About a month or so ago, I decided to jailbreak my iPhone. To be honest, I was a little worried at first about the idea that I might ruin it, but not only did it work the first time trying, but it was incredibly simple. One of the features my new iPhone JB has is the ability to ssh to and from it and I can record video. Unfortunately, my Cycorder (video recording program) doesn’t have a built-in way to get the videos from my phone to anywhere else. My desire to share a humorous video of the cats with my wife now seemed a near impossible act. Sync won’t do it. Email won’t do it. My Flickit app won’t see anything outside my photo album.
Getting from here to there Crossing my fingers, I downloaded the FTP On The Go app from the app store. I needed an FTP application, anyway. Sadly, it is bound to the same constraints as every other iPhone AppStore app, meaning it can’t see files outside its own directory tree. That’s great from a security and privacy standpoint, but it left me still searching for a solution. I wrote the author of the app, who quickly confirmed two things for me: 1. The application can only upload files from within its own file tree and 2. yes, moving files into that tree should do the trick.
Armed with a new game plan, I set out to take back control of my iPhone and the files on it. First, I tried making a symbolic link from the Cycoder Videos folder to the Documents/Files folder FTP On The Go provides. That didn’t work at all. I thought it was because FTP On The Go didn’t recognize the folder, thinking it was just a file. Next, I tried making a symbolic link from the video, itself to the Documents/Files folder. This also didn’t work, and I suspect that it’s because FTP On The Go is not following the symbolic link properly. I’m also guessing that’s part of the iPhone’s security rules. Eventually, I settled for placing the video directly into the target folder, after which it uploaded just fine to my server.
Why go to all the trouble?
I can connect to my iPhone over my wireless network via SSH and SFTP (Secure FTP), pop into the videos directory, and download whatever I want right to my laptop. That being said, some may question the longer method mentioned above. If I was home this morning that would have been the method used and you wouldn’t be reading this. At my office, my computer is wired, so I had no computer connected to the wireless network (it’s a different network). This makes the simple act of connecting directly to the iPhone over my wireless network all that much harder. Additionally, there will be times when I have a video (or some other file) on my iPhone that I need to move to a server, my laptop, etc. while I am not near a computer. When that happens, I’ll need a solution that relies completely on the capabilities that rest in the palm of my hand. It’s better to figure this out now than when that really is all I have to work with and need something fast.
What I’ve learned
First of all, I’ve learned that symbolic links won’t work and I REALLY wish they did. I would much rather link to the video folder (and my SNES ROMS folder) once. Without symbolic links, I have to copy any file I want to FTP every time. I’ve also learned, while poking around in the file system, that there’s a lot of raw files to play with. Perhaps there’s even a hidden setting somewhere to loosen up my symbolic linking. Either way, it’s a lot of fun to dig around and see what other trouble I can find. Just for kicks, the video can be seen below.
Admit it. You’ve always wanted to move objects with your mind just like Luke Skywalker, but without all the swamp training. More and more, we continue to study the intricacies of the human mind and technology advances faster than many people can keep up with. It’s no surprise, then, that something this cool would come our way so soon.
Mindflex™ Games from Mattel combines your own thought with their technology to make a small foam ball move on air. The game measures your brainwave activity via a light weight headset with sensors for your forehead and ear lobes. When you are concentrate on moving the ball, your brain wave activity is increased, telling the toy to increase the air flow, lifting the ball as can be seen in the video below.
While you might think that technology like this would surface in commercial applications before the toy market, it’s not all that surprising. Many of the coolest technologies have emerged embedded in toys, and for that reason, many of those toys are bought up by people like me who like to hack it into other stuff. For now, we’ll have to wait because it’s not available until this Fall. In the mean time, though, you can get a sneak peek at New York’s Toy Fair 2009 next week and at the web site, you can sign up to find out more when they have updates ready.
Electric matchstick – This is a fun (but useless) little weekend electronics project.
Build a 3D wiremap – This is yet another in the growing list of projects I want to build. I brought home a projector, so I think I’m going to try my hand at this one this weekend, possibly with a few modifications to make it easier.
Heart-shaped circuit board pendant – Are you and your girlfriend or wife both extra geeky? You should have grabbed her one of these for Valentines Day.
FlyCast – If you have a smart phone, this is a great addition to it. I love Pandora, too, but this is actual streaming radio, so it’s nice to have both.
Besmoke fluid interaction demo – By now, you know I love all this geeky stuff and this really comes through for me. I especially love his facial expressions throughout the demo.
Echelon Conspiracy trailer – Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this pretty much just Eagle Eye with a plot variation and different cast? Of course I’m still gonna see it, though because it’s 100% my kind of movie.
Papervision – Augmented reality – This is another really cool tech project. This kind of thing has been done before, but the implementation is much easier, now, for the rest of us.
I’ve been on Twitter a while now and I’m even up to almost 1,000 followers now, but still had not ever met anyone face to face that I knew exclusively via Twitter. Tonight, Phoenix joined in the global one-night event known as Twestival. To attend, organizers were asking for a mere $10-$30 donation but even more money was raised with the raffle at $3 a ticket and the silent auction, offering up a lot of great stuff from some generous local sponsors. The whole thing was from 6:00 to 9:00 PM and was at the Half Moon sports grill.
I’ve been wanting to be more locally involved, attending more local events and interfacing more with people right here in Phoenix, and Twestival sounded like a good start. Then I heard that all the money raised was going to a charity and I decided I would attend for sure. The charity benefiting from this global event is charity : water. They’re a non-profit, and their mission is to bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. The goal of the Phoenix Twestival was to raise $4,000 to dig a well in a developing nation.
Michelle and I showed up at around 6:15 and the parking lot was full, so we wound up parking across the street. We registered and then headed for the food, which was a happy surprise. From what I heard, another local sponsor covered the food and one drink per person for the event. After eating, we headed over to the silent auction tables, looking over the items offered. I liked the idea of a pair of Suns lower level seats or the two nights at the Clarendon hotel, but we ended up not putting in any bids. Just as we were talking about how I hadn’t even talked to anyone here online before – making it a little harder for us to dive in and start meeting people, we met @ShannonSelleck and her daughter. As it turned out, I had talked with her well before the days of Twitter and we have a few friends in common. Later, as the four of us chatted away, a specific combination of numbers spoken in the background triggered me to stand up and declare “That’s me”. With my single raffle ticket purchase, I snagged the $50 P.F. Chang’s gift card.
Although we had a lot of fun and I’m glad we went, Michelle is still nursing the cold I generously passed on to her, so we left before 9:00 to get her home. On the way home, we talked about my plans to get Phoenix bloggers together for Thai food once a month or so. In the interim, events like this will fill my calendar. For those who missed it, I hope you’re there next time, and for those who made it that I didn’t meet, I hope we meet at the next event.
Twestival – If you’re on Twitter, why not socialize in person, increase your (inter)net worth, and help a charity at the same time. It’s $10, 175+ cities, 3 hours, and all proceeds go to charity. I’m planning on making Twestival Phoenix, so if you’re going to be there, look for me and Michelle and say hello.
Projector Cell Phone – I’m hoping to review one of these phones very soon. If I do, you’ll see lots of photos and video right here, so subscribe up in the top right corner of this page and you’ll see it when I review it.
Hulu It was my best view of the inaugural speech and got plenty of Superbowl publicity, and you can view lots of TV shows there for free.
OQO – Of course I can’t mention ultra portables without mentioning OQO, too. This is another device I’d love to get my hands on for a review.
Audio re-invented – In part of his talk, Woody Norris mentions how you can make someone hear a whisper in their ear from far far away. About a year ago, I mentioned how it would be great to do just that and one of my programmers said something like that was in the works. Pretty soon, I’ll be able to do it for a few hundred bucks.
Ruckus shuts down – Some college music service I’ve never heard of has been shut down. I only mention it because it seems to be making today’s news.
Make money with PayPerPost v4.0 like I do.
Crossing my fingers, I downloaded the FTP On The Go app from the app store. I needed an FTP application, anyway. Sadly, it is bound to the same constraints as every other iPhone AppStore app, meaning it can’t see files outside its own directory tree. That’s great from a security and privacy standpoint, but it left me still searching for a solution. I wrote the author of the app, who quickly confirmed two things for me: 1. The application can only upload files from within its own file tree and 2. yes, moving files into that tree should do the trick.
