Mike Norman's Blog

I love everything augmented reality! Ever since BIL ive been hella interested in an augmented reality system thats content is community driven, and Wikitude is exactly that. sounds like a very specific thing to wish for.. but trust me… its worth wishing for. The app has alot to offer as far as hard data. it pulls your location gia GPS and uses the compass to point you in the direction of location based Qype and Wikipedia entries. the awesome part, and the augmented reality part is the camera mode. Wikitude overlays way points of interesting landmarks and descriptions on the display of your Android phone. Its really best described in this video.

Its not a terribly useful app at the moment unless your going sight seeing, but it is an awesome way to show off the ideas behind augmented reality. And a spiffy toy to play with. Scan the QR-code to get the app. Enjoy!

Recent gaming news has revealed that id software has been purchased by ZeniMax, this initially caused me to panic and fear for id and Quakecon, however after reading up on things and some googling i thought id share my results.

The company that purchased id Software is ZeniMax, they also own Bethesda Softworks. Which has licensing rights to Startrek, Starwars , and Terminator franchises among many others. so this purchase effectively gives id rights to make games on those subjects (long time hope of a Startrek FPS that’s good). Bethesda is also responsible for The Elder Scrolls series, which could only be made better by using ids RAGE engine. so which this merger as it were we can only expect to have both Awesome game companies improve! And it looks like ZeniMax has gotten Carmack and id as a whole to drop their “1 new game every 4 years” model in favor of “lets make badass games ad well and quickly as possible” model. More id games = good. Not only that but id Staff is largely being left as is!

id Software will continue to operate as a studio under the direction of its founder, John Carmack. No changes will be made in the operations of id Software in the development of its games. All the principals at id Software have signed long-term employment contracts, assuring they will continue in their roles developing games at the studio

Which is music to my ears! John Carmack is the heart and soul of id, i don’t think i would have quite the fanatic love for the company if he was no longer a part of it. that being said there will obviously be a new boss in town for id.Robert Altman is the CEO of ZeniMax, and seems to be built for this job. I cant tell if hes a supervillan of Lex Luthors mental acuity, or an unlucky badass (I’m voting for supervillan) a bit of quick research on Altman shows that he was under suspicion of fraudulent actions involving the sale of a bank, but he was acquitted of all charges and banned from banking….. so i can only assume (hope) he has a boatload of payoff money stashed away somewhere from this whole venture and got off clean. Take this and add that he married WonderWoman, and bam. you’ve got your awesome supervillan game software company owning badass. which can only be a good thing for id. And i have been told by an unconfirmed source that Quakecon is not only still on, but is getting MORE sponsors as a result of this buy!!!

To summarize, this is why i think this deal is good:

1. id has access to Startrek licensing (Good Startrek FPS)
2. id Now has the funding to increase staff and make games better and faster
3. Bethesda has access to much better game engines
4. Both companies are being run by a badass
5. And id is being pushed to be what they once were in the gaming industry. The best!

Sources: VentureBeat,ids Homepage.

Ive been using the Google Chrome browser since launch. and it was awesome to begin wiht, i mean its made by Google what else could it be? but alot of issues started cropping up recently. something i didn’t even thing about… is to frackin update the thing. The issues with Copy and paste in google chrome are all solved by the newest update. aswell as alot of chromes spell checking problems. To update it just to go tools and click about chrome, it’ll check for an update and get you to the newest version. just thought i would pass on that nugget of info.

Ok, this has been a long time coming, I’ve been using google voice since the grandcentral change, and everything i love about grandcentral had been moved over, and improved greatly!! The features of google voice are:

Call screening – Announce and screen callers
Listen in – Listen before taking a call
Block calls – Keep unwanted callers at bay
SMS – Send, receive, and store SMS
Place calls – Call US numbers for free
Taking calls – Answer on any of your phones
Phone routing – Phones ring based on who calls
Forwarding phones – Add phones and decide which ring
Voicemail transcripts – Read what your voicemail says
Listen to voicemail – Check online or from your phone
Notifications – Receive voicemails via email or SMS
Personalize greeting – Vary greetings by caller
Share voicemail – Forward or download voicemails
Conference calling – Join people into a single call
Call record – Record calls and store them online
Call switch – Switch phones during a call
Mobile site – View your inbox from your mobile
GOOG-411 – Check directory assistance
Manage groups – Set preferences by group

and each one of them is displayed so masterfully that i have begun using my Google voice # more than my regular phone number (The Google Voice app for Android has helped ALOT there!). One of the best features, and strangely unmentioned in Googles feature list is the Contacts! they do such an wonderful job of managing contacts, contact lists, and contact groups that its impossible to go back to any other management system! Ive used it to setup one voicemail message for family members and another for business contacts. seems like a useless feature but is totally awesome! Its voicemail system is also ZomgsWTFlol Amazing! If I’m in a meeting and forced to ignore a call that i needed to take, the transcript of the voicemail will be text messaged to me shortly after the message is left! Text messaging, as well as placing calls can all be done though the web interface, so it has the potential to save you alot of money on text messages. and a whole lot more money if you put your google voice number in your Fav5 (then all you calls can be free ). There are just so many small things that when put together make an amazing product!
Oh and the Google voice app for the android OS makes it Amazingly easy to route all your calls and text messages though the Google Voice system! The GV app also has surprisingly good contact management, and a few other spiffy features, but its main use is routing calls though google voice. If you have a Voice account, and a G1 but havnt installed GV yet now is your chance!

This was the 3rd app i ever installed on my G1. one of the most usefull but it has been removed form the market. what it does is send repeating text messages up to 100 at a time to any number. Its aweosme, the name truly explains the app. Google removed it form the app store because it can be used for malitious means. which is pretty much all i use it for… spamming the hell out of friends (and enemies ) anyway its not gone! If you enable the ability to install non market apps you can still have your SMSBarrage! the guy who wrote it (Jake Wharton) is hosting it on his site now and still updating it! alot of people are asking how to install it, so i went and made this handy Barcode.  Again you must enable non market apps, then just scan the barcode with your barcode scanner app, and install! 

Note: this is version 1.1.3, im told 2.0 will be out soon, when it comes out i will update the barcode.

Its Here!!! well almost. ive been an avid Brightkite user since before i got my G1, but began trending to using latitude, especially since the new version of maps came out. this was mostly because there was no Brightkite app for android! but thats all changing, The Android brightkite app is now in beta!
If your already a Brightkite user youll be happy to hear that almsot all the features of the web interface have been translated over to the Android app. including whats going on around you, a Really nice “Find Me” feature, its just all around great! now for the part that most of you came for… Heres how to get it.
First enable non market apps in Settings>Applications, then open your barcode scanner and scan the QR Code below. Next… ENJOY!.

Well first off i dont have a wave account yet (Hint Hint Google!) but as soon as i get one ill update this page. Heres what i think will be awesome about google wave:

The first thing that should be said is thisa isnt just Google Wave, It’s Wave. like Gmail is to Email. Its a whole protocol they are coming up with to build a new foundation for online communication! so even if your a google hater, most other companies will probobally make Waves shortly after the wave protocol is finished. and the way google is designing it all waves should be compatable (but microsoft will prob fuck it up).

So what wave is, new communication platform, poised to replace standars instant messaging and email. kinda takes most current forms of online communication and combines them. From email to picture sharing to online gaming, even some twitter like features. It seems like a much more naturual form of communication, kinda like how email would be, had we invented it today. As i type this im finding it Extreemly difficult to convey more information about what it is without making this post a mile long. so ill just post the video from Google IO, and hope i get a Wave account soon so i can elaborate.

So a few days ago i composed a walkthrough to get Bartor working. Bartor is pretty much the exact same as torrent fu, but less awesome. that is to say they both allow you to scan barcodes of movies and such, and send the torrents home for downloading. But only Torent Fu will allow you to check out the torrents your downloading from your Android phone! The only drawback is it only works with Utorrent.  Oh yeah! forgot to mention, another difference between the 2… Torrent FU is FREE! (Just got the news that BarTor is adding torrent monitoring support for ALL torrent clients soon, i take back what i said about Torrent-FU being more awesome)

If you need help setting Torrent FU up just check out my post on BarTor the same instructions apply. or hit the jump and a repost is there.

To install TorrentFu Scan this barcode —>

(continue reading…)

If you have an android phone, and are awesome, then you have already paid the measly $2.99 to get the Bartor app! if you haven’t you are missing out. it is the second app that I’ve considered worth the money (the first is open home) and it turned out to be worth way more than it costs

What it does: Bartor allows you to scan the barcode of a movie/cd/book/game, find the torrent for the product you want, and sends the torrent to your computer for downloading. I went to blockbuster the other day and almost filled my harddrive. i always see cool stuff that i want to download, but forget by the time i get home. the only qualm i have with the software is the lack luster help and setup documentation. most of the issue isn’t on the side of the software, but the side of setting up your home computer to receive the torrents. so im going to give a run though of how to set it up. ill be using utorrent in this example, but the same basic steps will be obvious (or ill post links or help to get other clients working aswell)

Step 1, the Utorrent setup: What we are going to do here is get utorrent installed, and the web interface configured. first step in this process will be grabbing utorrent from here. install it. After the install open up utorrent, click options, then preferences. go down to “Web UI” and check the box to “Enable Web UI”. Change the authentication UN/PW to something you can remember then check the “Alternative listening port” box and assign a reasonable port. (nothing that is already used by other stuff, like 8080,21,80 etc..) i chose port:666 (props to Id software) That’s pretty much it for utorrent config! next step is to make sure that you can access it from the outside. Find your outside ip address (You can find that Here), and type this in your browser “http:\\YourOutsideIpAddress:PortNumber/gui” if you don’t get a login prompt there is a problem. could be any number of things but most commonly your on a network, behind a router, and your router has no idea where to direct requests on that port! which leads us to the next step.

Configuring your router for port forwarding: Some of you may not need this step, if the previous instruction worked then skip this section. First off login to your router, if your using a linksys router with all defaults (your retarded) it will be 192.168.1.1 or some variation on the 192.168 network. the easiest way to find the ip address to login to your router is to use your gateway. now that your loged into your router click the “Applications And Gaming” tab. Type in the application name as bittorrent set the range as the port you chose in the Utorrent setup. put that port number in the beginning and end fields. Select protocol as both, and change the last octet of the IP address there to the IP address of the computer that is running utorrent. to do this, click start, run, type CMD and hit enter. this will being up a command prompt. then type “ipconfig” and hit enter. your ip address will be the 192.168.1.X number. type the X number into the blank. and check enable, then save settings. Congrats! you have successfully forwarded a port. Now the link in the last segment should work!

That link should be working now, and you should be able to access the utorrent web interface! now we are ready to configure the android app to send torrents to this interface! this is the easy part, just open BarTor, Hut the MENU button on your phone, hit settings, click the “Client Sites” tab, then click Add. Here you will type in your Outside IP address (again you can get that Here), The port number you chose when setting up the Utorrent web interface (the one we port forwarded) and the UN/PW that you chose in the Web UI setup. hit ok, then click the entry you just made to highlight it. that selects it as the default client site. just hit the back arrow key and your ready to start scanning! If you have any questions feel free to post them in the comments section, and have fun!

Scan this barcode with your G1 to install Bartor!

Update: just heard from the creator(s) of Bartor and they will be adding torrent montiring features soon!!! thats the only thing the free ones have over this tor client (that and the free ones are great at taking up system resources!)

I’m working to get torrent monitoring up and running in BarTor, but I want to make sure that I do it right and that it works well in all supported clients and not just uTorrent

Hurray!