By merging data from cars’ onboard computers and drivers’ smart phones, AT&T researchers have created a system that reports on drivers’ real-time behavior and long-term driving trends—and reveals whether a particular mistake might have been caused by phone use.
While driving around Boston one day, Nigel Jacob, co-chair of Boston’s Department of New Urban Mechanics, spied a group of public works employees at a job site staring intently at their phones. It turned out they were using Citizens Connect, an app Jacob’s department had developed for Bostonians to report public works issues, like potholes, street lights, and graffiti. Rather than following the arduous process of printing our requests and locating those requests on a map in order to fill a pothole, Public Works employees had discovered they could track requests as they came in using Citizens Connect. When the guys who fill potholes start independently using the same app citizens are using to report potholes, you know you’ve got a winner.
Jennifer Pahlka: Coding a better government (TED 2012)
Can government be run like the Internet, permissionless and open? Coder and activist Jennifer Pahlka believes it can — and that apps, built quickly and cheaply, are a powerful new way to connect citizens to their governments — and their neighbors.
Georgia Tech researchers have designed a texting solution that could become a modern substitute for passing notes under the table. BrailleTouch is a prototype texting app that requires only finger gestures to key in letters on touch screen devices - no sight required.
Android: Getting one step closer to turning your phone into a tricorder, Android app Radioactivity Counter uses the CMOS camera sensor on your phone to record radiation levels.
The first systematic power profiles of microprocessors could help lower the energy consumption of small and large devices, say researchers.
The resort town of Atami, Japan hit upon a remarkable way to help its ailing economy: cater to men with virtual girlfriends. The popular Nintendo DS game Love Plus+ is a dating simulator that allows players to court and then maintain a relationship with a virtual high school girl. In the game, the player (who plays a high school boy) and the girl go to Atami for a romantic weekend. Now, Love Plus+ fans can travel to Atami and re-enact their virtual romance in the real world. Hotels in the area go along with the charade and provide dual habitation quarters, restaurants offer special Love Plus+ fare, and the city is decorated to welcome the young lovers. There’s even an iPhone App that allows you to take a photo and place your virtual girlfriend into the picture. The Love Plus+/Atami crossover event attracted more than 1500 single men in July. Watch the video below to meet some of them. These virtual girlfriends are rather simple characters, who knows how this trend may grow as they become more sophisticated.
Smart phones promise a lot of computing power and connectivity: We can search the Web and communicate from anywhere. But it can be hard to make full use of all these capabilities on small screens with tiny buttons. Now comes a new wave of applications that combine speech recognition and artificial intelligence to help people carry out simple tasks on their mobile devices.
