Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Microsoft Looks to Mango to Make Windows Phone a Better Communicator
With Windows Phone 7, Microsoft was basically looking to get back into the smartphone conversation. With the next version, codenamed Mango, the company hopes to prove itself a social butterfly.
Improved communications, along with better Web browsing and more powerful apps, were the key focal points as the company looked to make the first major update to its revamped phone software.
On Tuesday, the company is announcing a host of new communications options that are among 500 new features that Microsoft is adding to its phone operating system in the “Mango” update due out later this year. The company is outlining the changes and sharing other details at a press event in New York that is just getting underway. (It’s being Webcast and AllThingsD has live coverage here).
As part of its effort to be a better communicator, Microsoft is adding support for Twitter as well as tighter integration with Facebook and an integrated conversation feature that allows chats to move between Facebook Chat, Windows Live Messenger and text message all within a single “thread.” The company is also adding an option to let users combine contacts into various groups that can be reached en masse via email or text message. On the email side, customers will now have the option to combine views from various email accounts into a single inbox as well as view messages in either standard or conversation view.
While apps are important, Microsoft is hoping to convince friends that when it comes to keeping in touch, it is better to integrate multiple modes into a single hub than to have to open a different program for each means of communication.
“Our friends aren’t apps—they are people,” Sullivan said.
That said, even with Mango, users will have to do some switching. The feature that lets discussions move from chat to text message doesn’t extend to email, while Twitter users will still need a separate program to handle more advanced tasks.
Still, Microsoft hopes integrating more options into its People hub will help the company’s products stand out from rivals. Sullivan noted that Microsoft’s research shows people spend 2.5 hours a day socializing on their phone–more time than is spent eating. “It’s pretty dramatic,” he said.
The Mango release of Windows Phone is due to show up on phones later this year. In addition to current hardware partners that are planning new phones, Mango will work on existing Windows Phone devices and will form the basis for Nokia’s first crop of Microsoft-powered phones.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Resistance to the "Arab Spring" is Futile
Resistance to the "Arab Spring" is Futile
Doha Debates: An overwhelming majority of Arabs are betting on reformist movements across the Middle East
Creator Video App Collabracam Talks iPhone Video
Kyle Hilla, speaks from his Grand Rapids, Mich. HQ about his app that aims to be a TV studio in your pocket, linking iPhones together to create a single, seamless video.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation Grants $1.5M To Turn Human Waste Into Biofuel
Two of many challenges developing countries face are unsafe water and a lack of affordable energy. With the help of a new $1.5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ghana may be able to combine these lacks into an asset in the form of biodiesel.
The grant, for a “Next-Generation Urban Sanitation Facility” in the country’s capital of Accra, will turn human waste from sewage into biodiesel and methane that can be used as fuel.
The project not only produces energy from waste, but tackles a major sanitation problem common in cities that are unable to pipe sewage to treatment plants. Bacteria in sewage can easily make its way into water sources used for cooking, drinking and irrigation, leaving locals, especially children, susceptible to dying of diarrhea-related diseases such as cholera.
Columbia University’s Dr. Kartick Chandran will lead the project. In collaboration with Moses Mensah, a Chemical Engineering professor at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and Ashley Murray founder and director of Waste Enterprisers, the team will build a biorefinery to recover energy from fecal matter, turning it into a useful resource instead of something to be inconveniently discarded. When completed, the project will reduce fecal sludge in Accra’s water supply and offer an affordable energy source to its residents.
The Gates Foundation estimates that 2.5 million people, or half of the world’s developing world population, doesn’t have access to safe sanitation. Chandran is familiar with Ghana, having worked for two years as faculty advisor to the an Engineers without Borders team there.
This isn’t the first time fecal matter has been used to create energy, but it could be a step towards a brighter future for areas struggling with wastewater sanitation and high fuel costs.
Here is video of Chandran discussing some of his wastewater treatment research.
MyVoice, a Great App for the Speech-Disabled, Is Foursquare Meets Text-to-Speech
The MyVoice app offers up location-based searchable phrases and helps users easily navigate social situations.
A new GPS-enabled app will give millions of speech-disabled people a simplified way to communicate in the local tongue. MyVoice is a text-to-speech app that uses location-aware dialogue and customizable phrases to streamline the search for the perfect phrase. Additionally, because its a smartphone app, using it in social situations isn't as awkward as a proprietary device.
"Usually, people would have to navigate through a huge hierarchy of words on a traditional device in order to find these seemingly unrelated words. But using our technology, using MyVoice, they're able to very quickly get to the words that they actually need to say at that time," designer Aakash Sahney tells Canadian broadcaster CTA.
The GPS and customization is what drives the experience. As an example, at a movie theater, the app may pull up words like "tickets" or "seats," or, at a coffeeshop, users can program their regular purchases.
"It fits in really well in social situations, too. It's natural to have an iPhone in your pocket and take it out somewhere," he adds.
MyVoice plans on being a monthly service with an online, syncable web component. It will be available for $30 a month, and Aakash says it will be available next week.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
“My God, it’s full of stars!”
Plains Milky Way from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.
Dynamic Perception Stage Zero Dolly dynamicperception.com
During the month of May, I shot Milky Way timelapse in central South Dakota, when I had the time, and the weather cooperated. The biggest challhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifenge was cloudy nights and the wind. There were very few nights, when I could shoot, that were perfectly clear, and often the wind was blowing 25mph +. That made it hard to get the shots I wanted. I kept most of the shots low to the ground, so the wind wouldn't catch the setup and cause camera shake, or blow it over. I used a Stage Zero Dolly on the dolly shots and a "Milapse" mount on the panning ones.
Canon 60D and T2i
Tokina 11-16
Sigma 20mm F1.8
Tamron 17-50
Keen On… Suzanne Vega: Music, Like Oranges, Shouldn’t Be Given Away for Free (TCTV)
Question: Who is the mother of MP3?
Answer: Singer songwriter Suzanne Vega, whose iconic 1981 song “Tom’s Diner” was used by MP3 inventor Karl-Heinz Brandenberg to calibrate the standard of the revolutionary codec that would change the music industry forever.
Vega’s attitude to the music industry is pretty matrimonial too. On Wednesday, she keynoted the “CREATE: Protecting Creativity from the Ground Up” conference in Washington DC, put on by the technology and media coalition Arts and Labs (for whom, full disclosure, I consult). Not only did Vega play us an haunting intimate version of “Tom’s Diner”, but she also spoke uncompromising in favor of the artist’s right to be paid for his or her work. Arguing that if she wasn’t paid for her songs she would have to go back to being a receptionist, Vega argued that music, like oranges, shouldn’t be given away for free.
Whatever else one might say about Vega’s critique of free culture and piracy, she can’t be accused of being a Luddite. As she confessed to me when I caught her on camera after her CREATE speech, she is a big fan of Twitter and particularly Facebook where she goes “eight or nine times a day”. Nor does she defend the status-quo of the old record industry. “The audience is the most important thing”, she explained the new reality of the business, telling young musicians that it’s much more important to build a loyal following than get a record deal.
Her faith in today’s digital technology to build viable new business models was echoed by a number of other speakers at CREATE. On a panel about the future of the digital economy that I moderated, for example, all the panelists agreed that the digital economy provided exciting opportunities for all creative industries in the 21st century. From Mike Fricklas, Viacom’s General Counsel to Matt Serletic, CEO of Music Mastermind to Jim Cavanagh, President of the American Society of Media Photographers to Tom Adams, Rosetta Stone CEO, everyone agreed that new streaming and anti-piracy technologies and devices offered incredibly exciting opportunities for media entrepreneurs. But, like Suzanne Vega, too, all the speakers on my panel agreed that digital content, like analog oranges, couldn’t and shouldn’t be given away for free.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
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