Learning by doing

Google Maps Navigation

Motorola Droid | Wednesday, December 14, 2011

In 2006, Google introduced a Java application called Google Maps for Mobile, intended to run on any Java-based phone or mobile device. Many of the web-based site's features are provided in the application.

On November 28, 2007, Google Maps for Mobile 2.0 was released. It introduced a GPS-like location service that does not require a GPS receiver. The "my location" feature works by utilizing the GPS location of the mobile device, if it is available. This information is supplemented by the software determining the nearest wireless networks and cell sites. The software then looks up the location of the cell site using a database of known wireless networks and cell sites. The Cell-site location method is used by triangulating the different signal strengths from different cell transmitters and then using their location property (retrieved from the online cell site database) to aid My Location in determining the user's current location. Wireless network location method is calculated by discovering the nearby WiFi hotspots and using their location property (retrieved from the online WiFi database, in the same way as the cell site database) to further discover the user's location. The order in which these take precedence is:

GPS-based services
WLAN-, WiFi-based services
Cell transmitter-based services

The software plots the streets in blue that are available with a yellow icon and a green circle around the estimated range of the cell site based on the transmitter's rated power (among other variables). The estimate is refined using the strength of the cell phone signal to estimate how close to the cell site the mobile device is.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

hearing aid compatibility

Motorola Droid |

A hearing aid is an electroacoustic device which typically fits in or behind the wearer's ear, and is designed to amplify and modulate sound for the wearer. Earlier devices, known as "ear trumpets" or "ear horns", were passive funnel-like amplification cones designed to gather sound energy and direct it into the ear canal. Similar devices include the bone anchored hearing aid, and cochlear implant.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

Motoblur

Motorola Droid |

http://cdn.androidcommunity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/2864-4aaa558d1b1a8.jpg

Motoblur (often stylized as MOTOBLUR) is an Android UI replacement and push-based service focused on social networking developed by Motorola. It aims at functional similarity to Palm's Synergy, including such features as Remote Wipe. Motoblur includes a variety of widgets which combine various social networking portals such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter as well as other services (news or weather reports) all in one place. Feeds and data are regularly pushed to these widgets. Motoblur is currently on Motorola's Atrix 4G, CLIQ/DEXT, Backflip, Devour, Flipout, Charm, Droid Pro, Flipside, DEFY, Bravo, Droid X, Droid 3, Droid 2, and Motorola Droid Bionic. The version found on the Droid X, Droid Pro, Droid 2 and DEFY is toned down and intended to be less intrusive than previous versions.

When first turned on, first generation Motoblur-based phones force a new user to create a Motoblur account, denying access to the main screen until the account is established. User account information is stored on Motorola's servers for access from web browsers and future phones. The newer devices allow users to defer Blur services for a later registration and has more filtering options and better battery management to optimize the Blur service experience.

In late 2010 Motorola announced that Motoblur will not be their focus for development in the future, as the latest Android builds are making custom skins largely redundant. While the Atrix, Droid 2 and Droid X do feature the UI skin, the new Droid RAZR does not feature Motoblur.

In 2011 PC World criticised Motoblur due to the poor performance of the interface.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

OMAP

Motorola Droid |

OMAP developed by Texas Instruments is a category of proprietary system on chips (SoCs) for portable and mobile multimedia applications. OMAP devices generally include a general-purpose ARM architecture processor core plus one or more specialized co-processors. Earlier OMAP variants commonly featured a variant of the Texas Instruments TMS320 series digital signal processor.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

QWERTY

Motorola Droid |

QWERTY is the most common modern-day keyboard layout. The name comes from the first six letters (keys) appearing in the topleft letter row of the keyboard, read left to right: Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in the same year, when it first appeared in typewriters. It became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, and remains in use on electronic keyboards due to the network effect of a standard layout and a belief that alternatives fail to provide very significant advantages. The use and adoption of the QWERTY keyboard is often viewed as one of the most important case studies in open standards because of the widespread, collective adoption and use of the product, particularly in the United States.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

sliding

Motorola Droid |

A slider or slide phone is composed of usually two, but sometimes more, sections that slide past each other on rails. Most slider phones have a display segment which houses the speaker used for calls and the phone's screen, while another segment contains the keypad or keyboard and slides out for use. The goal of using a sliding form factor is to allow the operator to take advantage of full physical keyboards or keypads, without sacrificing portability, by "retracting" them into the phone when these are not in use.

The Siemens SL10 was one of the first sliding mobile phones in 1999. Some phones have an automatic slider built in which deploys the keypad. Many phones will "pop out" their keypad segments as soon as the user begins to slide the phone apart. Unique models are the 2-way slider (sliding up or down provides distinct functions) such as the Nokia N85 or Nokia N95.

A version of the slider form factor, the side slider or QWERTY slider, uses vertical access of the keyboard on the bottom segment. The side slider form factor is primarily used to facilitate faster access to the keyboard with both thumbs. The Danger Hiptop and the Sony Mylo are two primary examples.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

Google Maps

Google, Motorola Droid |

Google Maps directions.png

Google Maps (formerly Google Local) is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free (for non-commercial use), that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API. It offers street maps, a route planner for traveling by foot, car, bike (beta) or public transport and an urban business locator for numerous countries around the world. Google Maps satellite images are not updated in real time; they are several months or years old.

Google Maps uses a close variant of the Mercator projection, so it cannot show areas around the poles. A related product is Google Earth, a stand-alone program which offers more globe-viewing features, including showing polar areas.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

turn-by-turn navigation

Motorola Droid |

Turn-by-turn navigation is a feature of some GPS navigation devices where directions for a selected route are continually presented to the user in the form of spoken and visual instructions. The system keeps the user up-to-date about the best route to the destination, and is often updated according to changing factors such as traffic and road conditions. Turn-by-turn systems typically use an electronic voice to inform the user whether to turn left or right, the street name, and how much distance to the turn.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

microSDHC

Motorola Droid |

SD cards

Secure Digital (SD) is a non-volatile memory card format developed by the SD Card Association (SDA) for use in portable devices. The SD technology is used by more than 400 brands across dozens of product categories and more than 8,000 models, and is considered the de-facto industry standard.

SD now comprises several families of cards: the original, Standard-Capacity (SDSC) card, a High-Capacity (SDHC) card family, an eXtended-Capacity (SDXC) card family, and the SDIO family with input/output functions rather than just data storage.

SD also comprises three different form factors: the original size, the "mini" size, and the "micro" size (see illustration). Electrically passive adaptors allow the use of a smaller card in a host device built to hold a larger card. There are many combinations of form factors and device families.

Host devices that comply with newer versions of the specification provide backward compatibility and accept older SD cards, but older host devices do not recognize newer cards. The SDA uses several trademarked logos to enforce compliance with its specifications and assure users of compatibility. This article explains several factors that can prevent the use of a newer SD card:

A newer card may offer greater capacity than the host device can handle
A newer card may use a file system the host device cannot navigate
Use of an SDIO card requires the host device be designed for the input/output functions the card provides
The organization of the card was changed starting with the SDHC family
Some vendors produced SDSC cards above 1 GB before the SDA had standardized a method of doing so.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

touchscreen

Motorola Droid |

A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touching the display of the device with a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus. Touchscreens are common in devices such as all-in-one computers, tablet computers, and smartphones.
The touchscreen has two main attributes. First, it enables one to interact directly with what is displayed, rather than indirectly with a pointer controlled by a mouse or touchpad. Secondly, it lets one do so without requiring any intermediate device that would need to be held in the hand. Such displays can be attached to computers, or to networks as terminals. They also play a prominent role in the design of digital appliances such as the personal digital assistant (PDA), satellite navigation devices, mobile phones, and video games.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

digital camera

Motorola Droid |

A digital camera (or digicam) is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It is the main device used in the field of digital photography. Most 21st century cameras are digital.Front and back of Canon PowerShot A95

Digital cameras can do things film cameras cannot: displaying images on a screen immediately after they are recorded, storing thousands of images on a single small memory device, and deleting images to free storage space. The majority, including most compact cameras, can record moving video with sound as well as still photographs. Some can crop and stitch pictures and perform other elementary image editing. Some have a GPS receiver built in, and can produce Geotagged photographs.

The optical system works the same as in film cameras, typically using a lens with a variable diaphragm to focus light onto an image pickup device. The diaphragm and shutter admit the correct amount of light to the imager, just as with film but the image pickup device is electronic rather than chemical. Most digicams, apart from camera phones and a few specialized types, have a standard tripod screw.

Digital cameras are incorporated into many devices ranging from PDAs and mobile phones (called camera phones) to vehicles. The Hubble Space Telescope and other astronomical devices are essentially specialized digital cameras.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

megapixel

Motorola Droid |

http://tech.spotcoolstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/pixsize.jpg

A megapixel (MP or Mpx) is one million pixels, and is a term used not only for the number of pixels in an image, but to express the number of image sensor elements of digital cameras or the number of display elements of digital displays. For example, a camera with an array of 2048 × 1536 sensor elements is commonly said to have "3.1 megapixels" (2048 × 1536 = 3,145,728).

Digital cameras use photosensitive electronics, either charge-coupled device (CCD) or complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors, consisting of a large number of single sensor elements, each of which records a measured intensity level. In most digital cameras, the sensor array is covered with a patterned color filter mosaic having red, green, and blue regions in the Bayer filter arrangement, so that each sensor element can record the intensity of a single primary color of light. The camera interpolates the color information of neighboring sensor elements, through a process called demosaicing, to create the final image. These sensor elements are often called "pixels", even though they only record 1 channel (only red, or green, or blue) of the final color image. Thus, two of the three color channels for each sensor must be interpolated and a so-called N-megapixel camera that produces an N-megapixel image provides only one-third of the information that an image of the same size could get from a scanner. Thus, certain color contrasts may look fuzzier than others, depending on the allocation of the primary colors (green has twice as many elements as red or blue in the Bayer arrangement).

#http://en.wikipedia.org

Wi-Fi

Motorola Droid |

Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point (or hotspot) has a range of about 20 meters (65 ft) indoors and a greater range outdoors. Multiple overlapping access points can cover large areas.

A Wi-Fi enabled device such as a PC, smartphone, tablet or games console, can connect to the Internet when within range of a hotspot. Hotspot coverage can comprise an area as small as a single room with wireless-opaque walls or as large as many square miles covered by overlapping access points. "Wi-Fi" is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance and the brand name for products using the IEEE 802.11 family of standards. Wi-Fi products that complete Wi-Fi Alliance interoperability certification testing successfully may use the "Wi-Fi CERTIFIED" designation and trademark.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

Verizon Wireless

Motorola Droid | Monday, December 12, 2011

Cellco Partnership Inc., doing business as Verizon Wireless, is one of the largest mobile network operators in the United States. The network has 107.7 million subscribers as of 2011, making it the largest wireless service provider in America.
Headquartered in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, the company is a joint venture of U.S. telecommunications firm Verizon Communications and UK multinational mobile network operator Vodafone, with 55 and 45 percent ownership respectively. On January 9, 2009, Verizon Wireless acquired Alltel Wireless in a deal valued at $28.1 billion. The acquisition expanded Verizon's wireless network.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

Lucasfilm

Motorola Droid |

Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO.
The company is best known for producing the Star Wars films, and has also produced other box office hits, including the Indiana Jones franchise and American Graffiti. It has also been a leader in developing new film technology in special effects, sound, and computer animation, and because of their expertise its subsidiaries often help produce non-Lucasfilm pictures. Lucasfilm is set to move away from films and more into TV, due to rising budgets.
On July 8, 2005, Lucasfilm's marketing, online, and licensing units moved into the new Letterman Digital Arts Center located in the Presidio in San Francisco. It shares the complex with Industrial Light & Magic and LucasArts. They are also best known for The Deep Note and THX.
Lucasfilm has collaborated with the Walt Disney Company and Walt Disney Imagineering numerous times to create rides and attractions centered on Star Wars and Indiana Jones for various Walt Disney Parks and Resort attractions worldwide.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

Europe

Motorola Droid |

Europe (pronunciation: /ˈjʊərəp/ yewr-əp or /ˈjɜrəp/ yur-əp) is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting the Black and Aegean Seas. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean and other bodies of water to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Black Sea and connected waterways to the southeast. Yet the borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are somewhat arbitrary, as the primarily physiographic term "continent" can incorporate cultural and political elements.
Europe is the world's second-smallest continent by surface area, covering about 10,180,000 square kilometres (3,930,000 sq mi) or 2% of the Earth's surface and about 6.8% of its land area. Of Europe's approximately 50 states, Russia is the largest by both area and population (although the country has territory in both Europe and Asia), while the Vatican City is the smallest. Europe is the third-most populous continent after Asia and Africa, with a population of 733 million or about 11% of the world's population.
Europe, in particular Ancient Greece, is the birthplace of Western culture. It played a predominant role in global affairs from the 16th century onwards, especially after the beginning of colonialism. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European nations controlled at various times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania, and large portions of Asia. Both World Wars were largely focused upon Europe, greatly contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the United States and Soviet Union took prominence. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east. European integration led to the formation of the Council of Europe and the European Union in Western Europe, both of which have been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

Latin America

Motorola Droid |

Latin America (Spanish: América Latina or Latinoamérica; Portuguese: América Latina; French: Amérique latine) is a region of the Americas where Romance languages (i.e., those derived from Latin) – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken^.Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² (7,880,000 sq mi), almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area. As of 2010, its population was estimated at more than 590 million and its combined GDP at 5.16 trillion United States dollars (6.27 trillion at PPP). The Latin American expected economic growth rate
is at about 5.7% for 2010 and 4% in 2011.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

smartphone

Motorola Droid |

A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant (PDA) and a mobile phone or camera phone. Today's models also serve to combine the functions of portable media players, low-end compact digital cameras, pocket video cameras, and GPS navigation units. Modern smartphones typically also include high-resolution touchscreens, web browsers that can access and properly display standard web pages rather than just mobile-optimized sites, and high-speed data access via Wi-Fi and mobile broadband.
The most common mobile operating systems (OS) used by modern smartphones include Google's Android, Apple's iOS, Microsoft's Windows Phone, Nokia's Symbian, RIM's BlackBerry OS, and embedded Linux distributions such as Maemo and MeeGo. Such operating systems can be installed on many different phone models, and typically each device can receive multiple OS software updates over its lifetime.
The distinction between smartphones and feature phones can be vague and there is no official definition for what constitutes the difference between them. One of the most significant differences is that the advanced application programming interfaces (APIs) on smartphones for running third-party applications can allow those applications to have better integration with the phone's OS and hardware than is typical with feature phones. In comparison, feature phones more commonly run on proprietary firmware, with third-party software support through platforms such as Java ME or BREW. An additional complication in distinguishing between smartphones and feature phones is that over time the capabilities of new models of feature phones can increase to exceed those of phones that had been promoted as smartphones in the past.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

multimedia

Motorola Droid |



Text	Audio	Still Images

Animation	Video Footage	Interactivity

Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun (a medium with multiple content forms) or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or traditional forms of printed or hand-produced material. Multimedia includes a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, or interactivity content forms.

Multimedia is usually recorded and played, displayed or accessed by information content processing devices, such as computerized and electronic devices, but can also be part of a live performance. Multimedia (as an adjective) also describes electronic media devices used to store and experience multimedia content. Multimedia is distinguished from mixed media in fine art; by including audio, for example, it has a broader scope. The term "rich media" is synonymous for interactive multimedia. Hypermedia can be considered one particular multimedia application.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

Interactivity

multimedia |

In the fields of information science, communication, and industrial design, there is debate over the meaning of interactivity. In the "contingency view" of interactivity, there are three levels:

Noninteractive, when a message is not related to previous messages;
Reactive, when a message is related only to one immediately previous message; and
Interactive, when a message is related to a number of previous messages and to the relationship between them.

#http://en.wikipedia.org

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