« May 2006 | Main | July 2006 »

Control Google Maps via ThinkPad tilt

Another day, another hack. Here's a demo that controls Google Maps using ThinkPad Hard Drive Active Protection sensor. You tilt your ThinkPad and Google Maps roll over. Pretty cool.

というわけで ThinkPad ハックづいてるこの頃(といっても2日ですが)、また面白いハックを1つ。Google Maps の地図を、ThinkPad を傾けてナビゲートします。まずはデモをどうぞ。

My recommendation is to choose Satellite mode, with the 3rd Zoom level. It makes me feel like flying in the sky, just as birds. Because of Google Maps JS library prefetching images, sometimes you have a delay (latency) moving, but other than that, it is quite fantastic.

サテライトでズームは最大から3つ目ぐらいが最適。空を飛んでいる鳥の気分になれます。ちょっと Gmaps のローディングで遅延があったりしますが、それ以外は快適の一言。

The code is available here in my svn repository. Note that because it uses ActiveX, you need to download the gmaps.html locally and open it with Windows IE. The app is written in JavaScript (using Google Maps API) and ActivePerl's PerlScript inside Windows IE. You need to install Win32API-File CPAN module (use ppm to install) before running it.

コードは こちら からダウンロードできます。ActiveX を使うので、ブラウザ上でそのまま動かすことはできません。gmaps.html をダウンロードして WinIE で開いてください。ドライブプロテクションのついた ThinkPad, ActivePerl (PerlScript が有効になっている必要あり) に Win32API-File が必要です (ppm でインストールできます)。IE で <script language="PerlScript"> の中から ShockMgr を開いて、JavaScript に返して GMaps を pan してます。IE だからできるワザ。

Enjoy!

Turn your ThinkPad into lightsaber

Recent IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad models have HDAPS (Hard Drive Active Protection System) support. HDAP's ShockMgr API is accessible to developers, by reverse engineering. For scripting languages like Perl, it's pretty straightforward to read the Accelerometer data from ShockMgr device.

So here it comes: ThinkPad Saber. It would be familiar as a ThinkPad clone of MacSaber if you're a Mac Geek.

The code is written in Perl, and is available at my public svn repository. You can also download the self executable package (of course for Win32) from releases directory.

Bloglines API bug in this 24 hours

Congrats to Bloglines new search stuff. It should have been done 2 years ago, but better late than never. It could be a nice addition to EgoSearch subscriptions and I already did it for Plagger.

I don't know if it's directly related, while it's likely, but their API authentication has been borked for more than 24 hours, since around 8pm PST of May 31st. All API requests end up with errors "401 Authorization Required". Fix that ASAP!

My Photo

del.icio.us/miyagawa

Flickr

  • www.flickr.com

My Last FM

Blog powered by TypePad

Blog Search

Lingr