roblog.

The Rock Piper will mainly be operating in the northern...

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 13:32:15 +0200

The Rock Piper will mainly be operating in the northern hemisphere. She is fully booked the next two years. We wish her many safe journeys.

WTF?

I think, I’ll finally be switching my usernames everywhere to something more grown-up.

OMG, there’s even more.

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 20:50:00 +0200

OMG, there’s even more.

Got a new gadget.

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 22:34:00 +0200

Got a new gadget.

Yesterday, I open-sourced “Lock With A Clock”—a small...

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 15:31:05 +0200

Yesterday, I open-sourced “Lock With A Clock”—a small BlackBerry™ application I originally had developed three years ago.

As the process of setting up a build environment on Mac OS X (without using a Windows VM, or using Rosetta to run old PowerPC binaries) is somewhat dreaded, I took the liberty to fully document all necessary steps in the accompanying README file.

Be sure to check out the app—it’s really the best way to lock a BB against accidental key presses, et al.

Testing smartphone GPS accuracy

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 21:42:17 +0100

We all know the iPhone 4s is one of the fastest smartphones available when it comes to getting a GPS fix. I have seen Android devices (OG Droid, I’m looking at you!) taking THREE whole days to find out it was just brought to the middle east, while the 4s answered the turning-off of flight mode outright with “you’re still on this runway, head into that direction to get to the cabs” while the flight attendants where still fiddling with the plane’s door.

But how do current smartphones fare when it comes to accuracy of the determined location? Can we really throw our standalone GPS devices away now?

Today I recorded a small walk with my family using a Garmin Forerunner 210 GPS watch (this is actually a fitness device including a heart rate monitor strap) and two smartphones: the Apple iPhone 4s and a BlackBerry Bold 9900.

On both phones, Endomondo SportsTracker was used to record the walk. It took us about one hour to get to Leipzig’s Zoo, grab a bratwurst, take a peek at the monkeys, and rush home again because it started to rain. Our average pace was somewhere around half an hour per kilometer—with two kids bringing doll’s prams this is just as fast as it gets.

Shockingly, it was not the iPhone that made the race here. While, of course, the black slab was the fastest to find enough satellites (with the BlackBerry coming in 2nd place), the quality of the recorded track is the worst of all three devices.

Even the GPS watch sometimes did not exactly hit the nail, but still, a smartphone cannot beat the accuracy of a standalone device right now. Whats worse with the iPhone: The timing seems to be a few seconds off and there are some more-or-less heavy misfires amongst the recorded track points.

The difference can be clearly seen on this video comparison:

Being a bit more “jumpy” when recording GPS tracks may not sound that bad at first, but in this case, the iPhone recorded a track that is nearly 25% longer(!) than what the Garmin delivered. The BlackBerry’s, on the other hand, turned out to be 5% shorter that the watch’s.

Of course, these are all not scientific measures, I don’t know for sure how long the path really is, we where probably moving ten times as slow as the average jogger, the sky was rather clouded, and the distance we walked was also nothing really fancy—but still, this is something to watch out for if you want to count on your iPhone for your running workout.

The lower recording detail is probably a software issue and other apps may be available, which record tracks with a higher frequency, but in the current test both phones only recorded a fifth of the number of track points, compared to the Garmin: That’s around two per minute for Endomondo, and one every five seconds for the GPS watch.

The smartphones did not record any height information (or Endomondo did not export this) so I did not compare anything like this. Also, I’m very interested in how the current Lumia devices and the N9 from Nokia fare—but I don’t have one at hand right now.

Conclusion: If you have a standalone GPS unit, continue using it! If not, then your BlackBerry works fairly good, too. If you want to use an iPhone to measure your jogging trail, better make sure you’re able to edit out any jumps afterwards, if needed.

Did I show you this fantastic shot of BlackBerry OS 7.1’s...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:02:10 +0100

Did I show you this fantastic shot of BlackBerry OS 7.1’s About screen yet?

Video

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:29:03 +0100

Batman is a Turk. (Especially with Facebook’s custom Bing...

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:06:06 +0100

Batman is a Turk.

(Especially with Facebook’s custom Bing rendering.)

Weird stuff.

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 13:21:30 +0100

Weird stuff.

Booting Nemo/Mer on the Nokia N9

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:43:30 +0100

Booting Nemo/Mer on the Nokia N9

"According to the report, HP tried to offload webOS to the social network but the company was..."

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:11:00 +0100

“According to the report, HP tried to offload webOS to the social network but the company was “practically laughed out of the room” by Facebook executives.”

Created by: Healthcare Management Degree

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:04:00 +0100

Created by: Healthcare Management Degree

This comparison video may be done very bad, but substantiates...

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 15:30:16 +0100

This comparison video may be done very bad, but substantiates that you absolutely have to go with the Lumia 800, if you’re actually lusting for the N9. Windows Phone 7 is way snappier than ~~Maemo~~Meego Harmatton with everything you do. It looks just as lag-free as the iPhone 4s—something I’ve always thought I’d never see.

PS: Pay close attention at around 6:40 to see what the best use for the N9’s FFC seems to be. :)

http://hackertyper.com/

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:32:53 +0100

http://hackertyper.com/

"Asking computer nerds to design social software is a little bit like hiring a Mormon bartender."

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:58:09 +0100

“Asking computer nerds to design social software is a little bit like hiring a Mormon bartender.”

- http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/

And there goes ‘photographic evidence’ …

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 23:25:00 +0100

And there goes ‘photographic evidence’ …

Google starts firing POST requests while crawling

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 19:37:00 +0100

Google starts firing POST requests while crawling

Xperia Studio's fantastic 360° video

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 23:59:00 +0100

Xperia Studio's fantastic 360° video:

This interactive video 360° video video was recorded using six Sony Ericsson Xperia Neos. Fantastic work.

Video

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 08:36:25 +0100

“Hello asshole!”

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 00:58:47 +0200

“Hello asshole!”