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Archive for: April, 2009
Weather forecast
Posted by: Frank Ableson in General Business on April 18, 2009
OK, so this is not terribly new and exciting, but it was satisfying. My wife asked what the weather forecast was for tomorrow. Because we recently redesigned the website for our local township I was able to go right to the site and click on the weather forecast link. Very convenient. Unfortunately, the weather tomorrow will not be nearly as nice as it was today...oh well. Welcome to New Jersey in April.
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Cupcake is almost here…
Posted by: Frank Ableson in Technology, Android on April 16, 2009
The Android SDK version 1.5 has been "pre-released". Pros: lots of cool stuff in there including both new features and improvements on existing functionality. Cons: moving target!
All in all, Android continues to impress me. I am working on a project presently which uses the different Hardware "Sensors" in the device. Very cool to have access to this kind of stuff.
Fortunately, it looks like the contents of the Unlocking Android book are still quite applicable.
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Google Code Hosting
Posted by: Frank Ableson in Software Development, Technology, Android on April 08, 2009
I have not had the opportunity to use it before, but have found the Google Code hosting (code.google.com) to be quite helpful. The site allows you to create a project, project members, home page, etc. You can also have a "wiki" and issues list if you really want to manage a project right from the site. We are using it for the source code from the Unlocking Android book. Check it out.
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The Future?
Posted by: Frank Ableson in Technology, Android on April 08, 2009
As I have been working with Android over the past year, it has been a steady thought that it can be used in so many places beyond a "cell phone". Here is another posting about where Android might be found.
http://www.androidacademy.com/3-news/122-home-is-where-the-andorid-is.html
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Municipal Website and Flickr
Posted by: Frank Ableson in Social Media, Software Development, Sussex County on April 07, 2009
We recently launched a website for one of our municipal clients, Byram Township. There are a few items that we have added since the launch, including the ability to load all of their various meeting agendas and minutes. Today, Ian added a Picture section which actually takes a feed from flickr.com. This way the township staff can manage their pictures at Flickr and get multiple uses out of them.
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Unlocking Android
Posted by: Frank Ableson in General Business, Software Development, Technology, Android on April 07, 2009
Today I received the final ebook for Unlocking Android from Manning. Along with a couple of other authors (Charlie Collins and Robi Sen) have been working on getting this title out for over a year. It should be on book store shelves within about 10 days or so.
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Version One
Posted by: Frank Ableson in Software Development, Technology, Android on April 04, 2009
I am working on an article project for IBM Developerworks. We (my son Tristan and I) have decided that we want our (Android oriented) system to monitor:
- Presence of water (i.e. for leaks!)
- Temperature
- Power consumption (Tristan's idea!).
We will also include a generic analog input value and two ouputs: one digital i/o and an analog value. These could be used for turning on a light, a heater, etc.
Things we would like to add (should we ever build this for real…) include:
- Sound monitoring
- Video input
- Audio out
The architecture will look something like this to begin with:
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Sounding the alarm
Posted by: Frank Ableson in General Business, Software Development, Technology on April 03, 2009
In Byram Township where our office (and my home) is located, we have terribly "hard water". Heat that water up constantly in a hot water heater and you've got a recipe for rusty hot water heaters that rot out faster than imaginable.
So… today some of the guys were working in the classroom and discovered that a small hot water heater used for hot water in the kitchen and bathrooms decided today was the day - to leak on the floor and keep me from getting much of anything useful done. Well, most of the damage is behind us, some multiple hundreds of dollars in new hot water tank and expert installation included. (Thank you, Polite Plumber). And the dehumidifier is cranking to get the remaining water out of the carpet. Oh the joys of property management.
Anyway, this is the push over the ledge I needed to come up with a (hopefully) cost effective environmental monitoring system. No, this isn’t some United Nations nonsense about how much vegetation-feeding carbon dioxide is going into the atmosphere, it is about keeping an eye out for leaky appliances and some useful (and fun?) technology at the same time.
This is going to start out as a hypothetical design idea and a mobile software application to monitor it. Why mobile? Well, a couple of reasons. Mobile is more interesting in some ways and I want to extend it to have some more features over time. Could it all be browser based? yes, and we might start that way, however the problem with browser based applications is that you have to think to go there and click and clack. I prefer an application which is periodically checking on things for me. So now, off to write an article about how this thing is going to work…
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Going Steady
Posted by: Frank Ableson in General Business, Technology on April 03, 2009
In our computer lab we often have students who prefer to customize their "desktops" during the duration of their time with us. For example, our classes generally run for one month in duration and students tend to gravitate to the same seat every day. Sometimes they get spyware, sometimes they delete files we would prefer them not to, etc. That's OK, its part of the learning process. However, at the end of the instruction cycle, we incur a cost to restore the machine to the state it was in at the beginning of the class session. We used a program called Deep Freeze from Faronics, which did an OK job, however it didn’t allow enough flexibility. We're now trying SteadyState from our friends at Microsoft. This promises to be a better experience. We shall see…
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Young Professionals, epilogue
Posted by: Frank Ableson in General Business, Sussex County on April 02, 2009
We had about 20 people show up including Tammie Horsfield from the Sussex County Chamber of Commerce and Steve Skorski from HQW architects. I am happy to say that MSI had three gents in attendance; myself, Watson and Slim, our ace web developer (one of them anyway). We're planning on meeting again the first Thursday of May. Location to be determined. If you are interested in joining us, please contact myself, Steve or the Sussex Chamber office.
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