One of the projects I have been working on at the lab has made it to the iPhone AppStore. It’s the Mobile Multi Display, and you can find more information about it on its website: http://www.graphics.rwth-aachen.de/software/mmd/.
Category: iPhone
Making transparent iPhone-Sim Screenshots
This is a real time saver: Cmd-Shift-4, hit the space bar, select the iPhone simulator window. This makes a nice transparent screenshot, like this:
Syncing iPod Touch and iPhone with Linux
Ok, so I just tried out the new libimobiledevice. Installation was a breeze, using the provided OpenSUSE repository. A first run of ideviceinfo returned successfully detailed information about the attached iPod Touch. I also upgraded libgpod4. But Amarok 2.3 did not show a thing. Mounting of the iPod needed to be done manually using “ifuse ~/my-ipod-dir”. Supposedly, this happens automatically with Gnome, usin gvfs. But since I am using KDE, this is at the moment a no-go. Ok, so Amarok fails at this point in time. What about gtkpod? It works, although it throws some mysterious error message (“Eweiterte Informationen werden nicht verwendet” — wtf?), and that program is dog-slow. I though iTunes is bad, but this program is really, really slow as a snail. But here a proof of concept that I was able to sync to albums to the device:
What I did not yet try is syncing contacts, notes and bookmarks. With gtkpod, you need to specify a program to do that. No idea which one that is supposed to be. Keeping my MobileMe contacts in sync with my Linux desktop would be nice, though. Also, syncing from within Amarok is mandatory for me, but does not work currently. So let’s wait and hope the situation gets better with time. So far I will continue to sync my device with OS X.
iPhone / iPhoto syncing woes
I just tried to download a couple of images from my iPhone, using iPhoto ’08. No luck. Suddenly the iPhone was not listed anymore in iPhoto! It turned out that something on the iPhone was broken / corrupt. When I looked at the device using the Image Capture program, I got this:
As you can see the devices section lists 24 images on the phone, but the photo list is empty. Deleting the pictures on the device restored the functionality. If you need the photos badly, you can forward them to your email or MobileMe account, and then delete them.
Sometimes it is so much better to just have a plain filesystem with photos, instead of some advanced database, that might break…
Angry Birds
I have to make some advertisement for a funny little iPhone game: Angry Birds. The idea: green pigs stole some eggs, now the birds are angry! Use those Kamikaze birds as ballistic missiles to destroy the pigs! Nice physics engine. Also available on the N900, and costs only 79 Eurocents. Here’s a shot:
