1 month: Thank you so much!

One month's gone... and to celebrate it... that incredible peak!


Wow!!! 294 visits from meneame in just one day.

Thanks for this. We're glad of being visited by so many people from this. We've received visits from several cities of Spain and also from so different countries all around the world: USA, Mexico, Argentina, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and so on... We hope you enjoy our blog and of course, you've learned a little.

We want to see all of you surfing our web and leaving comments to make this blog a good way to have fun, enjoy and share ideas all together, so we'll work hard for make it possible.

ARQuake project

Some days ago we talked about the difference between augmented and virtual reality showing images of a special shoot 'em up.

These images are from the ARQuake project, an AR project from the School of Computer and Information Science of the University of South Australia. It was the very first attempt to create a videogame for real world. Here are one of the videos they made and the links to the others.

More videos:
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=n781KHm230s
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=MDYv_uLmkE
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb5rACCUC1g

A good question would be... ¿Can I play? :)
mmmm, don't think so... because of its difficulty and cost. We need a head mounted display, a laptop, a head tracker, and, obviously, a GPS system to obtain our position. We can see in the first image that we're facing to a complex system. So, we've to continue waiting for news from them.

I wanna play ARQuake, and you?

Now Android is Open Source!

Making good on a promise it made at the very beginning, Google has announced today that the source code underpinning its Android platform for mobile devices is available for free to anyone who wants to play with it.

The code is being provided through the newly-announced Android Open Source Project. Theoretically, the move should position Android to benefit from a fairly democratic, and it'll also give anyone the chance to build a smartphone of their own without shelling out a dime in licensing fees.

We're really looking forward to seeing Android pop up on a whole bunch of devices for which it was never intended.

Download it nooooooooooooow.

Mobility Show 2008

We bring you a special event for those interested in new technologies, mobile phones, PDA's, Windows Mobile, HTC and things like that... The Mobility Show held in Valladolid (Spain), in Boecillo's technology park from 9.30 to 18.30.

There you could assist to several conferences of Microsoft, Telefónica y HTC. The theme of these mobility-oriented conferences will be Windows Mobile 6.0, Movilforum, Exchange 2007 or the new HTC Diamond...

More information, here:
http://www.micmovilidad.com/mobilityshow
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032390517&Culture=es-ES

We'll see you there!

Android Kill Switch Discovered

Do you remember when someone said that Apple had the right to basically disable applications when they felt that they were malicious or did not match up to a database of apps listed in a repository of those on a blacklist...

Well, so Google had the right too!!!!!

When it happened with Apple, it was discovered by a developer but Google has been more candid and they are not hiding it, like Apple did.

Is Google becoming evil after all? I don't think so... but they are making some questionable steps...

Handango touches Android

They are not new in the business, they know how to make money with mobile applications that’s why they have released the first "Un-Official Android market" to compete with the Google Android Market. Handando will allow developers to offer apps for free, a one-time purchase price, or a number of different subscription terms.

But why would we want to download application to our PC and then transfer to the mobile if we are going to have the Google Android Market in the directly in it...

A-B-C of Augmented Reality (II): vs. Virtual Reality

First of all, sorry. We were busy these days. We'd no time to update the blog.
We've to organize us in a better way. Now, let's continue talking about AR.

Some days ago we talked about the main idea that represents the augmented reality (AR) technology.

We all have heard about virtual reality and maybe some of you can't distinguish the difference between them. Well, here comes a simple explanation.

Virtual reality (VR) is a technology based in non-real images in a computer-generated environment. VR allows us to interact in a artificial world which replace the real world where we live. The keyword is replace. While AR adds new information to the real one, VR shows the user new information over the real one.

That VR could be generated through different devices such as googles, helmets, gloves or any type of special devices that captures the position and movement of the body, while it's moving in a virtual environment. We can see it in the next video.

Using googles and thanks to sensors, the character can move and interact in this kind of VR videogame. We see there's nothing from the real world visible in the environment.

Now, we can saw a similar videogame but using AR. In this image, we can see that gloves, helmets and others sensors are necessary to obtain the AR vision, but the result is different: the user can see the real world and interact with both the virtual and real images.

These images are from the ARQuake project, an AR project from the School of Computer and Information Science of the University of South Australia.

We'll talk about this special project in a few days. Since that, have fun and learn, learn!

Send this entry to Meneame, Digg.

Survey results for "Which platform do you prefer?"

Time's gone!!!

There has been a technical tie between Apple and his iPhone SDK and Google with Android!! 5 Points for each one!

The last classified is Microsoft with only 1 point... no one likes Microsoft Mobile Technology?

There is also one person who likes none of the 3 main competitors.


Well, see you in the next survey!!! And thanks for taking part!!!

Do you want to play with the G1?

For those who want to play with it, T-mobile has launched a new site where we can see the phone in a 360 degree view. The page also includes guides and info about the gadget, but the greatest thing of all is the emulator, similar than the one you can get installing the Android SDK, even more complete.

The emulator runs on our browser (with Flash support) and allows you to navigate trough the operating system, but there are areas that are not implemented, and logically the tactile interface will be replaced by clicks of the mouse.

Have a lot of fun with it!

G1 Emulator

Manufacturers like Android

After some days of relax, we bring you a small entry.

We talked a few days ago about the interest shown by Motorola in Android. We've also heard a week ago that Sony Ericsson was studying the possibility of adding it to their mobile phones.

Now, LG and Samsung have confirmed they're preparing a new one with Android about the middle of 2009.

Maybe we miss Nokia, but, probably in a near future, the finnish company will also work with Android. It's just a matter of time that the Google operating system could make their way in the market.

The main problem that must faced Android is the escepticism shown by some sectors of the manufacturers because of the publicity that Google usually introduce in all his applications. Obviously, nobody wants to give Google the opportunity to show rather than themselves.

A-B-C of Augmented Reality (I)

Hi everyone!. We're back with a new entry. Today we're gonna talk about Augmented Reality, one of the main concepts of this project.

Basically, augmented reality is a real time union of the real images we can see at every moment, with other computer-generated. That's just a concept, but it gives us some hints about what we're talking about.

This technology adds information to the real world allowing the users a new type of interaction, in which the focus is not in one specific point, it's everywhere around the user. I mean, a 3D information.

To simplify it, think in someone with a sheet with an square drawn on it. Just like this from Tum' web (Thanks!):

Well, it's just a sheet, nothing special happens.

Ok, now, take a look to the next image with augmented reality.

Maybe you're thinking that it's just a drawing onto the first image. Well, look at this Quicktime video.

Not enough? Here we have a Youtube video showing us a similar test, but, this time with some advertising.

We hope you've learned something new about this interesting technology. We'll continue talking about it in the very next days.

See you!