Cellit strives to put the power of mobile technology into all parts of your daily life. Today, Cellit is proud to announce that we’re going someplace new: The open road!
Our new Driveit technology allows you to control your vehicle (or any Driveit-enabled vehicle) through text messages sent from your cell phone! Imagine the possibilities!
Don’t want to go to the store? Don’t! Send your car there on its own!
No need to hold a clumsy steering wheel or push pedals with your feet. Let your thumbs do the driving!
Send your car to pick up the kids from school from the comfort of your living room!
Save money on gas without a driver weighing the car down!
Works with any text-messaging enabled phone!
How does it work? Simple! Send commands from your phone, such as FORWARD, BACKWARD, LEFT, RIGHT, EXCHANGE INSURANCE INFORMATION, or HONK, to a Cellit shortcode. Those messages will be sent to your car and your car will do what it is told! It’s that simple!
Watch the official pre-recorded demo video to see it in action:
As Cellit creates mobile applications, it’s only natural that we make the occasional app for tablets as well. The third generation of iPads was released today, to fanfare and long lines, but what really changes? Aside from general technology updates, the major improvement is the addition of the “retina display”, which the iPhone saw in the forth generation, almost 2 years ago. This doubles the resolution for the screen, from 1024 by 768 pixels to 2048 by 1536 pixels. Since the screen is the same physical size, it means that the pixels are smaller.
Though most people probably won’t notice it, being a visual person, the older screens tend to look a little fuzzy, or pixallated to me. These higher density pixels mean that the image can look crisper. The issue that I’m sure a lot of users will run into (if they become aware of such things) is that their old applications don’t look as nice on the new iPad. Unless the developer has taken the time to update it, all of the images will be at half the resolution of their display. (Note, that since text is created dynamically from vector files, it only effects any pixel based (raster) graphics. That is to say that text will look crisper than ever.)
I’ve created two images; one is half the size of the other. The smaller image is what would normally have been displayed mobile phones, tablets, or your computer monitor, the width being 94 by 76 pixels displaying at 72 ppi (the larger one being double the size).
Now that I’ve got these images, I can use them in a website (or application). Normally they would display as seen above, but I can declare the width and height and make them what I will. If I tell the larger image to display at the size of the smaller one, I get something like this:
The browser scales the larger image down, and so they look practically the same on a computer, since the screen resolution is 72 ppi. If you were to view this same webpage (or application) on something with a higher resolution (Apple isn’t the only one to offer “retina displays” in their devices, many of the new Android models also have a higher pixel density), you would see this:
This screenshot on the retina display shows that the smaller image is being blown up to twice its resolution, hence the fuzziness that becomes apparent on these new devices. Don’t be surprised if you download your favorite application, and it doesn’t look as sharp just yet. I’m sure the developers are scrambling to update the graphics.
This year, Cellit raised a small fortune from our own ranks to donate to Toys for Tots. Angie, Stephanie, and myself made a run to Toys”R”Us after work to pick out the gifts.
If you’ve paid attention to marketing materials that feature a phone, I’m sure you’ve noticed the default smartphone is the ever ubiquitous iPhone. Perhaps this is because Apple does a great job in creating hype around said phone, which then raises consumer awareness. How many people can say that they know what the HTC ThunderBolt looks like, or even the Blackberry Torch? The graphic designer wants to use what will be easily legible, something that will communicate instantly. Since people are familiar with the iPhone look, a designer will be more apt to use it.
Sometimes, there also seems to be a misconception of what a smartphone is. “Does it have the apps?” Everyone knows Apple has the App Store, but Android Market launched the in same year, 2008, and Blackberry App World has existed since 2009. If the designer assumes that the misconception holds true, they will cater towards it, meeting the expectations of the target market, which only reinforces the idea.
Perhaps this isn’t the reason, though. If you were to search for public domain images of a smartphone (preferably something in a format that is easy to edit, i.e. vector), most of the higher quality illustrations you’ll find will be iPhones. Designers don’t always have the time or skill to illustrate a realistic smartphone, so it’s much easier to just grab one of these, pop your screen shot into it and place into the layout. This brings up another point: the iPhone and iPod can take screen shots, something which Android and Blackberry can’t easily do (unless your phone is rooted, but that’s something we won’t get into). A designer could mock up a fake screen, but, again, they may not have the time or the skill to pump it out.
Any one of these reasons helps create the strangle hold on marketing materials that the iPhone has. Perhaps Google will release screen capturing as a base function in one of the upcoming Android OS updates, but I’m not holding my breath.
