LAMBORATORY

Forbidden the Step

Forbidden the step - Prohibido el paso

In our recent trip through Mexico we had the chance to admire this funny translation in Grutas de Rancho Nuevo, near San Cristóbal de las Casas: “Prohibido el Paso = Forbidden the Step” (which I guess is not proper English:).

Even funnier is to find out that some people have already uploaded pictures from there. The same sign can be found in Anyway’s blog, and in Un mexicano en Japón, Taringa, etc.

Additionally, the same funny translation, but in another place, appeared in Microsiervos not so long ago.

How did Meipi help me get rid of some plastic drawers

meipi spermola plastic drawersWe hadn’t posted about meipi.org/spermola yet, a meipi with some special characteristics that we have developed specially for Basurama. This “forum for discussion and reflection on trash, waste and reuse in all its formats and possible meanings” (and also good people;) wanted to have a tool to enable the sharing of objects.

For us, it has been important project, as it is the first ad hoc solution that we develop based on our free tool. For instance, we have changed the layout and also introduced some new fields, the possibility of archiving entries, and other features.

We now have a good chance to talk about it, as today I have been able to experience personally that it works. I had some plastic drawers that didn’t use anymore, and from today they will be useful for a nice neighbour of mine, who picked them up.

So long, drawers! Thanks, Spermola! :-)

Blinko!

Voy a aprovechar el reciente lanzamiento de la nueva web de Blinko para hablar algo de mi trabajo en el Mundo Real™.

Blinko es una nueva red social centrada en el móvil y la mensajería. El registro está todavía limitado a usuarios con invitación. Se puede acceder por la web (blinko.com), por wap (m.blinko.com) y desde una aplicación java para instalar en el movil, e incluso hacer algunas operaciones mediante SMS.

Cada usuario de Blinko tiene su lista de amigos. Se puede chatear con ellos si están online o dejar un mensaje que recibirán cuando se conecten o mandarles un SMS desde la web (por eso al registrarse hay que introducir el número de móvil). Los SMS a los amigos son gratuitos.

El tagline de la web es real time, real people. La idea es que los perfiles de los usuarios sean reales para facilitar que los amigos en el Mundo Real™ te encuentren en Blinko.

En la web hay varias secciones distintas: Se puede poner lo que estás haciendo con un pequeño texto y una imagen (tipo twitter), se pueden añadir comentarios a lo que están haciendo los amigos, hay unos canales o perfiles vip a los que te puedes suscribir y que te mantendrán informado sobre distintos personajes famosos, hay una lista de los últimos eventos que han pasado en la lista de tus amigos…

El proyecto está siendo bastante interesante, todavía seguimos trabajando en nuevas secciones que se irán añadiendo. Además he podido ir sacando algunas ideas para mejorar meipi :-)

¡Si alguien quiere registrarse que pida una invitación!

Meipi Beta

We finally uploaded the Beta version of Meipi! :-) As announced in Meipi Blog (in Spanish), we are still working on many different issues and finishing a special Meipi for Basurama.

So, instead of bothering everyone with technical nonsense, we’ll just encourage you to take a look at the improved version. Hopefully this video created by our team will properly explain whatever question you may have!

Un gran premio para una gran victoria

El pasado jueves los Lamb Brothers acudimos a la Google Open Pizza Night, en donde entre otras cosas (buena gente, pizza, bebidas…) se presentaba la nueva API de Youtube.

Se prometían premios para las mejores aplicaciones desarrolladas con la nueva API, más allá de los ejemplos mostrados. Pues bien, nuestro pequeño prototipo logró ser la mejor! Bueno, básicamente porque nadie más presentó nada, jeje. (en cualquier caso, nuestra Power Ball que nos llevamos con la tontería8-)

Puede que sigamos trabajando sobre la simple idea (tenemos a Rau1 casi convencido para hacer una primera colaboración;), la cual es la siguiente: Poder ir valorando un vídeo a medida que lo ves, de tal manera que al final una gráfica muestra qué partes son más valoradas.

Lo que desarrollamos deprisa y corriendo (usando la Google Chart API para el grafiquillo) era muy básico, pero creemos que puede tener gracia el mezclar las valoraciones dinámicas de muchos usuarios para crear la media.

Seguiremos informando!

No sólo friqueos

Apart from spending time in the projects we usually talk about in the Lamboratory, Jorge and me also have our “proper” jobs, of course. :-) And being one of the aims of this site to gather together our kind-of-portfolio, this wouldn’t be complete without mentioning those.

After almost three years in a Telefónica I+D project (someday more about it) I switched to a Researcher position at iSOCO Lab, so I thought it would be the right time to write about real-life-job stuff.

It is a good opportunity to roughly explain what will I be working at, so I’ll be able to point to this post whenever needed in the future. 8-)

Topics at my new job will be around Semantic Web, and first project I will be involved, SOA4All, is a quite ambitious European collaboration where SOA, Web and Web2.0, Semantic Web and Context Management issues will be addressed.

It looks really interesting, and a step forward into the right direction. Let’s see how it goes! :-)

Binary Satanic Lights

The advantage of “0110 0110 0110″ is that being palindromic it can be read from both sides of the street (and even from above;-)

0110 0110 0110

Nuestros gadgets, en el blog “Programa con Google”

El blog programa con Google RSS, el blog oficial de Google para los desarrolladores en español, habló hace poco de nuestro Gadget para la Comunicación entre usuarios.

En la entrada hablan del gadget que permite enviar y recibir mensajes entre los gadgets de distintos usuarios y que se puede utilizar para crear diversos juegos y aplicaciones.

Actualmente, estamos modificando la API que ofrecemos para que no sea necesario un gadget extra. Como sugería Rau1, los usuarios no tienen por qué tener un gadget que en apariencia no hace nada :p. Realmente ese gadget extra permitía evitar algunas peticiones desde los gadgets que utilizan la comunicación, además de listar los juegos disponibles, pero para el usuario es más sencillo no tener que incluirlo.

También estamos adaptando un juego que diseñó Guille hace tiempo. El juego ya funciona pero faltan todavía ciertos retoques, lo publicaremos cuando esté listo.

meipi to beta

We’ve been saying that Meipi (the collaborative local and thematic maps project we are involved in) is “at its alpha stage” for a while now. I bet most people have already guessed that there would be a beta stage after this one. And that is in fact our idea. :-)

We’re not doing it as fast as we would have liked, as we have to coordinate this with our jobs and the rest of projects we are involved in. (By “we” I mean Jorge and myself, plus the rest of meipi guys.)

So what are we changing? Mainly, we are trying to get a better look&feel and usability, as we haven’t paid so much attention to it yet. We are working with other people at this stage, as we (I now mean Jorge and myself;-) are focused on the back-end of it, and its proper functionality.

Of course we will also deal with some pending functionality issues, so it’s time for you to tell us (again) what are we really missing or doing wrong!

Now, the good thing is that even though the presentation of the common pages is rather terrible (see image below), and that creating a meipi is not easy at all, the number of users have been raising (around 400 by now), and so the number of created meipis (around 60).

Meipi index

So let’s hope that someday we will release the brand new interface… and we’ll see how it goes! We’ll keep you updated with the news in this process.

Multi User Communication gadget is here

Today we have released Multi User Communication gadget and the first game that takes advantage of its functionality: a Tic Tac Toe game.

Multi User Communication gadget can be used to send and receive messages between the igoogle pages of different users. Developers can create with this gadget any application or game they can imagine that needs users interaction.

If you want to add these gadgets to your igoogle page use the following links:
Multi User Communication page - This is a tab for igoogle page that already contains the two gadgets needed to play. Add it to your Google Personalized Homepage and start playing.

or

Multi User Communication gadget - This is the gadget that manages communications between users. You need to have this gadget added to the same tab where you have the games to play. You only need to add it once, don’t add it if you added the full tab.
Tic Tac Toe gadget - This is the gadget where you can play with a user. You can add as many Tic Tac Toe gadgets as you want, to play with different users.

If you are interested in creating a new game or application you can use the available API. The documentation is available in English and in Spanish:
English - http://www.lamboratory.com/multiUserCommunication.php?lang=en
Spanish - http://www.lamboratory.com/multiUserCommunication.php?lang=es

Here is an screenshot of a Tic Tac Toe game:

Multi User Communication - Tic Tac Toe
Enjoy! ;-)

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