Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Robots

We’ve seen methods for hooking house plants up with their own Twitter account, but there’s hardly anything more satisfying that building a robot to read back all those feeds from the thousands of people you’re undoubtedly following. Ganzbot is a decidedly low-budget robot that relies on an Arduino Decima to control the head actions and a USB cable to receive up-to-date status information. Have a look at the innards as well as a few words being spoken just after the jump.

[Via MAKE]

Continue reading Video: Ganzbot reads Twitter feeds aloud, looks fashionably low-rate

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Sheesh — and we though it was something special when Teddy Ruxpin went digital. Today’s mesmerizing bear just isn’t remarkable unless it talks, and to make it extraordinary, it needs to vocalize your Twitter messages. The mad scientists over at 2pointhome were able to implant a circuit board, USB Bluetooth adapter, 9-volt battery and a host of other goodies into an animatronic Teddy, and after coding in a few things and pairing it up, the animal was yapping in no time flat. Head on past the break to see a video of the operation, but be warned, as it’s not for the faint of heart.

[Via DailyWireless]

Continue reading Complicated DIY project leads to Twittering Teddy Bear

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

Trust us, this isn’t the first time LocaModa’s dabbled in the cellphone-controlled gadgetry game, but it’s never been more friendly than it’s being with the Social Jukebox. The aforesaid company has teamed up with TouchTunes in order to give patrons the ability to interact with flat-panels on TouchTunes jukeboxes. On-screen applications will include information about the song currently playing, elusive “user generated content” and even “patron photos” from their social networking profiles (scary?). For those completely absorbed in this stuff, you can even keep tabs on the interactions via data feeds from your favorite network. Twitter fights over which song ushers the drinking crowd out in a bar 1,500 miles away? What is the world coming to?

[Via textually, image courtesy of LocaModa]

&nbsp

Read&nbsp|&nbspPermalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: CES, Peripherals, Portable Audio

Motorola launched a slick headset today as a follow up to the original MOTOACTV ͇ we saw this time last year. Form looks unchanged on this outing, but Moto has opted to add high-definition sound with SRS WOW HD and fixed the issue we had with background noise by improving the earbuds. Battery life is touted as 6 hours of play time on a single charge — but of course your mileage will vary — and weighs in at a measly one ounce. If you’ve been looking to upgrade your current sweat damaged S9 set, this may well be a worthy upgrade for you.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Sean Cooper

There has been a lot of hype behind Flash VoIP, including Adobe’s formerly top-secret Flash VoIP project, which Om Malik (get well soon) and I broke the story back in 2006. Other players have come along in that time, including Ribbit (covered here), Flashphone (covered here), PushCall, and Wengo. I’ve been very pro-Flash VoIP apps since the vast majority of PCs, Macs, PockePCs, Windows Mobile, and other operating systems all have Flash installed. This enables easy cross-platform VoIP calls simply by visiting a website with a Flash VoIP applet embedded. Flash applets automatically download in the background without requiring a separate installer or administrator rights.

The obvious question that came to my mind when I was thinking about embedded Flash VoIP applets is &quotwhat about Flash video conferencing applets that do both voice & video?" Imagine simply visiting a website, and initiating an ad-hoc videoconference with other visitors to that same site. I should mention that there already exists tons of Flash video applications used by popular sites such as YouTube and LiveLeak. The video codecs at least exist within the Flash player. Though, YouTube uses buffering that isn’t real-time, so Flash-based videoconferencing would most likely use a different codec that performs better during real-time communication.

n any event, I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone took Flash VoIP to the next level and offered Flash videoconferencing. Apparently, SightSpeed is the first company to do so with an announcement being made today. At CES SightSpeed will announce an easy-to-use, no-download version of its video chat service, called "SightSpeed Light," that will run on a variety of online social networks, including those based on Google’s forthcoming OpenSocial platform. This has a lot of implications and possibilities for any type of social networking site, interactive blogs, dating sites, political sites, online forums, and more.

Imagine going to a very popular news article on NYTimes.com about Obama overtaking Hillary in the national polls. Naturally both Obama and Hillary supporters will visit this web page. The Flash application could allow for instant ad-hoc videoconferences between the web visitors to trash talk about Obama’s recent surge. Obama supporters can gloat and Hillary supporters can point to why Obama doesn’t have the experience to try and woo some Obama supporters to Hillary’s side. Or the web page could simply create separate video chat rooms to keep the two sides from having a "videoconferencing flame war". I’m sure someone will come up with a slang term for that one. Having ad-hoc video conferences based on the specific article/web page would require large web sites with tons of visitors, but that’s just one possible use of Flash videoconferencing. Websites could have "general" video chat rooms that are not specific to a particular webpage. Of course, online forums with a special interest (cars, sports, etc.) are an obvious good fit, as are dating sites where you want to have 1-on-1 video conversations.

Here’s the press release:

SIGHTSPEED INTRODUCES VIDEO-CHAT WIDGET FOR OPENSOCIAL WEB SITES

"SightSpeed Light" Will Provide Simple, No-Download Version Entry Point to Award-Winning SightSpeed Services

Will Run on OpenSocial Sites Like MySpace, Salesforce.com, Hi5, LinkedIn, etc.

BERKELEY, Calif. - Jan. 7, 2008 - SightSpeed Inc., the leading provider of Internet video communications, has announced it is developing a new addition to its award-winning portfolio of services: an easy-to-use, no-download version of its video chat service, called "SightSpeed Light," that will run on a variety of online social networks, including those based on Google’s forthcoming OpenSocial platform.

SightSpeed developers are creating the application using Adobe Flash, one of the most widely adopted multimedia viewing and creation tools, making SightSpeed Light simple to integrate on a variety of platforms and enhancing its accessibility and usability.

Furthermore, in anticipation of greater opportunities for cross-application collaboration through OpenSocial, SightSpeed is inviting other developers who are building new applications with Google’s APIs to work with SightSpeed to create a fully immersed video experience within the applications they are developing.

SightSpeed Light will offer free video chat and integrated video mail between members of the same social network or anywhere on the Web. Because it’s built entirely using Flash, SightSpeed Light will work on any computer through any standards-based Web browser, with no downloads or installation required. Chatting with friends using video-and recording and sending them video messages-will literally be one click away.

SightSpeed plans to implement SightSpeed Light on MySpace, LinkedIn, Salesforce.com, Plaxo, Orkut, Hi5 and many other OpenSocial social networking sites.

According to Google, OpenSocial is currently being developed in conjunction with members of the Web community. The project’s ultimate goal is for any social Web site to be able to implement common APIs and host third-party social applications. As those APIs are released, SightSpeed Light will add them, as appropriate, to provide benefit to users.

"With SightSpeed Light, we′re expanding our portfolio to make it easier than ever for people to get started with video chat or to send and receive video messages," said SightSpeed CEO Peter Csathy. "As growing numbers of people participate in online social-network sites, and with the proliferation of embedded webcams in PCs, Macs, mobile phones and other devices, video communications is quickly moving to the forefront of the social-networking experience. And because no one understands or delivers Internet-based video communications better than SightSpeed, you can expect that our widget-just like our other services-will raise the bar in terms of ease of use and overall performance."

SightSpeed Light joins the full range of video communication services from industry leader SightSpeed. Offering additional capabilities, the full-featured SightSpeed 6.0 delivers consumers best-in-class 30-frames-per-second video calling and high-quality video mail with a virtual inbox. Also available are VoIP-based phone service with phone-in and phone-out capability, custom click-to-call-me buttons, video community access with privacy features, unlimited text messaging and up to four-party video conferencing.

For the business user, SightSpeed now offers SightSpeed Business-the company’s first business-focused videoconferencing service, providing a full suite of administrative and call-management options and collaboration tools that are essential for the business user. SightSpeed Business is the first high-quality, cost-effective and hardware-free videoconferencing solution accessible to every business.

All SightSpeed’s award-winning services, including SightSpeed Light, are fully SIP-based and standards-compliant, which is essential for interoperability, security, stability and overall user flexibility and utility.

Tags: Adobe, Flash, Om Malik, SightSpeed Light, video conferencing, VoIP

Original post by Eric

Filed under: CES, Portable Audio

Now, we don’t have a whole bunch of info on Jook right now, and sure, the press photos claim that “actual products may differ from pictures,” and yeah, the patents are pending. Still, it seems like the dock connector-attached unit will be bringing some Zune-style social networking features to your lonely, non-WiFi iPod. Of course, we all know how successful The Social has been in Microsoft’s court — but with the massive proliferation of iPods on the street, this might gain a little more ground. We do worry about the use of the term “music standard,” the apparently-necessary headphones, and the fact that the company doesn’t appear to have a website, but hey — you never know.

 

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

According to a recently released report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a telephone study of US youths aged 12-17 found that — get this — kids actually put value on “non-online” meetings, such as “talking on the phone” or “hanging out.” If you believe these so-called findings, 40-percent of teens say they use that archaic and confusing system of wired telephones, while 31-percent claim to spend time “in person″ with friends every day, as though they’re not frittering away their time on PCs, DS Lites, and cellphones — interacting virtually, like the rest of us. Our take? Obvious youth-driven cover-up. Hear us out here. If the ‘rents found out kids were growing up so socially disenfranchised, they might just take all those beautiful gadgets away. On the other hand (or OTOH, as the youngsters say on their picture calculators), we don’t exactly take a telephone poll of 935 teens as empirical knowledge, so maybe it’s possible that kids are pretty much the same as they’ve always been — if slightly more distracted. One thing’s for sure — they’ll never experience the pain of not knowing the lyrics to Rock Me Amadeus like we did.

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Gaming

With under a fortnight to go until Microsoft looses the Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard update on us, we’re still learning even more about what it will entail. The latest tidbit touches on the oh-so-zany social networking craze, as gamers will soon be able to browse the friends lists of their pals in order to connect with old buddies or get all up in the digital grill of complete strangers. Starting on December 4th, the default setting will enable your Xbox Live friends to browse your list at will, and if that just doesn’t set well with your conscience, you can hit the read link for instructions on how to spoil some fun prevent it.

[Image courtesy of Xbox]

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Darren Murph