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Garrett Murray on Amazon’s new “Amazon Coins” virtual currency.
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A bricked up Daniel Craig gets his 007 on in this frame for frame Lego remake of the opening scene from Casino Royale.
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There was a post published earlier today on the Twilio blog on using Ruby and the Google CustomSearch API to replicate Google SMS Search. I’m more of a PHP fan, so I thought I’d post a PHP version of this handy tool.
First, you want to install the Google API Client For PHP:
In a terminal run:
curl "http://google-api-php-client.googlecode.com/files/google-api-php-client-0.6.2.tar.gz" -O tar -xvf google-api-php-client-0.6.2.tar.gz
To begin, we need to go over to the Google API Console and create a new application. Once you have created the application, make sure to enable the Google Custom Search Service, then head to the API Access tab and get your API key. We do not need OAuth 2.0 for this project.
Next we need to create a new Custom Search Engine:
Now you have a Custom Search Engine that searches the entire web.
Be sure to copy down the CX parameter from your URL – we will be using this later.
Now that our setup is complete, we can proceed to the code. For this project, we only have one file to create: search.php:
require_once 'google-api-php-client/src/Google_Client.php';
require_once 'google-api-php-client/src/contrib/Google_CustomsearchService.php';
session_start();
$client = new Google_Client();
$client->setApplicationName('My Google SMS Search Replacement');
$client->setDeveloperKey('Your Developer Key Here');
$search = new Google_CustomsearchService($client);
$result = $search->cse->listCse($_POST['Body'], array(
'cx' => 'YOUR CUSTOMER SEARCH ENGINE CX HERE',
'num'=> '3',
));
if( count($results['items']) ){
$msg = array();
foreach($results['items'] as $item){
$msg[] = $item['title']." ".$item['link']);
}
print_sms_reply( $msg );
}else{
print_sms_reply ("No matches found");
}
function print_sms_reply ($sms_reply){
echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n";
echo "<Response>\n";
if( !is_array($sms_reply) ){
echo '<Sms>'.$sms_reply.'</Sms>';
}else{
$cnt = count($sms_reply);
$i = 1;
foreach($sms_reply as $line){
$line = $line." (".$i."/".$cnt.")";
echo '<Sms>'.$line.'</Sms>';
$i++;
}
}
echo "</Response>\n";
}
Then you can upload this to your server, set up your Twilio number’s SMS URL to be http://yourapp.com/search.php – and then you can get back to sending your search queries to Google via SMS!
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Steve Kovach, reporting for Business Insider:
After we reported the news about the First’s price drop, one source familiar with Facebook employees’ thinking on Home said our headline, “HTC’s Facebook Phone Is Clearly a Flop,” was “sadly, very right.” Another source with knowledge of the HTC First sales wouldn’t provide numbers, but did hint they weren’t exactly flying off the shelves at AT&T stores.
This really isn’t a surprise..
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Matt Gemmell on skeuomorphism and intuitive design:
Our industry isn’t young anymore, but it’s still full of fear about whether so-called non-technical people will be able to use its products. I think we’ve been trying to get to less adorned, more information-centric interfaces for quite some time, but we’re still making the same tired old arguments from the golden age of human-computer interaction, about how humans need faux three-dimensional cues about the affordances of on-screen objects. Buttons apparently have to look “pushable”, or no-one will push them.
The reality is more nuanced. Our tastes, and capabilities, have moved a bit beyond screamingly-obvious knobs and dials. We don’t need drop-shadows to encourage us to poke at something. All we need is an invitation, in the form of icons or labels or animations which imply functionality, and a consistency of presentation which allows us to make a good guess about what we can interact with.
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Sundar Pichai, Google’s head of Chrome and Android, has given his first major interview since taking over Andy Rubin’s position as Google’s mobile chief. In an interview with Wired, Pichai speaks on the challenges of managing an open-source platform, the company’s relationship with Samsung and Facebook, and what lies in store for Android at this week’s Google I/O conference.
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Robert T. Gonzalez:
The human palate is arguably the weakest of the five traditional senses. This begs an important question regarding wine tasting: is it bullshit, or is it complete and utter bullshit?There are no two ways about it: the bullshit is strong with wine. Wine tasting. Wine rating. Wine reviews. Wine descriptions. They’re all related. And they’re all egregious offenders, from a bullshit standpoint.
I’m sure it won’t be popular linking to this in the middle of Canada’s wine country where there is a winery on every corner almost.
I’ve actually found that I can tell the difference between different wines. So reading this article and it’s various tests are interesting..
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Peter Shankman:
See, it’s people like Scoble who ruin it for regular people, the masses who will determine whether Glass succeeds or winds up in the land of the Apple Newton. His review was so over the top, so up Google’s ass, so “I’m taking a freaking showerwhile wearing them” (complete with photos,) that no normal, non-over-the-edge Geek will want to come within a hundred miles of them.
So much for mass adoption. It’s the Segway effect. I was the first person in NYC to own a Segway back in 2003. It. Was. Awesome. But I was also on the damn thing every minute of every single day. I’m not proud of that. I did back then to the Segway, what Scoble is doing to Glass, today, and he should have learned from my mistakes.
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On New Years Eve last year I said that I had some big plans for The Loop in 2013. The biggest of those plans is The Loop magazine for iPhone and iPad, which is available from the App Store today.
I wrote an introductory article on The Loop magazine Web site that you can read to find out why I decided to do a magazine, my inspiration and other details. I encourage you to read that.
There are clearly a lot of people I’d like to thank including Jamie and Daniel at TypeEngine, a beautiful new service I’m using to build and deliver The Loop magazine.
I would also like to thank Marco Arment for his support and advice over the past couple of months. It meant a lot to me.
As a quick overview, The Loop magazine will be updated twice a month through Apple’s Newsstand and will cost $1.99 per month, with a free 7-day trial.
All of the articles published in The Loop magazine are exclusive to the publication and written by some great writers. For instance, the first issue includes articles from Matt Gemmell, Dream Theater’s Jordan Rudess, Michael Simmons, Holly Winewell, Peter Cohen and long time Apple analyst Ben Bajarin.
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The Kato Tactical Mini-Messenger For iPad from ThinkGeek is the ultimate iPad messenger bag.
This bag features a back pocket made perfectly for your iPad, and then a big pocket that can hold an 11 inch MacBook Air, and a bunch of other items.
I’ve carrying my keyboard in it’s Origami Workstation case for the past week in the big pocket, and it’s worked well.
The other pockets make this bag flexible while still keeping a small foot print.
Some Specs:
If you’re looking for a small messenger bag, then this is one to look at..
