Over at (of all places) Lastminute.com, there is a team of obviously bored-yet-talented programmers who own a couple of Nokia N95 phones.
At the recent Over The Air 48-hour codeathon at Imperial College, they came up with Phone Fight - possibly the world’s first and only Bluetooth/Accelerometer-powered virtual swordfighting app.
Armed with your Nokia blade, Python for S60 and the Phone Fight app you can challenge your frineds to duels, complete with clanging sound effects.
All very silly, and could perhaps use a lightsaber mode, but fun nonetheless.
Here is a quick YouTube vid of an epic phone battle:
Nokia’ chief designer has dropped some hints about the kind of user interfaces the company are investigating.
You might assume that Alastair Curtis would be gleaning ideas from iPhone, Android, the OLPC wiior any number of communications or computing devices but no, he was spending a lot of his time playing with his Nintendo Wii and checking out the emotional feedback from his nunchucks.
“I bought the Wii almost the day it came out. The emotional feedback is three or four times more emotionally engaging than PS3 or Xbox 360,” says Curtis, “We’re starting to do that in the 6600 Fold. We have to do that more and more.”
Curtis uses the example of turning a phone upside down to put it into silent mode as an example of ‘meaningful insight’ into the kind of emotional feedback people can get from their handsets.
Interestingly, much of what he is talking about is already being implemented by the homebrew programming community. FlipSilent does exactly what he describes and there is even a project out there that lets your control your N95 using an actual Wii remote.
Sure, that BeatEd drum synth a couple of posts down is all very well if you like your rhythms nice, clean and pleasant sounding.
If, however, your drumming skills lean more towards Animal from the Muppets (e.g. you just like hitting things and making a racket) then NiiMe Drums might be more your cup of special brew.
A spin off from the NiiMe motion-sensing project - that aims to take greater advantage of Nokia’s accelerometer technology - NiiMe Drums is out on the 1st of May and looks like great fun.
The developer has posted a YouTube video of the app in action - it goes on a bit (a bit less footage of him fiddling around opening the app would have improved things) but it gets to the point eventually.
So - who fancies coding up an S60 guitar synth so we can form the first mobile phone band?
Those accelerometer-based apps for new Nokia phones keep on coming.
Although most of them are one-trick-ponies - this one locks your phone, that one sends a text, etc. - ShakeMe seems to be shaping up as more of an all rounder.
The latest release of the beta app will let you use a flick of the wrist to activate a variety of functions including toggling Bluetooth, adjusting the backlight and activating the keylock.
Here is a video clip of the app’s author Samir demonstrating ShakeMe. Note the touchingly lo-fi backdrop made from overlapping sheets of A4 paper. Bless.
ShakeLock is Yet Another Accelerometer app for S6o 3rd Edition. Unlike some of its more frivolous brethren, this might actually be some use.
With the app running in the background, just give your phone a shake and it will lock the keypad. To unlock it, just give it another shake. Easy!
Because this is developed by an amateur coder there is a slight wrinkle to the install procedure - an expired deveoloper’s certificate means you will have to alter the date on your phone to March 2007 to allow it to accept the app (you can change it back again when the app is installed).
ShakeLock has been tested on the Nokia N95 but should work with the N95 8GB & N82. Here is a video demo of the app in action.
Sheath the Lightsabre, tell Activity Monitor to take a walk. The real future of phone-waggling applications is here - a motion sensitive controller for a radio controlled car.
ShakerRacer claims to make use of the natural instinct to ‘lean into the turn’ that you get when you play a driving game or use an RC car. In practice it looks like playing one of the several driving/skating games available for the Nintendo Wii - you use the phone as if it were the steering wheel and tilt it in the direction you want to go.
Ok, its not an actual product that you can buy or even download (yet) and you do need a specially-modded car with a Bluetooth adaptor attached to the RC unit but just watch the video below and then say that it doesn’t look like great fun.
Seriously, Nokia are missing a trick if they don’t bring out their own range of branded cars…
The accelerometer-based apps keep rolling (or should that be bouncing?) in, as more and more people start buying supported phones like the Nokia N95.
Nokia’s research labs have released Activity Monitor, which works a bit like a souped-up version of a pedometer. The program uses the data from the N95 or N95 8GB accelerometer to find the number of steps you take and then works out your energy expenditure based on your height, weight and gender.
The resulting data can be mined and displayed in graphical form, and the app lets you keep a diary of your workout progress.
It is unclear how this fits in with Nokia’s Sports Tracker, if at all, but if you own an N95 and like to jog, this could be for you.
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