Author Archives: James

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One Week of WeatherSignal

Posted on May 18, 2013 by James

It’s been just over a week since we launched WeatherSignal, we billed it as “the most ambitious Weather crowdsourcing project ever” – that’s a fine claim to make, let’s see if we’re managing to live up to it. By the … Continue reading →

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How to use WeatherSignal for Quantified Self tracking

Posted on May 18, 2013 by James

While WeatherSignal is primarily designed to crowdsource Weather Readings you can also use it as a personal “tricorder” – for example to make highly localised maps of your surroundings, or even to monitor your own habits and interactions with the … Continue reading →

Posted in Quantified Self, WeatherSignal | 2 Comments

What Google Activity Recognition means for apps

Posted on May 16, 2013 by James

There is no shortage of sensors on smart-phones – most devices have a lightmeter, magnetometer, three-axis-accelerometer and sensors for location (GPS, cellular/wifi radio). While it’s relatively easy for developers to access, for example, raw accelerometer data, it can be difficult … Continue reading →

Posted in Android Development, Mobile Trends | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Getting Started WIth Activity Recognition: Android Developer Guide

Posted on May 16, 2013 by James

This one’s for the Android devs! Google’s Activity Recognition is so new it’s hard to find any documentation on it, although there are abundant news stories announcing it. I’ve put together a very quick guide on adding it into your … Continue reading →

Posted in Android Development | Leave a comment

5G spotted in the wild

Posted on April 1, 2013 by James

Recently we brought news of sightings of T-Mobiles LTE network before it was announced, we even saw the unreleased Galaxy S4 being used to test it. Today we spotted something far bigger, a new cellular technology matching the as-yet unreleased … Continue reading →

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Mapping the World via Cellphones

Posted on February 12, 2013 by James

Here at OpenSignal we’re using cellphones to map signal, cell towers & Wi-Fi access points. When we launched back in 2010 these seemed like obvious things to map using cellphones. To our astonishment we’ve built the biggest project of its … Continue reading →

Posted in Mobile Trends | 1 Comment

Find the easter egg, win a Nexus 7!

Posted on January 23, 2013 by James

Here at OpenSignal we’re very excited about the launch of OpenSignal 2 – the complete overhaul of our Android app. In order to celebrate its release to all Android platforms, we’re giving away a Nexus 7 tablet to one of … Continue reading →

Posted in App Update | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

On buying your mum a tablet

Posted on December 26, 2012 by James

My mum had been dropping hints about getting a tablet for a while. We – the kids – were a little surprised at this as mum is by no means a technophile, but she’d read in a magazine of the … Continue reading →

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Explaining Google Play Services

Posted on December 18, 2012 by James

Google’s apps are usually the most highly rated on the market. Google Mail has a rating of 4.3 and Google Maps 4.4. These are apps I use everyday, highly functional yet extraordinarily simple. Google’s latest app (if it can even … Continue reading →

Posted in Android Development | 2 Comments

After two thousand years of GPS, what next?

Posted on November 30, 2012 by James

GPS technology is probably older than you think, probably a few millennia years older. And back then it was more battery efficient. Let’s look at its history and some recent ideas that could make the current system 1000 times more … Continue reading →

Posted in Mobile Trends | Leave a comment