Jul 05 2009
Evil Mad Science
Check out what the people at Evil Mad Science are doing these days. “Do it yourself and open source hardware for art, education, and world domination.” Very cool for those that want to tinker with electronics!
Archive for the 'Cool tech' Category
Jul 05 2009
Trip to Seoul?
OK, I’m out to win this trip to Seoul, and had some fun writing about “The key features of the phone of the future.” in 200-300 words for the entry! I decided to go ‘first person’ to try to make it accessible. Here is what I submitted:
My new phone connects to everything around me, it’s got a great display for viewing information, and lets me use voice commands or a mini keyboard for privacy. Features I want are immediately available to me from the net, yet within all this, I retain control over my personal information.
Light sensors capture video, pictures, and light levels. They act as eyes for applications that do things like read a barcode, recognize a face, or identify a flower I’m looking at. The sound sensor is great for recording voice notes, but also recognize music and people, and accept voice commands. My phone knows it’s location, which is leveraged in different ways by the many applications at my finger tips.
I use it as a wireless credit card, but my favorite use is the Body Monitor extension. I stick a body monitor patch on my skin and my phone tracks my heart rate, respiration, temperature, blood pressure, glucose level, and oxygen level. Some great cycling software uses my changing location, my vitals, and an intelligent coach app to give me feedback and encouragement as I train. I have a friend with diabetes, and another undergoing chemotherapy. Both use patches on their skin to monitor blood levels, adjust medication, and allow review by medical technicians. Imagination is pretty much the limit for types of extensions that will be available for my phone; think home, office, the mall, and the factory floor.
I make voice and video calls, but what I really have is a personal technology access point. By the way, you should check out my screen. It’s usable as one side of my credit card sized ‘access point’, but a flip of the cover and it folds out to four times that size with a mini keyboard for private texting!
Mar 09 2009
Going to the Cloud
OK, so time to try to walk the talk. Why should my files, emails, calendar and such be tied to a physical device? So here’s what I’m doing.
Files: I’m using Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service along with JungleDisk’s virtual disk software. What does this mean? All my stuff gets stored (encrypted) at a service in the internet, but it looks like a local hard drive to any computer I connect it to (and is available via a browser).
Email, Contacts, and Calendar: I’ve moved my contacts and calendar to GMail, and setup GMail to check all my existing email accounts and consolidate them there. One interface, access to all the stuff, great search and archive capability. Privacy? Well, I pulled some bank account info out of a couple contacts (that shouldn’t have been there anyway). Beyond that, do I really do anything that secret? And with a last name like Nassar, maybe completely open is better! I’ve got it push-syncing to and from my iPhone – good bye Apple Mobile Me.
Basic productivity apps: Hello Google Docs – word processing, spreadsheets, etc.
Misc notes, links, and encrypted stuff (like bank account info and passwords): I’m using a service called Evernote, which is great for clipping and storing things, and allows encryption of any data I desire. Same deal, install the software on any computer I sit down at, and have full access. It also works on my iphone and the web (but web doesn’t show encrypted info).
I can sit down at any computer and do email/contacts/calendar, and with a quick download/install of JungleDisk and Evernote, I’m pretty much in business. Because I’m a techie, depending on what is on a computer I’m using, I might need to download and install a text editor, sftp software, or even a development environment – then SVN in the source.
Time will tell, but I’m hopefully in the process of eliminating my tether to a specific computer. This is pretty cool!
Mar 08 2009
blogging
So I’m realizing that keeping status up on FaceBook, and twittering, has taken the place of blog posts for me for the past few months. Interesting…
Nov 03 2007
Fun with SMS TextMarks
Last year I wrote an AIM Bot that could respond to informational requests (meeebot if you want to check it out). I just adapted some of it’s features to work with the TextMarks service. Check it out!
Send a text from your phone to the short code 41411 with one of these words in the body: answ (magic 8 ball), fuzzy (a compliment), insp (inspirational quote), insult (well, you know), shudi (should I?), spell (check spelling), thes (thesaurus lookup), weat (weather for a zip code), words (dictionary lookup).
Fun with a phone! My daughters wrote the compliments, insults, and yes/no answers…
Mar 19 2007
When Web Sites Become Web Services
Great article over at Read/WriteWeb. I’m not sure I’d call it “Web 3.0″, maybe more just good use of what’s been called Web 2.0 for a while.
It’s about combining features from multiple services to create your own site based ecosystem for your specific purpose as a site.
Jan 24 2007
Meeebot
I’ve still been tweaking and playing with Meeebot – an AIM Bot (send an IM to Meeebot on AIM) that I wrote with Kathryn and Audrey. Based on the logs, people are having lots of fun with it – particularly getting into arguments! Here are some bot related posts I’ve seen lately…
GregsBlog,Tech|Bumped, Chris on MySpace, iMessengr.com, orangelounge, Loud, Obnoxious Asshole, fuzzychan, JackieDog, Danny on MySpace, jrc.org, Julie on MySpace, Foiled Again, BigBlueBall
Sep 26 2006
Runners World
Runner’s World is launching “Wireless Run Tracker” – powered by Bones in Motion. A huge step for our company. We may make it on the map yet!
Take your training to the next level with Wireless Run Tracker. Record your speed, distance, route and caloric burn during your run through the convenience of a GPS enabled cell phone.
- Upload data such as mile splits, speed, distance, and calories burned to your PC
- Real time pace information displayed on your cell phone
- Access hundreds of running routes
- Track your progress online
- Create routes on Google maps
- Blog your results instantly
Sep 21 2006
Big milestone for Bones in Motion
We’ve been working for a very long time to be one of the first third party LBS (GPS) applications on the Verizon Wireless service. BiM Active is availabe on Verizon phones as of this week! We’re already on Sprint and Nextel.
Why is BiM Active interesting? Check out the recording of a snowboard run below… made with a mobile phone! And the mainstream uses, like running, hiking, cycling, aren’t bad either!