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iPhoto Beaming: Under the hood
Earlier today, Steve Sande showed you how to beam photos using the new iPhoto app. Now it's my turn, and I'll briefly discuss what's actually happening when you use this new feature. Beaming relies on two devices sharing the same Wi-Fi network. That's because the communication channel seems to be built on Zero Configuration (Bonjour) networking. Bonjour, Apple's branding for zeroconf/mDNS device discovery, allows computers and mobile devices to advertise services on a shared network. This lets Macs, PCs and iOS devices easily connect to printers, AirPlay servers, and so forth. iPhoto Beaming uses a UDP service called _mobileiphoto._udp. Devices that are ready to receive beams announce themselves in an easily discoverable way. A service appears on-network as soon as you enable Wireless Beaming. To beam, a source device searches for possible recipients. Once detected, iPhoto offers to connect to them. It negotiates a handshake, asks for permission at the far end to send data, and then transfers photos. The Bonjour device name seems to be made up of a hash filed by a local file name. This is quite similar to what goes on with GameKit peer-to-peer connectivity. Only properly hashed identifiers are recognized as valid destinations. To spoof iPhoto, a Mac client would need to provide a valid hash in this way. And, no, I was unable to get my GameKit hashing to match the iPhoto beaming hash in my initial attempts. Possibly operator error on my part, possibly they just used a different approach. What's more, the executable seems to be built using GKSession objects, so there's apparently some common genetic background between the two approaches. I didn't find other GameKit classes, so not all that much commonality. Before jumping into iPhoto, I had been hoping this would be some kind of AirDrop implementation that might later open up to other apps -- but from what my quick dive indicates, it looks like this is proprietary to iPhoto and not going to become a general solution yet. To summarize, the iPhoto beaming looks, at least from my initial scans, to be a jury-rigged solution proprietary to this one title rather than a general iOS file-sharing solution. The app-specific Bonjour name (mobileiphoto) and lack of custom framework classes suggest this isn't the future, it's just iPhoto. Pity.
Palm Developer Day reveals interesting bits on the webOS 2010 roadmap
It's hard to mention the word "Palm" without also mentioning either "takeover" or "shakeup" in the same sentence these days, but the company was able to change the subject -- rather refreshingly, may we add -- to the more pleasant topic of new webOS features coming down the pike at its Developer Day conference in Sunnyvale this weekend. It doesn't look like we'll see anything Earth-shattering this year, but devs will be getting their grubby paws on some oft-requested features including direct API access to the microphone and camera, new security and cryptography features, some sort of "media indexer" that'll make life easier on folks trying to make media apps, and support for Bonjour, zero-config networking, and the Bluetooth Serial Port Profile, a rather generic profile that should open up the door to new categories of accessories that we haven't seen paired to a Pre before. They'll also be adding support for asynchronous background services written in JavaScript, which should theoretically allow data-intensive apps to be more responsive while they're hard at work; a redesigned App Catalog (pictured); and a new set of developer extensions called Mojo Core that promises to let folks with existing web apps convert them into webOS apps way faster. Palm's being coy about when exactly we'll see this, but the official word is that everything they're discussing this weekend should be in users' hands by Fall. As far as we know, they didn't append "come hell, high water, or acquisition" to that timeline, but we figure it was implied. [Thanks, David R.]
Bonjour for Windows 1.0.4 released
Apple has released a new version of Bonjour for Windows, 1.0.4, just in case you're zero-configuration networking with any Windows PCs in the area. There's no changelog available, but this version dropped as a preview onto the ADC page last month, and apparently "includes Windows Vista support and various other bug fixes and enhancements." The release is good, of course, not only for Vista, but also for Windows 2000/2003 and XP. Additionally, Apple's covering their 64-bit bases as well-- they've got a 64-bit compatible release ready too. Like it or not, we can't all be on a Mac all the time, and fortunately, Bonjour makes networking without the hassles possible on both platforms.[via Ars Technica]
