This (extremely loud, be careful) video has been making the rounds lately -- it's a demo of a new app called Nearest Tube that isn't quite in the App Store yet, but uses both your location information along with the iPhone's compass and video camera to show you an augmented reality picture of where and in which directions around you the nearest London Tube station is. Very cool use of the technology, and while I'm not actually in London to use it (and I don't have a 3GS -- obviously the compass is required to make this all work), it looks like it works pretty well. Some of you folks in London will have to give it a try when it gets approved and tell us what you think.

Oh, and the whole augmented reality thing -- get ready to hear that term a lot. On the TUAW team list, we were just chatting about microprojectors as well (rumored to be coming to iPhones and iPod touches), and as all of these technologies (video, projectors, compasses and location information) all start to get combined and hooked up to some serious computing power, your phone will be able to tell you more and more about what it sees in the world around you, from Tube or road directions like this app, to restaurants and stores, stars in the sky, and even other iPhones and their users. Hold on to your hats, because more and more, developers won't need to simulate the world around you when they can just show you an augmented version of it through your iPhone's screen.

If you happen to be enrolling in Aoyama Gakuin University's School of Social Informatics in Tokyo this year, make sure to stop by the admissions office to pick up your free iPhone -- the school made a deal with Softbank Corporation, the iPhone's vendor in Japan, to give the phones to 550 students for school usage. But oh, there is one catch: they're also going to use the phones' GPS to track students, and make sure they're attending class on time.

It looks like skipping class is an issue -- the students at the school, despite having to answer an attendance check and/or hand in an attendance card, are still skipping out on class and having their classmates cover them. But apparently university officials think the iPhone plan will work better, because students will be less inclined, they believe, to pass off their iPhone to a buddy.

Need to keep track of truant students? There is, apparently, an app for that.

[via Ars]

At this rate, Google won't even have to release Chrome for Mac OS X -- our devs will have done it all already themselves. We've already reported about CrossOver putting their own port of Google's web browser together just to show they could do it, and now word has come in about Stainless, another attempt to bring Google's Chromium kit over to our favorite operating system.

Unfortunately, it's still just a tech demo and not really a full-fledged browser (and the guys behind it, Mesa Dynamics, say that they didn't even try doing the cool stuff that the real OS X Chromium team is working on). But they did create a multi-process browser (one per tab), and they used some of the tech from their other app, Hypercube (Edit: NOT HyperCard, sorry -- I would have been more excited about that, too) to do it. I haven't tried it (I haven't tried the real Chrome on Windows either, Firefox is good enough for me so far), but like the other OS X Chrome, this app really only exists just so it can.

And it shows just how desperate OS X users are to get their hands on Google's browser. Just how much longer do we have to wait?

MacNewsWorld has a pretty good in-depth overview up about Mac gaming: where it's at and where it's headed. The basic story is that the three things that have historically held Mac gaming back behind PCs (the technology differences, the OS, and the smaller installed base) are slowly disappearing. With Apple's switch from PowerPC to Intel, the introduction of Boot Camp and increasingly easy development in OS X, and the growing popularity of the platform, gaming is actually bigger on the Mac than it's ever been.

But there is still a huge obstacle, and that is DirectX. Though there are ways around it (Freeverse actually mentions the Unity engine in the article), many developers are stuck developing in DirectX, and that leaves the Mac platform out of the loop. And there really isn't anything comparable to it in OS X, either. Graphics hardware remains a problem, but that just harkens back to the biggest problem of getting games on the Mac: support from Apple. Some developers say that there aren't games on the Mac because Steve doesn't want them there, and until Apple shows evidence to the contrary, PC will always be the gamers' platform of choice.

[Via IMG]

We're getting closer and closer to the end of the year, and that means it's almost time for everyone to announce their "best tech product of the year" awards. Gadget website T3 has gotten an early start, and not surprisingly, Apple walked all over everyone else, with the iPhone grabbing tons of awards, and iTunes and the MacBook Pro picking up a few more.

Which means: get ready, because the iPhone is going to pretty much win every award imaginable for 2007. What else came out this year that came even close to moving gadget technology ahead? As predicted, it sold tons of units, captured the nation's imagination at launch, singlehandedly pushed cell phones ahead light years (even while bringing some harsh light to Apple's closed architecture policy), and just generally changed the world of gadgets. Is there any other product released in 2007 that could really be called "Gadget of the Year"?

I'd think not. The Wii is awesome and all, but my guess is as these end of the year awards come out, even Nintendo's little marvel of an input device demo won't hold a candle to Apple's communications device.

Thanks, Charles B!

As often happens with new and fantastic technology products with a lot of hype associated with them get released, someone immediately wants to take them apart to see what's inside. Such is the case at iFixit where they have begun the disassembly process on a new iPhone.

So, if you're curious not only about what the device looks like on the outside, you can also get a peek underneath the shiny, candy-coated exterior as well and see the inside. However, if you happen to be a bit squeamish about photos of disassembled devices costing over six hundred bucks, you may not want to look.

thanks for the tip kristen

Are you dying for a sneak peek at Leopard, the next incarnation of OS X? If so, book a ticket for San Francisco in mid-August. Apple has announced, on its site and by email to customers, that it will offer a preview of OS X Leopard at  WWDC 2006, scheduled for August 7-11.

The Apple site briefly describes five WWDC session tracks -- Application Technologies, Development Tools, Graphics and Media, Information Technologies, and OS Foundations --  but doesn't provide details about specific sessions. If you're considering going, try to get your boss to pick up the registration fee, which is a stiff $1295-$3500 before June 23 and even more after that date. If you're a student, don't overlook Apple's Student Scholarship Program. We told you before -- but it's worth a reminder -- that applications for a free WWDC ticket through that program are due on April 28.

Intel sounds excited about their relationship with Apple, as Deborah Conrad, vice president and director of Team Apple at Intel, spoke positively to a group of CNET editors yesterday about how things are going so far. Deborah was doubtful that an Intel chip would be powering the iPod anytime soon, but she mentioned the company was enthusiastic about the potential for their chips to show up in other future Apple gadgets. Thanks Deborah - I'm sure in the coming weeks the rumors sites will crank out all sorts of fantastic nonsense from that statement.

The article isn't very long, but you can check out some more bits from CNET's meeting with Intel's Team Apple here. My favorite quote from Deborah, however, reinforces one of the big fundamental reasons why everyone knew Intel was happy to take on a partnership with Apple: "It's nice to have a customer that pushes us on a technology front." I know there was a time when this relationship was one of the last things on any Apple fan's predictions list, but it's really starting to sound like these two companies are going to make a great couple.

Another day, another mindless shot across Apple's bow arguing against their use of DRM. This time around, it's coming from Brad King at Technology Review. Brad is upset about the popularity of the iTunes iPod combo from Apple, arguing that the dynamic duo is leaving the door wide open for the music and movie industries to tighten their grip around our digital content as much as they want. Brad then goes on to say that he doesn't mind all the DRM on the Microsoft/Windows side of the fence, since he has a tool belt full of DRM-cracking and DVD-burning apps that let him go on about his business. Part of me wonders if Brad just has a hard time dragging and dropping certain applications over from a disk image in OS X.

Seriously though: I am a fan of most of Apple's products and, wouldn't you know, I'm an iPod owner. However, I am neither an Apple fanboy nor a candidate for DRM evangelization, and I'm happy to stick it to Apple when it's well deserved. My problem with Brad's article is this: while Apple might be in the spotlight of digital content and DRM, it seems like Brad was partying when he should have been doing his homework, because Apple is merely the tip of the iceberg in the ocean of all things DRM. I'm not talking about WMP restrictions or the fact that subscription music services are about 10 times more locked down than the iTMS when it comes to cancelling your subscription. I'm talking about all the other new rules and regulations surrounding nearly every emerging digital content device - whether it's a white music player or not. A great example of the rest of this iceberg is a post I had on DownloadSquad back in August, about official documents detailing how Hollywood is now directly dictating the way next generation computer software and hardware will use encryption to protect content. Crazy, I know, and you only get three guesses as to who authored the document.

Apple isn't to blame for all this DRM silliness any more than TiVo or Napster are - the problem lies with the dinosaur that we call The Entertainment Industry. They are the gatekeeper to the (at present) big and popular music, TV shows and movies that most of us want, therefore: they hold all the keys. The fact that Apple was the first to step up to bat and hit a home run with all this iTMS stuff is meaningless - the problem lies with who controls all this content, and what we let them let us do with it.

[via MacNN]

Firefox, inarguably, is one of the coolest browsers available and a necessity if you're using Windows. On OS X however, I've been on the fence during Firefox's existence as there are a number of ways that Firefox and Mozilla have gone wrong and ruined the browser's user experience.

First up is Mozilla's directory of addons. Useful as they may be, these sites are still clunky as you have to always have to adjust what you're searching for - even when you're already browsing a specific section. Further, with the mountain of extensions and themes piling up, there really needs to be a way of limiting what addons you see to the version of Firefox you're using. Before I found Foxmarks, I was browsing the addons directory for a bookmark synchronizing extension, and Bookmark Synchronizer kept appearing in the results, even though it only works with Firefox 1.0. While this frustrates me, I'm sure it's even more confusing for all those users out there who can barely tell the difference between Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Next on the list is Firefox's lack of OS X-ability. While Windows XP is lagging behind with barely 20th century technology (hence the need for things like Firefox's password management), OS X already has a bunch of goodies baked in - like the Keychain and universal spell checking -  that Firefox really needs to take advantage of. Virtually all other OS X apps place application and web passwords in OS X's Keychain, a centralized resource the whole OS can use. One merely needs to copy the keychain database file (and know its password, of course) in order to back up a record of all the passwords they need to remember. Throw in .Mac service which can effortlessly sync your Keychain (amongst other things) with multiple Macs and you'll be on the next level of synchronization heaven. Let's also not forget OS X's built in, universal spell checking engine which offers a simple keyboard shortcut for a pop-up definition window. In other browsers like Safari, OmniWeb and even Camino, there are no plugins or extensions needed to gain any of these essential 21st century computing features.

So please, Mozilla, answer the call of us Firefox fans who are hoping for a more OS X-ified and more powerful version of your most fantastic of browsers. Mac users everywhere will thank you, and I bet we'd even buy a few tshirts too.