Stiktu Using Smartphones to Improve Urban Walkability This post is also available in: Chinese (Traditional), Spanish When it comes to walking in the city, a smartphone is now almost as important as a good pair of shoes. Our phones provide us with pedestrian sat-nav, reviews of the best places to visit and even measure how many calories we’re burning, while we walk. In fact, recent research suggests that our phones are encouraging us to walk further in the city and explore more places. Now a new mobile app from Walkonomics provides an essential tool for the walkable lifestyle. Road safety;Easy to cross;Pavement/Sidewalk;Hilliness;Navigation;Fear of crime;Smart & beautiful;Fun & relaxing. These ratings are generated from Open Data including street widths, traffic levels, 311 cleanliness reports, gradients, crime statistics, pedestrian accidents and even how many trees are on each street. You can download the Walkonomics Android App here.
Orchestra | Your to-do list, connected to everyone. Researchers Use Data from Cheap Cell Phones in the Developing World to Combat Disease Outbreaks At a computer in her office at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, epidemiologist Caroline Buckee points to a dot on a map of Kenya’s western highlands, representing one of the nation’s thousands of cell-phone towers. In the fight against malaria, Buckee explains, the data transmitted from this tower near the town of Kericho has been epidemiological gold. When she and her colleagues studied the data, she found that people making calls or sending text messages originating at the Kericho tower were making 16 times more trips away from the area than the regional average. What’s more, they were three times more likely to visit a region northeast of Lake Victoria that records from the health ministry identified as a malaria hot spot. The tower’s signal radius thus covered a significant waypoint for transmission of malaria, which can jump from human to human via mosquitoes. This work is now feeding into a new set of predictive models she is building. Blank Slate Scaling Up
Worldictionary - Instant Translator / Portable Translator Point your iPad 2, the New iPad or iPhone camera at any word and Worldictionary will instantly define and translate it. And also support pronunciation. This app will be your indispensable travel tool primed gives you translation on-the-go. Note Offline Collins Dictionary Support. Network connection is required. The instant “View and Translate” feature allows you get instant translation simply by pointing your iPad 2, the New iPad or iPhone camera at a word you want to look up. To proceed with looking up additional words or knowing more about the usage of particular words, you can first snap a picture of the text and then point the word you want to look up in focus one by one. Provide "Advance Search" function, you can search through Google, Wikipedia and YouTube to enrich your information life anywhere, anytime. Optionally, we provide full sentence translation from selected images without typing. Worldictionary automatically saves your search records.
Augmented Reality for Public Spaces Augmented reality (AR) has already piqued interest in the business, health, education, and entertainment communities. Now artists have begun harnessing the technology as a means of expression and social commentary. At the forefront of this burgeoning movement is BC “Heavy” Biermann. Biermann is a self-taught programmer and transmedia scholar with a foothold in both Los Angeles and St. Louis. This month, Biermann brings his insight to the IEEE panel “Omnipresent: When Virtual Meets Reality” at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. “Augmented reality will become a more integrated part of our lives. In 2005, Biermann founded The Heavy Projects (which last year brought aboard the digital media expert Ean Mering) to experiment with urban art and mobile AR technology. “We’re bombarded with commercial messaging whether we want to see it or not,” says Biermann. The technical challenges are considerable. In St.
Lemon · A wallet that helps you spend smarter. That’s a new twist. All of Your important cards — ID, insurance, loyalty and payment cards — plus LifeLock identity theft protection, all on your smartphone With the acquisition of Lemon Inc. and its Lemon Wallet app, LifeLock brings you a powerful new app. LifeLock Wallet app, available for both iOS and Android devices, offers one-touch access to LifeLock identity theft protection and these free features: Digital copies of your important cards - payment, membership loyalty, IDs, receipts, coupons and more so they can be accessed from anywhereA backup of all cards and informationCredit card balance updatesTracking of credit card transactions so you can manage your spending by category and monitor for fraudCancellation of your credit cards if they're lost or stolen Plus, the LifeLock Wallet App gives you access to paid LifeLock identity protection services. Get the app today. To learn more about LifeLock's acquisition of Lemon, see the press release.
Knight Foundation News Challenge - How might we improve the way citizens and governments interact? - Submission - ProtoAR for Urban Prototyping - Democratize Urban Planning through Augmented Reality entry Create a platform which would empower any citizen to create and share their vision of development/redevelopment projects while giving urban planners and contractors an effective avenue to crowd source and vet those projects. ProtoAR was the app which inspired me to think of the potential for AR augmenting urban planning. There is a perceived barrier to public participation in urban planning discussions due to the complex and specialized nature of projects. Project Goal: Create a platform which would empower any citizen to create and share their vision of development/redevelopment projects while giving urban planners and contractors an effective avenue to crowd source and vet those projects. A beta test for this project would create a simple interface which would allow users to show a street bike rack where they believe it is needed. How it will work: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Future additions could include: 1. 2. 3. 4. Pages which solicit people to submit where they would like a bike rack in SF:
News360 Réseaux sociaux et realtions humaines Les résultats d'une étude commandée par l'association britannique Cystic Fibrosis Trust, révèlent l'importance des réseaux sociaux dans les processus de relations humaines. Les réseaux sociaux ont considérablement modifié les relations humaines. Pour tenter de comprendre comment se traduit une telle évolution, l'association britannique Cystic Fibrosis Trust a commandé une étude sur le phénomène. Helen Oxley est psychologue pour adulte au centre associatif de Manchester. Les utilisateurs ont deux fois plus d’amis en ligne que dans la vraie vie Selon l'étude menée pour Cystic Fibrosis Trust, une personne sur 10 utilisant les réseaux sociaux rencontre ses meilleurs amis en ligne ou expriment des attentes allant dans ce sens. Si les réseaux sociaux semblent favoriser les relations humaines et être un bon moyen thérapeutique pour les personnes confrontées à l'isolement, ils sont également particulièrement chronophages. Vous nous aimez déjà ?