Chuck Falzone

Big Day for AR-on-Android News

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:05:47 -0500

Lots of augmented reality news yesterday:

The makers of Wikitude, an AR app that’s been around since I got my G1, proposed an open markup language for AR.
Layar announced that it’ll be supporting 3D objects in its AR app.
And two new AR apps. I tried both quickly: SomaView is a lot like Layar; GeoVector’s World Surfer reminds me of Google’s Places Directory app, but with a lot more polish.

Ustream vs. Qik: A Video Webcasting Smackdown

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:04:00 -0500

Ustream vs. Qik: A Video Webcasting Smackdown:

I wrote this piece for AndroidGuys.com that they posted today. I’ll be trying to submit something to them about once a week.

El Smok-o Cheap-o: A $12 Smoker

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:31:00 -0500

Inspired by my brother-in-law Bill’s forays into the art of smoking meat, I built myself a smoker this weekend. My plan was to follow Alton Brown’s plans for a terracotta smoker made from a couple of large flower pots, a hot plate, and a pie plate to hold the wood. But I saw two issues with that design:

You have to remove the meat and the cooking grate to add more wood.
$50 in materials to build the thing? I figured I could come up with something cheaper.

And then it hit me: I’ve already got a made-for-the-outdoors, heat-proof box: my grill. I cranked the charcoal platform to its lowest position, and set up a hot plate ($11, including tax, at Walgreens) on it. Ran the cord out the side to an extension cord. Pie plate ($1 at Big Lots) full of wood chips on the hot plate. Meat on the grill above the pie plate. The coup de grace: my grill has a door in the front to add more coals, making it easy to add more wood chips without disturbing the meat or even opening the top. So for a mere $12, I had myself a working smoker.

We enjoyed some delicious proof-of-concept smoked pork chops for dinner tonight. They took about two hours and were delicious. More ambitious projects (whole chicken, pork butt) are in the works.

Carrots In Order: I got a little OCD with the carrots we...

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 23:06:26 -0500

Carrots In Order:

I got a little OCD with the carrots we picked today

Veggies from the Garden 1: Early Girl tomatoes, yellow stripey...

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:45:54 -0500

Veggies from the Garden 1:

Early Girl tomatoes, yellow stripey tomatoes (not sure the variety), cherry tomato, purple bell pepper, and yellow squash

Mythical Creatures via kottke

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:37:57 -0500

Mythical Creatures

via kottke

Wikitude: Crowdsourcing Augmented Reality

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:06:00 -0500

Wikitude: Crowdsourcing Augmented Reality

Google: We'll give you $100 to try AdWords

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:22:00 -0500

Look what just popped into my inbox, an offer of $100 in credit if I open up a Google AdWords account:

And you know what? For $100, I’ll think of a reason to take them up on it!

I’d love to send everyone there to take advantage of it, too, but the email included a single-use coupon code— I don’t think you’ll be able to sign up unless you get an email of your own from them.

Yum, sliders for lunch!: -Chuck

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 18:18:17 -0500

Yum, sliders for lunch!:

-Chuck

Comment on blogs without leaving Google Reader

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:24:54 -0500

I’ve been using the Better GReader addon for Firefox for quite a while, but I just realized that one of its features allows you to leave comments on the original blog post you’re reading without leaving Google Reader.

Of course, GReader has its own commenting system, and it’s been blowing up lately. But often you want to participate in the comments around a post on the blog itself, pass along info to the author, etc. In the past I’ve middle clicked on the title to open the original up in a new tab.

But Better GReader’s Preview feature lets you load the source page in a frame within Reader. It’s activated by clicking the “Preview” button at the bottom of the post (to the right of “Send To”). Once the source loads, scroll to the bottom, and you can read and leave comments:

Better GReader also gives you the option of automatically previewing everything within reader, but I prefer to just use it selectively.

Google Listen: Android App Review

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:02:44 -0500

Yesterday, Google Labs released an Android app for finding and listening to podcasts and other audio called Google Listen.

Tried it out just a bit so far, and I have to say, it’s impressive. It works great. Streaming is smooth, and you also have the option of saving to the SD card for offline listening. There were little, extremely minor hiccups when I ran other apps while listening, but hardly worth mentioning. I was on 3G, but in a spot where I don’t get the strongest signal in the world.

While you’re listening to a podcast, you can hit Menu and then Share to get a full slate of sharing options, including apps you’ve installed with that capability. So for me, I can share podcasts via Gmail, SMS, Twitter (via Twidroid), Delicious (via Beelicious) and Tumblr (via aTumble). Pretty great!

With Listen, you can subscribe to search results rather than individual feeds. It’s a great idea—like Google Alerts for podcasts—and works well for niche topics; I’m happy with the search results I got for “Android” and have subscribed to them.

If you’re looking for a particular show rather than a topic, the results will appear too broad. For example, If I search for “This American Life,” sure enough, the first result is the latest episode of that show. But all the rest of the results are other NPR shows that are not TAL. But this is easily remedied: tapping on the episode of the feed you’re interested in will take you to a detail page, where you can bring up more episodes of the same and subscribe to that specific feed.

What is missing is the ability to manually specify a feed address; if the podcast you’re looking for doesn’t come up in the search results, you’re out of luck. Google’s Listen FAQ says that “for now, Listen only indexes English audio podcasts. We don’t yet index video or other languages.” And I’ve heard that English-language BBC podcasts are missing from the index. But remember, this is Labs, it’s brand new. The index will grow.

Finally, it’s no surprise that Listen just burns through my G1’s battery. And because I’m using a dongle, I can’t use it while plugged in. That’s not an issue with Listen tho; it’s an issue with the G1. And desite the warning in the FAQ to “wear safety glasses” because it’s still full of bugs, but I haven’t run into any yet.

The official Google apps for Android so far have all been high quality. Listen is no exception.

"In the future, a famous person will die every fifteen minutes. Already it’s happening. The ascent of..."

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:21:00 -0500

“In the future, a famous person will die every fifteen minutes. Already it’s happening. The ascent of the microcelebrities, the 24 hour news cycle, citizen journalism, and our darkest fantasies all collide on Twitter now. The website’s question ‘What are you doing?’ sometimes feels more like ‘Who died today?’”

- The Daily Death: When A Celebrity Dies Every 15 Minutes

via kottke

Auto publish from Tumblr to Facebook

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:37:14 -0500

Auto publish from Tumblr to Facebook:

To test the new auto-post-from-Tumblr-to-Facebook, I’m posting this article about auto-posting from Tumblr to Facebook to Tumblr and it will (hopefully) auto-post to Facebook. Got me?

I came across these two items one right after the other.

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:04:38 -0500

They are sort of companion pieces:

Aldous Huxley vs. George Orwell

Why I Read The Internet For Twelve Hours A Day

Panorama Photo - Evanston lakefront: Made with PhotoStitch on...

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:00:15 -0500

Panorama Photo - Evanston lakefront:

Made with PhotoStitch on Android

Panoramic Mugsy: Made with PhotoStitch on Android

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:32:53 -0500

Panoramic Mugsy:

Made with PhotoStitch on Android

A flurry of features for feed readers

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:07:00 -0500

A flurry of features for feed readers

louisgray.com: Hi Facebook, It's Me, FriendFeed...

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:26:00 -0500

louisgray.com: Hi Facebook, It's Me, FriendFeed...:

While the FriendFeed user base gnashes its teeth, the Facebook user base asks, “What’s Friendfeed?”

"I believe in the link economy. Please feel free to link to our stories — it adds value to all..."

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:10:25 -0500

““I believe in the link economy. Please feel free to link to our stories — it adds value to all producers of content. I believe you should play fair and encourage your readers to read-around to what others are producing if you use it and find it interesting.””

- - Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters

Android on a bootable flash drive or CD

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:37:54 -0500

Android on a bootable flash drive or CD:

LiveAndroid is an exciting project to provide a bootable version of Android for common PCs. They have provided a bootable CD image for quite some time and recently added support for a bootable USB image in v0.2.