Brewster

For the past year and a half, I’ve been very quiet about a project I’ve been working on.  So much so that I haven’t even said the name, actually.  But this past Thursday, Brewster was finally made public.  The reaction so far has been overwhelmingly positive, with write-ups all over the web from the New York Times to Gizmodo and AllThingsD.

Brewster is a personalized address book for iPhone.  It takes all of your contacts from the social networks you’re part of and mixes them with contacts from more traditional places like your address book and your Google Contacts.  It gives you an amazing unified view of the people you know, and how you know them.  You can search across all of your contacts, sort them into lists, and gain insight into how they’re connected.

If you haven’t checked it out yet – head over to the website and download the app today!

• Brewster on Twitter
• Brewster on Facebook

Streaks

Yesterday, my 124-day blogging and open-source coding streak came to an end.  I’ll continue to keep the same goals, and am sad to see it go – but hopefully we’ll build it back up

Do It.

# of People who do nothing is greater than

# of People who make excuses to not do something is greater than

# of People who talk about doing something is greater than

# of People who attempt to do something is greater than

# of People who do something

Roku

I got a Roku box a few days ago – to replace my Google TV in my living room.  The Roku is definitely less powerful, can’t browse the web quite as well – but has been pretty enjoyable.  For the things it does, the Roku outperforms.  Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu all felt pretty hacked into Google TV, but the Roku gives them a much more solid feel.

TV is a pretty exciting space, looking forward to what’s coming next – seems like it may be one of the next big battlegrounds as we head towards making computers even more ubiquitous.

Arduino: Combination Lock Opener

So I’ve started in on my first Arduino project – an automatic combination lock opener.  It’ll automatically turn and guess the combination for a Master lock like this.  It’ll have a screen to display its current combination attempt, and will spin the dial itself.  I thought for a while about it, and I think I have some really neat ideas to make it more interesting:

1. An optimization can be made by taking advantage of the lock’s imperfect positioning, and instead of trying every number, trying every other number first.
2. Based on where 1 spin ends, you can make the next move you choose to make start close to the end position of your last move.
3. The last turn, you can spin the lock and continually attempt opening, without re-trying the combinations.

So, my hopes are that with these optimizations, I can go from:

• 1st dial – 40 possibilities
• 2nd dial – 40 possibilities
• 3rd dial – 40 possibilities
• 40 * 40 * 40 = 64000 combinations

To:

• 1st dial – 20 possibilities
• 2nd dial – 20 possibilities
• 3rd dial – spinning as I go
• 20 * 20 * 1 = 400 combinations

I’ll post here updates as I have them, and hopefully soon we’ll have a cool combination lock unlocker.