Hasta La Gadget!

Windows Phone 7 turns out to be perfectly capable of tethering your data signal to a laptop via USB cable, a feature it was though to lack. To access the secret tethering mode, you’ll need to do some diagnostic voodoo, but its pretty straightforward stuff: more like inputting a video-game cheat code than actual hacking.

First, you need to get into the handset’s diagnostic mode. Right now the instructions are only available for Samsung WP7 phones. To do this, dial ##634# and hit the call button, followed by *#7284#. This will give you the above menu, which lets you toggle between the default Zune sync, a diagnostic utility and, yes, a tethered modem.

Back at the computer, use these settings to let it talk to the new modem:

number: *99***1#
user name: WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
password: CINGULAR1

Neat, free and fun. What more could you ask for? We’re sure that hacking other, non-Samsung handsets will be possible, too, as soon as somebody works out the proper codes.

According to David K of Mobile Digest, you can connect and disconnect just by plugging or yanking the USB cord. And because WP7 allows Wi-Fi syncing, you don’t even need to change this new tethering setting back – just leave it as it is. I don’t have a Samsung Windows Phone 7 phone to test this on, so let us know how things go in the comments.

Windows Phone 7 Tethers! You Can Do it NOW! Here’s How [Mobile Digest]

Samsung Omnia 7 ha il tethering USB! [HD Blog.IT]

See Also:

• AT&T Adds iPhone Tethering, Kills Unlimited Data for iPad …
• Android 2.2 'Froyo' Features USB, Wi-Fi Tethering
• IOS 4.2 Beta Adds Tethering to iPad

Over the weekend, a member of the NUI Group hacked the new Xbox Kinect to run on Windows 7, posting proof-of-concept videos, but not the code.

“As a research project, I took a weekend challenge of getting this awesome new Xbox Kinect device to work on Windows,” writes Alex P, who previously hacked the PS3 Eye camera to run on Windows. “Here are the first tests of controlling the Kinect NUI Motor and reading the Accelerometer data from a PC. Outlook looks good for other sensors (ie cameras and microphones) of the device.”

A day later, he posted the following video of the Windows-controlled Kinect with on-screen output from its depth and color sensors:

Open-source hardware company Adafruit has offered a bounty for open-source Kinect drivers, upping the reward to $2000 after Microsoft threatened legal action against anyone opening up their peripheral.

Engadget reports that Alex P isn’t interested in the reward, preferring to use it with Code Laboratories’s $150 video suite CL Studio Live.

DIYers, robots and children all hoping to leverage the Kinect for educational use did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

See Also:

• Adafruit Offers $1000 Bounty for Open-Source Kinect Drivers …
• $2000 Bounty Put on Open-Source Kinect Drivers
• How Facial Recognition Works in Xbox Kinect
• How Motion Detection Works in Xbox Kinect

Open-source hardware company Adafruit has declared open season on Microsoft’s Kinect, offering a $1000 bounty to anyone who can write and release open-source drivers for the camera.

Kinect, released today for Xbox 360, is expensive for a video game peripheral, but inexpensive considering its built-in hardware. It has an RGB camera, depth sensor, and multi-array microphone. But as we observed yesterday, it’s Kinect’s proprietary software that provides full-body 3D motion capture, facial recognition, and voice recognition capabilities.

“Imagine being able to use this off the shelf camera for Xbox for Mac, Linux, Win, embedded systems, robotics, etc.” Adafruit writes. “We know Microsoft isn’t developing this device for FIRST Robotics, but we could! Let’s reverse engineer this together, get the RGB and distance out of it and make cool stuff!”

The OK Project is Adafruit’s first attempt at a contest of this kind. Any person or group to upload working Kinect code and examples under an open source license to GitHub will be awarded $1000. The code can run on any operating system but must be open-source. Adafruit even invites Microsoft to participate.

This isn’t much like finding an open driver for a printer. It’s more like jailbreaking the iPhone. The Kinect has its own processor, and the code powering it operates several different pieces of hardware and does a lot of preprocessing before sending it out to the console. The human-anatomy and facial-recognition software is especially tricky. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

In an email, Adafruit’s Phillip Torrone writes that the company “would like to see this camera used for education, robotics and fun outside the Xbox.” That does sound like Microsoft’s bag, and I’d bet many people in the company in those fields have plans for the tech behind Kinect. Sadly, I doubt they’ll be tripping over themselves to help hack the company’s own camera.

See Also:

• How Motion Detection Works in Xbox Kinect
• Review: Flawed Kinect Offers Tantalizing Glimpse at Gaming's …
• Why Xbox Might Be Microsoft's Future — and Computing's, Too …
• Will the Internet of Things Be Open or Closed?
• Video: Command and Control Robots with Microsoft Surface

The Pocket Piano might not look like much. Or it might look like an awesome, handmade marriage of craftwork and electronics (a Kraftwerk, if you will). Either way, it does a lot more than you think it does.

Built by Critter and Guitari, the handsome aluminum and hardwood case houses a mini electronic synthesizer with six different modes. You play it using the little wooden buttons which you may notice are in two rows, representing the black and white keys on a real piano. For the music nerds, here’s a list of the modes:

• Vibrato Synth
• Harmonic Sweeper
• Two-Octave Arpeggiator
• Octave Cascade
• Mono FM Synth
• FM Arpeggiator

For the rest of us, here’s how it works. The buttons play notes, and you can extend the small keyboard to a full two-octaves by turning a knob. Other buttons allow mode selection, and knobs control waveform along with rate and decay, depending on which moe you are currently in.

The box runs on a single 9V battery, or can be hooked up to a DC adapter (not included). It also has a standard quarter-inch jack line-out to hook it up to amps or guitar pedals, for even weirder sounds. The Pocket Piano costs $150.

Critter and Guitari have a few other neat music gizmos you can buy, including the Television Oscilloscope, which take the input from a musical instrument and pipes it onto your TV, turning out the kind of nightmarish jumping, pulsing patterns that only a 1970s acid-head could love, and the Kaleidoloop, which is, well, which is rather hard to describe.

And if that weren’t enough to tempt you to the analog side, think how much cooler you’d look tooting one of these devices in public than you would with the alternative – an old SNES console, a soldering iron and a whole bagful of wire.

Pocket Piano product page [Critter and Guitari. Thanks, Eliot!]

Apple calls the Apple TV a “hobby” because it isn’t a big seller. But for a bustling community of hackers, jailbreaking and tinkering with the set-top box is the real hobby.

The recent release of the second-generation Apple TV is revitalizing a group effort to crack open the set-top box and expand on its capabilities with third-party software. In the next month or two, the rebellious coders say they hope to open an underground app store for the device, just as hackers did for the popular iPhone before Apple opened its official App Store.

“The Apple TV has been jailbroken for less than a month, and the amount of progress that’s been made on [hacking] it so far is absolutely phenomenal,” said Scott Davilla, a programmer who is working to get the Boxee TV platform running on the Apple TV.

Apple’s original Apple TV was cracked years ago, but there was relatively low enthusiasm in modifying the device because of some nagging technical hurdles. Hacking the first Apple TV required using a “patch stick” — installing software on a bootable USB drive that broke through the set-top box’s restrictions — and not all USB flash drives booted properly. Also, interest in modding the original Apple TV waned over time: Hacking the device’s software required a Mac running an older version of the Mac OS X operating system (10.4.7), and later versions of OS X broke software used to test Apple TV apps on a desktop computer.

However, this time around, the Apple TV jailbreak community, called Awkward TV, believes that hacking Apple’s set-top box will be much more popular and energetic. This is thanks largely to the fact that the second-generation Apple TV runs iOS, the same mobile operating system that powers the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Hacking the device will be much easier for users: The Apple TV requires connecting with a computer by a USB cable and running existing jailbreak software to break its restrictions, just like users did with the iPhone. (In other words, the annoying patch-stick method is no more.)

And besides, hackers can’t resist the allure of modifying a $100 device into the set-top box of their dreams — a path that carries much less risk than, say, tampering with a pricier Mac Mini or a less aesthetically pleasing Windows PC.

Also, a major difference to the new Apple TV hacking scene is that many of these coders have been making apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch — so now, the community is much bigger, diverse and more experienced. A lot of the groundwork has already been laid by iOS jailbreakers, and third-party apps served through the underground app store Cydia should be compatible with the device.

“Everything is kind of coming full circle,” said Kevin Bradley, an Apple TV programmer who works under the handle [bile]. “The old Apple TV is kinda sputtering and dying because it’s a 4-year-old product. Now you have all the people who have done amazing stuff on the iPhone working with us, and it’s made our jobs for the Apple TV a thousand times easier…. I think some really amazing things could come out of this.”

Indeed, the Cydia community is already working on an interface to launch the Cydia app store directly on the Apple TV’s main menu. Also, the “grandfather” of Apple TV hacking Jim Dovey (better known by the hacker handle AlanQuatermain), is working on a software development kit for programmers to code and test special Apple TV apps.

Dovey said he’s especially excited about the potential for hacks to take advantage of AirPlay, an Apple feature that will enable iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch to wirelessly stream content from audio or video apps to the Apple TV.

“I’d be very interested in the possibilities of using AirPlay video to treat an AppleTV as an attached screen in my iPhone, iPad or even Mac apps,” Dovey said.

Already, owners of the new Apple TV can hack their device to run an early version of Bradley’s software, NitoTV, a media player that promises to support every media format. That makes the Apple TV seem weak: It only plays a few iTunes-compatible formats, such as H.264-encoded MPEG-4 videos.

Bradley is also working to get some of his old Apple TV hacks working on the new system, such as an app that enables you to play Super Nintendo on the Apple TV, and an app that allows you to order a pizza.

The Awkward TV community is compiling a list of potential capabilities that could be unlocked with Apple TV hacks, such as playing Flash videos, connecting a TV tuner for recording, or hooking up a CD/DVD player for playing discs.

What are some Apple TV hacks you’d like to see once an unauthorized app store opens? Suggest and vote on ideas in the Reddit widget below, and maybe your wish will come true.

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Photo: Steven Levy/Wired.com