Advanced Gesture Recognition in iOS
November 30, 2012
DollarP-ObjC is an Objective-C port of the $P gesture recognizer to be used in iOS applications.
What is $P?
From the $P website:
The $P Point-Cloud Recognizer is a 2-D gesture recognizer designed for rapid prototyping of gesture-based user interfaces. In machine learning terms, $P is an instance-based nearest-neighbor classifier with a Euclidean scoring function, i.e., a geometric template matcher. $P is the latest in the dollar family of recognizers that includes $1 for unistrokes and $N for multistrokes. Although about half of $P’s code is from $1, unlike both $1 and $N, $P does not represent gestures as ordered series of points (i.e., strokes), but as unordered point-clouds. By representing gestures as point-clouds, $P can handle both unistrokes and multistrokes equivalently and without the combinatoric overhead of $N. When comparing two point-clouds, $P solves the classic assignment problem between two bipartite graphs using an approximation of the Hungarian algorithm. The $P recognizer is distributed under the New BSD License agreement.
Visit the permanent link to “Advanced Gesture Recognition in iOS”.
Tuio.js: Multitouch and tangible interaction in the web browser
May 24, 2012
Tuio.js is a JavaScript implementation of the TUIO library for multitouch and tangible interaction in the web browser. It brings a 1:1 port of the original TUIO Java library.
How it works
TUIO is based on the OSC protocol and usually transferred via UDP. Tuio.js uses node.js and Websockets (Socket.IO) to push OSC/TUIO messages to the browser. TUIO.js converts the messages to events that applications can register with.
Visit the permanent link to “Tuio.js: Multitouch and tangible interaction in the web browser”.
Why Facebook App Development is Seriously Flawed
August 24, 2011
Recently, the facebook API has been voted »Worst API« in a developer survey. Bad news first: It really is the worst API (or at least the worst API that we have worked with). Good news: It would be quite straightforward for facebook to drastically improve the overall app development experience by working on at least one specific area (see end of this article).
(more…)
Visit the permanent link to “Why Facebook App Development is Seriously Flawed”.
Code Like You Mean It
March 9, 2011
Very good presentation by Dan North about »Deliberate Discovery: Code Like You Mean It«. »Ignorance is multivariate« and »We’re ignorant about our ignorance« – yes, based on past project experience, I guess I can confirm that! ;) He also mentions an interesting book called »A mind of its own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives«…
Visit the permanent link to “Code Like You Mean It”.
JavaScript Development vs. Flex Development (and why today, web development sucks…)
February 8, 2011
Blog post titles with »vs« in it are often quite controversial. Most of the time, eliminating bias in those posts is neither desired nor possible anyway. Same here. However, having worked on real-world projects both using Ruby on Rails/HTML/JavaScript and Flex/AS3, I think that I’m able to kind of compare these different ways of developing rich interactive applications. Note that this is not going to be a comparison of programming languages, i.e. JavaScript vs. ActionScript. While both languages are based on ECMAScript, the major difference is that the latest version of ActionScript is statically typed while JavaScript is a dynamically typed language. Both languages are equally well (or badly) suited for application development.
So, basically, from a developer’s point of view, it mostly comes down to what frameworks and UI toolkits are available because you certainly don’t want to do everything from scratch (which particularly applies to JavaScript because handling all the browser differences usually means a lot of additional work). Let’s start with JavaScript: What libraries are available? (more…)
Outstanding Book on Software Development
January 3, 2011
The average software developer reads less than one job-related book per year. This may be true or may not be true. I have no proof for this claim, I just heard or read it »somewhere«.
Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It does not have an answer either but sheds lights on many much more important issues in the software engineering domain. The book challenges »opinion- and superstition-based software engineering« by reporting results from numerous scientific studies carried out by large research institutes and experienced researchers. Should one trust every belief read on a blog or take every anecdote of a co-worker’s past project experience for granted? Do TDD and pair programming work? Does it pay off to design your application using modules and design patterns? What do we know about bugs?
(more…)
Visit the permanent link to “Outstanding Book on Software Development”.
Ruby Development on Windows
November 24, 2010
Several months ago, I set a Ruby development environment up on Windows but quickly realised that people were right saying that it doesn’t work well: I had lots of crashes, installation of some gems was tricky, and the Ruby version didn’t play well with the Rails version at that time. So I installed VirtualBox and configured everything within Ubuntu. While it did work in a way, it wasn’t a pleasant development experience at all. Installing virtual machines for testing purposes is fine but for longer working sessions I didn’t like it. First, even on a fast machine working in a virtual machine doesn’t feel as responsive and native as using a real OS. Secondly, things can get inconvenient when you want to use some tools on your OS and some on the guest system (networking modes etc.). Overall, it just makes matters much more complex than using a single system. Now, with Ruby 1.9.2 and Rails 3 I made another try and so far things have been working really well. If you plan to get started with Ruby dev on Windows, here are a few tips:
(more…)
Visit the permanent link to “Ruby Development on Windows”.
How to be a Programmer
November 10, 2010
»To be a good programmer is difficult and noble. The hardest part of making real a collective vision of a software project is dealing with one’s coworkers and customers.«
When a book about programming starts with this software development truth, it’s a good sign that it is worth reading. Robert L Read’s short book »How to be a Programmer. A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary« (freely available as a PDF file or web version) was already published 2002 but the material presented is still highly relevant – recommended reading for everyone in programming.
Visit the permanent link to “How to be a Programmer”.
Asynchronous Callback Functions in FlexUnit
July 20, 2010
FlexUnit provides support for asynchronous testing with the Async class. While this class works well for event driven tests, it doesn’t support callback functions like you might want it to. A typical event driven asynchronous test looks like this:
(more…)
Visit the permanent link to “Asynchronous Callback Functions in FlexUnit”.
Excellent Book on Software Development
February 18, 2010
Just want to quickly point out an excellent reading for all software developers, architects, team leads or project managers: »Leading Lean Software Development: Results Are not the Point« by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Although there is a chapter about technical excellence that covers architecture, TDD, evolutionary development etc., you won’t any code in it (a recommended reading with *lots* of code is Uncle Bob’s »Clean Code«). The book is full of practical (and extremly convincing) advice on implementing and leading successful software development in an organisation. Must read!
Visit the permanent link to “Excellent Book on Software Development”.