Hasta La Gadget!

There’s always something intriguing cooking in Cupertino, even if Apple’s ovens are full, and the latest item on the list is a novel camera flash assembly you might one day see on an iPhone. Where camera flashes are typically fixed in a single spot on a device, Apple’s trying to patent a flash redirector that could whip them around, letting you frame a dimly-lit picture the way you want and automatically adjust the intensity and direction of the flash to get better results. The patent application suggests that devices would have a dedicated lens for the flash, and then a pivot on either that lens or the flash itself to aim, plus an “evaluator” that figures out what needs to be lit and by how much. Alternatively, Apple imagines you might be able to just select an area on a touchscreen camera device (wonder where we’d find one of those?) with your finger and aim the flash yourself, but if we know anything about Apple’s love of simplicity they’ll try the AI solution first. Either way, it seems like an excellent nighttime equivalent to iOS 4.1’s HDR, and something we might like to see on all sorts of shooters, not just those on phones.

Apple attempts to patent a smarter camera flash originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Sep 2010 01:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you looked at the blade-based key organizer known as the Keyport Slide and thought “this thing could really do with an integrated USB flash drive,” you were not alone. The company’s currently teasing a few images of a new 4GB accessory, which uses the same attachment as its key blades to slot in and out of that metallic shell. Even more tantalizing, this is said to be only one of a number of new accessories in development for the pricey but versatile door opener. Are these guys trying to subtly start a war with Switzerland or what?

[Thanks, Declan]

Keyport Slide adds new feather to its cap with USB key prototype originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Sep 2010 05:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With their infinitely configurable touch-screens, iDevices make pretty much perfect universal remotes. The iPhone and iPad can already be used to remote-control a DSLR, your iTunes-equipped PC or even your Sonos multi-room sound-system. Soon, you’ll be able to add Elinchrom’s RX flash lights to that list.

Elinchrom make those big, powerful flashes that you see in photographers’ studios, the ones that pull their juice from the mains or large external batteries and put out enough light to beat the Sun into submission. The company has just announced, through a coy, teasing blog post, that it is working on an iApp to let you control the power levels of your various flash-heads, pilot-lights and “many other features of the Elinchrom RX flash units”.

The actual workings of the apps are still top-secret:

We like to give our respected competition the chance to find out themselves. The EL-Skyport system idea lasted at least approximately 4 years, before other companies picked up this great idea.

We can make a guess, though. Elinchrom’s existing solution is a transmitter on the camera, and also a USB-dongle for control from a Mac or a PC. The picture above doesn’t show any extra hardware plugged into the iPhone or iPad, so I assume that the internal Wi-Fi radio of the iDevice is somehow being used. Either that or there is a dongle and it just isn’t in the picture.

We’ll find out soon enough, though, as Elinchrom will be showing off a demo at the Photokina show beginning next Thursday. The app will be available to buy for the “most modest price” in the early part of next year.

Remote Quadra RX with iPhone, iPad [Elinchrom]

Nikon’s second big announcement today (the other is the hot new D7000) is the SB700 speedlight, a smaller version of the great SB900 and an overpriced replacement for the SB600 (although the SB600 is still available).

Nikon makes some of the best flashes around: even some Canon shooters prefer them to Canon’s own if they plan to use them manually, but they probably won’t be buying this one, as it has one big feature missing: a sync-jack. Over at the Strobist blog, flash-nerd David Hobby has been crawling through the specs and finds that there is no way to trigger the flash off-camera with a standard PC-cord. You’ll either need to use a compatible Nikon camera to trigger it remotely, buy an expensive proprietary cable or use the “SU-4″ mode, which turns the flash into a dumb slave unit.

Apart from this odd move, the SB700 looks good. If you’re familiar with the SB900’s screen-and-control-dial interface, you’ll be at home here. In fact, in some ways the new flash looks better than its big brother, with dedicated switches for changing modes and for illumination patterns (like the SB900, you can choose between standard, center-weighted and “even”).

There’s also a motorized zoom, AF-illuminator and the ability to act as a commander for other, off-camera flashes (useful if you ponied up the cash for the top-end D3 which doesn’t have a built-in flash to do this). And lastly (well, lastly for this post: Nikon flashes have a veritable confusion of options if you dig in) there speedlight comes with a few hard color filters, replacing the flimsy ones that come with the SB900. The price for this new flash is $330, compared to around $220 for the SB600 and around $460 for the SB900.

SB-700 product page [Nikon]

Nikon SB-700 Speedlight Misses it By This Much [Strobist]

See Also:

• Hands-On With the Quad-Sync LumoPro Flash

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Apple has opened up the App Store review process, dropping its harsh restrictions on the tools developers are allowed to use and at the same time actually publishing the App Store Review Guidelines — a previously secret set of rules that governed whether or not your app would be approved.

Apple did not specifically mention Adobe — though investors drove up shares of the company up 12 percent on the news — but the changes seem to mean that you can use Flash to develop your apps, and then compile them to work on the iPhone and iPad with a tool called Adobe Packager. This could be boon to publishers, including Condé Nast, owner of Wired, which use Adobe’s Creative Suite to make print magazines and would now be able to easily convert them into digital version instead of re-creating them from scratch in the only handful of coding languages Apple had allowed.

To be clear, that doesn’t mean Flash is coming to iOS as a plugin: You still won’t be able to view Flash content on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. This change in Apple’s policy just means developers can use third-party tools such as Flash to create apps sold through the App Store.

And transparent guidelines will go a long way to making iOS a better place for developers. Previously, you wouldn’t know if you had broken a rule until your app was rejected. And if your app had taken months and months and tens of thousands of dollars to develop then you were pretty much screwed.

This uncertainty has kept a lot of professional and talented developers out of the store and caused the rise of quick-to-write fart applications. In fact, the point I have heard spoken over and over is that the developers don’t mind what the rules are, as long as they know about them.

The second part of Apple’s relaxation of restrictions is even less expected. Here’s the relevant point from the press release:

We are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.

This is a direct reversal of Apple’s previous ban on third-party development-tools. Why? Games. Many games use non-Apple, non-iOS code to make them work: the Unreal Engine behind the stunning Epic Citadel shown off at last weeks’ Apple event, for example, would fall foul of Apple’s previous rules. The “do not download any code” part of this is important. Apple will let you use non-iOS runtimes within your apps as long as it can inspect them first. Anything downloaded after installation which bring out the ban-hammer.

It’s a completely unexpected reversal, and one which will eventually lead to much more complex and refined apps in the iTunes Store. And everyone should be pleased about that.

Statement by Apple on App Store Review Guidelines [Apple]

See Also:

• Steve Jobs Debates Developers Over Apple’s New App Policy
• Adobe Gives Up on Flash for iPhone, iPad
• Apple VP Defends iPhone’s App Store Approval Policy
• Apple App Store Bans Pulitzer-Winning Satirist for Satire …
• Apple App Store Takes Tiny Step Toward Transparency
• Apple’s Delays Could Cost iPhone Developer $600K
• Apple’s App Store Director Sells His Own Fart Apps

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com