Developed by Sense Networks, Citysense is an innovative mobile application for local nightlife discovery and social navigation, answering the question, “Where is everybody?” Citysense shows the overall activity level of the city, top activity hotspots, and places with unexpectedly high activity, all in real-time. Then it links to Yelp and Google to show what venues are operating at those locations. Citysense is a free demonstration of the Macrosense platform.
Currently, local discovery depends on proactive searching for relevant locations. Users are challenged to input specific location data into mobile interfaces with small screens. Citysense eliminates the need to search. Instead, it evolves searching to sensing. Citysense passively “senses” the most popular places based on actual real-time activity and displays a live heat map. The application intelligently leverages the inherent wisdom of crowds without any change in existing user behavior, in order to navigate people to the hottest spots in a city. And it’s not dependent on having a critical mass of users on the system. Citysense is an application that learns. The application learns about where each user likes to spend time – and it processes the movements of other users with similar patterns. In its next release, Citysense will not only answer “where is everyone right now” but “where is everyone like me right now.” Four friends at dinner discussing where to go next will see four different live maps of hotspots and unexpected activity. Even if they’re having dinner in a city they’ve never visited before.
Sense Networks has built a unique back-end infrastructure that processes years of data encompassing billions of points of positioning data. Created on the Macrosense platform, Citysense leverages this historical data analysis to normalize live location data originating from tens of thousands of devices and users moving throughout a given city.
An organic sculptural landmark that responds to human interaction and expresses context awareness using hundreds of sensors and over 15,000 individually addressable optical fibers. Constructed of carbon glass, rising over four meters high, and containing more than 65 kilometers of fiber optics, the Cloud encourages visitors to touch and interact with information in new ways, manifesting emotions and behavior through sound and a dichotomy of luminescence and darkness. Located in downtown Florence outside the Fortezza da Basso. the Cloud is part of the “Redesigning Fashion Trade Shows” project that Pitti Immagine launched with MIT Mobile Experience Lab in January 2007. It is a long-term project to creatively re-think the trade show concept and propose innovative technologies, perspectives and sensory experiences for fashion trade shows. In June of 2008, the Fiber Cloud will officially debut at the 74th Pitti Uomo Trade Show.
[via TrendCentral]
TidalTV is the latest entry to the online TV category, TidalTV offers desk jockeys and couch potatoes alike quality on-demand programming in a user-friendly viewing experience that accurately mimics real television. The antidote to viral video overload, TidalTV offers both branded entertainment and news from the likes of Vogue, Ford Models, Dow Jones and Sports Illustrated and regular TV shows from channels such as CBS, National Geographic, NBC News, and Food Network. Next time you forget to DVR Swingtown, know you can always find it here.
[as reported from the Silicon Alley Insider]
One of Apple’s favorite apps for its upcoming iPhone apps platform: Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL Radio app, which lets iPhone owners listen to some 200 stations, including CBS radio and 25 other genres, for free. Stations will stream over the iPhone’s mobile Internet connection, and will be supported by in-stream audio ads, and potentially graphic ads, Bits’ Saul Hansell reports.
We haven’t had a chance to play with this software yet, but we’re excited about it. The music business should be, too: For years, both labels like Warner Music Group (WMG) and services like Napster (NAPS) have been hoping for a practical way to get consumers to experience music delivered over the air, directly to their phones. With the exception of novelty ringtones, it hasn’t happened (at least not in the U.S.). A working radio app — one that works pretty consistently, doesn’t chew up your battery life, etc — on a phone that’s about to become mainstream would be a huge first step.
On the flip side, it’s more bad news for Sirius (SIRI) and XM (XMSR), which are steadily losing relevance while the FCC sits on their merger deal. If we’re going to listen to music we’re not programming ourselves, it might as well be free and on a gadget we already own. Expect satellite radio growth to continue to slow as more services like this come out.
Going Fast on the Mobile Web, is a deck on Slideshare by Jason Grigsby, and has the rough structure of: (1) mobile is huge, (2) iPhone is worth developing for, (3) here’s why other platforms’ mobile experience sucks, and (4) what you can do to fix it. The two slides that really stood out were on points 1 and 2.
The size of mobile (3.3B handsets, one for every two people on the planet) is staggering, and well known (see Communities Dominate Blogs for description of other media’s relative penetration). What made Grigsby’s slide so good was the graph he used to illustrate it.
The Roku Netflix Player makes it easy to instantly watch movies and TV episodes over the Internet on your living room TV, or anywhere you have a TV and an Internet connection. Movies and TV episodes in your Netflix Instant Queue appear right on your TV screen. Also, it doesn’t matter what kind of TV you have, the Netflix Player is guaranteed to work with it. Connect to the latest HDTV or one that you’ve had for years. With standard RCA jacks, S-video, component video, HDMI, and optical audio, the Player will work with virtually any TV, AV receiver, or home theater system. Lastly, the Netflix Player lets you access the world’s largest online movie rental service with over 10,000 instant movies and TV episodes available. Watch as many as you like, as often as you want—with no additional fees.
Coming off of some major industry show buzz for their involvement in the Halo 3 campaign, the folks at T.A.G. bring the naughty party antics online for N.E.R.D with the help of Last Night’s Party. The site showcases a number of racy scenes from a live performance at a club. Visitors to the site have to browse the site quickly since the racy clips quickly disappear and visitors have to refresh their browser to get them back.
The first phase of Android Developer Challenge I is now complete. 50 teams of developers each received a $25,000 award and the opportunity to compete in the second and final round of ADC I, for ten $275,000 prizes and ten $100,000 prizes. Over the next several months, the developer teams can take the opportunity to further refine their applications in preparation for the final judging.
Shown above is CallACab developed by Konrad Huebner and Henning Boeger. CallACab helps you call a cab in a foreign country when you don’t have the local cab number. The application is location-aware, so there is no need to know where you are and you never get a busy signal.
[via Social Worx]
Loic Le Meur has a great interview posted with the GM of Nike+, Michael Tchao. Nike continues to set the bar with their use of branded utilities and social media to support their customers. And with their latest launch of Nike Soccer, which focuses on delivering a ‘bootcamp’ training program for soccer players, they are providing another strong tool for facilitating community around the brand.
Parallel Kingdom is one of the first Mobile Multiplayer Trans-Reality Game (MMTRG) for the cell phone. Parallel Kingdom brings new meaning to role playing games by using GPS to place the virtual world on top of the real world. By using any iPhone or Android based device, users can attack, dance, hug or team up with anyone around them. Set up trade routes, craft items or even create their own kingdom.
Nexus creates a graph of your social network and finds commonalities between your Facebook friends. However, it’s more than just a flashy data visualization tool, in addition to viewing how your friends are connected, Nexus can help you discover what interests your friends share and which of your friends are the most similar to you.
TwitterLocal lets you generate an RSS or XML Feed to filter out Tweets around a certain area. Just enter a city, state, postal code, choose the range of miles you want to include, and hit the button. You’ll instantly get URLs to add to your RSS reader.
As recently reported on IntoMobile.com, Orb, the application/service that allows you to stream content from your PC to other devices, just announced support for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. However, only jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch devices can utilize this new feature. The assumption is that this new feature is only a temporary solution until the new firmware with third-party application support becomes available later this summer.
I scraped this video from CrackBerry.com which has an in-depth look at the BlackBerry 9000’s new user interface. The BlackBerry 9000 rocks the BlackBerry OS 4.6 and sports a new slick user interface. As you’ll notice in the video, the menu icons light up as you scroll over them, while the screen dimension is a hearty 480×320 resolution. An amped up processor in the 9000 model gives this latest BlackBerry a leg up in the speed department versus previous BlackBerry handsets.
ShifD is a mobile application that provides users the capability to seamlessly shift content back and forth between their desktop computers and mobile devices. It was created by Michael Young and Nick Bilton, two members of The New York Times Company’s Research and Development Lab.
[from RWW]
Up-and-coming mobile social network Brightkite faces some serious competition from a myriad of mobile social networks, all of whom are fighting to win the emerging mobile market. However, Brightkite has a few tricks up their sleeve that they hope will make them stand out from the rest, the most important of which is their ability to create a social network that merges with your real life.
A couple of weeks ago, Brightkite launched into their private beta, inviting 100 people to join their network. As those users invited others with the five included invites, the network began to grow. Recent conferences like the Web 2.0 Expo and ROFLCon spread the word even more.
The service, a device agnostic, SMS-based application, lets you “check in” at various locations out in the real world and then see who else is there, has been there, and who is nearby. You can check in via text or via the web, but text is easiest if you’re mobile.
After checking in, you can post updates in a Twitter-like fashion and upload photos to your Brightkite-enabled stream, available at a URL in the format of brightkite.com/people/username.
The interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, wearables for short, and fashion, design and science is a highly promising and topical subject. Offered here is a compact survey of the theory involved and an explanation of the role technology plays in a fabric or article of clothing. The practical application is explained in detail and numerous illustrations serve as clarification. Over 50 well-known designers, research institutes, companies and artists, among them Philips, Burton, MIT Media Lab, XS Labs, New York University, Hussein Chalayan, Cute Circuit or International Fashion Machines are introduced by means of their latest, often still unpublished, project, and a survey of their work to date. Given for the first time is a list of all the relevant information on research institutes, materials, publications etc. A must for all those wishing to know everything about fashionable technology.
Carbonrally is a web-based activism platform offering individuals and groups a fun, simple and social way to have a measurable impact on climate change. The beauty of this site is that it makes reducing your carbon footprint a competition.
Here’s how it works:
Take a challenge – Every few weeks, the site will post a Featured Challenge and they’ll notify you by email. Most challenges are easy, short-term actions, but they’ll throw in a more involved challenge from time to time to keep it interesting. If the Featured Challenge doesn’t apply to you, or is something you’re already in the habit of doing, then you can look at the Previous Challenges where you might find some other actions that make more sense for you.
Check out the results – You can see how you’re doing by visiting your My Carbon Page. Or, view the Total Impact Map for a real-time snapshot of Rally results in different parts of the country. There are also impact maps associated with each challenge. On any map, you can click on a green bar to learn more about the people and action in a certain city.
Compete – Here’s where the fun begins. If you enjoy a healthy competition, you can create or join a Carbonrally team among friends, classmates, colleagues, or whomever. Click on Teams to get started. Team leaders are given tools to manage their rosters and send love notes to their best performers. Team or no team, it’s also fun to see how your city is performing. The Leaderboard shows the top cities, teams and individuals, and highlights our occasional prizes.
Dream up challenges – If you want to get creative, visit the Challenges Workshop area where you can post an idea for a new challenge. You can review the ideas of fellow rallyers and vote for your favorites.
Socialize with other Rallyers – Carbonrally is a place to share thoughts, serious or otherwise, on climate change and related issues. There is a message board for each Carbonrally city, team and challenge. Feel free to organize local events, heckle another team, or talk about your challenge experience – good or bad.
Cherry Blossoms was created by MIT graduate student Alyssa Wright to visually show civilian Iraqi deaths in the war. Some believe that the current death toll amongst civilian Iraqis is 10,000, but experts put the real figure at least 10 times higher. Wright’s goal was to show this disconnect via her protest art. The project basically consists of two parts, a backpack fitted with two confetti cannons and a GPS unit linked to a map of Boston, which has been overlaid with casualty data from Baghdad. The cofetti cannon will fire when Wright steps into a Boston location that corresponds to a Baghdad fatality.
This is one of my favorite projects from 2007. It’s a project that was spearheaded by Swedish interactive agency FarFar where everyday the citizens of Stockholm are posed with the same question of, “How are you today”? Emotional Cities aims to study and visualize the emotions of individuals and groups in the city of Stockholm where Stockholm’s most famous skyscrapers will change colors in real-time reflecting the mood and emotions of the people of Stockholm. Users can register their emotion for the day by visiting the Emotional Cities website, Facebook App, and OSX widget. Brilliant.
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