Androids, Robots and Blimps

Posted by Lester Madden under Gadgets, Smartphones

More fun with an accelerometer today, this time on a Google Android G1 phone.

Having an accelerometer in a phone is cool, but what’s better is when you let a couple of really bright people loose on the API. Especially if they happen to have a spare robot or blimp around the house.

Bluetooth+ Blackberry + Lewis Hamilton = Fun

Posted by Lester Madden under Gadgets, Smartphones, Symbian

It seems that Symbian OS isn’t the only platform to have a version of ShakerRacer.

The guys over at Vodafone have developed something similar for the Blackberry Storm. Even Lewis Hamilton gets to have a play.

A Real ShakerRacer

Posted by Lester Madden under General, Software, Symbian

A nice relaxing weekend is almost over. Almost because I have today (Monday) off as holiday, so I’m still relaxing. Yesterday I went to see Tina Turner in concert at the O2 in London. I’m not really a fan, but it was very entertaining.

Someone sent me an SMS to ask if I enjoyed the show. The only problem was they sent it to my house phone not my mobile. In the UK that means your phone rings every 30 minutes until you pick it up and listen to the full message. 12:30am the first call started, by the time we located the phone it hung up. 1:00am we got the next one, I finally answered the call at 1:30am only to be greeted with an electronic voice asking me if I enjoyed the show. I’m not sure who sent me the message but in the words of Mr T. I pity the fool.

While is seems like a long time off, especially if you are a delegate, but the Smartphone show is only 7 months away. That means that it’s time to start planning what’s going to be at the show. Last year we launched Mobile DevFest to bring back developers to the show and had an amazing event. This year we want to make it even bigger and better for developers, so if you have any killer ideas that you would like to see, feel free to let me know.

Last year the central attraction of the Mobile DevFest was ShakerRacer. Control a radio controlled car over BlueTooth from a Nokia N95 using the accelerometer API. As you see from the photo below we had a huge race circuit to race the car around.

I found a real version of ShakerRacer where a couple of university students put a BlueTooth module in to real car for their BSc. It’s the daddy of ShakerRacers, the only shame is they didn’t thrash the car in the video, but knowing how hard it was to control the mini version that was probably a wise move.

MS Windows On S60

Posted by Lester Madden under Gadgets, Smartphones

Totally pointless, but makes you sit back and say ‘no way, how did he do that?’

What’s The Value Of Your Network?

Posted by Lester Madden under General

So, you blog regularly, you religiously enter all your business contacts into LinkedIn.
You’ve added all your friends to Facebook and now your addicted to Twitter.

Friday today, so question time. If you could put a monetary value on your networks have you ever wondered how much they would be worth?

LG Watch Phone

Posted by Lester Madden under Gadgets, General, Smartphones

At Mobile World Congress 09 last week there was, as you’d imagine an abundance of mobile phones. I went for a walk around the 8 exhibition halls and have to admit after a while it was pretty hard to focus any more, all the mobiles started to blur into one. One thing that did stand out though was the wrist watch phones on the LG stand.