It’s been a long time since Istanbul was an economic focal point between Asia and the West. But, yesterday, at the opening of the deepest underwater railway ever built, Turkish officials described their vision to "restore the Silk Road" and link London with Beijing—thanks to a Japanese-funded railway beneath the Bosphorus.
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The fine people of Canada may still not have access to Spotify, but Greece, Turkey, Taiwan and Argentina are all getting the ad-supported music-on-demand service starting today. Yes, that’s at least one new country for three separate continents — Spotify’s really spreading the love around with today’s expansion, apparently. According to the company, that puts Spotify in 32 total “markets” worldwide, comprising 24 million “active users” — not too shabby for seven years of existence!
The company’s last big expansion was in April, when it arrived in Mexico, Malaysia and several other territories. Here’s hoping it finally arrives in Canada some time this year as well — our Canadian staffers are getting awfully antsy.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Source: Spotify
When it comes to 3D printing, one of the names that keeps on cropping up would be Solidoodle. Just in case it sounds vaguely familiar to you, let me jog your memory a little bit – Solidoodle is an affordable 3D printer for homes which debuted last year, and it even made an appearance over at the world’s largest 3D printer store in the UK earlier this year. Apart from that, we talked about how someone from New Zealand decided to build a 3D printed car from scratch, using a Solidoodle 3D printer to assist him in his efforts. Well, here we are today with the announcement of 3Dörtgen being Turkey’s first 3D printer store, and of course you will find Solidoodle 3D printers on sale there.
The 3Dörtgen 3D printer store can be found in Istanbul’s Camlica district, and if everything runs as smoothly as expected, then the store is tipped to open up this coming September 3rd. Solidoodle founder Sam Cervantes gushed, “I am excited to see that the 3D printing and the larger maker movement is a worldwide phenomena. The addition of 3Dörtgen as a distribution partner is a great opportunity to bring affordable desktop 3D printing to Turkey with a company that has had a strong presence in its own community for decades.” [Press Release]
Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It | 3Dörtgen Is Turkey’s First 3D Printer Store original content from Ubergizmo. 
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As personal drones become more usable – and more ubiquitous – I think we’ll see more and more scenes like this one. The video, taken in Istanbul by a protester named Jenk Kose, shows the quadcopter falling out of the sky after being shot at by the police. The quadcopter’s camera failed when it was hit, but Jenk was able to save some of the footage.
Jenk wrote:
I contacted Jenk about the event and he had a few things to say. “I have no idea why they shot it down,” he said. “I’ve been flying that model every day for the last four weeks.”
He said he will be uploading more video later this week.
FOOTAGE FROM RC DRONE THAT WAS SHOT DOWN BY POLICE / Polis Tarafindan Dusurulen Helikopter [HD] from Jenk K on Vimeo.
This video, accompanied by some stirring music, shows some of the footage Jenk took with the quadcopter before it was blasted out of the sky. While I could see the danger inherent in having a quadcopter flying over a big crowd, I would say the violent reaction was a bit much.
ACTUAL SCENE OF TURKISH POLICE SHOOTING RC DRONE / Polisin Ucan Kamerayi Vurma Ani [HD] from Jenk K on Vimeo.
The tension in Turkey is quickly approaching its breaking point as thousands of protesters gear up for a third week
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The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan, has condemned social media as a “the worst menace to society” following a weekend of anti-government demonstrations across his country. He singled out the “scourge” of Twitter in particular, since protestors have been using that platform to share information and vent anger at the government. Small-scale riots started over plans to build a shopping mall or mosque (depending on who you believe) on the grounds of a popular park in central Istanbul, but they quickly spread to other areas and to a broader set of grievances about Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian stance. None of these disturbances were especially visible on national TV stations, however, as there have recently been heavy crackdowns on press freedom within Turkey. From the sound of it, Erdogan would prefer a more tightly controlled internet too — or perhaps none at all.
[Image courtesy of Adem Altan/Getty Images]
Source: The Times (paywall)
Welcome to Japanese Technology from the Future Friday!
It’s already Friday west of the international dateline – here in Japan, it’s totally the future. The weekly JTFF is our somewhat technosnarky coverage of 2-5 particularly important, specifically Japan-related tech stories. Get yourself hip to the micro & macro that went down while North America was sleeping – check in with Akihabara News every Friday morning and BOOM! Ahead of the game, you win.
:: JTFF – May 3, 2013 ::
• New Pacific Rim Trailer for Japanese Audiences
The JTFF doesn’t often jump into entertainment stories, but since this one’s 1. about giant robots fighting alien sea monsters (“kaiju,” Japanese for “monster”), and 2. directed by Guillermo del Toro, it’s not only wildly relevant (perhaps you’ve noticed our recent renaissance in robotics coverage?), but also promises to maybe, just maybe be a decent blockbuster-scale robot movie. Jump through to see what the suits up in marketing decided to aim at the Japanese.
[PACIFIC RIM JAPAN TRAILER – DIGITAL JOURNAL]
• How Robots are Changing the Way We Age
Interesting and very comprehensive coverage of why and how robots will be all up the developing world’s aging process. Of course anyone worth their Robo-Dorky merit badge knows Japan’s aging society is the vanguard of the “Yeah so we’re getting old really fast and who’s going to take care of us ummm okay let’s do robots” club, and this piece provides a very nice contextual framework for how the issue’s addressed both here and in the rest of the world. For a primer, you might want to begin with our own coverage here.
[GETTING OLD WITH ROBOTS & STUFF – FISCAL TIMES]
• Japan’s Taking Nuclear Energy Tech to the Middle East
Not only is Japan funding off-shore wind farms in the eastern United States, they’re also taking J-Tech nuclear energy know-how to the UAE and Turkey. After Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s pan-Arabian hobnobbing, a deal was inked for Japan to sell nuclear tech to the UAE, and this bodes well both for tech exports and maintaining Japan’s steady stream of UAE fossil fuels, for which it’s a platinum-level customer. Motivation and angles on the agreement with Turkey are not quite as easy to parse, but appear to be part of Japan’s ongoing efforts to boost technological exports in lucrative markets outside of the traditional electronics, automotive, etc.
[THINGS GO WELL FOR ABE IN THE UAE – UPI] – [TURKEY GETS SOME NUCLEAR J-TECH – JAPAN TIMES]
That was the JTFF, and live from the future – that is all!
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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com, where the JTFF was born.
Tokyo at Night image via PhotoEverywhere.
Chairman of the Turkish Cultural Association of Austria, Birol Kilic, thinks the Jabba’s Palace LEGO play set is “culturally insensitive.” Why? He says that it resembles Istanbul’s historic mosque Hagia Sophia. Or any other building with a domed roof, for that matter.
He says that “This does not belong in children’s bedrooms, and the minaret-like tower features machine guns. Children will become insensitive to violence and other cultures.” Maybe he should worry about real world problems instead of worrying about a LEGO set based on a 30-year-old movie.
It all started when his organization was notified of the issue by an outraged Austrian father, whose sister had given the LEGO set to his son last Christmas. The father returned the toy to the store. It could have ended there, but the Turkish Cultural Association petitioned LEGO to drop the play set from its line-up.
Sadly, like so many things these days, political correctness and overzealous idiots are trying to kill the things that we love. Don’t mess with Star Wars. In response to the accusations, LEGO released the following statement:
All LEGO Star Wars™ products are based on the movies of the Star Wars™ saga created by Lucasfilm. Jabba’s Palace appears in Star Wars™ Episode VI and appears in a famous scene on the planet Tatooine. The building is the palace of Jabba – a fictional movie character.
The picture shown above depicts the building from the movie scene. The LEGO designers try to reproduce all buildings, space ships and characters from the movies as close as possible when creating a new LEGO Star Wars™ product.
This is done to allow both young and old Star WarsTM fans to act out the scenes from the movies at home. The LEGO Star Wars™ product Jabba’s palace does not reflect any non-fictional buildings, people, or the mentioned mosque.
The LEGO minifigures shown on the box and found inside the box (Jabba, Salacious Crumb, Bib Fortuna, Gamorreanic Guard, Oola, Han Solo, Princess Leia disguised as Boushh, Chewbacca and B’omarr Monk) are all modeled after fictional characters from the movie.
The LEGO Group regrets that the product has caused the members of the Turkish cultural community to interprete it wrongly, but point out that the design of the product only refers to the fictional content of the Star Wars™ saga.
A few media have reported that the product is being discontinued due to the mentioned criticism. This is, however, not correct.
As a normal process products in the LEGO Star Wars™ assortment usually have a life-cycle of one to three years after which they leave the assortment and may be renewed after some years. The LEGO Star Wars™ product Jabba’s Palace 9516 was planned from the beginning to be in the assortment only until the end of 2013 as new exiting models from the Star Wars universe will follow.
LEGO has no plans to prematurely discontinue the playset, but you can always buy one for your collection, just in case.
[via Nerd Approved]
The days of casually crossing a creek are over if you live in the Gölçük district of Kocaeli province in western Turkey. Which maybe you don’t. But the point is that someone stole a 22-ton, 82-foot-long bridge from there. It’s just gone. More »
Just days after finally pushing out its redesigned iTunes 11 software, Apple has thrown open the doors to its iTunes music store in 56 new countries today. The list of countries includes Russia, Turkey, India and South Africa where customers can download DRM-free tracks from both major labels and local acts. Additionally, movies from a number of distributors large and small are now available in Russia, Turkey, India and Indonesia, with “select additional countries” gaining access soon. That brings the iTunes store count to a total of 119 countries where it’s pushing media, while the App Store offers 700,000 apps in 155 countries around the world. There’s a few more details (although oddly not an official list of all the countries, but MacRumors appears to have worked them out if you’re interested) in the press release after the break, international listeners can just open up iTunes and see if that buy button is clickable.
Continue reading Apple opens iTunes Music Store in 56 new countries, four get movies too
Filed under: HD
Source: Apple
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