@beat app for iOS by Christophe Dirac

There is a new free app displaying Swatch .beats/Internet Time.  @beat by Christophe Dirac displays local 24-hour time and date along with the current beats and tenths (decibeats).  It also shows a slide show of the first 50 images in your camera roll and works in landscape mode.  There are no options.  Tapping the "i" brings up a tribute to Internet Time inventor, Nicolas Hayek, who recently passed away, and a very brief history of Internet Time, although no description is given for what .beats actually are.

The app store search function does not recognize non-alphanumeric characters, so try searching for a combination of "beat" and the author's name.

MJD 55402.920

@961

Update (MJD 55418.253): I noticed that the photo linked here has changed, which is because the app has been updated.  Although not yet published in the app store, there are some new features, such as local temperature and humidity, day of week, choice of background colors and text-to-speech. See the author's site for complete details.

Bumpers

As I suspected, Steve Jobs today, just 20 miles from here, offered free "bumpers" to all iPhone 4 owners, or a choice of cases to be named later. I had planned to buy a case the first day, but Apple had none, and Best Buy was sold out.  Apparently this was because Apple didn't trust case makers to keep the phone a secret, so they didn't have time to manufacture enough of them.  I've been thinking that maybe I would not bother.  After all, the aluminized glass is pretty tough.  However, I can't keep from holding the magic spot.  I've also noticed that the glass back is so smooth that it slides off other smooth surfaces.  So I will gladly accept the free case, thank you.

MJD 55394.357

Death Grip

I bought a new iPhone 4 a décade ago (55382), mainly because I promised my wife my 3GS when the new phone came out.  There were already reports in the media about the apparent reception problem, aka "the death grip".  I dismissed this initially as being over-hyped.  I have been thinking that, yes, it may be a real, albeit minor, issue, but Apples reactions have made it seem even worse.

Now I no longer think it is a minor issue.  Holding the phone in the most natural way, my calls do not go through, or are dropped after I make them, and my 3G data connection immediately goes south.  It's quickly resolved by changing my grip, but it has become annoying, and I should not have to constantly have the problem!  I do not have a case because all they had were those stupid "bumpers", and I'll be damned if I'm paying $30 plus tax (@9.5%) for a rubber band that does not even protect one of the two glass sides.  To add insult to injury, Apple released a software update today, which does nothing to actually fix the problem; it just makes the bars higher and more accurate.  WTF?

Tomorrow (55393.75) Apple is supposed to announce their fix.  It had better be good.  Free bumpers would be a start.

MJD 55393.250

New Clocks iOS app by Dennerlein Consulting

The decimal time apps just keep coming.  New Clocks (opens iTunes) by Jesse Dennerlein was released on July 8 (55385) and is free, supported by iAd.  If you haven't seen an iAd, yet, you can download this app and tap the bottom to watch the animated, interactive ad for the Toyota Nissan LEAF electric car.  The app, itself, simply displays four five different digital clocks simultaneously:

• Standard time (24x60x60 per day)
• Swatch Internet Time (1000x100 per day)
• New Earth Time (360x60x60 per day)
• Decimal time (10x100x100 per day)
• Stardate (00002.728 per day)

The standard and decimal clocks display hours, minutes and seconds, the NET clock displays degrees, minutes and seconds but only increments every 15 seconds (which is one second of standard time), and the Swatch clock displays .beats and centibeats.  If you tap one of the times, it will show you a brief explanation and a "More info" button that links to Wikipedia.  You can change the background color for the app, and the font for each clock can be set independently.

The only bug I've found is that the Swatch and decimal time clocks sometimes skip a second/centibeat, an issue we've seen in other apps.

MJD 55392.126

Update: (55392.366) I just noticed that the Swatch .beats show local time, rather than "Biel Mean Time" (actually CEWT/BST or GMT+1).  As you can see from the screenshot, the Swatch .beats (@429.89) are the same as the decimal time (4:29.89), which is pretty redundant.

Update: (55418.260) The app has been updated to fix the problem with the .beats I noted in my previous update, so they are now on BMT.  Also, another clock has been added which displays stardates, according to the method used by TrekGuide.com, which basically increments 1000.000 units per year, or about 2.74 per day.

Salut et Fraternité app for iPhone by Brumaire

Another decimal time app for iOS iPhone.  Salut et Fraternité (opens iTunes) is very similar to Calendrier, as it shows the Republican calendar date and decimal time below art from the French Revolution, namely a famous depiction of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.  It also allows conversion both to and from Republican calendar dates, while Calendrier only converts from Gregorian to Republican.  It also displays the decimal time on a simulated antique watch with animated hands.

Although similar to Calendrier, Brumaire has offered versions of their Salut et Fraternité software for years.  Like the other versions, the app calculates dates by inserting a leap day before every year divisible by four (except century years).  This makes it continuous with historical dates from the First Republic, when each year started on the autumnal equinox, resulting in leap days at the end of years 3, 7 and 11.  Calendrier gives two different options, either to have current years begin on the equinox, or Romme's proposal to insert a leap day at the end of every year divisible by four, although the implementation of this is buggy.  It just happens that dates for this year (ER 218) are the same for all three methods.

[Salut et Fraternité is $1.99]

MJD 55373.487

Octidi 8 Messidor an CCXVIII à 4^hd 94^md t.m.P.

Update: (55441.294, Sextidi 16 Fructidor an CCXVIII à 3^hd t.m.P.) Version 1.1 has dropped in the App Store, featuring calendar girl images for each month from the Revolution, optional seasonal images on the Convert and Genealogy tabs, and an option for Arabic instead of Roman numerals.  Also, swiping on the settings tab brings up bios for calendar creators Gilbert Romme and Fabre d'Eglantine and a gallery of calendar girls, with text of the associated poems in French.  Complementary days, which are in a couple of weeks/décades, still show the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

iOS4

I upgraded my iPhone 3GS to iOS4 on Monday, and have been been offline all week.  It may be my own fault for not restoring on 3.1.3 before updating to 4.0, since I jailbroke my phone. All seemed to be fine, until I left home.  It turned out that my data link was broken, so while it worked fine at home on my wi-fi, it did not work on 3G or 2G/Edge.  Restoring did not help.  I got an appointment on Wednesday at the Apple Store Genius Bar, where they reset it to its factory state.  But when I restored again, I had the same problem.  So I have been manually reloading all my apps, settings, etc.  It's just as well, since it will soon be my wife's phone.  As soon as I get the new iPhone 4, I will likely have to reload everything all over again.

One nice thing about the new iOS is folders.  I can now put all the decimal time apps in one place.  This works even better than the jailbreak Categories.  Other things I can do are wallpapers, multitasking, pull-up rotation-lock and iPod controls, editable playlists, improved email, spellcheck, etc.  That's most of what I liked from jailbreaking, although multitasking is not as good as Backgrounder, and I cannot use my mono Bluetooth with iPod to listen to podcasts, so I will eventually jailbreak again just for that.

MJD 55373.456

iOS4

There's a new catchall term for what has heretofore been called the iPhone OS, which is also used on the iPod Touch and iPad: iOS.  So from now on I will call these simply iOS devices.  This comes with the announcement of the new iPhone 4, which will run iOS 4.0.  I might get the iPhone 4, since my wife has been bugging me for one, so she'll either get my old phone or we might even share an iPad.  The flash and sharper display are nice (especially when the Netflix app is released) as would be the front-facing camera if I had anybody to use it with who also has an iPhone 4, but the iPad's large display would be a lot better to use at home, even though it costs at least $300 more.

Either way, I look forward to using iOS 4.0 on my current iPhone 3GS when it becomes available on July 21 (55351).  It has a couple of useful features, including multitasking and folders.  I really need these, and had to "jailbreak" my iPhone to get them before.  However, there are other things I'll probably still need to jailbreak my iPhone for, such as listening to podcasts through my mono Bluetooth.

Of course, there are some other great phones available now, but I've become accustomed to my iPhone, and so far as I know there aren't very many decimal time apps, although I have heard that there is one for Android.  I'm not an Apple fanboy, and I've never had bought an Apple product before my current iPhone, but I do love the iOS platform.

MJD 55356.973

dTime app by Cyberlab

Yet another decimal time app has appeared in the iTunes app store, dTime by Cyberlab, (opens iTunes) currently for free.  This one displays a simple analog clock dial with 100 marks around the edge, with the corresponding digital time displayed below.

The digital time is divided into three fields, each field having two digits.  The first unit is called "kar" (I don't know why) which is equal to one centiday or 14.4 minutes.  The next unit is called "mnit" and is equal to 100 microdays or 8.64 seconds.  The third unit is unnamed and is equal to one microday or 86.4 milliseconds.

The analog dial has three hands.  The "kar" hand makes a complete rotation once per day, just like a French revolutionary clock, but it points straight down at midnight (00) represented by a black circle, and straight up at midday (50) represented by a white circle.  The "mnit" hand makes one rotation every "kar", which makes it ten times faster than the minute hand of a revolutionary clock, and again points down for 00 and up for 50.  Then there is a little hand offset from the others, which makes a rotation once every "mnit", although this hand points up when the units are 00 and down for 50.

The Cyberlab web site has a Belgian domain and is in French, which is ironic since the authors seem unaware of French decimal time, and have reinvented the wheel.  C'est la vie!

MJD 55350.423

I'm a Neanderthal

Ja, Ich bin ein Neandertaler.  And so might you be, if you are not from Africa.  Two papers published in Science indicate that 1-4% of the genomes of Eurasians and Pacific Islanders contain DNA from Neanderthals, which Africans don't have.  See John Hawks and Carl Zimmer.  This suggests that shortly after human beings left Africa, about 50,000 years ago, they interbred with Neanderthals, who were then living in the Middle East, before spreading to the rest of the world.  Specifically, they compared the genomes of people from France, China, New Guinea and Africa (Yoruba and San) with the genomes from the bones of several Neanderthals.  Presumably, that suggests that all human beings living outside of Africa might have Neanderthal genes.  Even if you're African American, you probably have Neanderthal DNA, since most blacks in America have some mixed ancestry, and even some Africans must also have Neanderthal genes, since there has always been some migration in and out of Africa.  There's a caveat that it's still early days, and these are small sample sizes, and there are other possible explanations of the data, so the picture will become more refined in the future, but for now it looks pretty likely that most people outside Africa may be hybrids.  It's also possible that we have genes from others, like Homo erectus; we're still finding more hominids. 

Now I'm feeling offended by those GEICO commercials!

MJD 55328.992
 

UPDATE: I just got the free MEanderthal iPhone app from the Smithsonion, so I'm adding this image of myself from the app, since it fits so perfectly with the title.

Deci Clock and Internet Beat apps

There is yet another decimal time app for the iPhone, and an update of a previously reviewed app, both of which display Swatch Internet Time .beats.