Julian Bleecker

The mobile laboratory has modestly increased its list of equipment suitable for mobile, pervasive, locative and other sorts of games, projects and experiments.

* Three Nokia N70 handsets. Alas, at present, only one SIM, but the devices run Flash Lite, and Python, which allows you to do lots, including control many aspects of the device, such as its camera, and other things such as the decidedly ludic omnivorous backward facing cam experiment, as well as the ability to communicate over Bluetooth to things like GPS's. I also installed special reader software on them so you can make, print out and read your own 3D barcodes. You can also get Apache (!) to run on the device, turning it into a web server in your palm. Very cool. Just more fodder for possible experiments for various mobile play concepts.

* One Windows-based Qtek 9600 HTC Smart Phone, with more supposedly coming. Cool looking, and you can write apps for it using .NET 2005, which you can get gratis through out alliance with Microsoft!

* Motion Computing LE1600 Tablet PC (with outdoor viewable display, wifi, usual drill..)

* A triple-axis accelerometer development board. (Great for learning how to do things like, for example, turning a cell phone or a microcontroller stuffed into a dinosaur doll into a twisting, shaking, Revolution-like controller for a desktop computer game.)

* GPS's — we now have six (6) new Garmin Etrex handheld GPS's. Why not make an action-packed geocaching adventure game? Or a giant game of GPS tag? I'll be doing such at UC Irvine, with Anthony Ko's assistance, this Monday — documentation will be forthcoming!

* Sketch-up Pro. I managed to get the go-ahead to grant Sketch-Up Pro licenses for grad students in the program taking mobile classes for the term. Sketch-Up Pro, as you might guess, extends the features of the normal freebie Sketch-Up through better integration with other modeling programs, as well as all the great extensions that make it an awesome way to turn Google Earth into a kind of game engine, like I did with Battleship: Google Earth. What a great deal!

* Other miscellany, but those are the new recently begotten goods.

I'm sure I'll schedule a review of what this stuff is good for and how to get some hands-on time with the gear.