MEDIA RELEASE

WASHINGTON — A NASA App for the iPhone and iPod touch is available free of charge at the App Store from Apple. The NASA application will deliver a wealth of information, videos, images and news updates about NASA missions to people’s fingertips.

“Making NASA more accessible to the public is a high priority for the agency,” said Gale Allen, director of Strategic Integration and Management for NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington. “Tools like this allow us to provide users easy access to NASA information and progress at a fast pace.”

The NASA App collects, customizes and delivers an extensive selection of dynamically updated information, images and videos from various online NASA sources. Users can access NASA countdown clocks, the NASA Image of the Day, Astronomy Image of the Day, online videos, NASA’s many Twitter feeds and other information in a convenient mobile package. It delivers NASA content in a clear and intuitive way by making full use of the iPhone and iPod touch features, including the Multi-Touch user interface. The New Media Team at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., developed the application.

The NASA App also allows users to track the current positions of the International Space Station and other spacecraft currently orbiting Earth in three views: a map with borders and labels, visible satellite imagery, or satellite overlaid with country borders and labels.

“We’re excited to deliver a wide range of up-to-the-minute NASA content to iPhone and iPod touch users,” said Gary Martin, director of the New Ventures and Communications Directorate at Ames. “The NASA App provides an easy and interesting way for the public to experience space exploration.”

For more information about NASA’s iPhone application, visit:

www.nasa.gov/iphone

MEDIA RELEASE

The new Apple iPhone 3G S allows users to easily type diacritical marks essential for text messaging, emailing and Web surfing in Hawaiian, said an assistant professor of Hawaiian language at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo.

“Users do not have to install custom fonts and keyboard in order to display ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i with contemporary orthography on the iPhone and Macintosh,” said Keola Donaghy of Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College of Hawaiian Language. “That used to be a big barrier for users over the years – having to install custom software and perhaps later having to upgrade it.

Version 3.0 of the iPhone’s operating system allows users to type in the ‘okina (a glottal stop) and kahakō (a macron which appears over vowels in Hawaiian and other Polynesian languages). In addition, iPhone has an option to display the days of the week, month and other text in Hawaiian.

“Apple has been supporting the Hawaiian language since 1994 when they donated computers and offered support to the staff at Hale Kuamo‘o, the Hawaiian Language Center at UH Hilo,” Donaghy said. “These computers were used to develop and operate Leokī, the first intranet telecommunications system completely implemented in an indigenous language, and Kualono, one of the first completely bilingual Websites on the Internet. With assistance from Hale Kuamo‘o’s technology staff, Apple engineers added a Hawaiian keyboard, localized date strings, sorting routines and other Hawaiian language support to Macintosh OS X in 2002.

“Hawai‘i is such a small market that it doesn’t make a lot of sense economically for Apple to support Hawaiian language they way that they have, but they continue to support us by adding functionality that assists in our efforts to take the language into the future,” he added.

The Hawaiian language support is included with the new iPhone 3G S, but the iPhone 3.0 update can also be installed on older iPhone 3G and iPod Touch devices, Donaghy said. He added that the Hawaiian language option can be accessed on the standard U.S. English keyboard on the device.

“To type a vowel with a kahakō over it, touch any vowel on the keyboard and hold a finger over it for a second or two, and that vowel will appear in a pop-up list with several diacritic characters,” Donaghy explained. “Drag a finger over the vowel-macron combination then raise the finger off the keyboard.

“To type the ‘okina, one must first toggle the keyboard to display the number and punctuation marks by pressing the ‘123’ key,” he added. “Select the apostrophe key and hold it for a second or two. A pop-up list showing some variant characters will appear. Drag a finger over the character to the far left, which is the ‘okina.”

For more information, contact Donaghy at (808) 974-7798 or email donaghy@hawaii.edu.