I am a professional magician in Houston Texas. Currently my team is looking for a programmer to develope a simple application for a cell phone effect. I am hoping for the programm to be in a platform that will run on a Razor phone. Please email me at lostkaraoke@yahoo.com with a price estimate for what you will charge as well as an estimated time of completion. Here is the effect: The effect is a psychic or mentalist type effect. Effect: A spectator is handed a Razor phone or any java flip phone. The magician turns his back. The spectator scrolls through 10 photos on the cell phone and is told to choose one of the photos and to notice details of the photo and then close the phone. The magician then turns around and is able to tell what picture the spectator is thinking of. The phone is never opened by the magician except at the beggining of the trick to show the spectator how to scroll through photos. Method When the phone is opened the magician launches a program that emulates the photo viewer on the cellphone. The spectator finds a photo they like and then they close the phone. The outside window containing the clock is where the secret is. The last digit of the clock tells the photo they closed the phone on. Example 4:27 means the phone was closed on the 7th photo. 4:15 would mean the phone was closed on photo number 5. The photos are of course memorized with their number. I will supply photos. I do not care about what programming language is used. Thought I suppose Java would be the best as it could work on many flip phones. If this is possible please email me at lostkaraoke@yahoo.com. Thanks, Carl

Carl, my heart just broke. [oh]

I thought a magician never gave away the secrets?! Next time I see a magician hand over a cell phone and ask about a picture, the whole effect will be ruined.

Thanks a lot. [grin]

Oh, and on a serious note for anybody who is interested in the job....

The most difficult part would be setting the clock. Java's security model tries hard to prevent that sort of access to the system. On a cell phone it would be even harder, since the phone continuously gets time updates from the celular network. I don't believe that phone allows you to mess with the clock through Java. It might be easier to build a custom fake phone or to install a custom LCD clock on the thing.

[Edited by - frob on May 31, 2006 5:42:17 PM]

Sorry for the secret. I just wanted to put the job out there and see if it was plausable. I see you say there is a security issue with the clock. Could the clock showing on the outside window not just be a fake clock that displays the coded time? It does not have to change the actual clock if you can just show something on the outside window that looks like the real clock.

No one would be impressed anyway. People would be expecting some kind of software trick - everyone heared about trojans, backdoors, wireless hacking etc. To impress people you have to turn cell phone into rabbit or something like this.

You might be able to break apart the phone and install a serial-driven LCD that's similar to the existing one, but I don't know if Java would let you access it.

The software's relatively easy to write; it's the hardware interface that's tough. I'd talk to an electrical engineer beforehand.

You might have a way around the clock issue. You would need a phone that has a proprietary API that allows access to the outer screen (maybe something from the iDEN line, those phones usually have plenty of extra APIs). Then all you'd need is to draw a fake clock of your own.

shmoove

still looking for a programmer?