I have started this blog to keep track of all the interesting stuff I read about. In some cases, friends of mine have shared their cool stuff with me. I try to keep the headlines and descriptions short, so you must follow the links to read and decide for yourself if a topic is worth your time. Want to contribute? Just comment on any of the stories and I will be notified instantly.
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Your smartphone is packed with tons of sensors — many of them the same types of sensors that you might want to strap on to an Arduino by way of a shield. It's got Bluetooth. It's got WiFi. It's got gyroscopes, and accelerometers, and a touchscreen that can emulate all sorts of keypads and display types. Why not let your smartphone share those capabilities with your Arduino, effectively allowing it to provide the prototyping functionality of dozens of different shields? That's the idea behind 1sheeld.
While other companies like Square and PayPal have provided businesses with the ability to collect payments with mobile credit card readers, businesses are reliant on the provider's apps to process those payments. CardFlight provides its clients with card readers, and also gives them an SDK to build payment processing into their own branded apps.
CardFlight has SDKs available for both iOS and Android platforms, and connects with 23 different payment processors. The company's gateway also allows clients to connect apps with their own internal CRM, inventory management, fulfillment, and reporting and analytics tools.
On Studio, you can remix other people's designs by swapping out the base photo with one of your own, and then re-share the design.
There are controls for just about anything, with options to rotate and crop the photo, add filters, adjust brightness and saturation, as well as adding the aforementioned text, borders and designs.
For example, my sister could share a photo of herself on the beach with a special border and the text "Hang Ten." I could then remix that photo and place the same border and text on a picture of my 10 toes hanging over the edge of a surfboard.
Whether the app is in beta or live, Watchsend users can specify exactly what pages they want to record, which are then encrypted and secured in its data base. All recordings come with screen annotations of taps, swipes and presses, as well as a timeline of the user's actions. App developers can then go in and view them, using very specific search terms to navigate the vast number of videos collected.
Afterwards, they can then use Privy by entering their "chalkboard specials" — the limited-time offers they run for a specific time frame, plus a photo and description of each. Marketing teams can do this as the offers come up, or they can load them up to a year in advance if they're better organized and prepared. Privy then automates the distribution of those campaigns to the various services and sites the company uses.
From an online dashboard, businesses can see at a glance which sites are driving customers, and drill down into customer info, data on redemptions, reviews, claims, and more. Customer data can also be both imported and exported to Mailchimp and Constant Contact and CSV, to allow for more personalized targeting of the audience segments.
ThinkUp, the social media management tool that matters most, hits version 1.0 today. It lets you store all your social activity from networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ in a database you control and search, sort and analyze it. If you have a Web server that can run a PHP application, you can take control of your social network data. Ever wanted to search for a tweet more than a couple days old? Don't bother with Twitter search. ThinkUp is the only way.
ThinkUp lets you archive all your social network activity. It's free and open-source, so it's a totally extensible platform with a growing community of developers. You can search, browse, publish, analyze and visualize your content and data in all kinds of ways. Under the terms of service of your social networks, they can delete everything you've created without warning. ThinkUp lets you own your content. This isn't a review; this is a public service announcement. Go get it.
This CES has been a surprisingly musical. Aside from the usual headphones and speakers, we've already seen a number of electronic musical instruments including the Artiphon Instrument 1, a well-made electronic guitar analog with a pressure sensitive fretboard.
Unlike the Jamstik, the Instrument 1 doesn't have real strings but instead you play on the raised ridges on a pressure sensitive surface. The iPhone receives MIDI input from the device and you can even plug it into a computer.
The Instrument 1 is made of hardwood and can be played like a guitar, banjo, bass (by tapping on the strings), or even a fiddle. It should cost under $1,000 and will be made in and around Nashville by the creator, Mike Butera.
We spent a few moments playing the instrument on stage at CES 2013.
Today, the company offers integration support for over 35 services, including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google, Github, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Klout, Flickr, Instagram, WordPress, YouTube, PayPal, Reddit, StockTwits, SoundCloud, Rdio, Yammer, FitBit, RunKeeper, Zeo and others. iOS and Android SDKs are available, and Singly works with web-based applications, too. More integrations are coming, and the team will also respond to feedback from developers to solve future challenges and pain points on mobile in ways that can benefit the developer community as a whole.
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