8 (I mean 9) New Features of iPhone 4

Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Apparently there are over 100 tweaks, but the WWDC presentation highlighted eight of them.

  1. First, the beautiful new design, previously broken by Gizmodo. Flat front and back, stainless steel edge, 9.33mm thick. 24% thinner than iPhone 3GS. Thinnest smart phone on the planet. Mute, volume up and down buttons on left edge. Front facing camera, micro SIM tray. Camera with LED flash on back. Microphone, connector and speaker on bottom. Headset, second mic for noise cancellation and sleep / wake button on top. The stainless steel band around the phone is part of its structure and serves as the antenna for the phone. Glass front and back.
  2. Next, a vastly improved display, with four times the pixels in the current space of one – 326 pixels per inch. Its called “retina” display, fits within the same 3.5″, but crams in 960 by 640 pixels.The results are downright amazing, and undoubtedly will set a new screen standard.
  3. Next, the A4 chip, designed by the Apple team. It has bigger specs – 6 hours 3G browsing, 10 hours Wi-Fi browsing. 10 hours video. 40 hours music. 300 hours standby and up to 32 gb of space (the latter is the same as the 3GS). Quad band HSPDA/HSUPA, 802.11n.
  4. Next, its got a Gyroscope! It has a 3 axis gyro, with its own, new CoreMotion API. Will be interesting to see what developers do with this. The Jenga demo, with 360 degree rotation, is pretty breathtaking.
  5. Next, a completely new camera system. There is an illuminated sensor on the back, along with the new, 5 megapixel camera. It has a 5 times digital zoom. Tap to focus. The flash is LED. And guess what? High definition video! 720 pixels at 30 frames per second (getting worried, Flip?). iMovie is coming to the iPhone as well (for $4.99 – why isn’t this included?), so you can edit your vids right on the phone.  It will even allow incorporating photos into your vids.
  6. Next, iPhone OS 4 has been enamed iOS 4. All the features previously layed out by Jobs and discussed in the tech blogs, ad infinitum. Mail and Pandora music at the same time. New Mail features – unified inbox and threaded mail items. Bing will now be  search option in Safari. Unfortunately, it will not be available for download today (or even this week).
  7. Next, iBooks is coming to iPhones with iOS 4. All the same features, including reading / viewing PDFs and downloading all the same books. Mailed PDFs will open in iBooks automatically. AND, you will be able to sync all bookmarks and notes across devices.
  8. Finally, and I am not sure why this is relevant to the iPhone discussion,  iAds. Although Apple has only been selling them for 8 weeks (with over $60 million committed by advertisers), clients already include: Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Campbell’s, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS, and Disney. The ads will be turned on for all iOS 4 devices on July 1 (so we will be getting iOS 4 before then).
  9. Oh, wait – there’s one more thing (because the fine folks at Apple can’t count). Yup, you guessed it. Video chat. The person called shows up full screen, and your tiny little image shows in a box in the lower left corner. It’s called FaceTime. Looks to be wi-fi only for now. And you can use front or rear camera so the person called can see what you are seeing.

Will I be getting one? Let’s just say, my 3GS is sitting right next to me is starting to sweat.

UPDATE: Stuff I missed because I had to leave before the live blogging ended – FaceTime will only work between iPhone 4 users. iPhone 4 will be $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB, and ATT is making everyone whose contract expires in 2010 eligible for upgrade. Pre-orders for iPhone 4 start on June 15. iPhone 4 will be available in the familiar black and white.

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How Social Is Your Company?

Infographic time! This one, from Flowtown, measures online social networking activity of the employees of the most socially active companies. Is this sanctioned activity or unsanctioned? Check out the graphic below:

Wikipedia for Judges?

You bet! And it’s called, oddly enough, Judgepedia. Looking very much like its relative, Wikipedia, Judgepedia is a people-powered wiki on American judges and courts. The wiki began in October, 2007 and today has 89,140 articles and 630 registered users. The home page breaks out information by federal courts, state courts, judicial selection, judicial philosphy, news and changes and Judgepedia community. There are links for recent news, Facebook, Twitter, Ballotpedia (an interactive almanac of state politics) and the Sunshine Review (a wiki on standards about government transparency).

Obviously, the more interest in a particular court or judge, the more information. A lot of information is merely in the form of external links to the right source (mostly in state or federal government web sites). It still represents a fairly large collection of judically-related links and a decent source to hit if you are looking for particular information about judges and courts.

It’s a wiki – anyone can participate, but to prevent excessive spamming, one must register an account before adding or editing entries. Judgepedia also strives to maintain a “neutral” point of view, which means that:

  • Views should be represented without bias.
  • “Assert facts, including facts about opinions, but do not assert the opinions themselves,” as it says on Wikipedia.
  • Do not give undue weight to one viewpoint.
  • Exercise fairness of tone.
  • Good research, verifiability and reliability of sources are core values

It is currently sponsored and maintained by the Lucy Burns Institute, a non-profit organization based in Madison, Wisconsin, founded in December 2006.

Hat tip to Robert Ambrogi over at LawSites (link here) for this great find!

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