[Marcan] picked up this device on the cheap and is working to reverse engineer the controller. This media player is an off-brand Chinese model that can be had for the low-low price of $33.97 with free shipping. That’s worth it just to scavenge the parts for other projects, but the challenge here is to hack the controller because a datasheet was never produced for it. Warm up your logic analyzer, check out the wiki, and you can be pounding away at this ARM926EJ-S based system in no time.
The call to arms comes from [Marcan's] blog. You may remember…
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Reverse engineering off-brand media players
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Fanboys want to take AT&T down
A post about Operation Chokehold popped up on (fake) Steve Jobs’ blog this morning. It seems some folks are just plain tired of AT&T giving excuses about their network. The straw that broke the camel’s back came when AT&T floated the idea of instituting bandwidth limitations for data accounts. Now, someone hatched the idea of organizing enough users to bring the whole network down by maxing their bandwidth at the same time.
We’re not quite sure what to think about this. Our friend Google told us that there’s plenty of press already out there regarding Operation Chokehold so it’s…
Facebook
Little World Gifts Lets Facebook Users Send Virtual Gifts On The iPhone
Last week we discussed an application that lets users host their own white elephant party which works great for those in offices or among family members. If you aren’t in an office or simply want to share gifts with your friends, there’s now a great solution for Facebook users that own an iPhone: Little World Gifts. The application actually requires that you use Facebook in order to use it.
Right now it appears that there are only 12 gifts however I’d assume that there are more gifts coming in the future. I’ve never used any other gift applications for the…
Facebook
Is The New Facebook Dashboard An Effective Alternative To Notifications?
Facebook developers got an early glimpse of how the new Facebook dashboard will function when it was posted to the developer wiki last week. Facebook published a copy of the current iteration of the games dashboard which includes stories from recent games you’ve played and a feed of the games that your friends are playing. Developers can start testing out a number of new dashboard API methods, however developers do not have access to view the beta dashboard.
Facebook also provided further clarification on how the new application counters will function. For those that have an iPhone, you’ll notice that…
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Android ported to Meizu M8
[Evow04] has been working hard to run Android on a Meizu M8 smartphone and we’re beginning to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The Meizu M8 is a Chinese cell phone very similar in appearance and hardware to the iPhone. The factory firmware runs Windows CE 6 but there is no official support for Android. It looks like [Evow04's] upgrade method is fairly easy; copy an IMG and BIN file to the root of the phone, backup the Windows CE portion, and then use the upgrade mode to flash the two files.
We’re pretty impressed with Android, especially the…
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Cheating RockBand (again)
Sure making a robot that plays the game RockBand for you seems a little cheap at first, but no human can possibly hit that 30 triplet note straight ending in a button mashing contest. To finally get his high score [Joe] made a setup to play the game for him, on the iPhone. We’ve seen some very different Guitar Hero hacks before, but none that had to get around the touch capacitance screen on the iPhone. What version of the game should be hacked next? We think Football Hero would be a good start.
[via Make]
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Linux iPhone sync draws near
[Emuboy] lets us know about some software advances that will make iPhone and iPod Touch syncing possible under Linux. Apple made big changes to how the iPhone syncs compared to legacy iPods. Locking out all communications other than through iTunes was surely part of their motivation. This has left Linux users out in the cold with shoddy sync capabilities which should be coming to an end. If successful, syncing will be be possible with phones that have not been jailbroken.
One of the biggest hurdles in reverse-engineering the new protocol is the non-standard way in which the devices communicate…
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Hot off the presses its Android 2.0 SDK.
Today Google released the Android 2.0 SDK, allowing developers to begin writing for their latest cell phone platform. Unlike programming for Apple’s iPhone or Touch, however, there isn’t as much documentation on the installation and setup process. AndroidandMe steps in at this point for all those that have gone a muck by writing a very detailed how-to on the install process. So what are you waiting for, start now and you might just be the next Android Developer Challenge winner.
[Thanks Taylor].
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Use iPhone to run yourself over
The Spirit of Berlin team has developed an iPhone app to remotely control a minivan. They didn’t have to do much to the vehicle to get this working because the platform was developed for the 2007 Darpa Urban Challenge. The iPhone connects with the driving circuitry via WiFi and offers a gas button, a break button, and a steering button to enable the accelerometer for turning. The front camera video is transmitted to the iPhone in real-time.
In the picture above you can see the operator in the center of the van’s camera view. It looks like the van’s…
Facebook
Facebook Relaunches Touchscreen Mobile Support
Earlier today we learned that Facebook launched a new touchscreen version of the site via touch.facebook.com. While we’ve known that the iPhone version of the site has had a redesigned version for a couple weeks now, this is the first we’ve heard of the new subdomain. It’s not a dramatic change but making the site more effectively optimized for all touchscreen devices and not just the iPhone is extremely important, especially as there are a number of Android devices rolling out for the upcoming holiday season.
I reached out to Facebook to find out more information about the new touchscreen…
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Bouncy iPhone controlled dance lights
[John Boiles] introduces us to dimlet, his portable network controlled light dimmer. Inside the box is a fonera 2100 router that is running openWRT connected to an unnamed AVR microcontroller. Right now, he’s controlling the unit with his iPhone. It has three modes of control; a manual “slider” mode, an accelerometer controlled “dance” mode, and a programmable “tap” mode. You can download all the source code and schematics on his site.
[via Makezine]
Facebook
New Facebook For Blackberry Now Available
Over the weekend RIM released the latest version of Facebook for Blackberry. So what’s new for this version of Facebook for Blackberry? Not much. Users can now opt to set the News Feed as their default landing page if they wish and there are also a few feed filters included by default. The primary upgrade is that device memory is more efficiently managed. I’m in the process of testing it now however neither the iPhone or Blackberry application have worked for me for the past few months.
For those users with more than 1,000 friends or so, there has been…
