

The Q2 2011 earnings call is expected to provide more insight into Verizon iPhone sales numbers and the iPad 2, which was released on March 11 in the US and also went on sale last week in 25 more countries – just in time to fit into Apple’s second fiscal quarter window.

 

Music Labels Bringing “Enhanced Albums” To The iPad

Remember iTunes LP? It’s an experiment from Apple that never really took off in popularity (although Apple doesn’t disclose iTunes Store sales numbers) that aimed at offering a richer experience for consuming music by adding graphic elements to albums like artworks, lyrics, photos and videos. For a few dollars more than the usual iTunes price, the LP version of an album comes with additional content – but the big problem is, aside from desktop computers this content can’t be viewed anywhere else. Not on the iPhone, not on the iPad or Apple TV. It’s a locked format that, in spite of Steve Jobs’s promises, failed at catching on among iOS users and consumers overall. Still, is the idea of a “rich music experience” dead among music labels? Not at all.

The New York Times reports Universal and EMI have been experimenting with music albums sold as apps for the iPad at a higher price. The obvious trick is, these apps have extra content and visuals to justify the expense: once again, it’s all about photos, videos, lyrics, and so forth. Released by the EMI music group last week at $9.99, “Until One” for iPad gives you access to Swedish House Mafia’s latest album, including a photo gallery, documentaries and written accounts from the band. The whole package is touted as “highly interactive” and meant for multitouch. On top of that, the app also includes 2 full-length music videos and links to the band’s Twitter and Facebook profiles. So for 10 bucks and a 659 MB download, you get a music album with lots of videos, photos, and other stuff. Not a bad deal if you’re a fan of the band, but something most users in the App Store will likely ignore. That’s why EMI and others are looking to extend this concept to a wider catalogue of artists and albums.

The Universal Music Group has teamed up with a video company, Eagle Rock Entertainment, to create iPad versions of films about classic albums like Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” with social networking features that allow fan commentary. This month, Bjork announced that her next project, “Biophilia,” will encompass “music, apps, Internet, installations and live shows.

“This is very much a test of a really new and exciting technology platform that will push the boundaries of what you can do on a tablet,” said Cosmo Lush, the company’s vice president for digital business development.

I can’t stress enough how much I believe this is one of the paths to follow to deliver music content in this new mobile era, especially to owners of new devices like the iPad. The coffee table + music + photo gallery concept has always intrigued me as one of the most interesting ways to add real value to an audio-only product – that sense of “owning your music” that got lost somewhere during the CD-to-MP3 transition years ago. Perhaps these music labels will fail hard at reinventing the genre on the iPad because “it’s too little, too late”, but I’m still one of those waiting for Apple to show us that iTunes LP and Extras can make a lot of sense on iOS devices, and especially on the iPad.

N.O.V.A. 3 Will Use Unreal Engine, Coming Later This Year→

N.O.V.A. 3 Built On Unreal Engine, Coming Later This Year

Pocket Gamer reports an interesting tidbit about software development studio Gameloft and its first-person shooter game N.O.V.A. for iOS:

Gameloft has confirmed what we already knew down here in the Rumour Mine - it’s busy working on four games utilising Epic Games’s Unreal Engine 3. But the Paris-based publisher hasn’t revealed what those games are.

Word has it that shooter sequel N.O.V.A. 3 is among the four titles built around the engine and will be out later this year.

I’m not a huge fan of Gameloft’s console-like approach to iOS, but I think it’ll be interesting to see how a new N.O.V.A. developed with the same engine that powers Infinity Blade will fit in the iOS gaming scene. Gameloft has plenty of time to make N.O.V.A. graphically more impressive than Infinity Blade or Rage HD come the 2011 holiday season. And – we’ll see if I’m wrong – I have a feeling a brand new N.O.V.A. with stunning graphics could make for the perfect demo at a certain Apple fall event.

Also: who else thinks Infinity Blade is going to win an Apple Design Award in June? [via Steve Troughton-Smith]

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Impressive Hack Wirelessly Mirrors iPad 2 To Display

Cables suck, and if you want to kill a presentation you need to be untethered from that fifteen foot long VGA cable tethered to that overhead projector. When a client wanted to cut the cord, some ingenuity resulted in shell housing a minimum of two components and a simple usb cable. The idea revolves around the HP Wireless TV Connect and a Cooler Master Choiix Power Fort battery pack to power the transmitter used for the iPad, connected by a simple USB cable. The HP Wireless TV Connect consists of a transmitter and a receiver: the receiver is connected to the display, while the transmitter is fed power (up to two hours) using the battery. Using a wooden block for a mold, a shell was created to house the components and sit the iPad 2 on top, with enough space to connect the cord from the dock connector to the components inside. How does it work? Asides from the bulk and the two pounds added, the wireless iPad works just as you’d expect it to. We have a video after the break if you’re curious to see how it all goes down, and if you have the time and money you too could roll your own for around $275 according to the mastermind behind it all.

[Youtube (eg0voruhk) via Reddit, MacRumors Forums]

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Follows for iPhone Tracks Your Online Stats & Popularity

An interesting mix between third-party Twitter app Birdbrain and Ego for iOS, Follows is a new app for the iPhone aimed at collecting and displaying data from your social profiles on a variety of services. Currently, the app supports stats coming from Twitter, Facebook, Feedburner, MySpace, Vimeo, YouTube, Flickr, and LinkedIn.

While Birdbrain goes really in-depth in the way it aggregates and displays Twitter data over time and Ego is more geared towards website owners with Mint and Google Analytics integration, Follows offers a lightweight approach at gathering statistics from the supported services such as view counts, followers, visits and subscribers. From the main, dark-styled dashboard, you get a quick recap of all your online profiles with a series of tabs allowing you to get a more detailed look at numbers and graphs. It sounds complicated, but it’s not. Instead, Follows wants to be an easy way to, say, see how many people follow you on Twitter or are subscribed to your RSS feeds or, again, have liked your Vimeo videos. Plus, it’s a free app.

Once authenticated with the services (you can add multiple usernames for each one of them), everything goes into the main screen. Tapping on an item will display a different single view with additional stats (for Twitter, total amount of tweets, favorites, people you’re following) and two graphs depicting your “social growth”. The system works the same for all the services integrated into Follows. The app is fast at fetching updates and the latest version (released today) fixed an issue with the app crashing as you selected dashboard items.

Follows isn’t as full-featured as Ego (especially for bloggers) or Birdbrain when it comes to Twitter, but it gets its job done. The design is elegant and minimal, and in-app purchases allow you to remove ads and unlock “custom URL tracking”. It’s a free download in the App Store.

Doodle Jump 2.0 Adds Multiplayer

Following a series of updates that added “special edition” levels, Game Center achievements and a brand new version of the app featuring movie character Hop, Doodle Jump 2.0 was released last night with a highly requested feature: WiFi multiplayer. The new Doodle Jump doesn’t have any new levels or enemies, but it comes with Game Center integration for online multiplayer. The feature only works over WiFi with your Game Center friends; you’ll have to race to the top to see who reaches the finish line first, all in pure Doodle Jump fashion while jumping on platforms and avoiding obstacles.

Doodle Jump is one of the most popular games for the iPhone, and we’re still waiting for a proper iPad 2 counterpart to land on the App Store. In the meantime, if you’ve always wanted to compete with your friends in a Doodle Jump race, you can get the update here.

First WWDC Ticket Shows Up On eBay For A Massively Inflated Price

If you missed out on snapping up a WWDC ticket, which is very likely considering the tickets sold out in less than 10 hours, but still desperately want one you could consider swallowing your pride (and emptying your wallet) by jumping on eBay. There has been at least one developer selling his extra unactivated ticket that was supposedly meant to go to a colleague who decided he couldn’t make it out this year.

But unsurprisingly the ticket is being sold at an insanely inflated price of US$3,500 – more than double the original price of $1,599. In fact that’s nearly $2,000 more.  Whether or not the story from the seller is genuine, this ticket scalping will probably attract the attention of Apple’s legal department. But it’s unlikely to stop others from at least attempting to resell their tickets, given the incredible demand for tickets – so if you are desperate you may want to keep your eye out on eBay, Cragislist and even Twitter.

[Via TUAW]