Tilt This!

corey    Computers     android, cellphones, htc, tilt

I picked up an AT&T Tilt last week, though I was really hoping to get it before we left for Japan. The phone is capable of a couple of nifty features: GPS, connects to Wifi networks, 3G High Speed Cellular Data, and the 2100Mhz cell band (which is used in Japan for GSM phones). I had hoped to at least get to use the wifi capabilities so we could check email (and maybe even make a phone call or two using Skype), but that didn’t pan out as the phone was released the week before we left – not enough time for the stores to actually get any in stock.

Anyways, so I have this Tilt thingy. I did some serious reading over at XDA Developer’s forum and picked up the ROM used to flash your phone back to the original Windows Mobile setup HTC (the manufacturer) had rather than the messed up garbage AT&T gives you. The HTC ROM has a nice touch-screen graphical homepage that makes it easy to get to the basics that Windows Mobile has to offer.

Since HTC is one of the manufacturers who joined the Google Open Handset Alliance (a joke? We’ll see), I hope to eventually get a ROM that loads and runs Google’s Android phone OS. Windows Mobile works but, eh, it’s Windows and it already erased all of my contacts once.

All in all, a nice set of features in the hardware, but I think I like the Blackberry OS that my wife has on her Blackberry Pearl better. Windows Mobile is very serious/business-like – certainly not aimed at the same market as, say, the iPhone which is very much a “smart consumer” device. But I will say Opera Mobile seems to run pretty darn well on it (though I’m starting to think Opera Mini is going to by-pass Opera Mobile soon).

Japan Photos

corey    News, Vacation     japan, photos, Vacation

Now online!

http://picasaweb.google.com/corey.crawford/Japan2007

Defrag: Open Source Hardware

corey    Computers     bug labs, defragcon, hardware, mashup, open source

I don’t know how many folks out there are hackers/mashup folks, but I was at Defrag earlier this week and saw a talk about an ‘open’ hardware platform being developed.

The idea is that there’s a base unit running Linux+Java with built-in Wifi, etc with modules you can plug in. The modules can be a GPS unit, a camera, a touch LCD screen, pretty much anything. This thing is the ultimate Lego Mindstorm.

Check it out here, at Bug Labs.

The idea is that you can take the base unit and plug in whatever combination of modules you need to create your own special device. Using the Linux OS plus the built-in Wifi, you can then create applications and internet services based off of it. They even have an API Framework that already knows how to talk to all of the devices, so you aren’t doing any special programming for them. For example, you could plug in a motion detector and a camera, and set it up so that it’ll take a picture whenever there is motion and then ftp/post/whatever that picture somewhere.

Just thought it was a cool thing to point out.

(Another cool talk at Defrag was about visualizing data (particularly social networking type data) and how the speaker had worked with data from DARPA based on the America’s Army game; trying to find what a signature for a competent/well coordinated fire team looked like).

EVE, now on Mac and Linux!

corey    Computers, Games, News     eve online, Games, mmo

I know I haven’t posted about our Japan vacation (soon! .. I think) but wanted everyone (all 2 of you) to know that EVE Online now runs on Mac and Linux. No excuses now!

http://www.eve-online.com/download/