martin matysiak

One thing I was working on during my internship at Google was a beautiful new look for Checkins. The extension I now made* takes map images shown in such Checkins and replaces them by an actual map which you can zoom and drag around!

You may remember the SimpleMarker class I made about a year ago. Recently, I started working with the Maps API quite a lot again since I'm currently writing a Google+ extension with which you can get a map of your circles. During development, I realized that an update of my marker class was long overdue. Not anymore ;-)

During this summer, I have improved the firmware of my GPS-Logger more than ever. Most important, the firmware as well as the RawRead-tool is now completely available on GitHub. By that, everyone can participate in making them even better. Here's what I have changed during the past weeks.

Today Google has released a bunch of new features for the Google+ API. One feature that particulary striked my eye (just after I have released my new website including this blog) was the possibility to obtain the comments for a specific activity.

Despite the fact that it's currently only a one-way feature (i.e. you can get comments but not write new ones), why not using it as a commenting system for a blog? Sure, it's not very useful right now if the only possibility to add a new comment is to head over to the corresponding Google+ post. But as soon as writing is allowed, this could serve as a great way to outsource the commenting system to Google+, where one can probably reach a much higher range of persons compared to one's personal website.

Here it is! After a month of coding, designing, (lots of) translating and last but not least procrastinating, I have finished working on my new website. The site (including all blog articles) is now available as well in English as in German.

The design is very minimalistic on purpose. On the one hand because I like such designs, on the other because I want to draw the attention to the content.