When a 71-year-old Chinese shoeshiner spotted an iPad-user walking past, she begged him to take a photo of her face, and somehow send it to her daughter, who she hadn’t seen for five years after moving to a different city. More »
China, it seems, is getting ready to punch a cloud-shaped hole in its infamous Great Firewall. A massive six square mile office park currently being built in the southwestern city of Chongqing is set to escape the filtering that dominates the rest of the company’s internet access. The area, affectionately known as the “Cloud Zone,” will be home to technology companies and Chinese startups that will presumably require free access to sites like Twitter and Facebook to do their jobs. Freedom, after all, is just another word for being able to update your status from your cubicle.
Great Firewall of China getting a small cloud-based silver lining originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jun 2011 21:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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File this under ‘questionably useful, but darling nonetheless.’ ZviZvi over at Instructables needed to update an outdated product for his Industrial Design portfolio, so he took grandpa’s old rotary phone and implanted an Arduino soul. With an involved bit of slap n’ solder and a WiFly shield, our enterprising Israeli modder transformed this once-luddite tech into an emoticon-tweeting wireless terminal. While the phone’s LED-lit dial is only capable of outputting ten heartwarming expressions, that’s still ten more than any rotary phone’s ever had before. Sure, you could always use that ever-accessible laptop (or smartphone) for your Twitter needs, but where’s the fun in that? Per usual, budding inventors can tickle their Emo in the source link below.
Rotary phone mod tweets your emoticons, heavy soldering still required originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jun 2011 13:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The third-party app experience has always seemed like an afterthought for RIM. Lousy selection and a half-baked install process are just some of the issues plaguing BlackBerry owners and developers, but there’s no blow stronger in the app world than when a dev drops support for a platform, after dedicating the resources necessary to bring a product to market in the first place. That’s exactly what Seesmic has done with its popular social media app — effective June 30th, the company will drop support for BlackBerry, “in order to focus development efforts on (its) most popular mobile platforms.” It goes so far as to suggest that users “try out Seesmic for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7,” which would of course mean replacing that BlackBerry with another, more app-friendly device. The move doesn’t necessarily indicate that other devs will follow suit, but if jumping ship does become a trend, it could put a significant damper on RIM’s future earnings, to say the least.
Seesmic Twitter app drops BlackBerry support, RIM’s frown sags even lower originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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This article was written on March 16, 2007 by CyberNet.
You’re probably already sick of the word Twitter. I know, I’m just about at that point too. It wasn’t long ago that I hadn’t even heard of it, but lately it seems to have exploded in popularity. I was getting sick of seeing the word “Twitter” everywhere I went, yet I really didn’t know what it was. Yesterday I decided to search around and read up on the thousands of people writing about it. In case you are unfamiliar like I was, here’s Twitter in a nutshell:
With everybody answering that one simple question, “what are you doing”, it’s a lazy way to keep in touch with your friends. It eliminates the need to call your friends to see how they are doing, or what they’re up to because they’ll have already answered that question with an informal, impersonal Twitter message.
Do you really need or want to know what everybody is doing? I don’t know about you, but I’m okay with not knowing when someone is stuck in a traffic jam, or when they’ve stopped at the grocery store. I’m sure there are also plenty of instances of TMI (too much information) that people could do without.
I think part of the explosion occurred at SXSW where hundreds of people were using Twitter and talking about it. And it seems that either people love it, or they don’t. There’s really no in-between. If you must stay connected at the hip with everybody around you, this would probably be the best way. It’s also being used for “micro-blogging” with short snippet posts (remember, only 140 characters) using SMS.
While I haven’t used it, the idea of updating my life for everyone to see isn’t really my thing. I like personal phone messages with friends and family to get updates, not text messages. Despite this, I could see some benefits to using it.
If you have a question that you don’t know the answer to, you could easily send it out to all of your friends and get multiple responses back. For example, if you’re going out for dinner and you want to know what the best Thai restaurant is in town, just ask, and then get all of your friends responses back.Another benefit might be if you’re hanging out with a group of people for a night out on the town, Twitter would be a good way to keep track of everybody and where they’re at.
If you’re not a Twitter user yet, but it sounds intriguing, Webware put together a Newbie’s Guide to Twitter so that you can get yourself caught-up with the frenzie.
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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There are three things that will guarantee your DIY project some attention: slap it on a Roomba, base it on Arduino, or make it tweet. Do all three and, well, you’ve got a nerdgasm-inducing bit of Make fodder. The creation you see above is a web-controlled tweeting Roomba whipped up by Instructables member matchlighter using a 500 series vacuum bot and the Sparkfun WiFly shield for Arduino. The autonomous cleaner can be triggered from anywhere there’s an internet connection and updates Twitter to keep you abreast of its status (Ahh! Dock sweet dock). While Mr. matchlighter was kind enough provide directions for building your own, a lot of the actual coding is left up to you. (We’re lazy, let us just copy and paste dammit!) If you think you’ve got the programming chops, hit up the source link for instructions and check out the original’s Twitter feed at the more coverage link.
Update: The complete code is in step eight of the Instructable.
Web-controlled tweeting Roomba is a perfect storm of DIY magic originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The Samsung Galaxy S II has yet to make its US debut, but it looks like our neighbors to the north will be getting it as early as next month. Yesterday, Canada’s SaskTel announced via Twitter that it would launch the phone “within the next month,” making it the first North American carrier to confirm the S II. Earlier this month, it looked as if Verizon would be the first to bring the device to the New World, but our hopes were crushed when the carrier debunked rumors of a July launch. It remains to be seen whether Sasktel’s announcement will pave the way for a wider North American release, but we’ll let you know as soon as we hear more.
Galaxy S II coming to SaskTel next month, we embark on northward migration originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Jun 2011 07:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Ah, Iceland — home to the Blue Lagoon, Sigur Rós and, most recently, crowdsourced constitutionalism. With its economy still reeling from the 2009 financial crisis, the country has begun hammering away at a brand new constitution, and is asking its online citizenry for help. The draft is being prepared by a democratically elected, 25-member council, but any Icelanders with an internet connection can add their own suggestions, engage in online debates, or follow the proceedings in real-time on Facebook. All suggestions are moderated to weed out the really dumb ones (“FEWER VOLCANOES”), and those approved by the board will be directly added to the draft, due to be completed at the end of this month. It’s a fascinating social experiment, but one that could probably only happen in a place where nearly 90 percent of all households have a broadband connection, two-thirds of the entire population is on Facebook — meaning their politicians are always within poke’s reach.
In Iceland, constitutions are written on Facebook originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Jun 2011 10:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
A lot of writers like to see readers react to their work—it’s gratifying. But as Tweetage Wasteland’s Dave Pell explains, sometimes what happens on the Internet needs to stay on the Internet. More »
Joe Belfiore is hardly average, you know — he’s Windows Phone Program Director at Microsoft. And you don’t scale those heights by being the kind of wimp who would just lie down and be trampled over by a herd of new iOS 5 features. No sir. While more timid men might have distracted themselves with minor problems like disappointing sales, Belfiore instead reached deep into that strong place we all discover when we’re backed into a corner and pulled out his Twitter login. What ensued was a list of WP features that he feels “flattered” to see imitated by Apple, starting off with that most original of originals: a dedicated camera button. We’re guessing it’s just a matter of time before Andy Rubin follows suit.
Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore kicks off iOS5 ‘we did it first’ contest, sarcasm meter hits 11 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Jun 2011 22:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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