Change Displayed Text SizeGrow Displayed Text SizeShrink Displayed Text Size
  

                                                                
      

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Real world hyperlinks

A few years ago in Kona I had an idea for putting barcodes on billboards, so that devices such as PDAs could read them and use them as web links. The idea came to me as we were driving behind a small van with some ad URL on the back - really, who is going to remember that by the time they get home? I sure won't. The idea was to create real-world hyperlinks.
Damn, I should have [patented that mofo] (there are several companies doing this now).

With that in mind, why not take the idea of [Delicious Library] to cellphones? Just about every time I go to a bookstore I wish I could pull out my Amazon wish list, just to remember what books I was looking for. And more than once I've seen something I've wanted to look up online. Why not have my phone scan the bar code or ISBN, query Amazon, add/delete things from my wish list, etc.? A good portion of the app could be subsidized just from the Amazon Affiliate revenue.

I've got way more ideas for Series 60 phone applications than I have time to write, but I'm working on porting more of the development tools to MacOS X. Nokia and Symbian have been kind of slow to do so (though they have ported to Linux x86), and Metrowerks is leaving us out in the cold. Right now you can develop MIDP applications on the Mac, but that's about it.

Nearly unrelated, I recently found the version of [Opera for my phone]. It's cool, and like most Opera apps has some features that are really compelling - it was clearly designed to be used on a phone. Newton web browsers had shortcuts for "www.", ".com", ".net", etc. so you did not have to type them out every time you wanted to go to a website. Opera is the only mobile browser I've seen so far that has this - kudos to them. Unfortunately, the Opera browser requires 2.4MB of [memory] to run, which is 300kb more than I have to spare most of the time. Unless I have just restarted the phone, I can't run Opera.

12/14/2004 04:32:01 PM ] [  ]
      

                                                                     
      

Sunday, December 12, 2004

Venice-Marina Christmas Run

The race turned out a lot better than I expected. Like the 5k last year, the start was very slow. I was near the back of the pack, and between the horn of the start and actually starting to move was about 2-3 minutes. Everyone was so close together than we started moving as a shuffle, then slowly to a walk, and finally just after we passed the starting line, a very slow jog.

After being sick for most of November, I had fully expected to walk a lot of the race. I was aiming to finish, not to get a particularly good time. After the first mile I felt OK, and I knew the course wouldn't hold too many surprises (all of my training has been on the same paths, the race is right around where I live). I kept going. Mile 3 came pretty quickly, though between miles 3 and 4 I had a rough time. I kept going though. I figured that if I really had to, I could slow down up ahead around mile 5, though at that point I knew that if I started walking my muscles would seize up pretty quickly and it would be hard to get going again. So I kept on going. In the final mile I felt pretty good, and unlike most of the people there I knew exactly where I was and how far the finish was. I knew when I could push myself harder.

I ended up finishing in 1:00:57, according to the preliminary results. For my first 10k race, I'm pretty happy with how I did, especially since I ran a negative split the whole way (meaning I kept going faster, rather than slowing down).

12/12/2004 06:35:31 PM ] [  ]
      

    
[archives]