New Interwebs Postings

Haven't posted to this in some time. Perhaps I make it a annual tradition? Ramble on every year in some corner of the Internet. Speaking of, painted a new corner with projects and such. You should check it out. I mean you read this far right? justinmerz.net

Through the Glass

It's been awhile since I posted to this thing, need to get back on track. And what better way to get on track than post about MY thoughts on glass. I mean every other Glass Explorer has, why not join in the fun. It is after all why the program exists, right? I received my device during I/O this year ('13) after placing the order last year at I/O '12. I'm one of the lucky few IONs who gets to attend every year. So obviously becoming an explorer was the natural choice.

Where to start, where to start. The good? The Bad? The Ugly? Yes, let's start there, the ugly. I, am not a model. Shocking, I know. I am also not viewed from cool camera angles when walking around in public. So while there are many flattering (and some not so flattering) PR pics of Glass out there, these do not fit me. Glass has to work on it's aesthetic. Now I could divulge into my personal thoughts on fixes, thicker frames, thinner glass (note, not Glass, but glass. Make sense?), but I think it's more important to say, they stand out. Some faces seem to wear them and wear them well. Others... it's like the Glass is wearing the face. Luckily this is nothing a little variety can't fix (hopefully).

The Bad. I mean, I'm already bashing, let's just go with it. See if you keep readying to the good parts. Battery. Battery. Battery. It sucks. I mean bad. Unfortunately there are not a lot of options out there (at the moment). You want more battery life? Buy a bigger battery. Problem is, this thing is clamped to your head. You may notice. Next up, connectivity. If you loose it, you basically have a camera strapped to your head. Which is actually a nice segue into my next point, functionality. Look, I'm testing the device, as is, right now. I understand this testing is so we can find out what Glass could be later on, but for now, it's limited. Basically video, photo w/ sharing via G+. Plus phone, text, nav and some app alerts. And here is where I run into issue being an all day, every day Glass user. Currently I can walk around every second of my life with this device strapped to my head (being reminded of the time whenever I look up) but I use it so infrequently. For me, to 'use' Glass, means I need to use the device in a manor where it is truly better (in terms of user experience) or more efficient than pulling out / looking at my phone. So many interactions with my phone from a notification (I picked up my phone cause it beeped or buzzed) have a follow up action that Glass can't handle. Again, as the device is, now.

Ok, you probably thought here comes the good. Nope, sidetrack. The Poster. This is my other personal issue at the moment. As prior stated, the device stands out on my face. And I am starting to realize there are 5 kinds of people when it comes to Glass. 1) Those who have them. 2) Those who have heard about them and are super excited to see Glass, try them on, hear your thoughts. These people are great! It's really fun to share the new tech and like this post, my less than 2 cents. 3) Those who have heard about them and don't like them. At all. I feel like I'm almost getting into a political debate sometimes where I end up hearing a lot of personal feelings from people who have never once used the device. This will never make their points invalid (never using the device and already having such strong feelings), but the strength of their feelings is hard to deal with sometimes. 4) Those who have never heard of Glass and think they are fantastic. Again, awesome, let's grab a beer and chat. 5) Those who have never heard of Glass and think you are filming them. Like (3) it's tough. But there are enough articles about this point, I won't add to the mess. So. The Poster. While I sound excited to share, this is not always the case. Sometimes, many times, I just want to go about my day. And having this badge of nerd proudly attached to may face is not the best way to do that. And perhaps if I was constantly, or even semi-constantly using the device, it would be different. But I'm not. So no, I feel like I'm just trying to show off, desperately wanting to be the poster for Google's new product. And like a poster, I'm probably using the device about as much.

The Good. When Glass fits, it's one of the greatest tech joys I have ever experienced. I'm talking Mario 64 good. You want to share an experience? "Ok glass, take a picture". Tap once to share, tap again to speak a message. Beautiful. I just recently moved to LA and took a road trip from Sacramento looking for places to live. Glass was a kick ass co-pilot, every new place I needed to go "Ok glass, get directions to...". While feeding me directions (Nav is amazing, FYI) I can also answer phone calls. All with less distraction than working a CD player. Yes, those who have never used Glass will think this sounds dangerous. Those who have can tell you how wrong you are. It is truly technology out of the way. I tap once to answer the call, I never do anything else but talk and drive (both hands on the wheel). Now I don't want to become the developer advocate for everything Glass while driving but I think this is a good example of it's use. You are taking part in an activity (preferably non-social) and you need some help. You need that Star Trek computer to give you that quick response from above, take that quick action so you can move one. In this, Glass will excel.

We just need the apps. We just need the community. It will all come. Different sizes, different applications. I side loaded the Google Star map the other day. It's amazing. I am truly happy to be part of this great PR experiment, because like most Google products, the product does give back (though I'm still trying to decide if it's giving $1500 back...). I will be watching with the rest of the Explorers (and others) to see where this product ends up. Hopefully not like the Segway, I think this product has more to offer than ease of use for mall cops. Ok, now, who has an idea ;)

Combining Libraries

I was asked if a could start showing examples of the gwt-esri library combined with other 3rd party libraries. I have started off with a simple example using SmartGwt and the esri library. You can see the online example here. See the google code site for src.

The basic setup is as follows:
- The esri code loads the esri basemap and CPAD feature layer
- On pan/zoom the feature layer is queried
- On query response the features are rendered on the map and attributes are placed into a SmartGwt List Grid

The map and grid are setup so selecting a feature on the map will select the grid's row, or vice versa.

Fauna Cartoon

I have recently helped my friend Greg Bishop get his comic site up and running Fauna Cartoon. Other than taking over hosting duties and creating a quick gwt app to display them; all of the creative design, thought and obviously comic credit goes to Greg. I highly recommend for any animal lover/ general enjoyer of comics. To be honest, I saw a couple and my only thought was, these need to be on the web/cloud/internet/whatever we are calling it these days. I hope you enjoy.

Hello gwt-gis

As my gwt wrapper for esri's js api gwt-esri becomes more and more stable (a relative term), I have added a lot of functionality to what was 'the example project'. This project has itself grown in complexity and functionality. I have thus dubbed it gwt-gis and created it's own google code project (my second!) for the src to live. Please check it out. Feedback is always welcome. I'll try and release a jar soon, though as w/ gwt-esri, living off the trunk is recommended.

Also, always looking for gwt/jsni folks to help out with the gwt-esri library as many of it's components are wrapped but only have (sometimes very) limited testing.



PS. RIP Mr. Jobs.

My website's actually look decent in IE 9

See title. That's really all I have to post.

Last Call For I/O - Games

I just finished a challenge for Last Call for Google I/O after making it to the second round (not sure how, looks like I did very poorly on the test). Anyway, went ahead and made the next 'killer' webapp.... or a quick game that fit the 'order from chaos' description using HTML5. We only had 22 hours, I was sick and I still had to work. But put something together using the canvas tag and an svg of the chrome logo from wikipedia (~6 hours). So without further .... something... I give you Chrome Shuffle. Enjoy.