The World of Extraordinary Apps

Smartphones in this touchscreen form have not been among us for a very long time. Even though before the year 2007 the origin of app-based mobile phones existed within a variety of BlackBerry brand models and prototypes in Nokia and NTT DoCoMo labs, only after capacitive touchscreens matured enough to be industrialized and embedded into popular handheld devices did they start to be really interesting and competitive. Today, after only a decade, the smartphone market is one of the most valuable on the planet, and app stores have reached the limit of 2 million per platform. There are literally zillions of apps out there, and browsing the app libraries became the real effort.

Anyhow, today, and a dozen years after the first touchscreen smartphones (LG Prada and iPhone) hit the stores, Viktor and I decided to film/write about a dozen apps that are a little bit unusual and extraordinary compared to those that are used on a daily basis by most of us.

To start with, let's first present the latest video from the zViktor22 channel and our recent collaboration. I hope you would like it, even though it ended pretty long, almost half an hour in length, and if you haven't heard of some or all of the apps we were testing within, it could be entertaining and educational. If it proved that way, you know the drill; please like and subscribe and/or add some comments at the end. It would mean the world to us.

Before I add a word or two to describe screenshots from the apps, it is only fair to mention one more app that we tested with this video creation. Suitably for this title, this entire video is edited in an app as well. The name of this really great app is Animotica, designed for Windows 10, and all I can say is that it is a valuable competitor for the Movie Maker and Shotcut desktop applications we were using regularly for Viktor's channel so far. Only a couple of features were missing for this amazing app to become a worthy rival, even for software with the suffix "pro" in their titles.

The smartphone applications we were testing were all Android editions, but I am sure for most of them, if not all of them, they could be found within the other two major operating systems as well. We started first with apps designed for the outdoors. For this occasion, we chose "GPS Compass Navigator", "Last Survivors", and "CycleDroid". Like Viktor said in the video, the first two could become handy if the apocalypse strikes, especially the second one, which is one great offline database of survival skills. For the GPS compass, it might not be really useful in such an event as it requires operational GPS satellites, but it was one of the best compass-related apps with maps in overlay included, which is ideal for camping.

CycleDroid is one of those few apps that we are using on a regular basis. It is basically tracking you while riding a bike and saving database entries of all cycling details, including maps. The biking map files are using recognizable formats and could be easily imported into Google Maps, for example. Sometimes it could be extremely fun—like in the above screenshot from the app, one of our cycling trips in the past accidentally painted a "sitting bear" shape on the map. We probably couldn't do it in such detail if we tried painting with streets on purpose.

The next three apps from the above screenshots belong to scientific experiments you could do with your smartphone. Perhaps the most interesting is the one in the middle—the app that can play a continuous beep by choosing frequency and amplitude. In our case, 1400 Hz was able to put out the flame of a candle! Of course, peeking into the microworld is always fun, and the first app on the list was able to take images from an external camera, in this case a digital microscope equipped with a powerful LED light. If you want to learn more about it, hop to Smart Microscope story from an earlier post or the Digital Microscope video from Viktor's channel.

Surely, the biggest power from the smartphone is the global network, the internet coming either from the mobile network or wireless receiver. However, we are taking it too much for granted, and even our smartphones can't operate in full capacity without the mighty internet today. Smartphones are able to communicate even without it just by using their network parts. Just like 'Walkie-Talkie' from the previous century, by using extraordinary apps like "Walkietooth", "Offline Chat", or "FireChat", we can pair two or more smartphones into a private small wireless mesh network and use it in the wireless range. The video shows how to do it in much greater detail.

For the next section, we are going outdoors again with two amazing games. "Street Hunt" and "Pokémon GO" are great representatives in the mobile gaming industry. While you probably know a bit or two about catching Pokémon in your favorite parks, hunting a secret location is also extremely fun and yet as simple as one such app can be. Simply put, it chooses a nearby location from Google Maps, and your task is to hunt it down. If you want to play it with friends, unlike "Pokémon GO", there are no rules but those you create yourselves.

The last section and final two apps belong to the educational realm. I left these two for the end simply because I liked them the most. I have to admit that I learned about "iNaturalist" while I was researching the apps for this collab. This is sort of a social network that helps with identifying species. The idea is simple—just photograph an unfamiliar plant, insect, or animal, send it to the app and an automated algorithm, and people will identify it for you. Last summer, one strange bird landed on the high branch of our birch tree. Viktor and I took the photo, and to test it, we uploaded it to iNaturalist for identification. Only a couple of hours later, we got three matching recognitions. Common Wood-Pigeon. 100% correct. Amazing!

The last, but not the least, comes "Star Chart". The app that uses all the orientation sensors from the smartphone to identify its position in 3D space and, with the addition of GPS coordinates, creates an augmented reality view toward the stars and all the visible and invisible stellar objects known to man. If you own a small educational telescope, you need to know where to point it. It served me well before when I wanted to show Viktor's friends Jupiter's moons, the most famous constellations and stars, Mars' redness, and Saturn's rings, but even without the scope, its educational value is priceless.

At the very end of the story about extraordinary apps we found exciting, useful, or just fun, I am enclosing the links for all the apps from the post and video. Hopefully you will find a home for some of them on your smartphone as well, or at least inspiration to search for more.

Mobile Outdoor Games:
Throwy Phone Extreme! | Street Hunt | Pokémon GO

Experiments and Science:
MScopes for USB Camera | Spectroid | Yet another Air BLOwer: YABLO

Offline Audio/Video/Chat:
FireChat | Walkietooth | Offline Chat

Education and Space:
iNaturalist | Star Chart

Tools and Outdoor:
Army Knife | GPS Compass Navigator | Last Survivors | CycleDroid

Smart Microscope

Most of the popular digital and DSLR cameras are perfectly equipped for macro photos. Taking a great photo by zooming to the scene no farther than 20-30 centimeters is a little effort and requires only clicking the shutter button and leaving all the technicalities to the camera's automated software. Even the cheap lenses can do that without a problem. A while ago I collected some of those photos and wrote a little about macro photography and how to record all the close objects not very distant from our nose.

But can we do closer than that? Can we take a photo of an object like the top of a pencil as close as a couple of millimeters away from the lens, for example, like the one in this photo:

Dot-sized larvae of cricket or grasshopper invading our balcony flowerpot

Well, not with a consumer camera, not without specialized optics. However, "augmenting" our smartphones to do the magic is just a little effort. And yes, I took the above photo with only my smartphone, an additional plastic lens I taped to its camera, and... lots of patience.

To be completely honest, taking a photo of an insect, small in size, like a hair louse that is erratically running and jumping in your small zooming window, is not little effort per se, but it can make your day and everything else is just a piece of cake. All you have to do is strip one of those laser pointers and rip out its lens. Perhaps the better results you can get are with a laser pointer equipped with a lens made with greater optical quality, but for starters, anyone can do it. So, like in the left image, or if you click on the bottom reference link, when you take out the lens, all you have to do is tape it to your camera lens on the back of your smartphone, and the rest is your imagination. If you follow the image story, the goal can be even bigger—the end result can be one of those microscopes you can find in toy stores with quality lenses, capable of taking a photo or even a video clip of a microworld with up to the cellular level. Complete instructions on building such a device you can find within the Turn Your Smartphone Into a Digital Microscope! YouTube page.

Of course, taking microphotos means you have to get close to the scene, and your smartphone will block most of the useful light, so you have to think like an ordinary microscope. You bring the light with you and position it just below or next to the "set". I recommend one of those LED flashlights that are very small in size that allows you to carry them along with your phone. I used one of those book reader LED lights with a flexible handle with just one LED source on the top. That way you can fit both in your hand—the light and the phone. The other hand will be responsible just for zooming and the button. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is how it looks in action.

I didn't play too much time with this, but I am sure the following summer will bring lots of more microphotos when all of that microbiological life emerges, but it is amazing what exactly you can stumble upon in your front yard or balcony in just a couple of hours. In the image below to the right, when I pointed the lens toward the rose's stem, I thought I would get only some sort of reddish plant spores, but instead my memory card was filled with tiny and not too adorable rose lice. In other words, if you make this, prepare to be surprised at what exactly you might find in there.

Therefore, I advise practicing first with non-live objects in your own household, like in the above example of pencil tops, and believe me, exercising is what you really need to do, simply because zooming out of focus is just one tiny move of your finger or even a significant breath or hesitation. Anyway, I will be adding more images to this gallery in the future, and besides the embedded images in this post, there are more in the web gallery.

In today's update, the story goes further into the microworld, and this time with a cheap 'consumer' digital microscope. I bought one for Viktor's 11th birthday earlier this year, and during this entire spring we played with it a lot. In quality and zooming, it was more or less in the realm of the DIY smart microscope I made and described in the post. However, it brought to the scene its own powerful LED lights, and with its pencil-like shape, it was more controllable and applicable. The downside was that it was far beyond smartphone camera quality, and the number of pixels was not too high to capture quality videos, but still, its educational value was out of the question.

This new addition to the post imagery was actually a video from Viktor's YouTube channel, zViktor22, where he tested the microscope with various plants, food, money, fabrics, insects, and more from our country village, household, his 5th grade herbarium, and our front yard. I also included our old smart microscope photos and the caterpillar video from the initial post to complete the story about what it's possible to do with little effort and cheap technology.

Original post: May 2014, Update: June 2018.

Smart Microscope:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/TNng7utQTw1zb3GK8

Super 8

The history of motion pictures dates back to the second part of the 19th century with photographers like Étienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, who, among others, were the first to take several images per second in one effort—all for scientific purposes back then—to study the locomotion of birds, animals, and humans. For example, Muybridge was the first to take a series of photographs of a galloping horse in order to prove that in one single instant of time all four horse legs are not touching the ground. More or less at the same time on another continent, Marey created a shotgun-shaped camera capable with one trigger pull of capturing 12 images in a row within one single second and storing them all on the single 90 mm film. He used his gun to study various motions of animals, fish, and insects within his so-called 'animated zoo', including dropping cats from different heights and filming them always landing on their feet.

ELMO Super 106, 8mm movie camera

It was not long after initial chronophotography efforts and enthusiasm in the 19th century that the 'evolution' of motion pictures diverted heavily into entertainment and cinematography. The history of films and fun started almost with the start of the 20th century, but in the spirit of today's title, 'domesticating' films within ordinary people and human homes waited another 65 years for the invention of Super 8, or, to be precise, the improvement of Kodak's standard 8mm film from 1932 into a more efficient surface with a bigger width for the frame itself and significantly smaller perforation on the film's right edge. After they introduced it at the 1964-65 World's Fair, Super 8 instantly became the very first home video format with light cameras capable of filming 18 frames per second and more than 3 minutes of the movie per small film cartridge.

To say that my father was a film enthusiast in the second part of the sixties and the entire seventies would be an understatement. It was natural for him to go the step further and, in addition to the several analog SLR cameras and darkroom equipment for developing photos, to invest in home movies. Spending time in the darkroom and hanging photos on the wire were some of the most thrilling experiences of my childhood, but when Super 8 came, another world opened. I was too young to operate the camera, but on the occasion or two I remember, I did hold it and press the red button, especially during our vacations in Greece. Well, aside from those rare moments, most of the time my job, with being a kid and all, was to be in front of the camera and not behind it.

Tondo Super 8 Projector and LG Nexus 5 in action

But to cut the story short, this month I did something I was delaying for a long time. During the last two weeks, every night I was descending into my own customized darkroom equipped with a tiny Super 8 projector and digitalizing our family films. Twenty of those survived over time, and with a speed of two per day, I projected them on the wall and filmed them all with my smartphone. It was far from being an ideal setting, but this was the best I could do. I tried different approaches, filming from different distances, using different settings, and using my DSLR Nikon in the beginning. I even tried to project the film directly into the DSLR, but all my efforts failed due to not having proper lenses and objectives, and in the end, the smartphone was the chosen solution, and it did a better job in the dark than the Nikon.

With more expensive equipment, I am sure the results would be much better, and probably the weakest link was the cute and old Italian Tondo projector, which was my father's portable cinematic projector. I did try with a bigger 'player' first, but despite all my efforts, I couldn't manage to repair the old and superb Crown Optical Co. Ltd. Auto-P, a silent Standard and Super 8 film projector, our primary projector capable of displaying big and crisp screens on the large walls and with much better quality. To be honest, it's more than half a century old and built with nowadays rare parts, especially the missing lamp that is hard to find these days, but I didn't give up, and perhaps in the future, if I stumble on some solution (read it: an eBay sort of solution), I will repeat the effort, at least for those videos filmed indoors.

Nevertheless, all twenty rolls now come with twenty MP4s, and for this occasion I decided to create two movie collages with six movies each. They are all filmed in the late sixties, during the seventies, and in the early eighties with an ELMO Super 106 camera from the first image. The first one, embedded above, contains six films from our early vacations in Greece, and in chronological order, they are filmed in the Acropolis of Athens, Zeitenlik, the World War I memorial park in Thessaloniki, vacation resorts in Kamena Vourla, Asprovalta, Katerini Paralia, and two vacations in the vicinity of the port city of Volos.

The second collage is from our home and village in Niš and Guševac in Serbia. Mostly it focuses on my sister's and my babyhood and early childhood, birthday parties, family gatherings, and excursions. Also our old house that is now gone and the old shape of our country village front yard. This video also contains one of the rare black-and-white films from our collection that probably originated from different cameras and settings.

This entire effort triggered lots of memories and emotions from almost forty years ago, and seeing people live, especially those that are not alive today, is something extraordinary that regular photography cannot induce. Perhaps we today, with all of our pocket gadgets, are taking video clips and home photography for granted, but before, in the Super 8 era, this was a completely different experience. What we today do with just two taps on the screen, before you had to do in a more complex manner, including purchasing film cartridges, carefully planning (directing) filming sequences for a 3-minute film, sending it to development, organizing cinematic sessions...

One thing is for sure: Super 8 was the origin of what we have now in our homes. It was eventually replaced with VHS tapes in the 80s, but at the dawn of the 21st century, the analog period came to an end, and old-fashioned home gadgets were replaced with home digital camcorders first and, in the very last decade, with smartphones. To tell you the truth, it is nice to have a camera in your back pocket, it is, but somehow, with me, as I witnessed the origin of the entire process in my early childhood, the nostalgia for the analog days gave me another layer of the entire experience. Something special and extraordinary for sure.

'Super 8,' a sci-fi movie by J.J. Abrams

Perhaps for the best conclusion for this post, it would not be fair not to mention one of J.J. Abrams' greatest movies from 2011. Simply named 'Super 8', it tells a main sci-fi story about an alien encounter, but everything is perfectly wrapped within a background story of school kids trying to film a short movie for a Super 8 festival. It was really a great movie, and if you liked E.T. before, this is definitely a decent sequel and one of my favorites.

Refs:
http://www.kodak.com/id/en/consumer/products/super8/default.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_formats
http://www.retrothing.com/2009/09/tondo-super-8-projector
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/super-8-jj-abrams-says-194908

Friendly IoT or Daemon of WarGames

Is the Internet dangerous? Well, yes, we know all the hazards of spending all the work hours behind monitor screens, browsing the web at home, doing social networking, playing online games, watching YouTube, staring at smartphone little displays, or for whatever reasons we sit above our keyboards most of the time every day. That's indeed what we first think of—all the negative aspects of the mighty global network—but today I am not referring to all the potential medical issues inherited from sitting too long on the chair or looking every day into the LCD screen. I also don't mean the obvious social and/or physiological outcomes from letting the virtual world take over the real one for more and more people every day. No, I mean the real danger. Did the Internet overcome the pure network system and become a tool for mass destruction or a background tool for criminal activities? Can someone use the internet to hurt somebody or to perform a murder? Either directly or indirectly? Can some organization, country, or corporation use it to start a war? I mean, wars in the past began by more trivial things than by one global network. There was one war in the year 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras, initiated by a football game. True story. Google it.

You can relax. The Internet is still far from being a player. Or a rifle. It is getting sophisticated by the day, but currently it is still lacking two things to become something more than just a network. Two things are in development as we speak. And yes. You can stop relaxing now. The Internet IS going to be potentially capable and very dangerous when these two things become reality in the future. Very near future, if you ask me. And one of those two doesn't even have to be perfect. Like any other internet thingies, they have cool acronyms. AI and IoT. The first one will provide internet to be self-aware... or... in simple words, to start thinking. It means 'Artificial Intelligence', of course, and even though current development is far away from creating a real replacement for a human mind, some sort of NAI (near AI) will be sufficient to act independently on many occasions. NAI is not real AI. It is rather a complex logic that emulates thinking behavior in some spatial scenarios with predefined and predicted all or most of all directions and events. For example, the current two operational robotic rovers on Mars, Curiosity and Opportunity, are capable of driving on their own with their operating software. Or here on Earth, many metro systems in large cities are operated by complex control and are fully automated, without humans behind train controls. Something like in this embedded video was unthinkable only a couple of decades ago.

To be honest, true AI is not really a real threat. Even if science and technology build an AI entity tomorrow with certain doses of emotions and reason, it will be just another child in the neighborhood. True danger in the background of the global worldwide web is only the programmer's anticipation and powerful IF-THEN-ELSE command. And we have both today. AI being a mad mastermind of the future is not needed. The only thing preventing the Internet from being dangerous today is the still-early phase of IoT. "Internet of Things". Think of it like this: if you have brains and no body or senses, you are as good as a conductor without an orchestra. This is the inevitable part of the future Internet. It will get a body and a wide variety of sensing abilities. Basically, until now, IP addresses were reserved for devices with brains, or CPU units if you will. Home computers, business servers, phones, tablets, smart TVs, and microcontrollers are happy units today with internet access and proud owners of IP addresses. The trend is for tomorrow that all technology-based devices get online too. Remote controllers, motion sensors and any type of sensing converters, home and kitchen appliances, cars and any type of vehicle, industry tools, medical sensors, 3D printers, clothing items, and literally anything at all will be able to get a 'smart patch' and be allowed to be monitored or controlled over the internet. Think of this futuristic network from today's Google and Android smartphone perspective.

If you are a user of Google networks and devices (like I am, and this is just an example; the same goes for other providers and internet giants), from their databases (and I am not saying that they are doing it), it's possible to know what you are browsing to the simplest detail by your usage data in searching the net and the history of your browser, who you are following on social networks by which timeline or wall pages you are opening the most, what you like and dislike, what your watching habits are by your YouTube statistics, how your life looks in writing by your usage of Blogger, and all your whereabouts of your Android smartphone by Google Timeline. Not to mention that they have access to all of your online photos, videos, and files through your usage of all of their services and cloud storage. Oh, yes, and they have all your passwords you typed on various websites. Google is not even on the top of potential 'smart' providers with access to your, well, everything. If you are a user of, for example, Microsoft or Apple and their operating systems, then they are able (and again, I am not saying they are doing it) to know and have access to your localized data that is not clouded online. The story continues into the business environment further. If you are the proud owner of a rack of servers in some cool data storage building and you didn't write all the software and used so-called 'third party' code, the simple fact is that you are not the only one with potential access to all of your racks. And you are not the only one capable of monitoring all the network traffic. Those who manufactured network cards can do it too. Again, I am not saying that big internet corporations are doing all those spying and sniffing of people and other entities online, just that if they wanted to, it would be technologically possible.

Anyhow, all the worries of today's digital world end with privacy concerns. If you are a villainous criminal or a mad hacker, all you can do is steal somebody's identity data and log into other people's accounts for whatever malicious reasons you would do that, but you can't physically and directly harm somebody. In the past I have had these encounters with online thieves, and one of them cracked my password, logged into my dial-up account, and used free internet for a while until I went physically to the internet provider and overrode him for good. After that experience, I am creating complex passwords, and on a couple of occasions, they are so complex that even I forget them after a few weeks. I guess now is as good a time as any to thank all those "Forgot your password?" links standing timidly next to login forms.

However, the Internet of Things will have the power to end all of those 'benignities' of today's online world. Smartphones will not be the only systems with a 'smart' prefix. I am imagining all the varieties of SmartHomes, SmartCars, SmartShips, SmartRoads, SmartOffices, SmartFields, SmartTraffic, SmartEnergy, SmartPolitics... Ok, let's not push it. Some things will never happen. Nevertheless, and seriously speaking, even though this post looks like I am against the future breakthrough in the Internet size and means, many of the IoT-based gadgets will be extremely helpful. Think of the future SmartForest with many embedded fire sensors and intelligent surveillance cameras or SmartHealth gadgets actively monitoring your health signs and alarming anything potentially hazardous, either from within your body or by sensing bad food or air or any type of toxin in your near proximity. Surely every bright medal has the opposite side, and with the possibility of accessing all the gadgets online and controlling them from a distance, I am more than positive that we will be facing SmartViruses as well, and still, just people's passwords to access their mailboxes or bank accounts will be completely dwarfed by the online crime of entering somebody's house system and starting to leak gas while everybody is sleeping.

I am not quite sure that the Internet of Things will exactly be "The Fourth Industrial Revolution", but in one way or another, after a decade or so of transition years, it will be our everyday reality, and the next generations will embrace it and take it for granted just like we do with our current technological surroundings. Or our fathers and grandfathers and their lives within old-fashioned telegraphs, radios, and CRT television sets. Or their fathers and grandfathers with newspapers and books.

Anyways, we will be dealing with IoT when it happens, and I am sure I will be writing about it in general or in specifics on this blog or elsewhere in the future, but today I only want to end this story with a recommendation of one great related novel. About thirty years ago, I was watching WarGames on one of my first VCRs, and it instantly became one of my favorite films. I was more or less the same age as Matthew Broderick back then, in the middle 80s, when he played the lead role in the movie, and needless to say, I spent numerous hours watching it again and again and even read David Bischoff's book based on the original screenplay and enjoyed it all the same. At least for me, it was definitely an influential book of the decade. Every now and again in the previous thirty years, after WarGames, I was wondering why no decent book or movie was made to represent the real successor of the original story only in the realm of nowadays' Internet instead of WarGames' military background. And after three decades, finally, last week, on a friend's recommendation, I purchased Daniel Suarez's "Daemon". In the 'book' thread of the blog, I reviewed many titles without much of a spoiler, and to continue in the same fashion, all I can say is that it's one of those books you hate to leave, and as I am very close to the end, I don't see what would happen to force me to not give it a full five stars. "Daemon" is exactly what I was expecting after WarGames. I read that Walter F. Parkes, co-writer of the original WarGames screenplay and producer of the Man in Black movies, was interested in producing the movie "Daemon" and its sequel, "Freedom" (or "Darknet" in some editions), but this is still in "the clouds", probably due to the extremely technical plot and twists. Perhaps "Daemon" is more suitable for a mini-series or sci-fi TV show... Time will tell.

As for me, my time in the near future is locked and reserved for "Freedom", eagerly waiting in my Kindle's memory. With the same enthusiasm, I am embracing a not-so-near future full of "Internet Things" and what they will bring to our technocracy.

Image refs:
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/iot-brings-potential-security-threats
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/WarGames-Blu-ray/47282/
http://www.amazon.com/War-Games-David-Bischoff/dp/0440193877
http://www.amazon.ca/Freedom-TM-Daemon-Daniel-Suarez-ebook/dp/B002VUFKDY
https://3dprint.com/113502/iot-2015-person-of-the-year/

Refs:
https://re-work.co/blog/embrace-the-iot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2014/05/13/IoT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things
http://www.amazon.com/War-Games-David-Bischoff/dp/0440193877
http://www.amazon.ca/Daemon-Daniel-Suarez-ebook/dp/B003QP4NPE/