Everyone that attended to the 4th Mobile Technologies Seminar by PocketPT.net won a free license of NDrive 3.1 for Pocket PC. So I left TomTom behind for a few days to try this Portuguese software. First of all I just love the user interface. The dark colors are great. In the menus you are able to scroll using your fingers, which is always nice.
The interface is pretty simple, which is normal since it has fewer functionality that TomTom. It doesn’t allow your to plan a trip and see it in images or to add pit stops to your navigation plan. But since I don’t plan pit stops very often, this isn’t a problem for me. And it has a demo version of the navigation when your GPS is off, and I am able to use to do some planning after all.
NDrive has a lot of Points of Interest (POIs) at least in the map of Portugal that I have. I really like the dynamic POIs that allow your to download information about the weather, traffic, events, pharmacies and speed cameras. I like that I don’t need to be online while driving to have access to this data. I can synchronize it before I leave home and head to my destination free of GPSR charge.
Another feature that amazed me was the amount of information about the POIs that is available. Below you can see information about Convento de Mafra (in Portuguese, thought). Address, description and even pictures. This software can be very useful if you are in some place which is not familiar to you and you want to choose a place to visit.
If you search for a restaurant, NDrive has not only the description and address but also phone numbers, e-mails and website. While reading these details you have a menu that allows you to browse to the website, call the restaurant or send the location information to a friend (ohh, and navigate to the restaurant, of course ).
Some POIs have 3D models that are shown in the map. It is nice, I don’t think that it is that useful, but it is a nice geeky feature.
The software is very responsive and easy to configure. The driving directions are great, just as TomTom. One thing that I noticed as a problem was the information about speed limits accuracy. The information available in my map almost always tells me that I can travel in a higher speed that I actually can. As a consequence the time that is shown to me as the estimated travel time is pretty wrong. Nevertheless I must say that I paid much more attention to this speed issue in NDrive than in TomTom, so this can be a common issue, who knows.
From now on I will use NDrive instead of TomTom. It fits my needs. Thanks for this software license, PocketPT.net and NDrive.
A equipa PizzaShoot continua o intrincado processo de desenvolvimento de um jogo de elevado nível!
Temos disponível mais um vídeo. Desta vez demonstramos com é possível ligar acessórios wireless da Xbox 360 ao PC através do Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows. Demonstramos também como utilizar o Input Reporter (disponível no XNA Creators Club) para testar o input não só do gamepad wireless, como também da guitarra que acompanha o Guitar Hero 3! Isto porque a guitarra não passa de um comando com uma disposição diferente dos botões (e com um acelerómetro mapeado nos triggers do comando normal).
Os developers de jogos em XNA ficam então com um leque de possibilidades ainda mais abrangente.
Although the video is in Portuguese, I want to leave the main message to all the potential worldwide readers of this blog. If you connect your Xbox 360 guitar to your PC (a wireless or wired guitar) you can use it as a X-Box 360 gamepad. Use Input Reporter to find out the correspondence between each device buttons. Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows it the accessory that you need to connect Xbox 360 wireless accessories to your PC.
Have you heard about Windows SideShow? It’s kind of a geeky feature of Windows Vista.
It allows you to connect an external device to your PC, displaying gadgets like incoming e-mails, photo galleries among other stuff. There are already some devices that support this feature. You may be familiar with an ASUS laptop which comes with a display on top of it.
There are other devices detached from your laptop like digital picture frames.
More details available in the Windows Vista official website - Window SideShow details.
A beta version of a piece of software is now available which transforms your Windows Mobile 5 or 6 devices into a Windows SideShow compliant device (using bluetooth).
The developer preview can be found at Microsoft Download Center. Follow the instructions that come with the software. After a successful install you can download and install new gadgets from Window Live Gallery. (Suggestions: Microsoft Office Power Point Remote and Picture Viewer)
You can configure your gadgets for each plugged Windows SideShow device in the Windows Control Panel (Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Windows SideShow).
It allows you to write a Silverlight-based games, without actually writing any code. Once again, just as I think about the original Popfly, it is hard for non-developers to use this tool, but it can be great to people who lack a lot of advanced knowledge about development but are related to Computer Science (such as students or hobbyists).
One problem about the interface is that it is meant to be used in large resolution monitors. All the buttons are big, and even with a 1280×800 resolution I had some difficulties using the Game Creator.
Here’s a screenshot of the game editor. I like the childish look&feel.
Two or three days ago I read in some blog about Live Mesh. What is it?
“Live Mesh puts you at the center of your digital world, seamlessly connecting you to the people, devices, programs, and information you care about — available wherever you happen to be.”
You get a place on the web where you can store your data, and access and synchronize from within any computer you use. In this Tech Preview only Windows XP/Vista are supported, but the big picture includes Mac and mobile devices. You can share data with other people, and keep track of the news about your data (changes, additions, deletions, comments added, etc).
Take a look at this video that shows the main features of this new project.
Here is another video tour, this one’s target audience is the developers community. It seems that as usual in Windows Live Services, this new project will be very “developer friendly”.
I look forward to have a chance to try it. Meanwhile I’ll keep tuned in the website.
Today I’ve upgraded my blot to WordPress 2.5. I had a problem with this upgrade… The front page of my website showed the “Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.” message instead of my latest posts list.
After diving into the WordPress engine source code, I realised that it was trying to open my homepage as a single post (using the correspondent template). The is_home() function was returning false, and the is_single() was returning true…
I still don’t know the cause of this behavior, but I got it fixed by using my programmer hammer.
In the index.php file, I added the following line: $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']=’/page/1′;
This way, the engine renders the first page of posts instead of the single post page.
P.S.: I don’t like the new WordPress administration interface.
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