Another Friday and that means time for my "5 Things on Friday", my effort to share 5 cool things with you every Friday for 52 weeks this year. A few goodies this week including some amazing photos from over New York city, a fun Geo Trivia game, an interesting GPS project looking for funding, a rather odd mobile device, and some handy dev tips for you geo geeks… enjoy this week’s 5 Things and as usual, feel free to ping me any time with a tip about something cool that you’re involved with or heard about.
1. Your Chance to Fund MyGeopin
This is a clever solution that takes complex GPS coordinates and converts them into a customized "myGeopin" code for fast, simple sharing. Users can register their pin in order to secure a custom pin name that facilitates meaningful sharing. For example, secure your business name, your twitter name or special place name then share it. An example scenario would be to replace sharing something like latitude 40.756002 by longitude -73.986783 with a unique mygeopin name like US, NY, Times Square. An interesting solution indeed although it will depend greatly on the uptake of the application by the user community and then some viral spread via the user community… at first glance I have to say that this looks quite cool and may have some good possibilities although I’m not gonna hold my breath or bet on its success! Mygeopin is an "Indi" project that you can back, for example, a pledge of $24 will secure your mygeopin name for life! The group has an impressive following of about 3,000 already on facebook https://www.facebook.com/mygeopin
Check out the project online for yourself at http://www.indiegogo.com/mygeopin
2. Cool Gadgets from CES
Yes indeed, this is CES week (although I’m not there yet again) so naturally, I need to share a gadget with you! Taking home a best of CES award from CNET, YotaPhone (from Russia) is downright cool and a must see device! This bad boy has two display screens, one on the front the other on the back! One screen is for your regular data usage, apps, etc… the rear is the electronic paper display (EPD) – think 4.3" E-ink display. I’m not really sure if the whole 2 screen thing will really catch on with Joe Consumer bit the novelty of it all may be a bit of a wow factor for gadget geeks who take pride in having the latest and greatest. Imagine this, when you’re taking a photo and looking through the main screen, the E-Ink display tells everyone on the other side to smile for the camera! Ummm, okay, I guess that’s kinda cool! The specs of the device are as follows: 4.3-inch 720p display, a dual-core 1.4 GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, a 13-megapixel camera, 2 GB of RAM and a minimum 32 GB of storage. The device runs Android and will be available for sale worldwide in the second half of 2013. See http://www.yotaphone.com or check out a detailed review and hands-on video at TechLand
3. HTML5 Tips
There’s no arguing that HTML5 is hot, particularly in this "year of the Tablet" {yes, I’m calling it already} A helpful resource I rolled out a few months ago was a huge hit with readers, offering up loads of useful html5 goodies and resources. Something I forgot about until recently was that the guys at Avenza (think MAPublisher) are supporting (enabling) developers with some interesting HTML5 solutions. With their latest product release users have access to "MAP Web Author" which uses a technique to make maps from Adobe Illustrator compatible with browsers that support HTML5. According to documentation, the maps exported using MAP Web Author are not server-side rendered, instead, they are rendered on-the-fly and content dynamically changes when the map is panned or the map zoom level is changed. For anyone looking at authoring maps/webmaps for use on iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile devices, HTML5 is a fabulous solution – definitely check this one out on the Avenza blog and be sure to see the live HTML5 map example they published
4. Amazing WTC Photos Above New York
Like most of you, I’m captivated with the building and progress of One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. Hearing the touching stories of the passionate people that are involved in the design and building of the new structure is always inspirational. This week there’s a set of photos on Flickr that have gone viral and were even selected to be included in the popular Weekly Flickr. the photos come from a worker on the site who’s company (ThyssenKrupp) is installing 74 elevators and 9 escalators in the building. The photographer, like many photogs, got lucky one day when he happened to have his camera and snapped photos of the final escalator being hoisted by crane to the 100th floor of One Trade Center to be put in place. The images are amazing and give us an awesome view from 100 floors above… enjoy! See the photos HERE
5. The Know Where Game
Like Games? I’m not a huge gamer, however, I do appreciate a good, geeky GeoGame! Know Where is a really cool, fun, trivia game that is used by thousands of enlisted Air Force personnel to prepare for CDC and PDG exams. I familiar trivia fashion the game prompts the user to identify, on a map, the location of a military base. Click on the map and an arrow drops on the specified location, then the actual location of the base will quickly follow. Your score is based on the time it takes you to pinpoint the base and then the measured distance that your guess is from the actual location. A great job on the UI and it’s definitely fun… give it a go, I’m sure you’ll do much better than my pathetic score of 32,900! See HERE and enjoy
See ALSO Friday Fun – 5 Things on Friday #1