Find: HTC One with Nexus Experience Announced

Hard to beat this. 

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// published on AnandTech // visit site
HTC One with Nexus Experience Announced

At Google I/O 2013, the search giant announced the Samsung Galaxy S4 with Nexus Experience, and almost immediately rumors began circulating about a potential HTC One with the same Nexus Experience moniker.

Today, Google has announced the HTC One with Nexus Experience. The hardware is the same as the HTC One (AT&T variant) we've seen before with the same set of banding, which is unsurprising given the HTC One Developer Unlocked Edition is the AT&T variant. I had hoped for this being the T-Mobile variant which includes AWS WCDMA and none of the arbitrary AT&T RAT locks, but it's still good for T-Mobile and AT&T LTE in the USA. This is the same great HTC One hardware but this time with a pure AOSP (Android Open Source Project) build, skin, and thus pure Nexus experience. There still are some customizations like Beats, for example, but they're not at the expense of the rest of the software platform. 

HTC has pegged the One with Nexus Experience for release on June 26th on Google Play for $599 with 32 GB of onboard storage. Updates are of course provided by Google directly. 

Update: There's a bit more information now about what features the HTC One with Nexus Experience will support compared to the Sense 5 version. First, Beats Audio is included and is always on, with no UI or notification to disable it. Camera again only comes with UI and UX provided by the stock camera application and implements those features. When it comes to the IR Tx/Rx system there's no common Android API for it, but I've been told this should work with third party applications. None of this should come as too big of a surprise, that's what the tradeoff is for a completely stock Android device. 

Source: HTC Blog

Find: GM commits to in-car apps by the end of the year

Apps in cars!

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// published on The Verge - All Posts // visit site

GM commits to in-car apps by the end of the year
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General Motors has shown off prototypes of its in-car app platform for months, but today the automaker has finally committed turning its tech demos into a reality. In an interview with CNET, March Chan, the president of GM's global connected consumer division, said the company plans to have apps up and running in its dashboards sometime in the second half of the year, as 2014 models arrive at dealerships. But just what apps and just what cars will be a part of this rollout hasn't yet been announced.

Continue reading…

Find: Google engineers discuss fragmentation, hardware, and Project Butter

Key observation: 60hz frame rates are central to good mobile experience. 

// published on Ars Technica // visit site

Google engineers discuss fragmentation, hardware, and Project Butter

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Although Google's keynote at the I/O conference this week focused heavily on the APIs and behind-the-scenes development of the Android operating system, it looks like there's a lot more in store. This idea was especially apparent in a panel discussion today involving eleven members of the Android development team. The team sat for a forty-minute question and answer session, and while they dodged most inquiries about forthcoming features for Android, they did offer a bit of insight into what the future of Android might look like, what developers could do to help further the platform, and what they've learned from their journey thus far.

The conversation began with a question relating to whether or not the Android team would have done anything differently from the beginning. Senior Android Engineer Dianne Hackborn said the team "should have had more control over applications. A big example is the whole settings provider, where we just let applications go and write to it... it was a simple thing that we shouldn't have done." Ficus Kirkpatrick, one of the founding members of the Android team and the current lead for the Google Play Store team, added that "you're never going to get everything right the first time. I don't really regret any of the mistakes we've made. I think getting things out there at the speed we did…was the most important thing."

The team also briefly touched on fragmentation and how they're working to combat the issue—it was even referred to as the "F" word. "This is something we think about a lot," said Dave Burke, engineering director of the Android platform. He explained that many silicon vendors take the open source code, break it apart, and create their own Board Support Packages (BSPs) to make their hardware compatible with the software. To streamline the process, the Android team made the code for the platform more layered, so if a vendor needs to make changes, they have a clean abstraction layer to do so without affecting the entire operating system.

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Find: This is cool - Qualcomm shows off its Mirasol display

A new kind of color display. Very low power and reflective. 

// published on Ars Technica // visit site

This is cool: Qualcomm shows off its Mirasol display

There have been rumors of Qualcomm's MEMS-based Mirasol display for years now. Once advertised as the "future" of e-reader displays, the company is now showcasing its proofs-of-concept. Engadget snagged a preview of both a 5.2-inch panel display with a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution and 577 ppi embedded into the chassis of a common smartphone body, as well as 1.5-inch panel on what looks like a smartwatch. A representative at SID Display Week, where the prototype was being shown, told the site that the displays were merely mock-ups, but that the screen will likely show up in other third-party devices.

The Mirasol display is touted for its energy-efficiency. It offers a six-times-over power advantage compared to both LCD and OLED displays, which means it would be the kind of display that a smartphone would make great use of. It's made with a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) based on Interferometric Modulation (IMOD) technology, which Qualcomm says "offer[s] users a convergent display experience with paper-like readability in almost any ambient condition, while consuming significantly less power than any other display available today."

Ars Technica alumni Jon Stokes explained why the Mirasol display is so energy efficient in 2009:

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Find: The Next Version of Android - Some of What's Coming

Lower power, more ubiquitous Bluetooth, and better graphics, including frame rate display. 

 // published on AnandTech // visit site

The Next Version of Android - Some of What's Coming

Google I/O 2013 recently wrapped up, and I've been spending some time ingesting all the information from sessions during the event, including ones I couldn't directly attend. While Google didn't announce a new version of Android at the event, something nearly everyone speculated would happen, it did directly allude to new upcoming features that will be implemented in this still unnamed upcoming version.

Google allegedly assigns version numbers late in the process, but what is known is that this next release will implement upcoming API level 18. If you follow the progression there's a likelihood this will be Jelly Bean MR2 (Management Release 2), where Android 4.2 was management release 1. Based on some other discussions and sources I also suspect this might be Jelly Bean MR2. All of that is really just semantics however, what really matters are what specific features are coming and which of those Google touched on during I/O.

Bluetooth 4.0 LE Support

In a session on day one, Google announced upcoming support for Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy. Bluetooth low energy has been branded as Bluetooth Smart for low energy only devices, and Smart Ready for devices which support low energy in addition to classic (such as a mobile phone). Bluetooth LE implements a completely different physical layer compared to Bluetooth classic, with lower duty cycles that enable deployment in lower energy devices like proximity tags, sensors, pedometers, and watches which rely on small batteries that go longer than a day between charges. There's a misnomer that implementing Bluetooth LE will magically result in lower power consumption, it simply enables a completely different architecture optimized for different use cases. The Nexus 4 recently went through the Bluetooth SIG with Bluetooth 4.0 certification, the WCN3660 Qualcomm WLAN+BT combo chip inside has in fact always had compatibility for Bluetooth 4.0, it was just a matter of adding the APIs to Android to make it useful. 

With Android 4.2, Google changed both NFC and Bluetooth stacks. In the case of Bluetooth, from BlueZ to BlueDroid with an open source disclosure by Broadcom. It's now becoming clear this was done partially with the forward-looking benefit of enabling support for Bluetooth LE and addition to enabling the Android team to rapidly add more features and profiles.

API level 18 Bluetooth LE features will be added to the Android Compatibility Test Suite as well, which means OEMs who have already implemented Bluetooth LE features via their own APIs will have to support their third party APIs and the canonical Google ones in this future version of Android. The API will support the central profile role only, which means both transmit, receive, and the ability to initiate connections plus serve as the master. Peripheral role is not supported.

API level 18 also adds support for AVRCP 1.3 (Audio / Video Remote Control Profile) which essentially enables compatibility with things like a car head unit, AV receiver, or so forth. This enables the device to control commands like play or pause, as well as metadata such as album artwork, artist, name, and status of the music. This enables much better compatibility with car audio and so on. Interestingly on the last slide from this session the date for API level 18 is given as coming in "a few short months."

Graphics

Perhaps the most revealing session was the one I was most interested in on Android Graphics Performance. It was here that we essentially were given a few glimpses of the new platform features which improve the performance of the hardware accelerated 2D rendering pipeline running on a device as well.

First up is intelligent reordering and merging of draw commands for given UI elements. Like elements are reordered and then issued together to take advantage of the GPU in an optimal manner without incurring a change in the shader state to render bitmaps, text, or nine-patches for example. This also minimizes the number of draw calls issued to the GPU for the same equivalent UI.

Google showed an example before and after with the same Google+ UI going from 88 draw calls to 39 after this feature was enabled.

Second is multithreading of additional parts of the hardware accelerated 2D rendering pipeline for some tasks. Rendering operations will now happen automatically on multiple cores if present.

Third, hardware acceleration for non-rectangular clipping was added, previously this was not hardware accelerated. This includes clipping around paths and transformed rects.

There are new developer tools present in this new version as well. In Android 4.2 Google added an on-device overdraw visualization, similar on-device functionality is coming to the rendering profile tool previously added in 4.1 which required a longer tedious workflow. 

Toggling the profile GPU rendering option now gives the option to draw frame time (display list, rendering, then buffer swap) with a bar graph or line graph at the bottom of the screen in a persistent fashion instead of off-device in a spreadsheet. There's a handy green line which corresponds to 16ms (60 FPS).

This is a major boon for developers wanting to debug frame render time or occasional hitching. We saw this demonstrated on a device running the new tool and profiling parts of the Android UI, this was the first glimpse of the new Android version running on a device in public I'm aware of.

Systrace also gets a handful of improvements in this unnamed upcoming version of Android with an easier to run command line script invoking it, and the ability to trace each OpenGL call. Systrace is a very powerful tool for looking at what an Android device's underlying hardware is doing during a trace.

Conclusions

Even though we weren't explicitly told there's a new version of Android coming, nor its nickname or version number, there were repeated direct allusions and references to it throughout this year's I/O. Although many lamented it not being directly announced, it was there if you looked for it, including a few direct glimpses.

It's clear that the new version will implement API level 18 and bring further improvements to 2D rendering performance throughout Android as well as support for Bluetooth Smart (LE). These are both things closer to hardware and system which require changing the platform software entirely as opposed to pushing an update out to Google Play Services.

Find: Unity Mobile Now Free

Via the vxlab's student Adam Marrs. 

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Begin forwarded message:

Find: Google announces Android Studio, a new dev environment for Android

Bye bye eclipse! A new ide for android. Preview sounds very handy.

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// published on The Verge - All Posts // visit site
Google announces Android Studio, a new dev environment for Android
Lb_2595_large

Google is announcing its brand new development environment for Android today at Google I/O: Android Studio. Google isn't revealing all the changes today, but some of the big additions include a focus on multiple layout tools for a variety of devices and tablets. Changes to Android code for apps display in real-time within the development console and Google says it's planning to integrate a number of services into the environment. "This is just scratching the surface of all the new features in Android Studio," says Hugo Barra, VP of Android product management.

Google is also improving its developer console today. Five new features are being added to the console, allowing developers to generate more revenue from Android apps. There's a...

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Find: From Nexus One to Nexus 10: a brief history of Google’s flagship devices

Nice history.

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// published on Ars Technica // visit site
From Nexus One to Nexus 10: a brief history of Google's flagship devices

In 2008, Google joined the mobile world with T-Mobile's G1 handset. Originally branded as the HTC Dream, the first-ever Google Android phone served as a predecessor of sorts to a line of bloat-free devices that would receive timely software updates, almost all of which are sold under Google's Nexus banner.

The Nexus lineup has since expanded to include tablets and handsets of varying sizes, and once or twice a year Google teams up with one of its partners to introduce new devices and to showcase new versions of Android. Each phone can be seen as an interesting look at the evolution of Android over the years as the company's mobile division has grown and the hardware Android runs on has changed and improved. All of the Nexus devices have played a pivotal role in Android's history by introducing new software iterations and hardware standards across the board, and they keep the rumor mill churning for months on end in between developer conferences and surprise Google announcements.

In the spirit of this week's Google I/O developer's conference, let's take a step back in time and go through some of those devices to see how they helped increase Google's reach among smartphone users and application developers. We'll look at the devices that have been launched throughout the past few years and briefly touch on those slated for the future, too.

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Find: EA working on 'Frostbite Go' game engine for Android and iOS

The mobile engine competition heats up. 

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// published on The Verge - All Posts // visit site
EA working on 'Frostbite Go' game engine for Android and iOS
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EA has long been said to be working on a mobile version for its Frostbite engine, and now the company has posted information about the effort online. The Frostbite page officially reveals the existence of Frostbite Go, a "mobile division" meant to allow Frostbite-based games. While it says the Frostbite Go project will target "all major mobile platforms," only iOS and Android are mentioned specifically. The company was hiring mobile developers last year, and an EA / Dice project manager mentioned a mobile team called Frostbite Go in April. Epic — whose mobile version of Unreal Engine 3 powers popular iOS game Infinity Blade — has long led the pack in bringing AAA engines to mobile platforms, but EA and Crytek have both previously...

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Find: Facebook Home flagship phone, HTC First, may be discontinued

This is an interesting one. Designers liked it, but it broke too much with the underlying android experience. It's about experience continuity and expectations. 

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// published on Ars Technica // visit site
Facebook Home flagship phone, HTC First, may be discontinued

Facebook's HTC First, the smartphone herald of Facebook Home, will be discontinued by carrier partner AT&T, according a report from BGR Monday. The phones, released just over a month ago, will be returned as unsold inventory to HTC, with only 15,000 handsets making it into customers' hands.

Facebook announced its Android UI overlay Facebook Home in early April, and both the flagship HTC First phone and Google Play became available on April 12. The First hardware was solid (if lackluster) and in line with the $99-with-two-year-contract price. But the Facebook Home interface has proved confusing and borderline repulsive to users, with a current Google Play store rating of two out of five stars generated from 16,700 votes.

Last Thursday, the First was discounted to a mere 99¢. Just four days later, it appears AT&T can no longer bear the shame of associating itself with Facebook's unwanted Android love-child.

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Find: NVIDIA Shield Up for Preorder May 20 for $349, Ships in June

Thar shield blows! 

And game streaming too! 

Methinks there is more here than others think. 

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// published on AnandTech // visit site
NVIDIA Shield Up for Preorder May 20 for $349, Ships in June

It has been a while since we last heard from NVIDIA about Project Shield. Today, NVIDIA is dropping "Project" from the name, making it formally just Shield, and simultaneously announcing pricing and availability information about its Tegra 4-packing handheld gaming console. The specs for Shield remain the same as what we saw at CES 2013 — 1.9 GHz Tegra 4 SoC, 5-inch 720p display, and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. What's nice about getting a device straight from the SoC vendor in this case is that NVIDIA promises it will be able to push out OTA updates with the latest and greatest Android version basically in lock step with its own official Tegra 4 BSP (Board Support Package) software offerings, which makes it essentially the Tegra 4 reference platform.

NVIDIA SHIELD
Shield
SoC NVIDIA Tegra 4 - 1.9 GHz
Display 5-inch 720p "Retinal" Display
RAM 2 GB LPDDR3
Wireless Connectivity 2x2:2 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi + BT 3.0, GPS
Storage 16 GB NAND, microSD Expansion
I/O microUSB 2.0, mini-HDMI, 3.5mm headphone
OS Android 4.2.1, Updates from NVIDIA
Price $349.00, Preorders May 20, Shipping Late June

As for availability, the big news is pricing, which will be $349 in the US, with preorders starting on May 20th from vendors familiar to everyone. NVIDIA called out Newegg, GameStop, Micro Center, and Canada Computers explicitly as preorder vendors, with others to follow after the preorder period. As for ship date, NVIDIA is aiming for late June for fulfillment. At $349 the Shield is more expensive than the major first party handheld gaming consoles like the Sony PS Vita or Nintendo 3DS, but an impressive middle ground and price point nonetheless for basically what boils down to a higher-end smartphone sans cellular stack but with a built in gamepad. We're excited to get hands on with Shield in its final form with the final tuning of its joysticks, triggers, and D-Pad.

In conjunction with the launch of Shield will be availability of the PC game streaming functionality as well, initially in beta form. NVIDIA has a set of recommended titles which have been optimized for the Shield controller scheme, and as we experienced at CES likely include UI tweaks to make 720p handheld gaming a reality. 

Source: NVIDIA Blog (Shield)

Find: BlackBerry bringing BBM to Android and iOS this summer

Good idea. 

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// published on The Verge - All Posts // visit site
BlackBerry bringing BBM to Android and iOS this summer
Bbmandroidios1_2040_large

BlackBerry has just announced that its hugely popular BBM messaging service is going multi-platform: it will be released for Android and iOS as a free app this summer. BBM will support iOS hardware running iOS 6 and above; the Android version will be compatible with version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and above. "It's time to bring BBM to a greater audience," CEO Thorsten Heins said in announcing the expansion, "no matter what mobile device they carry."

Though it's long been considered one of BlackBerry's strongest exclusive offerings, Heins said that his company aims to deliver a "fully featured" BBM experience on rival smartphone operating systems. "We're starting with messaging and groups, but we'll bring voice, screen share, and of...

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Find: Windows Phone hits 145,000 apps, but progress slows

145k is enough. 

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// published on The Verge - All Posts // visit site
Windows Phone hits 145,000 apps, but progress slows
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Microsoft's efforts to build out the app ecosystem for Windows Phone 8 appear to be reaching a plateau. Buried in today's announcement of the Nokia Lumia 928 for Verizon was the fact that the Windows Phone Store now has 145,000 apps, up only slightly from the 120,000 apps announced in October. The figures suggest momentum has slowed after the Windows Phone catalog doubled in size over the first half of last year. And it raises the question of whether developers are shying away from a platform that is still struggling to catch on in North America.

Microsoft has won over some high-profile developers this year, attracting new or redesigned apps from YouTube, Hulu, and Foursquare. The company says that the vast majority of the most popular...

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Find: Former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein joins Qualcomm board of directors

Rubinstein is back. Qualcomm is the leading mobile chip maker by far. 

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// published on The Verge - All Posts // visit site
Former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein joins Qualcomm board of directors
Rubinstein2_large

After HP purchased Palm, gutted it, and sold its remains to LG, Palm's former CEO Jon Rubinstein has kept a relatively low profile. Rubinstein may not yet be ready to make a big splash, but he is set to join Qualcomm's board of directors, reports All Things D. Rubinstein already serves on Amazon's board, and on Qualcomm he would be adding his years of experience building products to Qualcomm's expertise in creating the chips that power them. Qualcomm quickly confirmed the report in a press release, wherein Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said that "His experience in creating revolutionary consumer electronics and mobile products will provide added insight to Qualcomm's board."

Beyond helping create the original iPod, Rubinstein is best known...

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Opp: mobile app for new student start-up

From some students in chapel hill.

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Oh, Jinny <ohhyojin@live.unc.edu>
Date: Wed, May 8, 2013 at 3:38 PM
Subject: Re: mobile app for new student start-up
To: "Benjamin Watson" <watsonb@gmail.com>

Dr.Watson,

Thank you for the fast response. I am looking for a team of talented students who are able to build a sample demo app (or if they can build the full app) and tweak up some of the interface design. It's a mobile app for collecting digital receipts. I'm not sure if everyone has headed home yet but if you have any students that you can recommend me contacting, that would be great. 

Thank you,

Jinny

Sent from my iPhone

On May 6, 2013, at 4:14 PM, "Benjamin Watson" <watsonb@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi jinny

Thanks for your interest. 

We don't have any spare development cycles in the lab -- but I'd be happy to email a bit or forward your queries to the students in my course. 

Best, Ben 


On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 11:57 PM, Oh, Jinny <ohhyojin@live.unc.edu> wrote:

Hi Dr.Watson, 

My name is Jinny Oh, I am a student at UNC. I am emailing you because I have started a new student-run venture company for sustainability/technology. I saw that you were the department head for the visual experience lab. We are trying to develop a mobile app with a lot of functions and features on it. I wanted to know if you had some time for me to come in person to talk to you about the mobile app or if you know of any students who might be able to help us out. It would mean a lot to the team and I if we could use you as a mentor. Thank you for your time and consideration. I hope to hear back from you soon.

Best Regards,

Jinny Oh

Phone: (704) 964 - 5730 
BA Journalism and Mass Communication Advertising | Class of May 2013
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill




Find: Silvermont - Intel's promise to power phones and tablets you'd actually want

Maybe it'll work this time. Hope so; it'll make our devices better. 
 
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// published on The Verge - All Posts // visit site

Silvermont: Intel's promise to power phones and tablets you'd actually want
Intel-medfield-reference-ces-2012-hands-_mg_5132-rm-verge-1020_large

Today, nearly all modern smartphones use an ARM-based processor, along with every iPad and practically every Android tablet as well. Soon, though, Intel's x86 silicon might finally pose a challenge. Six years after laying out a roadmap for power-efficient processors for tiny computers, and several failed attempts to make a real dent, Intel impressed us last October with just how power-efficient its Medfield chip could be compared to the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon. That chip used the company's Saltwell core inside, but this year the company's introducing Silvermont, and Intel claims the new 22nm architecture will more than hold its own against the best ARM has to offer.

Continue reading…

Event: CityCamp Raleigh Expands Statewide for Third Annual Event

Here is the event I spoke to you folks about. 

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published on CityCamp: Gov 2.0 goes local // visit site

CityCamp Raleigh Expands Statewide for Third Annual Event

CityCamp NC, an event to promote citizen participation and government transparency, today announced plans to host the now state-focused event that brings together citizens, government and businesses in order to ignite innovation focused on improving quality of life through technology. For the 3rd year, the event elevates civic technology issues and enables the conversations that are necessary to improve the place we live.

"Over the last two years, we've advanced the open government movement in Raleigh; the CityCamp umbrella needed to grow to include other cities and municipalities in North Carolina. In addition to Durham, Cary, and Chapel Hill, many other cities around the state such as Asheville, contain energetic open source enthusiasts and tech-savvy programmers and designers," said Jason Hibbets, CityCamp NC Co-Chair. "The advantage to our Capital City location is close access to State government. CityCamp NC becomes the community launch pad where everyone around the state comes to prototype ideas, make connections, and improve the State of North Carolina."

CityCamp NC will be held during the work-week, Thursday and Friday, May 30 -31, 2013, followed by a Nation Day of Civic Hacking event hosted by Raleigh's Code for America Brigade on June 1, 2013. And new this year, CityCamp NC will be held at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library on the NC State University Campus. Annually, the event builds on passionate involvement from volunteers, city and state advocates, local businesses and returning and new sponsors like GoTriangle, North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA), Red Hat, Lenovo, OrgSpan, and WRAL.

"Last years' experience was terrific. Lorena Akin pitched the idea of a mobile app for greenway users and a few hours' later six strangers became collaborators, friends and winners," said Eric Majewicz, member of the 2012 winning RGreenway team. "Our group used open data provided by the City of Raleigh to build an app that lets users navigate and interactively utilize the city's greenway system." The RGreenway team (http://rgreenway.com) continues to meet regularly to continue implementing improvements for the original mobile app. To date the app has had 7,000 downloads of the iPhone version and 650 downloads of the Android version.

This year, CityCamp NC will award a top prize of $3000 plus a consulting session with Jason Caplain at Bull City Venture Partners to the winning team. A second and third team will be awarded prizes of $1000 and $500, respectively.

The event kicks off Thursday, May 30th with Adriel Hampton, VP of Community at NationBuilder, inspiring with "Be Here Now: Living Open Government" followed by lightening talks, pitches, and unconference sessions where ideas begin to solidify and teams begin to form. Friday, May 31 is a build day culminating with the team presentations and awards.

North Carolina State Senator Josh Stein added, "Government should provide citizens open access to information like transit data so the people can innovate and help improve government's delivery of services. CityCamp North Carolina helps our effort to transform and enhance public confidence in government."

Prior to May 16, the event is $10 to attend and includes breakfast and lunch both days and a CityCamp NC t-shirt. Prior to May 16, the event is $5 for students and government employees (appropriate ID must be shown at the door). After May 16, the price continues to be $10 ($5 for students and government employees) but breakfast/lunch/t-shirt will not be guaranteed. The event kicks off Thursday, May 30 at 9am [doors open at 8:15am] at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library on the NC State University Campus, and continues through Friday, May 31 concluding at 6pm. Parking is free. The team presentations will begin at 5pm on Friday, May 31.

Register for CityCamp NC 2013.

Visit our updated site: citycampnc.org

Fwd: small grant for mobile apps​

Might interest y'all.

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carol Strohecker <cs@centerfordesigninnovation.org>
Date: Thu, May 2, 2013 at 1:32 PM
Subject: small grant for mobile apps
To: "Ben Watson" <bwatson@ncsu.edu>

http://pr.bby.com/community-grants/


CAROL STROHECKER   Director, Center for Design Innovation   01.336.354.7358





Project: Walk [Your City] (iOS)


Description:
Walk [Your City] is an app designed to be implemented in various municipalities across the country that allows users to see a list of nearby, curated locations within walking distance and get walking directions to them.  Users can filter the type of destination they'd like to see and get a personalized list of nearby venues based on their current location.  Walk [Your City] iOS combines the familiarity of Apple Maps integration with the precise walking directions of Google Maps to give users the simplest navigation experience possible.  The app is designed to be straightforward and easy to use, as we want users to enjoy the experience of walking to their favorite destinations and not be staring at their phones endlessly. 

Motivation:
Changing the future is sometimes as simple as changing someone's mind.   People tend to measure things in terms of "driving scale", or how long it takes to drive somewhere.  However, life happens in person at walking scale.  Walk [Your City] aims to put the emphasis in our daily lives back on walking to local destinations.  By making users aware of how little time it takes to walk to nearby locations, we encourage urban walking in general.  This leads to increased traffic to local businesses as well as safer cities.  It also has the side benefits of reduced emissions from vehicles and general fitness.  It is our belief that a future where more people walk is a better future for all of us.


Screenshots:


 


















Links:
GitHub Repository
Video

Project: A mixed, reality NFC-based API and game



Team Members: Meghambari Khavnekar, Juilee Tushar Chitre, Niharika Maheshwari, Saylee Tushar Chitre, Vidhya Suresh

The goal of this project is to use printed media Near Field Communication technology of Gema Touch for creating a simple API and developing a demonstration game which has the NFC interactions of tag-reading and beaming.  

Gema Touch NFC tags are embedded into a printed media form such as a card shown below. That can 'program' that card to communicate with your phone, when user touches the tags on the card. This provides with very rich interaction between the physical and digital world and exciting user experiences can be developed.

In the beaming scenario, two phones are to be tapped together and a message can be beamed from
one device to another. Incorporating these two scenarios, together with a database interaction, which is almost always present in any application, we have implemented the classic game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

The NFC enabled cards will have choices for rock, paper and scissors as well as a start option to launch the app. These cards can be placed at certain strategic locations where many users will notice it. A user can then interact with the card and play the game. When a user plays the game for the first time at a location, his opponent is the previous player that just played the game there. We have the feature of avatar selection whereby the player can select an avatar with some emotion to send to the next player who plays there. So, each time a player decides to play, he gets a kind of 'vibe' from the previous player to incorporate the psychological aspect that is present in player-to-player interaction. This will make the app more interesting and fun and will allow players to choose strategies and mind-tricks to confuse and influence one another. The scores of the players are updated and stored at an online database. If a player plays at the location consecutively, then for preventing the player from competing against himself/herself , we use a MasterMind player which is basically the CPU choosing random weapons.

In the beaming scenario, the app has social interaction with friends involved. Just imagine meeting your friend and challenging him/her to defeat you in Rock, Paper, Scissors with the app. One player chooses a weapon for the game and sends the beam request to the opponent player by tapping the cell-phones together. The other player then makes a choice and then the results are calculated by the server and displayed on both the phones. In order to keep players from cheating and trying to guess their opponent's choice, we have randomized the positions of the rock , paper, scissors choices on screen and this will add a mystery element to the game.

To keep the players engaged and to entice them to play more, we also maintain interesting statistics such as Total Wins, Favorite Weapon, Lucky Weapon and the Leaderboard which has a list of the top-scorers in the game.


Screenshots:





  

Project: Spinning Wellness


  Spinning Wellness

Amarja Vaidya, Jayesh Shanbhag, Minakshi Korad, Sruthi Saraswathy, Prajakta Hegde
·         {arvaidya, jvshanbh, mkorad, smohana, pshegde}@ncsu.edu




   
Want to go on a bike ride but too bored to go alone? Spinning Wellness is here to provide an easy way to go on bike rides with your friends! 

Spinning Wellness is an android application to motivate students to go on longer bike rides in the Life on Two Wheels class. The Life on Two wheels class aims at motivating students to use their bikes instead of cars by making the process of scheduling group rides easy. 

Splash Screen
Our application provides a convenient way to enable students to go on rides together. Using the app, a student can create a group ride, join and un-join the rides that were created by others. When a new ride is created an email notification is sent out to everyone registered for the course. Reminders are provided to students when a ride for which they have registered is about to start. Hence, as forming groups to go on long rides can be fun, this would encourage students to take their bikes out more often.


Registration
As the course also involves collecting student statistics such as calories burnt, maximum heart rate, cadence, distance traveled average speed and time required for the ride the mobile application can be used to enter these details. A student can also log the ride experience by using the quick post functionality. Each student can take readings from their respective bike monitors at the end of the ride and log them using the app. The application calculates the "Top Three Riders" on a weekly basis based on the maximum distance covered. 
Record Ride Details
Top 3 Riders of the week





  • Check out our Youtube video about the app
  • Our source on GitHub:

We would be more than happy to receive any feedback or suggestions regarding the app! We can be reached at: spinningwellness2013@gmail.com


Happy Biking! :-)



Project: Test Framework for Republic Wireless







Republic Wireless is a wireless communication service provider. They provide customers with unlimited calling, texting and data on a fixed price monthly plan. This is achieved using a 'Hybrid Calling' technology that involves the use of either an available WiFi network or the Sprint Cellular network for making Calls and Texts.


As part of this project, we are providing Republic Wireless with an automated test framework that will help them ensure that their production system is available end-to-end for voice calls and sms to and from other mobile networks.

Currently the test framework provides the following:
  • Automates Calls and Texts over both WiFi and Cellular networks
  • Provides Data logs about the performed Calls & Texts that can be used in further analysis
  • Provides Graphical Results depicting the Success/Failure ratio of the different types of Calls and Texts made

The test framework we are providing consists of the following components:
  • A PC based script to automate Calls/Texts
  • A source app that makes the Calls/Texts
  • A receiver app to manage the incoming Calls/Texts, and
  • A centralized application that does the comparison of logs and provides the desired results

Here is a link to a video of the functioning of our test framework and App.

And also a link to its github repository:

Shown below are some of the screenshots of the Source App:




We look forward to our test framework being put to good use by Republic Wireless to test their system and help obtain meaningful results that would be of use to them.

For any suggestions or comments on the working of the app, please send us an email at ncstate.republicwireless@gmail.com

Project: Winston-Salem Greenways Navigator



Go the Green way !!

Like walking, jogging, biking or hiking? Or are you simply an avid fan of nature, greenways is the way to go. How do you locate the greenways? Winston Salem Greenways Navigator does it for you. This Android application helps you find the greenways in your surroundings and also provides you with directions to help you reach them.
The weather feature is an excellent way to check what nature has in store for you. We understand that finding parking spaces can be difficult-which is why our application displays parking spaces closest to a greenway on the map.

Facing a problem on the greenway? No worries! The app has been seamlessly integrated with City Link, thus providing you with an option to report any issues faced at the greenways.

With its intuitive interface, the app is designed to be used easily by people of all age groups, which in turn encourages more and more people to become aware of various greenways in their locality, pushing them further towards a healthy living.
Screenshots:







Links:

You can provide your valuable suggestions and feedback here.