[DB75]

The Voq Phone (Video)

I was looking through PC Magazine today and stumbled across the Voq phone. The cool thing about this phone is the way they handle the keyboard. It really helps to minimize the size of the phone since the keyboard actually folds out.

I remembered that I took some video footage of this phone at CTIA this year. I was at the San Francisco show with SensorLogic demonstrating our M2M Portal application. Anyway, check out the Voq phone footage.

You need Flash Player 6 or higher to see it. Once you start viewing the video you can move your mouse over the bar (under the video) to display different controls.

Google and Keyhole

Very seldom do I find a piece of software that can keep me occupied for more than ten minutes (aside from dev tools). Anyway, a friend pointed me towards Keyhole and I was blown away. Keyhole was aquired by Google late last month and if you download a free 7-day trial you'll understand why. This software is amazing!

If you're into mapping then this is mapping to the 100^th degree. You have the ability to pan, zoom, and even tilt (although you're tilting a 2D image). The interface displays satellite and aerial photography from all over the world. In some cases the imagery is very basic but in major cities like Dallas and Las Vegas you can zoom all the way in to see what's on a billboard, it's truly crazy.

Let me give you an example of how it works. Once you've started the program you get an image of the earth. You type in a location and the program starts to zoom into the continent, state, city, and finally address. I can't begin to describe how tight the transitions are and I recommend you download it to get the full effect. So I typed in my college address - The Citadel, in Charleston, SC. You'll see screens of the results below (click on any image for a larger view):

You'll see in the final image (bottom right) the campus and even the barracks (2nd Batallion) we roomed in. Look at Jones Ave and you should see a big rectangular building. If you look close enough you'll see that they're doing construction at the time the image was taken.

SensorLogic on the Move

In the November issue of M2M Magazine there's an article about SensorLogic, the company I work for. It's a very interesting read and the article discusses our recent funding, partnerships, and the new M2M Dashboard. The Dashboard is a powerful concept that allows users to view their sensor data using graphical components. I'll follow up with a future blog post that goes into detail about the M2M Dashboard with some screen shots.

If you're not familiar with M2M, there's a good definition here. If you'd like to check out the article then you'll need to register on-line, it's completely free and definitely worth it. I believe they're still giving away FREE print subscriptions too. If you'd like to follow the M2M market (and why wouldn't you?!?) then sign up here.

Article Link
http://www.m2mmag.com/web/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=174

CFDJ Feature Article - Flash MX WebServices vs. Remoting

I mentioned a while back that I was working on another article for CFDJ. The article discusses the pros and cons of Flash MX Web Services and Remoting. It should be available at your local Barnes and Noble store or any store that carries tech mags. It's the cover article for the October issue of CFDJ and you can read it here: http://sys-con.com/story/?storyid=46783&DE=1. I think there's a PDF download too. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions and enjoy!

Preview of NextGen Flash Player (Flash Player 8?)

If you haven't seen the Tokyo demo of the next generation of the Flash player, then you gotta check it out: http://www.moock.org/blog/archives/000146.html. It's truly amazing and it seems there's been a lot of focus on the visual aspects of the player as well as huge performance improvements.

I originally started out using Flash to do cheesy animations and your typical "skip intro" movies. Then I was introduced to the power of ActionScript and never looked back. I'm really excited about the video capabilities of the new player and I'm looking forward to getting in touch with my "designer" side again. With the new video codec we'll be able to add alpha channels to video which is going to lead to some incredible stuff on the web. Check out the video and you'll see what I'm talkin' about!