something in the way

Quick Intro to SoundPrism

herkulano — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 20:36:15 +0000

I favorited a YouTube video: Available now: http://audanika.com/download An intro to Audanika SoundPrism with an explanation of the interface and the main concepts of it. Friend us at http://www.facebook.com/audanika and follow us on http://twitter.com/audanika for new...

Walk this way

herkulano — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 19:05:00 +0000

Whether you’re going for an urban hike or wandering from your hotel to find that restaurant you passed earlier, you won’t have to flag down a local if you’ve got Google Maps for mobile 4.5 on Android. Maps already had Navigation and walking directions, and today we’re happy to share the perfect marriage of the two: Walking Navigation (Beta). If you need help deciding where to walk (or drive), you can now also use Street View smart navigation or the new Google Maps search bar to guide your choice.

Walking Navigation
Walking Navigation lets you use GPS navigation with walking directions that are more direct and use pedestrian pathways when we know about them. To try it now, choose the “Walking” option from the Navigation icon. Walking Navigation has a few changes that help when you’re on your feet. For example, your phone will vibrate when you need to make a turn. You can even turn off voice guidance and just use these notifications while soaking in the sights and sounds around you. To help you orient yourself with your surroundings, the map will rotate with you as you turn the phone, and walking mode uses satellite view by default. Use it like a virtual compass with satellite imagery to look ahead or help pick out landmarks along the way.

Choose the “Walking” option after selecting the Navigation icon (left) to use Walking Navigation (right).

Keep in mind that Walking Navigation is still in beta, and Google Maps may not always have up-to-date information or optimal walking routes. Whether you’re walking or driving with Google Maps Navigation, you should always be safe and pay attention to road signs, follow signals, and use good judgment about routes that can’t be walked.

Street View smart navigation
If you want a sneak preview of where you’re going, use the new Street View on Google Maps with smart navigation and updated imagery. Just like with Street View smart navigation on your computer, you no longer have to slowly move down a street by tapping arrows along roads repeatedly. Now you can quickly navigate Street View by dragging Pegman from the corner and highlighting where you want to go with a lightly shaded “pancake” on roads or a rectangle on buildings. Let go of the screen when highlighting the front of a building, and you’ll fly there and turn to face it. With a swipe of your finger, you can hop rivers and scale buildings.

You’ll need to download an update for the “Street View on Google Maps” app in Android Market separately from Google Maps. Once you update, access Street View just like before: open Maps, search for a place or long-press the map, and choose the Street View option if available.

New Google Maps search bar
At the top of the map, you’ll find the new Google Maps search bar always available for easy access. Tap it to quickly start searching, open Places, use the Layers menu, or find yourself on the map with My Location. Here are more new features that may be helpful when you’re looking for nearby places:

Filter search results by distance or ratings
View prices categorized with dollar signs
See cross streets for places.

Google Maps for mobile 4.5 and Street View smart navigation are available now for Android 1.6+ everywhere they’re currently available. Search for Google Maps (tap here on your phone) and then Street View on Google Maps (tap here) in Android Market to update both.

Visit our Help Center to learn more or tell us your feedback and questions in our Help Forum. Give us suggestions and vote on other people’s on the Mobile Product Ideas page.

Posted by Andrey Ulanov and Kevin Law, Software Engineers

Search: now faster than the speed of type

herkulano — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:51:00 +0000

Search as you type. It’s a simple and straightforward idea—people can get results as they type their queries. Imagining the future of search, the idea of being able to search for partial queries or provide some interactive feedback while searching has come up more than a few times. Along the way, we’ve even built quite a few demos (notably, Amit Patel in 1999 and Nikhil Bhatla in 2003). Our search-as-you-type demos were thought-provoking—fun, fast and interactive—but fundamentally flawed. Why? Because you don’t really want search-as-you-type (no one wants search results for [bike h] in the process of searching for [bike helmets]). You really want search-before-you-type—that is, you want results for the most likely search given what you have already typed.

As you can imagine, searching even before someone types isn’t easy—which is why we are so excited today to be unveiling Google Instant. Google Instant is search-before-you-type. Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.

Here are a few of the core features in Google Instant:

Dynamic Results - Google dynamically displays relevant search results as you type so you can quickly interact and click through to the web content you need.
Predictions - One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that we predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing. See what you need? Stop typing, look down and find what you’re looking for.
Scroll to search - Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

Here’s a video that explains Google Instant in greater depth:

To bring Google Instant to life, we needed a host of new technologies including new caching systems, the ability to adaptively control the rate at which we show results pages and an optimization of page-rendering JavaScript to help web browsers keep up with the rest of the system. In the end, we needed to produce a system that was able to scale while searching as fast as people can type and think—all while maintaining the relevance and simplicity people expect from Google.

The user benefits of Google Instant are many—but the primary one is time saved. Our testing has shown that Google Instant saves the average searcher two to five seconds per search. That may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up. With Google Instant, we estimate that we’ll save our users 11 hours with each passing second!

As part of our current rollout, Google Instant will become the core search experience on Google.com for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE 8. We’ll also be offering Google Instant to our users in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the U.K. who are signed in and have Instant-capable browsers. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll work to roll out Google Instant to all geographies and platforms.

We’re very excited about today’s announcement and hope that you are too. Give Google Instant a try and let us know what you think!

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience

Flash on mobile, the facts.

herkulano — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Yesterday morning I got an email from fellow Adobean Danny Winokur in my inbox discussing the state of the union with respect to Flash on the mobile. The synopsis of the conversation went something like this.

Flash Player 10.1 is now beginning to ship in volume on many smartphones. Many of you may have seen the attached full page Motorola ad which ran on Friday in the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. There are other similar ads being planned by major carriers and handset manufacturers. This is the culmination of years of co-development to migrate Flash (not just Flash light) to the mobile. Some have criticized Adobe for not doing this earlier but the reality is that the technology just wasn't ready earlier (hardware, software and infrastructure).

As the masses are starting to understand that video performance challenges on mobile devices, the truth has started to emerge that many of these issues are not isolated for Flash. Many of the technical issues are a function of the hardware capabilities and the drivers which expose them. Just for one example, if you take the same video with the same encoding and use any other player technology, and it is likely to perform about the same or worse than when played using Flash (the abc.com problem stems from code on their site which tries to use the hardware decoder for two snips concurrently, while the hardware only allows one - a constraint shared by any player on this hardware).

Flash video performance, along with other video experiences on mobile, should substantially improve. We are all in still in the genesis days of mobile and the truth is that a consistent experience over multiple screens and devices is a lot of work. As Adobe rolls out improvements such as StageVideo in future releases, allowing video to be sent directly to the screen (instead of being returned to the Flash Player) after being decoded in hardware, these experiences will get better and better. This point, among others, is made articulately here:
http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/the-five-key-myths-about -html5.html?page=1.

As others have right noted, the way to get great performing video on mobile devices is for content publishers to encode in ways that are supported by mobile *hardware*.

I don't expect the naysayers to be quiet any time soon. Several of my brethren on Slashdot have already complained bitterly about the intrusion of Flash onto their devices. The reality is that it is the users choice. Adobe, as I understand it, has never been concerned about forcing things on users. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The exec's I talk to seem quite concerned about people having the choice. If they don't want Flash, they can turn it off. I myself turn of a lot of features on my Nexus 1 Android device when I am not requiring them to save battery life. When I want my GPS data, I turn it on. Flash is no different (although it has been architected and engineered not to squander device resources when not in use). Long live choice!

I am stoked about the future of mobile. It took me a while to get there but now that we are rolling it out, many of the enterprises I am working with are bombarding me with new ideas for extendingh their infrastructure to mobile. Some of these are simply items like extending a Livecycle ES business process to a Droid device or as complex as dynamic routing changes in task assignment due to geo-location. Very cool.

Original post at http://technoracle.blogspot.com

New webOS Shots Show Off Services, Default Apps For Filetypes

herkulano — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:33:57 +0000

A nice little package of webOS 2.0 beta shots has shown up over at Wibozi, and it’s looking nice. One very handy and apparently easily-accessed feature is setting default apps for filetypes; with the right combination of sideloading and file management, serious hacks probably won’t be necessary for webOS devices to play uncommon and nonstandard formats.

There are lots of suggested and default services shown as well, though we’re told that Dropbox and MobileMe are actually only there as part of the QuickOffice suite. That’s not to say webOS won’t have native access to those (though Dropbox seems more likely than MobileMe), just a clarification so you know what’s going on there.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the webOS tablets, personally — I think they’ll be a more open and customizable experience than iOS and more user-friendly and tablet-oriented than Android. We’ve still got Android 3.0 coming down the pipe, though, so anything could happen.

[via PreCentral and Engadget]

Samsung Galaxy Tab with Flash Player 10.1

herkulano — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 01:59:15 +0000

Now here is the first tablet that I’m actually excited about. The upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab will run Android 2.2 (Froyo) and will ship with Flash Player 10.1. I recently switched to the Samsung Galaxy as my everyday phone and absolutely love it. The screen is gorgeous and I’m assuming this tablet will have one just as nice. Check out the commercial for the tablet below. This looks like it will ship relatively soon too.

mimu : handcrafted products

herkulano — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:34:00 +0000

]]>

How to Use Your Tech Power for Good

herkulano — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 20:55:59 +0000

Last week Leo Laporte did a Gov 2.0 special show on TWiT with Tim O'Reilly and Jennifer Pahlka, a must-listen for programmers who want to use their skills to make the world a better place. It opened with this Code for America spot, which features Tim, Mark Zuckerberg, Caterina Fake, and Biz Stone. The Code for America fellowship application deadline has passed, but if you want to use your coding skills to help our government make better policy decisions, you can do so by contributing to ThinkUp.

What different sorting algorithms sound like

herkulano — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:17:30 +0000

Last month we saw sorting algorithms visualized in rainbow technicolor. Now, by Rudy Andrut, here they are auralized.

This particular audibilization is just one of many ways to generate sound from running sorting algorithms. Here on every comparison of two numbers (elements) I play (mixing) sin waves with frequencies modulated by values of these numbers. There are quite a few parameters that may drastically change resulting sound - I just chose parameteres that imo felt best.

It sounds like someone is playing on old Atari game. Warning: may cause seizures. Watch it in action in the video below.

[via]

Fresh Stuff From Banksy

herkulano — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:38:32 +0000

Altoids: Tune Out

herkulano — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:53:44 +0000

Para ajudar os usuários a superar a sobrecarga de informações, a Altoids criou Tune Out, um aplicativo de Facebook disponível para Android, iPhone e desktops.

De acordo com a Big Spaceship, agência responsável pela criação do aplicativo, quem utilizar o Tune Out vai poder filtrar conteúdos para, por exemplo, receber apenas a atualização dos amigos favoritos.

Nada melhor do que assinar um serviço pertinente, ainda mais hoje que as estratégias tradicionais já não resolvem. Oferecer ferramentas capazes de simplificar e/ou melhorar a vida dos consumidores, é um dos caminhos para quem quer gerar uma percepção positiva diante da enorme concorrência onde a diferenciação por produtos é cada vez mais difícil.

Arcade Fire meets HTML5

herkulano — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:09:00 +0000

What would a music experience designed specifically for the modern web look like? This is a question we've been playing around with for the last few months. Browsers and web technologies have advanced so rapidly in the last few years that powerful experiences tailored to each unique person in real-time are now a reality.

Today we’re excited to launch a musical experience made specifically for the browser. Called “The Wilderness Downtown”, the project was created by writer/director Chris Milk with the band Arcade Fire and Google. Building this project on the web and for the browser allowed us to craft an experience that is not only personalized, but also deeply personal for each viewer. “The Wilderness Downtown” takes you down memory lane through the streets you grew up in. It’s set to Arcade Fire’s new song “We Used to Wait” off their newly released album The Suburbs (which you may be familiar with, especially if you were one of 3.7 million viewers who live-streamed Arcade Fire's concert on YouTube earlier this month). The project was built with the latest web technologies and includes HTML5, Google Maps, an integrated drawing tool, as well as multiple browser windows that move around the screen.

“The Wilderness Downtown” was inspired by recent developments in modern browsers and was built with Google Chrome in mind. As such, it’s best experienced in Chrome or an up-to-date HTML5-compliant browser. You can launch the project and learn more about it on our Chrome Experiments site at www.chromeexperiments.com/arcadefire.

We hope you enjoy it.

Posted by Aaron Koblin, Google Creative Lab

Adding Rich Animation to your iPhone and Android Web Sites

herkulano — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Both the iPhone and Android Web browsers are built using the same technology, WebKit. With this in mind, you can create Web sites optimized for WebKit that will run on both phones. The focus of this article is animation for the mobile phone. We will cover CSS3, SVG and CANVAS techniques you can use today.

The Spectrum of User Experience

herkulano — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 08:53:11 +0000

]]>

Seaswarm

herkulano — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:28:05 +0000

I favorited a YouTube video:

Some Rest, Intel, FOTB, Lisbon, MAX and Latin America!

herkulano — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 19:27:22 +0000

Things are going to be pretty unresponsive around here (more than usual) for the next week as I’m taking some time off to recharge the batteries. After I return things will be picking up rapidly as we enter the new conference season. Here are some upcoming things that are going on over the next few months. There is lots of exciting new stuff that I can’t wait to start talking about.

Intel Developer Forum · San Francisco · Sep 13 – 15
My first conference back will be the Intel Developer Forum taking place at Moscone Center in San Francisco. Adobe and Intel have partnered for the Melrose project that presents an excellent way for developers to monetize their AIR applications targeted at netbooks. I will be presenting on Adobe’s multi-screen vision.

Flash on the Beach · Brighton · Sep 26 – 29
I am really starting to get amped up for this year’s Flash on the Beach conference, which is arguably the world’s best. There is an interesting mix of speakers this year including several industry heavyweights. The Inspire sessions are probably my favorite part of this conference. Now don’t be a wanker. Go and register.

Flash Camp Portugal · Lisbon · Oct 2
This will be my first time in Portugal and I’m looking forward to hearing the difference between Brazilian Portuguese and the native version. Will essa porra even translate? The plans for this are still in the works but it will take place in Lisbon on October 2nd.

Adobe MAX · Los Angeles · Oct 23 – 27
MAX will be huge this year and I will be pretty busy. I’m doing a 90-minute BYOL session on building your first AIR for Android application. I will also be doing a slightly modified version of the My Head Hurts presentation that I did at FITC. I think it is a really informative session. Go and register for my sessions if they sound useful to you.

Latin Flash Tour · Latin America · Oct 30 – Nov 12
Yes were coming back for a second year bringing mayhem, cervezas, and some Flash stuff too. Check out the details on the official site. Details are still be worked out so be sure to check back. Mateo un ladron!

An update on JavaOne

herkulano — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:30:00 +0000

Like many of you, every year we look forward to the workshops, conferences and events related to open source software. In our view, these are among the best ways we can engage the community, by sharing our experiences and learning from yours. So we’re sad to announce that we won't be able to present at JavaOne this year. We wish that we could, but Oracle’s recent lawsuit against Google and open source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and open source generally. This is a painful realization for us, as we've participated in every JavaOne since 2004, and I personally have spoken at all but the first in 1996.

We understand that this may disappoint and inconvenience many of you, but we look forward to presenting at other venues soon. We’re proud to participate in the open source Java community, and look forward to finding additional ways to engage and contribute.

By Joshua Bloch, Google Open Source Programs Office

P2P Radar for Android

herkulano — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:39:51 +0000

A few weeks ago I published a video demonstrating the amazing P2P features in AIR2.x, running on the desktop and on Android devices. Well I have been hard at work improving this application and making it robust enough to show here in India at the Flash Platform Summit.

The result is a pretty complex application that enables users to establish P2P video calls. I have used Google Maps in 3D mode and added Gesture support, Twitter for Authentication and a completely new API.

As promised, here is the source for you to download. Remember that Tom Krcha is our P2P and FMS expert, so make sure that you keep up-to-date on his blog for more elaborate uses of P2P.

DOWNLOAD

Multi-User Google Maps Collaboration on Android

herkulano — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:26:23 +0000

This application allows users in different locations to work together in Google Maps.

The collaboration features in this application include:

Video Chat
Map Synchronization on move, zoom, etc.
Whiteboarding
Cursor sharing

When running on Android, the application can use the device’s GPS to share your location.

This is just another example of “built-in” collaboration (go here and here for more). The point is really how easy it is to add these collaboration features to any application, and then to deploy these collaboration-enabled applications to multiple screens (browser, desktop, Android, and more devices soon).

Experience the application in the browser

Click here to experience the browser version of the application.

The application is written in Flex 4. The collaboration features are powered by LiveCycle Collaboration Service.

Demand for Flash Developers is Increasing

herkulano — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:50:09 +0000

The Wall Street Journal recently put out an article describing how the demand for Flash developers has been increasing as of late. While this is no surprise to most of us in the community, it is a refreshing reminder that those who have marked Flash as a dying technology are quite wrong indeed. The article states that the increase in online Flash gaming is a large reason for the spike. I’m guessing that it also has something to do with all of the anticipation surrounding Flash on mobile devices.

The article also includes a quote about the salaries that top Flash developers are getting these days:

Top full-time Flash engineers can now command more than $150,000 a year in salary, says Stuart Liroff, a headhunter at GreeneSearch recruiting firm. That compares with $50,000 to $80,000 a year three years ago.

I’m sure a lot of you are now running to your bosses office to talk about getting a raise .