Simon G's Blog

I attended the inspirational  Gather 2015 unconference today. As described on the website for the event “It is the digital, technical and creative community’s big day out”. There were several sessions running simultaneously and it was hard to choose what to go to since there were so many interesting topics. Below is a summary of my key takeaways (or interpretations thereof) from the sessions I attended. UAVs, Internet of Things, 3DVR: What are we going to do with these things? How do we get us/our companies/NZ to lead the way? What can we do to take advantage? These are the questions - does the room have the answers? MAKER CHANGE BUSINESS @lancewiggs Future Skynet Remote Monitoring UAV Tour - e.g. rent a UAV and do tour of Egypt Auto-herding GPS in humans Better battery life Sensors inc. in building beams to say if leak problem Track robber Traffic control Drone based terror Evidence-based thinking Data —> Interpretation Auto milk ordering fro...

I had some very simple code that worked well in the Chrome web browser, but it did not however work with Internet Explorer or Firefox and didn’t generate any errors. The functionality was simply to pass a parameter (in this case ‘auth’) to a PHP page; once on the page I am simply checking that it is set . I was attempting to do this by attaching the parameter to the image input type but was having no joy. Rather than look at alternative options, this made me curious so I went searching. After a bit of digging, I found that the HTML5 spec requires just the x and y coordinates clicked on for the image to be appended to the form data submitted. After realising this, I changed from using the name/value attributes on on the image input type to using a hidden field and all browsers were happy. In terms of my very simple HTML code, to make it work. Before:       <form action="index.php" method="post">      ...

With 300 attendees registered for this year, there were a lot of Web developers, designers, lawyers, investors and others in one place with several un-conference sessions running in parallel at Barcamp Auckland 5. A summary of my interpretation of key points from sessions I attended is below. Write once, run everywhere HTML 5 applications SmartBiller HTML 5 based desktop/iPhoneAndroid app. Used jQTouch as a framework; supports Webkit only. jQuery Mobile wasn’t ready at time, but this would be preference if rebuilding (better support). Sync driven from server. Device detection being done adhoc on client & server side. Would use MVC if writing again. fluidapp.com for Mac wraps any website and makes it appear like an application. Need to consider how to handle multiple open windows Check instancecount then “ping” other instance may be an option. Screen size, browser quirks / CSS, Intera...

The Webstock 2011 conference kicked off today at the Wellington Town Hall.  This is the second time I have attended this superbly designed and organised conference.  The description on the Webstock site sums up nicely what Webstock is all about: “Webstock is a range of web-related events with the aim of improving how websites are built through inspiration, education, insightful analysis and practical application. It features industry leaders and kick-ass speakers talking on topics such as accessibility, web standards, usability and other best practices.” Here is my synopsis of Day One.  There was also an excellent collaborative note taking effort that can be found at http://webstock.waveadept.com/ . Mike Brown @maupuia Opening and welcome It’s the small things that make us connect and share. Having somebody on stage signing for the deaf is nice to see. Frank Chimero @fchimero The Digital Campfire We’re going from less robotic to more human. Universal theory of s...

I have recently released my first Android application to the Android market. Even with a basic application, there are a number of things that needed consideration I hadn’t thought about (particularly graphical design considerations). Application functionality overview One night at home, Jane asked me what temperature we should be cooking chicken to.  We had a meat thermometer, but each time we wanted to know whether a meat was cooked enough we resorted to an Internet search to find the appropriate temperature.  To make it easier I decided to write a basic application for her Nexus One Android device called Meat Temperature Guide that allowed her to select a type of meat from a dropdown list and to then display the details of the temperature to cook the meat to for rare, medium-rare, well etc.  I later embellished the application to allow a user to select whether they want to see Celsius or Fahrenheit temperatures displayed and default this and the meat chosen to whate...