I’ve tried it from an iPod and iPhone which both worked a treat though annoyingly of course, without jailbreaking the iPhone only the iPod video functions actually output a picture. Such a silly limitation from Apple this one. It makes photo slideshow/video workarounds for presentations necessary that really shouldn’t be.

Anyway, I’ve come up with the following ideas so far, none of which I’m likely to have time to pursue but part of the fun is thinking these things up. I’ll edit this post as things occur.

• Fasten it under the seat of your bike and project an enormous red triangle or other graphic or message onto the road behind you so approaching motorists get that extra clue… anamorphic translations on the image (read all about anamorphosis) could come in useful as at some point the image would appear to stand upright from the driver’s POV. (for some drivers/road positions anyway).
• Combined with an iPhone 3GS – or indeed any computer/camera combination, though the iPhone+SHOWWX is a particularly elegant duo – it should be possible to display an image and film it on the camera simultaneously. With someone moving an arm/finger around  it should be possible to produce an effective “interactive whiteboard” type result.
• Shadow puppetry light source. Presumably because of the laser light source and scanning motion and lack of focussing lenses, when the image is obscured by a hand the shadow cast is pin sharp. No penumbral shadows at all regardless of distance from projection surface. Combined with some creative images to start with and shadow puppetry skills, shadow puppetry could take a leap appearing to interact with full color environments.
• Head up displays for cars etc. Easy one to try for myself to check it won’t dazzle passers by but you could easily I suspect project messages/footage onto the back windscreen (or on a strip of thin paper beneath it) and have a clearly readable image displayed at night. There are already many HUD apps for the iPhone. Projected via this thing you could have a HUD across your whole windscreen!
• Freaking out kids at Halloween. Movie running on a loop, projects ghostly images onto the wall/door/gate etc. Could be particularly useful combined with an anamorphic image to make the ghost look like it’s coming from a hole in the ground etc.
• In fact, its portability combined with a tripod and an app to apply anamorphic translations to images could be used to project onto the floor enabling the artistically challenged (like me) to cheat by projecting onto the pavement then doing a paint-by-numbers type job on it. Yes, it’s possible I’m becoming slightly obsessed by anamorphosis.
• 3D mapping. The methods are nothing new. Shine  a laser in a line while rotating the subject, capture the line deviations in a camera set at an angle an infer the subject’s profile from the way the line is warped. The SHOWWX essentially puts a laser in everyone’s hand at a fraction of the cost of usual solutions. Just project a picture with only one vertical line on it. Or, project a grid and do the same thing using a camera to record the deformation of the grid and thereby infer the contours of the subject.
• I wonder if it’s possible to get photo sensitive paints/inks that once exposed for a given time keep their arrived-at colour without recourse to developing chemicals? What a great way to do murals. Line up the image, black out the room, coat the wall, turn on the projector and leave for a while, allow it to cure and you have a “painted” mural.
• My kids have each got those glow in the dark wall hangings where you ‘paint’ on them using a light pen and they persists for a while. Great fun. I think I’l try projecting a line image tonight in a blacked out room and see whether the showwx puts enough light onto these things to leave an image.
• I wonder if a reflective dome on the floor and the showwx from above could give a home-made planetarium?
• Christmas message? shine it from inside to a window.

So many ideas, so little time… ah well. Am quite looking forward to the dead of night so I can try this thing in the garden and see just how big an image is actually visible on the side of the house. Also aiming to try it in the lounge tonight where I have an empty wall and see just how well it stacks up when the movie is 8 feet wide!

Now I got my iPhone second hand without a warranty or contract so I had little to lose if this process turned the phone into a pretty brick. Doing this will invalidate your warranty so if that scares you don’t go any further.

Now I have a mac at the moment and although I’d prefer to be able to do this via the pc, i am making an effort to learn mac so that’s all I can do.

The first thing is to use iTunes to upgrade to firmware 2.2. If you are currently using a turbo sim of some sort this will likely break it. You have been warned!

Now if you don’t have a bittorrent client go get one then use it to search for quickpwn you are looking for the 2.2 version since that’s the firmware you now have.

Once you have downloaded quickpwn just connect iPhone to mac and run quickpwn. It will check your phone is suitable then it will download the firmware package you need. This replaces the operating system on your phone with a hacked version. It takes a while but once done you will see a pineapple at startup rather than the apple logo. You will also see the cydia application which is basically a third party appstore!

Now point your browser at iPhone-dev.org then follow the link to their blog. Scroll down till you see the cydia source URL. Go into cydia on your phone and add the URL as a source repository. Once done you can browse for the yellowsn0w app version 0.9.4 is the one that worked for me.

Finally then install the app and follow the directions on the blog.

5 minutues after getting my hands on version 0.9.4 I had orange 3g and could makes calls with my regular sim card.

Thank you to the awsome developers who made this. I think apple deep down don’t want to work too hard to prevent something that increases iPhone uptake but I’m equally sure that o2 must be pissed and apple will do something because they have to been seen to do so. As long as you don’t restore your phone from backup though I guess all could be well for some time.

I typed this whole post on my iPhone using the wordpress app available from the app store. Anyone who says the keyboard input on iphone is anything less than genius is looking in the wrong place. I only get two and a half little fat index fingers to cover the screen width yet I can type as fast as I can think. Still loving ‘miphone’

Recently though, I read a few blogs about the app store for iPhone and iPod touch. This caught my attention because Apple have essentially gathered all users of this platform in one place which though criticized by many has the benefit for the developer of virtually eliminating marketing costs and at the same time with the iPhone they have created a platform so friendly and so powerful that it’s users want all their old simple apps games and utils on it. Since I’m in the business of writing software this is a new opportunity to be investigated at least.

So I obtain a 3G 16g iPhone. I was hooked in minutes. Setup of work and personal mail accounts, sync with exchange, wifi connections you name it, it works and with zero frustration. The software tools only work on a mac of course so I now have a mac mini and while the objective c language is a challenge for me, all else is easy and… dare I say it… I think I am starting to enjoy the environment.

I have had every slide out keyboard, stylus operated windows mobile or nokia phone of note and this beauty makes them all look like early prototypes of what a phone come PDA come laptop should be. What’s more, this phone is making a mac user and developer out of someone who thinks bill gates should be made king of the world. That is remarkable. The iPhone has filled me with an excitement and desire for programming that I haven’t felt since I school days spent programming 6502 assembler.

Don’t believe the reviews that say typing is difficult, it’s not, it’s the fastest editor on any small device, period. Don’t be fooled by reviews of other phones saying they are potential iPhone killers, they are not. This is, quite simply the best piece of technology I have ever used. It just works. It really does live up to Apple’s hype. Get one now and write space invaders for it, there is still a Market for all the retro stuff that we all know how to write these days but is saturated on other platforms.

If you can’t afford one, sell your granny to get one. If you have a phone, you need an iPhone. By the way, I typed this post on my iPhone and with the exception of a few erroneous conjunctions that had to be edited, what you see is what I typed and what’s more, I typed it using one hand, two fingers and a thumb, almost as quickly as I can type accurately on any keyboard. It is truly impressive.