Category Archives: New Stuff

News about site and in general

Developing first Pebble.js app

    

Pebble Smartwatch has offered SDK to develop watchfaces and watchapps in C language for a while now. But most recently they tried something different: Pebble.JS a project that lets you code for Pebble in JavaScript. Unlike native app – JS code runs on your phone, so it’s not as fast, and Bluetooth communication required to display any data, but there’re numerous advantages as well.

To test it I decided to write a simple app that would use basic, but important features of Pebble.JS: displaying of information card (a la Pebble notifcation), using menu and executing an AJAX call to bring information from the Net.

Enter AutoInsult for Pebble – application that is based on autoinsult.com – it generates a random insult based on style you selected.
Continue reading →

Solution for NFC not working on Samsung Galaxy phone

This has been bothering me for a while – NFC refused to work on my Samsung Galaxy phone. Service was enabled and running, no errors or warning were displayed, but phone was unable to detect any NFC presence – tags, stickers, point of sale etc.

I was wrecking my mind until I realized that a while back I replaced the original Samsung Battery with a higher capacity generic one to extend battery life. But original Samsung Battery acts as an NFC antenna as well!

As soon as I put original battery in – lo and behold NFC sprang to action.

SAY NO TO FLASH!

Say no to flash Just say no. And tell your kids never to use this piece of junk. And not only because its obsolete and has been replaced by HTML5 long ago. It also promotes bloatware and malware.

I got a prompt from my current Flash player that an update is available. So I ran the update – first it tried to download and install that bloatware of McAfee and only failed because connection to McAfee site failed. But that wasn’t all.

After install finished, I found that my browser was hijacked by “Trovi” malware – start page, search engine etc. And this was done by official installer from Adobe site! Wtf?!

Bye Flash, you won’t be missed.

Reenable (temporary) showModalDialog support in Chrome (for Windows) 37+

You know you shouldn’t use showModalDialog to open modal windows – it’s bad taste and prone to cause issues. Unfortunately many applications (especially Enterprise ones) rely on the method ability to halt code execution until the window closed (e.g. user answers a YES/NO question).

Tough luck, starting version 37 Google Chrome removed support for showModalDialog. Your code suddenly began to act in weird and unpredictable way. You definitely should rework it to use a different approach to dialogs. Fortunately Google gives you a bit more time. You can re-enable showModalDialog support, but only temporarily – until May of 2015. Continue reading →

How to search for Pebble app/watchface on the web

Pebble smartwatch has a pretty good appstore that is accessible from the official app on your phone. But sometimes I want just to search for the app on the Web (big browser, keyboard/mouse – you know). Fortunately it is possible:

Pebble Google Search

Just enter “site:apps.getpebble.com” in your google search in addition to search terms and you will be able to get direct links to Pebble apps/watchfaces in the app store.

Pebble direct appstore link

Of course this has limited use at the moment – you can scroll thru app screenshots, read the description and that’s about it. Ideally this would behave same way as Google Play store does – allow me to install the app from the web directly to registered device.

Your move, Pebble.

Flipping pebbles

Big Flip Clock

As far as smartwatches go – Pebble is a lot of fun. But after playing around with Watchface Generator, Canvas for Pebble and numerous other apps I wanted something more, something that only Pebble SDK could provide. A coder in me wanted to code.

Enter CloudPebble – an amazing online development environment that runs in your browser, has a full-blown C compiler and connects to your watch to run/debug compiled apps. Plus your projects are stored on the cloud and available anywhere you can get online.

Yes you program Pebble in classic C – and it’s a lot of fun. And my first real attempt at custom watchface (pictured above) is old-style flip clock, you can get it here. It is based on amazing pebble bitmap library by Gregoire Sage

Display “Lose It!” data on Pebble watchface

Original Lose It!Lose It! on Pebble

Lose It! is an excellent service that helps people lose weight by monitoring calories intake. It integrates with variety of devices so I was curious if I can display my user data on Pebble smartwatch (to make sure I can have another piece of cake or not).

Unfortunately LoseIt doesn’t have a public API. There had to be another way. Continue reading →

Microsoft Skype Doesn’t support IE11

Ever since I upgraded to IE11 my Skype is throwing error

Skype IE11 error

Digging deeper – the error is throwing while Skype is attempting to display an ad banner

Skype ad banner error

So not only when Skype came into Microsoft possession it stated to display banner ads – in doing so it relies on Internet Explorer and it’s not compatible with the latest version.

How stupid is that?

Canvas for Pebble: How to hide time in all-day events

If you wish to create a custom watchface for Pebble Smartwatch but want it to have some more advanced features than very cool Watchface Generator offers then amazing Android app Canvas for Pebble is definitely for you.

Using it you can have your Pebble watchface to display weather, location, temperature, of course date and time, etc. etc. in highly customizable formats.

One cool thing it allows you to show – next calendar events from your Google calendar. As with everything else it’s a highly customizable entry. For example three (out of much more) options are:

%a – abbreviated day of the week
%R – start time of the event in 24-hour-format
%ET – event title

So if you format the calendar field as "%a %R: %ET" your Pebble will display something like "Mon 12:30: Visit from Elvis". Unfortunately if calendar event is an all-day event (e.g. national holiday) – start time of the event (%R) always displays as “00:00” making your event look like "Tue 00:00: Day of the Tentacle". It would be really nice if we could hide the time for all-day events.

Fortunately one of the things Canvas allows you to do is conditional formatting. It does this in a form of {text1#condition#text2} where if condition is true – text1 is displayed, otherwise text2 is displayed (which is optional and can be omitted).

I noticed that for all-day events, event duration (represented in Canvas as %ED) is always 24 hours (duh). So I replaced the above format for calendar event with this one: %a{ %R#%ED<24}: %ET. The code in braces means “if event duration is less than 24 hours – show event start time, otherwise don’t show anything”. And the result is in images above.