I am developing an internet enabled FM radio for my 3rd year Electronics project.
What does that mean?
Well, you take the standard FM radio and and connect it to the internet, this allows the radio to get extra content for the user including text and images. It also allows it to push information back to radio stations and other web services.
I will be implementing a new technology called RadioDNS.
RadioDNS is open technology that lets broadcast radio and the internet work together: enhancing the listener experience, and making radio better.
This new technology is based on the DNS system that holds the internet up, allowing you to resolve URIs pointing to online content to support radio listening.
By the end of the project, I want to create a usable product that will have some form of user input(s) and of course visual and audio outputs. It will try and be as portable as possible making use of Wi-Fi and/or 3G connectivity, while maintaining main functionalities even when offline.
We have 3 lectures next week to give us final details on how the projects run and then I have free reign over what I do then.
It has been a few years now and she has served me well, but it is time to say goodbye to dot info. My second personal domain name (first being djvj.eu back in my early teens) has been with us a few years and seen me through my web dev learning process well. It has pointed to some great stuff but now the time is here to say goodbye.
I was messing around one day looking for a better domain, I mean dylanjones.info is pretty good as it is a top-level domain with just my name, but then I thought how could I just have my name. I checked that the Spanish .es TLD was publically available outside of Spain. Before 2005, you could only get a .es domain if you held a trademark within Spain or some other naming exceptions.
dylanjon.es was already taken and is just a holding page to sell it to the Dylan Jones around the world. Screw that, I am not paying more than neccessary so I looked further into my name.
anjon.es was available so I thought, perfect - I can change my name to Ryan and use the sub-domain ry - only joking, dyl.anjon.es is my name.
The best bit now is that there are a few other names ending -an Jones so I am willing to give you a free sub-domain and e-mail address if you want it - Just get in touch.
So I have moved everything over and put in place 301 Redirects from dylanjones.info - I have even spruced up the CSS a bit and included a Google Web Font called Signika. There is still a couple of things that need to be moved over so some stuff still points to dylanjones.info
So there we go, a personal domain with just my name and if you Ryan Jones, Sian Jones, Brian Jones or Alan Jones etc would like a free sub-domain, drop us a message.
A while ago, Alice said something about how the younger generation of today do not wear watches. This may be due to technology we live with in the 21st century, there is an abundance of devices around us reminding us of the time from wall clocks, to microwaves, computers, our phones, music players and TVs; there is just no need to have time strapped to ourselves any more.
The concept of attaching a mechanical device to our wrists to keep us informed of how many hours we have left to do things is quite funny really. Why have we been doing this for so long? To know the time, you say, time is precious, we need to look after it. Fair point. But I have taken the plunge and have not been wearing my wristwatch for a couple of weeks and I feel great! At no point have I even looked at my wrist to find out the time. I think I have been on time to my appointments and lectures, for the most part. I feel free and like I have all the time in the world.
Looking at my Google Analytics, there was something starring me in the face.
I was aware that my BBC Now Playing application was a bulk of my total traffic, but it was surprising to see how many different ways people will search for what is the current song playing on BBC Radio 1?
The other interesting thing is that the most common browser searching for these related terms is Internet Explorer. So I am guessing that the majority of these people are listening to the radio using an Analogue FM radio, rather than via their browser. This is multi-platform radio, sort of working then. A listener is happy to be listening to an old analogue radio and then when wanting track information, will head to a search engine.
Great! I hope to add more functionality to the on radio application, including LastFM scrobbling and integration with on-line music stores soon enough.
I have had my Samsung Galaxy S2 for a few weeks now and I have really enjoyed having a smartphone back in my pocket, after the demise of my iPhone.
Joining the Android Developer Program only cost $25 and I have now been experimenting with what I can get my phone to do.
A good starting point was to port ybsolo over to the Android Market. At the moment all the application does is open a web view but with the service being advertised in the market place, we hopefully will see some people trying it out.
Is My Train Delayed? is a perfect service for the mobile platform so I have been moving it to a native application. It is currently on the Android Market at version 4.0 as I have been adding features over the past few days.
Currently at 146 downloads, it is doing quite well. It pulls the live data straight from National Rail and creates a nice scrollable table view. It also auto-completes station names. On the website, you can locate your nearest station, I am experimenting with this on the android application as well as detailed journey information in a popup window.
I have been working on a couple of quick projects recently that I thought I would like to share with you. The first one was inspired my my recent trip to India. Myself and Alice wanted to make contact everyday to the UK to either of our families by email or text. It worked out that we both ended up sending a message each so that both sets of parents knew where we were, what we had been up to and more importantly that we were safe.
Looking back at the bill from O2, this did not work out too expensive. I thought there might be a better way, be using some kind of relay service. There does not appear to be anything designed for travellers in this respect so I thought, that seems like a fun thing to make.
Keep in Touch Abroad lets users make posts via the site, SMS or email and then pushes them in real-time to the users subscribers who can decide to have notifications via the site, SMS or email. Users can attach location, photos, videos or audio to their posts too!
I have not officially launched it yet but am thinking a closed-beta release due to the limit of texts that can be sent via the O2 API (20 a day).
If you are interested in giving this product a go then hit me up on twitter @dylan8902 or email dylan@dylanjones.info
The second little project answers the question: Is My Train Delayed? - very simple use of the National Rail live departure board API but a lot easier to use than their website and at a cool domain.
Yesterday, I went down to London (on the 0505 train) for Rewired State's Hack day, held at the Guardian Offices. A busy day in London with the Boat Race (well done Oxford) and a protest.
Using open data from data.gov.uk, the theme was to create a tool for government, citizens or businesses. We had about 6 and a half hours to do it. Obviously I went along with no plan and no data ready so I began by going through some of the datasets to see what I could find.
There was a crime theme in the air so I decided on using prison population data.
Introducing: Where Should All the Convicts Go? A tool designed to help the government decide which countries to deport prisoners to. Coded primarily in Javascript, with a hint of PHP.
There were loads of fantastic hacks put together including games, crime mapping tools, complaint tools, weather, political and more.
This semester, I am working on the Arduino Platform to design and make an embedded system. We have been given free reign (as long as Dr Evans things it's do-able within the time limitations) to make whatever we like.
In the labs, we have been learning the basics of the platform, getting familiar with the IDE and code libraries.
My first idea was some kind of remote control doing various things, but then I remembered my Electronic Clothing idea I had last year! So, I am currently toying with this idea:
Introducing the MAC: Multimeda Access Coat
From the fantastic sketch, you can see I am hoping to have a screen and keypad in each sleeve, earphones, possible connected to an iPhone dock type thing, temperature and wind sensors, GSM receiver (so that you can text the coat), maybe GPS?
Although in the early stages of development, I have invested in an £8 coat from Primark.
I have almost completed the Mobile Applications module. Code is submitted, tutorial is written up and poster made. All that is now left to do is a presentation on Thursday.
As promised, I am sharing what I have done with you.
The tutorial is available as a PDF and explains what the application does and how. It guides you through the processes to make the application yourself.
You do need background knowledge of iOS development and a basic understanding of the key frameworks.
The full code is available as well to see. If you have a Mac with xCode then feel free to build and use the application. You will need to edit a couple of properties before, feel free to get in touch if you need help.
This is the poster that gives a brief outline of the application along with some screenshots.
