Talk about Deal

A tipster send Gizmodo screenshots that supposedly reveal some interesting details of Google’s new phone.

Originally posted at News – Wireless

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Hi, in this short video message I want to wish you a happy new year and say a big thanks to all readers and all people that contribute everyday to make Woork Up a better community. A lot of interesting news are coming in the next months. Subscribe to our RSS Feeds or follow us on Twitter and Facebook to stay update. Happy new year to everyone!

Antonio

PS: I hope my english is… good :)

If I had to looking for some attributes to describe the japanese style in web design I’d choose: essential, minimalist, with an intensive use of Adobe Flash, animations and music in background (mainly solo piano, inspired by Ryuichi Sakamoto’s compositions), traditional and modern at the same time. Here is a collection of some beautiful examples of japanese websites for your daily inspiration.

Go to the websiteJapan Post Service

Go to the websiteIshiyama Senkoh

Go to the websiteShanghai World Financial Center

Errata Corrige: Shanghai is in China, not in Japan :)

Go to the websiteMoonlinx

Go to the websiteJapan Association Press

Go to the websiteMitsubishi Real Estate Services

Go to the websiteMikihiko Kyobashi

Go to the websiteffffff

Go to the websiteRiskyBrand

Go to the websiteNTT Docomo

Go to the web siteAll Japan Kendo Federations

Go to the websiteKarimoku

Go to the websiteIdemitsu Kosan

Go to the websiteDyDo Drink

Go to the websiteFit For My Life

Go to the websiteMitekero

A manufacturing snafu on a recent batch of Vicks DayQuil capsules has led to a voluntary recall by Proctor & Gamble. The problem? No child-resistant packaging.  About 700,000 packs of Vicks DayQuil Cold & Flu 24-Count Bonus Pack Liquicaps sold in various stores nationwide between September 2008 and December 2009 are affected. The recalled product comes in an orange package bearing the green Vicks logo; it has the following UPC code: 3 23900 01087 1. No other Vicks products are involved in this recall.

Be aware that the label says the packaging is child-resistant, even though it’s not. Vicks DayQuil Cold & Flu contains acetaminophen, dextromethorphan, doxylamine and pseudoephrine, all of which can be toxic to young children. “This medicine could cause serious health problems or death to a child if several of the capsules are swallowed,” according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

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Medical Mobile Monitoring develops a medical-alert tracking system that lets users track someone via GPS satellite online, but its funny-looking pendant misses the mark.

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Researchers at Japan’s Chiba University have unveiled an MAV modeled on a hummingbird. Designed for rescue, it flaps its wings 30 times per second.

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What’s the one application you can’t live without on your smartphone? Tell us in Talkback.

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T-Mobile is telling employees to prepare for the launch of a Google Android phone in early January that will be sold directly by Google, a report says.

Originally posted at Relevant Results

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Oppo doesn’t claim any audio performance advantages for its new BDP-83 Special Edition Blu-ray Disc Player over the standard BDP-83–if you use the new player’s HDMI output. It’s ideal for buyers who still have receivers lacking HDMI connectivity.

Originally posted at The Audiophiliac

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The touch-screen Oregon 450 and 450t navigation devices give hikers an updated interface and improved track navigation, the GPS device maker says.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

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For as little as $5, you can snag one of the best action/RPG titles of all time. If you’re willing to spend a little more, other entertainment bargains await.

Originally posted at The Cheapskate

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We definitely think that maps are the today’s cooler topic, as told in another post (Play with Google maps and Twitter api), and Google Maps API exposes so many functionalities so that I and Alberto Mancini decided to explore deeper some related features via a little toy (Hello Kitty Lost in Milan), which can be downloaded here. When you open the application, what you see is Hello Kitty that has lost the way and comes around looking for the way to home and asking you to click on the map in order to show the right destination.

How it works

Hello Kitty is lost in Milan and is waiting that someone clicks on the map to suggest the home position. In the while Hello Kitty randomly turns around its initial position, catching some gift whose position is randomly chosen to let the character to move around the map. The virtually infinite loop is started in the initialize function (triggered by the body’s onLoad event) that, calling the loadFromWaypoints method of a GDriections object, finds the first position of Kitty and then a callback function on the load event of GDirections lets the animation to proceed (recursively) from a random point to another until the user do selects a home-point on the map. This simple example shows a couple of interesting steps:

1. How to find a path between two points using GDirections.
2. How to use inverse geocoding with GClientGeocoder.

Finding the path

The construction of the path from the actual position of Kitty to the gift position is realized using the GDirections object which can be used to retrieve directions using either a query strings (i.e. addresses) or a couple of coordinates. In the sample to retrieve the path we use GDirections’s method:

that supports multi-point directions in spite of the more common:

being the latter most suited for human readable query strings than to programmatically generated queries as in the sample.

loadFromWaypoints method takes an array of textual input addresses or textual lat/lon points; each separate waypoint is computed as a separate route and returned in a separate GRoute object, each of which contains a series of GStep objects. We use loadFromWaypoints in two variants for different purposes:

1. to get a position “admissible” for a given (randomly chosen) point as:

dirn.loadFromWaypoints([point.toUrlValue(6), point.toUrlValue(6)],
    {getPolyline:true ...});

i.e. specifying twice the same point and then using the first point in the returned polyline to place the marker.

2. to get a path between two points (the caracter at point p0 and the ‘gift’ at point p1) as:

dirn.loadFromWaypoints([p0.toUrlValue(6),p1.toUrlValue(6)],
{getPolyline:true,getSteps:true,travelMode:G_TRAVEL_MODE_WALKING});

that loads the path between the points specified in the first argument; between the others, we specified the travelMode as G_TRAVEL_MODE_WALKING (Kitty has no car;).

Let us note that this is possible if the GDirections constructor is called specifying a <div> container that will hold the textual directions associated with the result (and required to display a warning message to the user when walking directions are in use; the container actually has a display:none;style in the sample code):

where we pass “null” as first argument to avoid the automatic creation of an overlay over the map showing the route. When the function is called, the GDirections object fires three events that can be catched:

1. load
2. add overlay
3. error

In our example we’re mainly interested on the “load event” that, with the help of a global variable, manages all the phases of the game:

1. initial walk
2. random walk towards the gift
3. walk to home

and relative transitions and computations. Most notably when a gift is reached (or at the beginning actually) a new gift position should be computed randomly on the visible map and approximated to the nearest street (using loadFromWayPoints) and if the user clicked somewhere on the map the home position should be retrieved and the path-to-home followed. Once the position of a gift is known (or the position of the home, it is irrilevant here), the call to the loadFromWaypoints method give us the polyline to reach the target and the animate function can proceed to modify the position of the character producing the animation. The function “animate” is realized starting from an idea of Mike Williams.

What’s Geocoding?

Geocoding is the process of converting a human readable address (like “Galleria del Corso, 2, Milano Italy”) into coordinates (latitude 45.465266 and longitude 9.195042) that are needed, for example, to place a marker into the Google map; this service can be accessed via the GClientGeocoder object:

var geocoder = new GClientGeocoder();
geocoder.getLocations(address:String, callback:function) .

where as usual the callback function is the function that will be called asyncronously when the server will give a response. In our case, the random location of the HelloKitty’s home (that will be the final destination of the character) is defined as the nearest street to the user click on the map. The handler of the click event give us the coordinates of the click (which may not lie on a street). In order to compute the address of the nearest street in a human readable way from coordinates, we use a feature that is called “reverse geocoding”. This stuff is suppported by the same GClientGeocoder.getLocations() method, simply passing as argument the GLatLng object instead of a String address. The following line calls the geocoder, passing the position (as the last point of the polyline) and the callback function that will use the retrieved values:

The callback function is necessary since geocoding involves sending a request to Google’s servers and can take some time. In our example, the callback function handles eventual errors and, for a successful response, opens the info window on the final destination and print the address, using the response class given by the Google server:

function showAddress(response) {
     if (!response || response.Status.code != 200) {
         alert("Status Code:" + response.Status.code);
     } else {
        place = response.Placemark[0];
        point = new  GLatLng(place.Point.coordinates[1],place.Point.coordinates[0]);
        map.openInfoWindowHtml(point,
        '<div>Thank you, I am back !! :-)' +
        '<strong>----</strong>' +
        place.address +
        '</div>');
    }
}

This work is realized jointly with Alberto Mancini.

Starting in 2010, car buyers will be able to get a factory-installed HD Radio receiver through which they can tag songs for later purchase and download.

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Eversince, Lokesh Dhakar created the first lightbox application, photo galleries and popup windows advanced to new era. And there was a time that lightboxes become a default component for every web sites. Aside from their libraries and codebase, all of them has similar properties like ability to show single image or group of images with next and previous buttons for navigation, captions and different transition effects mostly depending on mighty jQuery easing plugin.

Opens on the very top of the page texts with a transparent overlay background. In addition to images, also they can display inline elements, iframes, use ajax for its contents, flash or other video types. Many of them have slick css implementation for their user interfaces. So this helps to change their interfaces according to your website easily. In this post I want to propose to you a roundup with 15 of the best and most popular jQuery Lightbox Scripts.

CeeBox

CeeBox is a very customizable and extensive lightbox clone. In addition to images, it can display iframes, inline element, ajax, flash and videos. Note that, it need swfobject plugin to display flash.

ColorBox

ColorBox is very customizable like CeeBox and have a set of transition effects. It can display most of the content types. It also has different built-in themes both for overlay background and lightbox interface.

Faceboox

Facebox is facebook’s lightbox clone. It only display single images without captions, ajax and inline content.

FancyZoom

Fancy Zoom for jQuery: original Cabel Sasser’s FancyZoom replica for jQuery. It can display single image, flash and inline content.

FancyBox

FancyBox is a simple gallery plugin for jQuery. It display most content types but lacks flash and video support. It also has different transition effects.

Greybox Redux

Greybox Redux is simplified version of original Greybox. It can only display iframe content.

ImageBox

Imagebox specialized for image displaying. It only supports single and group of images.

jQuery Lightbox

Like to Imagebox, jQuery Lightbox is also only-show-image type lightbox clone. Its user interface and usage is very similar to Lokesh Dhakar’s Lightbox2.

nyroModal

nyroModal is one of the most extend-able lightbox clone. It display of the content types and also it allows form submits via its modal without extra plugins.

piroBox

piroBox is differs from the other lightboxes with ability to add link to current image file for. Also it has an auto slideshow option. It only supports single and group of images with 3 different built-in themes. Lacks closing the lightbox when clicking on the background overlay.

prettyPhoto

prettyPhoto can display all content I mentioned at the intro paragraph. It has 5 different built-in themes but these themes slightly changes the lightbox interface.

Sexy Lightbox2

Sexy Lightbox2 has both jQuery and MooTools based versions. It has 2 different built-in themes as black and white. And opens lightbox with a slide down effect with easing.

Slightly ThickerBox

Slightly ThickerBox is a modification of Cody Lindley’s Thickbox script. It can display images and ajax content.

Thickbox

Thickbox is one of the oldest jQuery based lightbox. Its development team discontinued the plugin’s maintenance.

TopUp

Depended on both jQuery and jQuery UI. TopUp has different built-in themes. In addition to most content types, it can also display flv videos.

This is a temporary post that was not deleted. Please delete this manually. (3bdfcff3-a413-429d-bdc9-6375e7dd9fc1 – 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)

In this tutorial I want to illustrate how to use oEmbed API to display embedded content (such as Flickr photos, YouTube or Vimeo videos) in your website. What’s oEmbed? oEmbed is a format for allowing an embedded representation of a URL on third party sites (YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Viddler, …).

Where is oEmbed used?

Facebook probably has one of the most popular implementation of oEmbed. For example, when you copy a link from YouTube into your status bar, Facebook converts this link into an embedded movie.

How you can implement this feature? It’s really simple using jQuery oEmbed an easy to use jQuery plugin that help you convert links into embedded content. Take a look at the live example below.

Live Example

Source Code

First of all you have to download the jQuery oEmbed Plugin. Then you have to include on the <head> tag of the page a link to jQuery and jQuery.oEmbed:

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.oembed.js"></script>

In your HTML page, you have to add an <input> field and a <div> layer (into which your links will be embedded):

<input type="text" id="olink"/>
<div id="oembed"></div>

Now add this simple JavaScript function immediately after the <body> tag:

<script type="text/javascript">
  $(document).ready(function() {
    $("#olink").blur(function (){
      olink = $("#olink").val();
      $("#oembed").oembed(olink);
    })  
  });
</script>

In this tutorial I used the blur() event but you can customize the code as you prefer (for example when an user submits the form). For the full reference guide to jQuery Events I suggest you to take a look at the jQuery official documentation.

Using Animation

If you want to implement the animation I used in this tutorial (the input field disappears with a fade-out effect after submitting a link) you have to change the HTML code in this way (wrap the input field with <div id="oembedcont">...</div>):

<div id="oembedcont"><input type="text" id="olink"/></div>
<div id="oembed"></div>

and the JavaScript function in this way (add $("#oembedcont").fadeOut(1000);):

<script type="text/javascript">
  $(document).ready(function() {
    $("#olink").blur(function (){
      olink = $("#olink").val();
      $("#oembedcont").fadeOut(1000);
      $("#oembed").oembed(olink);
    })  
  });
</script>

Download Source Code

You can download the source code of this tutorial and reuse it on your web projects.

If rumored specs for the Netbook prove true, it will house a Nvidia Tegra platform with an ARM CPU, a 10.1-inch multitouch screen that support HD, and much more.

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By now, you’ve likely read that AT&T removed the Apple iPhone from the list of cellphones its customers in New York City and some area suburbs could order from its website. Broken on Sunday by The Consumerist, the story immediately tore through social media outlets like Twitter and went national soon thereafter, being picked up by the usual roster of news and wire services.

It began when a Consumerist reader tipped off the blog, saying he couldn’t order an iPhone online using his Brooklyn address, but could if he tried ZIPs from other major metropolitan areas. Laura Northrop at Consumerist not only confirmed this herself, she managed to get a juicy quote out of an online customer service rep, who told them, “New York is not ready for the iPhone,” basically implying that AT&T’s mobile network in America’s biggest city is unable to handle the wildly popular handheld, whose owners are very likely to use it to surf the web. (In March, TechCrunch reported that half of all mobile internet traffic in the U.S. was attributable to iPhone users.) From there, the story just took off.

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The Domino and Laylo phones offer simple designs and basic features.

Originally posted at Dialed In

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If you’ve shopped for gear for a home theater, you’ve probably noticed that upconversion is a standard feature in lots of different types of equipment, including DVD players, Blu-ray players, LCD TVs, plasma TVs and even many home-theater receivers. For those unfamiliar with it, upconversion (also called upscaling) is the process used to transform standard-definition TV images to high-definition resolutions. One of our readers, Robert, recently wrote in to ask: “In a home theater, what component is best for performing upconversion, and is there any benefit in doing upconversion more than once?

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