Nate and I managed to make it to the finals of the California Clean Tech Open. I believe 51 teams out of about 120 made it through. We were one of 6 teams to make it out of 16 for our category, Smart Power. You can see a list of all the finalists for 2007 (and 2006) here. Our team is Euclid Street Technologies. We still need to come up with a company name. Any good ideas?

I’ve been keeping my eye on open source cell phones for a while now. After a few delays, Phase 1 of the OpenMoko based FIC neo1973 is finally available to developers. You can get the Neo Base kit ($300) for application developers, or the Neo Advanced kit ($450) which is dubbed the “hacker’s dream box.” OpenMoko bills itself as the first integrated open source mobile communications platform. Their tag line is “Free Your Phone.” There is also a developer’s portal called openmoko.org.

The software is based on a Linux 2.6 kernel, X11, Matchbox, GTK+ and KDrive with various layers added by the OpenMoko community. The hardware is based on a Samsung chipset and includes GSM/GPRS, AGPS, Bluetooth, USB and a 2.8″ 480×640 touchscreen. The Phase 2/Mass Market hardware, set for release in October, will include a faster processor and WiFi.

There’s another Linux based cell phone development platform that’s been out for a while called the Greenphone. It’s from Trolltech, the software company responsible for the Qt software framework. The Greenphone is based on a Linux 2.4 kernel and Qtopia, an embedded Linux device version of Qt. The Greenphone has a QVGA touchscreen, GSM/GPRS, Bluetooth, USB, and a 1.3 megapixel camera. The development phone device costs $695 and the software is available for the development community under a GNU GPL. The phone and software can be ordered from the Trolltech Web Shop. There is also a developer portal at qtopia.net. I don’t believe the Greenphone is ever intended for the mass market, only as a reference platform.

Technorati Profile

Once again, I seem to be falling behind with my blogging. It looks like it’s been 3 weeks since my last pose here. I did post a couple time on my other blogs. One post was related to the release of the iPhone on geek blog. The other was a recap of the backpacking trip Mary and I went on to Chilnualna Falls in Yosemite on my travel blog.

On the hiking front, we did a couple of evening hikes to Mission Peak near the full moon. We’d basically hike up to the peak and watch the sunset, then hike down in the dusk. When the moon comes out nearly full, there’s more than enough light to see the trail. The first time we went, Chris and Ashley joined us. On the way down, we were able to spot the Space Shuttle and International Space Station fly by. On the second trip, Ashley came with her mom and we had birthday cake for her mom at the top as the sun was setting. That was pretty nice. There are a few more pictures of the sunset views on my gallery.

Our weekend have been pretty busy. First we had the backpacking trip. The next weekend we hiked Mission on Saturday, then when to visit with my friend Linda (and Paul and Kate) who were visiting Berkeley from Boston. On that Sunday we went to Mary’s company picnic. This past weekend we hiked Mission and went to a barbecue at Joe and Cam’s house. We stopped by Don Edward’s and the Alviso area a few times and recently saw some kestrels there (picture on right). We’ve also been visiting downtown to look for the falcons. They are all still around. I’ve posted a few more pictures on my gallery and someone also set up a wiki page.

On the 4th of July, Mary and I went out on San Francisco Bay to watch the San Francisco fireworks. Our friend Matthieu has a sailboat, but he ended up having too many people interested in going. Fortunately, one of his friends with a boat also wanted to go out, so we split the group across two boats. Mary and I (and Mary’s brother) ended up on the other boat captained by Robert and his “crew”, Patrick. We had a great time and the fireworks were beautiful. I forgot my camera, but Matthieu has some pictures posted here. You can see the boat Mary and I were on in the 9th picture. Matthieu’s boat had some problems on the way back to the harbor. We ended up getting home at 3 AM.

On the work front, I’m moving forward on the green/clean tech venture with Nate from Berkeley. The product concept is a more efficient home thermostat using a wireless sensor network and some algorithms developed by Nate during his PhD research to improve home heating and cooling efficiency by 30% while generally improving the comfort level. We’re working on a business plan to build a company around this initial product. We haven’t yet decided on a company name. We did submitted our entry to the California Clean Tech Open in the Smart Power category. The finalists for this business plan competition will be announced on July 26. Hopefully we’ll make it at least that far.

Mary and I went backpacking in Yosemite over the weekend of June 23-24. The trip was coordinated by our friend, Matthieu. We ended up having a group of 10 people for a one night trip to Chilnualna Falls in the Wawona area of the park. This was my first time going on an overnight backpacking trip.

We decided to drive up early on Saturday morning. Mary and I had borrowed some gear from friends, and we stayed up until about 2:30 AM Friday night packing and repacking our gear in various backpacks. We got up at 4 AM after a whopping 1.5 hours of sleep. We picked up Chris and Ashley to carpool to the park. We were the first to arrive at the Wawona ranger station.

Once everyone arrived, we got a couple bear canisters and drove up to the trail head. After various adjustments and vying to be the last person to put on a pack, got on our way (that’s me in the picture on the right). The first half mile of the trail is fairly steep. You can see Chilnualna Creek for most of this section, and after the climb, we arrived at a nice cascade with a nice pool at the base (see picture on top left).

The pool was pretty crowded and we had a ways to go, so we continued on. After a short time we reached a trail junction where the foot trail meets up with the stock trail. From here the trail was a bit less steep, but there were a lot of switchbacks and it was a fairly warm day. The trail veered away from the creek for the next couple miles. It was tough going, especially for a few of the beginners who had “over-packed” for the trip. On the left you can see Leire, Francesco, Chris, Ashley, Mary and Patrick coming up the trail. We stopped for lunch under the trees along the path. Everyone was happy to have the break, but it was tough to get everyone going again.

After many more switchbacks and a few more breaks, we made it back to the creek. We stopped here for a long time soaking in the cool water, refilling our water bottles and resting in the shade. The picture on the right shows Karen, Maggie and Francesco enjoing the cool water and hamming it up. It has been a pretty dry year, so there wasn’t much water in the creek. I seem to remember much more impressive falls a few years ago when Mary and I day hiked here with our friend Steve. Of course that was a particularly wet year and we were there at the peak water flow.

Fortunately, the camping area wasn’t too much father. After a couple creek crossings we found a large area with a fire pit right next to Chilnualna Creek. We rested for a bit then set up camp. We had various dehydrated meals for dinner, needing only to add a couple cups of boiling water. The food is pretty good. As the sun was setting, we started a camp fire. On the left is the group sitting around the fire. From the left, thats Chris, Ashley, Maggie, Matthieu, Patrick, Karen, Francesco, Liere, and Mary. Mary and I were the first to turn in having only had 1.5 hours of sleep. I slept like a log. My all-time best night’s sleep camping.

The next morning Mary and I woke up because we were baking in the tent. We had somehow managed to find the only spot without good shade. Eventually everyone else was up, and we all had breakfast of oatmeal and such. We explored the creek a bit, topped off our water and broke camp. The hike down was much easier as you might expect. Thank goodness for gravity, or as Francesco said, “Thank God for Newton.” We didn’t take many breaks on the way down, but we did stop for lunch on a huge log next to the trail. We also stopped at the lower pools again (pictured at the top left). We got back to the cars in the early afternoon and decided to head over to the Mariposa Grove to see the sequoias.

The lot at the grove was full, so we had to park near the South park entrance and take the shuttle up. The bus had AC, so it was quite comfortable. We hiked around the grove for an hour or two then took the shuttle back to the cars. On the drive back to the Bay Area, we all stopped for diner at the Black Bear Diner in Gilroy. It’s a pretty good restaurant. We arrived back home pretty late, showered and went straight to bed. It was a pretty fun trip. I think I’d like to do some more backpacking in the near future, maybe in Sequoia…

There are more pictures from the backpacking trip and the Mariposa Grove on my gallery. Matthieu’s photos from the trip are here. Patrick and Karen’s photos are here.