This just in: the new iPod Touch with front-facing camera (aka the iPhone Lite) has a built-in vibrating motor for notifications, including silent call notifications. Why is this important? Well, presumably the iPod Touch is now a Facetime phone and definitely needs new ways to interact with the user. I’m personally very excited.

This confirms information found in the Accessibility page for the iPod.

Here is the first piece of evidence, and it is on Apple’s very own website. Located on the Accessibility page for the iPod touch, you can scroll down to the ‘Video calling with FaceTime‘ and clearly see the following: “… If somebody wants to start a video call with you, you’ll receive an invitation — along with a vibrating alert — on your iPod touch asking you to join. …”

via iPodTouchFans

And you thought Giz was the only game in town when it came to Apple dev units. Some folks on eBay posted two development iPod Touches with cameras placed at the center of the rear panel and running some odd variant of OS X. It’s not huge news – we knew the Touch was getting a camera eventually – but if you had designs on these things, think again. eBay just pulled them.

9to5mac grabbed all of the images and slapped them up before the auction ended prematurely.

Incidentally, one of the signs of the End Times was the release of development Apple hardware, so look for the Pale Horse coming across the dead plains.

Feature List!

The Lint Boys only got three hot photos of the device because the guys at the Apple store were scared of getting placed into the special Education Room in the basement of every Apple store.

But why now? Why touch?

This push for touch points to two things. First, we have the Windows 7 launch with some touch capability built-in. Like a proud parent, Microsoft wants to show off what its little baby can do and, as a result, rumor has it that it has forced OEMs to add touch to almost everything in their line. By pushing touch into the pipeline, Microsoft essentially ensures that it won’t face a repeat of the 2001 tablet PC debacle.

This push also comes from fear. If the Apple Tablet hits the streets this year, Windows 7 wants to be in the forefront of touch technology. By adding touch now, they can say they did it first and all of those laptop hunters can add one more bullet point to their arbitrary laptop wishlist (“I want good graphics, ummm, a keyboard, and ummm… lots of room for photos and a touchscreen.”)

Microsoft lost the mobile touchscreen war. They don’t want to lose the coming “desktop” war. While I have my own opinions on that, I will hand it to HP and Sony: their interfaces are gorgeous. The HP interface I saw last week has a number of simple tools – a recipe box, for example, that can take recipes from the web and import them into a private database – as well as the standard stretch’n'drag photo and note-taking applications that make touch actually compelling. Will you ever double-tap on “My Documents” with your finger? Probably not, but perhaps it’s nice to know you have that ability.

In the end, multi-touch will probably rule the day. Future-proofing is fine and more power to Microsoft for being pre-emptive this time. However, the fanboy in me says that Apple will redefine the space shortly and leave these experiments in the dust.

New games are always a cause for excitement. Ubisoft’s R.U.S.E. is a highly anticipated RTS set to release early 2010. But even cooler is the fact that you can play it on one of IntuiLab’s large multi-touch tables, and kill things just by touching them.

The announcement that R.U.S.E. would use IntuiLab’s IntuiFace Platform came at E3 2009, but this video is the first evidence of it actually happening. This marks the first step in a new way of experiencing video games. From the video, it seems that it’s not as responsive as a tried-and-true keyboard and mouse, so don’t expect these setups at any pro gaming tournaments anytime soon. But this setup is just to cool to look away. Next-step, holograms.

via Nowhereelse

The Tap has a 2 megapixel camera with video capture, a GPS, built in music player, and uses T-Mo’s 3G network. The phone will be available in two colors, “midnight blue” or “berry”. No word on the pricing or the exact release date, however it is expected to be available sometime this year.

[via CellPhoneSignal]

The same guys who brought you the bubble input have created a crazy scratch UI that allows you to scratch and tap almost any surface. By sensing the sound and the finding the peaks and valleys in the waveform the system can tell if you’re scratching a shape or tapping on the surface.

The UI can be used with any material – it just needs a sensitive microphone – and could be used to follow a pen on a whiteboard surface or allow you to control programs from your desk. Imagine, if you will, a touchpad on a laptop that consists of the entire wrist rest – heck, even the side panels. You just tap it and it senses what you’re doing.

This comes from some boys over at Carnegie Mellon, my alma mater, which makes it ten times cooler. It’s nice to know they’re still geeking out over there. Go Tartans!

via Giz

If you have ever wanted to plug in a pro-quality microphone and headphone to an iPhone or iPod touch, pay attention and read on.

This guide will show you how to make a cable that will allow you to do just that. It’s not that hard as long as you can solder well, and can locate the right stuff. But in the end, you’ll end up making a little dongle that will allow you to plug in a mic and headphones separately.

Digital Leisure has just launched Space Ace for the iPhone/Touch. This game, for those of you too young to remember when games were groundbreaking and amazing and worth spending money on, used a laserdisc to display little cartoons that played when you tapped the buttons or controller correctly. Obviously this is about as intuitive as a do-it-yourself colostomy kit but dammit look at those graphics. Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair came at a weird point between consoles where “photorealistic” was becoming a distant reality but “ugly and blocky” was the status quo.

Anyway, the game is $4.99 and we’ll be reviewing it post-haste.

GORMLEY, Ontario, Canada – May 28, 2009 – For the first time ever, you can experience Don Bluth’s classic arcade game Space Ace, the follow up to the revolutionary Dragon’s Lair, on your iPhone or iPod Touch!

This release of Don Bluth’s legendary animated arcade game features video transferred directly from the stunning high definition master, delivering the sharpest images and most vibrant colors ever – even far better than the original laserdisc release!

In Space Ace you play the heroic Ace who must stop the evil Commander Borf from taking over the Earth! Borf plans to reduce all of humankind to infants and take over the planet. Only two people have the courage and strength to stop Borf and save Earth: the beautiful Kimberly and the heroic Ace. But as they approach Borf’s stronghold, Ace is hit by the Infanto Ray, changing him into a child, and Kimberly is kidnapped by the evil madman! Armed with only a laser gun, Ace must find and destroy the Infanto Ray, rescue Kimberly and save the Earth!

The fate of Earth is in your hands!

Simply press on the direction pad to guide Ace in the right direction or fire your laser gun and blast those aliens away! It’s that simple!

Don Bluth and his production teams are the creative genius behind such beloved classics as ‘The Secret of NIMH’, ‘An American Tail’ and ‘Anastasia’ to name but a few.

Digital Leisure has just launched Space Ace for the iPhone/Touch. This game, for those of you too young to remember when games were groundbreaking and amazing and worth spending money on, used a laserdisc to display little cartoons that played when you tapped the buttons or controller correctly. Obviously this is about as intuitive as a do-it-yourself colostomy kit but dammit look at those graphics. Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair came at a weird point between consoles where “photorealistic” was becoming a distant reality but “ugly and blocky” was the status quo.

Anyway, the game is $4.99 and we’ll be reviewing it post-haste.

GORMLEY, Ontario, Canada – May 28, 2009 – For the first time ever, you can experience Don Bluth’s classic arcade game Space Ace, the follow up to the revolutionary Dragon’s Lair, on your iPhone or iPod Touch!

This release of Don Bluth’s legendary animated arcade game features video transferred directly from the stunning high definition master, delivering the sharpest images and most vibrant colors ever – even far better than the original laserdisc release!

In Space Ace you play the heroic Ace who must stop the evil Commander Borf from taking over the Earth! Borf plans to reduce all of humankind to infants and take over the planet. Only two people have the courage and strength to stop Borf and save Earth: the beautiful Kimberly and the heroic Ace. But as they approach Borf’s stronghold, Ace is hit by the Infanto Ray, changing him into a child, and Kimberly is kidnapped by the evil madman! Armed with only a laser gun, Ace must find and destroy the Infanto Ray, rescue Kimberly and save the Earth!

The fate of Earth is in your hands!

Simply press on the direction pad to guide Ace in the right direction or fire your laser gun and blast those aliens away! It’s that simple!

Don Bluth and his production teams are the creative genius behind such beloved classics as ‘The Secret of NIMH’, ‘An American Tail’ and ‘Anastasia’ to name but a few.

1. Download unofficialsn0w 2.0 for Windows from here
2. Get the 2.2.1 iPod Touch Firmware here
3. Rename the 2.2.1 ipsw to OriginalFW.ipsw and place it in /IPSW
4. Run IPSW.bat (It will take a while)
5. Right click on the jb.ispw and either open with Winrar or 7.zip
6. Go into Firmware\all_flash\all_flash.n72ap.production\
7. Delete the LLB file.(optional since it will be replaced by the new one)
8. Replace (by dragging) with the LLB file that’s in the same folder as the jb.ipsw.
9. Exit, continue to step 6
10. Place your iPod Touch 2G into DFU mode, plug it in and run RUNME.exe
11. Shift + Restore to JB.ipsw in iTunes and your done!!!

via Technology by Danger

MuscleNerd has posted a video showing how he jailbroke the iPod touch simply by connecting a microcontroller – in this case a DefCon badge with some crazy chips in it – and sending eight characters to the iPod Touch during boot, thereby allowing the new firmware to be uploaded.

It’s not quite ready for prime time but it’s a cool look at how the DEV Team operates. Amazing work by a group of dedicated nerds. Bonus points: check out MuscleNerd’s terminal.

Yellowsn0w, the illustrious iPhone 3G jailbreaking software, launched at the beginning of this month and the Dev Team is already toiling hard at their next release. Even though the group hasn’t officially announced that redsn0w is the iPod Touch 2G jailbreaking software, it more than likely is. When Apple stuffed a better CPU into the latest Touch, it broke the original jailbreaking software so a new release is likely to drop soon. Hopefully. More as we get it. Large image and coded message after the break.

• Well it isn’t a British Thermonuclear Device.
• It isn’t an episode from “The Twilight Zone”
• And it certainly isn’t iPhone 3G related (right now)
• There is one other device…
• It fits in your pocket..
• What can it be?

Apple has been experimenting internally with large form tablet devices for years, one source says, but there was concern that users wouldn’t like the device. The difference now is the iTunes app store, which has thousands of games and other applications that are perfect for a touch screen device with an accelerometer. Apple says more than 300 million applications have been downloaded since the App Store launched in July 2008. Combine the App Store, iTunes and a browser and you have one heck of a device.

We don’t have any information on pricing. The current iPod touch, with a 3.5 inch screen, starts at $229. The 32 GB model is $399. We expect the price on the larger iPod touch to be significantly higher.

Apple rumors, particularly Apple tablet rumors, tend to come and go. I’m not saying Apple is definitely launching a large form iPod Touch. But sources I trust are saying they are currently planning to, and one source has actually held the device.

It’s every Mac fanboys wet dream to embed an OS X touchscreen computer inside their ride. When RIDES does a mobile Mac workstation though, it’s more of an Apple Store on wheels with – get this – two Mac Mini’s, a MacBook Air, iPod Touch, iPhone 3G, 20-inch Cinema display, along with a bunch of car audio wares all within the surprisingly sexy Hyundai Genesis sedan. Words cannot do this car justice though. Even if you are on the PC side of things, head over and check out the car anyway; it’s a work of technology art.

Its extra-sensitive capacitance detectors are specially designed to report minute changes in object position, and I’m hoping they’ll be able to tell how far it is from the sensors as well. They’re still working on the technology, but maybe you won’t need special gloves for Minority Report-style big computing after all. [via HardOCP]

It’s been a while since we’ve heard news about the HTC Touch Diamond‘s Verizon debut. According to a tip sent into PhoneDog, Verizon’s Diamond model should launch sometime in October, and it might (italics for wariness) be that “Ice White” version we heard about just a few days ago.

The tipster confirmed some of the specs (400mhz processor, microSD support) we’d heard previously, and mentioned a few new details: like Sprint’s release of the Touch Diamond, Verizon’s Diamond will come out of the box with a larger battery (1340mAh) than the standard model; as a result, this handset gets the same additional 3mm of thickness that we saw with Sprint’s. Nothing wrong with puttin’ a bit of meat on them bones for the sake of reasonable battery life, right?

Hand-in-hand with the HTC Touch HD page spotted earlier, the product page for the equally unannounced HTC Touch 3G has also made its way into the public view. It’s packed with visual goodies and specs, so check it out

As far as anyone can tell from the images available, it’ll come in blue, brown, black, and gold varieties. Spec-wise, it’ll be luggin’ a 2.8″ QVGA (320×240) touchscreen, 256 MB of ROM and 192 MB of RAM, HSDPA, quad-band radio, GPS (and a-GPS), a 3.2 megapixel camera (fixed focus), all running behind Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro on a 528 MHz Qualcomm chip. Like the Touch HD, we’re still without word of pricing/availability, but it’s safe to assume this one is going to put a notably smaller dent in your wallet in comparison.