Hands-Free Control for Siri & Voice Control

It’s been some time coming, but the iPhone 4S can now be jailbroken.  That means that Hands-Free Control app now works with native Siri on the iPhone 4S!  This will be a boon to iPhone 4S users everywhere, as they will now be able to activate and use Siri without having to touch their phone at all.  No more having to hold down the home button each time you want to ask Siri a question.  Just say “Siri,” and she will respond, ready for your question, completely hands-free.  Your phone could be on your desk or nightstand on the other side of the room.  Nothing could be simpler.

To use Hands-Free Control on your iPhone 4S, just follow these easy instructions:

1. First, jailbreak your 4S.  Instructions can be found on Chronic Dev Team’s blog, or iPhone Dev Team’s blog.
2. Open Cydia app, and search for the app “Hands-Free Control.”
3. Install Hands-Free Control. (There is a small purchase price)
4. Once installed, go into the Settings app, and scroll down to Hands-Free Control.  From there you can set a number of options for the app.

Upcoming versions of Hands-Free Control will allow you to set up optional themes, such as a Star Trek theme, so you can say “Computer,” and Siri will activate with Star Trek sounds, all hands-free.

The future is now.

Note: because there is no 4S jailbreak yet, this only works on jailbroken Spire installations to date.

The Holy Grail of iPhone 4 setups

This past holiday weekend my two brothers and I had some fun with our iPhone 4’s (as in 4, not 4S), and got them set up in a pretty cool way, including being untethered jailbroken on iOS v5.0.1, unlocked for T-Mobile, $10/month unlimited data (EDGE), T-Mobile service around $20/month, unlimited texting and unlimited calling using Google Voice via the default Phone and Message apps, FaceTime and iMessage activation, Hands-Free Control by voice, and Siri fully working! That’s quite a mouthful, but gives us quite a good deal on our iPhone service, usage, and features. Here’s how we did it:

1. Untethered Jailbreak - The iPhone Dev Team and pod2G released a new untethered jailbreak this past week (redsn0w 0.9.10b3 and PwnageTool 5.0.1), which works for untethering iOS 5.0.1 on iPhone3GS, iPhone4, iPhone4-CDMA, iPad1, iPod touch 3G, iPod touch 4G. As usual for the Dev Team, their jailbreaks are well vetted, and this jailbreak works great. We were able to upgrade our phones to the latest iOS 5.0.1 operating system, and jailbreak our phones to install Cydia, and all our other favorite jailbreak apps (like SBSettings). Untethered means we don’t have to plug the phone back into a computer if we need to reboot it, which is great.
2. Unlocked for T-Mobile – There are many people that still lament the fact that you can’t use an iPhone officially on T-Mobile’s network, yet there are over 1 million people that currently use an iPhone on T-Mobile. We’ve used our iPhones on T-Mobile for the past two years. The iPhone simply needs to be “unlocked” for you to use it on T-Mobile. There are several ways to do this, including using a jailbreak app called ultrasn0w (if it is compatible with your current baseband, or “modem firmware”), using a Gevey SIM adapter, or getting a factory unlocked iPhone. We used to use the ultrasn0w unlock, but now that we’re on iPhone 4, that has become much more difficult since the only baseband supported is the first one released when iPhone 4 was launched. The method that we use now is the Gevey SIM adapter. This is an adapter that sits underneath your T-Mobile SIM in the SIM tray of your phone, and tricks the iPhone into becoming unlocked via a simple activation process. We created a YouTube video this past weekend showing how to use a Gevey Ultra SIM adapter to unlock an iPhone 4 on iOS 5.0.1 (baseband 03.10.01, although it works up to baseband 04.10.01. This unlocks the iPhone to work just like normal on T-Mobile.
3. Unlimited data for $10/month (2G/EDGE) – Because we are on T-Mobile with our iPhones, we can only get 2G/EDGE data speeds. The iPhone’s hardware doesn’t support T-Mobile’s 3G frequency bands, so 2G is as good as it gets. While this seems to be a disadvantage, we have found that it is not too bad. In most places we have WiFi data connection (at work and home), which is much faster than 4G speeds anyways, and whenever we are out and need to use the internet to read email, browse the web, look at a map, or even listen to Pandora radio on a run, it works sufficiently well to get the job done on 2G. Furthermore, we are grandfathered on the “feature phone” web2go data plan with T-Mobile, which means we have unlimited data for only $10/month (setting the cellular data network to APN internet2.voicestream.com). Not bad, considering the huge data costs out there right now that are all mostly limited in being capped or throttled in some way. (And we can tether other WiFi devices and computer to our phones using jailbreak app PdaNet.)
4. Unlimited T-Mobile service about $20/month – Most people probably under utilize their family plan options with their cell phone carriers. Going in with a family group beyond in-home family can drastically reduce your cell phone bill. We have 3 brothers and 2 wives all on a myFaves for Families 700 plan for $79/month. Unfortunately T-Mobile doesn’t offer the myFaves anymore (also called an A-list on other carriers), but we are grandfathered onto the plan. We also use Google Voice, which means we can set one of our myFaves numbers to our Google Voice number and get unlimited talk minutes every month (via the “call back” method). We also use Google Voice for our texting, which is free, which means unlimited texting. Once we add on our data plans, plus $10/each for 3 additional lines, and split the bill five ways, we end up paying only about $30/each/month for the cell service. Pretty slick.
5. Native Google Voice functionality – Google Voice can be tricky to use on an iPhone, even if you download the official Google Voice app, or buy a third-party app like GV Mobile+. Most of the phone and texting functions on the iPhone by default use the built-in Phone and Messages apps to do their handiwork, which bypasses Google Voice completely. But there is a way to get the Phone and Messages apps to use your Google Voice account natively, via jailbreak tweaks. To make Google Voice the backbone of your Phone app, get the Phone GV Extension jailbreak app. This will allow you to make calls from within your Phone app via Google Voice. To make Google Voice the backbone of your Messages app, get the SMS GV Extension jailbreak app. Then you’ll be able to text message within Messages using your Google Voice account. Any apps that use the built-in Phone or Messages apps will likewise we routed through Google Voice. This includes making calls or sending texts by asking Siri (see below), will go through Google Voice!
6. FaceTime and iMessage activation on T-Mobile – These two features don’t usually work on non-official carriers like T-Mobile, because of the way they usually activate (by sending a text message to an international number). My younger brother, Brock, recently built a jailbreak tweak that allows you to activate FaceTime and iMessage on the T-Mobile network. I think he might call it FIT Activation (FaceTime iMessage T-Mobile). Look for it soon in Cydia. Once activated, these two features use your data connection (cell data or WiFi) to function.
7. Hands-Free Control – Brock also developed a jailbreak app called Hands-Free Control that allows you to activate Voice Control by just speaking a keyword like “Siri.” You don’t need to touch the phone at all. This currently works great with Voice Control on the iPhone and iPod Touch, and will soon work with Siri once a 4S jailbreak becomes available. Now you can communicate with your phone, and send and receive information from the internet, just like they spoke to the computer on Star Trek, without touching a thing.
8. Siri! – This has been the holy grail of iPhone tweaks for several months now – getting Siri to work on an iPhone 4 (or anything besides a 4S). Developer chpwn this past week released a jailbreak app called Spire (available in Cydia) that installs Siri onto your iPhone 4 (and I assume iPad, and iPod Touch as well, although we haven’t tested those devices). As most people have quickly discovered, however, this doesn’t completely install Siri. It installs the GUI interface, but it cannot connect to Apple’s servers without a Siri proxy server, which can utilize the token keys from an iPhone 4S to authenticate your iPhone 4 to connect to Apple. Fortunately, another family member recently bought an iPhone 4S that we’ve used to set up our own proxy server to authenticate our iPhone 4’s with Apple, and fully activate Siri on our iPhone 4’s. It works great! We are currently developing this proxy server into a commercial service that would allow many others to access Siri on their non-4S devices. Stay tuned!

So there you have it. A pretty sweet iPhone 4 setup.

Update: Note, if you have access to WiFi most of the time, you can dispense with the cell phone carrier altogether, and use an app like Talkatone to make and receive calls with Google Voice for free, or use a SIP provider, like SipGate, and a softphone app, like Acrobits Softphone, to do the same thing. No SIM required. I suspect in a few years we will use the Internet and data for all our communications in this way, as WiFi will be much more widespread.

Hands-Free Control for Siri & Voice Control

It’s the stuff you see on Star Trek.

“Computer,” bee beep, “how long before we reach the Neutral Zone?”

Bee beep, “At our current speed we will arrive at the Neutral Zone in 4 hours and 37 minutes.”

“Computer,” bee beep, “what is the current stardate?”

Bee beep, “The current stardate is 41153.7.”

“Computer,” bee beep, “run a diagnostic on the anti-matter containment field.”

Bee beep, “The anti-matter containment field is functioning nominally.”

This is the kind of vocal dialog between man and machine that only science fiction has proffered for decades.  It is what artificial intelligence scientists have longed for, and spent mind-numbing hours developing.  It is the future we have imagined would some day become reality, when we could talk casually to our computers, and, they could talk back.

You might be thinking this is leading to some sort of hyperbolic statement about the new Siri feature on the iPhone 4S, and how it will bring world peace.  Well, you’re wrong!  But Siri is, as has been touted on a thousand blogs and news outlets everywhere, a revolutionary leap forward in voice recognition and artificial intelligence technology.

There’s just one big problem with all this cool new Siriness.  You still have to press the infernal button!  

Yes, Siri is full-on awesome in all that it (she?) can tell you about the world, your neighborhood, Johnny Depp, and whether it is raining in Blackpool, all by simply asking it.  But every time you want to talk to the blasted thing, you have to either press and hold the Home button, tap the Siri mic button on the bottom of the screen, hold the device up to your ear, or click the button on the cord of your earphones.

Why the button?!  Can’t we just speak to Siri already?

You might think that this is a battery issue or Apple would have done it, and you’re partly right.  You might also think it’s an entitlement issue, and you’re partly right.  (It’s going to space, for crying out loud – Give it a second!).  But the fact is, using Siri and Voice Control on your iPhone or iPod Touch completely hands-free is possible right here, and right now today.

Brock Haymond is my younger brother, and he is a wizard.  No, not like Dumbledore.  Sorry.  He’s not a vampire either, for that matter.  But yes, he is a wizard of the programming, and the “I’ll-figure-it-out” type.  One of the first things he said to me after hearing about Siri is, “Why do you have to press the button?  Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of speaking to it?”

So what did he do?  He made an app for that, a completely hands-free way to access Siri or Voice Control.  And it is now available on Cydia for jailbroken iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod 3, and iPod 4th generation devices.  But what about Siri, you ask?  It’s true that Siri is not yet available for any of those devices.  But those devices had a little used feature called Voice Control, which feature was invoked in the exact same way Siri is, by pressing and holding the home button.  This new app invokes Voice Control simply by saying the keyword, “Siri.”  No touchie necessary.

But tell me about Siri?! You ask with bated breath.  As soon as a public jailbreak is available for the iPhone 4S, and/or Siri is ported back to older devices by hackers (both of which are in the works), then this hands-free tweak will likely work with Siri too.  I’m giving it a 95% chance of working instantly, no update required.

In the meantime, Hands-Free Control is available for use with Voice Control.  Once installed from Cydia (only $1.99), all you have to say is, “Siri,” and your device will respond with its beep, and wait for further voice input.  You don’t have to touch the phone at all.  It could be sitting on a table at the other side of the room, and you can say, “Siri,” and it will respond.  It could be on your nightstand, in the black of night, and Siri will talk back to you hands-free.  It can be in your pocket, with earphones plugged, and you just say “Siri,” and it beeps for further input.

Yes, we’ve been beamed aboard.  And, yes, in the near future he’ll add the keyword option of saying, “Computer!”,  and the internet will respond.

Check it out in Cydia!  Just search for “Hands-Free Control.”

More information can be found at HandsFreeControl.com.

As I was perusing different energy gels and foods online this week, I was trying to figure out the differences between the most popular energy fuels available.  I wasn’t able to find many good comparative reviews of the different products, so I decided to put together this infographic to help compare them – A Comparison of Energy Gels, plus bites, chews, mixes, and pastes.  Click on the graphic to enlarge full-size (Esc to exit, or click outside the graphic).  See further explanation after the jump.  

A Comparison of Energy Gels, and bites, chews, mixes, pastes

The Categories

The categories I chose were based upon what I understand about carb fuels, and what I felt were the most important qualities of them.  I wanted to have some basic categories such as price, and what consists of a single serving.  But then I also wanted to consider what the “true cost” of each type of energy fuel was, for every 100 calories.  Calories is the basis for what most people are seeking in an energy gel, so that makes a good comparison point for price.  I found there was a very large range of prices per 100 calories.

I also wanted to compare the quality of those calories, the percentage of carbs from simple sugars – were the calories straight from sugar (similar to table sugar), or were they from more complex carbohydrate sources (like maltodextrin) which are absorbed more quickly, and don’t give you the spikes, crashes, and stomach aches of simple sugars.  This column represents how much of the carbs is from simple sugars.  A lower percentage here means the calories contain less simple sugar, and more complex carbohydrates, the good stuff for endurance exercise.

Another thing I was looking for was how compact those calories were; in how little space did they fit.  So that statistic is in the caloric density column, or calories per gram.  Some energy foods have more densely packed calories than others, which can tell you how much you’ll be packing.  Some of them it doesn’t really apply to since they are mixes, and are meant to be put into water anyway.

The last two columns first consist of electrolytes, primarily sodium and potassium.  Some gels have them in large amounts, others consider you’ll get them from other sources like a sports drink.  Next is protein, which again, some foods contain for longer endurance exercise, and others consider you’re doing a shorter workout, or getting protein elsewhere.  And lastly, bonuses consisting of the variety of flavors and other nutrients like vitamins, minerals, amino acids, caffeine, fat, fiber, etc.

The Best & Worst in Category

I’ve colored those areas that stand out from the crowd as having the best qualities, and also those having the worst.  The best are colored in bright green, and runners up, light green.  The worst are colored in bright red, and runners up, light pink.  This helps to see quickly which are better products in different categories.

• The “True Cost” between the different products ranges widely.  This stat might be particularly important to many people in this down economy.  This is your bang for buck.  The real cost of 100 calories extends from $2.50 in the GU Roctane Gel, to only $0.52 in the Hammer Perpetuem Mix/Paste.  That’s an order of magnitude difference of five times in price.  That’s substantial!  There are some great affordable fuels in the Hammer Sustained Energy, and HEED.  The runners up include Hammer Gel (bulk), as well as Clif Shot Gel, Honey Stinger, Carb BOOM Gel, and Crank e-Gel and e-Fuel.  The more pricey energy foods include the GU Gel, Hammer Gel (single serving), Hammer Perpetuem Solids, and Accel Gel.
• In the category of quality carbs (least percent simple sugars), the best products include almost the entire Hammer line of fuels that range between 5.8% and 13% simple sugars, and Carb BOOM Gel at 11% (a surprising stand-out!).  An OK runners up includes Hammer Perpetuem Solids.  Most other fuels are at least about 1/5 simple sugars.  The worst contenders are Honey Stinger, weighing in at 100% simple sugar (because it’s honey), PowerBar Bites and Blasts, Clif Shot Roks, and Accel Gel.  The runners up worst are Carb BOOM Chews, Clif Shot Bloks, and GU Chomps.
• The most densely packed calories goes to PowerBar Bites, Clif Shot Roks, Hammer Sustained Energy, and Perpetuem (plus Solids).  Runners up include Honey Stinger, Hammer HEED, and Clif Shot Gel & Bloks.  The most loosely packed calories are in PowerBar Gel, Carb BOOM Gel, and Accel Gel.  Worst runners up include Crank e-Gel, and Hammer Gel.
• Some companies believe their energy foods should include electrolytes too, as opposed to in your sports drink.  The best energy fuels for electrolytes include GU Roctane, PowerBar Gel, Clif Shot Gel & Roks, Honey Stinger, and Crank e-Gel & e-Fuel.  The worst fuels for electrolytes are PowerBar Blasts, Clif Shot Bloks, Hammer Gel, HEED, Sustained Energy, and Carb BOOM Gel.
• A few of the fuels also contain protein, which is useful for extended exercises where your body needs this nutrient to prevent protein canibalization of your muscle tissue.  The best fuels for this are PowerBar Bites, Clif Shot Roks, Accel Gel, and runners up including Hammer Sustained Energy and Perpetuem.  The worst in this category include all the many gels that don’t contain any protein.
• The products with the most flavors available include GU Gel, Clif Shot Gel & Chews, and Hammer Gel.  The least flavors available are found in Sustained Energy (unflavored), PowerBar Bites, Clif Shot Roks, Hammer Perpetuem, Carb BOOM Chews, and Crank e-Fuel.
• The products with the most additional supplements include Hammer Perpetuem, and HEED, as well as the GU line of products, Accel Gel, and Crank e-Gel and e-Fuel.

Best Overall Energy Fuels

Of course, with many of the products above doing well in one or two categories, it is more difficult to do well in all or many of them.  One or two of the categories might be more important to you than the others, and for that you can look for those products that are strong in those categories.  If you’re looking for an overall good energy fuel, there are a few that seem to sweep the board.  These I’ll rank in order.

Best energy fuels overall (ranked):

1. Hammer Perpetuem mix – The mix form of this fuel from Hammer gets high marks in almost everything.  It’s cheapest per 100 calories of all the fuels tested, at $0.52.  It can be used as a mix in water, or gel/paste.  It only contains 13% simple sugars, meaning most of its calories come from complex carbohydrates.  It’s also highly dense in calories, so if you mix it in a paste, you’ll get the most calories for the space in your bottle, meaning you’ll need to carry less.  It also ranks well on the array of electrolytes it contains, as well as protein.  It includes a good variety of bonus nutrients not found in other fuels too.  The downside is it only comes in 3 flavors.
2. Hammer Sustained Energy – This fuel, which has been available since 1992, is the second cheapest of the lot, at $0.55 per 100 calories.  It can be used as a mix, or a gel/paste.  It beats Perpetuem, and is the best on the list, in that only 5.8% of its calories come from simple sugars.  It also rates very high on caloric density.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t have many electrolytes to speak of.  Protein is still high.  Probably the biggest disadvantage to this fuel is that it only comes in one flavor, which is “unflavored.”
3. Hammer HEED mix – This mix-in-water fuel is also very cheap, at only $0.59 per 100 calories.  It has the second lowest percent of simple sugars of the list, at only 7.7%.  It is also fairly dense in calories.  The electrolyte and protein profiles are lacking, but it was probably designed that way.  It comes in 4 flavors, and a nice assortment of other nutrients.

Hammer Nutrition certainly seems to know what they’re doing in making energy fuels, and I applaud them in not bowing out to increasing marketing budgets or other gimmicks, but making quality products first and foremost.

Runner’s up best overall:

• Hammer Gel – This popular gel also ranks high in being affordable at $0.86 per 100 calories when bought in the 26-serving bottle.  It also has a low percent of simple sugars at 9%.  The other great thing is that it’s available in 9 flavors!  So find your favorite (Montana Huckleberry seems to be popular in my area).  It’s not very dense in calories, however, so depending on how long your workout is, you might need to carry a lot.  It’s purposefully designed for exercises lasting up to about 2-3 hours, and wasn’t meant for an electrolyte source or protein (see HEED, Perpetuem, Sustained Energy, or their other Endurolyte products).
• Carb BOOM Gel – This was a surprising stand-out among the competition.  I’m glad to see it, and want to try it myself.  This gel comes as low as $0.84 per 100 calories, has only 11% simple sugars, and looks like it has 6 tasty flavors that make me salivate just looking at them.  It’s also not very dense in calories, like the Hammer Gel, nor does it have many electrolytes or protein.
• Hammer Perpetuem Solids – If it weren’t for the price, these things would be awesome in most categories.  They have 15% simple sugars, is dense in calories, has good electrolytes and protein, and a bunch of other nutrients.  Unfortunately it comes with one of the heftiest price tags at $1.23 to $1.98 per 100 calories.  3 flavors.
• Crank e-Gel – This gel is also a new one to me, and I have to give a shout out to it.  It is relatively inexpensive, at down to only $0.81 per 100 calories.  Their percent of simple sugars is 19%, which isn’t fantastic, but not bad.  In designing this gel, they are looking primarily to include the electrolyte profile with it, so you can drink water instead, and they do a pretty good job.  They also include a good variety of vitamins in the gel, a plus.

Worst Overall Energy Fuels

There are some products that just don’t seem to get it.  They rank poorly in many categories compared to their competitors, or are just mediocre.  Here they are.

Worst energy fuels overall:

1. Accel Gel – About the only thing they seem to get right in this is the protein.  Maybe that is the focus of this product.  Nothing else seems right with this gel.  It’s very expensive ($1.75 per 100 calories), has a ton of simple sugars (65%), and the calories are not very dense.  It has some good amounts of sodium, and other nutrients, but I don’t know why I would choose this fuel for my exercise energy needs.
2. PowerBar Blasts – There is nothing spectacular about these energy chews.  They have the second highest percentage of simple sugars at 80%, and there is minimal amounts of electrolytes.  Nothing else stands out.
3. Carb BOOM Chews – While they seem to get a lot right in their gel, Carb BOOM Chews are not all that great.  It has a high percentage of simple sugars at 47.8%, zero protein, no bonuses, 2 flavors.  Everything else is mediocre.  These could use some work (they are a new product for 2011, so maybe they’ll get better).

Runner’s up worst overall:

• Honey Stinger Gel – I don’t understand this product.  It is 100% simple sugar.  Yes, that’s right, 100%, all from honey.  No complex carbohydrates.  All of it’s carbohydrates come from glucose, fructose, maltose, sucrose, etc.  This might give you energy, but in buzzes and crashes.  And it won’t be absorbed very quickly in your gut.
• GU Roctane – This is probably the most popular gel available, along with it’s more tame Energy Gel companion.  The Roctane however is insanely expensive.  $2.50 for 100 calories?  Are you serious?  There are fuels available, as have been mentioned, that are 1/5 that price.  I just don’t know what could be so special about Roctane.  Maybe if money weren’t a concern.
• PowerBar Bites & Clif Shot Roks – These two products are similar.  They have a very high percent of simple sugars, and good amounts of electrolytes and protein especially.  They might be good as recovery food, but I don’t know if I’d use them during exercise.

Conclusion

This has been a little investigation by yours truly, for fun.  I wanted to see what the difference was between the different energy foods on the market, and I think I have a much better idea of the lay of the land.  I think I’ll be using Hammer’s products, mostly because I don’t have a ton of money right now, but they also seem like the most quality product.  I might try some others too like Carb BOOM Gel, and Crank e-Gel.  Of course, for you, it might come down to which tastes or sits the best.

If I’ve made a mistake, please let me know, and I’ll correct it.  If you have a suggestion for making a better comparison, also let me know that too, and we’ll see what we can do.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.  Which energy fuels do you think are the best, or worst?

Bon appétit!

A new dynamic theme for Windows 7 that pulls the most interesting photos directly from Flickr and puts it on your desktop wallpaper

Did you know that Windows 7 has a feature called dynamic themes?  This is a cool new feature that allows for themes that use RSS feeds to pull new wallpaper content from the Internet and display it on your desktop, and automatically update as new content is added to the feed.  Many people seem to have enjoyed Bing’s trial run of their dynamic theme, but it only lasted from August 9th to November 9th, 2010.  Now that Bing is done, where is there to turn for new fresh dynamic theme wallpaper?  I didn’t find any, so I made a way to get some. 

What is one of the best places for high-quality, interesting, random photos on the Internet?  Flickr, of course!  But Flickr doesn’t offer any RSS feeds of their top content for easy use (and certainly not in a format digestible by W7 dynamic themes).  So I put together a mashup that generates just the right RSS feed of Flickr’s Interestingness daily content.

What is “Interestingness” you say?  Flickr defines it:

Besides being a five syllable word suitable for tongue twisters, it is also an amazing new Flickr Feature.

There are lots of elements that make something ‘interesting’ (or not) on Flickr. Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing. Interestingness changes over time, as more and more fantastic content and stories are added to Flickr.

Flickr’s Interestingness is basically a cool way of exploring some of the most popular content on Flickr.  So why not put these cool photos on your desktop, always automatically updating to the newest stuff of the day?

Using some Flickr API and Yahoo Pipes magic, I’ve put together a theme file that does just that.  All you have to do is download the “.theme” text file below, double-click the file in Windows 7, and select “Download Attachments” to enable the dynamic theme.  This will initiate it downloading the best photography content straight from Flickr to put on your desktop.

Download Flickr Interestingness Dynamic Theme for Windows 7 v1.0

It does take a few minutes for the feed to download initially, so if you see black wallpaper, don’t despair!  Just give it some time to work.  Also, this Windows 7 feature seems to only work when Internet Explorer is open (it looks like it uses IE’s built-in feeds feature).  So if you want your wallpaper to update, you’ll need to at least keep IE running, so that it can update the feed.  (If anyone knows how to get dynamic themes to work with other browsers, I’m all ears).  In addition, you may want to adjust the properties of the feed inside Internet Explorer to only keep the last 5-10 photos downloaded, to make sure your wallpaper only rotates through the newest content.  Go to your “Feeds” setting inside IE, and right-click on the “pipes” feed listed there.  Then go to “Properties.”  At the bottom of that dialog you can adjust the number of downloads to keep.  From that dialog you can also adjust how often to check the feed for updates.

Oh, and by the way, if you see a photo you like, and want to find out more about it, open the feed in Internet Explorer, and click on the item title in the list.  This will take you to the Flickr page for that photo, where you can see the author, comments, etc.

Let me know what you think of this new (and only, it seems) dynamic theme for Windows 7!  Please report any problems you might have with it also, and I’ll try to fix it.  Enjoy!

Wave Mapper shows the approximate location of tsunami in real-time on a Google Map

Whenever a huge earthquake hits, like the one yesterday in Japan, I’ve always wondered where in the ocean the tsunami might be, and how people might be better forewarned about an impending wave.  No organizations that I know of publicly post real-time & interactive maps online of where the tsunami could be as it approaches various locations throughout the world.  So I just built such a map at WaveMapper.com.

Wave Mapper is a simple web app that displays a Google Map of the locations of the largest earthquakes in the world from the past 7 days, registering 7+ on the Richter scale (data provided by USGS).  Instantly, and in real-time, the map will calculate and show the approximate current location of where the tsunami is in the ocean, if it is traveling at various tsunami speeds of 400 (yellow), 500 (orange), and 600 (red) miles per hour.

Note that this is not scientific.  It is only an approximation.  When compared to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) sophisticated MOST tsunami models, it’s surprisingly close.  Wave Mapper, however, is available instantly after a large earthquake has occurred, instead of later in the day when such a map becomes less utilitarian.

Since yesterday’s tsunami has already passed, Wave Mapper won’t immediately show anything when first loaded (the default “NOW”).  But you can also enter in a certain number of hours after the earthquakes, and click the refresh button, to see where the tsunami was at that time.  Or, enter in a certain number of hours ago, to see where the tsunami was at that time.  It even works (crudely right now) on smartphones like the iPhone.

Hope this is helpful, especially for future tsunami.

It is a presentation by Jennifer Lin, a very gifted American pianist, who gave a presentation at the TED conference in Monterey, California, on February 27, 2004.  The first sixteen minutes or so are her playing of two pieces, one entitled “Kaleidoscope,” and the other “Abegg Variations.”  Her piano skills are incredible, but her really amazing creativity starts at about 16:30 into her presentation, when she says she is going to do some improvisation.

She has a stack of seven notecards with one letter from the musical alphabet on each.  She invites a member of the audience, who ends up being be Goldie Hawn, to choose any five cards, in any order.  She picks C, G, B, A, E.  Jennifer then sits down at the piano and says she needs a minute to think about how to put that into a melody.  A few seconds later she begins to play.

What happened is probably best described by weblogger James Daley, who was in attendance:

Biologists may write books about the complex neurological, chemical and electrical functions that occur in order for certain stimuli to produce complex human emotions. All I know is that as Jennifer continued to play the hairs on my arm stood on end. A buzz crackled through the audience as the beauty of her composition unfolded. Several people nearby had eyes that were moist with tears.

See below (her improvisation bit starts at about 16:30):

Feel free to take a look around, and don’t hesitate to drop me a line if you have any questions or comments.