Our winner this week is…

Starter by Marc Chardine of ScienceApps

Starter is an app you can use to start several apps at once, and for the App Hack, Marc has added position detection to it. So what, you say? Well, this means that you can make Starter start your apps when the device has a specific orientation, e.g. on the TouchStone charger or flat on a table. We think this is a great concept. Congratulations, Marc! We’ll be in touch about your TouchPad.

Honorable Mentions

SkyOrb by Stephane Denis of Realtech VR

This impressive PDK app takes you on a tour of the solar system (or the galaxy) and also serves as a star map. With Stephane’s App Hack update, the app now uses the PDK Sensor API instead of SDL accelerometer tracking. That way, GPS, compass, orientation, and gravity sensor classes are used for augmented reality tracking of planet and stars.

Map.3D by Henk Jonas of MetaView

Well known developer Henk Jonas has taken his app MapTool to the third dimension. As you hold the TouchPad in front of you and move it around, the Map will follow you and always point in the direction you’re looking…in all three dimensions. We love it!

Tumblewords by  SqueakyDogSoftware

A new app for kids, combining spelling and tilting, and based on a letter block theme you’ll recognize instantly.

The sensor API can be used with PDK (details in the PDK documentation), but is also available to the SDK, as webOS 3.0.5 implements the DeviceOrientation and DeviceMotion Event Specification. Let’s see what we can do in a simple Enyo app.

DeviceOrientation Event

The device orientation event returns rotation data—how much the device is leaning side-to-side (beta), front-to-back (gamma) and the direction the device is facing (alpha).

DeviceMotion Event

The device motion event is a superset of the device orientation event; it returns data about device rotation and also acceleration information. Acceleration data are returned in three axes: x, y, and z, and are measured in m/s^2. Although some devices might not have the hardware to exclude the effect of gravity, the event nevertheless returns two properties, accelerationIncludingGravity and acceleration, which excludes the effects of gravity. (When including gravity, whichever axis is vertical registers the 1g effect.)

This is where the gyroscope on board the TouchPad comes into play; with its help, the effect of gravity can be removed from the acceleration values.

Our example, we will explore the deviceorientation event:

Let’s start by implementing the function that does something with the orientation data:

onSensorData : function(event) {

    // gamma is the left-to-right tilt in degrees, where right is positive
    var tiltLR = event.gamma;

    // beta is the front-to-back tilt in degrees, where front is positive
    var tiltFB = event.beta;

    // alpha is the compass direction the device is facing in degrees
    var dir = event.alpha

    // when using the devicemotion event, try these values:
    // event.acceleration.x/y/z
    // event.accelerationIncludingGravity.x/y/z

    var rotation = "rotate(" + dir + "deg) rotate3d(1,0,0, " + (tiltFB * -1) + "deg)";

    this.$.myImage.applyStyle('-webkit-transform',rotation);

    var res="Gamma="+Math.round(tiltLR)+" Beta="+Math.round(tiltFB)+" Alpha="+Math.round(dir);
    this.$.resultWindow.setContent(res);
}

Here we are rotating an image on-screen in response to device motion, using the alpha orientation to rotate the image and the beta (front-back tilt) data to rotate the image around the x-axis. To do this, we’re using the rotatate3d CSS3 Transform. The first three values indicate direction (0,1 or -1) and the fourth the number of degrees to rotate. In our case, we’re only rotating the X axis.

Finally, we add an event listener to call our function every time the orientation data changes:

window.addEventListener("deviceorientation", enyo.bind(this,"onSensorData"), true);

That’s the basic idea! We’ve put the source for our demo app here for you to study more closely.

The Challenge

Your task for this week’s App Hack is to create something cool with the Sensor API presented here. You can follow the basic outline we’ve provided here, or stretch it to imagine something nobody’s thought of before!

The Rules

1) Submit your app based on the sample above to the App Catalog by January 31st at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time. We will be accepting both new apps as well as new incorporation of the theme into existing apps as an improvement. A submission to the Beta catalog is acceptable.

2) Notify us that you want to participate in the App Hack by sending us an email containing your app redirect link (it’s generated automatically and placed on the app’s detail page in “My Apps”) and any extra information you want to share with us at apphack@palm.com. This is also due by January 31st at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time. If you do not send us this note, your app will not be considered for the App Hack.

3) By the end of the day on Monday, February 6th, the Developer Relations team will announce the winning app (along with honorable mentions and other entrants). The winner will get a blog post dedicated to him/her and his/her fantastic app.

4) For this round, the winner (and only the winner) will also receive a 16GB TouchPad!

Additional terms and conditions

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY AND PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE CHANCE OF WINNING. OPEN ONLY TO REGISTERED DEVELOPERS. HP reserves the right to request additional information for consideration. False information disqualifies you and your app from consideration, making it subject to review under applicable laws. Violators may be prosecuted. This offer is void where prohibited or restricted by law. Taxes, if applicable, are winner’s responsibility. HP employees are not eligible. Winner may have to sign and return an eligibility and liability release, unless prohibited. If eligible winner fails to sign and return required documents, prize may be forfeited. HP is committed to protecting your privacy. Your personal information will not be passed on from HP without your explicit consent. Visit our Online Privacy Statement to learn how we use automatic data collection tools and your personal information to tailor your communications. Neither party acquires any patent, copyright, mask work or trademark rights during this event. Participation imposes no obligation on either party to purchase, sell, license, transfer or otherwise dispose of any technology, services or products, and does not create any agency or partnership relationship. The terms herein may be added to or modified by HP at any time at its sole discretion. Additional terms and conditions may apply. Entry constitutes agreement to rules and HP’s decisions. Entrants release and hold harmless HP, its subsidiaries, affiliates, and their officers, directors, employees, agents from any claim arising out of entry or prize receipt or use.

Color Tangle by Will Hankinson

Just what you wanted—another puzzle game to steal hours out of your life, right? Well, Will has brought his popular game Color Tangle to webOS. In this game, you must untangle pairs of balls attached by strings. As each pair is untangled, it disappears. When you’ve cleared the balls, you win the level. The catch is that not all colors of strings allow all colors of balls through. It is thoroughly addicting, with a simple, cheerful design.

BTW, it looks like he’s using Haxe NME as his development tool of choice, which is definitely worth a look if you like to do cross-platform games the easy way. Thanks, Will! We’ll be in touch about your new TouchPad.

Honorable Mentions

Quad Word by David Whittaker

As a word guy, I love word games, and Quad Word is quite a challenge. From each of four quadrants, grab a single letter and drag it to the center, forming a word. You can grab multiple letters at a time for speedier results and a higher score. It’s a real trick to sort out a word from all the possible combinations. And if your letters spell more than one word, you’ll get an extra point for each word.

Shooty by Erik Weitnauer

A nice tribute to Space Invaders. We love the hand-drawn design of this little gem. Erik adds one great feature (although we found it inconsistent in real-world use) by providing an optional separate app for your webOS phone to control the game. Erik makes use of node.js, built into webOS since version 2.0. Great concept, Erik!

Powfish for webOS phones by Oli Coombs

Oli wanted to create a puzzle game that combined the best of games like Tetris and Bejeweled. We think you’ll like his final result. There’s also a version for the TouchPad, though it’s not full-screen.

Other notables

If you have small kids you need to keep occupied, check out two additions to the Make a Scene series, Safari and Under the Sea.

LowDef Invaders brings back fond memories for me, because it’s the first game I cloned as a young developer. It’s hard to beat these retro games!

Once again, thanks for making this a very challenging App Hack to judge!

Big thanks to all of you who submitted entries for the “Got Game” App Hack. Keep an eye out for the results. See you in the New Year!

Gliders Data Tracking by Jacques Piquard

No doubt inspired partially by the fact that one of the Wave Gliders is named the PiccardMaru, Jacques gives us a very nicely laid-out app, with the ability to select the desired data and glider, and color coded data display with prominent decoding key. Nice job, Jacques!

Don’t forget that there’s still time to enter the latest App Hack with your new game. We’ve even given you extra time—entries aren’t due until December 20th. We’re already getting entries, though, so keep them coming!

This week, we’re throwing you another open-ended challenge. We want a game. Your choice of game, but to help, we’re giving you an extra week, as well as a couple of suggestions:

1) Consider your framework–how about Canvas or NME?
2) Consider technology elements–sprite sheets, accelerometer events (you’ve got practice!), or physics (why not give Box2D a try?).
3) Consider a change from your normal genre – try a puzzle game, a arcade game, or something with a retro feel. (Hey, 8-bit is all the rage, right?)
4) Think about your controls. Can you make good, intuitive on-screen controls? If you use the accelerometer is the context sensible? Try this mantra– “Written documentation is an admission of failure.”

So, those are the guidelines. Let your imagination wander and show us something new and different!

The Rules

1) Submit your app based on the sample above to the App Catalog by December 20th at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time. We will be accepting both new apps as well as incorporation of the theme into existing apps as an improvement. A submission to the Beta catalog is acceptable.

2) Notify us that you want to participate in the App Hack by sending us an email containing your app redirect link (it’s generated automatically and placed on the app’s detail page in “My Apps”) and any extra information you want to share with us at apphack@palm.com. This is also due by December 20th at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time.  If you do not send us this note, your app will not be considered for the App Hack.

3) The Developer Relations team will announce the winning app (along with honorable mentions and other entrants) once we’re finished judging. The winner will get a blog post dedicated to him/her and his/her fantastic app.

4) For this round, the winner (and only the winner) will also receive a 16GB TouchPad!

Additional terms and conditions

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY AND PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE CHANCE OF WINNING. OPEN ONLY TO REGISTERED DEVELOPERS.  HP reserves the right to request additional information for consideration. False information disqualifies you and your app from consideration, making it subject to review under applicable laws. Violators may be prosecuted. This offer is void where prohibited or restricted by law. Taxes, if applicable, are winner’s responsibility.  HP employees are not eligible.  Winner may have to sign and return an eligibility and liability release, unless prohibited.  If eligible winner fails to sign and return required documents, prize may be forfeited.  HP is committed to protecting your privacy. Your personal information will not be passed on from HP without your explicit consent.  Visit our Online Privacy Statement to learn how we use automatic data collection tools and your personal information to tailor your communications. Neither party acquires any patent, copyright, mask work or trademark rights during this event. Participation imposes no obligation on either party to purchase, sell, license, transfer or otherwise dispose of any technology, services or products, and does not create any agency or partnership relationship. The terms herein may be added to or modified by HP at any time at its sole discretion. Additional terms and conditions may apply. Entry constitutes agreement to rules and HP’s decisions. Entrants release and hold harmless HP, its subsidiaries, affiliates, and their officers, directors, employees, agents from any claim arising out of entry or prize receipt or use.

You may recall that the theme of the week was “Three”, and we challenged developers to do something creative with the number three.

This week’s winner (and the winner of a 16GB TouchPad) is…

Two Outta Three by Chris Van Hooser

A nice little coin flip game you can play against a friend (or arch-nemesis) or against the TouchPad. Comes complete with corny sound effects, and your choice of coin to flip. All it’s missing is a secret two-headed coin option!

Honorable mentions go to:

Triples by Andreas Eckerle

A new take on the classic memory card game. This time, you have to find three cards instead of two. That turns out to be a lot tougher! (Check out the number of tries to get to this screen shot…) Great idea!

Stereo Cam Pre3 by Alejandro Garcia

Take two pictures a few inches apart, and Stereo Cam presents you with a stereo (3D, get it?) doublet that you can view using the “distance focusing” or “crossed-eyes” method. Very cool. Alejandro gives special thanks to Ariadna Morales for doing the graphic design. (The linked version is for the Pre3. Other webOS phones can use this one.)

Okay, now that you’re briefed on the project (how cool is that?), it’s time to get to work. We want to take some of the data from Pac-X’s Wave Gliders (seriously, how COOL is THAT?) and plot it on a map using Enyo and its Map control. For the purposes of this example, we’ll keep it simple. It will be up to you to make it rock and roll.

The project’s website lists the available datasets. We’ll use the basic telemetry dataset, containing just position and temperature data. To start, choose the relevant data on the project’s data access page. For now, we just want data from one glider, namely the Fontaine Maru. So, on the data access page, add “FontaineMaruPCX_4″ as Constraint #1 to the variable “id”. Then, farther down, select “.json” as the filetype and finally, click “Just generate the URL” to view the URL to access the data.

We’re going to use this URL together with an Enyo webservice control to fetch this data so we can plot it onto a Map. We’ll use Bing Maps’ Pushpins and Infoboxes to do this. For details, refer to the sample code and also to our Map Control article on the Developer Portal.

For this week, your challenge is to extend the Basic application to do more, e.g., let the User select which glider, which date range, etc. Feel free to use more of the datasets and push the Map Control to the limit. As usual, you can find the sample code on Github here.

We’re looking forward to see what you can come up with!

The Rules

1) Submit your app based on the sample above to the App Catalog by December 6th at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time. We will be accepting both new apps as well as incorporation of the theme into existing apps as an improvement. A submission to the Beta catalog is acceptable.

2) Notify us that you want to participate in the App Hack by sending us an email containing your app redirect link (it’s generated automatically and placed on the app’s detail page in “My Apps”) and any extra information you want to share with us at apphack@palm.com. This is also due by December 6th at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time.  If you do not send us this note, your app will not be considered for the App Hack.

3) By the end of the day on Monday, December 12th, the Developer Relations team will announce the winning app (along with honorable mentions and other entrants). The winner will get a blog post dedicated to him/her and his/her fantastic app.

4) For this round, the winner (and only the winner) will also receive a 16GB TouchPad!

Additional terms and conditions

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY AND PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE CHANCE OF WINNING. OPEN ONLY TO REGISTERED DEVELOPERS.  HP reserves the right to request additional information for consideration. False information disqualifies you and your app from consideration, making it subject to review under applicable laws. Violators may be prosecuted. This offer is void where prohibited or restricted by law. Taxes, if applicable, are winner’s responsibility.  HP employees are not eligible.  Winner may have to sign and return an eligibility and liability release, unless prohibited.  If eligible winner fails to sign and return required documents, prize may be forfeited.  HP is committed to protecting your privacy. Your personal information will not be passed on from HP without your explicit consent.  Visit our Online Privacy Statement to learn how we use automatic data collection tools and your personal information to tailor your communications. Neither party acquires any patent, copyright, mask work or trademark rights during this event. Participation imposes no obligation on either party to purchase, sell, license, transfer or otherwise dispose of any technology, services or products, and does not create any agency or partnership relationship. The terms herein may be added to or modified by HP at any time at its sole discretion. Additional terms and conditions may apply. Entry constitutes agreement to rules and HP’s decisions. Entrants release and hold harmless HP, its subsidiaries, affiliates, and their officers, directors, employees, agents from any claim arising out of entry or prize receipt or use.

Without further ado, this week’s winner is (imagine trumpet fanfare now)…

Fruit Catch by William Townsend

Keeping with the multi-touch theme, the game tosses multiple pieces of fruit into the air, and as they’re coming down, you have to grab them with your various fingers and drag them into their respective baskets. Nice!

Congratulations, William! We’ll be in touch with you about your prize.

Our runner up this week is…

Turkey Puppet by Micah Gorrel

Micah brings to life the paper turkeys most kids in the United States make in school around Thanksgiving time. Too cute, Micah!

Thanks to everybody who entered the App Hack. We love your enthusiasm!

The theme this week is “Three”.  That could mean the number three, a book named Three, a trilogy of things, or a game with three legged aliens.  It’s entirely up to you.  Use your imagination to it’s fullest.

For my hack this week I built something in 3D, a simple particle simulator with circles the come flying at you.  But I didn’t just make it 3D. I made it Threeeeee Deeeeee, using the anaglyph red/blue effect like the old 3D movies.

The effect is pretty simple. It’s a particle sim like some of my other hacks using the Amino.js library.  The particles get bigger over time and move further from the center to simulate moving closer.  To give it that nice 3D effect with the glasses I chose a red and blue color and tweaked them until each was invisible through one lens of the glasses. I had to further adjust the color once I ran it on a real TouchPad because the color profile is slightly different.

The other key is giving the shapes 50% opacity so that you can clearly see the overlap areas.  Once that was done I adjusted the spacing between the two shapes over time to further reinforce the 3D effect.

To fully appreciate it of course you’ll need some glasses. I picked up a nice pair from Amazon for only three bucks; including free shipping!

So this week: what does “Three” mean to you? We can’t wait to find out!

The Rules

1) Submit your app based on the sample above to the App Catalog by November 15th at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time. We will be accepting both new apps as well as incorporation of the theme into existing apps as an improvement. A submission to the Beta catalog is acceptable.

2) Notify us that you want to participate in the App Hack by sending us an email containing your app redirect link (it’s generated automatically and placed on the app’s detail page in “My Apps”) and any extra information you want to share with us at apphack@palm.com. This is also due by November 15th at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time.  If you do not send us this note, your app will not be considered for the App Hack.

3) By the end of the day on Monday, November 21st, the Developer Relations team will announce the winning app (along with honorable mentions and other entrants). The winner will get a blog post dedicated to him/her and his/her fantastic app.

4) For this round, the winner (and only the winner) will also receive a 16GB TouchPad!

Additional terms and conditions

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY AND PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE CHANCE OF WINNING. OPEN ONLY TO REGISTERED DEVELOPERS.  HP reserves the right to request additional information for consideration. False information disqualifies you and your app from consideration, making it subject to review under applicable laws. Violators may be prosecuted. This offer is void where prohibited or restricted by law. Taxes, if applicable, are winner’s responsibility.  HP employees are not eligible.  Winner may have to sign and return an eligibility and liability release, unless prohibited.  If eligible winner fails to sign and return required documents, prize may be forfeited.  HP is committed to protecting your privacy. Your personal information will not be passed on from HP without your explicit consent.  Visit our Online Privacy Statement to learn how we use automatic data collection tools and your personal information to tailor your communications. Neither party acquires any patent, copyright, mask work or trademark rights during this event. Participation imposes no obligation on either party to purchase, sell, license, transfer or otherwise dispose of any technology, services or products, and does not create any agency or partnership relationship. The terms herein may be added to or modified by HP at any time at its sole discretion. Additional terms and conditions may apply. Entry constitutes agreement to rules and HP’s decisions. Entrants release and hold harmless HP, its subsidiaries, affiliates, and their officers, directors, employees, agents from any claim arising out of entry or prize receipt or use.