Here’s another fun mobile app I helped implement recently using all the latest greatest visual tricks offered by HTML5, CSS, Javascript and Webkit (aka Mobile Safari).
Ryan Oakes, a talented professional magician and proprietor of Solid Oak Productions, spied me sitting in a coffee shop one day working on some code, and asked me if I knew how to build iPhone apps and if I liked magic. Always up for a new and interesting challenge, I said yes, and now, “ta-da!”, anyone can learn and perform a great trick using their iPhone…
Finally, a professional-looking magic trick specifically designed for the mobile phone! Designed by a professional magician to make YOU look like the star… not the phone. It doesn’t look like the phone does all the work, but it does! So easy to do, yet people will be totally amazed.
Perform it for friends! Perform it for your family! Perform it in a bar to break the ice with strangers!
Two versions included in app: “Think-a-Drink” and the family-friendly “Predict-a-Pet”
Rosa’s new work, “Chrono-Particle Processor”, is both visually mesmerizing and strangely functional. You see, it is actually a distributed time machine meant for the general good of all humanity to give back time we have lost… or something like that. Portions of the work/device were realized using intricate inked pieces of wood designed using open-source app Inkscape and then rendered out of wood using a laser provided by the always-awesome NYC Resistor. Since there is a spiritual link between Nikola Tesla and NYC Resistor, then the possibility that Rosa’s work is actually a space-time device of some sort may actually be true.
The show is up until September 13th. It is very easy to get to the Bronx Museum on the D train… it took MC and I about 45 minutes from Park Slope on a Sunday! Exit at 167st and walk down Grand Concourse about two blocks. The museum itself is a beautiful space, with additional exhibits on display including a general history of the Bronx through artifacts.
More of Rosa’s drawings and sketches can be seen below and on her website…
Social Activism Using Mobile Technology
H79.2800.1 Call#76846 Tues 6:30pm to 9:00pm Staff ITP Course Listing
We all know how mobile phones and ubiquitous computing have changed communication and networking in our personal lives, but do you understand the affect they have had on political and social justice movements around the world? More importantly, do you know how this has been done, so that you can apply these techniques when your own moment to raise your voice comes? While Obama Vice-Presidential SMS announcement was a milestone for politics in the U.S., activists and organizations around the world have been using mobile phones for years to get their message out, organize their communities, safely communicate under authoritarian eyes and save lives in times of crisis.
Through studying historic, global uses of mobile technology and then teaching you how to use and apply these techniques, this course will give you the power 2B THE CHNG U WNT 2 C. The source will study and apply the use of SMS capture and broadcast systems (FrontlineSMS/RapidSMS), mobile crisis & event reporting tools (Ushahidi, VoteReport), Bluetooth broadcast systems, pirate Wifi mesh nodes, helmet-cam mobile phones and wearable UMPC/NetBook video broadcast systems. The course will also study about security and privacy of mobile phones and the possibility for open-source telephony. While the focus will be on the cutting edge, we’ll also review the historic importance of police scanners, HAM radio, walkie talkie radios and other “old school” tools that have played important roles in the civil rights movement, the environmental movement and more. Actual organizations, causes and activists will be invited to speak to the class (both in-person and via Skype from around the world) to offer their stories and observations. Opportunities to work on projects with these movements will be presented to students.
Some experience programming mobile devices (J2ME, iPhone, Android) will be useful, but not necessary. Experience in setting up at least one web server/application or blog system preferred. Having a cause you work or identify with or at least something you care about will be very important. Case studies to include:
The use of SMS message forwarding and multimedia attachments to share the Philippines version of the Nixon tapes
Streaming live video from Mt. Everest and the Great Wall of China (while hiding from the police)
Secure, Anonymous, Private Mobile Phones via open-source Cryptophone software and Google Android
Reporting in Crisis: Kenya, Congo and Gaza eyewitness acount tracking via SMS and Smartphones
Election Protection: making sure your vote counts – activism for the common citizen
Crowd Control: Organizing and directing mass mobilizations through Twitter and SMS
Virtual Telephony: Asterisk, Google Voice, Skype and more, and why making phone numbers virtual and disposalable matters
From Tsunami’s to Twitter: did you know the first micro-blogging via SMS that mattered happened in the aftermath of the 2005 tsunami?
Feeling left out, I decided there should at least be a basic offering for Android, and realized I could just wrap and tweak the mobile web service they offer at http://m.playfoursquare.com
Hence, FourDroid was (quickly) born, thanks to the always awesome PhoneGap Framework and the built-in WebKit browser on Android.
The benefit the “app” version has over just pointing your browser at the site:
the app keeps its state/page separate from any web browsing you might do
You can easily add the app icon to your home screen for quick access
the browser font size is increased by default (the size for the mobile site is very small)
a bottom button/tab bar provides quick links to often used screens
it is just so much hotter to have an “app” than to try to explain how to type in a mobile URL
At some point, PhoneGap can also be used to tie in GPS location detection, photo upload, accelerometer and more, but for now, I’ll just settle for the benefits listed above.
The best part of this whole story is that I wrote the app this evening while I was waiting for other work (well paying work) to compile… so about two hours total interleaved into what I was actualy supposed to be doing. Yay, for PhoneGap on Android!
Search for “fourdroid” or “foursquare” in the Android Market today to try the app out for yourself
Cruxy was first envisioned back 2004 as something called “DigiPay” and then “OpenVision”, and then ultimately Cruxy, a crossroads of creativity and commerce. Cruxy is also a rock climbing term for a very difficult climbing problem to solve, like perhaps when you have to cling from your fingertips to a horizontal rock shelf and pull yourself up, sweating, planning and thinking the entire way. That’s a bit how the last four+ years have felt… and we are exhausted.
Jon and Nate in Brooklyn, 2006
Jon and I set out to bring creative people making digital works closer to their audiences, and give them powerful tools to distribute and monetize their content online in any format, price or online venue (blog, virtual world, website, mobile phone) they thought was best for their product. It was a distributed market, meant to empower thousands of other sites, as opposed to trying to own a single audience.
The good news is that while Cruxy never really broke through in the way we hoped, the world, including Apple & iTunes, has shifted to embrace some of the ideals we have always had – open formats, more ways to distribute and promote online, more avenues for niche content to be discovered and heard. People today are watching long-form HD video online (though still much of it is content repurposed from mainstream networks for sites like Hulu.com), downloading podcasts and mashing up and sharing their own original creativity like never before. Rock stars like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are completely destroying myths about how the “music industry” should work, while independent musicians like Jonathan Coulton, are proving that through hard work, creativity and ingenuity, that you can quit your day job.
Jon, Nate and Will at the Cruxy Cantina event in 2007
The world has changed for the better, and we are glad for that, but at some point we have to admit, Cruxy is not needed or used by enough people for us to keep going. While we have had an amazing cloud-based business model since day #1 that actual made sense and worked, thanks to my brilliant, co-founder Jon Oakes, we were never able to scale our business up with enough volume to allow us to make an actual living. Our technology platform, built by the incomparable Will Meyer, was a great success in my mind, being one of the first to fully embrace Amazon’s cloud and provide a widget-based commerce system that actually worked!
With all that said, I (Nathan) sent out the letter below, on behalf of the Cruxy team, to our top artists and sellers…
I am writing to let you know that we are going to stop purchases on Cruxy in one week (March 18th), and then ultimately shutdown the service on April 1. All final payouts to you will be made then.
It has been pretty obvious that we haven’t been able to maintain the high level of service we’d like, and to be honest, it is because none of us can commit the time necessary to making the site work as it should anymore. It just isn’t fair to you or the customers to represent our site as being “open for business” when it barely is. This was a very difficult decision as Cruxy has been 100% built and funded by a very small, passionate team. However, times are tough everywhere, whether online or offline, and we need to come to terms with that.
We really appreciate all of the traffic and business you’ve brought to Cruxy, and are writing you directly because we recognize that, and want to make the transition as smooth as possible. We can keep your pages and links up through March, but we will just be turning off the “BUY” option. This way you can provide an alternate link to direct customers to your download destination.
Drop.io, another Brooklyn-based service, also has an interesting service for paid downloads called PayWall: http://drop.io/paywall
If you have any other ideas or questions about how we can make this process work, let me know. Again, you have been an amazing community of creative artists and digital makers, and we wish you the best in your artistic and business efforts moving forward.
Thanks, everybody, for all of your support. Whatever you do, please keep creating, making, sharing, mashing and living. We need art and inspiration in these times, like never before.
Here’s an early “Best of Cruxy” montage… special thanks to all of you who have been with us since the very early days.
and course, the incomparable HowToDoTheRobot.com crew….
