Richard Spindler’s Weblog
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Also dieser Joseph von Westphalen reflektiert mein Lebensgefühl schon in erschreckend präziser Weise.
Introducing Mobeedo
Hi there,
as I am currently involved in the Mobeedo Project, I thought why not give you a little overview about what we are doing.
In short, Mobeedo is basically a platform that allows you to easily create your own location aware applications or websites for Mobile Phones.
Ok, and now for the longer version. What is location aware? Location aware applications generally can only work with phones that have GPS. Which means the phone knows where you are. And based on your location your phone, or any kind of software that runs on your phone can make certain guesses about what is interesting to you right now. For example, if you are currently in Innsbruck, you are likely not interested in events that take place in Vienna this evening. So based on the built in GPS, your phone actually knows that you are in Innsbruck, and therefore it can be clever and suggest: “Hey, you are in Innsbruck today, you totally have to see Death Rockers Incorporated at such and such.”
Ok, this is location aware.
Now what does this have to do with mobeedo and how does it help you to create location aware websites? Mobeedo gives you two tools, one for consumers, and one for producers. Currently the client, which is the tool for information “consumers” is only available for Google Android based mobile phones, and right now the only phone that qualifies as Android Phone is the HTC G1 or also known as T-Mobile G1.
And the “Mobeedo Client” is available through the Android Software Market, if you own such a device. What it does is it switches on the built in GPS, and shows you all the relevant information for your current position. Simple that is.
Now lets go the the Mobeedo Cockpit. This is much more interesting, because this is the tool that allows you to create your own Location aware websites. Technically you can also create complex web applications, but Mobeedo will only handle the “location aware” part, and the “application” part you would need to take care of yourself. Therefore we will stick to “location aware websites” for now.
Ok, go to the aforementioned cockpit, draw a shape on the map, and add a link to your website with information that is interesting whenever you or everyone else is physically inside this shape. If you do not have a website already for that information, you can enter it into a “wiki”-form inside the cockpit, now how convenient is this?
Sweet, now this should provide you with enough information, to get you started with working on your own location aware mobile websites.
Oh, and because the Mobeedo team is extra nice, we have already imported all of Wikipedia into the system, to give you something to look at, while waiting for the rest of the world to add its websites to Mobeedo.
Have fun,
Cheers
-Richard
DE … meaning Distraction Environment
Mark rambles about Notifications and Stuff, which brings me to a couple of ideas that are roaming my mind in respect to that kind of thing.
First of all, I do not like Notifications AT ALL. They are a major distraction, especially for me, as I am easily distracted. Therefore I’d suggest several countermeasures: First of all, minimize the number of notifications necessary. And second, make it possible to filter notifications. And filter also according to time. Say for example I only want to be notified of new Updates once a week, and not when they become available. I simple don’t care, and it just irritates me.
Another filtering possibility would be to restrict notifications to specific Virtual Desktops, say I always keep my email-tool on one Virtual Desktop, and I would like to see my email notifications only there.
Cheers
-Richard
Diplom Prüfungs Tag
In the train I was sitting next to a beautiful girl with a very very sad story. When we stood up to leave the train we looked into each others eyes and smiled. I was in love with her back then. I guess we will never meet again.
Life is infinitely beautiful, sometimes.
-Richard
Ponoko, no more!
This is it, can anyone imagine anything more humiliating?
I never really liked the ideas on ponoko, but this tops everything, I can no longer support this artform, ponoko I am removing you from my feed reader!
Lebensweisheit
Wearing a tie without a vest is absurd!
Public Service Announcement
Google Chrome on Linux
Stuff that matters:
- For the Linux/X11 platform both GTK+ and Qt are “native”.
- That was all of the arguments I saw against Qt, and neither was convincing.
- Which is fine, that’s his choice
- I just don’t see why he’s having to try to make up excuses after the fact.
- What do you mean “good Qt browser”?
- use Opera. It’s Qt
- but Google Earth still uses Qt in 2009
- I am also disappointed to see that gtk is being used for Chrome
- I also really had high hopes for the firefox qt port
- They use Qt menus and file dialogs
- I have to say that I’m disappointed that they chose GTK too
- I was looking forward to having a great browser that was Qt based.
- well that said i definately wont use chrome.
- I don’t think. I think that we needs a Webkit plugin for Konqueror
- Uuh can’t wait to start using konqueror with QtWebKit 4.5 mmmmmm…..weeebkit…*droooool*
Don’t you nerds have anything better to do? Like taking over the world for example?
Cheers
-Richard
Clever Email Tricks
Ok, my mailbox was getting a little bit crowded, so I created a structure of about 70 subfolders for my mails, and appropriate rules to filter everything where it belongs. Good Idea, … However, now I have to go through 70 subfolders to find and read new mail. Not so good.
But, …
no more, I wrote a little script that traverses my mailbox every evening, compiles a list of all the folders that contain unread mail, and emails me this list. Lets see how this works out over the next weeks.
Cheers
-Richard
PS.: Also: Using Thunderbird to Get Things Done
Hey Feedburner,
if you are so clever about Feeds, how come that all feeds that you process screw up my feed processing software, because all posts have the same posting time/date?