What’s the News: Smart clothes might soon be coming into bed with you. A company is developing shirts endowed with a chip that senses the changes in breathing that accompany shifts in sleep phase, to help people track how variables like exercise, coffee intake, and stress affect their sleep.

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With VizWiz, the blind can take a picture, ask a question, and get an answer back from a real person in seconds.

What’s the News: With the web as their eyes, the blind will able to read menus, identify canned foods, and tell whether that park has any free benches without having to walk over. That’s the vision of a team of computer scientists behind an iPhone app called VizWiz, which lets people take a photo of whatever’s perplexing them, record a question like “What denomination is this bill?” and send it off to real people online who’ll respond in a matter of seconds with “That’s a 20.”

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I know the holidays are over and the long, dark winter months—which bring little to look forward to besides furry meteorologists and the pressure-packed atrociousness of Valentine’s Day—lie ahead. But take heart, America: Shiny new toys are coming. January means it’s time for the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which begins Thursday in Las Vegas. And gadget lust is already at peak volume, with product prognosticators predicting what will be unveiled in 2011.

Tablets. We mean it this time.

2010, certainly, was the year of the iPad—Apple has sold millions of the sleek devices since their April launch. 2011, gadget pros are predicting, will be the year everybody tries to catch up to Apple and the tablet computer market explodes.

While [Apple] is poised to introduce a new model in just a few weeks (barring some manufacturing hiccup), the likes of Microsoft, Blackberry’s RIM, Hewlett-Packard, and Google are gunning for them. A raft of consumer electronics companies, ranging from HDTV leader Vizio to Japanese heavyweight Toshiba to Palm OS owner HP, will introduce their own tablets. These will be in a variety of sizes and price ranges, in the hopes that the right balance will be struck to unseat Apple in the tablet space. [FoxNews.com]

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In many high-tech parts of the world, iPhones are what people turn to when their minds wander from what they were supposed to be doing. For a study in this week’s Science, however, researchers turned the tables on these people, using the iPhone as a tool to study the wandering mind. Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert found that the minds wanders a lot (no surprise there), but also that daydreaming could make people unhappier.

Their app, called Track Your Happiness, takes advantage of the iPhone’s unparalleled ability to butt into its owner’s life.

iPhone users, aged 18 to 88, signed up for a Web application that contacted study them at random times during their days to ask a simple set of questions: How happy were they at the moment? What were they doing? Were they thinking about something other than what the task at hand, and if so, were they thinking of something pleasant, neutral, or negative? [Boston Globe]

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Skyhook, the tiny Massachusetts company that created the location software in your iPhone, sued Google this week (pdf). David is charging Goliath with trying to keep its software out of Google’s Android mobile software platform in favor of Google’s own location service, and with encouraging Skyhook’s partners to break contracts.

In other words, Google is leveraging its OS market share to push its own affiliated products and snuff out competitors — kind of like Microsoft did with Internet Explorer on Windows 15 years ago. Yikes. [Wired.com]

Google says it hasn’t had the opportunity to review the legal action, so it has yet to comment.

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Every three years the Librarian of Congress reviews the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and James H. Billington’s review just expanded digital freedom with this year’s ruling of new exemptions to the copyright law.

Jailbreak that iPhone

First and foremost, Billington ruled that it’s not against the law to jailbreak a phone (the practice of working around the device’s security system and taking more direct control of it). The Electronic Frontier Foundation lobbied hard for this, particularly with the iPhone in mind. Because Apple keeps tight reins on the device—offering only AT&T phone service and acting as gatekeeper for what apps can be added—many people had taken to jailbreaking the phone.

About 4 million iPhone and iPod Touch units had been jailbroken as of last August, and were accessing apps from a sort of black-market storefront called Cydia, the marketplace’s founder told Wired. The store is a haven for many developers that Apple, the gatekeeper to its App Store, has ignored or turned away [Los Angeles Times].

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Earlier today on Apple’s Cupertino campus, Steve Jobs held a press conference regarding the iPhone 4 reception saga, which he said is not “antenna-gate.”  The overall gist: Jobs says the iPhone 4′s reception isn’t perfect, but not any worse than other phone’s, and Apple will give out a free “bumper” case to iPhone 4 phone buyers.

The cases are meant to reduce the dropped reception problem that can occur if a person’s hand covers a crucial bit of the antenna. The bumpers will be free until September 30th, and buyers can return their phones for a refund if still unhappy.

We’ve rounded up opinions of Jobs’ conference, which you can catch a video of through Apple’s site, here.

Jobs started the meeting by showing other phones (BlackBerry Bold, Droid Eris…) also dropping signal strength depending on how they’re held. But some think that comparing the iPhone 4 to other devices isn’t a valid excuse when you have a brand built on exclusivity (and expense).

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“Stop me if you’ve already seen this.” So joked Steve Jobs today at the official rollout of the iPhone 4, which will be available June 24 in the United States. Back in his native habitat of a product reveal, the be-turtlenecked one made light of the multiple iPhone 4 leaks (including the famous incident of the lost phone prototype) as he demonstrated the phone’s new features.

The iPhone 4 is sleeker and more advanced than the original iPhone that came out in 2007. Like the iPhone 3GS, it comes in black or white, though it has a more angular look. Its front and back are covered with glass, and it is rimmed with stainless steel that acts as part of the phone’s antenna. It is about three-eighths of an inch thick; the iPhone 3GS is nearly half an inch. It can shoot high-definition video, catching up to some other smart phones. It has a gyroscope in addition to other sensors, to enable more advanced motion-sensing applications, such as games and mapping services [AP].

The Retina display is what’s really turning heads.

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A furious Apple has sent tech website Gizmodo a terse letter demanding the return of an iPhone prototype which the site procured. The device was found on a barstool in a pub in Redwood City, California, and was sold by the finder to Gizmodo for a reported sum of $5,000.

As Discoblog reported yesterday, the site immediately declared that the phone was the prototype for the 2010 model of the new iPhone 4G and wrote an in-depth article detailing all its new features. The article, accompanied by photos and video, drew an estimated 3 million viewers to the Web page in just 12 hours online. Some of those viewers must have been Apple’s lawyers.

In the letter dated yesterday, Apple’s senior counsel wrote: “It has come to our attention that Gizmodo is in possession of a device that belongs to Apple. This letter constitutes a formal request that you return the device to Apple. Please let me know where to pick up the unit.”

The phone, Gizmodo revealed, was found in a bar, camouflaged to look like a regular iPhone 3GS. But when the finder switched on the device, he found that the mobile Facebook app was logged in to the account of Gray Powell, an Apple software engineer whose last post on the social networking site was reportedly “I underestimated how good German beer is” [ABC News]. The guy who found the phone reportedly tried to get in touch with the person who lost it, to no avail. That is when the finder is reported to have started shopping the phone around; selling pictures of the phone first to Engadget and then selling the device to rival Gizmodo for $5,000.

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Scientists at MIT’s Senseable City Laboratory have designed a bicycle wheel that can give riders a boost when they need it most. Kinetic energy is released when a rider hits the brakes, and the new wheel, called the Copenhagen Wheel, captures that energy for later use. The new wheel uses a kinetic energy recovery system, the same technology used by hybrid cars, like the Toyota Prius, to harvest otherwise wasted energy when a cyclist brakes or speeds down a hill. With that energy, it charges up a battery inside the wheel’s hub [The New York Times].

The Copenhagen Wheel made its debut today in Copenhagen, one of the most bicycle friendly cities in the world and the site of the current international talks on climate change regulations.The special wheel can be swapped in for any bike’s rear wheel, and includes other bells and whistles such as an odometer, a sensor to track air quality, and a GPS. The wheel can even talk to your iPhone though a Bluetooth connection so you can check your speed, direction, distance traveled, monitor traffic, and find your biking buddies. The wheel is expected to retail for between $500 and $1,000.

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It started off innocently enough, with a Rickroll—when the first iPhone worm turned up in Australia two weeks ago, it changed its victim’s wallpaper to a portrait of “Never Gonna Give You Up” signer/Internet sensation Rick Astley. But now iPhone worms have turned malicious.

But by this week, some iPhones were victimized by the “Duh” worm, which steals personal banking info. Like the rickrolling original, the new malicious code targets only jailbroken iPhones—those on which that the owner has circumvented the Apple operating system to hack the phone. It is specifically targeting people in the Netherlands who are using their iPhones for internet banking with Dutch online bank ING. It redirects the bank’s customers to a lookalike site with a log-in screen [BBC News]. An iPhone could spread the worm to others that use the same wi-fi hotspot.

As for Apple’s response to the growing iPhone threats? Don’t hack your phone, genius. Apple spokesperson Natalie Harrison says, “As we’ve said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones, and for good reason. These hacks not only violate the warranty, they will also cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably” [The Loop].

Only a small percentage of iPhone users hack the device, so relatively few people are susceptible to this latest attack. Yet some researchers say the worm confirms that attacks against mobile users are evolving, and that cybercriminals are targeting the personal and financial information kept on portable devices. The ability to communicate with a central command-and-control server–a characteristic more commonly associated with hijacked PCs–also makes such software more dangerous [Technology Review].

Related Content:
80beats: Sorry, Australian iPhone Users: You’ve Been Rickrolled
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Discoblog: Weird iPhone Apps, our compendium of the strangest things to do with your smartphone.

Image: flickr / William Hook

Have you seen those Verizon Wireless ads on TV, showing a map of the company’s 3G network coverage next to a far less inspiring map of competitor AT&T’s coverage? Those ads have now led the nation’s two largest mobile provides to a court fight.

Verizon’s “There’s a Map for That” campaign spoofs the “There’s an App for That” campaign by Apple, whose iPhone uses AT&T. In response to the Verizon campaign, AT&T filed suit against Verizon in federal court. AT&T claims the ad is misleading because it implies that AT&T customers can’t use their phones and cannot access the mobile Internet in areas where the carrier does not offer 3G wireless coverage. The truth is that AT&T customers can use their phones and they are able to access the wireless Net using the company’s slower EDGE network [CNET].

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The first worm to infect iPhones is squirming through phones in Australia, spreading the face of the 1980s pop singer Rick Astley throughout the land. On infected phones, the wallpaper changes to a glamor shot of Astley, with a line of type that declares “Ikee is never going to give you up.”

As savvy internet users know, the iPhone has just been Rickrolled. For several years, the bait-and-switch trick has caused internet users to click on a link that looks relevant or promising, only to be led to Astley’s 1987 video, “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

However, only iPhone users who have ‘jailbroken’ their phones will be affected by the worm. Jailbreaking an iPhone involves running a program that circumvents the official Apple operating system and allows users to run software on their phone that has not been approved by Apple [Telegraph]. The worm preys specifically on iPhone users who haven’t changed their default passwords on an application called secure shell (SSH), which allows file transfers between smart phones.

The iPhone worm doesn’t appear to be a malicious or criminal act. Instead, it seems to be half warning, half prank. Ikee’s author, who identifies himself or herself as “ikex” in the worm’s source code, also wrote in the code that “People are stupid, and this is to prove it so,” adding that users should read their phones’ manuals.”It’s not that hard, guys,” ikex writes. “But hey who cares its only your bank details at stake” [ Forbes].

The worm’s creator was later identified as 21-year-old Ashley Towns, a programmer who lives near Sydney; no word yet on whether Towns will face any repercussions for his trick.

Related Content:

80beats: How Did “Soupnazi” Allegedly Steal 130 Million Credit Card Numbers?
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80beats: Computer Virus Travels Into Orbit, Lands on the Space Station

Image: flickr / William Hook