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Hack Turns iPod into PDA
Liquidape writes "Provue Development has released a personal info and contact manager app called iPod Organizer. The program enables use of iPod for storing and retrieving phone numbers, email addresses, flight numbers, appointment times and other data. It also comes with a sync feature. " Obviously it is fairly limited just
because of the input for this device, but its quite a clever hack.
Now all the iPod needs is wireless ethernet. Then someone could hack up some software that will automatically discover and sync music collections with near-by iPods.
Just because an idea is easy to implement, don't assume that "somebody has done this before". If you know of someone that has, provide a link. Yeah, it's something that could be done on lots of other MP3 players, but apparently no one did. And at the risk of being flamed, I suspect that this idea would be patentable.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
What would be a nice addition is to have the program automatically generate a short MP3 of the touchtones for the contact telephone number.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It would be nice to make some use of the fact that
:(
the ipod can play music: encode the phone number
as DTMF (or DMTF, whatever it's called) and save it
in the mp3 file. So when you want to call someone
you just play the mp3.
I'm still missing that feature for my iPaq
I counter that Windows sucks because it doesn't work with iPod.... but for an even more clever hack, how about turning your Apple Newton into an iPod: Here's the site
it might have been clever when this guy did it a couple of months ago, but it's not clever anymore.
Could someone please write a iPod app that plays mp3s that are in a slightly modified format. I would love to be able to copy songs from my iPod to a diffrent computer but the copyprotection prevents this. I figure if is doesn't know it's an mp3 it won't know enough to stop me.
The versatility in the iPOD that allows for this is the sign of a well designed product. It takes more time and thought to design a product that both serves its original purpose and allows for upgrades and changes to be made succesffully. I suspect apple will use the iPOD platform for other purposes as time goes on as there is really no other motivation for engineering this amount of flexibility.
by the lore of "alt.hackers" the Usenet group, it qualifies as a hack, that is using a tool in a way it wasn't intended. This is slightly different than an older definition, these big stunts and pranks MIT students would pull, and a later definition, breaking into systems. There are a few more variations on the theme hanging out there as well.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Use the iPOD for storage on a digital video camera. Just add a lens, a ccd, and a little processing to the firewire input. Sure beats tape and the component nature of the resulting device would make it easier to upgrade.
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...
The bigger piece of the pie, the one that Apple never game us with the Newton (and still hasn't) is a complete description of how to use the iPods Pixo embedded operating system to program other functions which are more familiar to PDA-people like: sorting, searching data enry via FW keyboard, or FW stylus if you could figure out how to make the display touch-sensative, being able to tell the machine "Make me an appointment with Carol at 5:00 next Tuesday for 2 hours, to ring 45 minues before", and it would auomatically look up Carol in the adressbook modules, check you calendar app to make sure there are no conflicts (and alearting you in that case), then placing the datbook entry, changing the ring parameter to "45 minues before meething" I dont' know if Newton Intelligence (built into the final MP2100) could do quit all that, but it might.
Right no, people trying to extend the iPod past "just an MP3 player" are stuck with the system the iPod has now - basicall a file browser. If Apple would release the lower-lvel APIs to access the hardware and compile C programs down to assembly (for porting Sphinx and Festival, as well a WICKED fast BrickOut game)
Apple did, after some pressure from the Newton community, release the in-house plug-ins and header/libray files for their MPW compilation system (God, what a beast) From the released stuff, people are starting to do some really cook stuff with it, as the recent beta test of an ATA card driver for the Newton by >a href="www.kallisys.com">Paul Guyou has shown, as well as the port of Waba for the Newton by Sean Luke. One person figured out how to do assembly language code programming for the StrongARM chip in Newton, and used this as the basis for a MOD file music player. Another project is aimed at porting an MP3 player to the Newton (I don't know if this is in working beta state yet, but I believe it it)
But many if not all of these endevours "going behind NewtonScript" would be much easier (and faster) if Apple could be persuaded to release all the appropriate headers, memory maps, memory proctection schema in public view (with a licence that says you can't use this in a competing product - althought that would have to be clarified as Apple to my knowledge has never definitively said yea or nea on ever producing a PDA again.
If the QuickDraw hooks were available (the Newton uses a stripped down SE-vintage quickdraw), then program like Waba, instead of using NewtonScript bytecode to do the drawing, which is slow, it could draw directly do the screen. Having the interface to the "Inker Port" which runs the pen input device, would make getting taps and drags to activate the applet faster, as you would have to go though NewtonScript to get them as is done now. If the full specs relating all the communications claases in the "below-Newtonscipt" layer were known, it would be easier to access the serial port, eternet cards from down there.
Some people call for the entire source code to be released, but from what I've heard it was an enourmous mess of speghetti code. But the headers and glue files for the current machines (100,120,130,2000,2100 I believe) could help access these lower level features, which seem to be becoming more an more important as the few Newton users left push their machines to their limits and face compatibility problem with desktop systems.
I don't know about Apple releaseing the entire source code. On one hand, if they released the whole thing, we'd have it but no roadmap; on the other hand, if they cleaned in up, took out the headers and glue, wrote some more comments, it would be VERY expensivive for them (especially as most of the original Newton people are gone from apple) However, in the case that they released EVERYTHING, a community of developers would quickly develop I'm sure to try to figure out what the code does, what should be thrown away in a new implementation of a PDA, and what would be of use to current Newton developers.
Persuading Apple to release the source to the connectivity applications (Newton Book Maker, Newton Tool Kit, and Newton Connection Utilities) would also help, as these apps are the ONLY apps that can interface with the Dock application built into the Newton's ROM. The authentication protocol used includes a DES-encrypted challenge-respononse. This is a BIT of a hitch to making new connectvity apps that can work with the native Dock (as you'd have to after you'd wiped the Newton clean)