This is my iPod.....

Newsweek has a cool article about how our soldiers are using new technology to defeat the enemy. Some of the uses Newsweek notes are pretty interesting uses.

• iPhone software that would enable a soldier to snap a picture of a street sign and, in a few moments, receive intelligence uploaded by other soldiers (the information would be linked by the words on the street sign).
• The U.S. Marine Corps is funding an application for Apple devices that would allow soldiers to upload photographs of detained suspects, along with written reports, into a biometric database. The software could match faces, making it easier to track suspects after they're released.
• Software developers and the U.S. Department of Defense are developing military software for iPods that enables soldiers to display aerial video from drones and have teleconferences with intelligence agents halfway across the globe.
• Snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan now use a "ballistics calculator" called BulletFlight, made by the Florida firm Knight's Armament for the iPod Touch and iPhone.
• Army researchers are developing applications to turn an iPod into a remote control for a bomb-disposal robot (tilting the iPod steers the robot).
• In Sudan, American military observers are using iPods to learn the appropriate etiquette for interacting with tribal leaders.
• A new program, Vcommunicator, is now being issued to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It produces spoken and written translations of Arabic, Kurdish and two Afghan languages. It also shows animated graphics of accompanying gestures and body language, and displays pictures of garments, weapons and other objects.

I’m sure are boys are being pretty creative and are using it for a lot more. I’m surprised the Pentagon allows the use but I guess they understand they can’t prevent the soldiers from using them anyway so might as well use it as another weapon against the bad guys. This is a great example about how consumer products are used first by consumers then brought into business, in this case the military. It used to be the military would develop a product for use in war then uses would be found in civilian life like with the Hummer. In this case the reverse is true.