Maybe because, as nutshells go, the convenience of seeing lotsa things in a single glance is just, well, convenient! So if you want to apply that convenience to something long and hard and full of fun, like the Internet, feel free to hit this.
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Internet and also me in a parallel universe, was interviewed on stage at the Embassy of Finland in Washington recently. And among some pretty interesting things he discussed (aside from describing a photo of a squirrel with huge testicles, and cats!) was the fact of the unnecessaryness of the double backslashes in web addresses. Video here.
Forget fumbling with tiny cell phone keys. A prototype of a new application allows cell phone users to write short notes in the air and send them automatically to an e-mail address.
This represents just one possible step toward allowing people to naturally merge the real world with the information power of the Internet. Travelers and other mobile users could air-write notes to themselves rather than have to text on the run.
“By holding the phone like a pen, you can write short messages or draw simple diagrams in the air,” said Sandip Agrawal, an electrical and computer engineering student at Duke University in North Carolina.
The air-writing app takes advantage of accelerometers already inside cell phones such as Apple’s iPhone. Accelerometers normally keep track of phone movements and orientation, such as having the display screen rotate from portrait to landscape mode.
Speed writers may still want to stick with texting for now, because air-writers currently have to pause briefly between each letter and cannot use cursive. But researchers expect an improved app that will come with better algorithms and accelerometers.
Future versions of this PhonePoint Pen app may even allow users to take a photo with their phone and write a quick note on it.
Such interactivity has also emerged in the work of other research groups, such as MIT’s Sixth Sense project, and may signal the new era of cyborg technologies. Applications that can piggyback on existing cell phone technology may also get an advantage.
“We’re trying to get past the whole idea of typing on a keyboard or using a stylus to enter information into devices,” said Romit Roy Choudhury, an electrical and computer engineer at Duke who acted as Agrawal’s mentor.
Ogilvy Advertising has a new mobile application for Fanta that can be heard only by teenagers — made possible by using high-pitched frequencies that can be detected only by humans under 20s. The app, called Fanta Stealth Sound System, includes such exciting, totaly useful shit as wolf-whistles, warnings, pssts and sound tags for phrases like “cool”, “uncool”, and “let’s get out of here”.
Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take “immediate steps” to reduce exposure to their radiation.
The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks.
It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.
{Mad: The fakest fakes}
In today’s exceedingly helpful, We’re Sure You’ll Actually Do This kind of video, you’ll learn how to turn any garden variety cordless phone into something more awesome.
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As Google posted the official SDK and documentation for its new Android mobile OS, it also cleverly dangles over $10 million in no-strings-attached money before the eyes of anyone who will develop Android apps. So if you’re interested in participating in the “Google Gold Rush,” here’s where you wanna be.
And because we know you live and breathe for fine print, here’s the stuff you’d need to know:
The award money will be distributed equally between two Android Developer Challenges:
* Android Developer Challenge I: We will accept submissions from January 2 through March 3, 2008
* Android Developer Challenge II: This part will launch after the first handsets built on the platform become available in the second half of 2008
In the Android Developer Challenge I, the 50 most promising entries received by March 3 will each receive a $25,000 award to fund further development. Those selected will then be eligible for even greater recognition via ten $275,000 awards and ten $100,000 awards.
Cool, isn’t it? Meanwhile, lovebirds Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz demonstrate Google’s Android platform in the video below.
[youtube]1FJHYqE0RDg[/youtube]
You got all wet and excited over the Google Phone, yet it turns out it’s not actually a phone but a mobile phone OS called Android. Basically, the wisdom behind it is to allow Google to distribute its mobile apps to as many devices as possible, so in the future it can control you right from its Giant Borg headquarters with funny commands like, “Eat shit!” or “Kill Bill!” or “Pronounce ‘conflagration’ with your nose stuck in your ass hole.”
As explained by Ars Technica:
Google’s handset partners upon launch will include Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and LG, confirming many of the recent rumors that Google would not be developing the hardware on its own. Google has a number of carrier partners worldwide as well, such as T-Mobile and Sprint in the US, T-Mobile/Deutsche Telekom in Europe, and China Mobile in China, to name a few. The whole thing comes as part of the Open Handset Alliance—also announced by Google today.
Google has chosen to launch Android in this way is because it wanted to put its focus on the platform for development of its mobile applications. Although Java is widely available on many handsets worldwide, it still operates differently from phone to phone and can’t provide the type of flexibility that Google wants for itself and its partners. In addition to rolling out its own suite of mobile apps, Google also plans to make a “full” SDK for Android available next week, making the platform even more attractive to third-party developers (and perhaps delivering a slight ice burn to Apple on the side). And the more third-party apps there are available for the platform, the more attractive it will be for customers.
More on Android straight from the handsome horse’s mouth.
Here’s a great costume idea for the Halloween: cellphone! Hey, it has become so frightening, people run for their lives when they see one.
Astronauts bouncing around in space in their bulky gas-pressurized spacesuits are far from what sci-fi authors imagined. But Dava Newman is changing that by putting the sex back in “spacesexsuit.”
Newman, her colleague Jeff Hoffman, her students and a local design firm, Trotti and Associates, have been working on the project for about seven years. Their prototypes are not yet ready for space travel, but demonstrate what they’re trying to achieve–a lightweight, skintight suit that will allow astronauts to become truly mobile lunar and Mars explorers.
Newman anticipates that the BioSuit could be ready by the time humans are ready to launch an expedition to Mars, possibly in about 10 years. Current spacesuits could not handle the challenges of such an exploratory mission, Newman says.
NTT DoCoMo’s D9041 cellphone detects shaking and tilting, redefining playing games on a mobile phone by allowing the user to play games like the Wii.
Instead of punching a keypad, users can move the handset like a tennis racket or fishing pole in easy-to-play games, similar to those on Nintendo Co.’s popular Wii.
In the “Tokyo Highway Battle” racing game, users twist the handset like a steering wheel to control driving. In “Skateboard Dash,” the phone can be tilted to control the board’s speed and direction.
Too bad these phones will only hit Japan. But still, Huzzah! And a big bottle of booze for pedestrian lanes and sidewalks of the future, made more fun with jerking, cavorting people avidly playing “Duck, Or I’ll Swallow” on their phones.
Practically everybody in this country has a cellular phone. A huge percentage just use them for text messaging. A huge percentage of that huge percentage use it to find casual sex on TV text chats. I’m not guilty of that but I’m guilty of this.
A new study commissioned by the indoor cellphone booster firm Wi-Ex, and conducted by Harris Interactive, 62 percent of cell phone owners who make calls at home have done something special to improve signal reception in an attempt to make or receive a cell phone call indoors including going outside (46%), standing by a window (42%) or using their landline instead (30%).
People do strange things just to increase their cell signals. Me, I wave around my mobile or shake it hoping that the bars would go up. The study conducted by Wi-Ex revealed these amusing list of what other people have done to boost their signals.
via Cellular News
Well, that’s what the third GSM Congress in Barcelona have in mind. Even though the plan is to enable health workers in Africa use their mobile phones to ”upload critical information on the disease into a centralized database“, the idea of combating the dreaded disease is somewhat inutile, if not weak. Or vague, even.Â
This $10-million-project may be able to keep track of the deadly disease, but in no way will it be able to halt it.
The stuff of some of Nokia’s nightmares has just come out: some smartass actually producing a mobile phone that not only almost mirrors the advanced features of Nokia’s sleek phones, but also comes with a name that seems to send the heartwarming message, “Up yours!”
It’s Nokir (model E828G pictured here), and given its features, it’s as cheap as a Chinese baby up for adoption.
Stuffed with an MP3 player, full screen MP4 playback and a regular as you like 2 MP camera, this lovingly aped mobile is also home to a 2.6-inch high-res screen that’ll make checking out video a doddle.
Its real killer feature though is the touch screen, knocking the mainstream competition squarely into touch. Its interface is a walk in the park too, so you’ll have no trouble sniffing out buried contacts or throwing on some motivational power ballads to pep you up of a morning.
It comes in at a paltry 14mm thin, which considering what’s stuffed under the bonnet is no mean feat.
via T3
