Google Latitude on Pandora – Your friends will know where your Pandora is!

Posted by: mazza558

Some of you may have heard of Google Latitude, the mobile (and now web) service that allows you to broadcast your location with friends, via phone signals. Well, now there is a way to use Latitude on the web, provided you have Firefox, WiFi and iGoogle. Google calculates your position through triangulation and your Wifi signal.

Guess where this is going? Guess what the Pandora has? That’s right, WiFi and Firefox!

So, effectively, you’ll be able to hook up to a Wifi hotspot in a city, log on to iGoogle on the Pandora, and share your location with friends, without suffering network costs! Pretty cool (and a terrifying invasion of privacy) eh?

If you still don’t understand, watch this video for an introduction…

If anyone want to try out the service on their laptops/desktops, here’s the howto:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/159378/find_yourself_on_google_latitude_without_gps_or_a_phone.html

P.S – It has pinned my location to 10 metres, which is both terrifying and awesomely-awesome.

Welcome the new Blog Team Members!

We now have tomvas (Tom` on the forums), thebutterman (Butterman on the forums) and poisonedv (same name on the forums) on our blog team!

Good luck to the new members!

3 more places for the Unofficial Blog Team available!

All places have been taken.

As some of you may have noticed, TaG and I have been posting less and less on the unofficial blog lately. We don’t really feel this is fair on the community, but we have other commitments. TaG and I are unfortunately unable to order from the first batch, as well as having our own separate commitments. As I am the admin, I therefore invite anyone who feels they want to make a meaningful contribution, can write fairly well, and doesn’t mind reading forums, to come forward and put their names down.

As a member of the blog team, you will be able to post, edit and delete your own posts on the blog, but I as admin can also edit and delete the posts if they are inaccurate or a repeat of what we already know. As a general rule, post any news which has not already been covered by others in the team – this way, we keep a good flow of news coming through all day.

The addition of 3 new members should cover for our less frequent postings, as well as giving the frequency of posts a slight boost. I should mention that the existing blog team are doing an amazing job already, but I didn’t think it was fair to put the bulk of posting in the hands of just 2 people. So the situation will be 4 regular blog contributors and 2 who post infrequently (me and TaG).

So, if you think you have the commitment to step up to a task, post away, and I’ll add you to the blog team on a first-come, first-serve basis.

(The blog team have said time and time again that Mali would be great to have on the blog, often beating the team itself to news, but it doesn’t look like this is possible).

Super Lumenal Beta Gameplay Video

Coming to a Pandora near you!

More shiny tech demos coming soon.

From Craigix’s Twitter:

The full hardware demo is on the homepage as you know. An even more advanced demo is coming soon

Pandora gets major tech press coverage

Shortly after the second prototype video was posted, it looks like the community have taken it upon themselves to spread the news far and wide – the video currently enjoys front-page slots on several technology blogs and websites, and is very close to reaching the front page of Digg. So, here’s a round-up, as well as an interesting mistake that one of them made:

Engadget Coverage

OSNews Coverage – Why do they insist it’s the design team that’s posted the video and suggested the release date?

Currently, the team estimates the release date to be somewhere around April 7th, 2009.

Digg Article

Ars Technica Article (the author of that article thought that my estimated release date was what the developer team themselves had said)

Though the current build is still missing its internal components, the team ensures those awaiting the device that the project is coming together and has posted an “unofficial estimated” launch date of April 7.

Gizmodo Article (not really worth the click – it’s a negative, sarcastic article)

Are there any more that people know about?

Get the Pandora Hardware Prototype on the Digg front-page!

If you have a Digg account, you should Digg the Pandora Prototype video in order to help it reach the front page. If it does so, it’ll be seen by many thousands of people.

Let’s do this!

Digg it!

All controls working now!

Yes, the drivers for all input devices are in the kernel. Notaz made a test app that bring up an onscreen keyboard and visual representation of all gaming controls and the nubs. I can easily demo that, but it’s a bit boring compared to a game or something.

Source

A functional FDM Prototype Pandora coming soon

In reply to a query about the space bar using 2 contacts on the main board:

We tried this on rev2 and it was agreed by all that it was a bad idea. If the rubber was stiff enough to make both buttons press (ie. if you press in the middle), then you get two events back in Linux and it was agreed that would be confusing as you wouldn’t know if the space bar was pressed twice quickly or if you had to throw one event away. It was changed back to one input for rev3.

BTW, I just got some production analog nubs today so I’m soldering them onto a PCB for use in this FDM case. I had the whole thing together last night but I don’t think any games support the internal controls because everyone has been using USB gamepads and keyboards. If I can get a new build that works, I will definitely make a video.

Source

Official Blog update – more Sneak-peeks

Hi!
Did you come here for your daily basis of pictures?
Well, yep, I’ve got some more.
This time, I’ve got two more sneak preview renderings (in HiRes!). Still not finished (real life work is still a lot at the moment), however, looking better each day.
“What’s not finished in this render?” you may ask. Well, the keyboard layout is not yet the finished one, we’re working on it and it will be included as soon as we’re finished with it. The same goes for the printings on the case (SD 1, SD 2, etc. We might use icons for the functions).
Apart from that, it should look very close to the finished model.

While mentioning the finished model: As I told you yesterday, Michael got the FDM case and put together a first test unit. Everything fits! He didn’t have much time so he taped the case and didn’t put a working board inside, however, that will follow soon. Then we can actually show pictures of a working board inside that FDM case! Time to go for a real CNC case!