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Showing posts from August, 2011

Nice Google Chrome Failure

Ah look at this lovely msgbox Chrome has displayed to me. The chinese / east asian characters are extremely worrying. Anyone know why this happens? The interweb is just full of people asking the same question...

AndyPad launch

http://www.andypad.co.uk/ The AndyPad comes out tomorrow. It's essentially another very cheap tablet. I have played with a lot of very cheap tablets and always found them to be very poor. For some reason I am hoping for a little more from the AndyPad. Depending on general reviews from people I could be tempted to get one...?

Internal vs External DSL s

I listened to this Podcast this morning about domain specific languages.? http://javaposse.com/java-posse-361-roundup-11-internal-vs-external-ds-ls I won't give a round up of the podcast as it's worth listening to yourself. One interesting thing I thought about was that if you have top write a whole DSL just to desribe your business logic, couldn't you save time and write it in Gherkin instead. The business rules could then be the tests upon which the program works but you don't have to write a whole new language...

Acorn tablet (newspad)

Wow... This is the Acorn News pad from the mid 90s. Remind you of anything?....

Nokia Morph Concept

http://research.nokia.com/morph I wonder if research is still going into devices like the Nokia Morph phone. They had so many interesting hardware research projects but seem to be incapable of bringing anything to market. I would drop anything for something so futuristic.

Spinito - Bar dare game

I've just been messing about making a Windows Phone 7 app. It's based on an old dice game that some of my mates used to play. They had a small dice and it had a?weird?face on one of the sides. They called the face Spinito and when the dice landed on it, dares had to be completed. I can't remember whether it just got lost or the dares got too much (I seem to recall someone having to eat an old kebab from a public bin).? Anyway, this app sort of emulates that. It could either receive more dares over the air or you could add dares yourself and maybe even upload the dares for others to download...

The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Online Marketing Efforts | Copyblogger

via copyblogger.com Sonia makes an interesting point here. Don't put all your eggs in one basket when I comes to online marketing. I am not sure that many businesses do though. I certainly don't know of that many. I suppose for a company, if you are investing heavily in custom software that is linked with Facebook / Twitter (or other) it's important to ensure that your software isn't tightly coupled to that particular social media route. If you are so tied in to using Facebook that it's going to cost thousands to move it to another place then you are at risk. If you work an abstraction above that you may be able to be saved from some of the fuss of a potential move onto another platform and you won't need to retrain content creators etc...

Glance - Cell Phone by Alan Gerardo Far?as ? Yanko Design

via yankodesign.com An interesting design. Not revolutionary but more realistic. I reminds my slightly of the HTC Legend ( http://www.htc.com/europe/product/legend/overview.html) which wasn't really popular in the UK. Of course that didn't have the cool screen on the bottom. I like the curved screen at the bottom with the contextual menus. For me the icing on the cake for this would be some sort of Colour EInk display. Or even a hybrid screen if the refresh rate isn't fast enough (which it currently isn't).

Interactive Walls - Hospital Navigation and MORE!

I am big on Interactive walls at the moment for some reason. I saw a cool video on Vimeo a week or so ago that got me thinking and I always like the interactive wall panels on Star Trek that could direct you to any part of the ship. With this in mind it would be most excellent if you were able to implement the idea of interactive wall panels in a hospital. The Queens Medical in Nottingham is massive and finding wards can be a complete pain. It took me and my wife a good while to find out where the natal unit was hidden as there were no clear signs (that we could see...). It would be great if you had a smartphone app that you could type in the ward you would like to get to and it lit up the way for you to get there. You could even use an Augmented Reality system to guide you there, as you lift your camera up the directions would appear on the walls until the door you needed to get to. It could even be used to show you were various shops would be, cash points, exits, all sorts!? I suppo

Interactive shopping boards for commuters

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJVoYsBym88] @Rixyboy pointed me towards this that he had spotted in the Metro. What a cool idea. I don't know if I would be so easily sold on something that I can not touch and get excited about but for quick shops on the way home this would be brilliant. Even better would be if the screens were interactive so that when you came close to the screens they could tailor themselves based on things you had bought before, your lifestyle, things your friends had bought or based on the history of what you had bought, when you would be most likely to need it again. For example it could advertise milk to you based on the sell by date of the previous milk sold to you. AMAZING!

Psion EP10 PDA

I hadn't realised Psion have been trying to come back into the lower cost rugged handheld market... Seems a little late for this offering now. Companies like Symbol/Motorola and Intermec seem to have this tied up. It's a pity the rugged market hasn't moved past Windows Mobile 6.5.3, although from experience when moving your app from pocket pc / windows mobile 5 up you tend to inherit the nicer looking skin of 6.5.3 by default which makes your app look quite nice. Open Projects software had it's own custom updater which got the latest version if needed whilst downloading data to the handset. The nice thing about the latest handheld OS's is the built in updating through the marketplace although I don't know how the market place updates would work with enterprise software... It's nice to Psion Harware though even if it isn't in it's EPOC manifestation. I got my first Psion at 16 (Psion Sienna) and went on to acquire as many models as possible. My fave w

eMachine ER1401 Desktop - Desktops

via ebuyer.com This is an excellent price for a small desktop. Whilst not super powerful it would be an excellent replacement to someones aging computer. Better yet, you could kit your office out with these if you were running a thin client environment. I wonder how much per unit the council / government pay for such a set up...

My Cycling Mission

I would love to do this bike ride. Cycle over to Holyhead and then down to Newbridge in Kildare (I'll rope at least one cousin into it from here). After that it will be a quick trip across Ireland stopping in some pubs along the way. Ah it'd be a great laugh. I don't have the spare annual leave, the cash or the fitness at the moment but these are all things that can be obtained. Huzzah! I still think due to baby and various friends getting married abroad next year it won't be until 2013 that I can do this. I think that is plenty of time to get my fitness up (and lose it then get it back again) and get some money (then piss it up the wall then save again). I probably just need to get some accomplices. Luckily I normally have a steady queue of foolish friends ready to do stupid things.... [googlemaps https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Haddon+Crescent&daddr=Barrettstown+Lawns+to:Unknown+road&hl=en&geocode=FQZYJwMdQhrt_w%3BFXWoKwMdDU-Y_w

The new ?Who?s Suing Who? map of the Android world ? Eurodroid

via eurodroid.com Makes for a very depressing read.... there are some interesting ones I hadn't noticed in there before and I was also impressed that no one except Oracle are trying to sue Google directly.

Augmented Reality.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtnNgRSu4gE] I saw this post from my boss Phil. I really like the idea. I like the augmented reality on the phone but really I would like some sort of Augmented Reality glasses (even contacts perhaps) that brought up loads of different information layers. I'd rather not have the hyper augmented reality imagined in the video below but you can imagine the possibilities. The future can't come quick enough! [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/8569187 w=560&h=345] Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo .

The Demise of the Arcade Game

Reading this article on the demise of the arcade games was rather amusing. There is no mention of the zany prices they expect you to pay for an arcade experience. One afternoon in the arcades could literally cost you the price of a home console or game boy... It would be great if they could revamp the arcade. I would expect no less than serious 3d and a feast for the eyes! Maybe even a trip back to virtual reality land?...

Real Life Syndicate Wars

A friend sent me this picture so I can not credit it's source.. If I am not mistaken, those little health bars are from the original Syndicate Wars. Correct me if I am mistaken!

Open Source Off Site Construction

I love the idea of Open Source off-site construction. I have just been reminded about it today from seeing various posts about the site  http://wikihouse.cc/ . This doesn't seem to contain any real useful information at the moment however... Similar to the way that software developers build their skills in their free time and add projects to their CVs, this seems a great way for various designers, engineers and other construction proffesionals to get experience, help others and develop professionally. Collaborative building development could start off with someone starting a project idea off, even if it's just a cool Garden shed that is energy self sufficient by creating some basic drawings and a project outline. One or two draughtmen could sign on to do the initial drawings, sketchup might suffice but I think something like Inventor or old school AutoCad would be better for this type of drawing. Others could then check these drawings out from the sites source control, make cha

BBC News - Inflation figures to raise rail fares by 8% average

via bbc.co.uk I love this story. Having used to work on the Railway on the maintenance and construction side of things I cannot convey the INSANE amount of money they waste with over hyped procedures, general loss, strange management techniques and general bureaucracy. They dare not look inside themselves.