SHALLOW HACKER ㋡

This is a quick heads up for Blogger bloggers that may have missed it. Blogger now lets you easily switch on an option to present your mobile readers with a special mobile formatted version of your blog. If you've ever read stuff on a mobile device that's not formatted for mobile you'll know how annoying it can sometimes be navigating a non mobiel-friendly web site, even with mobile browsers like Opera doing a good job at solving that issue. To switch on the mobile template view in Blogger, just Go to your blog's "Settings" tab Click "Email & Mobile" Then where it says "Mobile Template (beta)" choose "Yes" and your done! You can hit the "Mobile Preview" button to see what your blog will look like too.

Could really think of suitable title for this post. I just found this fun application for my HTC Kaiser . It's called " QuickMark ". It's a barcode scanner. I wasn't sure what to expect really, I just liked the idea of being able to scan barcodes with my phone's camera! Well, it's early days (I've only had it installed about 30 minutes) but this thing I just did with the app made me laugh and I had to post it. The little barcode picture above left is google.com... but not as you know it. Obviously, cos instead of saying google.com it's just kinda saying.. nothing except a weird little pattern. But if you download, install and run QuickMark on your phone and zap the image with your camera the program immediately picks up the url "http://www.google.com". I have no idea whether this is useful or not.. I'm still deciding! But it sure is funny :)

Here's a tiny bit more information on the My Location feature in Google Maps Mobile 2. http://www.google.com/gmm/mylocation.html?hl=en At the moment it can't seem to pinpoint my location (without GPS). I'm in Amsterdam.... Let's see if it finds me during the course of today! Well, I'm impressed :) The My Location feature did indeed kick in later in the day when I was on my way home. It told me (and showed me) that it had pinpointed my position to within "1700m". There was the familiar little blue dot, but this time with a faded blue circle around it. The position of the solid blue dot was in fact a fair bit closer than 1700m. It was about 900m away from my exact location. So, this is pretty impressive. Not so great for door to door navigation. I mean, if you were in a car you'd be pretty screwed, driving through parking lots and over the edge of cliffs. No, "to within 1700m accuracy" doesn't cut the mustard. But for location-based news, w...