Flash grew up to be a real monster in last few years and that’s probably the only real reason why Apple did not put it in iPhone so far. Flash Lite just doesn’t fit into profile of multimedia web experience and full blown desktop Flash version was just too much to fit into iPhone poor underclocked 412 MHz CPU. Latest 3GS iPhone has 833 MHz CPU underclocked to 600 MHz, and I can’t help to wonder, is this 188 Mhz change in performance really enough for Flash to run remotely smooth?

Adobe said Flash CS5 public beta should by out by the end of 2009, so we all just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, check out this crazy Flash on iPhone Myth Busters inspired video from MAX:

Checkout Turbulence by lft:

(turn on your speakers because music is great!)

The challenge which by little help of modern marvel becomes a walk in the park. Originally developed by US Dept. of Defense, GPS and can now be found in cameras, phones even arm watches. My trusty Garmin nüvi 760 packed with maps of Europe and best set of maps for our region – AdriaRoute and SCG ROUTE never let me down so far. Even my last phone Noka E71 is A-GPS enabled device. Nokia Maps (or Yahoo Maps and Google Maps for that matter) have really bad coverage of streets in Croatia so are basically useless for navigation. But Garmin Mobile XT runs on Symbian very well and you can use the same maps as mentioned above. Since my mobile phone is internet enabled too, with the help of GPS device the possibilities for navigation and orientation are practically limitless. Right? Right?

Wrong. Why? Because browser (Opera Mini) and Flash Lite 3 can’t communicate with GPS device. Actually Flash Lite can communicate with GPS trough KunerLite S60 RAD, and Opera Mobile (because it supports javascript) can communicate with GPS trough similar expensive middle-ware called GPSGate, but all that is far far away from becoming a standard.

Good news is that couple of days ago Mozilla Labs released experimental geolocating plug-in for Firefox called Geode which would help websites locate you. All that conforming to the W3C Geolocation specification. Beta plugin uses single hard-coded location provider (utilizing proprietary Skyhook’s Loki technology) to map your local Wifi hotspot or cell towers GPS location in your area to your location. If this started to freak you out, fear not – users can decide what level of location information they want to reveal to a website, ‘exact location’, ‘neighborhood’, ‘city’ or ‘nothing’. None of this obviously doesn’t work in Croatia so it’s NOTHING by default for us. If you are reading this from other part of the universe – check the demo here.

Mozilla says that in final version location will be provided by one or more user selectable service providers and methods, e.g. GPS-based, WiFi-based, ip2location, manual entry, etc. What is even more interesting is that this plugin will be in core of the upcoming beta releases of Firefox 3.1, as well as alpha releases of Fennec (Mobile Firefox).

This is pretty good damn news from Mozilla because proprietary solutions like Skyhook’s XPS or Garmin Communicator (plugin which enables your browser to talk to Garmin GPS) don’t provide enough user coverage for worldwide usage.

When I touched standards, it have to mention a new standard proposed to IETF this year called HTTP Enabled Location Delivery (HELD) which proposes a standardized way to ask the network (Location Information Server (LIS)) for the location of the device. This is still a proposal, and years away from worldwide implementation, but if nothing, I at least expect Jack Bauer to catch criminals by “hacking the HELD” in new season of 24. :)

Garmin Mobile XT

Nokia Maps

I had a few shots with it and camera is great. View finder with 100% coverage is excellent, big and bright. People complained that camera is heavy but I found it ok with 895 g, it is after all a full-frame camera. Bad points go to position of Auto focus points which are too close to center.

I tested it only a few minutes so a have only a few shots but here they are (right click -> save as):

ISO 400, 1/90 sec, RAW converted to JPEG in post processing (16.2 MB)

ISO 800, 1/125 sec, RAW converted to JPEG in post processing (16.9 MB)

ISO 1600, 1/200 sec, RAW converted to JPEG in post processing (20.2 MB)

ISO 6400, 1/3000 sec, RAW converted to JPEG in post processing (27.7 MB)

All shots are made with Zeiss ZA Planar T* 85mm f/1.4 ( Sony SAL-85F14Z ) at f/1.4.

As you see there is no visible deference between ISO 400 and 800:

At ISO 1600 and 6400 noise is visible:

ISO 6400, lots of grain, but still, it’s 6400 and the need for it is just in very special occasions.

More test and specification can be found on dpreview.com Sony Alpha DSLR-A900 Preview

However, I digged around and found another interesting thing. Have you ever heard about mobile codes? This is old stuff really. Originally, bar codes represented data in the widths (lines) and the spacings of parallel lines and may be referred to as linear or 1d bar codes. But they also come in patterns of squares, dots, hexagons and other geometric patterns within images termed 2d matrix codes. As cameras and mobile phones progressed some phone manufacturers started shipping their phones with build in bar code reader applications – thus words “mobile” and “code” in the name. :)

Two currently most popular open-standard formats for 2D codes in mobile phone applications are Datamatrix (DM – now owned by Siemens and covered by an ISO standard, public domain) and Quick Response (QR – developed, patented and owned by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave initially for car parts management, public domain).

Graphical output of Datamatrix (DM) looks like this:

and Quick Response (QR) open-standard like this:

.

I can’t say I understand the whole point behind it. Idea was to use matrix codes to encode URL’s, emails and small messages and do what exactly with this? Why would I print unrecognizable encoded picture somewhere and force people to scan it? What’s wrong with good old numbers and letters? Barcods are made to automate recognition on a large scale recognition operation (eg. manufacturing, warehousing etc), but I just somehow don’t see 1000 people waiting in line with their mobiles to scan our website url encoded on a sticker. Email protection? Scan this to see my email? Are you kidding me? :)

Experts predicted bright future for matrix codes and spread in various applications. Couple of years later, I really can’t say I saw much of it. However, couple of days ago this press release made me rethink the whole concept again. NTT DoCoMo announced that they developed the acoustic OFDM (Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) technology, which can be used to embed URLs and text data in broadcast music/audio. Consumers’ mobile phones “listen” to the music/audio and extract the embedded URLs/data. About 100 characters can be transmitted in a second.

This sounds really cool compared to scanning codes on a sticker mentioned before. But where are they going with this? If you owned ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 you definetly had tapes. Ever listened to any of these tapes? :) Like 20 years ago I remember a show on local radio station where guys even tried to “send” programs over the air to listeners. They would play C64 tape in the air and tell people to record it. OMG :)

Anyways it’s getting pretty late and I have to catch some sleep. If you wanna give mobile codes another go, get readers for your mobile here or here and start playing around. :)

update: I just got contacted by Roger from 2d-code.co.uk. If you are interested in mobile coding, I highly recommend that you check out his web site. It’s full of news and interesting mobile coding application. Gooo Roger! :)

Unfortunately, it is my duty to report another Logitech G9 failure.

Before I begin, here is some sweet talk, just to put things in perspective. Now, generally I love this mouse; the ergonomics fit’s my hand far better than G5 (harassed that one for years), looks like a 7of 9’s breast implant – combining both sexy and super geek. The precision is noticeably better than G5, and the left mouse click just makes you want to … well, click it. A winner on paper statistics for sure.

For those following our rantings, u should be familiar with Daemon’s initial post describing the issues with trashy grip problem also known now as the „G5 skin disease affair“. I am sure many of you returned to more closely inspect the Hi-Res images, and documentation presented in the post.

As we expected, we where contacted by Logitech representatives, the mouse was replaced, and all was well (with a little help from some sticky grips).

4 months latter, the disaster strikes again!

This time the left mouse button stopped working and started irritating. Daemon says it is no surprise since he can hear me stomping on it in from the other room, but i know he is just sticking his head out for the love of Logitech. The truth is – there should be no excuse for a 6 month old Logitech G9 to cancel obedience.

I design, I click, I play Quake, I play TF2, and on average, Nivas Design crew spends 12 hours a day hard-core clicking, and yes.. I do believe the harder you press the button, the faster the bullets will fly (almost, a scientific fact, ask any gamer), but you don’t buy G5 if you don’t know your mice.

Fact is, my colleague is still pounding away on my old Logitech G5. The same G5 which passed a proper Guantanamo treatment in my hands for about 1.5 years, and now 6 months in his hands – and it is still working flawlessly!

What in the name of Christ and all that is holy and unholy, is wrong with this product?! Logitech G9 is seriously best mouse on the market while new. But durability of that mouse is just awful! How can they be called “Gamer grade” mice, when they cannot withstand hard core usage? Logitech PLEASE don’t make me go out and buy Razor, ‘coz we all know they look like a truck ran over a squid.

Daemon edit: to answer your question, yes, Nivas designers do work with Hand of Sauron

[photopress:Xone_3D_3_4_on_black_TRAKTO_1.jpg,full,centered]

This is the mother of all mixers. It’s a usb mixer designed to be used with the traktor dj studio 3. I’m speechless, I want one…