Archive for the ‘New Technologies’ Category

  • 08 Dec

    Posted by
    beriberikix


    Category

    Google Voice: Converging Mobile and Web

    2

    I must admit I wasn’t impressed with Google Voice at first. I didn’t see a need nor how it solved a problem. Now, however, I’m a huge fanboy. But its not why you think.

    Google Voice is based on the acquisition of GrandCentral in July 2007. At its core, Voice is a call routing tool that integrates Calls, SMS, & Email in one service. With advanced rules like direct-to-voicemail or “don’t ring on weekends,” I can control my phone service like a conductor controls his orchestra.

    That’s great, but where’s the innovation? Well, Voice brings a mobile-only service (SMS) into my browser. I can have zero bars and still get that text about 5 dollars pitchers @ happy hour. Awesome. I can also search my transcribed voicemails like I would email. Space Odyssey status. SMS is over 18 year old and hasn’t changed much. Except for now, it is distributed and cached. This is way beyond mobile web; its product synergy. And I’m a fanboy.

    You might be saying, “well, Foursquare and Twitter are mobile applications.” But their experiences are just regular mobile pages or apps that happen to live on a mobile device. They barely exploit, let alone leverage, the mobile ecosystem.

    I hope more products push the envelope and merge age-old experiences. Maybe you’ll come up with the next classic + classic = new.

    ./BBK

  • 23 Sep

    Posted by
    beriberikix


    Category

    Innovative Platforms for Flash

    0

    Awhile back, I did some research on advanced Flash frameworks. The reason for the research was due to the fact that a lot of 3D In-browser effects are achieved using plugins. Several examples for plugins include Unity, Wild Pockets & O3D.

    *NOTE* WebGL was recently introduced into the Firefox nightly build, but WebGL is a very YOUNG product and will take awhile before it goes mainstream.

    PushButton Engine

    My personal favorite. The PushButton Engine touts itself as a robust “modular” game engine. All the basics are covered: Physics enigne, Gameplay like health and stats, sprites, tilemaps and networking. Besides the obvious benefits of modularity, PBE will also have a component library allowing even greater functionality.

    Hemlock

    Hemlock is an open-source framework that combines Flash & XMPP for Real-Time, multi-user applications.

    Papervision3D

    The original 3D Flash framework. They’re site is a little hard to navigate, but there is plenty of information out there. Plus, everyone uses it, so Google can be your friend here.

    Away3D & Sandy 3D

    Both Away3D and Sandy 3D are new to me and I discovered them in the course of writing this blog. In Away3D’s latest release, it leverages some of the rendering improvements in Flash 10, so the results are quite impressive. Sandy is unique in that it supports both AS2 and AS3. That’s great for devs who haven’t learned the new version or who use older modules. Definitely worth checking out both.

    Degrafa

    Degrafa is a Graphings framework it the core. See this beautiful example of what kind of graphs it can produce. Degrafa is also used for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs,) which can be simple games to robust financial management software.

    I hope to spend more time with each one of these frameworks. There’s potential for a lot of innovation here.

    Have you tried one of these before? Let us know what it was like!

    ./BBK

  • 27 Jul

    Posted by
    beriberikix


    Category

    Why YQL?

    0

    Content, & to a degree data, has become ubiquitous in this post-Web 2.0 revolution era. Having mounds of content is not only common, its expected. However, you’ll be hard-pressed to make a business around simply serving data (outside “Premium” content like TV shows ala Hulu.) What you can do is take the hoards of distribution channels and make something meaningful out of all this mess.

    Making something meaningful, however, is tricky. With an never-ending array of technologies, formats, standards and groups, collecting content is sometimes harder than figuring out how to make it meaningful. Wouldn’t it be lovely if there was a system that simplified the management and manipulation of data around the web?

    That’s where the Yahoo! Query Language (YQL) comes in. For those of you unfamiliar, YQL is system that allows you to work with RESTful web-services in a syntax similar to SQL. YQL has three key elements:

    • Basic YQL – a system for “SELECT”ing or polling web-services.
    • YQL Open Data Tables – a directory system for web-services.
    • YQL Execute – a way to modify data on the web, really the last piece of the puzzle.

    From a intellectual-curiosity point of view, YQL sounds interesting. However, many technologists argue that YQL is just a niche product and cannot be used for anything commercial. I claim that YQL is much more.

    YQL provides two important abilites: managing web-services and manipulating data they serve. I really like how zembly manages available APIs, but wouldn’t it be great for Zembly if they just needed a single XML file? Then, once someone selects three APIs or so, how awesome would it be to write 3 uniform lines to get the data they need?

    So far, the only downside to YQL is that it goes through Yahoo!s proxy. But, with a 100,000 call per app, per day limit, most projects are good to go. I looked for frameworks or libraries that cloned YQL’s syntax, but no dice. As of of now, you gotta go through Yahoo!. If you find a framework or library, let me know below.

    All that said, I’d suggest trying out YQL. I’m currently working on a full OpenSocial Open Table. Try to find an API you’re passionate about and make table for it. :-D

    Thoughts? Blurb it in the comments.

    ./BBK