New “CubeCheater” iPhone App can solve a Rubik’s Cube!

by nycScribbler, 6 February 2009

........CUBEcheat
Just when you thought the iPhone apps couldn’t get any cooler, the Rubik’s cube CubeCheater comes along and makes solving the iconic puzzle a breeze in just 20 steps! The CubeCheater works by using complex algorithms and simple image-recognition technology, and it only costs $1 in the App store.

All you have to do is take six pictures of your unsolved Rubik’s cube using your iPhone’s camera. Take one photo per side. And if you have an iPod Touch, no problem, you can tap in the color combos manually.

CubeCheater determines the placement of each colored square and generates a map of the cube. It proceeds to figure out the quickest path to solving the puzzle and then gives you simple step-by-step directions. Check out this YouTube video demonstration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNwx0nbgm7M.

So who is the master of Rubiks’ computer algorithms? His name is Herbert Kociemba and he is the creator of the open source Cube Explorer software program. This software is being used by computer science students at universities to build cube-solving robots, some of which also use a camera and image-recognition technology to calculate the color patterns.

So we now know that CubeCheater uses Kociemba’s algorithm to solve scrambled cubes, but the app can also be adjusted to solve cubes with non-standard color deviations. Even more impressive is the CubeCheaters ability to work in reverse! You can create a virtual mixed up cube inside the app and it will tell you how to turn a solved cube to match your formation.

.......SHAZAM!
Besides the Rubik’s Cube app, another of my personal favorite apps is Shazam. This app has helped me to expand my music collection. Say you’re driving in a car and you hear a song that you like but don’t know the artist or the name. Just hold your iPhone next to the speaker and in 10 seconds it identifies the song. It even works in noisy clubs. The result is shown on the screen complete with details on artist, album, title, genre, music label, a thumbnail image of the song/album artwork, and links to download the song on iTunes or the Amazon MP3 store. Shazam is a free application (in most countries) for the iPhone and Android phones such as the T-Mobile G1.

I, for one, can’t wait to see what other fun and useful apps will be created as a result of today’s constantly emerging technology.

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Source: iPhone App Solves Rubik’s Cube in 20 Moves or Better