We’ve all seen Scrabble played on the iPad with iPhones used as tile racks, but Dave at Magic Jungle Software had more ambitious plans for his Apple tablet. He hooked up an iPhone to act as a Bluetooth controller with his new – currently unreleased – game Chopper 2, then going on to connect the iPad itself up to a 42-inch HDTV via the composite adapter.
Video demos after the cut
Best of all, none of what Dave has done uses any of the private APIs that Apple is so protective about. That means there’s hopefully a pretty strong chance that, when he submits it for App Store approval, it won’t encounter any hiccups.
To be honest, Apple would be crazy not to allow titles like these. After all, if you’re using an iPhone or iPod touch to control your iPad game, that’s at least two pieces of Cupertino hardware you’ve gone out and bought. Factor in the composite adapter for big-screen playback and that’s even more cash for Steve’s pocket.
While that would probably be enough for avid meeting attendees, Livescribe are looking to extend the usefulness of the Echo by including an app store. Accessed via the Livescribe Desktop app, with software synchronized over to the Echo via microUSB connection, it turns the Smartpen into a translation tool, a musical instrument or anything else developers can come up with via the free SDK. Unsurprisingly it’s the language apps that are most obviously useful; a dictionary app, for instance, shows definitions of your handwritten word on the OLED screen, while various translation apps can automatically convert your handwritten notes into other languages. Of course, developers are also coming up with more unusual software, so you can sketch out strings or staves and play your notepad as a guitar or piano, convert currency or even play games like Sudoku.
