This one is for Ubiquitous Computing for Mobile Devices…

Had to analyze a mobile application web site.

Here it is:

Groovr

Groovr is a tool to share where you are, what you are doing, and what it looks like to a bunch of friends or to the whole world using your cell phone.

You can check where your friends are, create places, add comments, upload pictures and create groups.

And if you have a camera phone you can upload your pictures as well.

The interface to browse through users/places and their pictures is very intuitive and smooth – simple and well labeled.

Maps integrated to Google Maps… adds a nice touch to the interface but could be more integrated like Platial, described further below.

And I did not find a “find friends” tool that will search my Yahoo or Google address book for example to see if I know anyone who already is a member…

In general – cool interface – not so novel idea – basically a blog that you upload from your mobile – well ok – the differential would be in that it is about where you are at the exact moment of your post.

Platial:

First of all I love the play on words of this product… play… spatial… place…

Basically a geo-tagging/blog/social network with tons of tools.

You can add places of your own, tag them, collect them into your own “map” as well as search other user’s places and maps…

You add buddies to your list so that you can monitor their activity…

You can upload photos from your computer, a web site, or your Flickr account…

You can create a MapKit – a tool you embed on your own web site.

Did not see any mobile part from it but I imagine that you could upload photos from your mobile into your account by sending it to a specified email account.

Nice and easy interface that does not jump around pages every time you update some information… is this what is called Web 2.0?

I also did a quick review of where I used to work in Brazil.

http://br.ringtones.com

Ringtones, wallpapers, and games for your mobile.

To purchase a product you send a command like “TOP” to the short code (1212 in Brazil) and receive a menu of songs. If it is your first time browsing, you will have to inform your cell phone’s make and model through a long series of SMSs between you and the service.

You finally receive the link to the ringtone – a WAP Push (SMS + url) that the phone recognizes as a web message. You open the link via your phone’s browser and download the content.

There is also a WAP interface which is much simpler to purchase with. It automatically detects your phone’s make and model and you are browsing through a site – not dealing with hundreds of messages back and forth.

One cool app is a tool that will automatically format a picture from your computer and deliver it to your phone (R$2.99 – US$1.40 – the price of a wallpaper)

The web interface is almost childlike and very simple… menu on the left and tabs on the top.

No social network or login – straight and pure retail.

That’s it for now 🙂

Wow… long time with no posts…

Well… let’s start with a recap.

SPiRT – Subconscious Picture Rating Tool
– Your eye ball, and not your mind rates the pictures you like best.

Frosty Home
– Roomba hack

CommLab Projects

Our team had to present a 20 minute reply to Michael Hawley‘s speech from the previous week.

The response has to be in the form of a 20 minute presentation to all of ITP’s first year students…

Here are some themes he mentioned during his presentation:

• Joining music and computer.
• Leaders like music.
• The joy of playing an instrument.
• Listening to music LIVE.
• Permanent memory of that moment/experience
• Instrument as a connector
• A creative company? Get a piano!
• Chopin had more market penetration than Microsoft has today
• Lizst – first “real” celebrity
• Kodak
• Member of the board
• Company that will probably suffer the most with this new technology revolution
• Audio spotlight ( http://www.holosonics.com/?g&gclid=CJWHxofx2YgCFU5xFQodtGZ-og)
• Toys of tomorrow ( http://toys.media.mit.edu/)
• LED – much more efficient way of lighting
• Counter-intelligence – intelligence on your conter top ( http://www.media.mit.edu/ci/)
• A home is not a Home without a piano
• Electronic nose – there are no “pixels” for taste, yet…
• Disney – problem of scent display is that you have to clean the air before the next batch of visitors came in
• Video camera + projector in one unit
• Levis – custom made jeans
• Dancing shoes
• Automated embroidering machine
• Sensors inside human body
• Net Weight and Overview – see graph of your weight
• Camera with GPS
• Photomosaic
• Tepha Net
• Mesh network of plant sensors disguised as rocks
• Book Mobile
• Print books on the spot
• Cycling fan
• Tour de France
• Lance Armstrong
• Imax movie got cancelled because of other film being released
• Buthan
• Invited by the Royal Family
• Population 700k
• 100 visitors/year – 1995
• Several languages
• Elevation – 300 to 1900ft
• Most preserved cultures of the world
• HP gave him 8ft long printer
• Framing with glass would cost 15k each photo
• Patent on how to assemble a book that size
• Play music on one laptop and other laptops will follow
• More fun to make music than listen to it
• His time: 1/3 corporate 1/3 student/teaching 1/3 music

Some links:

http://web.media.mit.edu/%7Emike/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0974246905/ref=nosim/0sil8
http://www.kottke.org/04/10/bhutan-book

*************************************************

In response to all that we decided to focus on the music/live performance segment of his speech…

Somehow the song Girl from Ipanema emerged as the one, and since I could sing in Portuguese I was chosen to sing 🙂

Here is the result… LARGE clip… at the end you can see our replies to Red and the audience with respect to how we came up with the idea, how we did it, intentions and so on…

Enjoy!

http://web.mac.com/lucaslongo/iWeb/Videos/Presentation%20Video.html

Final project for Physical Computing…

The objective was to hack a Roomba and do something with it… so the technological challenge came prior to the content/purpose of the product…

In any case, I think we were able to coordinate the final product into a simple/goofy but cohesive product after all:

http://web.mac.com/lucaslongo/iWeb/ITP/Frosty/Frosty.html

The Dutch in Thailand again! 🙂

DC motor control using H-bridge

DC motor control with potentiometer controlling speed

This week the homework for ICM (programming class) was NOT programming… we had to write a 2 page story about a day in the life of the future, 10 years from now…

Here it is:

Dear diary… feel strange actually calling this a diary… but somehow it makes me feel good to stick to some of that good and old terminology… put it down on “paper”… wow… really old school today!

In any case, it was a great day today! Well, except for encountering my ex-boss during my morning Sky Run… definitely time to change my every day route. Talking about change, seriously thinking about changing my AeroBike… seems like the vertical climb stabilizer unit is a little weak… can’t seem to pull off all of the usual flips and turns I enjoy doing.

Hum… let me see what actually happened. I might simply have been tired today.

Where is my Transfer Cap… oh, here it is…

***
// Daily brain dump initiated:
// Reading Core data:
… Vital Stats … done
… Sensorial Stimuli … done
… Visual Cortex … done
… Auditory Drums … done
… Vocal Chords … done
… Conscious Streams … done
… Sub-conscious Levels … done
… Emotional Fluctuations … done
//Compiling Core Data Presentation Level:
… Adjusting peak levels … done
… Synchronizing timeline … done
… Generating Video … done
… Generating Audio … done
… Generating Speech to Text … done
… Generating levels and graphs … done
// Thank you for using Daily Brain Scanner
***

So let’s start by looking at the sections where my heart rate peaked this morning. Scanning by visuals… Ah! Here it is… it was right when I was over the Bermuda region… Love doing the tricks over that area – all that dark blue ocean water and then suddenly, a small island surrounded by clear blue water.

So first loop – heart rate up there – usual muscle output levels – but something seems to be holding back my effective pedal strength.

Pulling up Sub-conscious streams… Yes, indeed… That’s it…

Seeing flashes of my ex-boss coming up to the Conscious Levels conflicting with some current job pressures and demands at the frontal lobe region.

Let me look up some documentation on sub-conscious levels interfering with muscle output… Here we go…

“Hello Lucas – from the sub-clip data transmitted – your brain command pulses to your activity muscles contain interfering noise. This noise seems to be coming from your mid-term sub-conscious memory fluctuations.”

Oh well… got to keep focused during my morning work outs.

Now lets select some cool stuff today to share with my friends on MyLife.me

I love this new version of the Daily Brain Scanner! It has some excellent new search and editing capabilities. Not to mention the 3D holographic displays it generates.

Selecting only video, audio and conscious streams from the speech I gave this morning to my students in the South Pole. Their research on solar polarization of ice caps is amazing.

Hum… will have to delete this whole section where my mind drifted off into my own research on data visualization… don’t want to bring that out into the open just yet.

***
//Initiate Upload
… Visual data … uploaded
… Speech to Text data … uploaded
… Conscious Streams … uploaded
// Synching timeline
// Generating Visualization holograms
// Committing and sharing with default distribution list and subscribers…
***

Perfect… now let’s check out what is going on with my friends… wonder if there are any cool dreams people posted today.

Here is the link to subscribe to my PodCast:

http://rss.mac.com/lucaslongo/iWeb/CommLab2/CommLab2/rss.xml

Go to iTunes, in the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast, and Paste the above URL…

Or, just go directly to the web version HERE.