Kae Verens has posted a cool little application of how to pull information out of a photo and parse it with the GD library. His example is a visual sudoku solver (part one, at least).

The plan for this one is that, if you’re doing a sudoku puzzle in the pub or on the train, and you get stuck, you just take a snapshot of the puzzle with your camera-phone, send the photo to a certain mobile number, and a few seconds later the solution is sent back as an SMS message. The solution costs you something small - 50 cents, maybe.

The script looks at a picture of a sudoku puzzle, converts it to b&w and tries to find the squares surrounding each position of the board. With these measurements, the next step is to grab the numbers already in the puzzle and hand those off to the puzzle solver to be processed.

In this new post on jurriaanpersyn.com, the author shares a PHP/Ajax creation with the reader - an Ajax/PHP-powered Sudoku helper application.

He quickly explains the game and the tools that he's used to create the application - MySQL, phpMyAdmin, Javascript/Ajax, and PHP5 - and a basic overview of how the script works. There's not a step-by-step look at the code, but it is provided for download later in the post. You can even check out a demo of the project that he's set up. And, for those interested, there's a basic presentation on the software as well.

In this new post on jurriaanpersyn.com, the author shares a PHP/Ajax creation with the reader - an Ajax/PHP-powered Sudoku helper application.

He quickly explains the game and the tools that he's used to create the application - MySQL, phpMyAdmin, Javascript/Ajax, and PHP5 - and a basic overview of how the script works. There's not a step-by-step look at the code, but it is provided for download later in the post. You can even check out a demo of the project that he's set up. And, for those interested, there's a basic presentation on the software as well.

Via this post on Nexen.net today, there's a pointer to a few Sudoku puzzle resources that use PHP for a variety of reasons.

They hhave four items listed:

• Sudoku in PHP
• a Freshmeat Sudoku project
• the source for a sudoku puzzle solver
• a Sudoku solver class from PHPClasses.org

Personally, I just enjoy working them - the solvers take the fun out of them. I can, however, see where they might come in handy if you don't have the answers where you can get at them...

Via this post on Nexen.net today, there's a pointer to a few Sudoku puzzle resources that use PHP for a variety of reasons.

They hhave four items listed:

• Sudoku in PHP
• a Freshmeat Sudoku project
• the source for a sudoku puzzle solver
• a Sudoku solver class from PHPClasses.org

Personally, I just enjoy working them - the solvers take the fun out of them. I can, however, see where they might come in handy if you don't have the answers where you can get at them...