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MobileVNC embedded VNC server library version 2.1 now also supports outgoing connections to VNC repeater software. Find here a detailed tutorial how to connect with VNC behind a Firewall or a NAT router. This lightweight, embedded VNC server is perfectly designed to be integrated within your own hardware or software products.
I just got the information to announce this years regional Open Commons Congress in Linz Austria. The Open Commons Kongress 2013 OC13 is the second event on Open Commons approaches and culture in Linz, organized by the Johannes Kepler University Linz together with the Open Commons Region Linz. This year the overall topic is ‘Learning and Living with Digital Commons‘ It will take place in following location:
Today, the new release 2.1 of MobileVNC VNC Server for Win32, Windows CE and Windows Embedded Compact was published. It features some major bugfixes and an additional licensing option for the base VNC server library (vnc.lib and vncserverlib.h) integration for your own products. MobileVNC, as a native VNC implementation, offers a tiny footprint VNC integration without any dependencies. MobileVNC is running fast even on the tiniest Windows CE platform and it is backwards compatible until Windows CE 4.2. MobileVNC offers binaries for x86, ARM and MIPS CPU platforms.
Within this amazing video an inventor presents a system, consisting of a Raspberry PI, a hall sensor, GPS and a small projector, that is able to project the actual driving speed in front of a bycicle rider. So whereever you are driving you always see actual driving stats in front of you without any major distraction. A real cool idea!
Today a new version of TabShop, the free Android based Point of Sale kiosk and restaurant app was published. This new version changed a lot of the initial design and introduces a new startup screen. A lot of the customer feedback was considered when this new version of TabShop Point of Sale app was implemented. Here is a small glimpse at the newly introduced start screen:
Spotnick – Locate and Track your Facebook Friends, Image source: Spotnick.at
Some days ago a friend told me that his team just published a brand new iPhone and Android App called Spotnick that allows mobile Facebook users to immediately locate and track their friends. After connecting to Spotnick by using your Facebook account, you are shown a map on which you can locate your linked Facebook friends. As far as your friends are not updating their location in realtime, Spotnick uses the actual home address, or the last known address your freinds entered within Facebook. The Spotnick app also allows to track and update your own address in realtime, so that you can select people who are allowed to see your realtime location. Spotnick app was published for Android as well as for iPhone.
Spotnick – Locate and Track your Facebook Friends, Image source: Spotnick.at
Since the first commercial appearance of e-Ink Displays around the year 2008, a large collection of cheap e-book readers, such as the Sony PRS505 or Amazon’s Kindle, were successfully introduced on the consumer market. As the e-Ink technology became mature in this field of application, millions of e-book readers are in active use today and the amount of sold e-books is nearly the same level as of traditional books.
E-Ink technology was first mentioned in 1997 based on research started at the MIT Media Lab. Joseph Jacobson and Barrett Comiskey are listed as inventors on the original patent filed in 1996.
E-Ink displays offer some great advantages over alternative display technology, such as extremely low power usage, incredible high contrast and the ability to preserve the static image for an unlimited amount of time without the use of any energy at all. E-Ink displays on the other hand do not offer much multimedia capabilities as they are mostly operating on grayscale, or very simple single color modes. Also their slow reaction times prevent e-Ink displays to show any videos.
Beside the widespread use of e-Ink displays in e-Ink ebook (or even as prototypical Smartphone display) reading devices, their use within industrial applications and rough production or outdoor scenarios is still underestimated. As e-Ink displays offer perfect contrast and preserve the displayed image over an unlimited amount of time, these displays could be the perfect choice for machine interfaces.
Following examples show the use of e-Ink displays in various interesting applications, such as static information on pillboxes, showing information directly on a mountain bike or even to directly show information on a snowboard.
e-Ink display on a pill box, image source: http://www.eink.com
e-ink display on a snowboard: image source: http://www.eink.com
Watch a short film explaining the basic concepts of e-Ink technology:
Google’s Project Glass, the implementation of an augmented reality head-mounted display (HMD), has gained a lot of publicity over the last months. Recently, Google published some additional promotion videos that should demonstrate the benefit of these head-mounted transparent see through displays. Project Glass introduces the recording of personal activities in first person perspective, comarable with a helmet mounted action cam. Google Glass is also used as an unobstrusive information display, in order to give you additional background information in every situation of your daily life.
apps4austria is a federal Austrian Challenge to create mobile Apps by using Open Government Data archives. These archives contain all kind of information that could be used by a wider public community, such as location of waste collection centers, tourism information, public statistics or public building information.
The challenge emphasises the design of apps that are using these kind of publicly available information and visualizations. Its even possible to submit concepts and ideas without concrete implementation. The submission of apps4austria is due to 1.march 2013!
In this video I-Wei Huang shows a guy from the Wired magazin his amazing collection of robot designs. I-Wei Hung’s has a special interest in steampowered robot designs, as you can see in some of his robot designs. I-Wei Hung designs adorable cool robots, watch this video to get a glimpse on his robotic genius! Also refer to the original Wired Interview here.
