Gadget Review: 6-Colour ePaper Name Badge


Skintones rendered on eInk.

The good folks at SmartDisplayer Technology Co have sent me a six colour eInk badge to play about with. Here's a quick video and then a walk-through of its features. You can also view SmartDisplayer's official video. The Badge It is a single block of plastic. There are no seams, screws, or rough edges. The ePaper appear right on the surface of the badge, there's no recessing or anything…

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How to password protect a static HTML page with no JS


Screenshot of some garbled text on screen.

I recently saw Robin Moisson's method of password protecting a statically served HTML page. It's quite neat! But it does rely on JavaScript. That got me wondering if there was a way to encrypt a static page only using CSS? And... I think I've done it! I'll warn you now, this is a deeply stupid way to solve the problem. Here's a screencast of the demo in action: …

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Better Keyboard Buttons in CSS


A pet cat typing on a computer keyboard.

Here's a simple scrap of CSS which you can Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V kbd { border: .1em solid #aaa; border-radius: 15%; display: inline-block; padding: .1em .5em; background: linear-gradient(180deg, #fff, #fff, #fff, #ddd); user-select: none; cursor: pointer; color: #000; font-weight: bold; } kbd:hover { background: linear-gradient(0deg, #fff, #fff, #fff, #ddd); } …

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How to present at a hack day


I go to lots of hack days and hackathons. Some are big corporate affairs, some are boutique community events. They all have one thing in common - Geeks suck at giving demos. You have 3 minutes to convince the judges - or your peers - that you've built something brilliant. How do you do that? One Hundred and Eighty Seconds. It is not a lot of time. So here are my top 3 tips for succeeding at a…

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Demoing BlipDrop at Mobile Monday London


Terence standing up demoing to a room full of people.

This is a necropost - resurrected from the now defunct blog of a previous employer. I really loved the idea of geolocated ephemeral content. And I was a little disappointed that the business never saw the potential for it. Maybe I'll find a way to relaunch it in the future. I’ve been attending Mobile Monday London for years. It’s a great (free!) way to meet people in the mobile industry, to lea…

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Optical Theremin - Demo


At Over The Air I demonstrated what I considered a novel use for one of Android's sensors. I wanted to create a Theremin - a type of musical instrument which is played by moving one's hand over it - changing pitch and tone by moving nearer or further away. My first attempt used the proximity sensor. However, on all the Android phones I tried the sensor's accuracy was binary - it could sense…

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QRpedia Demo at Mobile Monday


I love going to Mobile Monday London - it's a great meeting place for those of us in the mobile industry. It's also one of the few spaces which holds the equivalent of an "Open Mic" night. MoMoLo's Spring Demo Night was crowded with great entrants. So much so that each of us had only three minutes to present! That's quite tight. I'm used to 15-30 minutes. I'm not sure how, but I managed to…

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