Spotted this interaction Ads display in a shopping mall in Warsaw. Watch the video here
Marketed by Lemon & Orange, this Kinect powered gesture controlled interaction display shows talk bubbles with products over the heads of shoppers walking by.
It is a nice hack. No, it doesn't read minds.
The city of Hong Kong hosted the Gnome Asia Summit this year. GNOME is a popular open source desktop environment for gnu/Linux Operating System. This annual event attracts people from diverse open source communities across Asia.
GNOME Asia Summit kicked off with the pre-event GNOME Design Workshop. The workshop helped GNOME contributors and developers understand GNOME environment design process. The workshop was intended for novice and experience UX designers, graphic artists and experienced desktop users.
The usability of the Open Source desktop environments has always left something to be desired. The keynote talks at the event delivered by GNOME Developers were very interesting. The GNOME community which was mired by conversation and dissent. Recently the developers revamping the software under the 'Every Detail Matters' initiative. Efforts to bring new UX paradigms into GNOME are also in full swing. Check out the GNOME team mock-ups here.
3D software used to create eye-popping prototypes. Don't believe me, check out this YouTube video Channel.
In the last few years, Javascript programming language had become very popular. Today applications written in Javascript are just as fast as native applications. Gnome-shell window manager is written using Javascript, thanks to GObject Introspection libraries such as Gjs and Seed. This means you can use your web development skills to enhance and extend your GNOME Desktop functionality.
The Gnome-shell add-ons is integrated closely with the Gnome Extensions service. It lets you share your extensions easily, search and enabling new features is a breeze.
The summit also featured talks related to teaching Open Hardware concepts, Gnome Accessibility, Community development and Gender equality in Open Source communities and Localization tools and GNOME predictive text input system
Opportunities abound for those who think big in Vietnam. Recently 5Desire, a local startup accelerator organized Startup Investment hour. The event attracted a large gathering of young bright eyed entrepreneurs in Hanoi City.
After some informal social networking over a cup of coffee. The event kicked off with an interactive session on investment opportunists for startups in Vietnam. Four startups did elevator pitches and fending some real hard questions from the investor panel and the audience.
Startup culture in this booming economy is still in its infant stage. Events like do help young entrepreneurs learn more about the opportunities startups with some great ideas.
View more pictures from the event on 5Desire page
.Didn't expect it would be so hard to buy Arudino open source prototyping platform hardware in Hong Kong. On a brief stopover in Hong Kong to attend Gnome Asia 2012. It would take a lot of time to hunt for Arduino boards in Hong Kong's famed electronics markets. It would be wise to do some homework before hitting the markets.
Got a lucky break while digging through the Dimsum Labs facebook page. Found the Candy Chan's shop address in Sham Shui Po in Kawloon. The shop's website lists all the Arduino boards, shields and various electronic components. Navigating the maze of shops in Sham Shui Po is not for faint hearted. You won't have any problems finding these shops with the direction given below.
Take the MRT to the Sham Shui Po station, exit through Gate D2 on to Fuk Wa street. You will find yourself facing the Golden Computer Center, the Wonder building is on your right. You will find the shop on the ground floor of this building.
Stumbled upon Man Wai-Yun's shop that offered a large collection of sensors, kits from DFRobot.com. You need to wait few days for the components to be shipped in from Taiwan.
The shop in the basement level of the Golden Computer Center. The best way to find the shop would be to ask the guard at security desk to guide you to the shop No. 60.
It is easy to find open hardware online but finding a shop that stocks them would be really hard. Next time I'll buy the open hardware online at DealExtreme.com .
Good news for digital nomads around the world. Hanoi now has a co-working space. 5Desire startup incubator and consulting company helped us create this co-working space. Register here and come prop yourself up on a couch for free!.
If you are feeling generous we could definitely use some money for a dedicated high-speed Internet connection and a coffee machine.
I had moved to Vietnam two years ago. Had been looking for a co-working space in Hanoi ever since. Working out of bedroom at night and coffee shops by day just works, but soon you'll start craving for some company of your own kind. Finally after a year of work the co-working space is now a reality. A big hug to all my friends in Vietnam and across the world for all the support.
Barcamper Preetam Rai once shared his vision of building a inter network of hackerspaces, co-working spaces and startups across South East Asia. These spaces could be a harbinger of innovation, exchange of ideas and foster new startups.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think?
Mozilla Firefox Localization project spans 90+ languages across the planet. If you haven't used Firefox in a different language, try downloading a language pack and change Firefox user interface language by editing general.useragent.locale preference setting using about:config. Captian Caveman created an easy to use Quick Locale Switcher Firefox addon for this purpose.
In this post, I'll explore some ideas to improve the locale management experience inside Firefox. The idea adds unified search, installation and language switching capabilities to Firefox Language panel. You will find Firefox Language panel under Tools > Addons menu. Currently the language panel on Firefox Nightly build looks like this.
The mockup below describes searching, installing and switching locales workflow. This is similar to existing Firefox Add-ons workflow.
Please share your thoughts, suggestion and criticism using the comment form below.
If you are a Firefox hacker looking for something new to hack on, this is your lucky day! .
In this post we'll explore some effective presentations techniques using Samsung Galaxy S2 accessories. Use the Droid@Screen (See this blog post) program to display the mobile phone screen on my computer during my presentations. This program works by taking a continues series of screenshots of the phone screen. There are some problems with this design, there is noticeable delay during application interaction and the video performance is not great on my Lenovo X120e Ubuntu computer.
You can not demonstrate audio and video capabilities of the mobile phone using such software. Planning to give a talk about using Firefox Mobile with Android 4 screen-reader and existing solutions doesn't work for me.
This adapter allow you to plug in your phone directly into HDMI large displays and digital projectors. The mobile phone AC charger powers the adapter and no additional audio cable is needed. The Samsung HDMI adapters are available for Samsung Galaxy phones and tablet models.
This works really great if you are planning to setup large screen display in a exhibition booth. Connect the phone to large screen display with HDMI cable and play your video demo in a loop.
The Samsung Power Pack comes handy when phone runs out of battery in the middle of the presentation. It does extend the battery life of the phone during the presentation or an extending application testing session.
Few caveats using these accessories. The HDMI adapter will not work when the phone is attached to the power pack .
This power pack has some issue with power sensing, sometimes it starts and stops charging with annoying beeps every 10 seconds. And you need to press locking mechanism tight to get the phone to charge. Hope someone at Samsung fixes this problem.
