#“First Leaked Screenshot of Unity 2 on Ubuntu 12.04”
Given the direction that Ubuntu is heading in, this is the logical conclusion.
16 Nov 2011, 16:16
16 Nov 2011, 10:14
#“Happy 10 Years XBOX”
XBOX users also have access to arguably the best media center application on any platform. XBMC started because the XBOX needed a good media player, but it evolved into something so much larger. Streaming media files from the network with library organization, weather support, XBOX game trainers, a game/program launcher, and an entire build of python to run a plethora of scripts which can be created by anyone. XBMC has been unsurpassed by many other media applications, some of which you must pay for.
via xbmc4xbox.org
I always love it when CE devices last way beyond their intended obsolescence date. We still have two XBOXes which are used daily as XBMC media players.
Both bought secondhand, both hacked, both utterly brilliant. The most recent version of XBOX4XBMC was only released a while back.
We’ll keep using them until the majority of video becomes MP4, which unfortunately they usually don’t have enough welly to play.
16 Nov 2011, 10:14
#“ThinkUp - Why Gina Trapani is an absolute bloody legend.”
ThinkUp is a free web application that archives and analyzes your social media life. You’ll need a web server to run it on, and it’s geared for people and organizations who are very active on social networks and have lots of conversations they want to track, archive, and analyze.
via smarterware.org
Installing it now.
07 Nov 2011, 21:14
#“Atari’s Greatest Hits - Android”
Free for Missile Command (a game I never mastered). $9.99 for the lot.
Nothing else needs to be said.
Oooh, just remembered, runs to plug MHL cable into phone so he can play Missile Command on 37” LCD TV.
Just like the Atari 2600 I never owned with the joysticks I always hated.
31 Oct 2011, 16:46
#“Our Plan to Stream Live Music in the Car Fell Flat”
I connected up our Zoom Router and O2 Dongle to the cigarette lighter via an old DC inverter this morning in prep for our drive from Rosslare to Bandon.
The idea was that Oisn and Oscar could connect to it using their phones and then stream their choices of songs from YouTube etc to the car stereo over A2DP Bluetooth for free. Unfortunately before we'd even got out of Rosslare I detected the smell of burning. I touched the inverter and it was roasting hot. I quickly unplugged. Ah well, next time I won''t use a cheap 4 year old one of eBay, I'll use the one I got in Lidl recently.
On our last drive we could get 3G over large chunks of the N25. Add in some Google Music offline storage and buffering and we have a very usable solution.
Actually, on the topic of power, any chance the car manufacturers of the world could agree a new socket standard for 12V that doesn't require you to re-seat the connections every day? The current cigarette light socket design vies with SCART as the worst physical standard ever invented.
24 Oct 2011, 13:39
#“Seeing 1’s (not +1’s) of Google+ Updates about #aras11”
Check it:
Apart from Slugger O'Toole, it's tumbleweed.
On the upside, Google+ now effectively has hashtags and decent search on them. Stick an API on that and finally Twitter would some technical competition. Not sure anyone will use it tho.
20 Oct 2011, 16:26
#“Opportunity for Android Open Accessory + App Inventor to be the new Lego Mindstorms?”
Our eldest daughter will be 8 shortly. She loves Lego and also found our first App Inventor session to be pretty straightforward. One idea I came up with for her birthday present was a Lego Mindstorms kit. Then I checked the price: 279! Is Lego insane? The control box alone is 162. No wonder it's been such a flop.
I then thought maybe there are some Arduino kits or Android Open Accessory kits for younger kids but I haven't been able to find any. Even if there was, development would be in C or Java.
It strikes me that the time is ripe for a low-cost robotics kit for kids based on theAndroid Open Accessory standardthat can be controlled by Google App Inventor (it already supports Mindstorms). You can get an Android phone for 99 in the UK PAYG. Heck, you can get crappy resistive-screen Android tablets for less.
Or maybe Lego can get its head out of its ass and get back to their roots of providing useful educational toys for people of all means, not just the well-off. They should retire Mindstorms, move to an inexpensiveAndroidplatform and watch sales sky-rocket.
01 Oct 2011, 15:20
#“Ois\u00edn, aged 9, may have just invented the next generation of treadmill”
We were watching Modern Family last night and the subject of running/fitness came up for some reason. My wife and I are doing the Amsterdam Marathon (Half in my case) and Oisn had the genius idea that treadmills should be able to imitate any route by changing the incline as you run. Then he suggested showing a map too. We riffed for a few minutes and came up with the ultimate treadmill which need only be a few Euro more than anything already on the market.
So the treadmill would have a microUSB input obeying the Android OpenAccessorystandard. You would have a cradle to hold an Android Tablet or phone which would be running a massively expanded version of CardioTrainer or RunKeeper. You input "Amsterdam Marathon 2011" on the Android device and you would get a Google Maps Streetview display of the route. The app would then use the Open Accessory input to set the treadmill at whatever your hoped-for speed was and change the incline to match the real route as you progress along. You would then have a very clear idea of what you need to do in order to hit a particular time.
I'd kill for something like that. You could even split the screen between Streetview and whatever TV/movies you normally watch when running on the treadmill.
The only things it couldn't do are downhill, wind and rain. That would be v2.0 :-)
Oisn wants to know when he'll get his first check from whoever runs with this idea. He has a 3DS on his shopping list.
29 Sep 2011, 14:37
#“My Latest Work of Sugru Genius”
I'm a big fan of Lidl keyboards and mice. They are now just as reliable as anything Microsoft or Logitech does and much cheaper. However whilst their wireless receivers have been getting smaller and smaller over the years they have also been getting more and more fragile. One of them shattered completely on me recently so of course I reached for the Sugru.
In my enthusiasm to create something with a bit of character, I forgot that it was supposed to sit inside the mouse when travelling. Ah well, I'll take a smile over usefulness any day.
26 Sep 2011, 13:05
#“We Need a Computer History Museum for Web Apps like Facebook and Twitter”
I was just bitching on Facebook about the recent changes and one of the FB guys mentioned that he has seen the original Harvard version of it. I suddenly realised we need some way of capturing the activity and behaviour of important web-apps over time. We all remember the cultural terrorism of Carol Bartz in Yahoo shutting down GeoCities. How do you avoid the same fate for Buzz, Friendster, Orkut etc?
I'm not talking about getting your data out, I mean having some way of seeing what these apps did and how they did it. Some sort of EC2 instances running read-only "playback" or live demos of these apps?
Wouldn't it be wonderful to see the evolution of Twitter over time, beyond static screenshots and HTML snapshots like the Wayback Machine.
Yeah, I know there are gigantic technical issues but I really treasure having ZX Spectrum emulators that let me play Manic Miner and my own games 30 years later. Surely people in the future would like to do similar with the major webapps?