Archive for 'SciTech'
Busy Bee
Posted on 05. Jan, 2009
I've switched anthonyjhicks.com over to the Busy Bee WordPress theme by WooThemes. Fairly happy with this theme over Fresh News which I had been using for the last several weeks. Some kinks to sort out with spacing in IE6/7, and still a bit messy in the Photos section for all browsers. Some unusual random browser crashes occurring too when viewing pages.
I’m a WordPress Convert
Posted on 04. Dec, 2008
I'm very pleased with WordPress - getting comfortable with tinkering with code, databases and creating plugins. I'm working on a plugin at the moment that integrates the InstaMapper API into a widget and also a full screen tracks viewer - I'll release a beta soon. Loving the new Reverse Geocoding feature in the Google Maps API where you pass co-ordinates and return an address/locality name - which feeds nicely into my tracks viewer menus.
Absolutely love the Lifestream plugin which is now sucking in my public activity from Digg, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Last.fm, Twitter and Vimeo - creating a neat daily digest of what I've been up to, great for people not on Facebook where all this normally appears in the News Feed.
Also picked up a commercial plugin, AutoBlogged to pull in richer feeds of certain content, e.g. My Facebook Posted Items, and automatically blog it. The Akismet comment spam web service is genius, it's already blocked hundreds of spam comments and trackbacks without me having to lift a finger. Lots of outbound RSS feed options too, for example tagging a post "fbpost" sends a blog post to Facebook.
WordPress for iPhone is a little buggy, but still does a fine job. All in all really happy with the level of integration between WordPress and the various sites, tools and gadgets I use each day.
Last GPS Location
Posted on 29. Nov, 2008
I've created a sidebar widget (see on the right below the Lifestream) showing the last GPS location as reported by my iPhone when running the InstaMapper application. The widget picks up the last co-ordinates via InstaMapper API and overlays a marker on Google Maps. If you click the info bubble on the marker, there's a link to a full screen map as well. InstaMapper is neat!
jQuery UI: Widgets, Components, and Interactions
Posted on 17. Sep, 2007
Looks promising.
http://ui.jquery.com/...
LightWindow
Posted on 15. Sep, 2007
LightWindow is a fabulous hack (rewrite!) of Lightbox. I have implemented this on my site, using it to display embedded YouTube clips and showing the Flickr Slideshow without leaving my site. Lets you display any type of media, image, Flash or page in the LightWindow. Super stable and compatible, highly recommended. Checkout some of the samples of the authors site.
http://www.stickmanlabs.com/...
floAt’s Mobile Agent
Posted on 16. Aug, 2007
Great mobile phone management application. Works well with Bluetooth and my Sony Ericsson W880i, has proximity events and scripting capabilities. Great for reading and replying to text messages on your PC. Proximity can be set to lock your PC when you walk away from your desk. Nice alternative to Sailing Clicker and BluePhoneElite on the Mac. Highly recommended.
http://fma.sourceforge.net/...
Facebook Developers Garage London
Posted on 16. Aug, 2007
Attended the first Facebook Developers Garage event in London last night. Great turnout, maybe 200 people. Interesting mix of developers with launched or in the works Facebook applications, and then loads of "entrepreneurs" with ideas running around desperate for developers. Definitely a lucrative market opportunity here to cash in on companies looking to build applications on the Facebook platform. Facebook should crack one million London users in the next couple of weeks.
http://www.facebook.com/...
App(s)aholic
Posted on 16. Aug, 2007
Checkout Appaholic and Appsaholic. Two nice Facebook application trackers.
17th Annual Jolt Product Excellence Awards
Posted on 11. Feb, 2007
Good list.
http://joltawards.com/...
Google Local for mobile
Posted on 21. Jan, 2006
Google Local for mobile provides mapping and satellite images via a J2ME app on your mobile phone or BlackBerry. Its a very neat implementation and reasonably fast considering all the map imagery comes down over GPRS. This is a good alternative to the popular J2MEMAP which has provided J2ME access to GoogleMaps for a while now (and now also MSN Virtual Earth). Neat download, highly recommended, watch your GPRS usage though.
http://www.google.com/...
Windows Live Ideas
Posted on 21. Jan, 2006
Microsoft's answer to Google Labs? Some mildly interesting things here from a Google copy cat view point, including Local.
http://ideas.live.com/...
PSP 80410D06 error fix for Linksys WAP54G
Posted on 15. Jan, 2006
Google Bait: To avoid the 80410D06 error and get your PlayStation Portable WiFi working with a Linksys WAP54G 802.11G Wireless Access Point when using WPA-PSK: Upgrade the PSP and Linksys to latest firmware, then go to Advanced > Advanced Wireless on the Linksys and switch Basic Rates from "Default" or "ALL" to "1-2Mbps" - this is a compatibility feature for less capable 802.11b devices which does not seem to impact performance for 802.11g devices. While you're at it, turn Frame Burst to ON to boost your wireless performance as long as your other wi-fi devices don't complain.
UPDATE: I might be wrong. Doing this seems to shag all your performance and drops even G connection speed down, this will certainly make your PSP work with the Linksys, but it's no good. I now only drop my Linksys down to Basic Rate 1-2Mbps when I need to go wireless on the PSP, and then change it back again when I need decent wireless performance on my other gear. No definite answers on this, your mileage may vary.
Bluetooth Remote Control tool updated
Posted on 29. Sep, 2005
Fun with HID.
http://developer.sonyericsson.com/...
Asterisk and Bluetooth repost
Posted on 02. Sep, 2005
Just wanted to bump my three recent posts on Asterisk PBX and Bluetooth presence to the top again:
VoIP, SIP, IAX, Asterisk and Bluetooth Presence
Asterisk mobile VoIP
More Bluetooth presence fun
24MB Broadband.. drool
Posted on 01. Sep, 2005
UK Online to offer 24MB ADSL2+ for under GBP30 per month! Where do I sign?
http://www.ukonline.net/...
Asterisk mobile VoIP
Posted on 01. Sep, 2005
There's another feature I included in my Asterisk PBX config that I forgot to mention. At any of the IVR prompts, and also directly through one of my personal 0845 PSTN direct-in-dial numbers I can call my Asterisk box and access all the VoIP functions remotely. In extensions.conf I have a hidden extension (pin) defined which then includes my home-context dial plans. Essentially turning my mobile phone or whatever phone I happen to dailing from into an extension on the PBX. From there I can dial through any of the VoIP providers I'm peered with and also make PSTN calls via VoIP or out the BT trunk. This is great for making international calls on my mobile via VoIP without having to make the international call directly at 10x the cost.
On a related note, Skype users should download the 1.4 beta released yesterday which now includes the option to forward calls to mobile or land line phones via SkypeOut if you're not online. Nice.
VoIP, SIP, IAX, Asterisk and Bluetooth Presence
Posted on 30. Aug, 2005
I've been playing with the Linux open sourced Asterisk PBX software for the past couple of weeks, it's really quite an impressive package. I've got Asterisk linked with a Sipura SPA-3000. The Sipura provides the PSTN inbound and outbound trunk to the Asterisk (via SIP) and also acts as an ATA so I can use the Panasonic cordless as an IP phone. The Asterisk handles SIP and IAX registrations, call routing and voice mail. The great thing about Asterisk is that any combination of inbound and outbound providers, dial rules, hard and soft phone extensions, call forwarding, ivr menu prompts and more can be easily defined. The initial configuration is daunting at first, but once you get the hang of the key files sip.conf, iax.conf and extensions.conf the possibilities are endless.
I have Sipgate, Sipphone, FWD, Gossiptel and Oztell SIP peers and users defined, and a VoIPtalk IAX2 peer. I have three free PSTN direct-in-dials in the UK, and a Sydney direct-in-dial 02 number from Oztell for less that AUD$5 per month. The nice thing is that any inbound call rings the cordless phone in our flat in London rather than relying on a PC soft phone. The local Sydney number is a nice touch too, allowing friends and family to ring us from home for the cost of a local call and it rings directly through to the flat in London.
Using the extensions.conf you can define any number of dialing routes and codes. For example PSTN calls to Australia are transparently routed to Sipgate, where as local London and mobile calls switch to the PSTN trunk on the Sipura and go out via our normal BT line.
Inbound calls can ring on multiple extensions and each inbound call can be handled in a different way. Another extremely cool feature is creating interactive voice response applications. I've set it up so if any inbound IP or PSTN call is not answered you're taken to a IVR menu where you can press 1 or 2 to divert to one of our mobiles or press 3 to leave a voice mail. The diversion to mobile is routed over IAX2 rather than SIP to VoIPtalk, which is much more reliable for quickly and reliably initiating calls over NAT. The diversion to mobile is the same whether the call was inbound from VoIP or PSTN. The inbuilt voice mail server is quite good too.
Possibly the coolest feature though is linking Asterisk to Bluetooth presence! I have a cron script that grep's for the MAC address of my mobile phone on Bluetooth every 5 minutes. If I'm home, through my Linux box detecting my Bluetooth mobile, any incoming VoIP or PSTN calls ring the home phone. If I'm out, through the Linux box being not able to detect my Bluetooth mobile, it will forward the call via VoIPtalk and ring my mobile. All this logic takes place in the extensions.conf where an incoming call runs initially runs an AGI script (Bash), which then returns a variable anthonyhome=yes or anthonyhome=no and then the appropriate diversions take place, all in about 5 seconds.
Asterisk is really quite amazing, and purrs on a low spec 733MHz Celeron sharing resources with several other servers and a couple of X sessions running on the same box. I can't recommend Asterisk and a Sipura box more highly as an excellent geek VoIP project.
http://www.asterisk.org/...
More Bluetooth presence fun
Posted on 30. Aug, 2005
After initially getting Bluetooth working with automatic dial plan changes in Asterisk, I've linked Bluetooth presence event changes to a range of neat little tasks and spoken messages. I run a cron script every 5 minutes which grep's for the MAC address of mobile phone and then triggers off a number of tasks if detected or not. For example, when I leave for work in the morning, the script will detect that I have left and log an away time stamp. It will continue to poll every 5 minutes for my phone. When I get home several hours later and my phone is detected my status is changed to "home" in Asterisk PBX and on the anthonyjhicks.com Real-Time Tracker. The script then compiles a comprehensive welcome message to be spoken using Festival TTS. It calculates my time away, polls for waiting emails and voicemails, and checks TV shows recorded by GB-PVR. For example, within 5 minutes of getting home from work, I'll hear the following message spoken through the speakers on my Linux box:
My Bluetooth presence continues to be used the entire time I'm home, for example every time a TV program is recorded by GB-PVR, it will announce:
Where-as if my Bluetooth presence is not detected, it saves up the list of recorded shows until it detects my presence again and then plays back the list as above.
I plan to add more Bluetooth presence events, but for now automatic call diversion changes, web status, voice and email messages waiting, and an away time calculation is a nice start. Super geeky. All of this is home grown code, I'll post the scripts at some point.
Oz watchdog bans mobile porn | The Register
Posted on 06. Jul, 2005
Classic quote:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/...
