I read a lot of blogs many of which are heavily devoted to technology, mobile, and the developers who love them.
This week I came across a new video series for N-Gage targeting developers and it’s strangely brilliant in a Finnish way. It’s called Sauna Talk because all the interviews, well, take place in a sauna. Beware though, clicking this link will force you to watch a lot of video content starring this guy.
The only thing that’s really lame about it is that there’s no RSS feed and there’s no way to easily share/embed the video. If there were RSS, I’d probably go back to the site more. And this totally needs to be on YouTube.
I’ve been doing some pro bono web work recently for Children’s Pressline, a youth news service that trains kids to be reporters and editors who write articles for mainstream media partners. It’s a non-profit open to any child in NYC, and currently their news stories are being run in the NY Daily News, Metro, and the Amsterdam News.
There’s not a mobile website, but just by having an RSS feed, that’s all you really need to get started reading the content on your mobile. If you’re reading this on your S60 device, you can just click on the RSS feed, and automatically subscribe to the latest news articles.
If you’ve got one of the newer S60 devices, though, then you can get a richer experience using this widget I made which pulls in the RSS feed and displays the latest news stories directly on your phone.
Total development time for this widget was less than an hour, and most of that time was just deciding which colors to use in the CSS. If you haven’t seen the Nokia Web Run Time, then I’d recommend checking it out as it’s going to be a great way to build quick applications for S60 devices. Right now, it’s only drawback is that it has almost no access to the device itself (e.g. GPS, Contacts), but Nokia has already announced these features will be included in the next major release.
If you want to see the source code of the widget, then just download the file to your PC and change the file extension from .wgz to .zip. Then open the zip file and all of the source code is there. It’s a very simple setup with one HTML page, and one XMLHttpRequest call to retrieve the RSS feed.
Let me know if you have any questions about how the widget was built, and I’m also interested to see how other people are using widgets not just for their personal use, but also to help promote causes they believe in.
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).
