Sorry, didn't want to spam, but www.hiqautomation.com. We did build one for Android and it works pretty well. And like one of you said...most our beta testers ended up using it when they were not in their car...usually out working on the lawn or something. One guy we have testing told me about the time his wife got locked out of the house but she didn't have an android phone, alas! :-)

We're doing a release in about 2 months...ordering the parts for the first fifty units just after xmas.

My partner and I came up with a device that allows you to open a garage door with a smartphone. Just a box with a relay and a Bluetooth radio. When I started looking into whether or not we could do this for iPhone I found apples "Made for iPod" program...their hardware licensing scheme.

The first thing they asked for was our attorney's contact information.

A quick search showed me that it was going to cost in the ballpark of $20,000 to deal with Apple's bullshit. So that didn't happen.

TL;DR The law is whatever they want it to be.

Agreed. I used to read the NY Times several times a day. When they put up their paywall, even with the easy workarounds, it dropped off my radar. I even wanted to pay...but at the time (and perhaps they still are) one had to pay extra for each device class you wanted to use...$X for web access, $Y for tablet access and $Z for phone access. This worked out at the time to be something like $50 a month...for a NEWSPAPER.

I've heard claims that this is akin to the PBS model...with a minority of people overpaying for content/service and the majority using the product for free. Seems okay for PBS but economically backward for an organization like the NY Times, imho.

I'd also like to add that Daisyworks is a great little company you can buy inexpensive bluetooth toys like breakout boards from. I bought some of their products to do our prototyping.

And the link to the Kickstarter project didn't quite turn out like I thought, so here it is...twice!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1045304366/hiq-automation-iopener

What it really is is an investment killer. And here I was thinking Illinois has an awful business climate.

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

So that's how the constitution reads...I was asking one of the younger attorneys at the firm about the "limited time" if the application of the Sonny Bono copyright schmutz didn't make copyright, in effect, unlimited.

His response, verbatim...and I am not shitting you:

"Unlimited is a limit."

The law is whatever they want it to be folks.

I really don't understand why folks are making a big stink about Siri and this other whoozitwhatsits. I imagine IBM hasn't made a smartphone app for Watson because it would need a huge computer/serverfarm/planet to run it for millions of users yet.

Watson is the real deal. Siri, to me, seems like a search engine and nothing more. It's not answering questions...it's just giving normal people the ability to use Google like I use google...i.e. knowing the modifiers and using them.

I don't know the exact figures, and I'm sure that it could be spun as lies, damned lies and statistics, but the entire movie industry takes in something like $60 billion a year. That's about one year at Intel alone. Maybe combine another half a company somewhere to get some more digits added up right. The music and video game industry...oh wait, we can not mention the video game industry because they figured out the piracy issue and aren't hammering laws down our legislators throats.

Lets be generous then...lets say annual revenue of RIAA/MPAA members is $100 billion...hell, lets say it's $200 billion (it's nowhere close to 200bil, but lets just say).

$200 BILLION IS NOTHING. Why the hell are we letting these asshats try to control the internet? General motors has $135 billion annual revenue (wikipedia). Shall we let them just waltz into googles offices and start making demands about how they run their company? They're also just middlemen(mpaa/riaa)...they produce NOTHING. They add NO VALUE. They're a bunch of thieves trying to hold onto a failing business model.

I say make them compete in the real world or get out.

Whoever apple employee made that comment about the 8,000 workers...shame on you. How is that NOT slavery? And you're fucking proud of it?!?!?

Second off...you can do the same thing in less time by reprogramming a machine.

Insightful? Please. If you think that the cops are *not* going to use this technology for fishing expeditions you're fooling yourself.

Allow me to introduce you to a little concept we in the real world call "economic incentive".

Is it mildly entertaining that the world can get away with racist colloquialisms (i just wanted to say that word) against the Irish? I'm, what...half-Irish-ish...totally not offended by that comment...I even chuckled. Just think it's weird that one could say this without catching hell about the Irish but not, say, about Mexicans.