News tagged ‘Time’

There is an app for about everything. iMaya is an iPhone application that shows a countdown clock until time X of 2012.

Here is a quick story about this Maya calendar. Maya civilization had several different calendars, the longest one, The Long Count, identifies a date by counting the number of days from the Mayan creation (August 11, 3114 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar or September 6 in the Julian calendar). But instead of using a base-10 (decimal) scheme like Western numbering, the Long Count days were tallied in a modified base-20 scheme. Thus 0.0.0.1.5 is equal to 25, and 0.0.0.2.0 is equal to 40.

The Maya name for a day was k'in. Twenty of these k'ins are known as a winal or uinal. Eighteen winals make one tun. Twenty tuns are known as a k'atun. Twenty k'atuns make a b'ak'tun. Confused? Don't panic. 1 B'ak'tun is about 144,000 days or 394.3 years.

The date December 20, 2012 is simply the last day of the 13th b'ak'tun. And here is the big misinterpretation of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. There is a belief, that this date is the basis for a New Age and for a big cataclysm. For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle. But that is not the end of the Long Count because the 14th through 20th b'ak'tuns are still to come. So we need to wait for another 7 b'ak'tuns (> 2700 years), when this Long Count calendar will end.

The app costs $0.99 and is available in AppStore (link). It requires firmware 3.1.2 and is localized in various languages.

Some time ago we have presented a concept of an alternative homescreen for the iPhone created by Geoff Teehan. The designer announced via his blog that this concept will be implemented in collaboration with Saurik, the creator of Cydia.

The new Sringboard will be characterized, following the old concept, browsable by a long list of applications that takes the place of icons, showing notifications, weather and stocks updates in real time. Here is the full screen:

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Geohot has released his BlackSn0w utility. BlackSn0w is an unlock for the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. It supports the latest firmware 3.1 and 3.1.2 with baseband 05.11.07 and enables official tethering. Available for both Windows and Mac.

Here is a quick tutorial:
If you havn't done the jailbreak: go to blackra1n.com, download blackra1n, run it, follow the instructions (it is really simple) to perform the jailbreak. Run balckra1n app on iPhone and install BlackSnow.
If your device is already jailbroken - run Cydia, add repository blackra1n.com and install blacksn0w. That's it!

The latest version of blackra1n is RC3. It now has hacktivation support, 15 second speed improvement, Tiger+PPC support.

PS: If you just bought a new iPhone 3GS or have one that was made recently (approximately after 40th week after iPhone 3GS release): your device has a new BootROM. Unfortunately it is impossible to run regular jailbreak with this new BootROM. There is a sloution - tethered jailbreak. Everything including unlock will work fine. However every time you restart your iPhone, you need to plug it to a computer with blackra1n installed.

Apple is airing a new Get a Mac Web Ad entitled, Ultimate Upgrade, on websites (f.e., NYTimes and CNN).

You can watch the web ad below:

Bell Keller, Executive Editor of the NY Times, let slip on the still unconfirmed Apple tablet in a speech last week.

The New York Times speech comes from an internal "all hands" meeting at TheTimesCenter, which was intended to be off the record. However, the video was also provided to the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. Skip to about 8:20, and you'll hear:

We need to figure out the right journalistic product to deliver to mobile platforms and devices. I'm hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate, or whatever comes after that.

Given the matter-of-fact way Keller refers to the slate, it sounds like a done deal versus a hypothetical.

via gizmodo, niemanlab

Volkswagen and Firemint released a new iPhone game called Real Racing GTI. The 59.3MB download offers a Volkswagen branded racing experience with one main track and six 2010 GTI sport hatches. This game is free (AppStore link).

The three game modes include Quick Race, Time Trial, and GTI Cup Championship (across three tracks). Aside from being a great ad for Volkswagen, Real Racing GTI also serves as the Lite version of Firemint's widely acclaimed Real Racing ($6.99, Appstore link).

via toucharcade

Apple today announced financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter (third calendar quarter) of 2009. Apple posted revenue of $9.87 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.67 billion, or $1.82 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $7.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.14 billion, or $1.26 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.6 percent, compared to 34.7 percent in the year-ago quarter, and international sales accounted for 46 percent of the quarter's revenue.

The numbers represent the most profitable quarter in Apple's history and include record-breaking Mac and iPhone quarterly sales.

Conference Call Notes

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Good news for all users who look forward to the release of elimination, the First Person Shooter multiplayer game by ngmoco. The game should be approved by the end of October and it will be free! And this is not a limited time promotion. Let's watch the video about the game:

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A side by side video comparison of the iPhone 3GS and the Zune HD has been posted by Domenico Panacea from Macitynet.it. The video compares the two displays both inside and outside. Panacea also tests load times for web pages and applications, and even demonstrates the video out quality of both devices.

via iclarified

Apple has updated the BootROM for the iPhone 3GS to iBoot-359.32. This software upgrade is reportedly not vulnerable to an exploit hackers previously used.

MuscleNerd, a member of the iPhone Dev Team, noted this is the first time ever that Apple has done a BootROM update in the middle of a product line, without a new hardware model. The Dev Team is a group of hackers who release tools used to exploit the iPhone OS. With the new iBoot hackers will not be able to use "24kpwn" exploit.

This means that anyone who will buy an iPhone 3GS these days, will not be able to jailbreak and unlock it, probably for a very long time.

DigiTimes reports that Foxconn Electronics has been named as Apple's manufacturing partner for its much-anticipated tablet.

The device is expected to hit the market in the first quarter of 2010, with initial shipments from Foxconn being in the 300,000-400,000 range. The device will have a 10.6-inch display.

iPhone VM is a new tweak available in Cydia that allows to free some iPhone memory by creating a swap file. Keep everything in RAM rather than open apps all the time might increase the performance in terms of speed.

iPhoneVM can be installed in Cydia through this repository: http://repo.beyouriphone.com.

Want to know some more about Apple’s upcoming iTablet device? There are many rumor names (iTablet, iPad, MacBook Touch, etc), but not much details. Site ilounge claim to receive some new rumors from a reliable source:

1. Apple has created at least three separate prototypes of its tablet computer.
2. Version 1 was designed with a 7” screen, which was judged to be too small. The latest version has a 10.7” screen.
3. It runs iPhone OS.
4. There have been reports that it looks like an iPhone. They’re sort of true. It looks like an iPhone 3G, complete with a curved back.
5. It will come in two different variations: one with 3G networking capabilities, and one without 3G networking capabilities. Think of the 3G version as a bigscreen iPhone 3GS, and the non-3G version as a bigscreen iPod touch.
6. Screen resolutions will obviously jump considerably from the iPhone and iPod touch 480x320-pixel displays, enabling easy reading of full-sized book and magazine pages, plus cropped newspaper pages. Expect something like 5-6 times the resolution of an iPod touch or iPhone screen (720p or thereabouts) and 7 times the touchable surface area.
7. It is designed to expand the iPhone and iPod touch media concept to its next potential level: as a slate-like replacement for books and magazines, plus all of the media, gaming, app, and web functionality of the iPhone and iPod touch.
8. It is not meant to compete with netbooks. It’s an iPhone OS media player and light communication device.
9. Apple is currently planning to announce it on or before January 19, 2010, and to use an iPhone-like hype buildup period to start selling it in May or June.
10. It is apparently awaiting a final green light from Steve Jobs; chances of it appearing in the market are believed to be 80% at this point.

Not bad. But still this is unofficial..

Stocks went down? Puma Index iPhone application is here to cheer you up, with plenty of naughty bits. Sexy girls will stip as stocks go down. For free.

The economic crisis never was so nice and hard at the same time. Appstore link.

via gizmodo

The idea to personalize the iPhone is now new. Here is a new concept from Geoff Teehan. He has published a concept which shows a new type of Springboard.

Applications uodate data in real time. Unfortunately Apple does not allow you to change the SpringBoard with the SDK. So the only hope is to find some person who can do it and publish it in Cydia. Here is the full screen:

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