MelApp is an image-based risk assessment mobile app that assists in the early detection of melanoma

Despite years of health promotion campaigns advising us about the dangers of skin cancer, the incidence of the most dangerous type – melanoma – has been steadily rising since the 1970s with around 130,000 cases now diagnosed globally each year according to the World Health Organization. Even if we no longer spend hours sunning ourselves on the beach, extended time outdoors playing sport or socializing can still put us at risk of this deadly cancer. Developed by molecular diagnostics company Health Discovery Corporation (HDC), MelApp is an iPhone app designed help detect melanoma at an early – and likely curable – stage using mathematical algorithms and image based pattern recognition technology.

To use the app, you take a photo of an unusual mole or freckle with your iPhone’s camera using the zoom feature to ensure it fills the green box on the screen. The photo is then uploaded and evaluated against a database licensed from Johns Hopkins University Medical Center.

If the risk is significant MelApp recommends you seek medical advice and can refer you to a nearby specialist for proper follow up.

It can also store images in albums so you can track changes in your freckles and moles over time. Sliding indicators are used to note information such as size, color and how fast it has developed.

MelApp is available from the iTunes store and costs $1.99 – which seems like a small investment in your health. An Android version is on the way.

Lord Have Mercy Little iApps

You can’t buy absolution—at least, not anymore—but $1.99 will help you get there. A new app for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch has been “developed for those who frequent the sacrament and those who wish to return” in what is the first known imprimatur to be given for an iPhone or iPad app. Can we get an Amen?

Confession: A Roman Catholic App was developed by Little iApps to help walk the penitent through the sacrament of penance, a.k.a. confession. The app won’t impart absolution to you—sorry, but there’s no getting out of the actual act of confession—but it does help one organize his or her sins into a handy list and maintain proper confessional decorum.

The app helps users examine their consciences by listing the 10 Commandments and asking users questions about their lives related to the fundamental rules of Christianity. Password protected profiles even allow the app to question a penitent soul about aspects of Christianity as they pertain to the person’s age, marital status, and gender, helping them to better enumerate their spiritual shortcomings and make sure nothing is forgotten when the get into the booth. Almost like a grocery list, except instead of general food items it lists all the ways you fall short of the glory of God.

It also helps users through the process of the confession itself, reminding them that when the priest says “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,” the proper response is “For His mercy endures forever.” It even contains the traditional texts of several oft cited Catholic prayers, so when the priest prescribes you a handful of Hail Marys and a couple of Our Fathers, you won’t be at a loss for words.

The app is a direct response to Pope Benedict’s January World Communications Day address in which he gave new media and social media the Papal stamp of approval as tools for helping parishioners find “meaning, truth, and unity” in their everyday lives. That is, of course, if it is used wisely.

No word on whether the Vatican considers Angry Birds a “wise” use of technology.

It’s Only Blurry Because It’s Magnified The world’s smallest University of Michigan logo, magnified thousands of times.

Apple is justifiably proud of their so called "retina display", but a new display technology promises to make it look like about as sharp as a worn out 1977 Sylvania Superset.

This picture might look fuzzy, but that’s because it’s a super magnified image of an incredibly tiny area. About six of these University of Michigan logos would fit in the width of a single human hair. This makes the pixels about eight times smaller than the iPhone’s, and would allow for a full HD 1920 x 1080 display that was smaller than a postage stamp.

The technology is called a nanoresonator, and uses nano-thin sheets of metal with a precisely spaced grid of slits that can trap or release light depending on its wavelength. An added benefit is that no color filters are needed, making the nanoresonator display much more efficient than current LCDs.

The developers from the University of Michigan (no surprise) say the displays can be made to be flexible, and would be useful for projection displays in addition to very small high-rez applications.

No word on when nanoresonator displays might show up in actual products you can buy.

EyePhone The EyeMenu on a Nokia smartphone. While a user looks at the display, a button is highlighted if it matches the eye position on the display. The highlighted button is ready to be “clicked” with a blink of the eye.

Dartmouth College researchers are giving a whole new meaning to the word iPhone. Ahem Make that Eye-Phone.

Eye-tracking could soon be coming to cell phones, allowing hands-free control of mobile devices that goes way beyond voice activation, Technology Review reports.

While eye-tracking is nothing new — it’s been used for years to allow people with disabilities to use computers, by advertisers, and by the military — eye-tracking is difficult on a small, moving device like a cellphone.

The Dartmouth team, led by professor Andrew Campbell, devised a new algorithm that learns to identify a person’s eye movements under different conditions.

First, you have to calibrate the system by snapping pictures of your eyes both indoors and outdoors. During a learning phase, the software is trained to recognize eye movements in various lighting situations.

Running on a Nokia N810 tablet, EyePhone tracks the position of the user’s eye relative to the screen, rather than where a person is looking. The software divides the camera frame into nine regions and looks for the eye in one of those regions, Tech Review reports.

The user has to arrange the phone so a virtual “error box” is situated around his or her eye; the system can recognize the eye as long as it stays in this box. Blinking equates to a mouse click, allowing users to choose an application.

The team will present a paper (PDF) on their findings at a workshop in New Delhi, India, in August.

It’s a pretty basic system, but the researchers hope to develop more advanced methods. That shouldn’t be too hard for Campbell, whose lab has previously dabbled with something it calls NeuroPhone — an iPhone that taps into your brain. That system uses an off-the-shelf wireless EEG headset to control an iPhone. A mind-controlled contact app flashes photos of contacts, and when the user sees the person she wants to call, her brain activity triggers the system and tells the iPhone to dial that person.

After a weekend using the iPad, I’ve realized I’m not interested in hedging my reaction to it with careful considerations of its lack of a USB port or webcam. It’s not every day, or every year or maybe even every decade that we’re able to see a piece of technology that takes a familiar human experience–here, using a computer–and fundamentally changes it. But that is what I think the iPad has done.

Maybe this is a honeymoon phase. Time will tell. But I don’t think it is. To support that, and because I know no one wants to read another monolithic 3,000-word iPad review running through every feature, what follows are some assorted notes and impressions from my first weekend of using this machine and how it pertains to the future of using computers. Some may be on the fragmentary side–please jump in the comments if you feel inspired to add to the conversation or would like to hear more.

The Screen

It starts from the moment you pick it up and that obsidian black pool comes to life. On paper it’s not by any means the highest-resolution screen at 1024×768 spread over 9.7 inches of diagonal glass. Many netbooks pack a higher resolution into the same size. But somehow, it manages to be the most breathtaking screen I’ve ever seen. Maybe because there’s basically nothing else–an inch of black glass bezel surrounds it, rimmed by a thin lip of aluminum, but from the front that’s it. All screen. And its saturation and clarity is astounding.

And oh yeah, you can touch it. You can touch everything, and it reacts instantly. It’s fast. The glass feels cool and smooth on your finger, but after a while you’re not touching glass. You’re touching words, pictures, buttons, everything. The Internet. And everything responds.

Plenty of words have been written about the iPad’s touchscreen interface, and I can pretty much guarantee that none of them will mean anything to you until you use it. It just can’t be expressed. On paper it’s just a giant iPod touch. Yes, I’ve heard that a few times, even said it myself. But then it’s in your hand and you’re gliding your finger over your favorite websites, panning around the globe with your pinkie tip in Google Maps, feeling like a CIA analyst manning some future spy satellite terminal. It’s one brainstem-level pleasure after another; it reacts to some base human instinct to touch and manipulate something shiny put in front of us, and well, we can’t really argue with the brain stem, can we?

And that’s why it changes everything. The layers of abstraction are gone, and we’re interacting with graphical information in the most natural way possible. Apple’s unrelenting focus on simplicity means everything but the touch drops away.

Nothing But Interface

Think about it–on your computer, interfaces are stacked inside each other like a Russian doll. The web site you’re looking at sits inside the browser, which sits inside a folder, which sits inside your operating system. Each interface has its own set of conceits and constraints, meaning the resulting experienced is subject to a great many rules dictating what it can and can’t be. But that’s not how it is on the iPad. There, a weather app adopts the perfect interface for browsing weather information–pinch and zoom on the giant world radar map; tap the forecast and current conditions blocks for more detailed pop-ups. You touch and it responds. And that’s just weather.

The Future of Software is Becoming the Future of Hardware

Like the iPhone, the iPad is a blank slate ready to morph into any device with any interface imaginable. It’s a million gadgets in one, with each able to express itself with the perfect interface. The hardware is designed to fade into the background, so in a way, developers are conjuring their software into tangible, concrete things that act, essentially, as hardware. The list of physical real word objects the iPhone has made irrelevant: cheap pocket digital camera, GPS navigator, e-reader, voice recorder, bicycle computer, iPod–the list goes on. The iPad, with a screen four times the size, will only make this list longer.

Using the iPad on the Toilet

Is so, so great. Apple’s case with its wedge-shaped lap stand is an essential tool here.

With a Keyboard

For more proof of how this is the future, connect any Bluetooth keyboard. Immediately, Apple’s Pages (the significance of which I’ve already written about) becomes the coolest word processor I’ve ever used. A word processor? Cool? But with Words and a wireless keyboard, you can enter text just like we’ve been doing for generations, and see it appear on a blank white screen. Then pick up this screen, turn it vertically, and add pictures and other formatting with your fingers. Touch a misspelled word and pick the proper correction. Even after a few days, I already know this is how I want to create anything made of pictures and text in the future.

I’m Typing on the iPad RIGHT NOW

I wasn’t going to honor the cliche of typing a review of a device on the device itself, but now that I paired up a Bluetooth keyboard i had in the cupboard, I can’t help myself.

Going From an iPad Back to an iPhone

Is hilarious. The same interface motifs put back on a tiny screen makes the proportions seem completely out of whack. Making the world’s most advanced smartphone look like a baby’s toy is something Apple can’t be excited about. This, more than anything, lends credence to the rumors of a new iPhone this summer with a higher resolution display.

It’s not Perfect

Believe it or not, a gadget can change computing forever but still have flaws. Shocking, I know! Almost all of the gripes over what the iPad lacks miss the point, but the one that’s spot on? The iPad needs multitasking.

Not the multitasking we’re used to on the desktop computer. No task bar, no ctrl-alt-delete. Just a small, elegant way to tell us when we have a new IM or email while we’re reading Twitter or playing a game. The ability to let apps that play music continue to play it while we do other things.

Without this, one of the internet’s fundamental forms of communication–the instant message–is basically impossible on the iPad. This thing is supposed to replace the laptop you keep open while you watch TV at home, right? Well, what you do on that laptop is keep 12 browser tabs open and four Google Chat windows, responding to them at your leisure. Not possible on the iPad.

Something like Android’s pull-down notifications drawer would work. In fact, the iPad’s interface already hints at this–when a song is playing in the iPod app, you get a little play icon in the ever-present black strip at the top. It’s less than a centimeter thick, but that’s all it needs to be. Apple, open up that area to the SDK and let apps notify you of things there–with the iPad’s increased screen real estate, it’s time to turn the iPhone’s fairly puny background notification system into something truly usable.

Without it, I find myself flying around from app to app at an exhausting pace. Ironically, Apple’s rigid focus on apps performing one task at a time that actually, I think, reduces the focus you’re able to give any one app on the screen. I’d love to read Moby Dick on the iPad for free, but, NEW EMAIL! Someone has to have replied to my wittily provocative tweet on Queequeg’s mark by now, RIGHT? Tap tap tap. Book interrupted.

Do You Need an iPad?

No. As many others have pointed out, it’s just another device. But you/I didn’t need an iPod when they first came out either. But when the iPod debuted, I was content to connect a tape deck to my computer to record the dozen or so MP3s I could suck down from Napster through my 56k modem during any given month. I just didn’t see the need because I didn’t have thousands of MP3s. The content environment was not yet ready.

Do we “need” an iPod today? We still don’t. But MP3s are now a much larger part of our lives than they were in 2001 (which, of course, the iPod is partly responsible for) The buying question has changed from “do you want to listen to your music portably in this new digital format” to “do you want to listen to your music portably.” What will the iPad’s similar commodity be? Until that’s defined, no one needs one. But my guess is that it won’t be long until touch-based apps move from novelty to necessity.

In Closing

The iPad is not without problems, some of which have the potential to make the Internet a less happy place than it is now. Yes, Apple’s well-documented closed system via iTunes. Apple is turning into a monopolistic recreation of the Hollywood studio system in the 1940s: if you need something done right, you work with us and no one else. But even then, there was more than one major studio. Not now.

This is bad. But fortunately for Apple, it’s bad in a way that creates an unbelievably pure and easy user experience on the iPad. (For more on this, see Joel Johnson responding beautifully to the closed system crowd).

The iPad presents a computing philosophy that not everyone agrees with: unrelenting simplicity at the cost of openness. But it’s hard to argue it’s not a perfect execution of that philosophy.

Let’s face it, there are a million of these types of loudspeakers kicking around and some aren’t worth the trouble of hooking them up. We got our hands on the Foxl v2 wireless speaker to see if it lived up to the hype.

The Foxl v2 is instantly impressive by its weight, it’s not made of plastic and it delivers impressive bass sounds through technology that combines the unit’s rechargeable Lithium-ion battery with a Flatmagic acoustic bass radiator.

The unit’s mid and high-range come at you via two patented dual voice coil 25mm (1 inch) Linear Magnetic Drive Twoofers (tweeters that also woof – tuned to 100Hz) and on-board amplification is supplied by four ultra high-efficiency digital amplifiers delivery total power up to 8W at <0.1%THD. Add in Bluetooth capabilities and this unit ticks a lot of boxes.

It’s easy to set up, just fully charge the foxL before its first use, pair it to your iPhone or other Bluetooth device. It worked without dropping out for around 8m line-of-sight indoors and equally well outdoors. With an iPhone sitting on a window sill, the foxL had no trouble belting out tunes from around 5m away, even non line-of-sight.

And if it’s not pumping enough bass for you, there’s an output jack to attach a separate sub-woofer.

In the past we’ve tried out cheaper, plastic versions of 2W and 4W loud speaker/docks before which don’t perform anywhere near as good as the foxL (the foxL isn’t a dock). The foxL V2 is so bassy, it comes with a grip pad to stop it “walking” off shiny surfaces – useful when the unit’s volume was turned up near full outside on a glass table top.

As the manufacturers, soundmatters, say: the sound quality is better on a hard, flat surface and the sound is slightly bigger when connected to power.

According to Sound&Image, who provided the unit, the relatively tiny Foxl unit uses highly advanced speaker technologies not found elsewhere to achieve its eight-octave bandwidth.

The big sound it generates from that special battery/bass radiator was developed by soundmatters founder and audio designer Dr Godehard Guenther – a physicist and former NASA engineer with three PhDs. He says: “Music is a big part of my life, yet so is travel. There weren’t any really small hi-fi quality portable loudspeakers, so utilizing a number of our patented and proprietary technologies, I developed one myself. A true labor of love, I named it after Fox, my first grandson.”

The foxL comes with two charging options – wall socket AC and USB.

On the front of foxL is a wide bandwidth, high sensitivity microphone with dedicated noise-canceling electronics which provide enhanced voice clarity. FoxL automatically over-rides streaming music, becoming both mic and speaker when a call is answered by your Bluetooth-connected hone or computer.

When powered, the unit produces 4W and when running on its battery drops to 2W (97-95dB). It weighs 9.5oz and measures 5.6 x 2.2 x 1.4 inches. Its 3.5mm input jack lets you use the foxL for a multitude of devices, like portable gaming units, MP3 players, etc. It has a lanyard which can be attached to let users carry the device around their wrist or neck.

The foxL v2 sells online, for around US$199 plus postage or via retailers worldwide. The original foxL (sans Bluetooth) is around US$149.

Links International (in Japanese) says this particular charger excels in its device compatibility, as it can charge almost any gadget you can think of. It includes connectors for the iPhone/iPod, the Nintendo DS, the Sony PSP, eMobile, and standard Japanese cell phones. It has a rechargeable life cycle of about 500 charges, which isn’t too bad considering that this is likely to be an auxiliary charger for use on the go.

While I’m all for innovative ‘eco’ products such as this one, I’m not certain that this is a product that would be used by the average consumer. But if you’re an outdoors type who’s prone to an occasional adventure in nature, this might be an ideal charger for you.

The smaller iCharge Lite comes in 12 colors and the manufacturers say it’s priced at ¥3280 (or US$36). It’s about the size of an iPod nano (dimensions are 3.5 x 1.2 x 0.7 inches), but weighs a hefty 1.6oz (45g).

The larger iCharge DX comes in seven colors and costs ¥6980 (about US$77). It’s a little wider than the other model, comparable in size to an iPhone (dimensions are 4.2 x 2.0 x 0.6 inches).

Charging time for both devices ranges from 13-15 hours (solar); around two hours via AC and two-three hours using a USB.

The Apple iPad was announced January 27 . In a nutshell, it’s a bigger iPhone that runs all the same apps on a 9.7 inch touch screen and has a 10 hour battery life and 30 day stand-by. It’s half an inch thick, weighs 1.5 pounds, and is powered by Apple’s own custom 1GHz ARM A4chip and can run up to 64 GB of storage. It has all the wireless connectivity of the iphone (802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1), a built-in speaker and microphone, accelerometer and uses the same 30-pin Dock connector as the iPod and iPhone.

The first iPads will ship in 60 days, with 3G models taking another month. Pricing starts at US$499 and runs to US$829.

The official press release from Apple reads:

Apple Launches iPad

Magical & Revolutionary Device at an Unbelievable Price

SAN FRANCISCO—January 27, 2010—Apple® today introduced iPad, a revolutionary device for browsing the web, reading and sending email, enjoying photos, watching videos, listening to music, playing games, reading e-books and much more. iPad’s responsive high-resolution Multi-Touch™ display lets users physically interact with applications and content. iPad is just 0.5 inches (13.4 mm ) thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds (0.68 kg) — thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook. iPad includes 12 new innovative apps designed especially for the iPad, and will run almost all of the over 140,000 apps in the App Store. iPad will be available in late March worldwide starting at US$499 in the United States and with international pricing to be announced at a later date.

“iPad is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iPad creates and defines an entirely new category of devices that will connect users with their apps and content in a much more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.”

iPad features 12 next-generation Multi-Touch applications. Every app works in both portrait and landscape, automatically animating between views as the user rotates iPad in any direction. The precise Multi-Touch interface makes surfing the web on iPad an entirely new experience, dramatically more interactive and intimate than on a computer. Reading and sending email is fun and easy on iPad’s large screen and almost full-size “soft” keyboard. Import photos from a Mac®, PC or digital camera, see them organized as albums, and enjoy and share them using iPad’s elegant slideshows. Watch movies, TV shows and YouTube, all in HD or flip through pages of an e-book you downloaded from Apple’s new iBookstore while listening to your music collection.

iPad runs almost all of the over 140,000 apps on the App Store, including apps already purchased for your iPhone® or iPod touch®. The iTunes® Store gives you access to the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store with a catalog of over 11 million songs, over 50,000 TV episodes and over 8,000 films including over 2,000 in stunning high definition video. Apple also announced the new iBooks app for iPad, which includes Apple’s new iBookstore, the best way to browse, buy and read books on a mobile device. The iBookstore will feature books from major and independent publishers.

Apple also introduced a new version of iWork® for iPad, the first desktop-class productivity suite designed specifically for Multi-Touch. With Pages®, Keynote® and Numbers® you can create beautifully formatted documents, stunning presentations with animations and transitions, and spreadsheets with charts, functions and formulas. The three apps will be available separately through the App Store for $9.99 each.

iPad syncs with iTunes just like the iPhone and iPod touch, using the standard Apple 30-pin to USB cable, so you can sync all of your contacts, photos, music, movies, TV shows, applications and more from your Mac or PC. All the apps and content you download on iPad from the App Store, iTunes Store and iBookstore will be automatically synced to your iTunes library the next time you connect with your computer.

iPad’s brilliant 9.7-inch, LED-backlit display features IPS technology to deliver crisp, clear images and consistent color with an ultra-wide 178 degree viewing angle. The highly precise, capacitive Multi-Touch display is amazingly accurate and responsive whether scrolling web pages or playing games. The intelligent soft keyboard pioneered on iPhone takes advantage of iPad’s larger display to offer an almost full-size soft keyboard. iPad also connects to the new iPad Keyboard Dock with a full-size traditional keyboard.

iPad is powered by A4, Apple’s next-generation system-on-a-chip. Designed by Apple, the new A4 chip provides exceptional processor and graphics performance along with long battery life of up to 10 hours.* Apple’s advanced chemistry and Adaptive Charging technology deliver up to 1,000 charge cycles without a significant decrease in battery capacity over a typical five year lifespan.**

iPad comes in two versions—one with Wi-Fi and the other with both Wi-Fi and 3G. iPad includes the latest 802.11n Wi-Fi, and the 3G versions support speeds up to 7.2 Mbps on HSDPA networks. Apple and AT&T announced breakthrough 3G pre-paid data plans for iPad with easy, on-device activation and management.

Continuing Apple’s dedication to designing and creating environmentally responsible products, each iPad enclosure is made of highly recyclable aluminum and comes standard with energy-efficient LED-backlit displays that are mercury-free and made with arsenic-free glass. iPad contains no brominated flame retardants and is completely PVC-free.

Apple today released a new Software Development Kit (SDK) for iPad, so developers can create amazing new applications designed to take advantage of iPad’s capabilities. The SDK includes a simulator that lets developers test and debug their iPad apps on a Mac, and also lets developers create Universal Applications that run on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

Pricing & Availability

iPad will be available in late March worldwide for a suggested retail price of $499 (US) for the 16GB model, US$599 for the 32GB model, US$699 for the 64GB model. The Wi-Fi + 3G models of iPad will be available in April in the US and selected countries for a suggested retail price of US$629 for the 16GB model, US$729 for the 32GB model and US $829 for the 64GB model. iPad will be sold in the US through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers. International pricing and worldwide availability will be announced at a later date. iBookstore will be available in the US at launch.

*Apple tested wireless battery life by browsing web pages and receiving email over an AirPort® network, never letting the system go to sleep during the test, and keeping the display at half brightness. This is a typical scenario of use on the go, resulting in a battery performance number that is very relevant to mobile users.

**A properly maintained iPad battery is designed to retain 80 percent or more of its original capacity during a lifespan of up to 1,000 recharge cycles. Battery life and charge cycles vary by use and settings.