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  • Detecting infrared light

    Ellen 23:19 on March 1, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: detecting, , infrared sensor, Sharp GP2D12

    Magic Mirror Infrared detector

    Magic Mirror Infrared detector

    Building robotics and electronic installations with IR sensors can be a hassle when detecting objects. At the moment I am working with several Sharp IR sensor that I suspect interfere with each other, picking up each others bounce light. I saw this need neat little IR detection card that displays your IR light so you know exactly where your IR sensor bounce back on objects.

    Investigating these cards further I found out you can use a digital camera to catch the light. The human eye can’t see the IR light but the digital camera can! Just turn on your digital camera and view your sensor through the camera.

    Using my iPhone camera I could clearly see where my Sharp GP2D12 reflected back the IR light and I could adjust the IR sensor face the object more accurately.

    Iphone IR detection

    Iphone IR detection

     
  • Facebook Connect: Only for grown ups

    Ellen 13:03 on February 6, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,

    In some Facebook Connect apps you might want to target an older audience. Any Facebook user is required to fill in their date of birth so the birthday field of the profile can be a way to check that your user has the appriopriate age for your application. This can be done by checking the birthday date of the user (birthday_date) using the function
    users_getInfo($uid, 'birthday_date').

    birhtdate

    Important to remember though is that if the Facebook user has chosen not to show the birth year, this will not be available for the Facebook Connect application. To determine that the Facebook user has the appropriate age her settings on Facebook must look as follows:

     
  • Google Chart API - dynamic graphs & charts

    Ellen 17:47 on January 25, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: chartpart, Google, Google Chart API, pie charts

    As I am gathering a report that I want to present online I have been looking for alternatives to screen dumping Excel charts. Of couse Google had a tool for this. They are providing an API for generating pie, lines and what have you charts. The neat thing is that they are dynamic. No Flash Player or screen dumping required. Google hosts the generated image and you can feed in data on the fly. This is great when presenting live data online. The image below shows a dynamic pie chart.

    You can read about Google chart API here.

    Google Chart API and Chart Generator Tool is a great tool to try it out.

    To explore the field more Mashable made a short review of different pie charts.

     
  • Facebook Connect: No server-side needed

    Ellen 17:27 on January 15, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , javascript

    With the Facebook Connect API comes javascript functionality. This means no server-side scripting needed. You can create your application on Facebook and connect to it from your website thought javascript. Use the API Key and Secret Key to connect to you application. Make sure your callback URL is set on Facebook to be the URL of the page you are connecting from.

    Create your customized Facebook Connect login button through this wizard. Paste in the code into your site.

    Enabling calls to the javascript API on Facebook:
    <script src="http://static.ak.connect.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/FeatureLoader.js.php/sv_SE" type="text/javascript"></script>

    Generating the login button on your site:
    <fb:login-button v="2" size="medium" onlogin="window.location.reload(true);">Log in to Facebook Connect</fb:login-button>

    The Facebook Connect login will appear in a pop-up window. When successfully logged in, the window closes and your main page reloads.

    The output
    In the Javascript function FB.ensureInit you can then put in your API calls and generate your HTML from that. Below is an example of showing selected information from a user’s profile.

    <script type="text/javascript">
    var widget_div = document.getElementById("profile_pics");
    FB.ensureInit(function () {
    FB.Facebook.get_sessionState().waitUntilReady(function() {

      var session = FB.Facebook.apiClient.get_session();

      FB.Facebook.apiClient.users_getInfo([session.uid], ["about_me","books","interests","movies","music",
    "religion","tv","quotes","education_history","political","sex","meeting_for"],

    function(result) {
      var markup = "";
      for(var o in result[0]) {
      markup += "<br>" + o + " : " + result[0][o];
    }
    widget_div.innerHTML = markup;
    FB.XFBML.Host.parseDomElement(widget_div);
    });
    });
    });
    </script>

     
  • Making jar files on Mac

    Ellen 15:34 on January 13, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: jar, java, mac, terminal

    jar

    To make a jar file on Mac just first need to open up the Terminal window.
    1. Go to the directory of where your java file is by entering
    cd myDirectory

    2. Compile your java file(myJava.java) into a class
    javac myJava.java
    List the content of the directory to make your the class file has been made
    ls -l

    3. To indicate which function to run first in the jar file we will need to create a text file (MainClass.txt) with the content in the same directory as the java file:
    Main-Class: myJava

    4. The last command to create the actual jar file looks like this:
    jar cmf MainClass.txt myJava.jar *.class

    5. Run your jar file! You can run it by clicking on it or by entering the follwoing command in the Terminal window
    java -jar myJava.jar

     
  • DN Reklamcupen Webb 2010

    Ellen 15:42 on December 15, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: DN, Reklamcupen

    DN Reklamcupen Webb from TOL Tackolov on Vimeo.

     
  • Add Facebook Connect to your blog comments

    Ellen 11:09 on December 15, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: comments, , ,

    This neat video explains how you can add Facebook Connect to your blog and let users add comments by logging into Facebook Connect! No server-side scripting needed!

     
  • Site pal: 3d mapping on faces

    Ellen 16:43 on December 8, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 3D, flash, Site pal

    Site Pal lets you add a speaking face to your website. Even Barack Obama… You can upload your own image to create a 3D avatar moving and talking with different face expressions. The company Site Pal took experiences from the gaming industry and put it into a 3D engine made in Flash. The facial expressions are quite impressing.

    I tried it out with an image I uploaded:

    See more on: http://www.sitepal.com/

     
  • Hooked on Café World?

    Ellen 16:06 on December 8, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , games, zynga

    New to Café World? It is one of many games made by Zynga. The game can only be played on Facebook and you can invite your friends on Facebook. From today the game hs more users than Twitter and the number of users have rapidly increased over a week. Read more about it here!
    http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2009/10/08/zyngas-cafe-world-goes-from-0-to-8-6-million-users-in-a-week-with-big-implications/

    My cafe:

    Café

    Café

     
  • Iphone OSX browsing the internet

    Ellen 15:12 on November 25, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: statistics

    As an Iphone user it comes as no surprise for me how the Iphone now is even more common than SymbianOS for browsing the internets! Symbian has been around since 1998 launching it’s first mobile browser years ago.

    The screen shot is from W3 on statistics with most used OS for browsing the internet.

    Operating Systems

    Operating Systems

     
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