Drone Technology in Social Projects

Amazon plans to use drones for making deliveries. They are not the first to use drones for transport of materials. Oppikoppi music festival attendees can order a beer using a mobile phone app. The DarkWing Beer Drone use the mobile phones GPS location to drop a beer straight into their hands or mostly onto their heads. Made this video of the beer drone demo at Tech4Africa 2013.

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) commonly referred as drone will be more prevalent in the future.The United Nations (UN) is deploying drones in Congo. The cost of this technology is still prohibitively high. But social projects such ConservationDrones.org are trying to bring down the cost by using Open Hardware and Open Source Software. They are already using drones for field surveys in Indonesia. You can learn more about Conservation Drones here.

Do you know of any interesting use of Drones in social projects. Please do share it by leaving a comment below.

Auto-Refresh Your Twitter Feed With Firefox Add-on

Pleasantly surprised to see my Firefox add-on mentioned on Mashable.com story Auto-Refresh Your Twitter Feed With These 2 Useful Tools. The add-on automatically loads new tweets as they appear without any user intervention. You can also use this add-on to display continuous real-time feed of tweets on a large screen or digital projector.

I had written this add-on during MozCamp Warsaw last year. I observed my fellow participant constantly clicking a button to reveal new tweets on Twitter.com. Using Add-on SDK I automated this tedious process. Add-on SDK allows developers to enhance the functionality of Firefox web browser using JavaScript. I love to use Add-on SDK to create such duct-tape solutions for Internet annoyances.

Draw Electronic Circuits with Conductive Ink

To bring electronic circuits to life by drawing them is an amazing experience. You can use the good old pencil on paper. Bare Conductive developed a non-toxic paint to draw electronic circuits on any surface. You can pick up a tube of Bare conductive paint at your local RadioShack.

Andy tweeted this Circuit Scribe Kickstarter project that lets you create circuits with a conductive ink pen. Things just got interesting. :)

DIY Streetview Videos with GoPro

Walking through the Taipei National Museum, I noticed this interesting rig with six GoPro cameras mounted on a monopole. Asked the owner about the project, he mimed 'I am taking 360° videos of the palace grounds'.

Back at the hotel I searched for more information about this DIY project. Perhaps it is similar DIY-Streetview.com camera system.

Please do leave a comment if you have any information about this project. :)

Joby GripTight tripod mount for Smart Phones

Continuing my blog series about interesting accessories for your smartphone. Did you ever want to make shake-free photographs and videos with your smartphone. The $20 Joby GripTight Mount connects your smartphone onto any tripod to provide a stable shooting platform. You can also use the smartphone headphone button as cable release. This gadget is great for smartphone photographers and video bloggers. To learn more watch GripTight mount videos on YouTube.

If don't own a tripod, then try to buy GripTight Gorillapod Stand. They make wonderful Christmas gifts too.

Turn your old iPod speakers into wireless speakers

Do you have one of these portable iPod speakers in your home. In this post I'll shared an idea that lets you play music straight from iPhone or Android device. You can pick up this $25 GTI Bluetooth Adapter from Frys. The device plugs into iPod connector on your portable speakers and receives music via Bluetooth A2DP. Similar Bluetooth receivers that connect to aux-in ports are also available.

The idea emerged while helping a friend re-design hotel rooms for tech savvy business travelers. Found these inexpensive Bluetooth A2DP receivers to reuse the existing iPod dockable clock speakers in the hotel rooms. Perhaps NFC is a better choice but right now there only few mobile phones with NFC support.

Kinect-Powered Interactive New Media Installation

During the recent visit to Taipei, I visited the famed National Palace Museum. The Qian Long Chao new media art exhibition featured this Trees of colors interactive installation powered by Kinect. The installation detect the visitors dress color and decorates the Qianlong vase accordingly. You can view the video on Youtube.

Mozilla Taiwan Localization Sprint

Last week I traveled to Taipei for localization sprint with Mozilla Taiwan community. The community translates various Mozilla projects into Chinese (Traditional)(zh-TW). The goal of a localization sprint is to bring together new and experienced translators under one roof. Such events help promote knowledge sharing through peer learning and mentor-ship. Special thanks to Michael Hung, Estela Liu and Natasha Ma for making the Mozilla space available and inviting by providing Pizzas.

The event began with a short introduction to localization by Peter Chen, followed by a brief overview of various translation projects such as translating Mozilla Support (SUMO) by Ernest Chiang, translating Webmaker by Peter Chen, translating addons.mozilla.org by Toby, translating Mozilla Developer Network(MDN) articles by Carl, translating Mozilla videos with Amara tool by Irvin and translating Mozilla Links by Chung-Hui Fang. The speakers then organized participants into topic specific working groups, based on each individual's interest.

It was interesting to see how people used various tools such as Narro, Pootle, Transifex and even Google Docs for translation. It gave me an opportunity to observe and note some of the potential problems in the translation process. At the end of the day, everyone gathered to share and present their group's work. The also took time to answer question that participants had. All in all it was a very productive and enjoyable event. Mozilla badges were issued to recognize the participants' contributions.

Check out the event photos and etherpad for additional details. The Mozilla Taiwan community will continue to translate during their weekly MozTwLab meetups and a follow-up event is planned for the sprint 2014.