Brokekid.net

The iPad launches

By now most of you have heard about the launch of the Apple iPad. I don’t want to go into the specs of the device but want to point you to a great article on what the launch of the iPad means, beyond the functionality and more into the direction of mobile computing. I recommend you read Steve Frank’s take on the iPad and the future of this technology.

I can’t do the post justice but I’ll try and sum up his take on this technology.

The iPad itself might not catch on, but this new direction in computing will. It’s a move from the old to the new, from the desktop to the real world. It’s powerful, it’s sleek and it’s easy to use. Of course we’ll still have a need for desktops and smart phones, and many will be slow to move on from the older technologies, but those will disappear in time.

How long will it take to complete this Old World to New World shift? My guess? The end is near when you can bootstrap a new iPad application on an iPad. When you can comfortably do that without pining for a traditional desktop, the days of Old World computing are officially numbered.

The iPad as a particular device is not necessarily the future of computing. But as an ideology, I think it just might be. In hindsight, I think arguments over “why would I buy this if I already have a phone and a laptop?” are going to seem as silly as “why would I buy an iPod if it has less space than a Nomad?”

One thing I believe we need to think about is what does mobile computing, that’s tactile based and location aware mean for us? How will users see and access our services once they’re detached from a power cord and a keyboard? How will we present our data to them? In the same way we do with a regular website? We need to think on this.

EchoEcho

This service takes the opposite approach to finding your friends as they move about the city. Instead of broadcasting your signal, you ask them where they are. Unlike most services, your friends don’t have to sign up for you to be able find them, EchoEcho pings the contacts in your address book.

Once your friends answer, you’ll be notified and shown a map of where they are. This definitely sounds more secure and less intrusive than similar services.

What does Google know about you?

Quite a bit actually and they’ve launched a dashboard to show what they know about you, your contacts and their contacts.

The “Social circle” tab shows the information it tracks that is associates with your close friends, contacts and friends of friends. The “Social content” tab shows the information that is associated with you.

So what’s the point? Google is trying to give you relevant information from people you trust along with other sources of information from across the web. From gigaom.com -

Now, when you search on Google.com while logged in, if it can find relevant pages published by people you’re connected to, it will show them at the bottom of the results page.

From the Director of Idealist.org -

You know how sometimes in life you go through a bad moment, and your friends hear about it later, they say, “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you ask? We would have helped.”

That’s where Idealist is now, and I am writing to ask for your help.

Very briefly, here’s what happened. Over the past ten years, most of our funding has come from the small fees we charge organizations for posting their jobs on Idealist. By September 2008, after years of steady growth, these little drops were covering 70% of our budget.

Then, in October of that year, the financial crisis exploded, many organizations understandably froze their hiring, and from one week to the next our earned income was cut almost in half, leaving us with a hole of more than $100,000 each month.

That was 16 months ago, and since then we’ve survived on faith and fumes, by cutting expenses, and by getting a few large gifts from new and old friends. But now we are about to hit a wall, and this is why I am reaching out to you.

If over the past 15 years Idealist has helped you or a friend find a job, an internship or a volunteer opportunity; connect with a person, an idea or a resource; or just feel inspired for a moment, now we need your help. I wouldn’t be asking, and not like this, if this were not a critical time.

There are two ways you can help. First, if you can, please make a donation at:

http://www.idealist.org/donate

Some people in this community are not in a position to contribute right now, so if you are, please give as generously as you can. Thank you!

Second, please spread the word about this appeal by sharing this message with friends and colleagues who may have benefited from Idealist over the years. Since 1995 Idealist has touched hundreds of thousands of lives. If in the next week or two we can reach everyone who’d give us a hand if they knew we are in trouble, I believe we’ll come out of this crisis even stronger than before.

I believe this because while this has been a tough stretch, I’ve neverbeen more optimistic about the future. The content on Idealist has never been richer, our traffic is surging, we are building a whole neIdealist.org that will be released later this year, and the potentiafor connecting people, ideas, and resources around the world has never been more urgent or more exciting.

Your contribution will allow us to maintain all our services, and it will also give us some time to diversify our funding. Being able to breathe, recover, and plan ahead for a few months will be an incredible blessing.

Thanks so much for your support. Idealist has always been a community-driven site, and we can’t do this work without you.

Thank you!

Ami Dar
Executive Director
Idealist.org

Did you know?

You can follow the changes on any website using Google Reader. Regardless to whether or not the site has a feed, you can now check for updates.

These custom feeds are most useful if you want to be alerted whenever a specific page has been updated. For example, if you wanted to follow Google.org’s latest products, just type “http://www.google.org/products.html” into Reader’s “Add a subscription” field. Click “create a feed”, and Reader will periodically visit the page and publish any significant changes it finds as items in a custom feed created just for that page.

Did you know? Google Voice can be accessed through the iPhone as a rich web-based application.

This HTML5 application provides you with a fast and versatile mobile experience for Google Voice because it uses the latest advancements in web technologies. For example, AppCache lets you interact with web apps without a network connection and local databases allow you to store data locally on the device, so you don't lose data even when you close the browser.

You can access the application at m.google.com/voice. Check out the video below for more info –

Micello

Micello is basically Google Maps for the indoors. Their aim is to “map the world’s inside spaces – places like shopping malls, convention centers, retail stores, airports, college campuses, and more.”

The maps are accessible through the iPhone and geo-coded to the realworld. To see it in action, check out the video below -

Vimeo and YouTube support HTML5

Why is this cool? HTML5 support removes “Flash as the video middleman [and] can increase performance and reduce the hit to processing and download bandwidth as well as battery life.”

Want to see how it works in Vimeo?

“…load up the latest version of either Safari, Chrome or Internet Explorer with the Chrome Frame installed and look for a “Switch to HTML5 player” link below any video.”

Facebook updating Page Admin toolset

Facebook is slowly rolling out new tools for Page administrators, “One is the ability to see the number of impressions per post, and the number of likes and comments per impression.”

What makes this interesting is witnessing the viral effect of a post when shown on your wall after interacting. You may have X number of followers on your Fan Page but you may potentially give exposure to your posts to many more times that number through the viral nature of your wall.

Facebook is continue to roll out admin updates but I’m not sure what they are yet, I’ll update you as they continue.

Did you know?

Blogger now allows users to create up to 10 static pages for their blogs.

“Blogger Pages lets you to publish static information on stand-alone pages linked from your blog. For example, you can use Pages to create an About This Blog page that discusses the evolution of your blog, or a Contact Me page that provides directions, a phone number, and a map to your location.”

This feature can be accessed from Blogger in Draft, then click the Posting | Edit Pages tab, then click New Page.

For more information, check out the Blogger in Draft blog.

Did you know?

Google is slowly rolling out the ability for users to upload any file type to Google Docs. Google Docs will support files as large as 250 MB in size, permit sharing and uploading from third-party software.

For more info, check out the Google Docs blog.

Update: It allows for most file types, not all.

MapBox

MapBox is a cool new technology that allows users to quickly add custom tiles to a Google Map. The example below shows Washington, DC on Google Maps but with customized tiles meant to display Washington at night.

MapBox has a number of tiles you can start working with.

Pachube Data Logger

If you aren’t familiar with the work of Pachube (pronounced “PATCH-bay”) I have written about them in the past. They’ve just launched Data Logger for the iPhone that allows you to capture all sorts of geo-referenced data.

Data Logger for iPhone enables you to store and graph any data of your choosing along with a timestamp and geolocation. You might use Data Logger to store electricity meter readings, to create maps of pollution or temperature sensor readings around your neighbourhood, or animal sightings around the city. You can also set up custom data feeds, with user-defined min and max values, tags, description and units.

Augmented Reality used to fix vehicles

Software has been developed that leverages augmented reality to help mechanics fix vehicles. From Slashdot.com -

“ARMAR, or Augmented Reality for Maintenance and Repair, is a head mounted display unit that provides graphic overlays to assist you in making repairs. An Android phone provides an interface to control the graphics you view during the process. Published in IEEE, and recently tested with the United States Marine Corps on an armored turret, ARMAR can cut maintenance times in half by guiding users to the damaged area and displaying 3D animations to demonstrate the appropriate tools and techniques.”

Check out the video below -

I can imagine this in situations like Haiti when paired with reporting from Ushahidi to avoid certain neighborhoods, locate injured and the dead as well as aid non-professionals when experts are unavailable.