First steps of Linux on the iPhone
It seems that Linux is taking its first steps on the iPhone and I guess that we’ll have a lot of fun with this ;)
All the information about this project is in this blog. I’ll try to find some spare time to get to work on this hack and try to run this alpha version of Linux on my iPhone.
iPhone Linux Demonstration Video from planetbeing on Vimeo
Augmented Reality, next killer app in mobile devices?
I was having a look at TechCrunch50 conferences when I found the proposal of Tonchidot, a japanese startup that has developed the Sekai Camera application for the iPhone. This application uses the device camera to display the real world while puts information from the Internet on top of it. This is a kind of augmented reality as is the information overlays in the TV, or the next generation GPS navigation systems.
The presentation of Tonchidot was short of technical details and the following Q&A was kind a joke, very funny but wasn’t informational at all.
As you can see in the video, the application has a hard to believe accuracy displaying information for diferent objects on a shelf that are separated just a few meters or even centimeters. Knowing the technology that is available in the IPhone, it sounds to me like Sci-Fi. GPS positioning won’t work inside a building, GSM positioning could work indoor but it has a precision of 50m in the most favorable case and has a strong dependency on the cell/base-station density.
Are these two location technologies good enough to have context based information services as the ones demoed in the video? I’m a bit skeptical about it, and I’d like to have more technical information about the Sekai Camera application to know how they got it working.
Besides these technical doubts there are more doubts about who and how the information that is displayed in the application will be created and managed. Tonchidot is confident that the service will grow around a community of volunteer users that will introduce information in the system, creating a kind of social network. That’s fine but maybe would be more credible if they had explained how they expect to launch the service in the very beginning, to attract the first users. Telling the audience “imagine” and “join us” without giving technical details and a business plan it’s smoke and mirrors for me.
On the other hand I found Enkin for Android. It seems to be a much more advanced work, and they give some technical details about the project in their blueprint.
Would be cool to know more ongoing projects of augment reality in mobile devices, do you know any more?
pwned!
Tenía a mi iPhone de 1ª generación un poco descuidado, ni siquiera lo había subido a la 1.1.4. Desde que me lo traje de San Francisco en Navidad lo tenia con el jailbreak en la 1.1.2 y qué mejor momento de darle un lavado de cara que la release del firmware 2.0.1 y de la versión 2.0.2 de pwnagetool.
Para los que hayáis llegado aquí buscando información de cómo realizar el proceso, aquí tenéis una simple guía “for dummies” ;) de cómo realizar la actualización en 10 sencillos pasos… son 10 si no contamos con el sync inicial y final ;)
- Asegurate de que tienes sincronizado el iPhone para recuperar posteriormente los datos.
- Obtén el software necesario: pwnagetool, firmware y bootloaders.
- Instalar pwnagetool y arrancar la aplicación.
- Seleccionar “Expert Mode” y el dispositivo (iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G o iPod Touch).
- Seleccionar el firmware, en mi caso el fichero iPhone1,1_2.0.1_5B108.ipsw.
- En “General” comprobar que está marcada la opción “Activate the phone”.
- A través de las opciones “Cydia packages” y “Custom packages” Incorporar al custom firmware los paquetes adicionales que nos sean de interés, como OpenSSH o Python.
- Opcionalmente a través de la opción “Custom logos” modificar el logo que aparecerá en el arranque del dispositivo o cuando se entra a modo de recuperación. Este paso es únicamente estético :)
- Una vez hayamos realizado todos los cambios deseados, generar el nuevo fichero .ipsw con el custom firmware del cual se hará el restore mediante la opción “Build”.
- Se entra en modo DFU y se hace el restore del custom firmware. Desde iTunes, pulsando alt+Restore, se selecciona la imagen generada por pwnagetool.
- Pasados unos minutos durante los cuales se restaura y verifica la imagen, el iPhone arranca con firmware 2.0.1 totalmente activado y liberado, mostrando el logo que se le haya puesto o una piña mordida en su defecto ;)
- Recupera tus datos (contactos, fotos, etc.) desde iTunes.
Por cierto… yo cuando crezca y sea mayor quiero ser como los del iPhone Dev Team… estos tíos son unos maestros, me quito el sombrero… ;D