Nokia Research has some sample software and plugins that you can use to capture raw data from the accelerometer found in the N95.
Accelero what with the wha? Let’s just say it detects the motion of your phone and that allows people to make applications like Lightsaber! Easily turn your N95 into a lightsaber. Check out this really rough video I made demonstrating it.
At today’s MobileCampNYC, the whole group got a sneak peek at ZXing (Zebra Crossing), the barcode reader Google is planning to include in the Android SDK being released on Monday. There wasn’t much real information presented about Android itself, only about the bar code reader that will be included with the platform. Highlights include:
In general, there’s nothing here that really struck me as being any different than any other open source bar code reader. The most important thing I pulled out of the presentation is that Google is going to trial QR codes with print advertisers. This shows that Google is going to start actively pushing bar codes, but more importantly, it shows that they’re moving more into the print area, even if it is just to link people to online services.
Here are a few slides from the presentation. Though sparse, they might answer a few basic questions. For more details, you’ll just have to wait until Monday when the SDK and emulator are released.
I’m a big fan of Yelp.com because of the richness of information plus the fact that they do a pretty good job of keeping it real and not getting bogged down with shills. Yelp also has a great mobile site that allows you to search through their listings and find something directly from your mobile phone. This service is particularly useful when you’re out and about in an unfamiliar area and need to find a good place nearby.
So I made this mashup. You can play with it here. Here’s a pic.
The idea is that you can drag around the Google Map, and then when you click on a location, it will generate a QR code for Yelp’s website which allows you to see what kind of restaurants and nightlife are around that exact point on the map. Pretty cool, right?
In order to make this happen, there’s a lot of web services going on in the background. First, there’s the Google Map. Pretty basic and well documented. Once you click an overlay though, Google only gives you latitude and longitude of the point, but not an address. So I found this great Google Reverse Geocoder online and am using that to convert the lat/lon into a street address.
From there, you can build the URL for mobile.yelp.com, but it ends up being a VERY long URL and consequently, the bar code gets to be gigantic. So once I have the long URL then I’m sending it off to tinyurl.com to shrink it down. Finally, you take the tinyurl and generate the bar code using Kaywa.com.
Four web services, all done with a few lines of Javascript. If you look at the demo, then all of the source code can be seen there.
So even though Google’s own site doesn’t mention it, it appears that they’ve released an update of their Google Maps application for the N95. Anyone can get it by going to google.com/gmm, or you can just use this mobile code:
This new version is light years ahead of the older one in terms of ease of use. The map scrolling is smoother and easier to use, and the interface is cleaner. Here’s a screenshot of the application in action:
I can even switch it to satellite view and see things like traffic patterns.
Hey, notice that text across the top of the screen? That’s right, I asked the program to show my location, so it’s activated the GPS receiver on the N95 and is attempting to get a lock on the position. Once it has a lock, then it zooms in and centers on your location (indicated by a blinking blue dot).
I love it.
It seems that Nokia is taking a page from the record industry and putting out all of their big releases on Tuesdays.
The second big release today was the developer beta for Nokia Web Widgets. This release is really meant for tech developers only, unless of course, you want to download and install a 336MB C++ SDK (requires login), but the point of it all is that pretty soon you’ll be able to install widgets on your S60 mobile phone.
What some people might not realize is that the web browser on S60 devices is based on WebKit, which is the same codebase that’s used on Safari on Mac OS X and the Dashboard widgets built into the Mac OS. So as I test, I decided to see how easy it would be to try and get my GuitarChords widget for Dashboard up and running on the new beta for S60.
After installing the developer beta, I had to make a few changes to the info.plist file, and disable the custom code for the GuitarChords Plugin, and voila!
The application showed up just fine in the emulator and when I clicked on it, the widget launched on the device!
Obviously, I’ve got to do some work on the UI to get it to scale properly, and I’ll probably need to re-think the interaction so that it’s more appropriate for mobile devices, but this isn’t a bad start for 20 minutes of work… More soon….
Device Status, some new software from Nokia Beta Labs showed up in my Bloglines this morning. I did a quick download and install, and I absolutely love it. It’s not rocket science, just a really nice diagnostic tool that shows you a lot of information about what’s on your device. Things like installed applications, network settings and (gasp!) the amount of free RAM in the system. It’s really nice to see these kind of tools being released publicly by the manufacturers themselves and I’m sure it’s going to help them tremendously when troubleshooting support issues.
I’d love it if a future version would have GPS information or the ability to actually edit your phone’s settings (all of the displayed data is read-only), but for a first release this is pretty slick and informative.
For my day job, I spend a lot of time on airplanes flying back and forth between the US and Europe. I don’t mind the travel and you’d be amazed at how much you can accomplish when you’ve got a laptop, a power supply, and a seven hour block of time with no distractions, no incoming emails or IM and no phone calls. A typical flight works like this:
At least it’s supposed to work this way. What happens is that tired people sitting in front of me lean their seat all the way back and I can’t open my laptop. No laptop means no fun, and I’m faced with six hours of bad movies, the inability to sleep, and the anxiety that I will have lots of work to do once I land and get off the plane. This experience is often referred to as Airline Laptop Syndrome. I’ve attached a diagram.
So how do you fix this problem? If you’re lucky, then you have a seat on the plane without someone who leans back, but I’d rather not leave it to chance. So what I’m considering instead is buying the Nokia Wireless Keyboard. This way I can use the keyboard with my N95 and do writing, emailing, Python programming, you name it. I can still listen to my music, and the phone is so small that I can get lots of work and emails done regardless of how far the person in front of me leans back. Sounds like a plan, right?
Well, no. You see, the Nokia Wireless Keyboard is out of stock everywhere. Nokia is out of stock, Dell wants you to wait 3-5 weeks, Amazon doesn’t have it, Buy.com has it backordered. I can’t imagine that this is in huge demand, and it’s been in production for over two years, so my guess is that it’s being discontinued, or else they’re going to come out with a new one soon.
Anyway, in the meantime I’ve started looking for alternatives and am curious if anyone has a recommendation? The iGo Stowaway keyboard says that it’s still being tested with the N95, and I’m hesitant to buy an older bluetooth keyboard off eBay as I’m not sure it will work with the N95.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Earlier this week, Nokia released another firmware update for the N95. One key feature included in this release is the support for Assisted GPS (A-GPS) on the device. Assisted GPS works by combining the normal GPS satellite functionality with your cellular network connection. The end result is that you supposedly get faster, more accurate readings, while also using up less battery life.
But how accurate is GPS on the N95? Does this new firmware really make a difference? I’ve started doing some very unscientific experiments to find the answer and wanted to share some results.
The tests were done using Nokia’s Sports Tracker program with my N95. Sports Tracker works by recording your GPS position over time and using that information to display details about your speed, location, and distance travelled. One of the very cool features of this program is that it allows you to export your running routes and GPS data to a number of different formats including Google Earth.
I had a few workouts saved in Sports Tracker before the recent firmware update, and last night I went on the same run, but this time with the new firmware update. How did they compare?
The GPS route captured using the latest firmware definitely stays closer to the path than previously, however, the route also seems to zig zag a bit more than before. This can be critical if you’re using Sports Tracker to track distances as it can lead to inaccurate data.
For instance, I did a speed walk from my house to my friend’s house and I did the walk in 24 minutes. According to the map, the distance between the homes is 1.75 miles (2.82km). However, when I walked there using Sports Tracker, it said the distance was 2.18 miles (3.5km). This seemed like a huge difference, but when you compare the results on a map you can see why.
It seems that over time, the small zig zags in the GPS readings add up to big differences in distance, and also the average speed. According to Sports Tracker, I did the walk to my friend’s house at a pace of 5.4 mph (8.7 km/h), when in reality the pace was closer to 4.4 mph (7.1 km/h). So if you’re using the program to train or to accurately predict a workout, you should be cautious when examining the results.
What have other N95 owners experienced with the accuracy of their GPS data?
In May, I went to Oregon on vacation, and in preparation for the trip I put together a custom map of restaurants and locations using Google Maps. This was pretty easy, and certainly helped me visualize where all the restaurants were in relation to each other, however, this wasn’t going to help me when actually walking around town. What I really needed was a way to get this Google Map onto my N95. That way I could look up the locations and directions using my mobile’s built-in mapping features.
Luckily, this wasn’t hard to do. Google Maps uses the KML format for all of its custom maps and the Nokia N95 uses the LMX format for landmarks, so all I had to do was come up with a converter from one format to the other. Both formats are just XML files, so I figured the easiest, most portable way to do the conversion was using XSLT.
And here’s the result.
(download also in the sidebar with a GeoRSS version too)..
Of course, you can’t really expect most people to download a KML file, download an XSL file, run them through an XSL processor, then upload the result to your device. So I created a simple web form that makes things a little easier for testing and development.
Just enter the URL for your KML or GeoRSS feed, and then select the type. Once you click the update button, it will generate a link where you can download the LMX file. If you want to download the LMX file straight to your N95, then you can do that using the generated DataMatrix code.
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This is definitely something developed in about an hour, and it’s only had limited testing, so there are no guarantees this will work for everyone, and I’m interested in any bugs you find or enhancements you’d like to see in the future.
So I’m interested in doing some remote still photography with the N95, but I’m having a hard time finding any tools that would allow me to do this. I have seen (and tried) numerous programs like ComVu and Mobiola which allow you to stream video from your camera to somewhere else, however, what I’m more interested in doing is taking advantage of the 5 MP camera to create higher quality still images rather than moving video.
I have tried playing around with Nokia’s Mobile Web Server, and this seems like it might work, but it also seems to be very slow… It’s taking on average around 15 seconds to process a 640×480 image using the built in Wi-Fi.
So I’m thinking that maybe I could roll my own program in Python, which is looking like the best option at this point, unless anyone out there has a recommendation for a program that would do this for me? Thanks…