I was going to open up and post a picture of one package a day from the stack on my desk. ๐ Today’s surprise are SMS Audio headphones: โชattendees of the Intel Developer Forum ’14 got these nice smart headphones with heart rate monitor in their christmas mail. Thank you, Intel!
SMS Audio Smart Headphones
Earlier in 2014 I backed a kickstarter project and I was very excited, the project made the stretch goal to build lasers into these range finders. Today I opened up the box on my desk, that arrived recently and I am really excited to test out the range finders, their precision, and their usability for robotic applications. I will post updates with more info soon.
Lidar Lite
Today I feel very excited to be recognized by Intel as a member of the Intel Software Innovator Program. ๐
… a second christmas ๐
2nd xmas
Eclipse sandboxed by Mac OS X Gatekeeper.
Problem: Eclipse (or other application) won’t launch in Mac OS X Mavericks.
Solution: delete extended quarantine attribute – which probably Safari or Finder added after the download. Enter the following command in the Terminal to allow Eclipse to launch.
$ xattr -d com.apple.quarantine eclipse.app
This way you can leave the sandbox in place and only add exceptions for applications, that you cannot live without. For further information on and graphical configuration options of Gatekeeper check out this Ars Technica article.
Interactive Gesture Camera.
We just won $1000 – One Thousand US Dollars! Awesome! Thank you Intel!
During the time of December 17th to February 20th Intel held the Perceptual Computing Challenge Phase 1. I entered “Google Earth Controller”, an application demonstrating touch-free navigation of Google Earth utilizing an Interactive Gesture Camera and the Intel Perceptual Computing SDK.
It allows you to fly like Superman across Earth or other planets while staying seated in your favorite chair! See video below.
Yesterday afternoon the winners were announced and Team “W” is happy that “Google Earth Controller” was awarded with Second Place. While this was just a weekend warm-up hack we are getting ready for Phase 2 of the challenge. Stay tuned!
Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is an exciting event providing an in-depth and inside look at the latest in iOS and OS X. Tickets are always high in demand and have sold out within two hours this year. In addition to the regular tickets, which sold for $1599, Apple accepted applications for one of 150 scholarships.
I have been very excited all day when I received an email from Apple granting me a scholarship to attend WWDC 2012. Thank you, Apple!
Scholarship notification email for WWDC2012
At today’s keynote of the Intel Developer Forum 2011, Intel CEO Paul Otellini presents Intel’s vision about the future of computing. It came by surprise to see Google’s Senior Vice President of Mobile Andy Rubin get on stage during the keynote. Paul Otellini and Andy Rubin announced a strategic partnership between Google and Intel for delivering x86 phones and tablets running Android. So that raises the question: what is going to happen to Intel’s own Linux platform for tablets and phones MeeGo? Paul Ottelini reassured the audience, that Intel will keep the collaboration with industrial partners utilising MeeGo on embedded devices.
Furthermore for laptops the trend goes towards Ultrabooks says Paul Otellini. Intel focusses on making them lighter, faster, cheaper, less power consuming and more responsive. A few Ultrabooks are exhibited on stage. A demo computer shows in which direction mobile computing may go: an ultra low voltage cpu prototype powered by a solar cell and executing Windows.
Cisco shows the next generation office phone. It looks like their current line of IP phones, however it’s color screen is actually a detachable android tablet powered by an atom cpu, I guess.
For a seamless collaboration of mobile and stationary gadgets, Paul Otellini presents Intel Pair & Share, which enables phones, tablets, computers and TVs to connect to each other and show notifications and messages on the currently used device.
References:
IDF: http://www.intel.com/idf/
Android on x86: http://intel.com/software/android
My photo story of today:
I consider myself lucky, getting one of the ~5000 Tickets for this year’s Google I/O, which sold out in 59 minutes. We heard exciting news about the next Version of Android “Ice Cream Sandwich”, which will fuse the latest Phone and Tablet Operating Systems Gingerbread and Honeycomb. On Day 2 Google announced the shipment of Chromebooks from different manufacturers. Chrome OS is Google’s Client system for Cloud based computers. Traditionally – like every year – attendants got a huge gift pack. I have to admit, I have never been so thrilled at a Technology Conference.
For full details about Google I/O, check out their excellent online session catalogue: Google I/O 2011.
Below you find my personal picture story:
AquaChem
Get it at BlackBerry App World
AquaChem at BlackBerry App World
AquaChem
Research in Motion announced: everyone who submits an application for the BlackBerry PlayBook by March 15, would receive a free PlayBook tablet. Since I am very excited about the BlackBerry PlayBook, it’s Hardware, and it’s underlying QNX realtime operating system and I am waiting for it to appear on the market, a free Tablet is enough incentive to look into how to code for the PlayBook as an early adopter. I implemented AquaChem – an Adobe Air application – from scratch, after spending a couple of hours going through a comprehensive tutorial with Source Code.
AquaChem is based on the idea of iChem. The purpose of the application is to bring Aquatic Chemistry on modern Handheld devices to the classroom. AquaChem has just been submitted to the BlackBerry App World.
Microsoft’s Kinect Sensor is a nice peace of Hardware and considerably cheap for a camera that also provides a 640×480 depth image. Soon after it appeared on the market in November 2010, it was reverse engineered for users to interface it from the computer without the Xbox 360.
Technology Enthusiasts and Roboticists all over the world picked up a Kinect to see what they can do with it. My personal motivation is to improve Perception for my Service Robot. Shortly after the publication of the Kinect Hack, Microsoft and PrimeSense decided to release an official SDK: the OpenNI Framework.
Below are the first Depth Images and User Tracking Images, that I took with the official SDK.ย
Eric Butler published an easy to use Firefox extension which captures session cookies from broadcast media such as public wifi networks. It allows anyone, to collect Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc session cookies and do anything with these accounts with just a click.
http://codebutler.com/firesheep
This is scarily easy!
I hope social network providers start implementing end-to-end encryption via https soon. Until then, be careful from where you access your social networks. On the other hand easy identity stealing brings social networking to a new level. ๐