Localtone Blog

Mobile March Conference Is Back For 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:56:00 +0000

Organizers of Mobile March today announced the agenda for it’s second annual mobile event will be held on March 19, 2011 at the Best Buy Corporate Campus. The name Mobile March denotes not only the month in which it takes place, but also emphasizes the ongoing advancement and growth of mobile technology and the related lifestyle. Its dual track format includes more sessions than last year and will continue to offer education and information in both the Mobile Development and Mobile Business areas. In addition attendee registration includes access to Mobile March’s Mobile 3D: Demos, Dinner and Drinks featuring locally developed mobile technology the preceding night, March 18th, at CoCo in downtown St. Paul.

According to Mobile March’s Justin Grammens, “Mobile continues to grow rapidly and offers so much opportunity for developers and business. We feel we’ve expanded and increased the value of Mobile March significantly.” According to Mobile March’s Phil Wilson, “From President Obama down, with all of the talk about innovation, we believe mobile represents a clear example of that innovation and that the Twin Cities is home to leaders in both mobile development and use.”

The agenda, available online at mobilemarchtc.com, includes Mobile Development sessions addressing the development of applications for the new Windows 7 Phone with Microsoft’s Jeff Brand, HTML 5 and the Mobile Web with Mark Nutter from Area Studios, 4G, as well as an iPhone – Android Showdown with Recursive Awesome’s own Phil Olson and Rory Lonergan.

The non-technical Mobile Business track includes Cracking the Code: QR Codes and Coupons with MixMobi’s Lisa Foote and guests, Location Based Services: Mayors to Marketing with Christopher Lower of Sterling Cross Communications, and Grill Yourself, a session about what you need to know when developing a mobile app for business. The track also includes Tablet’s Mean Business with Pioneer Press Tech Writer and author Julio Ojeda-Zapata and to end off the day, an excellent session entitled On the Campaign Trail With Mobile Technology by Mark Jenkins Marquis Mobile Solutions.

The Landscape of Mobile Discussion with Pearson VUE’s Peter Pascale and a Keynote to be announced soon will target both Development and Business attendees.

Registration is now open for Mobile March!

Register for Mobile March via the website at www.mobilemarchtc.com or directly through http://mobilemarchtc.eventbrite.com

Event sponsors include: Recursive Awesome, RemainComm, Focus Business Development, Best Buy, Verizon Wireless, Fusion Room and Microsoft.

Mobile March Conferece in Minneapolis

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:34:00 +0000

Reprinted From Minnov8.com by Tim Elliot

What organizers hope will be the first of an annual event dedicated to Mobile technology and it’s application, Mobile March is scheduled for March 27th at the Hilton Garden Inn in Minneapolis.

The two track conference will offer sessions that appeal to active software developers as well as mobile users including marketers, advertisers and enthusiasts. Attendees can choose a single track of learning and information or pick and choose from either track to maximize their experience.

According to event founder and organizer, Justin Grammens, “There are plenty of meetings focused on mobile development or mobile marketing and use. We wanted to bring the two groups together to better understand the overall mobile platform.” Grammens, Co-Founder of mobile development firm Recursive Awesome and founder of Mobile Twin Cities noted, “We have assembled an agenda of mobile experts and users that will offer unique perspectives on the opportunities with the local, national and global mobile community.”

The agenda, available online at www.mobilemarchtc.com, includes technical sessions addressing the development of applications for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry mobile devices. These sessions will be presented by local developers Aaron Kardell, Robert Green and Shawn Butler respectively. The technical track also includes Beyond the Code: User Experience, Testing, and Support presented by Breon Nagy.

The non-technical mobile users track includes What Do They Want, providing results from a consumer study presented by Carlson Marketing’s Doug Rozen and On the Air and In the Papers, featuring a panel of representatives from local TV, Radio and Newspaper companies. Other sessions slated are Show Me the Money, discussing the future of mobile commerce with Farhan Muhammed, and Mobile Marketing: Watch That Step presented by a panel of marketers highlighting the process of initiating a mobile strategy.

Other agenda items including a keynote to start the day will be announced in the near future.

Registration is now open for Mobile March, Saturday July 27th at the Hilton Garden Inn in Downtown Minneapolis via the Mobile March website or directly through Eventbrite. The cost is $20 and includes lunch.

Minnov8 is pleased to be a sponsor of this event* and joins other event sponsors including: Verizon Wireless, Fusion Room, Best Buy, The Nerdery, Recursive Awesome, Focus Business Development, and RemainComm Media Strategies

Droid Demo Videos

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:13:00 +0000

I had the opportunity to run the Verizon Droid through the paces before it was released this past week. These videos were shot on my Android powered Google ION smartphone, so the quality could be better, but hopefully it gives you an idea of how the device works. Android 2.0 contains many new features, so there's A LOT more details to the phone that I wished I could have had time to show. I suggest you stop on by your Verizon store and check this device out. Or if you have the chance, come to our next Mobile Twin Cities user's meeting on November 17th, as we should have few Droid devices for people to play around with. Enjoy the videos!

Android 2.0 - Google Navigation App

Android 2.0 and Droid Basics

The (R)Evolution of Android

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:27:00 +0000

In honor of today being The Day that Android is officially released on the Verizon network, I thought it was fitting that I finally get the blog post that has been churning in my head all week out the door. I'm also very deep in Android programming right now as I'm working to release another Android app for a client of mine, so Android and the future has been on my mind...

If you haven't heard, or haven't been watching TV or listening to the radio, the new "Droid" device, manufactured by Motorola and released on the Verizon wireless network was released today, November 6th, 2009. I was lucky enough to be be invited by Albert Maruggi @AlbertMaruggi to a special Verizon Wireless "pre-release" event last week to get my hands on this new device, give some initial feedback and take it through the paces. I was also able to take the phone home and have 3 days with the device and see how it performed. Finally, we all got Eclairs to take home (which were delicious by the way!) in honor of Android 2.0 being the code named "Eclair" release.

This entry will be some of what the device has done (or hasn't done) for me, but I do have some video that I shot from using the device, (which I need to edit) and will post in a future blog entry. Just as some background, I came into this event and have been using Android since before it was officially released. I was one of the first people in line at the T-Mobile store to get my G1 and have been excited by the evolution of Android and how it was changed over the past year.

Before I start though, as a point of clarity, I don't subscribe to the stories of "Droid is / not an iPhone Killer". In fact, I'm very annoyed by seeing all of the articles with titles like this. The whole idea of one platform as "killing" another, really defeats the purpose of these devices and marginalizes what any device or platform will bring to market. Plain and simple, people who write articles like this and this are idiots. Want proof? Here's an article that agrees with me. In fact, when I was at Google I/O in San Francisco earlier this year I was amazed when talking with a few Google engineers, just how open they were to competition. They really believe that competition and innovation is what is best of the consumer. It was refreshing to hear that they really weren't all about trying to bash or take down the qualities of other devices out there. And therein is the beauty of Android. You have manufactures, focusing on what they do best (make good hardware) and Google focusing on what it does best (make good software and services). And now, you've got the network of Verizon to back this up.

OK, I'll get off my soapbox now. Let's talk about Droid!

First impressions
Inside I believe that someone is either a physical keyboard user or a virtual keyboard user. That's not to say that you can't be trained and go from one to another, but intrinsically, I think a person will gravitate to one out of habit. I am definitely a virtual (soft) keyboard user. I liked my G1 when it had a physical keyboard, but I *REALLY* liked my G1, when we got the 1.5 update that contained the virtual (on-screen) keyboard. I just find it too awkward to have to pop/slide something out to type. Yes, you can leave the keyboard out all of the time, but I find the balance on most devices with the keyboard open to be odd and also, I prefer to view and browse sites in portrait over landscape mode. Plus, the more moving parts... the more parts that are likely to break! Thus, when I started working with Droid, I was not too impressed by the pop-out keyboard. Sure, it has back-lit keys and is OK to the touch, but the G1 keys pop out a little bit more and are actually easier to use in my opinion. The phone itself is a little boxy and I don't understand why the screen doesn't go all the way to the end - it kind of gives it, as Breon called it, the "inverted chin" that you may have seen with other HTC devices. I would have much preferred that the screen just go all the way to the edge. While the screen is absolutely gorgeous and supports thousands more colors than anything else on the market, I'm not sure if I'm really sold on the rectangular shape of the (854×480) shape of the screen. It's too rectangular for me. I think maybe over time I might get used to it, but if they made the screen longer, I would have liked it if they would have bumped the width out a little bit as well. It has a long tight look too it - not my cup of tea, but is just my small nitpicking.

Performance
Overall, the phone performed flawlessly. It was by far the fastest phone I have used running Android. Part of that might be related to the speedy processor, and some might be Android 2.0. But I'm very happy to see that now Android is performing much better than the Google ION and G1 that I currently have. However, it is a little disappointing that Motorola couldn't get the new 1Ghz Snapdragon processor in this phone, like you are going see with Sony's X10 Experia Phone. Now, THAT is the phone that I can't wait to try.

Here's some rough hardware specs on the device if you are interested.

Egonomics
I think Motorola made some serious mistakes in the ergonomics of eh device.

First, the sleep and power button are on the top. I love my Google ION (HTC Magic), because I can use just one hand to put it to sleep and then press the "menu" button to wake it back up again. Putting the button on the top was just stupid. It then always takes me two hands to pull it out of my pocket and wake it up. And then two hands to put it to sleep. Not easy to use.

Second, the volume is on the SAME SIDE as this power/sleep button. I found myself repeatedly adjusting the volume as I was putting the phone to sleep or waking it up. I can see why they had to put the volume button on that side (since the other side is the USB port for the cradle), but it's seems like bad design and something that I know will drive some people crazy.

Third, holding and scrolling with my left hand caused some very odd behavior on the phone. It might be tough to explain and took me while to figure out what was going on, but at the bottom of the phone there are the 4 signature Android buttons - Back, Menu, Home and Search. Many of the other Android phones have these and this is no different on Droid. The problem is that they are capacitive buttons, which mean that it's really easy to tap them by accident. When trying to scroll on webpages or in emails as I hold the phone and scroll with my thumb, the screen kept shooting back up to the top of the page! After playing around for a long time and talking with a friend about it, we came to the conclusion that it was my palm touching the far left button ("Back Button") as I was scrolling. This causes the app to auto scroll to the top of the page. So much for walking to the bus stop in the morning and reading my emails and surfing with one hand. This by far was the worse user experience on the device.

With my 3 complaints aside, overall, the phone performs well and for most people that use two hands when using their phone, none of these issues will be a big deal. Just watch out for those capacitive buttons.

Apps
I installed a number of the apps from the market and everything I tried ran fine in Android 2.0 with the larger screen. I must applaud other Android developers for getting new versions of their apps out into the market so quickly and supporting Android 2.0. Besides Droid, there aren't any other devices running Android 2.0, but I think that will changing in the next month or so, as I bet most all phone will be upgraded to Android 2.0 by the end of the year. Word on street currently, is that Google will have Android 2.1 out by the end of the year. Their development speed is really picking up! Verizon does have their own "tab" on the Android market, which I find is interesting, however, they have only developed 1 App for Android! That's pretty lame guys. I applaud you for finally carrying the Droid, but now let's see you develop some applications that use it as well. Their application is a visual voicemail application, that runs pretty good. It basically takes voicemails and converts them to text. Google voice does this already, so really there aren't any unique apps by Verizon on the market. Would like to see them become more involved. Speaking of which... is Verizon even a member of the OHA?

Android 2.0
I didn't get a chance to really work through all of the specifics of Android 2.0, but a few high points that I saw as I was playing with the device.

A setting that allowed you to share files via bluetooth - very cool.

Cleaner and more crisp icons.

Soft Keyboard MUCH easier to use.

Auto brightness adjust based on ambient light - worked OK, but sometimes would change for no reason.

Google Navigator - Very sweet! I have a video demo of this, working on getting it edited though. Will be in my next post.

Google Services - This isn't really an Android 2.0 thing, but I will reiterate that having all of your data "in the cloud" is super cool. I would have both the Droid and my Google ION on and all of the contacts, calendars, email, meetings, etc. were shared between the two since they both were accessing my same Google account! It just kind of brought it all home when I realized that I there was ZERO migration (besides apps), if I were to decide to move to another Android smartphone in the future. Very cool.

Summary
Over the past week, a number of people have asked me what I think about Droid. Would I be willing changing to Verizon for this device? Is it an iPhone killer? (I won't answer that last question) ;)

Well, here's what I CAN say. I think Droid is a good device for someone out there, however that someone is not me. It's not the fault of Android and it's not the fault of Verizon or Motorola. It's just that I'm very happy with my small compact Google ION (ie. myTouch) and there isn't enough new on Droid to make me switch. In fact, there isn't any other device (iPhone, Blackberry, Palm included) that makes me want to switch. My current Android phone from HTC is like little tank that keep on running. I have dropped it, kicked it, scratched it and it still keeps running. It's small, very light, compact, can fit easily in my pocket and I can quickly pull it out and use it with one hand to get done what I need to get done. And I don't have to baby it. The Droid is none of that for me, but it probably will be the right device for a number of other people out there. In reality, I see the Droid competing much more with Blackberry and Windows Mobile users. It's those kind of users that I think will enjoy this device. Droid is just another option on the Verizon network for people that want a cutting edge, fast, large screen, multimedia capable smartphone backed by and integrated with all of their Google service.

Now, as some of you know, Verizon is releasing another droid phone called "Eris" today as well. Has anyone heard of that? Did people even know that "Droid" is more of a collection of phones than just 1 phone? It was pretty dumb move I think to market everything as "Droid", but then say that you have a "HTC Droid Eris" and "Motorola Droid". Plan on people being very confused at their local Verizon store today when they start checking out the new phone(s). However, as long as they buy one or the other and enjoy the Android experience, no one is the wiser. Android will continue to grow and developers like myself will continue to build apps. Speaking of apps... time to get back to that app. Time to run for now. Look for some videos that I shot on Droid shortly!

Talking Technology on the First Crack Podcast

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:21:00 +0000

I was interviewed for a podcast with Garrick Van Buren from First Crack Podcast earlier this year and have just realized, I never posted the details! It was great amount of fun and we talked about all sorts of technology items related to VoIP, Asterisk and the Mobile Twin Cities Users Group that I had just formed at the time. I also realized as look back that we touched on an excellent book called "Hot Flat And Crowded", by Thomas Friedman that I think any kid growing up today should read. It's fascinating to realize just how much we will need to innovate as a species if we are going to survive on this plant. I'll leave at that. I fully recommend picking up the book!

You can read the discussion and listen to the entire podcast here.

Hope you enjoy it!

Recursive Awesome Formed

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:57:00 +0000

It's been a little while since my last post, as it's been a wild and crazy summer, but I am finally getting around to giving an update on what been going on with me related to mobile software development and business.
I'm super excited to let everyone know that I have co-founded a company with a good friend and colleague of mine named Sam Schroeder. Sam and I developed a product together this summer for ourselves around the area of mobile video distribution and branding called Mobile Vidhub. While we were developing this product, Sam and I were working a number of other projects together and decided it made sense to join forces and go into business together. Our new company ( Recursive Awesome, LLC ) focuses on developing mobile application on the 4 leading smartphone platforms ( Android, Blacberry, iPhone and Palm ). We both agree that using agile software development practices is the most effective way to develop software. We build not only mobile, but server side applications using Ruby and the Ruby on Rails framework.
We hope you check out our business, keep us in mind and please let us know if you are in need of our services. Sam and I are always interested in working with startups and new ideas, no matter how large or small. We have a wide array of experience related to software development and good contacts in the local community to help scale your project up as needed. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Google Technology Users Group

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:17:00 +0000

Just a quick note that I presented on Android at the local Twin Cities Google Technology User's Group this past week. I had to cover material for about 2 hours worth of time. It was a great experience and all who attended I felt get a lot out of the presentation. It's great see interest in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area build around Android and having been working with the platform in some shape or form for close to the past year, I feel like I'm really starting to master it and enjoy sharing my experience with others.
If you are in need of a person to train or bring your development staff up to date on Android, please contact me and let me know.
I also have posted all of the code that I wrote that night for the meeting and all of my slides up on GitHiub. You can find it all here:
http://github.com/justingrammens/tcgtug

For more in formation on the TCGTUG, you can find their website here:
http://tc-gtug.org/

POST JSON from Android using HttpClient

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:40:00 +0000

I'm using Ruby on Rails on the server and needed to post JSON to it from Android. Here's some quick code that I wrote to do this. Hopefully it helps someone else. All of the tutorials that I found didn't work. You basically need to make sure you post data in JSON format. Just seetting parameters won't do the trick.

In my case I had to create JSON something like:
{ fan: { email : 'foo@bar.com' } }

which equates to the HTML form input:
<input name="fan[email]" type="text"/>

To POST in Android. You can use something like this code.

public static String makeRequest(String path, Map params)
throws Exception {

DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httpost = new HttpPost(path);
Iterator iter = params.entrySet().iterator();

JSONObject holder = new JSONObject();

while(iter.hasNext()) {
Map.Entry pairs = (Map.Entry)iter.next();
String key = (String)pairs.getKey();
Map m = (Map)pairs.getValue();
   
JSONObject data = new JSONObject();
Iterator iter2 = m.entrySet().iterator();
while(iter2.hasNext()) {
Map.Entry pairs2 = (Map.Entry)iter2.next();
data.put((String)pairs2.getKey(), (String)pairs2.getValue());
}
holder.put(key, data);
}

StringEntity se = new StringEntity(holder.toString());
httpost.setEntity(se);
httpost.setHeader("Accept", "application/json");
httpost.setHeader("Content-type", "application/json");

ResponseHandler responseHandler = new BasicResponseHandler();
response = httpclient.execute(httpost, responseHandler);
}

Finding Skins Under Android 1.5

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:25:00 +0000

I was testing using some custom skins under the Android SDK 1.5 and was a little perplexed that all of the documentation I read told me to put the skins in the directory

$SDK_ROOT/tools/lib/images/skins

This is not correct under Android 1.5 SDK! Instead you want to put them into the directory

$SDK_ROOT/platforms/android-1.5/skins

This discussion on the Android Google Group helped me.
http://is.gd/1ouFs

Also, you can find many cool skins here:
http://teavuihuang.com/android/

Hoping this will save others wasted time.

Mobile Software Development at Localtone

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:26:00 +0000

If some of you have been following me on Twitter you might have seen that I'm becoming actively involved in mobile software development. I thought might be good to do quick post relating to the some of the talks that I've given on the subject and a presentations I have coming up this month. If you are looking to learn more about mobile and are local to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, I suggest you join us at one of the Mobile Twin Cities User's group meetings that I have founded. a BIG thanks to everyone who has presented at the previous meetings an Breon Nagy for recording our presentations!

Mobile Twin Cities
http://mobiletwincities.com - We meet the third Tuesday of the month.

Watch us online realtime or archived videos from the meetings can be found here:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/MobileTC

Twin Cities Java user's Group - (TCJUG)
I presented at TCJUG where I showed my "Contratoid" Android app and deployed it to the Android market all in one evening.

Video, source code and slide from this meeting can be found here.

Video at: http://is.gd/U4Zr (the presentation starts about 10 minutes into the video)
Source at: http://is.gd/TZFP
Slides at: http://is.gd/U5tM

I presented on Android at the Ruby User's of MN (RUM) group. Slide from this presentation can be found here.

http://www.slideshare.net/justingrammens/AndroidIntro

If VoIP is your things, I also spoke on Adhearsion as well at RUM. Slides from that presentation can be found here:

http://www.slideshare.net/justingrammens/voice-enabled-applications

Finally, I'll be talking about Android at the Penguin's Unbound meeting this weekend where we'll try and create another Android app and deploy it to the market. Hope you can attended.

http://is.gd/1ayaT

I'm available for consulting around mobile software development on all devices. Would be more than happy to spend some time talking with your organization around how you can use mobile and VoIP technologies.

Android Themes

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:52:00 +0000

Here's a good blog post on doing themes within Android. With the latest release of Android 1.5, the interface is looking much more clean and adding themes to your application can really give you that "wow" factor to you users.

You can read more on the blog post and specifics around giving you application a them here.

Podcast on Mobile and VoIP Technologies

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Sat, 23 May 2009 17:40:00 +0000

My good friend Garrick Van Buren was nice enough to involve me in a conversation on mobile software and VoIP technologies. We had a lot of fun talking about where the market is today and where we see it going in the next 5 years. Exciting times are ahead for all of use in this space. Details of the discussion can be found on his Podcast blog at:

http://www.firstcrackpodcast.com/

Enjoy!

Adhearsion Sandbox Rocks

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Mon, 18 May 2009 01:05:00 +0000

I presented in April at the Ruby User's of Minnesota (RUM) on creating voice enabled applications using the Adhearsion sandbox and another service called tropo.com. Slides from the presentation can be found here. Some people I know were unable to attend or unable to follow along during the demo, so I thought it might be fun to put together a quick screencast of the steps to get yourself working in the sandbox. The sandbox is completely free and provided by Jay and Jason at Adhearsion.com to give developers like us an opportunity to get our feet wet and play with Adhearsion. Enjoy the screencast! It's amazing just how fast one can get up and running and hope you have an opportunity to start creating voice enabled applications in the future. There's a lot of potential customers out there using plain old cell phones and the cost to implement voice enabled applications using Open Source frameworks like Ruby on Rails and Adhearsion is a small fraction of proprietary solutions.

My Lightning Round Talk at Mt. West Ruby Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:37:00 +0000

I attended the Mt. West Ruby Conference last month with good friend and fellow Rubyist/iPhone developer Sam Schroeder. We had a great time attending the conference and even got a little skiing in before the event began. I also had a chance to meet Jay Phillips from Adhearsion and an opportunity to do a quick lightning talk on Adhearsion at the end of the conference. The organizers were nice enough to give me 3 minutes and the very last slot, so that is why I'm speaking so fast! I did notice though, that I need to work on stopping the use of my crutch words like, "um..." during my presentations. I'll also be speaking at the Ruby User's of Minnesota on April 27th to show off the Adhearsion Sandbox and other software as a service telephony frameworks available to developers. Watch the video below to see a quick example of my lightning talk at the Mt. West Ruby Conference.

There were some excellent presenters and I'm definitely planning to attend next year. You can watch any of the other talks or lightning rounds here. Enjoy!

Blog Post From The F1 Web Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:51:00 +0000

Keeping myself busy here on team Ruby.MN at the F1 Web Challenge. You can check out some photos of our group uploaded at: http://is.gd/leE3
I've been up for 20 hours and programming for the last 16. Only 8 hours left! Fear the Red Shirts! =o

F1 Web Challenge v2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:41:00 +0000

Well, the F1 Web Challenge is back again this year! I'll be participating in the Team Ruby.MN. We just got word yesterday that our team t-shirts are done, we have met as a group a few times since the event to plan out the logistics and everyone is fired up to take on whatever non-profit is assigned to us. Yahoo!

What is the F1 Web Challenge You Ask?

It's a yearly competition put on by a local software consulting firm that brings non-profits together with programmers in a competitive setting to see who can build the best website in 24 hours. From being in the event last year, "24 Hours" is really a misnomer. That's the amount if time you'll be working, but not the amount of time you'll actually be awake and at the event. Last year I was at the event from around 7:00 am Saturday, until 4:00 pm Sunday and then by the time I got home and unwound, I didn't actually get to sleep until 7:00 pm on Sunday. I ended up being awake for 36 hours!

All of the that being said, the event was extremely fun and rewarding. I met some really great people, made some really good friends and had a chance to work with some of the brightest programmers in town. What more could I ask for? I should have been paying to get into this event!

I'll be trying to post photos and details on the event on the blog here as time permits. We won't know our non-profit that we are assigned to until we show up that morning. One thing they have changed this year was to increase the members on the team count, so we have two more bodies to help us get the work done. I'm excited to see what we create!

Details
F1 WEb Challenge Website:
http://www.f1webchallenge.com

Our Team (Ruby.MN) Website:
http://www.f1webchallenge.com/teams/27-Ruby-mn-2-2

Follow me on Twitter during the event!
http://twitter.com/justingrammens

OGG track numbers iTunes - and Songbird Sings!

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:12:00 +0000

I'm a BIG fan of Linux and open source. I try and use open source software whenever I can and try to contribute projects with either monetary donations or helping in reporting bugs, testing or documentation. I have a Linux desktop and host all of my applications on Linux. However, there unfortunately are however some programs and clients that require me to have a MacBook. Alas, sometimes you have to pay the piper. But I am looking to eventually ween myself from Steve Jobs.

I'm also an equally big fan of open standards. One standard that I support is Vorbis and more precisely the OGG container. If you have heard about OGG, the definition from Wikipedia is as follows:

Ogg is a free, open standard container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The Ogg format is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia.

The fact that a company could own the format that all of my music is in, goes against my beliefs of free and open standards. I therefore have tried everything that I can to try and keep all of my music in this format. It hasn't been easy, especially since most all music purchase download sites only offer MP3 or AAC. Not even a lossless version like FLAC seems to be available for download on most sites! Very annoying, but that's the subject of another post I guess.

Why am I writing all of this you ask?

Well, I've got close to 20 GB of OGG files and had been wanting to try and use iTunes to listen to them. The people at Xiph have created a quicktime extension that allows iTunes to recognize and play the OGG format! Details on that can be found here.

However, what you'll soon find out is that while it plays the songs, iTunes doesn't know the track numbers! It plays all of the songs from an album in alphabetical order. Bummer. This while not a deal breaker, is extremely annoying and when you have some albums where the songs are in particular order for a reason, it makes listening to album useless. This issues has been submitted to the people at Xiph, but has been deemed not important.

After some searching however, I found an amazing script by Dr. Lex, which allows you to run through your entire library and update the iTunes metadata with the track numbers from your OGG files. Woohoo! Now we are in business. You can get the script directly from Dr. Lex's site here. Very easy to install and it worked out of the box with my iTunes version 8. You'll notice the script also does some reply gain adjustments as well if you have that configured, but in my case I was just interested in getting the track numbers. Thank you Dr. Lex for creating and sharing this script. This is open source at it's best.

UPDATE:
Since I have solved my iTunes in OGG problem, I have actually found a better music player that support OGG right out of the box! It's called Songbird and has some really cool features along with a pluggable architecture. This allows in the same way that Firefox has taken off by people contributing to it, my hope is that Songbird will do the same. If you want to help an Open Source song player succeed I suggest you take a look at it. My next step is going to be getting a sync program going with Songbird so it will push songs to my Android powered G1 phone, but that's a subject for another post. Lots of fun pet projects in the works.

Happy audio listening with Songbird!

Getting Up and Running With Adhearsion

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:43:00 +0000

As many of you know, I'm extremely interested in developing applications that use the open source telephony project called Asterisk. You also might know that I'm a HUGE fan of the open source project started by Jay Phillips called Adhearsion. It aims to make developing VoIP applications in Asterisk, object oriented, easier to maintain, integrates with Rails and makes the process of developing VoIP applicatons FUN once again.

In this screencast, I show how you can get up and running with Adhearsion in a just a 10 minutes. Sit back and I hope you enjoy the presentation. Please let me know if there are other screencasts in the area of new technology that you might be interested in learning more about. I have a lot f fun doing these (when I have the time) and have a few sample applications (one of the them is a click-to-call service), which I'm planning to do screencast on this the coming weeks. Enjoy!

Asterisk Screencast

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:39:00 +0000

I've been learning and working with Asterisk for approximately the last 10 months. It's quite an amazing piece of software and I truly believe that it will change the way telecommuncations is done in the future. Along with Asterisk, I have been playing around with two very cool projects that interface with Asterisk - Adhearsion and Asterisk-Java. Both of the projects are aiming to solve similar, but yet very different problems in the VoIP space.

I submitted a screencast to the Adhearsion project showing how you configure and install Asterisk. If you are interested in learning more about Asterisk, you can watch my screencast! I had a lot of fun doing it and know that I'll be doing more in the near future.

If you are curious, I used screencasting software called ScreenFlow. It's hands-down one of the most fun pieces of software to use when doing screencasts. Look for more screencasts coming in the next few months on whole range of technology topics!

Little Brothers Website Launches

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:28:00 +0000

As I blogged about a few months ago, I was a part of a local development competition called the F1 Web Challenge. The competition was held back in March and was a 24 hour competition where 10 teams of 8 technologists worked together to build a website for a different non-profit. Our team was Ruby.MN and our non-profit was Little Brother's Friends of the Elderly.

After the 24 hours was completed, we did have a "functioning website". However, there were still some things that had yet to be completed in terms of bugs, a few minor features and the "D" word.. deployment. I ended up taking on this task of working with Kathleen from Little Brother's.

Tasks

1. Setup and configure the website on a place that would host if for them.
2. Work on fixing any bugs that we outstanding in the code.
3. Working with other developers on the team to complete the implementation of some of the features.
4. Keep a central point of communication for people at the non-profit to deal with the changes on the website until we went live.

Well, I'm safe to say that we've finally made it!

http://www.littlebrothersmn.org

Over the past 2+ months, it's been a little slow going as I've been the main person taking on the responsibility along with running my software business. As it's been for a non-profit, this has all been work that doesn't pay me anything. I do wish to say that I tremendously appreciate the help that I have gotten since the competition from a few of the members of our team. Even though I took on most of the work, launching the site myself, there is no way I would have been able to get it completed without help from a few key people. Thank you.

Configuration/Deployment

A few things I wanted to note in my configuration and deployment.

Setting up the hosting was not a trivial as one would think. First, LBFE had an existing website that we could not take down as it's accepting online donations. It was hosted on GoDaddy and actually involved an SSL certificate, so the new site had to support SSL for online donations. GoDaddy likes to say that they support Ruby on Rails, but at last check that support Rails 1.1. That was not going to work for us.

VISI.com offered to host the site for 1 year for free as being part of the competition. After communicating with their support staff however, I got the feeling that they had never hosted a Ruby on Rails application. Hosting Rails is actually very easy, but we decided maybe we shouldn't be the guinea pig for VISI. Also, we had no information as to how expensive the costs might be next year. I think VISI is a great company for large companies, hosting large applications. They do good work, but they are not cheap. Thus, I would assume they would be out of the price range for your typical non-profit.

I have used RailsPlayground before in development and it was suggested by another person on the team that we look at using them. For ease of use and expertise on running Rails, we decided to go with RailsPlayground. I setup a "test" subdomain for us to use to test, since their "www" site should not be disturbed, get a new SSL certificate created at RailsPlayground (you can't transfer SSL certificates), and configure their DNS to make this all work, while not upsetting their email and existing website. Pretty basic stuff that I have done in my business, so it wasn't technically difficult, just time consuming.

Hosting Specifics

1. RailsPlayground supports using Mongrel, so we setup Mongrel to serve the site through Apache proxy.
2. RailsPlayground offers shell access, so I setup capistrano for the deployments.
3. Setup TRAC if needed for the bug repository and WIKI if in the future LBFE needs to submit bugs or create documentation.
4. I setup Subversion to manage all of our source code.
5. Created a nightly cron job to dump the database and backup all of the binary resources for the site.
6. Using Montastic to monitor the uptime of the website.
7. Made all of the DNS changes and worked with support to get the SSL certificate installed and working properly.

Just one note on RailsPlayground: I was a little weary of using them since I have actually used their services for a few years now for quick development applications on public facing sites that I didn't want to setup on my own Linux Virtual Server. To be honest, from my past experience I would not host a large scale production application with them. Their servers seem bogged down and run slow (even using mongrel and a few users) and I have had issues with major outages in the past. However, as it is with all virtual hosts, it depends on the machine you site is on. or more importantly who is bogging down the server. I can say though I have been pleasantly surprised running the LBFE site through them. In the past few months, the site has responded well and I been very happy with their lack of downtime.

Overall, this has been a great experience I think for everyone involved and I'm very happy with the outcome. I think it's a win/win for everyone. I've made some new friends through the process, learned more about Ruby on Rails development while working with some very bright teammates and a non-profit got a great looking new website out of the deal. Not a bad deal!

IP Phone Install

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:04:00 +0000

Yesterday at our local Twin Cities Asterisk User's Group ( TCAUG.net ) we had the opportunity to do a real world, hands on, IP phone install at the client's business of the meeting organizer. What a great experience! The client is deploying 160, Polycom Soundpoint 301's at a newly acquired space within the same building.

In most cases, setting up an IP phone network is very straight forward. You can with DHCP and the default VLAN setting have the telephones actually download their configuration files from a local TFTP server. However, there was a bug in the boot-rom with these phones, so we had to do some manual configuration to get the system updated. The steps we took were.

Unpackage the IP phone
Boot the phone and select a static IP
Tell the phone the TFTP server to use.
Tell the phone the VLAN to use.
Reboot the phone and allow it to update itself.
Reboot the phone and reset it to DHCP.
Reboot the phone one final time and make sure it was assigned an IP correctly.

I actually had the opportunity over the past couple of day to help Eric do some of the line patching and installation of a plugs at the employee workstations. It was an awesome experience to get out in the field and work hands on with some new cutting edge IP phone technology. This install is using Asterisk on a 10 gigabit network. After we got the phone registered, our group played around with paging around 50 phone at the same time to see what sort of response from the Asterisk server. It turns out it didn't even break a sweat! Asterisk can scale very well in small to medium sized businesses. I'm looking forward to continuing to help Eric when I can with future projects, just to continue and round out my VOIP technology experience. I continue to see areas and new ideas of places where software can be used in these new IP based systems, but getting the chance to work, hands on with the phone and running hte lines is a lot of fun and something I have having a great time learning and working in.

Join Me At TCLUG

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:01:00 +0000

I'm bad at getting these messages out ahead of time, but wanted to let people know that I'll be presenting tonight, alongside two friends of mine, Jason and Eric, at the Twin Cities Linux User's Group (TCLUG). We'll be talking about Asterisk and the history/future of telephony using VOIP.
I'll be trying to hold my own in the conversation, since those guys are wizards when it comes to this VOIP stuff and deal with Asterisk everyday and run the Twin Cities Asterisk User's Group. I'll be talking more about the software integration that is possible with Asterisk using Adhearsion and Telegraph. Hopefully we'll have a good turn out. I really enjoy talking about VOIP and telecommunications and I see a great potential for all sorts of both client side and server side applications.

Here more information on the event and a link to the meeting page. Here's all the details.

When:
Wednesday, April 9, 2008, 7:00pm - 8:30pm

Where:
University of Minnesota Minneapolis campus, EE/CSci Building , Room: 3-115 (Room change!!) 200 Union St SE, Minneapolis 55455

Who:
Justin Grammens : Localtone Interactive, LLC
Localtone Interactive is a Minneapolis, MN based internet application development company focusing on using Ruby on Rails, Java, Linux and Open Source technologies to provide business solutions to our clients.

Jason Brockman : OneNet USA
OneNet USA is a Communications Solutions Provider offering integrated network solutions for voice, data, IP, and video to a diverse clientele

Eric Osterberg : Sound Choice Communications, LLC
Founded in May of 2001, Sound Choice Communications offers competitive telecommunications services in Minnesota including highspeed DSL, local VoIP dialtone, private data circuits, and VoIP long distance service.

Hope you can join us!

Emerging Digiterati

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:50:00 +0000

I just got back from presenting Localtone Radio at Emerging Digerati earlier this morning. It was held at the Wiesmann Art Museum on the University of Minnesota Campus. What an awesome event! I actually had never heard of this event, but my business partner Phil I think got the skinny on this event from our good friend Garrick.

Emerging Digerati is basically a showcase of emerging technology related to art - and I use art in the broad sense of the term. From everything related to video, audio, installation, design, etc. I talked with the people who have been running this event for the past 7 years and learned a little about the mission and goals of the event. This year was the first time that they tried doing a full week long event with presentations. I was blown away to see all of the different presentations people gave and all of the ways technology is emerging. A few take-aways that I do see in emerging technology were:

Trusted Friends - Some people call this social networking, but those are kind of loaded words, since they encompass a lot of concepts. Basically, the thought that there is so much content out on the internet, that people only have time to visit sites and keep on things that are recommended by their trusted friends. It's not so much to just network with people, but to use their suggestions in content you consume. I have some thoughts about how to add these concepts into Localtone Radio.
Interactivity - The days of the boring static website I would predict will be coming to a close. With Flash and technologies such as Ajax/Javascript, more desktop type interfaces are going to be demanded in the browser.
Video - We all know video is popular, but seeing a number of the presentations today solidifies this point and more sites will incorporate some form of video or pulling in video from other services in the future.
RSS Feeds - With the sharing of more information on the web, RSS feeds are becoming more well known as a way to distribute content to people. I was surprised at the knowledge and ideas people had related to sharing and using RSS feeds. RSS is something that I had kind of viewed as being beyond many consumers and was not a big deal in Localtone Radio. After today however, I'll be looking at ways to add them.
Passion - As with all artists, it's the passion of what you are working on that drives you. In all of the presentations today, you could tell that these were projects and technology that people truly felt passionate about. People often work on these projects for little or no money and instead are not driven by dollars, but by pure motivation.

I want to say a big thank you to Aaron and Anne from the Institute for New Media Studies the opportunity to be a part of this event. I'm looking forward to next year, if not to present, just to show up and take in what everyone else is up to. It was a great way to spend half a day (I unfortunately couldn't stay the whole time due to other meetings) and I'll be sure and be there next year.

Turn Off The Lights

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:04:00 +0000

This past Saturday evening, Becky and I participated in Earth Hour. If you have not heard of this event, it's where everyone is encouraged to turn off all of the lights in their house for 1 hour, between 8 and 9pm their local time. A number of large companies here in Minneapolis turned off the lights in their buildings in observance of the event. I also noticed a number of homes in my neighborhood that went dark during this time as well.

Besides cutting down on energy consumption, I found it to be a very relaxing time and a good way to spend quality time with the person I love. Becky and I lit candles and sat and talked in the kitchen of our house. It was great way to force us to get out of the daily grind and never ending tasks and just spend time together. There is a wide range on what people believe in global warming, but I'd like to suggest people try and do this more often, both for the sake of the helping environment, but also as a way to spend quality time with your family.

Earth Hour probably never intended to have this consequence, but try turning off the t.v. and the lights for even 15 minutes every week and talk with each other more often. Life goes by far too fast and those days of sitting at home and using candles to read a story or talk about what is going on in each other's lives will be gone before you know it. Just something to think about.

F1 Web Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Localtone, LLC) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:49:00 +0000

Last weekend I volunteered my time for a non-profit charity website programming event. It was one of the most fun events I've been a part of and would do it again in a heartbeat. Here's the scoop on what happened.

Story

A local consulting company named Sierra Bravo decided to sponsor an event that would bring 10 teams of 8 technology people together with 10 non-profits. They made a competition out of the event pitching it as "24-hours of overnight programming". Each technology team could use any programming language and/or system they wanted to, but after the 24 hours the programming was to stop and a panel of judges would decide who created the best website. The winning team won some small prizes, but the big deal was that they won "bragging rights" as the F1 Web Challenge Winner for 2008. The event was 24 hours of programming time, but with breaks, time to setup and tear down and presentations I was awake for 36 hours straight!

Oh, also the plan was originally to have 10 teams and 10 non-profits, but because of overall demand it was decided to "take it to 11" and another team and non-profit would be added.

My team

My team was name Ruby.MN, a collection of local Twin Cities developers who met at our local Ruby Users of Minnesota (RUM) meetings. We had two designers who are not programmers and one person who specializes in Quality Assurance. We had a "dream team" - some really solid rock-stars covering all area of technology and design.

Our non-profit

Our non-profit randomly chosen was "Little Brother's Friends of Elderly" and we were designing and implementing the MN chapter. We were very excited to get a chance to work with this non-profit. They do some amazing work combating loneliness and working with elderly citizens when it comes to both mental and physical health and well being. Kathleen was the person from the organization that we worked with and she was a real trooper. She stayed with us the whole time and was one of the best clients I've ever worked with. Very open and understanding of our limitations in the timeframe we were under and she was very excited that she was working with the Ruby.MN team!

Photos from the event

My schedule for the 36 hours went as follows:

6:00 AM - Wake up.
6:45 AM - I arrive to the place where the event is being held (St. Paul, U of M campus). I get signed in and set up at our tables. They provided us some breakfast.
7:30 AM - Non-profits are matched up with team, rules are explained and coding commences.
12:00 PM - We stop for a break and lunch from BW3's.
1:00 PM - Coding resumes.
6:30 PM - Break for dinner from Chipolte.
7:00 PM - Coding resumes.
8:30 PM - Break for prizes to be given out (I win an HD-DVD of a National Geographic Special)
8:45 PM - Break for playing "Rock Band". Ruby.MN comes in 2nd place on the applause-o-meter.
10:30 PM - We had a clown show especially for the Ruby.MN team!
12:00 AM - Midnight snack from Dominoes.
3:00 AM - All are feeling very tired. A few take a break for some sleep. I continue to stay awake and work.
6:30 AM - Breakfast is brought in. Bagels, doughnuts.. lots of energy drinks!
12:00 PM - Coding stops.
12:30 PM - Lunch is served. Chinese buffet.
1:30 - Presentations are performed in front of all of the teams and the judges.
2:30 PM - Event is complete and the winner is crowned.
3:00 PM - Clean up my stuff and call Becky to be picked up.
3:30 PM - Becky and I go on a walk up to the store.
6:00 PM - I fall asleep on the couch after being awake for 36 hours.

This was an awesome experience and one in which I feel like I learned as much as shared. One of the other guys on the team I heard say something like, "This is something that more conferences should do, instead of sitting in a room and listening to one person ramble on." I completely agree. Usually when you go to technology conferences (or probably any conference I would argue), it's all about sitting in a room and letting one person present and trying to learn from them in 45-90 minute increments. Some sessions very in time, but they all are basically the same. One presenter and many attendees. How about doing a programming exercise for the conference - one where all the attendees of the conference build something? The F1 Web Challenge was a competition, but it really was a technology caucus. People who knew each other, shared ideas even across teams and all of the work and positive energy was directed towards the non-profits, as opposed negative energy towards each other.

Final Verdict

Well, after the sites were all judged and all of the points were tallied, only one winner could be awarded... I'm sorry to say however it was not Ruby.MN who was crowned the winner. To be honest, it was nearly impossible to choose one winner in this event. All of the teams created some beautiful and useful websites for their charity. Great job job everyone!

Anyway, check out the links below for the information on the event and a "live blogging" one of my teammates did during the event. Once the site we built is fully functional and live, I'll be sure and post an update here with the all of the details. Here's some simple "before" and "after" screenshots.

Before

After

Additional Links

Live Blogging By Samuel Schroeder

Official F1 Web Challenge Website