The Newspaper Map: browse thousands of local, regional and national newspapers from around the world, based on geographical location. Filter and translate languages, see newspaper archives back to the early 19th century, and find fourth estate Twitter and YouTube feeds. A
mobile version is also available.
via
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Jun 7, 2011 -
7 comments
Security-in-a-Box.
A complete guide to digital security for advocates and human rights defenders (and for you too!). It includes all the info and tools you'll need for anything related to personal digital security.
Mobiles in-a-box: Tools and tactics for mobile advocacy.
Message in-a-box: Everything you need to make and distribute your own media.
NGO-in-a-box: Set up you NGO using free and open-source software.
[more inside]
posted by lemuring
on Feb 28, 2011 -
14 comments
Inside Google's Age of Augmented Humanity. Wade Roush of Xconomy interviews Google researchers working on
speech recognition,
machine translation, and
computer vision.
[CEO Eric] Schmidt talked about "the age of augmented humanity," a time when computers remember things for us, when they save us from getting lost, lonely, or bored, and when "you really do have all the world's information at your fingertips in any language"—finally fulfilling Bill Gates' famous 1990 forecast. This future, Schmidt says, will soon be accessible to everyone who can afford a smartphone—one billion people now, and as many as four billion by 2020.... It's not that phones themselves are all that powerful, at least compared to laptop or desktop machines. But more and more of them are backed up by broadband networks that, in turn, connect to massively distributed computing clouds (some of which, of course, are operated by Google). "It’s like having a supercomputer in your pocket," Schmidt said in Berlin. "When we do voice translation, when we do picture identification, all [the smartphone] does is send a request to the supercomputers that then do all the work."
posted by russilwvong
on Jan 20, 2011 -
62 comments
What the Heck is Shadow DOM? Browser developers realized that coding the appearance and behavior of HTML elements completely by hand is a) hard and b) silly. So they sort of cheated. They created a boundary between what you, the Web developer can reach and what’s considered implementation details, thus inaccessible to you. The browser however, can traipse across this boundary at will.
posted by netbros
on Jan 18, 2011 -
38 comments
Where do you think Apple’s iPhone is the most popular? Where do Nokia’s Symbian phones dominate? How is it going for Android in different parts of the world? What about Blackberry?
We’re going to answer all of those questions and more in this article, which will closely examine mobile OS usage across the world.
posted by infini
on Jan 14, 2011 -
45 comments
You are in a warm, dark, comfortable place. This has been your place since you became aware that you are alive. It's almost time to enter a different world now.
In 1986, Activision published a roleplaying computer game called
Alter Ego. Unlike the action and fantasy titles that ruled the day, this game simulated the course of a single ordinary life. Beginning at birth, players navigated a series of vignettes: learning to crawl, reacting to strangers, getting a first haircut. The outcome of each scenario subtly influenced one's path, and with every choice players slowly progressed through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age.
Graphically minimalist -- one's lifestream is represented by simple icons, and the scenarios are all text -- the game was nevertheless engaging, describing the world in a playful, good-natured tone tinged by darkness and melancholy. And it had quite a pedigree; developer and psychology PhD
Peter Favaro interviewed hundreds of people on their most memorable life experiences to generate the game's 1,200 pages of material. Unfortunately for Dr. Favaro, the game didn't sell very well. But it lives on through the web --
PlayAlterEgo.com offers a full copy of the game free to play in your browser, and the same port is available as a $5 app for
iPhone and
Android.
More: Port discussion group -
Wishlist -
Vintage review - Original game manual (
text or
scans)
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 31, 2010 -
46 comments
In February of 2008, Microsoft
acquired the maker of the Sidekick, Danger Inc.,
for $500 million dollars and rolled the company into its Premium Mobile Experiences division, led by
Roz Ho. The Sidekick retained a dedicated following after the merger despite some
hiccups along the way. Twenty-six months after the acquisition, Microsoft
unveiled the KIN One and KIN Two devices which would launch in May. The devices were backed by a huge and
mildly controversial marketing push aimed at the young, hip social-networking addict niche. Reviews were
generally negative and often cited needless complexity, software that was lacking basic functions and no support for third party applications. The devices ran a fork of
Windows Phone 7, Microsoft's rewrite of their aging mobile operating system that had been
rapidly losing ground to RIM, Apple and Google. Just seven weeks after launch,
the KIN is dead. Engadget has some
insight into the failure and the subsequent shake-up at Microsoft.
posted by cgomez
on Jul 1, 2010 -
98 comments
Flash Mobs Take Violent Turn in Philadelphia [H]undreds of teenagers have been converging downtown for a ritual that is part bullying, part running of the bulls: sprinting down the block, the teenagers sometimes pause to brawl with one another, assault pedestrians or vandalize property. . . .
The flash mobs have raised questions about race and class.
Most of the teenagers who have taken part in them are black and from poor neighborhoods. Most of the areas hit have been predominantly white business districts.
In the flash mob on Saturday, groups of teenagers were chanting “black boys” and “burn the city,” bystanders said.
Bill Wasik is not proud.
posted by grobstein
on Mar 25, 2010 -
70 comments
In the light of the
Microsoft/Sidekick data disaster, it might be a good time to take a look at just what's happening with Microsoft's half billion dollar investment in Danger. Despite already having a mobile phone operating system (Windows Mobile) and an entire division (Zune) just itching to go head to head with Apple's iPhone. Microsoft decided to turn Danger into a skunkworks for "
Project Pink," named, apparently, after
the pop star.
Now,
According to MobileCrunch, the project is two years late, most of the team has left or been fired, Microsoft hasn't managed to create an app store, and the demoralized team is more enamored of their iPhones than their own product.
[more inside]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll
on Oct 11, 2009 -
42 comments
NextBus uses GPS to tell you the predicted time of the next bus. Google maps show buses in real time, and you can get updates on your phone/PDA. The coverage is limited to certain agencies within the US, so these other sites might be useful:
Hopstop covers subways and buses in NYC, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, DC, and more. (
mobile version)
Google Transit has many US metro areas in addition to Canada, Europe, and Japan.
(previously) Many more locations inside.
[more inside]
posted by desjardins
on Oct 21, 2008 -
36 comments
"Thanks to tremendous progress achieved by the General Packet Radio System (GPRS), the wireless communication protocol, it is now possible for Africans to send articles and images (still and moving) about events taking place in their countries without using a computer and without having internet connection. Under those circumstances, the bigger the number of people expressing their opinions through that technology, the stronger becomes democracy, and the more valuable is the contribution to good governance efforts in Africa" -
Voices of Africa, Mobile stories and videos from Africa. Quote above from article
Mobile Reporters in Africa.
posted by infini
on Jul 27, 2007 -
11 comments
Using a physiological sensor called the
SenseWear by BodyMedia, researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) have
created the XPod. The XPod "learns" a user's preferences, activities and even emotions, and then selects the most appropriate music to accompany any given situation. The
mood ring for the new millennium.
posted by terrapin
on Oct 24, 2006 -
14 comments
Dead Ringers: the Science Museum asks us the question "should we upgrade our mobile phone?" "
No" and "
no" say the Times and the Observer, but we still do: on average every 18 months. What's the problem? Well it isn't just the lead, arsenic, beryllium and
brominated fire-retardant cases (pollutants all) disappearing into our land fills (which are not covered by the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive [
WEEE] in Europe). Coltan also goes into our phones. It occurs mainly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and as such our demand for upgrades has been
contributing to a war (despite mobile phone companies' claims to the contrary, coltan is not regulated like timber). If we must upgrade, we can at least
recycle or hack our
old phones.
posted by nthdegx
on Aug 7, 2006 -
49 comments
Alexander Calder's Circus. A movie by
Carlos Vilardebo, in four parts:
one two,
three,
four, [YouTube]. Calder developed his own one-man circus, with tiny performers made of "cork, wire, wood, yarn, paper, string, and cloth," carefully engineered to walk tightropes, dance, tame lions, lift weights, and engage in gymnastics and acrobatics in and above the ring. Acting as omniscient ringmaster, Calder would manipulate the wire performers while his wife wound circus music on the gramophone in the background.
via [more inside]
posted by nickyskye
on Jun 29, 2006 -
17 comments
A nightvision camera you phone up This seems to be a wireless CCTV camera that you phone up with your mobile and watch what is going on. It says it works in the dark. Now what would anybody use that for? As you dial it I guess it has it's own sim. "Pupillo", err horrid name.
posted by priorpark17
on May 4, 2006 -
4 comments
The Crazy Frog / Axel F Song (previously mentioned on the
Blue) is about to make history by being the first ringtone / pop music crossover to successfully invade the British charts. How successful? A little band named
Coldplay also have a new single out; as it stands,
Crazy Frog is outselling their effort by a factor of 4 to 1.
People, this is serious. Prepare for some major league irritation to descend upon us. The success of this single will only spawn a legion of imitators, and that can only lead to the dark side. As
Malcolm McLaren, ex Sex Pistols manager puts it: "Listen to this song and you can hear the death knell of the traditional music industry."
posted by LondonYank
on May 28, 2005 -
40 comments
Micromovie awards 2005 - the mission: produce a 90-second movie filmed entirely on a mobile phone (dubbing of better quality audio permitted). Dozens of films are available here for viewing.
Sponsored, or course, by a major phone manufacturer. Don't let that distract you from the cute little films, though)
posted by Jimbob
on May 26, 2005 -
3 comments
