Jeans maker is to launch a mobile phone

The jeans maker is to launch a mobile phone, it said this week, but the doyenne of demin is remaining tight-lipped about many of the device's capabilites



Dubbed simply the Levi's Phone, the device will be manufactured under licence by the Paris-based ModeLabs. While a denim-covered version has yet to be announced, the steel-framed Levi's Phone will appear with "shiny silver" and "shiny sand" finishes for the ladies, and "metallic silver", black and "brown copper" for the lads.










Levi's will also include a detachable chain on the phone, certainly a draw for the rockers, skaters or those a little too worried about pickpockets. Unfortunatly, Levi's only said that its phone will enable users - or, more specifically, "young people" - to "connect, enjoy music, and exchange images and videos whilst on the go".

Some online reports are suggesting that it will include Bluetooth and an MP3 player - not exactly out-of-blue guesses, we'd say.

The Levi's Phone will be available in Europe from September, but pricing details are yet to be released.

5 things you need to know about the iPhone 1.1.1 update

Before you hit that 'Upgrade' button, here are a few items of community interest to consider.

1. It's a one-way street. You cannot downgrade the firmware back to 1.0.2, not even using the alt-Restore trick that lets you pick an ipsw file to restore from.
2. The new firmware is locked down tighter than a WWE Half Nelson. If you somehow managed to upgrade while keeping your iPhone apps intact -- I have yet to hear a confirmation of this happening, and I kinda doubt it can happen -- congratulations. Everyone else is out of luck. Don't expect a jailbreak anytime soon

3. You can buy songs at the iTunes WiFi music store and transfer them back to your computer. iTunes creates a custom playlist with your purchases.

4. The Home-button and double-space tricks are cool. Not sure whether they're cool enough to make it worth cutting off your access to third party apps, though.

5. My media folder disk access utilities still work. So if you want to store some files on your iPhone or iPod touch, download from here. For Intel Macs only. If you want to run on a PPC, grab this universal, rename it to util and replace the one in my tar file. It won't run as cleanly but you still get to use it on a PPC Mac.

There is something futile about the way Apple appears to be fighting some of its most ardent fans, those who want to use the full capabilities of the iPhone.

Thursday afternoon, Apple released the scheduled update to the iPhone software. And the gadget blogs confirm that it does, as Apple threatened, wreak havoc on modified iPhones. Some phones have indeed been “bricked.” In others, unofficial applications have been disabled. And there are worries that hacking the updated phone will be harder.

The result: Serious hackers will keep finding new ways to break in. Less technically inclined may well find themselves chastened into technological submission, assuming they can get their pricey toys to work at all. Will Apple really refuse to help people with iBricks?

Speaking in London last week, Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said the company is in a “cat and mouse” game with hackers.

“People will try to break in, and it’s our job to stop them breaking in,” he said.

David Pogue, our technology reviewer, received a cautionary message Wednesday night from a person familiar with Apple’s plans after he posted a video showing some unofficial, but entertaining, applications that can be installed on the iPhone. Take those applications off your phones now, David was warned, or a software update scheduled for Thursday afternoon could turn your phone into a brick. [David takes a closer look at the iPhone update here.]

On Monday, Apple had issued a press release warning of “irreparable damage” to iPhones that have been modified or unlocked from the AT&T network. It also threatened users that “the permanent inability to use an iPhone due to installing unlocking software is not covered under the iPhone’s warranty.”

This caused a scurry by hackers to develop software that will relock iPhones before software updates. It’s like kids at the slumber party turning out the lights and jumping under the covers each time mom thumps up the stairs.

Apple may well be justified using tough tactics against people who modify their phones so they no longer use the AT&T network. Apple stands to receive several hundred dollars for each phone over the course of two years from AT&T’s service fees.

Some people—actually a lot of people—don’t much like AT&T. Or they don’t want to pay AT&T’s roaming fees overseas and would rather use a local cellular company. And these people will always be looking for ways to defeat Apple’s locking system. The simple way to defuse this fight, of course, would simply be for Apple to sell an unlocked iPhone for, say, $300 more than the locked version.

But this gets at Apple’s propensity for control. The phone is, in some ways, a better experience on AT&T because of its links to voice mail and so on. But does that mean if Apple’s way is better it should always prevent people from using its products in some less optimal way?

Since the iPhone is a very sleek, capable handheld computer, people are going to want to run programs on it. They are going to want to hack and see what they can build. It’s a law of nature. And Apple might as well be fighting gravity.

Many other cell phones are locked down, of course. But few other phones capture the imagination of programmers the way the iPhone does.

Apple did allow for some application development inside its Safari browser. But it is not supporting Java or Flash, the two environments that allow the most flexible applications. And there is no official way to write applications that run on the phone’s operating system. Apple has said that it is worried that some applications could cause trouble for the AT&T network. But it’s hard to imagine that there isn’t a way to wall off and limit network usage without preventing people from developing well-mannered programs.

Apple essentially has two choices. Either it exposes most of the iPhone’s capabilities to developers. Or it will have to gird for an ever escalating war in which it will have to send ever more electronic brick-bombs to its best customers who don’t follow its strict rules.

Electronic Nose

Onboard the space station, astronauts are surrounded by ammonia. It flows through pipes, carrying heat generated inside the station (by people and electronics) outside to space. Ammonia helps keep the station habitable.

But it's also a poison. And if it leaks, the astronauts will need to know quickly. Ammonia becomes dangerous at a concentration of a few parts per million (ppm). Humans, though, can't sense it until it reaches about 50 ppm.

Ammonia is just one of about forty or fifty compounds necessary on the shuttle and space station, which cannot be allowed to accumulate in a closed environment.

And then there's fire. Before an electrical fire breaks out, increasing heat releases a variety of signature molecules. Humans can't sense them either until concentrations become high.

Astronauts need better noses!


That's why NASA is developing the Electronic Nose, or ENose for short. It's a device that can learn to recognize almost any compound or combination of compounds. It can even be trained to distinguish between Pepsi and Coke. Like a human nose, the ENose is amazingly versatile, yet it's much more sensitive.


Here's how it works: ENose uses a collection of 16 different polymer films. These films are specially designed to conduct electricity. When a substance -- such as the stray molecules from a glass of soda -- is absorbed into these films, the films expand slightly, and that changes how much electricity they conduct







 


Because each film is made of a different polymer, each one reacts to each substance, or analyte, in a slightly different way. And, while the changes in conductivity in a single polymer film wouldn't be enough to identify an analyte, the varied changes in 16 films produce a distinctive, identifiable pattern.

Electronic Noses are already being used on Earth. In the food industry, for example, they can be used to detect spoilage. There's even an Electronic Tongue, which identifies compounds in liquids. NASA's ENose needs to be able to detect lower concentrations than these devices.


As a safety device, the ENose has a lot to offer here on Earth, too. With some modifications, an ENose could be used to check for gas buildups in offshore oil rigs. "The workers have to go down into the legs of the rigs, and they want to make sure it's not going to blow up while they're in there." Sanitation workers would benefit by knowing if any poisonous gases have collected down in the sewers.

Cellphones: Blackholes of Entertainment

For the Millennial generation, which is made up of 13-24 year olds, the cellphone has become the "black hole" of entertainment--they suck everything toward it.

That's according to a survey commissioned by Deloitte & Touche released this week. Not surprisingly, this generation is most active when it comes to producing user-generated content, gaming and using the Internet for socializing. But they're the least active as far as Internet surfing. They visit fewer Web sites each week than any other generation.

The number of people using cellphones to get entertainment is still relatively small, but growing. The survey said 24 percent of Millennials and 17 percent of Generation X-ers (people aged 25-31) listen to MP3s on their cellphones. About 9 percent of both groups watch movies and reach newspapers on their cellphones. Twenty-six percent of both groups use their cellphones almost daily to access some form of video content, like a YouTube clip.

The survey was conducted online, so the respondents were probably more inclined to be tech-savvy. But the stats confirm the trend toward the cellphone becoming a media device, no doubt helped along by the introduction of flashy devices like Apple's iPhone. Once wireless carriers improve the Web-surfing experience via cellphones, these numbers will surely shoot up.

Amazon's Improved eBook Plot Stumbles on Resolution

Amazon.com hopes its new Kindle tablet will make buying and reading electronic books as easy as buying the paper kind. But while Kindle avoids some flaws of such earlier attempts as 1998's NuvoMedia Rocket eBook and last year's Sony Reader -- thanks in part to a free wireless connection that downloads books off the air -- it can't quite close the deal.

The $399 Kindle (sold out through Christmas) is a slim, white tablet about the size and shape of a paperback, weighing just over 10 ounces. Its front consists of a 6-inch screen and a miniaturize keyboard.

The device's gray-scale screen doesn't look anything like other computer displays. It uses the same "E Ink" technology as the Sony Reader, which keeps the screen readable even in direct sunlight but can't duplicate other qualities of the printed word.

The Kindle's screen, for example, doesn't include a backlight and displays only a few shades of gray. Between the dark-gray text and the light-gray background, its contrast falls short of a newspaper's and is inferior to that of a book.

The Kindle's screen, for example, doesn't include a backlight and displays only a few shades of gray. Between the dark-gray text and the light-gray background, its contrast falls short of a newspaper's and is inferior to that of a book.

Worse, the Kindle's sluggish screen needs about 1 1/2 seconds to draw a new page, during which time the next page distractingly appears as a photo-negative image of itself before settling into place.

That delay seems short next to most waits on a computer but feels like infinity compared with turning a paper page. The Kindle screen's lag ensures there can be no such thing as flipping through a book on this device.

The design of the rest of the Kindle can get in the way, too. Two-thirds of each side is taken up by buttons to skip to the previous and next page, so you must remember where you can safely grab the thing without losing your place.

To navigate through the Kindle's on-screen menus and links -- say, to bookmark a page, search the book's contents, view a footnote or add a comment -- you spin a small scroll wheel to move a tiny indicator up and down a thermometer-like column to the right of the screen. You're supposed to line up this indicator with the item you want to select, an awkward task when a chapter list hugs the left side of the screen.

The reward for mastering this often-awkward interface is a small library you can read on the go. Amazon stocks 90,000 titles for the Kindle, a fraction of its print inventory, and makes them available through a wireless connection that comes free with the device.

Once you set up a Kindle with your Amazon account, everything downloads directly and almost instantly -- no computer or special software required.