Interim Presentation - Setup

I have decided to use Apple Keynote for my interim presentation, you can get som creative designs and interesting slide tranistions.

I also plan to take my new Apple MiniMac to the presention, I can speak from past experiance that creating presentations and applications at home, and then trying to run them on University computers can cause problems.

According to Steve Gardener who is responsible for the I.T, there will be computers and monitors available for the presentation. I noticed that all the PC monitors have VGA connectors and the Mac's there own special connector is used.

I managed to find some "normal" DVI monitors and asked if I could have one of those for my presentation, as my MiniMac only has a DVI connector. I did dome with a VGA adaptor but the qaulity though this is appauling.

My Apple MiniMac also comes with a remote, which can be used to advance slides. I feel this would be benifial as i could have a contiunus "flow" to my presentation and not stop to advance slides.

Interim Presentation

Its been a while since i have posted, this month involves my interim presenation.

I have been told I have to present in a 30 minite slot, the acutal presentation will be around 15 minites long.

The presentation is worth 10% of the entire project, so its very important i get it right and to a high standard.

At the moment, I do not know who I am presenting to. However I am looking forward to it, as I would like to have a working demo my the time i present.

Alex Lewer

I e-mailed Alex Lewer after Steve Cockett mentioned, he would be willing to work with mobile related final year projects.

I have now received a reply from Alex expressing interest in my project, and suggesting various ideas for implementing texting systems.

I am now arranging a time with him, when we can meet up and go though it in person.

XML Visit Card

I found this whilst searching for "Flash Lite XML" in Google.

http://www.metah.ch/blog/?p=176

Its designed as a "Business Card" but looking further into it, this has exactly the kind of technology i need.

The values to the visit card are pulled down from an XML file that is hosted externaly.

I plan to look into this further and see how exactly it works and how it can be customerised for my project.

Flash Lite Testing

I have been testing some Flash Lite applications and making my own, Flash 8 Proffesional has the options to export to particuar phones. I have been experimenting in the actionscript to make applications full screen.

At this stage I would just like to get the basics right.

Flash Lite Development

Flash Lite 2 is available for my Nokia N70, which will be my test bed phone for my project.

Flash Lite is a cut down version of Flash designed to be run on mobile devices. Flash Lite 2 has been around for some time now, early versions (1.0 & 1.1) had limited support for actionscript and XML connections.

I paid $10 from the Adobe website and have installed the new version (Flash Lite 2.0) on my phone, I downloaded an example from the Adobe Showcase libary and it works well.

Zeo

A very interesting project from last year was Zeo made by Alex Lewer, Steve Cockett mentioned in one of his lectures that Alex would be willing to help anyone doing mobile based projects. I spoke with Steve about this and what i was looking for, and he was kind enough to e-mail Alex for me, and forward on his business e-mail address.

I have e-mailed Alex detailing my project idea to see what he thinks, hopefully he will be interested by my project and i should be able to get some good advice from him.

Project Update

Its been about a week since I last posted on my blog, I should have posted before but unfortunately not got the chance. A lot has happened however since my last post, such as:

2 meetings with Ian Dear
Apple MiniMac Recvied
Apple ProCare Training Session on Apple OS X Basics.
Sample Demos Working

I had a meeting with Ian Dear on Friday 3rd Nov, the outcome from the meeting was for me to look into the databases side of the project and how I could get data from an online source to a mobile phone.

I decided to use Flash Lite for my mobile application for a number of reasons, which I have talked about in my documentation. If I was using a normal full version of Flash, I could use “Flash Remoting” for the databases, as Flash Remoting uses PHP and MySql. Unfortunately Flash Lite does not support Remoting, so another solution had to be found.

During my research I found that XML works very well with Flash Lite, using actionscript the Flash Lite application can contact and externally hosted XML file, and download this and display it in text boxes in the software.

I managed to get several demos working, and show these to Ian Dear on my most recent meeting which was today.

I would also like to include some kind of news feature with the project, and cool and nifty way of doing this I found was though RSS feeds. Flash Lite can display RSS feeds, although it can’t display images. It does however have the benefit of being cross platform, so other devices can access the news feed.

I had so many ideas to talk about with Ian Dear, that we just ran out time and he had to kick me out off his office because he a lecture to give.

I also have taken delivery of a shinny new Intel Based Apple MacMini, this was due to my Sony laptop being a bit slow and unreliable. I also fancied a mac!

To make the most of my new purchase I am now a Apple ProCare member, I went along to their store in Regent Street in London on Wednesday. I just went though the basics to start with, although I had used OSX before I had never used it in anger. The ProCare team gave me some good hints and tips and I already have another session booked this coming Wednesday on some more intense areas.

iStock Photo

Today i bought some images from iStock photo, which i thought would be perfect for my project.

I will use these images in the documentation stage of my project.

Project Meeting

Had my 4th meeting with Dr Ian Dear today, I showed Ian some of the research I had been doing as well as some of the many ideas i had for my project from documentation, to the acutual artefact itself.

He said that I needed to fill in on of Monthly Progress forms, but most importantly to look ahead to next month and what I needed to do.

I plan to complete the Project plan & Progress form this week and get his comments by the end of the week.

Apple ProCare

Its been 3 years since my first lessons in Photoshop in Flash, since then i have forgotten some of the key skills in Flash & Photoshop.

Yesterday I learnt of a service offered by Apple Computers called "ProCare" as well as a number of other benefits, it offers you 52 private one-to-one sessions with a Apple Mac specialist. These one-to-one sessions can be on any topic you want from basic OSX operation, to Photoshop and all Apple programs.

In my project I need to make the best use of Photoshop, and other applications so I thought it would a be a good idea to brush up on some of my skills.

Today I became a Apple ProCare member at a cost of £79, which is good value considering the amount of personal tuition you get, plus a number of other benefits.

This is the website for Apple's ProCare:

http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/procare/

Domains Purchased

For my project I have purchased 2 domains:

• thorpeparkmobile.co.uk
• thorpemobile.co.uk

I decided to buy .co.uk rather than .com domains because Thorpe parks current site is .co.uk

I have already setup a basic page on:

www.thorpeparkmobile.co.uk

Thorpe Park

I have decided to make my mobile multimedia map for Thorpe Park, since this is close and i have already done some research there.

Clarification of Project

I have only just realised that since i created my project blog i have not described my idea in detail.

My project called eMap is an interactive map for theme parks, designed to run on mobile phones.

The idea is you can download software from a website, or have it loaded onto your phone when you enter a theme park.

This software then allows you to interact with the park in a number of ways:

• Explore Rides
• Get live update on Queue times
• Navigate to park facilities
• See how rides work

That is the basic idea, I keep getting new ideas all the time and I can see my project expanding.

Change of project

On a recent trip to Thorpe park, to gather images and do research. I have decided to make the interactive map for mobile phones rather than a handheld bespoke device.

Whilst queuing for several of the major rides, i noticed many people had their mobile phones out. They were either playing games, or texting friends while waiting for the ride.

This is when I had the idea that my bespoke device was going to be a waste of time, due to the costs to build it and possible vandalism or damage.

Why build a multimedia device when nearly 100% of your guests, bring one into the park already?

I plan to investiagate creating a multimedia application for mobile phones.

GP2X - Not Suitable?

On futher investigation, i have found out the although the GP2X runs the Linux operating system, it does not support the new version of flash.

I plan to create my project and possibly my documentation in flash 8 proffsional and use videos

The GP2X would not be able to play these and as such, would not be suitable for my project.

I plan to reseach and find a small handheld device to demo my project on, maybe a small touch screen which is an extension of windows.

GP2X

I have been researching the GP2X that Steve showed me, here are some photos of it:





Its seams a good size for my Project idea... i need to speak with Ian Dear regarding getting one of these...

Blog is created!

I have now created my blog for my Project.

Today I had a conversation with Steve Cockett regarding my project, at the moment I have to main ways I can go down with my main project idea.

I had an interesting chat with Steve and he showed me a very interesting device, its called the gp2X and its a hand held device simialr to Sony's PSP.

It runs the Linux operating system, and has several "bolt" on things such as PS/2 ports, S-Video, RCA. He said this could be used to demonstrate my project, and its a peice of tehnology that can be used and can prove it can be done.

Here is a link to the website:

http://www.gp2x.co.uk

Its not that expensive to buy, Steve suggested talking to Ian Dear who is my Project Supervisor about the possibilty of the School buying one.

My plan in the next few days is to e-mail Ian and talk to him about it and see if they would buy one, also i need to look into Flash & Director on Linux as my project will be made in one of these two applications.