The iPhone’s latest version of Safari supports HTML5 Geolocation Services. To the average mobile phone user this might not seem like a big deal, but for web developers it’s huge.
In the past, web developers who needed to get latitude/longitude coordinates in Javascript were required to make server-side AJAX calls and base coordinates off of IP addresses and shaky algorithms. The process was time-consuming (even using asynchronous calls) and burdensome to the server. If constant updates were required, an ill-equipped server would overload. Simply put, web browsers lacked the ability to support robust real-time geolocation updates.
HTML5, the newest standards outlined by W3C, sought to change that with Geolocation Services. Now, major website browsers (such as Safari and Firefox) come with the ability to retrieve latitude and longitude coordinates within Javascript as an integrated part of the browser itself. This means that a programmer can now ask an HTML5 enabled browser to return coordinates without ever making an AJAX call. The process follows this pattern: programmer makes request to the browser, browser pings its geolocation service provider, the geolocation service provider responds to the browser, the browser updates its Javascript coords object with the relevant information including latitude and longitude for the programmer to then work with. The speed is incredibly fast compared to the old method, and is also incredibly accurate down to a few 100 meters.
Even more important, the programmer can register a callback function to constantly be executed asynchronously with updated positions. This allows a lot of exciting things to be done. For instance, I developed a very basic speedometer website (calculating MPH) at http://www.geigel.com/html5/speed.php that can be used on my iPhone. To test this, open your mobile Safari browser to the website URL and then start driving down the road in your car. Although the updated speed appearing on the website is not as precise or responsive as the MPH the car shows, the experiment illustrates what is now possible using HTML5.
What I find interesting beyond the mere technical/programming doors that HTML5 has opened is the behind-the-scenes battle from search-engine companies to be the exclusive provider of geolocation data for the major browsers. After all, geolocation data doesn’t just magically come into existence simply because HTML5 says it should. A company needs to process a request from the browser and respond quickly. Obviously, Internet Explorer will rely on Microsoft as its sole provider of information (when, and if, IE decides to support geolocation). Similarly, Chrome will use Google, however it is unclear if a Gears plugin will be required versus being natively built into the browser. The real competition occurs when you begin looking at who will supply information for Firefox and Opera. At present, Firefox relies on Google (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/geolocation/). Opera, on the other hand, seems to currently be going with a third-party geolocation service provider named Skyhook (http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/03/26/). Whether these browsers will stick with these providers remains to be seen.
Whatever all of this means for the future of websites, the W3C, and major players is unclear. What is clear is that users of the technology are going to experience a richer browsing session with location aware websites. Equally clear is that geolocation providers will gain significant amounts of anonymous technical data about user positions, trends, etc. which can be scary for privacy-minded individuals. Thankfully, the W3C cared enough to require in their specification that browsers should warn users when their position is being tracked, and ask that these services be activated.
Jeff Zimmerman and I will be running in a 5K race on June 7, 2009 to help raise money for an organization called The Gathering Place. The Gathering Place is a support center providing programs and services free of charge for individuals and families touched by cancer. The race takes place in Beachwood and more information can be found by visiting their website.
Placing an order at a restaurant can sometimes be a hassle. We’ve all been there. Waiters make mistakes, cooks can’t always read the waiter’s handwriting, and a great deal of inneficiency accompanies the entire process.
Now imagine being seated at a restaurant that supports ONOSYS‘ soon to be debuted iPhone ordering app. With the flick of a finger you can browse the entire menu, select what meals you and your family want, and place the order with almost no staff involvment. This type of scenario would not only speed up the order-to-fulfillment process (which would make restaurants happy) but would also cut down on tons of human mistakes that invariably occur. I also think this would become an extremely hip and cool app for people with iPhones to flaunt. There are over 40 million iPhone users nationwide who use their device for everything under the sun — why not order food?
Stan Garber, of ONOSYS, will be in Chicago this week at the Marketing Executives Group Conference (MEG) and National Restaurant Association Show to debut the app. I subscribe to ONOSYS‘ newsletter called “Quick Bites” which includes more details. Here’s the newsletter in it’s entirety that arrived to my inbox this afternoon:
Got an iPhone? Get a pizza.
ONOSYS is taking the wraps off of the industry’s hottest iPhone ordering system in Chicago this week at the Marketing Executives Group Conference (MEG) and National Restaurant Association Show, and you can see for yourself how your customers can order anything from your menu with just a touch of their finger on the screen of their iPhone.
With over 40 million phones sold, the iPhone has revolutionized mobile computing, and ONOSYS has harnessed that mobile power in a simple, elegant and powerful ordering system.
Coming to Chicago this week? I’d love to show you the next wave in online ordering: mobile transactions. See how our mobile ordering system can help you reach more customers, increase order size and satisfy your customers who are on the go.
Want to track me down? Email me (stan@onosys.com) to set up a time to get together, or call me on my cell (440-785-2870) if you have a few minutes of free time at the Show.
Stan Garber
P.S.: If you see a guy on the show floor wearing “ONOSYS Orange” shoes, that’s me. Stop and say hello and I’ll show you how mobile ordering works on the fly!
Out of the thousands of apps currently flooding Apple’s App Store I believe this has real potential. If the ONOSYS people get this right, and are able to prove a realistic ROI for restaurants, they’ll have a killer app on their hands.
If anyone in Chicago has video of this app in action please send it to me. I’d love to 1) view it and 2) post it for others.
Every computer science student at Hiram College is required to perform two research projects, called IRCs, prior to graduation. Of the two projects I completed I am proudest of my Computer Vision project because it not only was one of the coolest things I’ve ever studied, but it also required an extensive amount of hard work to complete. The satisfaction is still a source of motivation for me to this day.
The project’s in-depth details can be found at http://www.geigel.com/signlanguage/, however, briefly, I was able to employ computational methods, initially researched in the 1980s, to recognize American Sign Language letters within computer images. (Note: The initial research performed in the 1980s focused on recognizing faces in images which have popularly become known as Eigenfaces). The process is called Principal Component Analysis (PCA)and is widely considered to be a breakthrough discovery in the advancement of Computer Vision. Much of PCA’s attractiveness comes from it’s ability to train similar, yet slightly different, images of a given class. In my research, for instance, the classes I dealt with were signed letters corresponding to different hand orientations. When it boils down to it, PCA is able to mathematically define (using Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues) the most important features of a given class (for example a fist for letter A versus the open cirlce for the letter O), and then when a new unknown image is presented to the system a calculation can be performed and a mathematically reinforced estimate can be made as to what class the unknown image belongs.
Ellen Walker, my Computer Vision professor at Hiram College, oversaw my research and offered help when I ran into issues. Ultimately, I was able to develop/program/execute a fully functional PCA system in C++ for recognizing American Sign Language letters. In fact, once the PCA system was trained, I was able to test it on 10 sample images with 100% recognition accuracy. The project was a huge success! Both in it’s results and in the lessons, knowledge, and gratification it left me. Though Ellen has never explicitly said this to me, I think that she was also impressed and surprised with how well the results turned out.
This all took place in 2005 — the year I graduated from Hiram. As the years went on I would occasionally correspond with Ellen and then on 11/29/2006 I received an email from her asking if my project could serve as a possible AI/Vision project that she would be submit to the University of Hartford’s “Machine Learning Experiences in AI” shared curriculum. Of course I was excited and happy that my project would be the inspiration for such a project.
My life is owned by Google. Seriously. I use Gmail as my only email program and their calendar as my only calendar. I’ve also recently decided to use their documents software instead of Word/Excel. Having Google maintain my digital life has made things a lot easier.
So when I got my new iPhone a few weeks ago I was eager to setup my Gmail account. Just as I expected it was painless and easy.
Then I moved on to my calendar which I thought would be just as easy. Unfortunately it wasn’t. I was hoping that the iPhone would support a pull architecture for iCal synchronization — basically allowing me to tell the iPhone that it’s time to sync between the iPhone and my Google calendar. A lot of calendar software packages support the iCal standard, and Google calendar allows you to export your calendar in this format. Naturally I thought this would be supported on the iPhone, but it wasn’t.
I then searched online to find what I was looking for. I found a syncing program that works with the iCal standard, but only with the iCalendar application in OSX. Since I run XP on my machine this wasn’t any help. I then found an application that said it could do what I needed, called NemuSync, but it required that I jailbreak my iPhone — something I wasn’t looking to do.
Just as I was about to give up I found the answer to all of my problems. It was called NuevaSync and it has been the best thing I’ve ever setup for my iPhone. NuevaSync is free, and allows you to setup an account with them that bridges information on your iPhone with Google’s calendar without ever having to install an app. On a more technical level, they offer a Microsoft Exchange layer to push syncing between your iPhone and Google’s calendar.
Because Exchange is a push architecture you never have to worry about activating a sync request — it’s done automatically when you add a new event in your calendar either on your iPhone or on your Calendar webpage. So let’s say you’re on the road and enter an event on your iPhone. By the time you get home and log on to your Google calendar it will already be there. NuevaSync is a real-time ongoing syncing of your iPhone calendar and Google calendar.
I was so happy when I found this out that I emailed their staff to thank them for the service. They could easily charge $99 a year for this service and I would have paid. It’s so seamless and translucent that I literally had to write a blog article singing its praises.
It’s been nearly a year and a half in the making, but my friends and I finally got our Pi tattoos. Chris Armenio, John Belter, Sean Teller and I went to Smokin’ Tattooz last night (11/29) in Kent and all got inked — some of us for the first time. Noticeably wussing out and NOT getting a tattoo (even though she promised she would) was half-Asian Sarah Scroggy who nonetheless provided event planning services, and moral/emotional support.
The tattoo appears slightly to the left of the center of my wrist, and along my watch band (so it can be hidden when it needs to be). The entire tattoo fits within a 1 inch square. The image on the bottom shows off 3.14 – 3 fingers up, wring finger down (point), pinky finger up for 1and the entire count of up fingers being 4.
Other important attendees during this historic event include: Mike Pavis, Lou Colorito, Katherine Dunn, Matt Coleman, Jeff Zimmerman, Caitin Ganley and Jeff Burk. All of whom looked on as the rest of us endured. Honestly, the needle wasn’t painful at all, and I was expecting much worse.
Why get Pi as a tattoo? I can’t answer for anyone else, but for me I’ve wanted it for a long time. There is beauty in mathematics, and Pi is an important number (ratio) used in calculations that define our world. It’s infinite, never repeats itself, powerful in its simplicity and unique. Pi is God’s number.
Additionally, the Greek letter Pi resembles neolithic Irish dolmens – or altars. Dolmens pepper Ireland, and my dad and I saw a lot on our first visit there. So in that way, my Pi tattoo will help remind me of those fun times.
Some of the dolmens my dad and I saw on our first Ireland trip. Notice how similar dolmens are to the Greek letter Pi?
If you have a Gmail/Google account you MUST go login now. Then open another window and do a normal Google search. See anything different in the result listing?
There are a couple of new icons along each search result that allow YOU to vote/score/rank results higher/lower, remove results that you’ll never care about or need, and to comment on results. You can also add a link that you always want to appear for the phrase you searched for. Want “cats.com” to come up as your second result when you search for dogs? You can make it happen now!
AWESOME!
I have thought for a long time how great it would be to simply remove a result listing you know you’ll never need, but they go even further. These features make it easy to find repetitive information very quickly and to tailor it to your needs.
You also know Google’s taking all that feedback and making their system even smarter. If a thousand people hide a result, or a thousand people promote a result to a higher rank, that will have an effect on future searches for everyone. It’s ingenious!
While the commenting feature is very much like the old “Note This” feature which was bulky and mostly unusable, the commenting feature is super easy and intuitive. I WISH they kept the “Note This” feature, however, for personal use so you can maintain individual notes on a website that don’t become public.
Anyway, I felt the need to let more people know about it because it’s slick. And of course Google integrate these new features in an unobtrusive way — they’re known for that.
After I graduated from Aurora High School I was accepted to Hiram College, a private liberal-arts school in Northeast Ohio. I brought to college a more sophisticated work ethic than I had in high school, and an open mind. My first course, The Quest for Justice, was taught by one of my favorite professors, Ken Alpern. I’ll never forget my first class with him. Imagine 20 or so students loudly piling into a classroom. Ken just sat there, like a stone, stoic in his stature. Settling whispers and coughs crescendoed to a roaring silence. Still, he sat there gazing upon each of us. Clutching our copies of Plato’s Republic we sat there not knowing what to expect, and in a state of paralytic fear. Then he spoke, quietly and somber, yet somehow loud and thunderous, “Open your books. We will read the first sentence together. This will be the first sentence you will read as college students, and it will be from a text that has had profound impact on humankind. Remember this moment.” As he began to read aloud we read along in silence. It was Socrates talking, “I went down to the Piraeus yesterday with Glaucon, the son of Ariston.” In that day, my first day of classes, Ken set the tone for the way I approached higher education. He also, perhaps unwittingly, peaked an ongoing interest in philosophy. Over the course of 4 years at Hiram I had 3 courses with Ken all of which were top-notch. When one speaks of memorable teachers he surely has a place among my top 5.
Unlike many other students I knew coming into college exactly what I wanted to major in, computer science. Hiram’s CS department is extremely focused, challenging and educationally demanding. We are the only college in America to have an all female faculty, and also one of only a few that require 2 research projects before graduation instead of just 1 which others schools normally ask of their students. There will always be a place in my heart for the 2 senior faculty members, Obie Slotterbeck and Ellen Walker. Their lifetime experience alone is a wealth of knowledge, and their enthusiasm for the subject matter second to none.
My proudest moment as a professional student was my research project done in Ellen Walker’s Computer Vision course. I developed a fully supervised and trained vision detection system for classifying sign language letters within photographs. I approached the project with the same energy and determination I had in my chemistry project. I dominated the research and understood every technical detail required to make my system work. The satisfaction I had from the project was some of the purest ever felt. When I gave my presentation to my fellow students and professors a great exhilaration came over me. You know what’s a great feeling? Working your ass off for something that you know you’ll get an A in, and having 100% confidence going into a presentation that you won’t get anything but an A.
Like most people who look back on their college years I remember mine as being some of the best of my life. Unlike most people, however, I don’t want to look back on them as if I can’t have even better times ahead of me! I am not done with life! I still have things to offer this world and things to do. After graduating it was a very strange feeling to not be returning to school the next fall. I miss learning. I miss research. I miss that undescribable spark a person feels when they’re on a campus with other smart people who are equally active in educational endeavors. The atmosphere is viral and electric. Hiram College, if nothing else, injected into my soul a desire to learn even more than I know today. To defend freedom of thought. Lastly, by generating a pang (sometimes painful) that I should strive for even more learning.
In the words of Hiram’s motto — fiat lux — let there be light.
In 5th grade a lot of my friends began to get computers. I didn’t really know what they were, why someone would want one, or what they could do. After all my 8-bit Nintendo was enough technology for me. It wasn’t until I became friends with Nat Walizer, a classmate from Solon, that I began to realize the potential uses of computers. He introduced me to programming. Besides offering fun games, and a way to write papers for school, all Windows PCs were shipped with an interpretive language programming application called QBASIC. What this allowed you to do was to write lines of instructions telling the computer how to behave. I was instantly hooked. I can’t explain whether it was my affinity for logic, my desire to create things (as if I were God), or to just mess around with a cool piece of equipment. Something struck me in my core and I knew it even at that young age. This was what I wanted to do. This was me. I threw myself into QBASIC; often choosing to code instead of doing my homework. I created math games, adventure games and Pong. As my accumen and talent grew I developed graphically superior games such as a fishing game, a fighting game, a space invaders game and — my crowning achievement — a fully functional Monopoly game that had an on board screen that looked exactly like the real board.
The time I spent exploring the computer was in itself a course. When I chose to play on the computer I was developing the analytical skills programmers need. In retrospect I’m so happy that I worked on my programs than do some meaningless homework assignment. I wish I could convey the great feeling I have for my memory of these times.
As I grew older I developed greater skills and attacked more sophisticated languages. My foray into Windows applications was facilitated by Visual Basic. Then later, while in high school, my parents paid for private lessons in C++ at Hiram College from a student there. By the time I entered Hiram College as a student myself (you’ll read about this later) I had such a commanding understanding of underlying computer architecture and technology that I hit the ground running. While all these logical stimulations were good at serving my left side of the brain; they neglected my right side of the brain, and I needed to satiate it with art.
