7s SevenSnap entertainment shopping for your iPhone

Finally, it is online – the sneak preview explaining the idea behind SevenSnap. Take a look at the guide.

SevenSnap in a nutshell:

Every 60 minutes, we are offering you a product from the realms of consumer electronics, travel and leisure activities. To see the price of the product, which drops every second, you have to enter the Snap Room. Being in the Snap Room costs 1,– USD per minute.

If multiple people are in the Snap Room at the same time, the price of the product can drop by up to 100,– US Dollars per minute. The person first clicking on the “Order now” button gets the deal and the price drop is repeated from the top.
This system creates incredible saving opportunities and makes shopping a very exciting experience.

Now available for the iPhone.

Montreux

Here I am at the “Eden Palace au Lac” in a balcony in a nice suit in the fifth floor facing the lake.
Nuria is working while I relax here listening to the economist with my iPhone.

Augmented Reality Navigation System

Mobilizy GmbH reveals a preview of it’s augmented reality navigation system, the first fully functional mobile AR navigation system available for the Android platform. Wikitude Drive was developed by the Mobilizy Research & Development group in Salzburg, Austria, to satisfy the curiosity of the developers to see if it was feasible to combine real-time navigation with mobile augmented reality. The result of this quest is Wikitude Drive, a fully-functional, light weight navigational system which overlays point-to-point directions on a camera-view, without the need for maps.

Wikitude Drive boasts the following features:

• * Mobile AR navigation, similar to a heads up display (HUD);
• * Fully functional, map-less navigation;
• * POI 2 POI navigation;
• * Integrated voice commands (additional text-to-speech engine required);
• * World wide navigational data which is accessed in real-time from the internet;
  o (a mobile internet connection is necessary to access data while in motion)
• * Peer-to-peer navigational functions
  o Social navigational features will be implemented in future releases
• * Interfaces with existing navigational APIs (for example: NavTeq, Map24, TeleAtlas)
• * Launching for Android and iPhone soon.

sixthsense project: integrating information with the real world

‘SixthSense‘ is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

The SixthSense prototype is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The hardware components are coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user’s hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus SixthSense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction.

WebOS (huevos in Spanish): Your computer in the cloud

We are all day listening to the tech news and they talk about the future, Google making this new Google OS that will be open source and will be basically in the cloud.
Amazon offering cloud space and processing power.

Are we going to live in the cloud in the near future?

Some people have gone one step further, and have developed sort of operating systems (pretty basic) in the cloud. When I say the cloud I mean that they are not hosted in your PC but they are in the “Internet”, so wherever you go, supposely that you have an internet connection, you might be able to access your email (that would be imap protocol) via a webmail client (such as gmail) or your files iDisk, or whatever.

This operating systems (OS) in the cloud (webos) try to be like a computer on your browser. In the same way you have your Windows, with your start button, your applications, photos, files, etc… These services provide you with cloud space and a set of applications to install in your virtual pc.

You can have to kind of OS: hosted by them or that you can host yourself.

I will highlight a couple on the first category:

• g.ho.st

Ghost is one of the best. They offer for free 15Gb of storage using Amazon s3 services. You can share your desktop for collaboration purposes and you can use zoho or google docs office suits.

• cloudo

Cloudo is pretty cool. It is build on a LAMP server (linux with Apache, MySQL and PHP) but they also host it. Looks like it is not open source though. They have an API for developers to develop their stuff in cloudo. I could not see how much space they give you for free. What I saw it that you can make it look as a windows vista, a macos or whatever you want. Pretty cool.

On the second category:

• Eyos

Eyos is open source and you can host it in your own servers, so no limits. It is pretty good too.  I would probably choose this one for precisely this reason.

All can provide schools and universities a full web platform where students, teachers and parents will have a personal yet collaborative desktop to work, communicate between them and get organized inside and outside the school. The Students and teachers will have an intuitive and easy-to-learn Desktop System, to work with school resources and communicate with other students and teachers. Also for personal use, for your photos documents, and even to share part of them.

They have interal communcation tools, so they are great for collaboaration, but again…

Are you ready to live in the cloud?

In my case not at any price. Google OS will be good because they have the Google Gears that would allow you to keep it all offline and continue working in the train.

In fact, I wonder who would be using this sort of solutions. Some will rather have a place with shared files and continue having all distributed: photos in flickr, email with gmail, contacts  with mobile me, etc…

Honestly I don’t see the point on browsing inside one of these or using zoho or google docs. Why not use them in the regular way?

I have to test it more… but for the time being I am a bit esceptical.

Here you have a more extended list:

Size matters: Star size comparison

Gruml: A Google Reader App For Your Mac Desktop

Google Reader is a very useful service for consuming your news feeds (assuming you still use RSS), but it lives in the browser, which means it doesn’t the responsiveness and polish of a desktop app. For all those Mac users out there looking for the best of both worlds, I present to you Gruml, a new desktop Google Reader application.

Gruml is a lightweight application that sits in your dock and menu bar, and gives you all of your RSS goodness. What’s great about Gruml is that it brings a lot of the features in Google Reader that we’ve come to know and love and brings them into the desktop client, including features like starring, “liking,” and sharing posts (with notes and tags), and reading headlines that friends share with you.

And for those Twitterholics out there who need to tweet their news, Gruml comes with Twitter support, allowing you to tweet articles (converted to short URLs) directly from the app.

It’s important to note that Gruml is still in beta, and has its faults, like running slowly on startup, and missing some settings in the preferences menu. But overall, it’s a great application that runs well and shows promise.

First iPhone Augmented Reality App Appears Live in App Store

French app development shop PresseLite appears to have the first Augmented Reality (AR) supporting iPhone app live in the iTunes store, though we don’t know how they did it. It’s called Metro Paris Subway, and while the app isn’t new, it released a new version last week that added an AR overlay that displays information about Paris businesses when you look at the city through your iPhone’s camera.

Augmented Reality is the term for a long-developed set of technologies that place layers of information on top of a view of the real world. Developers and AR-watchers have believed that no AR apps would be able to go live in the iTunes App Store until the next version of the iPhone OS is released in Fall. No one we’ve talked to has seen any others, but this one is for sale for 99 cents. It’s possible that it was allowed in by mistake, or that it’s a partial implementation of AR, but we’re waiting to hear back from the developers for more details.

We discovered a video of the app via Swedish blogger Magnus Aldemark. Augmented Reality is being tracked far more closely outside of the United States than within it, especially in Europe, Korea and Japan.

The AR capabilities only work on the new iPhone 3Gs; both GPS and a compass are used to determine location and direction being pointed at.

AR for the iPhone is eagerly awaited by iPhone users around the world.

Monkey King Climber

Nokia Booklet 3G

New gadget from Nokia… not bad.

Snow Leopard Has Arrived, Shipping 28th of August

Snow Leopard is nearly here. You can already pre-order it.

Click on the link to see what is new.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/

13 Fantastic and Fun Image Generators

Whether you’re artistically inclined or not, sometimes you just need to whip up an illustrative or entertaining image for a blog post or presentation. The tools on this list help you generate respectable graphics in a jiffy — design talent optional!

Most of the tools on this list are web-based and as easy to use as filling in a web form. We’ve added a couple of desktop applications that make visual communication a lot quicker and easier, even for those of us without a ton of graphic design skills.

1. Warning Labels and Signs

Advising people to the dangers of the situation has never been so easy. Simply pick a label style, a warning icon, and enter your desired text into a simple web form and voila, you’ve got a standup warning label.

For a vertical sign-style warning image, check out the companion site Warning Sign Generator.

2. De-Motivational Posters

Annoyed by those superficial and unflaggingly insipid motivational posters we’re subjected to in dentists’ and corporate offices everywhere? Why not take a stance against mass-produced pseudo-solutions to important problems?

With the Demotivators tool you can easily generate a realistic illustration of the trials and tribulations of Real Life. Just choose an image from your desktop to create a motivational parody from, customize your image settings, add a title and de-motivational text and you too can contribute to the better psychological health of us all.

3. Street Signs

From the same fine folks who brought us the Warning Label Generator above is a tool for making funny and inappropriate street signs. Once again this is a simple web form; simply choose one of four background styles, input the text you want displayed on the sign, and choose an optional suffix (Road, Lane, etc.).

4. LOLcats

Almost no list is complete without a reference to funny cat pictures. On the internet, all roads lead to LOLcats, so you might as well make like the natives and start rolling your own.

The LOL Builder tool will help you achieve goofy captioned imagery of your favorite felines and other irresistibly cute animals in no time. You can upload your own photo or re-use an image someone else has submitted.

There’s even an advanced version of the LOL Builder for once you’ve mastered the basics, allowing you to adjust the position of your text and caption bubbles. Poster and “breaking news” bulletin styles are also available, and there’s no rule that requires an actual funny cat to be present. If you want to use any of these tools to make images with other themes, the Internet Police will probably not be showing up at your door.

5. Magazine Covers

This magazine cover tool from Big Huge Labs lets you upload an image or bring in one of your photos from Flickr (), Facebook (), Photobucket () or from a URL. You can customize the color palette, fonts, and up to 17 lines of text to generate your own custom print mag cover.

6. Tombstones

It takes a hardy soul to laugh in the face of death, but if you have the courage this tombstone generator might help. It’s a quick and painless web form that adds your custom text to the headstone.

7. Xbox 360 Achievements

This one goes out to the gamers in the house — especially those of you who experience that satisfying pang of joy each time the achievement badge with trademark sound pops up on your console.

You can make your own achievements with this handy tool, and we sincerely hope you put them to hilarious uses. Know of a funny Alterna-Achievement? Let us know in the comments.

8. Movie Posters

Another project from Big Huge Labs, the movie poster tool is a web form that helps you design a film-style poster from your own images. Choose an alignment for the photo, a poster style, text and accent colors, title fonts and colors, and enter your own custom text for the film title, taglines, credits and MPAA rating.

9. Garbage Pail Kids

Who else is old enough to remember these gems? Relive your youth, or your child’s youth, with this Garbage Pail Kids card generator. Modify the text badge, customize your font and the positioning of the text, and you’ve got your own gruesome custom and classic trading card.

10. Presidential Seal

Going from the cultural to the political, this simple tool lets you add your own verbiage to the official U.S. Presidential seal. And did you know the Vice President also has a seal? Can someone please alert Biden?

11. Add Photo Effects

The Tuxpi site offers a bunch of easy, one-click web-based tools for adding borders, captions, reflections, and other types of effects to your digital photos. You can turn any image into a postage stamp, wanted poster, pop art collage, and more.

12. Skitch

Sorry Windows users, you’re out of luck on this one. Skitch () is a Mac desktop app that makes screenshots dead easy to edit and share. Simple edit tools allow you to overlay text, lines and simple shapes to your screenshots or other images. Skitch integrates with iPhoto, Aperture and Photo Booth to easily pull in your existing images or grab a shot from your webcam.

Once your image is ready, you’re one click away from sharing it to the web (publicly or privately), uploading it via FTP, or dragging it to your desktop. A history trail saves the images you’ve worked with for easy reference.

This tool is so useful it’s one of the few I have set to launch automatically on startup. I wouldn’t want to be on a desert island without it.

13. Comic Life

From the makers of Skitch is another great application for would-be doodlers and ad hoc illustrators. Comic Life is available for both the Mac and for Windows PCs, and helps you create professional-looking comic panels, photo albums, and other image layout template styles.

Have you ever torn your hair out looking for those great poofy comic fonts in Photoshop or other tools? That’s one of the areas where Comic Life shines, allowing you to easily drop in impactful lettering text to your images or panels.

More than that, Comic Life provides a fun and easy entry into getting more create ideas flowing with your images. This is the only paid app on this list, but at $24.95 for the standard and $29.95 for the deluxe version, it’s on the cheaper side of imaging tools that help achieve professional-looking results without spending a heinous amount of time. There’s a free 30-day trial as well so you have a chance to check out if it’s worth shelling out the registration fee for your needs.

(from mashable)

Flickr and Google Map: Great Mashup

You take the best photos of flickr and you put them in a mashup in Google maps, and this is the result:

http://www.earthalbum.com

iPhone 3GS: TomTom, Navigon and iGo my way

There are 3 major players of turn by turn navitiaon for the iPhone now:

• TomTom
• Navigon
• iGo my way

Tomtom costs 99.99 euros for the European version.  It has 21 countries.
Everybody was expecting this app. There were rumors about the price. We saw photos of the little gadget to put it in the car… Well now we know, 100 euros just for the software. For this price you can get a stand alone version of tomtom and leave it in the car, honestly.

I have been playing with it for the past couple of days. It is like the one I had on my htc artemis but worse. It has all the good things that tomtom has, but now connectivity. No traffic, no weather, no radars. If they call you it goes back to tomtom, and you can switch the screen off and just listen to the driving directions if you wish. In my case this is handy when I ride my motorbike.
The list of POI is extensive and the graphics are the same as all tomtom versions.
A nice thing it has is that it does not talk too much and you can configure complex routes. This I like.

Navigon Europe costs 79.99 euros. That is 20 euros less than Tomtom. It has 39 countries (including Romania, Hungry, etc…).
Navigon has the nicest graphics of the three. It is an app that would be like done by apple. Beautiful in terms of graphics. When on a motorway you have a real graphic of the panels and indications you find which is handy.
The downside is that it is as it is. Little to configure. You can also access the contact database, but no data, radars, traffic, etc. No alternative routes or complex itineraries.
The plus (aside from the graphics) is the POI. Very complete, with nice graphics.
The voice commands are OK.

iGo my way costs 89.99 euros and it has 40 countries. There is a Western Europe version for 10 euros less, but the 89.99 has even Turckey.
iGo is by far the best. Don’t stop reading here though. It is also veeery buggy. I would say that you should not buy it at this stage! The voice stops working and you have to reset to factory defaults. It gives far too many vocal instructions (when it works). In the negative part also you cannot plan itineraries and the POI db is the poorest. You cannot access the contacts and has bugs such as you cannot control de volumen unless you edit the language and when you play then you modify it.
Positively I would say that it is great that you click on the screen and navigate in 3d. Like in google earth!. That it has 3d topography. Yes… you can see the mountains. Also it has rendered buildings (depending on the city). Also that you can actually see in 3d, so if you are in a complex motorway you can see if it the road where you are goes under or above the one you are crossing, or if you are entering a tunnel it gets darker. That is smart. In Navigon you know you are in a tunnel because it complains that there is not satelite coverage.
Positevly also that you can choose the arrow you normaly have as vehicle: a car, truck, bicicle etc…  You can choose from alternative routes and the interface is very good. You have also the motorway panels like in navigon. Both are better in that respect compared to tomtom.

What you don’t have is the speed at what you are going. For this TomTom is the best. You can tell it to alert you if you are over the speed limit though, but tomtom is smarter and displays currentspeed/maxspeed and if you are over it turns red.

The down side for all of them is battery consumption. I have a car charger but even with the car charger connected it drains the battery. I will have to buy a 1000 mah minimum if I want to keep using this apps.

Conclusions:

Tomtom is too expensive but it is the benchmark. It does well what it has been doing for the past years. No improvements though.

Navigon is beautiful, but you should like it as it comes. Little configuration is possible but may be this if fine for 90% of the people.

iGo is premature and buggy but the one with more potential.

Not an easy choice.

As a negative point for all of them is that with a regular car charger they will not survive for more than 4 hours….

Also that none connects to the internet to get traffic or whatever. Also that none allow you to add POIs such as speed cameras and so.

May be is too soon.

Some funny photos