It wasn’t so long ago the East End of London was synonymous with evil doing cockneys of the likes of Jack the Ripper. Now East Londoners face a new threat from er…lampposts.

British directory service 118 118 has taken it upon themselves to pad offending lampposts to help distracted texters from injury.

If the London trial proves successful(?) the next stop on the padded lamppost tour will take in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.

No word yet if the lamppost padding will be trialled in the former colonies, but enjoy the video.

What is the iPhone SDK?
The iPhone SDK is a software development kit that will allow third parties to create applications that can run directly on the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The kit is significant because Apple can’t possibly anticipate, nor produce, all the applications that people might want to use on an iPhone. And some of those applications will convince people who weren’t sure about the iPhone to buy it.
The questions: will the iPhone go 3G, will it have VoIP, what will the games look like, when will there be a software update, what are the ramifications of the SDK release, what of the promises enterprise features? Patience my friends all will be revealed.
Everyone was expecting a mention of the 3G iPhone but guess what – nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. In seems like it will be June now before the most wanted feature finds it’s way into your beloved device.
No 3G is a bummer but Steve gave his imperial nod today to allow VoIP through WiFi if someone develops it. Handy if you are chewing through your minutes and are inundated with WiFi hotspots to tap into.
Like games? EA and Sega have signed on get involved in games for the iPhone using both the multitouch and accelerometer features. Early titles to get the Apple treatment will be Super Monkey Ball and Spore.
That’s all great but when will I get my hands on any of this? After all these announcements comes the big downer. Though the announcements have all been made today users won’t be able to get any of these features until the iPhone 2.0 software update in June. Meanwhile developers will be testing their applications and hackers no doubt cutting a whole in the heart of the beast.
Want to get involved and download the SDK and build your own application? You’ll need Mac Os X Leopard, An Intel-based Mac, Xcode, a free Apple iPhone developer account and the SDK itself downloadable here.
Apple also made these tools available for developers:
Cocoa Touch - Multi-touch events, Multi-touch controls, Acceleromter, View Hierarchy, Localization, Alerts, Web View, People Picker, Image Picker, Camera
Media - Core Audio, OpenAL, Audio Mixing, Audio Recording, Video Playback, JPG, PNG, TIFF, PDS Quartz, Core Animation, Embedded OpenGL
Core Services - Collections, Address Book, Networking, File access, SQLite, Core Location, Net Services Threading, Preferences, URL utilities
Core OS - OS X Kernel, BSD TCP/IP, Sockets, Power Management, Keychain, Certificates, File System, Lib System, Security, Bonjour
A software iPhone emulator for Mac OS X is provided to help with development.
What about the Enterprise features? Well there’s a bunch of them, but sadly these once again will have to wait until the software update in June:
- Push calendar

- Push contacts

- Global address list

- Certificates and Identities

- Push email

- Cisco IPsec VPN

- WPA2 / 802.1x

- Enforced security policies

- Device configuration

- Remote wipe

- Active Sync and Microsoft Exchange support
Who said no news is good news? You can watch the whole presentation here.

Before you were galavanting around town like King Muck with your Nokia 8800 Arte draped oh so casually from your bejewelled hand, the Nokia phone had a very different life. Here for the first time, is the untold story of how a microchip became the little phone that could.

Picture 1. The electronic components of the phones are sourced from external mass suppliers and brought to one of nine factories that produce the phones. These components are delivered and attached to tape reels in protective circular plastic cases. The circuit board is inserted into a “paste printing machine” which apples a layer of solder paste. The tape reels and accompanying electronic components are fed into “pick-and-place machines” which separate the components from their protective tape and paste them in to their assigned places in the printed circuit board. The printed circuit boards which contain the newly added components then travel through a series of pick-and-place machines before being inserted into an oven which ‘melts’ the components to the circuit board.

Picture 2. Following this the circuit boards are loaded on to tracks before undergoing their first quality test which confirms that basic software is installed into programmable components. A robotic arm removes the circuit board from the tracks and places the circuit boards in a bay where low-level settings are configured in electronic components. A series of tests that follows confirms the circuit board is perfect, in working order and correctly installed.

Picture 3. From here on in operations are mainly performed manually. Delicate components such as LCD screens and digital camera components are added, assembled and tested, and completed circuit boards are sandwiched between structural frames and the outer shell applied.

Picture 4. From menu installation to start-up screens to the addition of IMEI numbers, the final stages convert what is essentially a mess of electronic components into a usable communications product. A last diagnostic test is performed on both the software and the battery and a final visual inspection is performed. Once all the assembly and testing is completed phones are de-ionized to remove electrical charge and dust before being hand boxed, placed in the retail box with appropriate accessories and logged into a tracking system using a barcode reader.

Picture 5. The phones are bexed and placed in containers to be distributed globally - from Finland to your door.

Is the coolest Windows Mobile smartphone around coming to AT&T? Showing off their XPERIA X1 at CeBIT in Germany, Sony Ericsson may have inadvertently started a tidal wave of speculation as to the US home of this 3G bad-boy or simply let the cat out of the bag.

AT&T have added a number of Sony Ericsson devices in recent times, will the XPERIA X1 be next? Guess we’ll just have to cross our fingers and wait and see which shouldn’t take long according to recent reports.

Those Esato boys are at again with another dazzling concept for Sony Ericsson packed with all the must-have features in the communication market - welcome the P7i.

The embarrassment of riches in this vaporware quad-band smartphone includes a 2.8” WVGA TFT Multitap Touchscreen display, Symbian 9.5 UIQ operating, HSDPA , EDGE, Bluetooth, full QWERTY keyboard, Dual Type memory slot card – Memory Stick Micro and microSD and Nvidia GoForce 5500 GPU.

What? Where are the consumer features you ask? Well there’s the 5 Megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, Walkman Touch v2.0 Media Player and XMB Media Manager 1.1 possibility to record 30fps VGA video clips, FM Radio with RDS, A-GPS receiver and WLAN 802.11b/g/n.

Sony - make this happen.

If you are a personal trainer or a GYM freak , then here is a solution for you. Do you want to monitor your heartbeat while jogging? Do you want to count your steps ? Do you want to take 2 mega-pixel pictures of yourself while flexing? Do you want to listen your favourite MP3s while your at it?

Well…The recent Samsung Adidas launch; miCoach F110 can do it ALL.

  

We have previously covered the first iPhone GPS solution that had used pre-installled google map into their directions ( Video “A”) . Now, Nav N Go have worked their “iGo My Way” into Apple’s phones, it supports turn by turn directions and location finding via a WiFi key or fob. ( Video “B”).

Video A
Video B