Hi
Stuff I picked up on the web the last week:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/05/on-the-go-mobile-coupons-almost-as-cool-as-minority-report-not-quite-as-creepy/
AT&T bust out a new mobile-ads concept, watch the video. It’s an idea we already had, but here it is – in the flesh.
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20091106/microsoft-college-tour-09/
Microsoft taking natural UI forward.
http://gizmodo.com/5400305/even-god-runs-windows-xp
Very thick fog as advertising space – nice!
http://gizmodo.com/5400932/the-history-of-computing-video-shows-why-we-are-doomed
A video trying to explain the amount of data we are going to be exposed to in the near future
http://gizmodo.com/5400618/magic-volumes-have-three-different-magic-shadows
Shadow art can be cool!
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/10/google-go-language/
Google tightens the knot on programmers.
http://gizmodo.com/5402027/video-nokias-vision-of-mobile-devices-in-2015
See what Nokia thinks of the mobile experience in 2015: Social-Augmented-Reality (2:35), Social-Location (1:00), All-Screens (1:55), and more stuff.
Have a great weekend!
Roy.
Category: Recommended
Categories
Weeks of the link [Links of the week]
Hi
Stuff I picked up on the web the last week:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/30/dont-be-a-featured-loser-facebook-helps-out-the-unpopular/
I’m liking this! Applications helping people reach out.
What happened to: “You didn’t call your mother in a while! Why don’t you give her a call now… [Click to dial]”
http://gizmodo.com/5395911/disturbingly-cool-big-head-papercraft-halloween-costume
I Love papercraft! and this is amazing.
http://gizmodo.com/5395865/watch-the-xperia-x10s-rachael-interface-in-action
The new Sony-Erricson Android phone showing off.
I think we should take stock on Kick-Ass UI in our projects. This is becoming more and more obvious that it is the future.
Can you see the guy standing in this picture? (tip: you can see his shoes very good)
http://gizmodo.com/5397102/liu-bolin-creates-slowest-least-practical-invisibility-cloak-ever
http://gizmodo.com/5381011/microsoft-couriers-swipes-snips-and-scribbles-the-leaked-interface
Microsoft’s e-book reader – much more than just a reader, but nothing over a tablet PC…
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/04/say-goodbye-to-voicemail-hello-to-ribbit-mobile-500-invites/
You thought Google Voice is the competition? This is the competition’s competition.
http://gizmodo.com/5396860/video-concept-symbian-interface-blends-augmented-reality-maps-and-social-networking
Symbian’s next-gen concept UI – shabby, seen it, done before, too late.
See ya’ll next week!
Enjoy the weekend,
Roy.
Categories
Links of the (last) week
Hi
Stuff I picked up on the web the past week:
http://gizmodo.com/5388708/1000-cellphones-and-2000-text-messages-playing-tchaikovsky
Cellphone orchestra
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/27/mobile-web-usage-keeps-on-growing-and-growing-and-growing/
Big mobile web numbers curtsy of Opera Mini. 224% YOY growth… (9/08 – 9/09)
http://gizmodo.com/5390090/interactive-multitouch-sphere-will-make-you-feel-like-gandalf
Cool visuals
http://gizmodo.com/5390894/build-your-own-life-hud-with-a-smartphone-and-some-cardboard
This is virtual reality just like this is a car.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/27/facebook-launches-a-new-hub-for-world-peace/
Nice concept! Go Peace!
Google corner
This week Google decided they take over (what’s left of) the world:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/26/google-voice-can-now-take-control-of-your-mobile-voicemail/
First – they’ll take your voice mail
http://lifehacker.com/5390307/google-launches-social-search-experiment-to-search-what-your-friends-are-posting
Then they’ll take your social graph
http://gizmodo.com/5391043/android-20-official-its-the-android-weve-been-waiting-for
They will update your Android mobile OS
http://lifehacker.com/5390864/google-voice-air-app-keeps-voicemail-and-sms-on-your-desktop
Desktop Widgets – Behind you!!
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/28/google-redefines-car-gps-navigation-google-maps-navigation-android/
Google takes over the navigation business. TomTom and Garmin stocks plummet by 20-40%.
This proves the saying: “You’re only safe untill google does it.”
‘Till next week
Roy.
Categories
Weekly Links
Hi guys
Weekly links is something of a tradition at work I have been keeping up for a couple of months now. Its time to share them with the world.
Stuff I picked up on the web the last week:
http://gizmodo.com/5382585/10gui-fascinating-multitouch-user-interface-design
Very nice multi-touch desktop experience
http://gizmodo.com/5384680/sonys-360-degree-3d-display-prototype-no-glasses-needed
Sony with a 3D “screen” that looks like a bomb
http://gizmodo.com/5384893/gps-puzzle-box-only-opens-in-one-specific-location
Very nice concept in Location-Based-Something. The box will only open when you actually get to the point
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/19/android-galore-a-complete-list-of-the-android-phones-and-their-specs-droid-best/
Look at that – 24 Android phones already! Definitely going to explode…
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/new-google-music-service-launch-imminent/
Google bulldozing into the music biz. Amazon & Apple – behind you!
http://gizmodo.com/5386532/when-robots-attack-theyll-also-come-by-ski
It skis better than me!
Big Numbers Corner
Note: “corners” are topics that seem to be a trend that week.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/how-the-iphone-is-blowing-everyone-else-away-in-charts/
Some interesting big numbers from Morgan-Stanley about the iPhone booming
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/web-2-0-summit-facebooks-vp-of-engineering-on-scaling-facebook/
Huge numbers for Facebook
And a comic for finish: (made with: http://superherosquad.marvel.com/create_your_own_comic)
Enjoy the weekend!
Roy.
Today I came across a very nice free service called Ring-2-Skype. It lets you register a personal international number from about 40 countries, and whoever calls this number and dials your extension is directed to your Skype account.
The coolest thing is that you can register a number on several countries for the same Skype account. For instance on for USA, one for Peru etc.
And… it’s FREE!
The downside is that the number you get is not direct, but requires you to dial an extension number, so you can’t use it with Google Voice-like services.
UPDATE #1: I discovered a bug with the service – it is incompatible with Skype’s voicemail: meaning the call gets disconnected when the greeting is played. I contacted them and they said it’s a known issue and they are taking care of it. I’ll update the post again once I know this issue is resolved
This is the story of my journey to find a way to run a process (or a program on a remote pc)
This wasn’t an easy thing at all…
Overall, I thought, this should be an easy thing to do.
I found this C# code on a Microsoft forums
object[] theProcessToRun = { "notepad.exe" };
ConnectionOptions theConnection = new ConnectionOptions();
theConnection.Username = "username";
theConnection.Password = "password";
ManagementScope theScope = new ManagementScope("<\\\\" + IP + "\\root\\cimv2", theConnection);
ManagementClass theClass = new ManagementClass(theScope, new ManagementPath("Win32_Process"), new ObjectGetOptions());
theClass.InvokeMethod("Create", theProcessToRun);
I tried this code, not after forgetting to disable the firewall on the remote computer – a big downside but I guess if I had gone with it I’d hunt a way to stable port to unblock in the firewall.
Then I found the big downside (which can be an upside to some of you):
The remote process this way will never have a GUI window opened (In this example, a process of notepad will be opened in the background).
This can be a big advantage to system admins which want to run scripts.
Ok, back to the quest.
There’s nothing like a good visualization to deliver your ideas over a presentation. Concise points and breakdowns can only go a certain distance before they become weary, and finally confuse your audience. It’s better to keep them on their toes by spicing up the boring slides every 5 or so page turns.
I found that Word Clouds, a kind-of new visualization concept, have a good trait of focusing the attention over a single word’s associative space. You bold your main word, center it, and scatter the associative words around it. This creates a powerful effect.
I found a nice tool to create these word coulds on-the-fly: Wordle.
The way I did was, get the Wikipedia value of my word, for example “Friendship“, and go to the Edit tab. Copy all the textarea’s contents, and paste it into Wordle’s word cloud creator. Press “GO” and the results are immediate.
You can eliminate the “outliers” – those unrelated words that appear too many times, and layout the cloud as you like to fit your slide.
The down-side with Wordle is that it has no export ability, so I had to take an Alt-PrintScreen screenshot to get my cloud as a picture.
Enjoy!
Roy.
Hi
If you haven’t yet tapped into the (well by now it’s a) phenomena that is Kutiman’s “Thru You” project – don’t walk, run and do it now.
I’m a long time fan of Kutiman’s work, his last CD (“Kutiman”) is playing repeatedly in my company-leased car. And I have been watching closely to hear some of his new beats.
I must say he totally surprised me. The music is awesome, but this was to be expected. He surprised me beacuse he single handedly create a new concept – Social Music. What he did was a natural development of music in the Web 2.0 spirit – use the enourmous amount of “data” laying around freely on the internet, and bring it together to create something new.
Anyway, enjoy his work, it’s truly aspiring.
R.
Categories
Enhance your GPS device
Many GPS devices are coming with built-in (or bundled) navigation software and does not allow you to install newer version or use the device in any other way that the original menu allows.
This, of course doesn’t mean that the device is not CAPABLE of running most of the applications. After all – it is running on Windows CE platform.
Googling a bit lead me to a project called MioPocket. This is a software that patches your mobile windows and installs lots of (freeware) utilities (media player for example) that can really upgrade your usage of the device.
One of the best features (and of course the main reason why those people wrote this utility) is that it enables you to run any navigation software.
Lots of people own several computers. Not to mention different operating systems.
Don’t you wish you had a folder with some files that will be accessible from every single one of your PCs ?
A friend of mine recommended Dropbox (www.getdropbox.com)
This is a software, compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac, which creates a folder on your PC(/mac), that is linked to your account, and with every computer that runs the program (with the specific account) – This folder will be in complete sync.
If you need it from a shared pc – you also have a web interface to download your files.
Also, a public folder is created which you can just send a direct link for your file to a friend
You get 2GB of online storage for this matter – completely for free from Dropbox, and you can also revert to earlier versions of your files.
Dropbox claims to be encrypted – but I can’t guarantee it, so I wouldn’t recommend using it for sensitive data (passwords, etc.)
I started using it. Definately recommend it!