Yes, Google is an all-powerful overlord to which we all must bow. But like any good false god or dictator, occasionally trinkets of affection are rained down on the unwashed masses.
So Happy ChrismaHunnaKwanzika, everyone! Google has the gift of free WiFi in select airports for the holidays - starting now through January 15.
"We're very happy to extend our Holiday Wi-Fi gift to the millions of people who will spend time in airports over the next few months," said Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google. "We know that this is a very hectic travel season for people, and we hope that free Wi-Fi will make both traveling and connecting with friends and family a little bit easier."
Sounds great, right? Well, before you get too much spirit flowing, there is a lump of coal in quite a few stockings. The deal only stretches to 47 airports, none in Chicago area, if that's important to you, though Milwaukee and Madison are participating.
The smaht kids at Harvard are at it again. Harvard Medial School's publishing arm has released an iPhone app that, among other things, will map H1N1 news and reports near you.
Using the iPhone's geo-locating ability, the HMSMobile Swine Flue Center's "Outbreaks Near Me" HealthMap feature will pop pins on a Google map around your location, along with associated news links, so you know which direction to bar your doors and windows in to maintain maximum security.
There's also the fun of setting up an alert so you know when a "Dawn of the Dead" type outbreak crops up near you. So much the better for planning surgical mask hording.
As if that weren't enough fun for your germ-filled ride home on the bus, you can also find video guides for preventing infection, interactive tools to determine if an illness is likely to be swine flu, and advice for businesses dealing with illness, according to Harvard Health Publications.
The only thing it won't do is prevent you from getting Swine Flu. So make sure you wash your grimy hands after getting your high-tech flu hysteria on.
By Thomas Conner on October 14, 2009 11:43 AM
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Can you put the iPhone down without freaking out?
From the utterly obvious file: A study has found that most people get very, very stressed out when they don't have an Internet connection.
But it's more than that. The study -- from The Future Report and commissioned by British Internet service provider Virgin Media -- coins an acronym for people who are slightly hooked on their wifi mainline. Those who not only love their tech but experience great anxiety when they are disconnected are SOSOs. They "switch on to switch off" -- that is, they experience less stress as long as they see this:
More than 35 percent of those surveyed said they kinda freaked out if they were unable to stay in relatively constant contact with friends and family via email, Web sites or social networking services.
In addition, the SOSOs don't care if you find their anxiety ridiculous. The same percentage reported that they don't feel guilty about always having a computer or Web-activated cell phone within reach.
The numbers were higher for stay-at-home parents.
"An 'always on' lifestyle may not be for everyone but there is a significant number of people for whom always being connected actually increases peace of mind," says Mark Schweitzer, COO of Virgin Media.
How about you, Yanks? Do you get the shakes when you leave the bars, as it were?
Ice, ice, baby. NASA is looking for it in our own backyard again - this time on the moon.
Just two days after the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced the discovery of a giant, previously invisible ring around Saturn, the space agency is looking for another hidden gem in our solar system - evidence of water on the dark side of the moon - and they're pulling out all the stops to find it.
Well, technically, it's only two stops being pulled. The plan, see the video walkthrough here, is to basically ram an Atlas V rocket into the crater Cabeus on the moon's south pole so a probe can analyze the debris thrown into the the sky for evidence of water. Then that probe wil smash into the moon's surface to create a debris field for Eartbound and orbital observers to study.
Here's how the obviously giddy NASA folks explain the process:
Just imagine. A spaceship plunges out of the night sky, hits the ground and explodes. A plume of debris billows back into the heavens, leading your eye to a second ship in hot pursuit. Four minutes later, that one hits the ground, too. It's raining spaceships!
First they tell us Pluto's not a planet. Now this? What is going on at NASA?
The good folks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have found a previously hidden new ring around Saturn that's so big it could fit 1 billion, yes, with a B, Earths inside.
"This is one supersized ring," said one of the authors, Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Her co-authors are Douglas Hamilton and Michael Skrutskie, also of the University of Virginia.
So how does this giant space hoop go so long without being spotted in a time of space exploration where we look for anything possible in the heavens? It was invisible.
Turns out the new ring, made up of ice and dust, only shows up on infrared inspection with the heat signatures of its frozen mass can be seen clearly. And it's so diffuse, you could be floating in the middle of it without realizing you're in a rin, reports space.com:
"This thing is just immense," Hamilton, of the University of Maryland, one of the astronomers who found the ring, said. "If you look at just a small patch of it, you just see fuzziness."
Saturn's moon Phoebe orbits within the ring and is believed to be the source of the material. The ring also may answer the riddle of another moon, Iapetus, which has a bright side and a very dark side.
The ring circles in the same direction as Phoebe, while Iapetus, the other rings and most of Saturn's other moons go the opposite way. Scientists think material from the outer ring moves inward and slams into Iapetus.
"Astronomers have long suspected that there is a connection between Saturn's outer moon Phoebe and the dark material on Iapetus," said Hamilton. "This new ring provides convincing evidence of that relationship."
With all the looking into the distance being done, it makes you wonder what we have in our own backyard that hasn't been found yet.
The discovery was made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and you can find more detail and images at the JPL page on the discovery.
This is graphic, so, you know, don't watch if you can't deal.
Texting and driving is getting to be big news as states, like Illinois, and even the federal government, in the form of a threat to withhold funding without state legislation being passed, move to ban an activity that, frankly, you would assume most people would realize is dangerous.
Stand on any busy street for 10 minutes and watch people try to walk and text as they ram into passersby, walls and bus stops and you get the idea - if talking on the phone is distracting, reading and writing is not only a safety hazard to yourself, but a potentially deadly impairment on par with driving under the influence to anyone unlucky enough to be on the road at the time. In fact, a Virginia Tech study in July found that those who text and drive increased their crash risk by 23 times.
That's where this video, making the rounds on talk radio and cable news, comes in. Produced in Wales, it shows in fairly graphic context what happens when you concentrate on thumb typing instead of driving. The results are LOL. There's a debate on various sites - check out the comments here at carcentric motherproof.com - as to the realistic depiction of the chain of events and the severity of the situation presented in the PSA, but it does a good job pointing out that the person texting is not the only one affected. Whether it gets people to stop? Well, do these things ever stop people? Time - and aggressive laws - will tell.
Snow Leopard is out and we have to wait nine days for the next Apple announcement - a tablet, a new iPod, a netbook? - so what can we do to pass the time?
How 'bout some stalking of the ex? Not since the advent of ">Google Maps has keeping ceaseless track of the people who have no interest in you been easier. Of course there's an app for that.
Of course, it's all a big joke. No stalking people, kids. Save your time - and court fees - and buy some self-help books instead.
By Thomas Conner on August 27, 2009 1:50 PM
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It's a week full of weird Bob Dylan news. First, he announces he's recorded a Christmas record, "Christmas in the Heart." ('Cause when you think of Christmas, you think of Dylan, right?)
Now comes news -- well, he actually mentioned this on his radio show a while back -- that he's negotiating with two different car companies to be the voice of their in-dash GPS.
The 68-year-old gave listeners of his Theme Time Radio Hour on BBC 6 Music on Monday a sneak preview of what the Dylan-accented GPS might sound like.
"Left at the next street," he said. "No, right. You know what? Just go straight. I probably shouldn't do it because whichever way I go, I always end up at one place -- on Lonely Avenue. Luckily I'm not totally alone. Ray Charles beat me there."
We can hear it now ...
"You're positively on 4th street."
"On the left is Cinderlla sweeping up on Desolation Row."
"How many roads must this car drive down before you realize you're lost?!"
There's nothing like an inbound CTA/Metra ride to make one think of drinking - at least that's what Budweiser is banking on in a new video ad spot.
The twist? It's a spot running in the United Kingdom and Ireland as part of a campaign for the beer's licensed brewer, Diageo Ireland.
Set to the tune of the Beatles' "All Together Now," the spot almost makes you forget you're watching an ad - and almost makes the schlep downtown something to look forward to for the work-a-day drones stuck on the various "L" and Metra lines used in the piece.
Sliding by scenes both famous and simply familiar, it's not the usual glamour shoot you'd see from a Chicago-shot ad campaign, but rather an insider's view to the city. There's the usual skyscraper footage and the like, but no ballparks. No lakeshore. No Michigan Avenue.
Irish blogger Darragh Doyle touched on some of the Chicago-centric aspects of the ad in a post in July. Here's what Doyle had on the city - and its people - as star:
Written by Dave Henderson and Richard Denney, and shot by award winning Director Chris Palmer, it was shot over 5 days from an actual train on the metro-rail as it tracked around the city of Chicago.
All in all, the film and crew were on the train for 50 hrs over a 5 day period in temperatures that were often below freezing. All of the actors were outside for up to 10 hrs a day in the freezing temperatures, often in costumes that provided little warmth. As such there was almost an entire crew of people dedicated to keeping the actors warm with blankets, thermoses and portable heaters.
The people of Chicago were brilliant as well and invited actors into their homes and offered them some respite from the bitter weather during shoot down time glorious stuff.
The band playing the Beatles cover is The Hours, a London-based duo.
The work for the "Lyrics" was written and conceived by DDB London and during a blogger release party for the spot, DDB's Matt Delahunty tells krishnade.com what it took to get the add off the ground - a 17-month process. It's an interesting look behind the scenes:
Delahunty talks about not only the technical challenges of getting the shoot timed perfectly, but his surprise at the freezing Chicago weather that surprised him on his first trip to the States.
You can find much more on the making of the video - behind the scenes and concept work, as well as upload your own video clips - here, though you'll need to be 21 - or at least tell the site you are - to get through the age wall. Some very cool insights to be found.
In the end it is just an ad campaign for a mediocre beer, but any Chicagoan can appreciate the glimpses into our city. And anybody who appreciates the creative process will find the explanations behind the work a treat for sure.
Hat tip to the Windy Citizen for finding this Chicago gem. Stop by and give it a vote up if you're so inclined.
Is that the Twitter birdie, or just Andrea Baker as a Bird of Night in a scene from the Royal Opera House's production of Dominique Le Gendre's "Bird of Night'' in London in 2006?
For those of you convinced that the downfall of civilization is being spread 140 characters at a time on Twitter, fear not. The Royal Opera House is looking to class things up with an opera authored by the people ... via Twitter
It probably won't be "Madame Butterfly," but it should be fun.
In an effort to get more people involved with opera, which sometimes suffers from an elitist, highbrow reputation, London's world-famous Royal Opera House is turning away -- temporarily -- from classic talents like Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini and giving the composer's pen to ... just about anybody.
We're working with the Twitterverse to create the storyline for a brand new opera, which will be performed throughout the weekend of Deloitte Ignite (4, 5, 6 September 2009). We're investigating how short, 140-character contributions can build upon each other to create a non-linear narrative - like a Choose Your Own Adventure story or a game of Consequences. Our mysterious opera director will be regularly blogging here with updates on the story, and as well as offering his thoughts on how the story can combine with some music and acting and marvellous singing to become a finished piece.
It's a very democratic approach -- the plot will be worked out by twitterers contributing one line at a time, then put to music by professionals -- but some harbor doubts about the quality of the work that will be performed in September.
"It's a gimmick, but not a malign gimmick" London music critic Norman Lebrecht said. "I wouldn't put too high hopes on it. It won't produce great opera."
He said the use of Internet technology to concoct a collective work of art is not new -- but that success stories have been very rare.
That doesn't necessarily mean he's predicting a Fail Whale of operatic proportions, but he's certainly thinking a work of tragic proportions my be in order:
"In the earlier days of the Internet there were a number of collaborative novels, including some started by major writers, and none of them worked," he said.
Royal Opera House officials claim it will be the world's first "online opera story." Fans are contributing to the libretto line by line, their imaginations limited only by the Twitter format, which allows a maximum of 140 characters to be posted at a time.
Alison Duthie, director of ROH2, the Royal Opera House's contemporary program, said the use of Twitter is part of a wider effort to get more people interested in the art form.
"We wanted to engage with audiences in the creation of an opera," she said. "We felt it would be a good way to be interactive with the public and with audiences. We wanted to explore how to get people involved at a creative level."
The plot that is taking shape is surreal and, at the same time, very dramatic, she said.
"At the end of act 1, scene 1, our hero had been kidnapped by a flock of birds and is in a tower awaiting rescue," Duthie said. "That feels extremely operatic, people are really getting into the story line."
There is also a talking cat.
You can follow the submissions, cat and all, here.
Apple's iPhone store has rolled out it's share of hits and misses in the hundreds of thousands of apps stocked on the virtual shelves.
And this one definitely fits the "hits" category.
Cannabis - the app - is now ready to download to help you find cannabis, the smokin' weed. For just $2.99, the Cannabis app will help you track down marijuana near you! Though, the $2.99 does not cover the purchase of the sherm itself. Of course, this is for medicinal purposes only, according to the creators of the app, Ajnag, and not for when desperation sets in at midnight at the frat house.
Sorry, kids, but it looks like a prescription is the next thing you'd need to make this app useful, and Apple currently doesn't not offer that in download form.
But let Ajnag explain the goals themselves:
There's nothing worse than being a qualified patient with a physician's recommendation to consume cannabis-- commonly referred to as marijuana. You never know where to find cannabis resources near you. Sure, you could search the web but that's as tedious as flipping through the phone book or browsing through the advertisements in the latest cannabis publication.
That's why Cannabis is the latest "must-have" iPhone app. Not only does the program give you the nearest medical cannabis collectives, doctors, attorneys, organizations, and other patient services, it also gives you real-time, door-to-door directions sent right to your phone.
And just who is Ajnag? It's a grass-roots (sorry) organization that's a self-described "cannabis lifestyle network." Basically, a group looking to push the "legalize it" agenda, hemp cultivation, medical marijuana ideals, etc.:
AJNAG (Ahj-Nag) is an activism, resource, and lifestyle network cultivated by the people to help connect, educate, and empower individuals on the cultural, economic, and medicinal benefits of: decriminalization, production, regulation, distribution, and taxation of Cannabis sativa L. AJNAG is about raising the cannabis consciousness by using the power of the World Wide Web and Digital Media.
A quick search of North Side Chicago area codes prompted two listings of sympathetic organizations - Northwestern University NORML and Columbia NORML - but no cannabis for sale sites since, you know, it's not legal here. NORML, of course, is yet another pot-friendly national group looking to legalize.
Considering the staggering array of seemingly benign apps the iTunes store isn't offering, it's a puzzler how this got past the app Nazis at Apple. Makes you wonder what they've been smoking?
As for the app itself? A lot of folks complaining in the user reviews that it's sluggish and incomplete. Sounds like a weed app, alright.
Oh, and it also causes paranoia and they'd like to see listings for convenience stores with frozen burritos if possible.
Those of you who read this blog with any regularity will know we're suckers for A) great photos and B) the GigaPan-style uber enlargement photos that are starting to pick up in popularity for some news coverage.
The most notable example is from President Obama's inauguration, a sweeping image that pulls in the entire scene around the Capitol steps, providing hours of searching for the newsworthy and the just plain freaky in the crowd - and for some bonus Obama, check out this shot from the MLB All-Star game. Well, for a Chicago perspective, here's a new GigaPan image that easily tops the Obama shot.
Behold The Ledge, the Sears (God, is it really the Willis Tower now?) Tower Skydeck ledge that allows you to step on air for an unparalleled view of the city - straight down and all around. Below is a look at what you see as the base image for this photo, that basically allows infinite zooming:
OK, nice photo. But the beauty of the image is when you start digging in. Here's an image of the Chicago Sun-Times building, a little to the north of the Sears Tower, that was found within this image (in the bottom right corner area):
And there's plenty more to see. You can even create snapshots of scenes you find - with a free account logon - and interact with a growing GigaPan community to discuss images and the secrets that used to be hidden in the corners.
And, with apologies to Billy Mays, if that were the only Chicago photographic goodness today, you might be thrilled. But wait, there's more! National Geographic's Intelligent Travel blog has some nice advice for how to get the best images of Chicago and its skyline. It's good advice for tourists and townies alike.
There are tips offered on where to go and how to get there to capture images like this:
And just to add to photographer Bob Krist's advice, while the Ledge is awesome, you get a much better photographic vantage point for photography from the Hancock's Observatory.
Yes, it's an ad. So what? Ads this creative and innovative are a pleasure to look at, no matter what they're selling. It's well executed, clever, meticulous and a joy of stop-motion photography.
But wait just a second ... hasn't this already been done? And just a few weeks earlier right here on YouTube, to boot?
As it turns out, yes ...
So what on first glance was a tremendous effort at artistic advertising for the Olympus PEN camera - a largely European campaign - has quickly turned into a debate on the line between "homage" and pick-pocketing.
By Thomas Conner on July 6, 2009 4:05 PM
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Michael Jackson wasn't just the King of Pop, he was also a bit of a video game junkie. His collection of arcade and home video games, even pinball machines, was part of an exhibit earlier this year in Beverly Hills. Also featured in the exhibit were his collectible movie props, including costumes from the "Spider-Man" and "Batman" films.
Pinesane has this online guided tour -- look at the collection, and zoom in on the "Star Wars" figures, the pinball machines, the video games and more -- that's sure to make you envious. (Then again, this stuff could be up for auction somewhere someday ...)
OK, so this isn't the iPhone 3G S. It's probably hard to fit in a pocket and the camera isn't much to speak of, to say nothing of call quality.
But it's hard to imagine a much cooler use of mobile operating system technology in a desktop setting - all of which adds up to limited usability, but no less "wow" - than this touch screen wonder running iPhone OS off a Mac Pro. The clever developer has gotten around the need for the iPhone Home button by using an Apple remote.
Crunchgear tracked the hack (or is it hoax) down to Swedish design firm Dreamfield, which seems to have done it as a messing-around project. Here's a look at another of the projects they work on, this one is a music video for British hip hop artist Dizzee Rascal where they actually walk you through the process of creation. Pretty cool.
In the grand tradition of iPhone mockups that crop up before each release, though, the big question is the same here: Is it real?
Answer: Who cares? It's pulled off with starry bits of awesomeness.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog is betting it's bust through some careful study of the video. Sometimes, though, you just have to suspend disbelief and enjoy the movie.
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