iwobot in happy state

iwobot in sleeping state

First possible design I came up with, is a TV-like robot with basic body parts which can help iwobot to have human-like gestures. It has 2 legs, 2 eyes, a mouth a screen and hair with a hair clip ^^

I thought the screen can be a data transfer interface between the robot and the user. So in case the user asked iwo what her favorite picture looks like, iwo can actually show it to the user by putting the image on her screen.

Anyway,  it’s Feedback time!

The Idea
I want to make a virtual friend (iwobot) who can:

• act as a usual interface between me and the people who are visiting my website
• be a guide for the visitors of my website in the pre-defined cases
• let the visitors of my website interact and play games with him

Functionalities
Here are the use cases and functionalities I want my robot to have:

1. iwobot will use 1 twitter account (iwobotTwitterAccound) as a data feed
2. The user will be able to feed the robot with input text through the user interface
3. The user will be able to choose actions for iwobot to take (like jump, walk etc.) by clicking on buttons in the tool box of the application
4. The user will be able to interact with the robot by giving him objects (by dragging and dropping an apple from the tool box to the canvas where the robot is drawn)
5. There will be pre-defined questions and answers set, like a Frequently Asked Questions, if the input text the user enters looks like one of these questions or simple commands, then they will be interpreted right away by the iwobot engine and the user will be able to see the reaction quickly
6. Otherwise the idle animation will play until the admin receives the question in his twitter account and answers it (The idle animation may be thinking or sleeping etc.)
7. The text that the user entered (as told in number 2), will seemlessly be sent to iwobotTwitterAccount from iwobotTwitterAccount if the engine couldn’t handle the message itself

Pixel Bow

I made an image viewer using Flex and Actionscript 3 where you can view the images as thumbnails and select an image and annotate it and even download that image with your annotations on it or save it to my server. Since I can view these images later, this can be a good way to send me a secret message ;)

Anyway here you can view my pixel bow application or download it and embed it in your website. Or even better, you can download my source code and play around with it.

Your comments are appreciated :)

Me and my project mate Mies developed 2 different versions for this assignment.

• Version 1 – uses the GeoIPService, the Ruby programming language, Sinatra, soap4r, the jquery Javascript framework and the Yahoo Maps API and can be found here:
  iwa-wsdl2ruby
• Version 2 – uses the Fraudlabs IP2Location webservice, the PHP programming language, nusoap, Javascript and the Google Maps API and can be found here:
  DisplayGeographicalLocation.html

Version 1:
Since Version 1 was fully developed by Mies, I will not post the source code for this here. Maybe he can give a link to his code if he wants. So here is the explanation for the version 1:

The GeoIP WSDL-to-REST service is built using Sinatra, soap4r, the Ruby programming language, Yahoo Maps and the jquery javascript framework. Sinatra is an open source web application framework and domain specific language written in Ruby. As opposed to other web frameworks such as Rails (also in Ruby) or Django (written in Python), Sinatra is very minimal in its design and implementation. URL Routes in Sinatra are HTTP methods combined with some pattern matching and logic. The simplest URL route and thus web application in Sinatra is:

get '/' do
"Hello World"
end

which basically prints out “Hello World” if invoked via the web server using the root url (http://localhost/). As such Sinatra is ideal for building small REST services, API’s and web hooks, and thus a perfect candidate for completing this assignment.

All application logic resides in the ‘main.rb’ file. Using the soap4r library (an implementation of Soap 1.1 in Ruby), a request object is created using the provided .wsdl file. The IP address as provided by the user is passed as parameter to the getGeoIP method of the request object. Second a result object (in fact a key-value pair, or dictionary) is created using the getGeoIPResult method, invoked upon the same request object. The actual country name is the value of the CountryName key within the result key-value pair.

Two forms of URL routes are provided, one for the html representation and a second route for the REST API. The html representation is a simple .erb (a ruby templating language) template with a form. The IP address can be submitted and the result is displayed.

The second URL route provides the methods for the RESTful API. The following methods are supported: /api/location.?ip= where is the desired output format.
Current options are .xml and .json

For instance the url:

/api/location.xml?ip=62.69.184.53 will render a response NETHERLANDS

whereas

the location.json?ip=62.69.184.53 equivalent will render a {”CountryName”:”NETHERLANDS”} response.

The ajax response and yahoo maps calls are handled using jquery; a javascript framework.

Figure 1 displays an overview of the application’s architecture:

The final web application is deployed using Heroku, a cloud-based hosting environment for ruby applications at http://iwa-wsdl2ruby.heroku.com/. The initial version used the Google Maps Geocoding API for requesting a latitude and longitude and subsequently render the actual map. However as Heroku uses a reverse proxy (Nginx) and http caching layer (Varnish) to service and load balance requests, and being able to dynamically scale deployed web applications, the IP address used for this web application is not static. As such the Google Maps API key can not be coupled to this web application and thus an error message appears and the actual map is not rendered. The Yahoo Maps API is less strict in this sense about its usage and thus we ended up using this service in rendering the final map.

Version 2:
This version of the application makes use of Javascript in the front-end and PHP at the back-end and only works for IE  for now. This can be avoided by using a framework like prototypejs.

When the user browses to DisplayGeographicalLocation.html 2 new Ajax objects are created as the page is loaded(one for getting IP asynchronously and the other for getting the geographical location asynchronously).

The logic of the application resides in ipToMap function. If the ip input text field is empty, it makes an HTTP GET request to getUserIP.php which returns the user IP to the client.

The Javascript code for this would look like this:

The PHP code for getting user ip is as below:

After the ip is successfully assigned to the ip input text field, a new http GET request is made to getGeoLoc.php and ip is given as a parameter.

This php file makes use of nusoap library in order to create a soap client using the WSDL file provided by fraudlabs: ip2locationwebservice.asmx?wsdl and to call the fraudlabs IP2Location webservice with a message including the ip and licence key needed to use this webservice.

A sample call to getGeoLoc.php and its result would look like this:

And the source code for getGeoLoc.php which turns WSDL webservice into REST.

The result is then processed and turned into XML format within getGeoLoc.php and returned to the ajaxObject as a responseText. This text is than recognized as an XMLDOM and parsed and the latitude and longtitude are retrieved. These latitude and longtitude variables are then used for creating a map using the Google Maps API.

Please note that the free version of fraudlabs includes only 90 calls to their webservice per month, so when the credits are finished the result will not be accurate, it will return a latitude of 0 and longtitude of 0.

These examples are bound to external services though.
In practice, if it is a crucial functionality for your projects, I would recommend keeping the ip to geographical details on your database and write a service of your own, so that when these external services are down or you are out of credits, you wouldn’t be angry at other parties :)

Our first assignment for the Multimedia Authoring course was to make an interactive logo which navigates back to the home page when clicked. Nothing special, just an exercise to get familiar with Flex and AS3.

Since it had to be a portfolio page in the end, I wanted to use my name and initials. And while doing this I wanted a mascot for my logo, which happened to be an owl by using 2 different fonts. About the effects I used, I move the eyes of the owl according to the mouse position. And add blur effect when the logo is clicked.

You can download the source code for my logo component or check out the demo flex application.

Oh, and the documentation of my code is already embedded as comments in my files. Let me know if you have problems running the application or have any questions related..

• my school assignments / projects
• things I’ve learned / discovered during my studies
• may be some tutorials
• and sample code you can reuse..

First of all, my dream company would be my own company; meaning I should either own it, or the company should offer all it’s workers a percentage of the company, so all the workers are actually the share holders of the company. In my opinion this would make them more dedicated to the company, and naturally provide them a great sense of responsibility about their job. Because they will realize that the more quality work they create, the more successful their company becomes.

Second thing I would want in a company is the trainings and research on new technologies. The employees should not only listen to a conference and fall asleep while listening. They should not sit there and read a long tech paper by themselves. They should get trainings where they can have hands-on practice during or afterwards. This will keep them sharp and up-to-date. Trainings could also decrease the stress of a busy working environment and let the people make friendships during the projects they work on together.

Thirdly, I would like the company located in a central region where you can go out in the lunch break and get your things done. For example shopping for a gift for your friend who just gave birth and you have to visit her tonight after work and the shops will be closed at 18:00 but you don’t have to worry about that since you can do it in the lunch break, thanks to the location of your company!

For the working environment, I would prefer ergonomic tables and chairs, a carefully selected, cosy lighting and creative office decoration. I would like the company to have a relax-room where employees can do yoga or play some table tennis or chess during the day. Of course shall I mention a breakfast/lunch room with healthy and delicious food :)

For the projects, I would prefer to work on projects that are being developed for the good of humanity. Like creating things that will make people’s life easier, safer, more fun, or educate them..

Do I want too much already? :)

Anyway, we chose Muiden not because of the wind but because I wanted to see the Muiderslot..
The road we cycled through had water on one side with ducks, geese and swans on it; and greenland with sheep, cows and horses on the other. I couldn’t help and stopped to take some pictures of those cute little fellows at some point :)
And finally we made it to Muiderslot castle in Muiden. (after stopping like 5 times :P)The entrance has a fee around 10 euros per person. The castle has been renovated many times since 13th century..
And now, with the integration of interactive edutainment elements -like games where you try out some real archery, shooting a laser pointer on a crossbow, to a plate with a light sensor in the middle- it seems quite entertaining and educating for families with children. (or maybe people like me ^^)

Having a relaxed day out, I even learned something during this trip: “why the stairs of the castle turn to right while you go up”.
That’s because, it is harder for the invaders who are right-handed to fight right & upwords (they need to bend their right arms to right back) and people who protect the castle fight easier downwards respectively.

Anyway, lets see where we go next..

Cheers,
tiw

A few weeks ago my room-mate came to visit me in Amsterdam..
She would stay with me for 5 days, which is just enough time for some people to visit the city..
But we are such a gas couple that we decided to go to Germany to visit another friend of ours for the weekend. (Edit: In my native language Turkish, someone “gas” also means someone egged on about taking a specific action)

We were not satisfied by going to another country but also we decided to visit Drei-Länder-Ecke, which was 50 km far away too. It is a land where 3 countries come together at one spot! The highest point of the Netherlands is also a few meters away from this place :)

Anyway, on our way back, passing by the forest, we saw this poor tree trying to get his freedom by eating the metal fence surrounding him.

I wanted to share this scene with my non-existing readers..