Hasta La Gadget!

Apple's iPhone 4 includes a front-facing camera for video conferencing. A few customers claim the camera is taking random photos when it's supposed to be inactive. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

A small number of iPhone 4 customers claim their phones’ front-facing cameras are snapping photos of them without their knowledge.

These inadvertently snapped photos later appear on the iPhone screen when they try to initiate a FaceTime video-conferencing call, about a dozen customers said in Apple’s support forums. For instance, one person said that FaceTime showed a picture of her in her office, even though she’d never used FaceTime at work.

The bug freezes the video call, requiring customers to retry until FaceTime properly loads.

One iPhone owner on Wednesday uploaded a video (below) demonstrating the bug. In the video, the iPhone 4 shows a still shot of the customer after he initiates a FaceTime call.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment. Wired.com staff was not able to replicate the glitch after several attempts on both iOS 4.3 and iOS 4.3.1, the versions of the operating system that reportedly suffer from the problem.

The glitch appears to affect a diminutive number of users, but it’s worth noting that Apple’s popular iPhone has fallen victim to several embarrassing security flaws in the past. In two instances, the iPhone’s security passcode was easily bypassed with a simple button sequence. Security researchers also discovered a memory-corruption bug that would allow a hacker to crash an iPhone with a text message and take control of it.

“Sounds like Apple has a potentially serious privacy leak,” said Jonathan Zdziarski, an iPhone-security researcher, regarding customers’ reports of the front-facing camera bug. “I guess the moral of the story is don’t let your iPhone see you naked.”

Wired.com is continuing to look into the issue. If you’re experiencing similar problems, or if you’ve found a solution, please post in the comments section.

See Also:

• The Secret To Apple's FaceTime Success Will Be The PC
• Porn Industry Aroused by iPhone FaceTime
• Steven Levy on FaceTime and Sharing the View

The success of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad have made Apple a truly global. One market the company has yet to fully penetrate, however–the former republics of the Soviet Union. Apple is reportedly eyeing the opening of a store in the area, however, in a historic building in Moscow’s Red Square, right around the corner from the Kremlin.

The building first opened in 1935 as the Hotel Moskva. In more recent years, it’s been undergoing serious renovation and is set to reopen as a Four Seasons–the first in that country.

The company has yet to make a final decision on the matter. According to anonymous sources, “At the time, no lease had been signed, but a decision could be made soon.”

In spite of the lack of an official Apple Storethe iPhone has reportedly been a bit of a hit in Russia since its 2008 launch in that country.

Continuing the trend of tying streaming content to the ol’ ball and chain that is your pricy cable subscription, ESPN announced the launch of the WatchESPN App for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, with an iPad optimized version slated for release in May. Said App can be downloaded now and will allow you to “stay connected to live sports and shows from ESPN, wherever and whenever you want them” — assuming you’re a Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks or Verizon FiOS TV customer that is. The ability to watch three of the most popular cable networks while on the go, or anywhere in your house, is certainly nothing to scoff at, but many sports fans’ excitement will indeed be diminished until ESPN fulfills its promise to release apps for “other smartphones and tablets,” and of course the other big service providers like Comcast, DirecTV and Dish Network get with the program. For now you can live vicariously through us by clicking through to the gallery or watching the western style WatchESPN App commercial available via the source link.

Continue reading WatchESPN iOS app lets some people watch live sports wherever they want

WatchESPN iOS app lets some people watch live sports wherever they want originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 09:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know all those hub-less wheels that “designers” like to throw onto their CG concept bicycles? Well, a student of Loughborough Design School in England has actually made one. He even threw in a belt-drive for good measure.

It’s called the Lanartic, and it was designed and built by Luke Douglas. Despite being having a full sized wheel, the wheelbase is much shorter than that of a regular road bike, and because the seat sits over the rear wheel the seat-to-handlebar distance remains similar to a bigger bike.

The hubless design opens up a lot of extra opportunities, not least of all luggage carrying. You could put a bag or basket inside that rear wheel (taking care to keep it away from the rider’s heels) and it would put the load at or even below the bike’s center of gravity for a very stable ride.

I imagine the friction of this kind of wheel is a lot higher than that of a regular hub, thanks to so much more contact between wheel and the “frame”. It looks like crazy fun to ride, though, and wheelies should be dead easy with the seat so far back over the rear wheel.

Lanartic [Loughborough University via Doobybrain and Make]

See Also:

• Orbitwheel: Hubless Wheels for Your Feet
• P-fars
• YikeBike

This article was written on July 30, 2007 by CyberNet.

The Firefox development team has finally resolved what was probably the longest outstanding bug for the browser: full page zoom. Up until now Firefox has only been capable of increasing and decreasing the size of text to simulate zooming, but now it handles images as well! The funny part is that it only took 8-years for this bug to get fixed.

This is something that the Opera browser has had ever since I can remember, and it is something I’ve always longed for in Firefox. Heck, even Internet Explorer 7 has some sort of zoom capabilities that also scales images, but the results are typically not the best.

To get it in Firefox 3 you’ll need to be using the latest nightly build, along with this extension. The extension is just a temporary fix that lets you add buttons to the navigation bar for zooming, and without it there is no way to take advantage of the new zoom capabilities. Eventually the developers will get the feature integrated with the browser, but the extension is the best way to test it out for those that want to see what it is like.

The results are much better than what Internet Explorer 7 produces, but not quite as good as Opera’s. I noticed in Firefox 3 that it has problems scaling some Flash and JavaScript objects, and one example of this can be seen in the screenshot above where it didn’t actually scale the contents of the ad located at the top of the screen nor the one at the top of the sidebar. I’m sure that these are just some bugs that they will be working out, and I look forward to seeing this feature in full swing when Firefox 3 gets released!

Source: Mozilla Links

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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