Monday, July 4, 2011

Mobile Phone Technology News Update - iNnovation: 2 Freakishly Futuristic iPhone Add-Ons

Dr Mobiles Limited - Apple iPad, iPhone 4 Repair and Unlocking
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand
Tel: (09) 551-5344, info@drmobiles.co.nz 

When the iPhone came out, did anyone really expect it to spawn all kinds of bizarre add-on devices that could make this seemingly innocuous smartphone powerful enough to do pretty much whatever we want it to? Well, we have a feeling some people did, because iPhone gadgets with associated apps have been bouncing out left and right. One of the most interesting (and useful) ones we’ve seen lately is this $50 dongle that turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a universal remote. It’s made by L5 Technology, who debuted the device at CES 2010. According to them, it’ll actually control any compatible device within about 30 feet via a free app from the app store. Just select the devices you want to control, drag and drop buttons where you want them, and you’re good to go.

Another handy invention to debut at CES was the Mophie credit card reader device. It’ll let you take payments with nothing more than your iPhone, a third-party app, and this little device which attaches directly to your phone. Imagine how much easier this would be for merchants than carrying around a computer to take credit cards at trade shows and other remote locations.
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Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
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**BUYER BEWARE**  Dr Mobiles Limited is the only professional phone repair lab that DOES NOT charge inspection fee for checking up faulty or water damage phones! 

 

Cool Harness Bike Combines Running, Swimming and Flying

Dr Mobiles Limited - Mobile Phone Repair and Unlock
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand
Tel: (09) 551-5344, info@drmobiles.co.nz 

Are you dreaming of flying but afraid of heights? The StreetFlyer is a vehicle that gives you the free, soaring feeling of flying but without the danger of plummeting to the ground. It was invented by Dr. Carsten Mehring, who says that the design incorporates movements of swimming, running and flying. The lightweight frame includes a harness which suspends the rider in a horizontal, Superman-type flying position, then glides along on a hard surface with the power of momentum.

The StreetFlyer isn’t motorized, so the rider must run to start it moving. The steering mechanism works in a similar way to a bicycle, allowing users to steer the device in a familiar and simple way. When rolling along, the user looks like a hang glider suspended above the pavement. With brakes but no propulsion system, the device could even be used for zero-impact rehabilitation exercise.

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There are two versions of the StreetFlyer: this one, with a stable lightweight frame, and a different prototype with a retractable frame that is worn on the back until the user wants to start “flying.” For adventure-seeking outdoorsy types, this could just be the next big craze.

Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr
**BUYER BEWARE**  Dr Mobiles Limited is the only professional phone repair lab that DOES NOT charge inspection fee for checking up faulty or water damage phones! 

Cyber News 2011: Power Napping: Catch a Daytime Nap On Any Street Corner

Dr Mobiles Limited - Mobile Phone Repair and Unlock
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand
Tel: (09) 551-5344, info@drmobiles.co.nz 

Sleep deprivation will do all sorts of terrible things to you – things like decreasing your attention span, making you cranky, and even causing you to gain weight. Obviously, the best remedy is to get your recommended seven to nine hours of sleep every night, but not all of us have time for that…especially those of us whose job it is to comb the interwebs looking for interesting stories about technology and science.

The Vertical Bed is a solution (albeit a strange and kind of crazy one) for people who just can’t seem to get through the day without a nap. It is a nap contraption that lets you sleep standing up on a city street, supported by a subway grate and sturdy armature.

The armature supports the user’s body weight and attaches to the ventilation grates in the sidewalk to keep the user upright. Light-dampening sunglasses and noise-canceling headphones help the napper block out the world’s distractions to get a little public shuteye. When nap time is over, all of the pieces fit neatly into the included briefcase and the sleepy business person can go back to the office refreshed. You get the benefit of a power nap without even having to sneak a blanket and pillow into the little space beneath your desk…though you may have some ‘splaining to do if your boss happens to walk past your napping body on the street.

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Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr
**BUYER BEWARE**  Dr Mobiles Limited is the only professional phone repair lab that DOES NOT charge inspection fee for checking up faulty or water damage phones! 

 

Hide and Tweet: Augmented Reality Apple iPhone 4, 3GS Twitter App (Apple iPhone Unlock and Repair, Auckland)

Dr Mobiles Limited - Mobile Phone Repair and Unlock
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand
Tel: (09) 551-5344, info@drmobiles.co.nz 

twitter 360 augmented reality app

Twitter recently added a geotagging feature, so it was only a matter of time before someone made good use of it to create an iPhone app that would let stalkers, exes and nosy parents find their Twitter contacts. But Presselite did it with such style that we can just about forgive how creepy it is. The app, called Twitter 360, uses an augmented reality interface to guide you to your Twitter friends based on their geotagged tweets.

Using the iPhone’s camera, the app creates an overlay atop reality on the user’s screen to show Twitter friends’ distances from the user. The friends’ avatars are displayed along with an arrow pointing in their direction. The app also works with Google Maps, giving a detailed map of all Twitter friends along with their locations. While it does seem to make stalking way too easy, we can see some benign uses for this technology, like picking out friends in a crowd or finding your way to the bar you’re meeting a buddy at.

This post is sponsored by:Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr
**BUYER BEWARE**  Dr Mobiles Limited is the only professional phone repair lab that DOES NOT charge inspection fee for checking up faulty or water damage phones! 

 

Apple iPhone 3GS, 4, Augmented Reality Droid Too Awesome For Earth (Apple iPhone 4, 3GS Repair, Auckland)

Dr Mobiles Limited - Mobile Phone Repair and Unlock
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand
Tel: (09) 551-5344, info@drmobiles.co.nz 

IPhone apps are good for keeping most of us occupied and well out of the dangerous sphere of social interaction, but how awesome would it be if you could use your iPhone as a controller for a real-world game? This drone, created by Bluetooth headset company Parrot (yeah, we don’t get it, either) is controlled by your iPhone and can take you head-first into an awesome augmented reality airborne war game. We want it. Now.

The on-board computer communicates with your iPhone and uses its own internal accelerometers to bob and weave through the air. The drone is equipped with WiFi so you can challenge your friends to a real-life game of augmented-reality destruction. Two cameras, one on the front and one on the bottom, transmit the drone’s surroundings to your iPod display, where target information is overlaid on the video feed. You simply move your iPhone to control ther drone. There’s typically a slight lag with the camera-based augmented reality gaps, so we wonder how accurate the controls would actually be.

Four propellers keep the drone in the air, and a removable bumper helps keep the (presumably expensive) toy relatively safe from harm. Parrot hasn’t released much information yet, so no word on how much it’ll cost or when/where you can pick one up. But when they’re available, we would crawl over our own mothers to get one.

This post is sponsored by:
Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr
**BUYER BEWARE**  Dr Mobiles Limited is the only professional phone repair lab that DOES NOT charge inspection fee for checking up faulty or water damage phones! 

 

Mod, Modding - Look Closer. $10 DIY Microscope Uses Mobile Phone Camera

Dr Mobiles Limited - Mobile Phone Repair and Unlock
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand
Tel: (09) 551-5344, info@drmobiles.co.nz 

cell phone microscope

We all know how handy a cell phone can be when we’re stranded on the side of the road or late for a meeting. And far from just making phone calls, cell phones let us take pictures, send text messages, and even watch movies. But now a UCLA engineer has come up with an entirely new way to use cell phones. He took a regular cell phone, around $10 worth of off-the-shelf parts, and software that he wrote himself to make the world’s first cell phone microscope. He hopes it can be used in remote locations to diagnose diseases when getting to a hospital for tests just isn’t possible.

blood cells microscope

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Aydogan Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at UCLA, has formed a company called Microskia to develop and market the technology. The concept could be used with cell phones with or without cameras; for those with cameras, a slide containing a blood sample would be placed over the camera’s sensor. The software would be able to detect abnormalities, and the data would be sent to a nearby hospital or clinic. A piece of add-on equipment could be used for phones without cameras. The technology eliminates the need for lenses, instead using holographs to process the data in samples. Already, the cell phone microscope is being anticipated as a major help for screening efforts in areas where malaria is rampant.

Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr
**BUYER BEWARE**  Dr Mobiles Limited is the only professional phone repair lab that DOES NOT charge inspection fee for checking up faulty or water damage phones! 

Technology News Update: Can You Hear Me Now? Handheld Gadget Kills Cell Signals

Dr Mobiles Limited - Mobile Phone Repair and Unlock
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand
Tel: (09) 551-5344, info@drmobiles.co.nz 

Cell Phone Jammer

If you’re just teeming with passive aggression and want to get back at all of those annoying public cell-phone talkers, you may have just found the best thing ever. The Portable Phone Jammer is capable of jamming phone signals within a 30-foot radius, and it’s small enough to carry around in your pocket. This gadget, and others that scramble cell phone signals and make the phones useless while activated, are illegal in the US, but still not hard to find online.

Cell Phone Jammers

Responsibly, the site selling these gadgets does make it a point to say that it’s not cool to use them in public because of that pesky emergency-services thing. The uses they suggest? Libraries, court rooms, meetings, classrooms and anywhere else attendees need to stay off of their phones but might not need to make an emergency phone call.

Cellular Phone Jammer

Cell phone jammers have been available forever, but they are usually veyr large and expensive, making them difficult for regular people to obtain and use. This particular cell phone jammer, however, is about the size of a small cell phone and less expensive than some phones at $166. It weighs in at a tiny 70 grams and shuts down GSM 850-, 900-, 1,800- and 1,900-MHz cell phone calls within its 30-foot range.

This post is sponsored by:
Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr
**BUYER BEWARE**  Dr Mobiles Limited is the only professional phone repair lab that DOES NOT charge inspection fee for checking up faulty or water damage phones!