TaoSpace

iPhone instrument

You have to take a look at this: Ocarina for iPhone.

Its a woodwind instrument (for lack of a better word) for the iPhone. You blow into the microphone to create sounds and use four buttons on the screen to get various tones. It works way better than you'd think.

That by itself is pretty cool, but it doesn't stop there. It also sends you musical creations out to the net and if you want to and you can actually listen to other people play anywhere on the globe in (semi?) realtime! It even has some cool visualisations for that to boot.

Wow...the iPhone app-store has only been around for 5 months or so and the creativity continues to amaze me.

App-store link here.

Flabbergasted

Google Releases Google Earth for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Run, don't walk. With 3D terrain controlled by titling as well as Panoramio and Wikipedia integration. We really ain't seen nothing yet, when it comes to what can be done on an iPhone.

The other shoe

Lots has been said about the release of the iPhone SDK and the features it has. Even more has been said about Apple's role as gate-keeper for this new software eco-system. Not much at all has been said about version 2.0 of the software.

It has always surprised me how little new there was in the various releases of the software up until now. I've suspected for a while that Apple was readying a v2 with major new functionality. Now we have a first chance to get some understanding of what will be in there.

Some of the features have already been talked about: Exchange support, over the air synching, VPN support, etc. But watching the various tutorials about iPhone development makes it clear that there will be a lot more. Hints are being dropped all the time, disguised as thoughtful how-to's and suggestions by the tutorial's presenters. Some examples:

• In one of the videos something is deleted through shaking the phone. A new action not seen before.
• In another there is talk about marking areas of an image by using the pan&zoom functionality.
• Basic image processing was demoed
• The API includes Bonjour zero-conf networking, that will discover other iPhones in the area. This could be used for "social apps" suggests the helpful presenter.
• Positional audio was demoed. 3D audio generation is apparently possible on the iPhone.

So what does this mean? New gestures, a set of APIs to do audio and image processing, "social" networking support...and that's just the start.

It seems that a lot of these APIs were created after the iPhone launched. The recent Wired piece suggested that getting the iPhone ready in time meant crunch-mode for a long time. Corners were probably cut. With the release of the SDK it stands to reason that all apps will probably see an update in version 2.0, if only to make sure of the various "proper" APIs.

But as the small list above makes clear, R&D didn't stop during this time either. New ways of doing things, new gestures, and more advanced ideas of what a pocketable touch-screen device could do will lead to dramatically better software for version 2.0.

By the time everyone has gotten used to what the SDK can do, and is building apps, version 2.0 of the iPhone software might just be the next big surprise, and the other shoe will drop.