Mobile Mobile – Page 6 – nathan's open ideals

Predicty: Mobile Magic App built with HTML5

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…

Here’s a little more about Predicty:

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”

Download it now on the App Store!

Teaching @ NYU this Fall: "Social Activism Using Mobile Technology"

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?

Quick Hack: PhoneGap + FourSquare = FourDroid

You may or may not have heard of a new service called: FourSquare http://playfoursquare.com, but I am sure at some point in the next year, you will!

It’s from the guy who made (and sold!) Dodgeball (a pre-Twitter mobile social service) along with another super-sharp mobile guy in NYC, and it’s launching at SXSW…. well, at least the iPhone app is.

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

gReporter for Android code is up….

Still some work to do, cleanup and some better javadocs, but if you are looking for Android code to help you record audio, take photos, get GPS location, upload via HTTP and more, then this is the project for you.

Git Code Repository (source access and zip/gzip download): http://github.com/natdefreitas/georeport-android

Slide overview download: http://olivercoady.s3.amazonaws.com/AndroidAdvancedGReporter030909a.pdf

Here’s the slides I presented today at Columbia University on this topic…

Advanced Android gReporter

View more presentations from natdefreitas. (tags: android mobile)

eWeek coverage of NYLUG Android Event

Darryl K. Taft, a reporter from eWeek magazine, was in the room at the NYLUG event last week, and I didn’t even know it! I am still working on getting some audio, video and slides up from that talk, but in the meantime, some good quotes from the evening below, and after the link…

Freitas, who has worked at Palm as a program manager building Java code, said he appreciates Android as “the first open mobile platform. There’s really a lot to hack on. It’s really the first open platform developer-tools-wise. No one’s ever put the effort into delivering a fully cross-platform development environment.”

and this….

Making a comparison to the iPhone development environment, Freitas said, “There’s a big difference between APIs and a thoughtful platform…The iPhone is a beautiful device and a great user experience.”

However, the iPhone world does not focus as much on providing an ecosystem of services for developers like Android does, Freitas said, noting the OpenIntents.org site, which is a place to collect, design and implement open intents and interfaces to make Android mobile applications work more closely together. In addition, Freitas mentioned the PhoneGap project, which is a development tool that allows Web developers to take advantage of the core features in the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry SDK using JavaScript.

Read the full story on eWeek