Well … while checking out Logogle, I then found:
People are having *way* too much fun! 🙂
More ‘oogles’ …
Reply
Monthly Archives: November 2005
My Own Google Homepage!
Yeah … I know about the personalized Google home page … but check out this one! Scottoogle!
It’s actually kinda funny. I found a link to Logogle … and you can create a similar “home page” using any words. The net is always full of fun new adventures!
Novell buys Onward Novell Software (India)
While working for Novell I had the pleasure of visiting India, and the
additional pleasure of meeting Harish Mehta. Harish is the
managing director of Onward Technologies, and was half owner of Onward
Novell Software (India) … splitting the venture with Novell.
I was glad to hear that Harish has now sold his half of the venture
back to Novell, and allowing Novell to take control of the
entity. I’m sure that Harish did well in the transaction, and I
look forward to contacting him to see what he is working on
lately. I actually think that it is a good time to get out of the
relationship with Novell. Now we’ll see how well Novell is able
to capitalize on the investment!
Novell takes control of India venture.
The software maker bets on the emerging technology market for Linux
software by acquiring the other half of Onward Novell in India. [CNET News.com]
Fixes to the RadioAtomBridge tool for Radio
As of tonight, I have fixed two more issues with the RadioAtomBridge tool.
Last night I was able to get SSL/TLS working to post to Blogger.com …
since they have now started to enforce requiring this. I also
fixed the links on the events page so that they will now take you to
your Atom feed for the appropriate blog.
Tonight I thought I would do a couple of other tweaks. First, I
added a quick fix that will include the date and time as a title if you
do not specify one. Blogger requires a title on every post.
Second, I did a fix to the prefs page for RadioAtomBridge to account
for category names that might have a ‘.’ in them. The way the
code had been written it failed on my categories where I used a domain
name for a category.
I also spent some time learning how the prefs page works, and now I
think that I am going to add a new option for SSL/TLS enabled disabled
to keep the tool working with any potential Atom site. It’s going
to take some time for that fix.
I’m still pushing to get v3.2 out the door in the next few days.
This prefs page fix is the last one that I want to address for now.
One thing that it fun is that I am still learning more and more about
Usertalk, and the underlying architecture of Radio and tools. Not
sure its useful in the long run, however its fun to experiment
with! 🙂
Motion Tracking with a Webcam
In the worlds of ‘virtual reality’ and ‘augmented reality’ one of the
important technologies is ‘head tracking’ … knowing the orientation
of the users head. If you want to create an artificial world, or
add an object in the field of view of the user, you often want that
object to ‘sit still in space’ allowing the user to move around the
virtual object. In the past many of the systems were based on
gyros, or accelerometers, or even some ‘base station’ that the user is
near.
In recent years there is a lot more work going on with ‘video head
tracking’ or the use of a camera attached to the head of the user, and
using software analysis of the image being sensed to determine movement
and rotation. I have seen some amazing demonstrations of using
this technique in the wearable computer realm, and the software is
becoming more and more available.
This article caught me off guard as the develop is now using this same
technique to create a virtual version of the ‘wooden labyrinth’
game. This is an impressive application of the technology … all
implemented on off the shelf hardware! What you can do with a
Tablet PC, a Webcam, and some software!
Casey hacked a Tablet PC with a Webcam to recreate wooden labyrinth game.
I had to get this one in. Phillip Torrone wrote me and said this Tablet PC hack is something I had to check out. I’m glad I did. Casey Chesnut did /cameraFlow. I wanna see this working.
Awesome.
Public Distributed Sensor Networks
I remember talking with Phil Windley
about one of his ideas to leverage OnStar
as a distributed sensor network. He posited that all of these
cars tend to have temperature sensors, some form of GPS, and the
wireless communications … they could be used to create a nationwide
temperature map.
Now here is another article about taking this further to use cell
phones as the source of distributed sensor information. Very cool
idea. Everyone carrying the right kind of cell phone could opt-in
to providing sensor data to one or more servers. A huge variation
on SETI@Home!
Let’s see … what would someone pay me to participate in this? And protect my identity …
Saving the World With Cell Phones.
Scientists work to turn mobile phones into a distributed network
capable of measuring pollution levels — and possibly detecting
biological weapons before they can be launched. By Rachel Metz. [Wired News]
RadioAtomBridge update coming
I really have put off working on my RadioAtomBridge for a while
now. It worked for me, and that’s what counts … right? 🙂
Well, over the last week, it stopped working for me … and I was
frustrated. I haven’t seen any comments on the blog about it, and
so I figured that it was probably ok, but the more that I looked into
the problem it appears that there were two issues:
- It appears that Blogger/Google have lived up to their promise of
requiring SSL/TLS to secure the ATOM posting. This really does
make sense, and I’m not against … I just didn’t want to have to edit
code again. But I have, and I am now testing this new version
that I worked on last night. If all goes well, I’ll post a new
version for people in the next day or so. Oh and another note …
this is slowly becoming the Radio Blogger Bridge
again since I am slowly hardcoding some things to work with Blogger,
and removing some options. I might see how easy it is to add an
option for SSL/non-SSL … but don’t count on it. - I also found that Blogger will not allow you to create a post
that does not include a “title”. So if you post, and the title is
empty, it causes a java:Null Pointer Exception on their server.
Wonderful. I haven’t yet fixed this, but am looking at what I
might do … maybe force a default title of the time and date?
Anyhow … it was fun to get into Radio again … and it was also a
pain. I hate that I have not yet found a fully supported blogging
tool that really does what I want it to do. But I am working on
it!
Keep your eyes on the Radio Atom Bridge blog for update news!
Pandora … music by the masses
Ok … this is a cool web site: Pandora
I know that it might be old, but I just found it and it’s pretty
cool. You enter a artist or song and it begins to stream music to
you that they feel fits that “sound”. The best part is that you
can then vote if you feel that a song applies or not … so that your
feedback continues to mold the genre of music.
I’m listening now for a bit. It would be cool if they did a “custom podcast” that I could download.
iPod is an experience, not a product!
I now own an iPod … and I can now understand a lot of the buzz about
them. It really is amazing. Not the product, but the experience
that Apple has created. I have to admit that I underestimated
what Apple has created. I kept thinking “Yeah … another MP3
player, but a little cooler looking.” But after having it and
using it for one week I am thoroughly impressed.
I’m working on ways to integrate the iPod with our product, and so I
got one to begin to do the research. I wasn’t sure if I would use
it much or not, but I am now hooked. It is so well thought
through … again, not the iPod device,
but the entire solution of iTunes and the iPod. I am now using
both of these on a daily basis, and the synergy between the two
products is well thought out and polished. Apple has done a lot
of thinking about all of the details.
I do have a few complaints … but they are very few. What I did
like is that I can now add iCal and vCard objects to my iPod and they
are accessible via the UI. I found a lot of information from this link about iPod synchronization sent to me by a friend.
Anyhow … expect me to post more about my iPod experience … so far it’s amazing!
More gaming platforms
A friend of mine sent me these two links for some new gaming projects. Or they are new to me. 🙂
Alice is a “3D Authoring system” … I haven’t yet had time to look at it. GameMaker is “a program that allows you to make exciting computer games, without the need to
write a single line of code”.
Both of these look interesting and I’m going to go and check them out.