It took me a while to realize that the microphone on the iPhone headset actually works when plugged into the headphone input on my MacBook. When plugged in, the microphone shows up in the preference pane. Cool, no need to buy a splitter, then, and it saves me carrying around an extra headset for skyping.

I recently upgraded to iWork ‘09. I don’t use Pages or Numbers for anything, but Keynote is my preferred presentation software, so I thought it was good to get the latest version. The new animation features are ok, but the most interesting update so far is the possibility to control presentations from an iPhone. While the first version of Keynote crashed once in a while, I can’t remember one single crash with the ‘07 version.

All the big companies are launching new devices with “gesture control” these days, and Microsoft is following along . This insider story presents some of the new features in Windows Mobile 7 which is supposed to take on the iPhone later this year. The most interesting part of the “leak”, I think, is the differentiation between touch gestures and motion gestures, where the former is related to what I would call manipulation, such as in this example of one and two finger strokes:

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I am thrilled by the fact that various sensing technologies are getting so cheap that they are incorporated everywhere. As could be seen from the presentation of Apple’s new iPhone, it includes an accelerometer to sense tilt of the device (and also movement if they decide to use that for anything), a proximity sensor (ultrasound?) to turn off the display when the phone is put to the ear and a light sensor to change the brightness of the screen (?

What I find most fascinating about Apple’s new iPhone, is the shift from buttons to body. Getting away from the paradigm of pressing buttons to make a call or to navigate, the iPhone boasts a large multi-touch screen where the user will be able to interact by pointing at pictures and objects. Furthermore, the built-in rotation sensor will sense the direction of the device and rotate the screen accordingly, somehow similar to how new digital cameras rotate the pictures you take automatically.