YouTube user justkylevids stuck his iPhone 4 inside an acoustic guitar and decided to record how playing guitar looked from inside the guitar. Due to the camera’s rolling shutter, the resulting video is actually really neat, making the guitar strings look like wavy computer generated-strings. Justkylevids provides tips on how to recreate the effect:

• You must have the strings brightly backlit to get the camera to capture at such a high frame rate (pure conjecture). You can see how the effect fades when the buildings come into view.
• Use a pencil [to position the phone inside the guitar]
*This was used with the front facing camera, try the back camera, it may capture better!

So, give it a go and see if justkylevids was justkytrolling.

(via kottke)

If you were tired of getting your unlocked iPhones from that creepy guy who works the door for bar down the street, today is your lucky day. Apple has started selling official unlocked iPhone 4s, albeit for the hefty prices of $649 for the 16 GB model and $749 for the 32 GB model. The unlocked iPhone 4 can be used on any carrier around the world that supports a GSM network, so it would seem Verizon still holds the market hostage on CDMA iPhones. One will simply have to install and activate a micro-SIM card from a carrier of their choice to activate the phone. Generally, the point of an unlocked phone is to get a carrier-exclusive phone onto a different carrier, but in this case, another viable reason to purchase the unlocked phone would be to avoid committing to a multiyear contract, or to use an obscure local carrier.

(Apple via TUAW)

The final Space Shuttle mission planned for next month will have a unique twist: the shuttle will carry two Apple iPhone 4s to the ISS for a series of experiments using the SpaceLab app. The app, currently available in the app store, was created by Odyssey Space Research and aims to carry out positioning and other experiments with the phone. Though not mission-critical, and no doubt somewhat aggrandizing, the experiments will help improve SpaceLab and maybe open the possibility for similar functions on handheld devices in space.

Once in orbit, the ISS crew will test SpaceLab’s ability to determine altitude and position. Amazingly, the app can apparently do all of this without a data connection, instead using a sequence of images taken with the iPhone’s camera as a reference and performing the calculations internally. The lack of wireless functionality is partly due to NASA’s concerns about the phone’s electronics interfering with station functions. The ISS crew will also calibrate some of the app’s senors, and the app itself will monitor the effects of radiation on the device by watching for blips on the phone’s memory during orbit.

Georgia Tech researcher Grant Schindler has come up with a pretty clever use for the iPhone 4: Use it to create 3D models. It’s a simple process that proves that while there are over 350,000 apps, there’s still plenty of new ideas for the iPhone platform.

Schindler’s app, called Trimensional, works by shining light on a person’s face from four directions, and recording the results. These are compiled into a single image that users of the advanced version of the software can export to a 3D printer and create a model of their face, or whatever they scanned. Cleverly, Trimensional does not require any additional equipment to perform the scan, such as a light kit. Instead, it uses the iPhone’s screen as a light source, and records the images with the front-facing camera.

Schindler describes the scanning process as answering a series of questions. From the Georgia Tech Digital Lounge:

If I take a scan of my face, the app asks ‘what does the image look like if I shine the light from the left side, what does it look like from the right side,’ and so on. There’s one three-dimensional answer per pixel, and combining all those answers results in the full 3-D model[.]

Read on after the break for a video of Trimensional in action.

I guess the above picture explains it all. Reported over at The Next Web is a firsthand account of losing reception at a famous restaurant in Amsterdam, Pasta e Basta, and a seemingly silly trick to gain reception, which actually ended up working:

Apparently I looked disappointed because the waiter came over right away and asked me “Can’t get a signal?”. I nodded and shrugged. Oh well. Then he offered “Do you want a glass?”. I figured he offered me another drink to cope with my disappointment but as I hadn’t even touched the Prosecco yet I thanked him and declined. But then he said “No, I mean for your iPhone!”.

Now I was confused. What the hell would I need a glass for my iPhone for? He smiled and said “It improves the reception. Here, look!” and he pointed to a row of phones, stuck in glasses, on the top shelf behind the bar.

Apparently, a few years prior, a waitress discovered that putting a phone in an empty glass improves reception. In the above anecdote, the iPhone 4 in question went from zero bars, to three, with no 3G reception, but some GPRS.

Now that I’ve heard this account, I finally have a theory as to why a person had his iPhone 4 housed in a glass in an apartment I once viewed. I thought it was a humorous phone dock, but now I know it could’ve been an ingenius way to make his poor phone work in New York City.

(via The Next Web)

Verizon Wireless customers who have endured who-knows-how-many Verizon iPhone rumors over the years have finally been rewarded for their faith: Since 3AM EST, Apple’s website and Verizon’s have both been offering 16GB and 32GB iPhone 4s for preorder, to be shipped or available for pickup in an Apple Store by February 10th. Non-Verizon customers will have to wait until February 9th to order online or in an Apple Store, and iPhone 4s will hit Apple Store shelves for all at 7AM local time.

With this morning’s announcement of the Verizon iPhone, many AT&T iPhone users are contemplating making the switch from their current network to Verizon. Changing carriers is no small ordeal, so customers need to decide if the shift is worth the effort. How does Verizon’s iPhone stack up versus AT&T’s?

While AT&T has been berated in the past for frequently dropping calls, Verizon is known for their rock-solid network and excellent coverage. Verizon is confident that it will be able to handle the influx of iPhone users, but like AT&T, its network could potentially buckle under the strain. Big Red may not have the raw 3G speed that AT&T users benefit from, but its next-generation LTE network has serious potential in the long run, which is important if you are signing the next two years of your life away. On the other end of the literal spectrum, AT&T plans to implement its own LTE network in mid-2011.

Disappointingly, neither version of the iPhone 4 is compatible with 4G networks of any kind. It is customary for Apple to refresh the iPhone’s hardware in June, so there is an excellent possibility of 4G-capable iPhones on both networks within the next five months.

You just lost Halloween to John Savio, a madcap dreamer whose madcap dream consists of an obscenely huge, (ten-times-to-scale) iPhone 4, which he is wearing as a Halloween costume. Apparently, Savio has been dressing as an iPhone for three years running now, making the costume progressively more realistic and elaborate each time: He’s really nailed it here.

From the YouTube description:

John created the upgraded rendition of the iPhone 4 featured here at 10x to scale, complete with a 40″ LED LCD Panel, a Jailbroken iPhone 4, VGA out from the iPohone, LED Back Camera Light, weighs roughly 75 lbs and uses a mini 12v Battery with 2+ hours of battery life. The costume took a total of 3 days / 40 hours to complete.

(via DVICE)

Not only has the wave of hope that crested in the hearts of many Apple fans when white iPhone 4s surfaced in Apple’s updated App Store app crashed after Apple announced that, oops, the white iPhone 4 won’t actually be available until next spring; now, that wave may sink into a sea of sadness, for the white iPhone 4 may never come at all.

Update, 10/28: Uh-oh: It looks like Apple has quietly pulled the white iPhone from the App Store.

The results are in from the Duracell Toy Report, an annual report that tracks what kids from ages five to sixteen want for Christmas. The big winner: Apple, which swept the #1, #2, and #3 slots. Who gets their child/tween an iPhone 4, though?

Survey results below: