Small bug in the Location Starter Kit

Posted in: Android, Augmented Reality, Blog, LBS, iPhone by openhanced on April 11, 2010

We discovered a small bug in the setup procedure for the Location Starter Kit (thanks Josh for the feedback). This bug writes the wrong username in the webservice/layarpoints.php file. Make sure that your db username on line 16 in this file is correct.

Download latest version

A Layar to show leisure/sports activities and an interview with GPSies.com owner

Posted in: Android, Augmented Reality, Blog, iPhone by openhanced on April 7, 2010

Besides building a freemium version of a Layar backend (to host your datapoints) we also joint forces with GPSies.com to bring you 300000 leisure/sports tracks from most countries in the world.

With the Layar you can find the start points of the tracks and advanced track, elevation and weather data.

Right now the database contains around 300000 + points and it is growing on a weekly basis. We will update our clone of the GPSies.com database once a week to bring you all the new tracks.

Interview with Klaus Bechtold of GPSies.com

What is your name and origin?
My name is Klaus Bechtold and I’m living in Berlin, Germany. I’m married and I do have two children. GPSies.com is just a hobby besides my job as a software developer at an internet agency in Berlin.

What is the goal of your company GPSies.com?
The goal of GPSies .com is to help everyone to plan and document their tracks. The focus is on the GPS technology and I tried to implement a simple user interface. So users without a GPS background can e.g. easy use the converter (automatically file detection) or the track creator.

Do you have a long history in sports activities and what is your favorite sport?
My first marathon was in 1998 – so I’m an enthusiastic runner. And I’m a cyclist in summer, when I’m riding from home to work. Sometimes I’m on trekking tour with my family – never without GPS

How did you come up with the idea of GPSies.com?
I bought my first running GPS device in 2006. The device was very expensive and my wife did not allow me to buy additional maps to document my running tracks. Exactly at this time Google launched the version 2 of Google Maps – so I started some experiments to plot a GPS track on the map. Because I made it public, I received many positive feedback from the community  – so, here we are!

How much visitors does your site attract on a monthly base?
GPSies.com has about 300.000 visitors with about 1.4 million page impressions. In summer 2010 I’m expecting about 2 million PIs. The community has now more than 50.000 registered users and it is growing very fast. All statistics (tracks, users, countries and so on) are public and are accessible by the footer navigation.

How much tracks are there in your database worldwide?
GPSies.com has about 340.000 tracks worldwide (March 2010, public and private tracks). Most of them are in Europe and especially Germany (170.000 tracks).
But GPSies.com has also tracks in USA (8.000), Russia (7.000) – see the statistics to get it all.

How do you see the future for the site?
My plans are to force the mobile accessabilities of GPSies.com. GPSies.com has already a mobile site (m.gpsies.com) and many devices (Andoid, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and so on) are using the API to get tracks in an area or upload tracks to GPSies.com. I’ll open GPSies.com as a plattform for any mobile devices to let them store thier tracks.
GPSies.com is growing very fast. As you know, it is just my hobby site and I don’t earn my money by GPSies.com. My wife and my children are fighting for more time to spend with me. Ok, I’m getting a small income by the advertisement, but this is totally used to pay for the infrastructure (server, administrator, …). I don’t know what happens next – I try to  carry on

Do you foresee a great future for Augmented Reality?
Yes indeed! This is a great opportunity to get much information within an intuitive and easy to use interface. Smartphone software like Layar is just the beginning. Later we’ll have e.g.  glasses with GPS, compass and internet access like in some SF movies.

Is there anything else you want to add to this short interview?
Yes, I’d like to mention, that GPSies.com has also an Android version that let you view tracks by your search parameters. The app is free and available at the Google Market.
Last but not least, don’t forget to go outside and have fun with your outdoor exercises!

Launch of the Openhanced Location Starter Kit with #Layar functionality

Posted in: Android, Augmented Reality, Blog, Mobile, iPhone by openhanced on April 6, 2010

NEWS: Openhanced is releasing a new Sports/freetime activity Layar next week in cooperation with a German company. Above 300000 tracks listed worldwide including elevation/weather data.

Online help | Download

We are, as planned, delivering the Location Starter kit to provide individuals and organizations with a solution that can be used in combination with mobile applications like Layar.

The development of this solution has taken a while and this Freemium version is the blue print for our GEO Data warehouse where people with different roles can manage location content in a user friendly way. Our first goal is to make the solution available to anyone who is interested in location oriented solutions.

For us Layar is the showcase application that we use a lot to provide people with an awesome demo. However, Openhanced is involved in several Enterprise location based solutions for users or employees. To fulfill end user solutions you need a flexible backend for demonstrations.

Some information before you start the download

As with every software solutions and deciding on releases and time frames there are a few small minor issues, mostly related to validation during installation:

• The install wizard can one click install but make sure all your MySQL details are correct;
• Double-check if you need the special 755 permissions on the mentioned files;
• Get a Google Maps key that is needed for the location picker.

Scalability

The backend location management system is built on PHP and MySQL and can be used in a live production environment if needed. We use it for a few solutions that serve a quarter of a million data points and we think that is still fine performance wise.

Downloading and unpacking

You can download the solution here. Make sure after downloading to unpack the zip file and to upload it to your PHP/MySQL server. Call the install.htm through your browser after uploading.

To get help before you upload and install visit our extensive online help.

EU VAT check Mobile Web Application (mowapp)

Posted in: Android, Mobile, Mobile Web Applications, iPhone by openhanced on April 2, 2010

Click here for the URL.

All companies in Europe officially need to check the VAT id of the partners/suppliers they work with, till now that has been difficult to do.

That changes from now on, we just have released a Mobile Web Application to check VAT numbers for the following countries:

• Netherlands
• Austria
• Belgium
• Bulgaria
• Cyprus
• Czech Republic
• Germany
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Spain
• Finland
• France
• Great Britain
• Greece
• Hungary
• Ireland
• Italy
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Latvia
• Malta
• Poland
• Portugal
• Romania
• Sweden
• Slovenia
• Slovakia

The mobile browser based application is usable on the Android an iPhone devices but you can also use it on the desktop on a Safari browser.

It is our aim to provide businesses worldwide with vertical applications on mobile devices.

The data is provided by the EU and a wrapper web service is developed by http://isvat.appspot.com/

The Layar Open Source creation tool will be released next week, the name is OHLSK.

Posted in: Android, Augmented Reality, Blog, Mobile, Open Source by openhanced on March 26, 2010

Right now OHLSK is the short name for Openhanced Location Starter Kit. It can be used as a backend for any mobile location client but right now it supports Layar out of the box.

In between business – we are working on: a big sports activity Layar, location based SMS services, mobile app., several new Mobile 2.0 concepts – i’m glad to say that there has been a lot of progress in the OHLSK. We needed to extract a Freemium set of capabilities from the total solution and that has gone well. Below are some screenshots of the final Freemium solution:

There are some things still to add or change:

• creation of Layar actions in multiple languages;
• authentication;
• spatial search optimization;
• URI types.

However, these are minor changes and it will not postpone the release. The release will contain extensive help on how to configure and install the solution on your own PHP/MySQL environment.

The total solution (with more capabilities) that we are working on serves as a base backend for all our concepts and projects in the future.

How to use the ZXing Open Source barcode scanner in combination with a mobile web app.

Posted in: Android, Blog, Open Source by openhanced on March 24, 2010

One of the great things of Android is the Intents functionality (An Intent is a simple message object that represents an ”intention” to do something) and some smart applications have implemented an even easier method to startup their application, an http URL.

After doing some experiments with the ZXing package we discovered that there is a way to launch the ZXing barcode application by using the URL http://zxing.appspot.com/scan For this to work ZXing needs to be installed of course.

We used this approach to show a small barcode demo to a few people. The demo is about scanning a barcode and starting our own customized mobile web application. When that is done we have the option to scan another barcode, that is using the ZXing URL to start the application.

To get this working you need to do a few settings in the default ZXing application.

1. Goto settings…

and select Custom search URL.

There we will fill out the URL of our mobile web application.

Of course you can replace this by your own custom URL. If you use this URL it will not work for you because we have only one barcode in our database right now.

Now we scan a product and then click Custom search.

Our product in the database is a box of stamps. Our database contains media that is related to stamps (Youtube video, Photo etc.).

Here we have the option “Scan new object”, this feature supports the ZXing option to start the application by an URL.

With ZXing you can build your own barcode database if you want!

Preview of a complete POI/Layar backend, frontend and browser based mobile solution

Posted in: Android, Augmented Reality, Blog, Mobile, Open Source, iPhone by openhanced on March 8, 2010

Layar client

Last couple of weeks we have done some extensive development to get a complete working concept (some will be used at current projects) around POI’s, Layar and backend integration PLUS Jquery based clients for Android and iPhone.

After analyzing some of the solutions available I think there is a lot to improve and also ways to extend the experience. A lot of layar developers for example focus just on the Layar client (which is perfectly fine) but we took this approach and extended it into an approach where Layar actions (available in the specification) kick of Jquery clients (Android and iPhone) where you can even execute more location based services. Below is a sample screenshot of how this looks inside Android (in Dutch):

By linking these almost native clients (nothing to install) for example the Layar experience can heavily be extended. When people select an action in Layar above screens can be opened from within Layar:

POI/Layar backend

There are a few POI/Layar backends available but again we think they are not flexible enough. We think that one infrastructure can facilitate both Layar data but also any other location based information. On top of that we are working on:

• a commenting system for POI’s/Layar;
• location based advertising;
• invitations by SMS for location based surveys or ads;
• generating coupons and a way for users to claim a coupon (location based);
• a retailer interface where store owners can add ads;
• and may other interesting solutions…

Below some screenshots of the backend:

The backend is suitable for multiple users and user groups. Users that register as a retailer will have an option to create location based messages or coupons.

All above work is in development and some will be rolled over to a live environment. A freemium version will be available so that you can create your own Layar in an easy way. We plan to release this around April.

A CloudPhone is an interesting concept

Posted in: Blog, Mobile by openhanced on February 23, 2010

Just back from MWC and I’m recovering from all the news announced. Lots of phones, apps., talks, pacts etc.

However, between all the news I missed an overall visionary overview of the mobile industry and where we are heading. Maybe I missed it because I did not attend the real congress but I heard no buzz around phone functionality in the cloud or CloudPhones.

What is a CloudPhone
To me this is a device that gets 90% of its functionality and content out of the cloud. It includes the interface that is not baked into the device or on SIM but a real fully connected phone with a very lightweight OS. For mobile operators that would mean a smarter bit pipe in the end (they hate the word dumb bit pipe).

For a CloudPhone to happen we need one important thing at least: high-speed wireless access.

Desktop trends vs mobile trends
If we look at the trends in the mobile world and compare that to web 2.0 and the Enterprise we notice a difference, the mobile world is focusing on native (desktop for mobile devices) while web 2.0 and Enterprise is all about cloud. I think this is an remarkable difference especially if you know that the iPhone was web apps. only in the beginning. The biggest question is “why is this the case?”. For sure the answer now is reliable high-speed access everywhere. Whatever phone manufacturers say the concept of phones have not changed much, how we use them however has changed a whole lot. So the question is if we should change the phone model if we get mobile access everywhere? I think we should.

I think it is very weird that we carry around all this privacy data the whole day with a big risk of losing it. Can you imagine you would make a backup of your business data everyday and carry it around the whole day in your pocket? Basically a phone stores a lot of information locally and I see that as a huge risk. If you ask people why they carry their phone the whole day you get two answers:

1. I need to be in touch with everyone;
2. I’m afraid to lose it so that others have all my data when I lose it.

Point 2 is really important, the risk of losing or getting robbed is a real risk everywhere in the world and the old phone model where everything is stored locally is absolutely not the smartest way to do it (again, everything else moves to the cloud).

In the cloud is saver
The cloud is good enough to store all our: Tweets, banking information, credit card information, employee info, invoice etc. so why isn’t it good enough to store all our phone stuff (I don’t mean syncing). Actually, the mobile operator is already storing a lot of our phone information and in some countries they are actually forced to do so.

I notice in talks with other phone users that their contact list is holy although mostly very incomplete. My private contact list on my phone does not contain much information either, just first names or nicknames. I personally would like to have an online contact list without the need to sync., just make calls from a real-time online list.

Having all in the cloud is also much saver and controllable if you lose your phone, you could easily log in through a portal and disable your phone.

The dumb bit pipe discussion and how it can become smarter
Again and again you hear that mobile operators don’t want to be called dumb bit pipes but my point is that they should be very happy. They control who drives on the mobile wireless highway and nobody else. Mobile operators are the ISP’s of the mobile world, they just need to be much more innovative from an end user perspective. From an infrastructure point of view they are already very smart and innovative. They need to think how to move stuff to their cloud infrastructure (contact lists, phone settings) and forget about this dumb bit pipe discussion. They need to look into different ways to setup call connections (see Ribbit) and offer solutions like Dial2Do, Twilio etc.

If they manage to move to a smart bit pipe they can charge even more for Internet access because that is the future for sure.

The CloudPhone, it is almost there
Basically the iPhone and Android are already partly cloud phones because they connect to an incredible amount of online services, everyday more services are released. But, wait a minute, the phone itself is not a cloud device yet, indeed it isn’t. It is still this device with local storage and native apps. However, within 2-3 years it can be. New faster mobile wireless access (Long Term Evolution) can make the CloudPhone happen very soon!

What needs to happen
A lot needs to happen, the mobile industry has evolved but is now on a collision course with standards. Everyone is doing his own OS and the AppStore goldrush is just copycat behavior because nobody can come up with something more innovative. There are two things that need to happen:

1. Availability of high-speed mobile internet all over the planet;
2. New lightweight OS’es that all support the same standards and focus on mobile web apps.

I think Palm is actually the company who has the best and most open implementation although I must confess I have never used it. However, specification wise I can say they have adopted emerging standards.

How does a CloudPhone look like in 2-3 years
A CloudPhone is an always connected device that uses a high-speed always on data connection to present the user with the latest information. It does not use synchronization because it gets all data from the cloud (address book, settings etc.). Only a small core OS will be installed on a SIM card (probably possible) and a browser will take care of the rest. Smart technologies like HTML5, Ajax and REST will make the phone super interactive and responsive. The CloudPhone will be secure because when it gets stolen everything can be disabled online fast and easy (IMEI number).

The dumb bit pipe will be upgraded to a smart bit pipe and most call handling will be done by cloud servers at the mobile operator. Mobile operators will also take care of the storage of address books and phone settings (again, in the web 2.0 world we already do this) so that we can easily move our profile to a new phone.

It could look like the very interactive interface that Microsoft showed with Windows Phone 7, I actually think MS could pull this off with all their very advanced backend services easily. Some of this they will do in Windows Phone 7 but it will probably be another fat mobile client.

I personally would love to have a full CloudPhone that is always connected. Currently my phone is used for so much more than just making calls, it is really starting to replace my desktop in some areas

Openhanced is announcing the Layar (@layarmobile) starter kit

Posted in: Android, Augmented Reality, Blog, Open Source, iPhone by openhanced on

In the last month we have been working on a complete starter kit for Layar, including: an Open Source backend (multi user level) with supporting database, a GEO spatial search routine and supporting mobile web pages that behave like native apps (Android and iPhone). We will launch this web starter kit in the first week of April and everyone will be able to download the starter kit and install it on a shared or dedicated host.

Now that Layar (@layarmobile) really gains momentum we really want everyone be able to play around with it in an easy way. Right now there are a few solutions out there that support the creation of layars but we wanted to create a full system that can be used by everyone with just a small understanding of PHP and MySQL.

It is just a solution to check out how Layar works and it will not support 3D objects.

Below you can see a few first screenshots of the solution:

backend

mobile web apps.

yes this is the Nexus One

We use the mobile web apps. for providing access to different API’s when executing a layar action, all these actions are related to a nearby selected point. You can think of things like: nearby station, –tweets, –shops etc.

The backend system that we use allows administrators to setup different users that all can add and maintain their own points from within the same database, however, users cannot edit other peoples points.

We will release the solution free of charge and you will have all freedom to install it on your own environment to try it out.

P.S. I want to thank Johannes (@jlapoutre) for his tip on the GEO spatial search.

The Openhanced take on MWC 2010

Posted in: Blog, Mobile by openhanced on February 21, 2010

Just back from MWC 2010 and my head is full of impressions and technology. This was the first time at MWC and probably not the last (next time a little shorter). Can we write down somewhere that the mobile (24) operators agreed on a kind of pact against Apple? It is clear, the mobile operators feel they are missing the AppStore opportunity and have decided to close a pact to bring….. another AppStore. Well, do we need it? I’m not sure if this is innovative, it is just copy cat behavior. There is an incredible gold rush happening right now and it seems everyone wants to build and sell native applications for iPhone but also Android. Interestingly most people I talked to gamble on a consumer application to get rich. To base your business operation on such a gamble is a big risk with a low possibility of success. There are probably only a few hundred developers worldwide that make very good money on consumer applications, that is not much.

I also doubt very much if the native route is the best way. The Gartner Group, but also Google and others, are very clear that mobile web applications is the market that will grow faster. On top of that, it is the only segment that has a kind of standard and that is WebKit and HTML5. The mobile OS war makes one thing clear, there are not many standards and I think that is bad news. If you go native your development team needs to be very skilled in several different languages and developers might be hard to get. WebKit on the other hand seems to be everywhere and the support for HTML5 is a real value. Let’s hope that Microsoft will fully support HTML5 or even decide to roll out WebKit as an option for device manufacturers.

Talking about Microsoft, they really surprised everyone with a very slick demo of Windows Phone 7 Series.

I really think they have done the impossible, redefining the mobile interface again and to me the iPhone suddenly looked old.  However, we still don’t know anything about the core code and other plans. They did not answer any question on the OS, they all save that for Mix 2010.

If we talk about other companies that got attention, we need to mention Google. Lots of Android phones but Google did the ultimate, 1000 developers got a Nexus One for free. And yes, I got one too! Google is dedicated to get attention and the developers behind them.

Overall the MWC event was a good place to meet people from the business but there was one thing I found really annoying, the lack of FREE and reliable WIFI. I must say, a big joke! Next time the organization should fix this!!

And what about the others? Well, saw Samsung Bada OS but they need to get back to the drawing board, not sexy and not interesting.

Luckily this year there was also AppPlanet, by far my favorite spot. All the hardware is nice but in the end it all looks the same and the software makes the difference. I would say a bigger AppPlanet next year!

And yes such a exhibition can make you very tired, sleep well ladies