So I’ve read a couple of articles lately about the new Google Maps that’s available for the Nokia N95. This is particularly exciting because they now offer Transit directions in some cities. Being able to get this type of information on your mobile is wonderful.
So I installed the app, and noticed that this updated version of Google Maps has a new icon. One that looks surprisingly like the Nokia Maps icon. Here’s some screenshots:
Nokia Maps icon
old Google Maps icon (compass)
new Google Maps icon (ripoff)
I have a hard time believing that this new icon is just a coincidence… Thoughts? Is Google trying to intentionally confuse users so that they run Google Maps on their phones instead of Nokia Maps?
So I recently purchased a Chumby. According to UPS, it’s on its way here, and in anticipation of its arrival I’ve started reading about how to make your own Chumby widgets. Turns out, the widgets are all just 320×240 FlashLite 3.0 movies.
This is wonderful news.
Why? Because my phone also runs Flash Lite 3.0. So now if I’m going to go to the trouble to make a Chumby widget, I can design it to work on the Chumby and on my Nokia device. As a quick test, I grabbed some of the existing Chumby widgets and tried to see if they would run on an N82.
Out of the box, two widgets worked great — the MTV News widget and the Chuck Norris Facts widget. Some of the other widgets like weather and NY Times launched correctly, but I need to pass them some configuration details so they know what content to download from the web. That’s the next step.
Bottom line is that if you have an Nseries device that runs FlashLite 3.0, then check out Chumby as a source for games and things that you can load straight on your device. And in case you need proof, here’s Chuck Norris Facts running on an N82.
Yeah, yeah the video is kind of fuzzy, so here’s what it looks like on a real Chumby.
Today I was downloading the new Channels Media Service application from Nokia Beta Labs to test it out and see what it has to offer. The interface is pretty clean, but one of the nicest things I noticed is that Channels makes use of the N95’s built in accelerometer. I recently showed you the Lightsaber demo, but Channels automatically orients the UI based on how you’re holding the device, similar to what Apple always shows off in their iPhone commercial. Here’s a demo of it in action.
When the N95 came out it didn’t have this functionality. In fact, it didn’t even talk about the accelerometer. But you know what? Nokia is slowly releasing software updates for this device, and they’re slowly showing people more and more things that can be done with this device. Every time there’s a new firmware update or I find a cool new application, it’s like getting a whole new phone. And I’m just not seeing that with the iPhone. Web apps? Yeah, they’re okay and can be helpful, but they’re more like widgets that sit on top of an internet connection rather than something that truly integrates with the device. The N95 is showing me more and more that it’s retaining its value over time, whereas the iPhone price drop just says that it was overpriced to begin with.
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:
ZXing is an open source project, and will also be available as a standalone J2ME application for use on existing phones.
This is an early version of the reader, so don’t expect it to completely blow away some of the proprietary readers out here. As he put it, the goal is to set the minimum standard for open source bar code readers.
As it is an open source project, they’re actively looking for programmers to contribute
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).
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.
