Turn your old iPod speakers into wireless speakers

Do you have one of these portable iPod speakers in your home. In this post I'll shared an idea that lets you play music straight from iPhone or Android device. You can pick up this $25 GTI Bluetooth Adapter from Frys. The device plugs into iPod connector on your portable speakers and receives music via Bluetooth A2DP. Similar Bluetooth receivers that connect to aux-in ports are also available.

The idea emerged while helping a friend re-design hotel rooms for tech savvy business travelers. Found these inexpensive Bluetooth A2DP receivers to reuse the existing iPod dockable clock speakers in the hotel rooms. Perhaps NFC is a better choice but right now there only few mobile phones with NFC support.

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Kinect-Powered Interactive New Media Installation

During the recent visit to Taipei, I visited the famed National Palace Museum. The Qian Long Chao new media art exhibition featured this Trees of colors interactive installation powered by Kinect. The installation detect the visitors dress color and decorates the Qianlong vase accordingly. You can view the video on Youtube.

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Mozilla Taiwan Localization Sprint

Last week I traveled to Taipei for localization sprint with Mozilla Taiwan community. The community translates various Mozilla projects into Chinese (Traditional)(zh-TW). The goal of a localization sprint is to bring together new and experienced translators under one roof. Such events help promote knowledge sharing through peer learning and mentor-ship. Special thanks to Michael Hung, Estela Liu and Natasha Ma for making the Mozilla space available and inviting by providing Pizzas.

The event began with a short introduction to localization by Peter Chen, followed by a brief overview of various translation projects such as translating Mozilla Support (SUMO) by Ernest Chiang, translating Webmaker by Peter Chen, translating addons.mozilla.org by Toby, translating Mozilla Developer Network(MDN) articles by Carl, translating Mozilla videos with Amara tool by Irvin and translating Mozilla Links by Chung-Hui Fang. The speakers then organized participants into topic specific working groups, based on each individual's interest.

It was interesting to see how people used various tools such as Narro, Pootle, Transifex and even Google Docs for translation. It gave me an opportunity to observe and note some of the potential problems in the translation process. At the end of the day, everyone gathered to share and present their group's work. The also took time to answer question that participants had. All in all it was a very productive and enjoyable event. Mozilla badges were issued to recognize the participants' contributions.

Check out the event photos and etherpad for additional details. The Mozilla Taiwan community will continue to translate during their weekly MozTwLab meetups and a follow-up event is planned for the sprint 2014.

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