CatchBob! on TabletPC

We are preparing a TabletPC version for CatchBob! to broden the channel of communication with freehand drawing and writing. I now use the Placelab toolkit for spotting the beacons (does not give perfect results, but it works) and use the classes of the replay tool for the graphical interface. I am going to drop my own socket-based protocol to move to SOAP or XML-RPC for the client-server communication. Let’s see how they caliber with intermitent connectiviy-based applications.

I should also implement something to correct my horrible lefty handwritting.

3G en Suisse

UMTS débarque en Suisse pour le grand public à la fin de l’année. Evolution, pas révolution (recyclage des services déjà existants). Les applications potientielles proposées sentent le WAP (visionner en différé la finale du 100m des JO??)

Location of Politics

Fundrace City Map 2004, is a map of areas by political contributions in the US. A cool view of the political San Francisco and the more frighting Neighbor Search.

From the placelab mailing-list:
Imagine your cell phone glows red/blue based on location. You probably don’t (or do!) want to rant about George while in the elevator of 101 California St. San Francisco — residents contributed over $102,500 to the RNC!

Mobile Messaging Access Protocol

The Mobile Messaging Access Protocol (MMAP) is an XML SOAP protocol for mobile messaging. It provides a generic framework for mobile interactions and defines a full set of functions for short message submission and delivery. These functions are fully equivalent to the SMS Forum’s binary messaging protocol (SMPP). MMAP is compliant with the SOAP 1.2 standard.

Hessian Binary Web Service Protocol

Looking for ways to simplify the port of CatchBob! to TabletPC I stumbled on Hessian. The Hessian binary web service protocol makes web services usable without requiring a large framework, and without learning yet another alphabet soup of protocols. Hessian comes from the people of the good Resion servlet and jsp engine.

Get the Best Results from Tablet PC Handwriting Recognizers

Since we are thinking to port CatchBob into TablePC with a higher emphasis on the communication means, there is an MSDN Library article Get the Best Results from Tablet PC Handwriting Recognizers on how to develop handwriting recognizers in .NET

It's Not Just Usability

Another guy who screamed “Nonsense” when hearing about eBay Wrong, wrong, wrong, but at least I was not alone

Via Usability & Social Interfaces. It’s Not Just Usability is about usability to being the major focus in the field of human-human interaction. A lot of sotware is still about human-computer interaction. But the Internet brings us a new kind of software: software that’s about human-human interaction (software that mediates between people). The best UI in the world won’t save software with an awkward socila interface. Other quotes:

“With social interface engineering, you have to look at sociology and anthropology”

“Whereas the goal of user interface design is to help the user succeed, the goal of social interface design is to help the society succeed, even if it means one user has to fail.”

“Software used in teams usually fails to take hold, because it requires everyone on the team to change the way they work simultaneously, something which anthropologists will tell you is vanishingly unlikely”

“Ergonomics experts knew a lot about the right height for a desk, but they didn’t know how to design GUIs for file systems”

“Over the next decade, I expect that software companies will hire people trained as anthropologists and ethnographers to work on social interface design. Instead of building usability labs, they’ll go out into the field and write ethnographies.”

Mobissimo

Mobissimo is not a travel agency but a search engine that directly quieries the offers of travel suppliers (including low-cost like EasyJet). It is a San Mateo based company with a european touch. Time made an article on it The Google Of Travel Searches?

Graph Based Interfaces with TouchGraph

Just because I have been mentionned it many times, here we go TouchGraph for Graph Based Interfaces:
- TouchGraph LLC
- TG Development

SpamRadio

The best of spam poetry has its own radio. Spamradio is serving up delicious helpings of spam each hour of every day to all who are hungry. Going mainstream!!