New Florence. New Renaissance.

The Amazon college student app

The app for the iPhone and iPod touch

"allows college students to price-check textbooks and other items, keep lists of things they want to buy, and check the eligibility of items for trade-in.

The free app also includes a barcode scanner for comparison shopping: Students scan a textbook’s barcode to see how Amazon’s price compares with the book’s price at the school bookstore.

At the end of the year, students can also scan barcodes to see whether textbooks or any other unwanted items are eligible for trade-in."

Consumer Reports

 

CNET's back to school picks

Parents get your checkbook ready

 

Technology and Memory Lanes

We have a tradition in our family. After every major trip we document a report of between 20 to 30 pages with photos, flight/hotel/car details, other trivia – then print and put the pages in heavy duty plastic sheet protectors and into a three ring binder they go. The electronic document itself goes into Carbonite and various other archives.

Every new trip gives a chance to revisit the trivia from previous ones.

Examples from the hundreds of pages:

• October 28, 1998: we took our shortest flight ever from Honolulu to Lihue on the island of Kauai – 95 nautical miles.  
• July 5, 2002: Strausberg rail ride in Amish country.
• April 27, 2003: Tommy competed against a Cameron Myhrvold from Washington State at a chess tournament at Hyatt Orlando (wonder if he is related to the famous Nathan?). Rita competed against Chris Rogsby from Indiana.
• July 7, 2004: Mom and Dad took a quick tour of Sam Gimignano in Tuscany while the kids slept.
• July 13, 2006: Tour Guide Jim Crew at Edinburgh Castle joked the Scots being tight-fisted chose One O’clock to fire the daily cannon to save on gun powder.
• July 2009: Most of our hotel rooms across a week’s drive across Bavaria, Switzerland and Austria ended with the number 04. What is the statistical probability of that?
• July 19, 2010: Rita’s commentary : Mom asks the waiter to sing happy birthday to Tommy. Instead he calls a band of wandering Romanian musicians who serenade Tommy. So American and Irish cousins at an Italian restaurant in Amsterdam listening to Romanians. Can you get more international?

Last week as Margaret and Tommy drove across California, I vicariously traveled with them by updating their trip report each night. I observed how much easier and richer the documentation has become with today’s technologies. So, I used FlightAware to track their flights and added their flight maps to the document – maybe Tommy’s kids will find fascinating 30 years from now the altitudes they were at while near the Grand Canyon and the air traffic control centers they were handled by.  I used almost real-time credit card statements to get precise information on restaurants they ate at and got photos and menus from sites like Yelp.  I used Google Maps to trace their 1,500+ miles of driving (see below). Their Flips and Blackberries made photos a breeze.

When they got home, I asked them to review my draft and add their commentary. Tommy thought the pomegranate juice ruined his dish at Francis Ford Coppola’s restaurant, Rustic in Geyserville.  Margaret raved about an old book store they had stumbled across in San Francisco. A quick check at the credit card site and a search at Wikipedia got us a photo of City Lights – founded in 1953 and with a colorful past.

Why still print out the reports? Well, poor HP needs our support:).

Seriously, nothing beats a family get together around those three ring binders. The plastic protectors have kept even the old trip printouts in great shape. And technology allows us to keep improving the content. And yes, those binders with all that plastic are pretty heavy so an iPad or a Nook might replace them soon.

25 Cool College Labs

Popular Science gallery of some awesome college labs including deep ocean research(at Woods Hole - photo below), an experimental mine, propulsion labs and even a brewery!

Panasonic's "Smart Town"

Bloomberg's Mike Firn reports from Fujisawa, Japan, about Panasonic Corp.'s plans for the nation's first so-called smart town, which will showcase the company's household technologies. The plans are part of Panasonic's effort to expand business built on energy-related products and to cut its reliance on television sales, as intensified competition erodes prices. Japan's worst earthquake and tsunami cut power supplies across the country and boosted demand for energy-saving devices.

 

Back to the Future: Digital Maps of History

This new generation of digital maps has given rise to an academic field known as spatial humanities. Historians, literary theorists, archaeologists and others are using Geographic Information Systems — software that displays and analyzes information related to a physical location — to re-examine real and fictional places like the villages around Salem, Mass., at the time of the witch trials; the Dust Bowl region devastated during the Great Depression; and the Eastcheap taverns where Shakespeare’s Falstaff and Prince Hal caroused.

Or as the picture below explores: What could the Confederate general Robert E. Lee, actually see during the battle of Gettysburg?

New York Times

Large Touch-Screen Panels

"Perceptive Pixel already makes large touch panels; some are used by broadcasters, including CNN, to display data such as weather forecasts or election results. But today these screens are relatively bulky—up to a meter deep. They sense touches using a technique known as frustrated internal reflection. It involves shining infrared light sideways through the glass surface of a display and using a camera behind the screen to track how fingers change the light's path. The camera behind the screen needs to be a certain distance away in order to capture every touch. Perceptive Pixel has sold most of its displays to federal and defense customers that are willing to design or build rooms around the space required for such large displays.

Now the company has found a way to make projected capacitance work in much larger screens. "We developed algorithms for signal processing that can filter out that noise so you can detect the really small changes in capacitance needed to do multitouch," says Han. "We can finally bring projected capacitance to the full-size range." Earlier this year, Han announced a 27-inch screen that made use of this technology; improvements to the technique enabled the new 82-inch panel.(but only 6 inches deep)"

MIT Technology Review

Photo Credit

Next-Gen 911

The FCC has announced NG911 which will support

"seamless, end-to-end IP-based communication of emergency-related voice, text, data, photos, and video between the public and public safety answering points (PSAPs).

· The benefits of NG911 include:
o Increased public access: NG911 multi-media capabilities expand accessibility (e.g., to persons
with disabilities) and give all consumers more calling options in emergencies.
o Enhanced information for first responders: PSAPs receiving text, data, photos, and videos can
assess emergencies more quickly and respond more effectively.
o Increased reliability of NG911 networks: IP-based architecture provides more flexibility and
resiliency than the legacy circuit-switched 911 system."

FBI Child ID App

"First, parents can store on their iPhones recent pictures of their children along with vital statistics: age, height, weight, distinguishing marks, and so on. If a child goes missing—say, at a shopping mall or an amusement park—parents can summon help from dedicated links to 911 and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Once law enforcement arrives on the scene, parents will have, literally on-hand, all the info needed to help locate the missing child. More important, the app lets parents easily e-mail that important data to the proper authorities as needed.

Second, the app contains safety tips on how to prevent child abductions as well as "specific guidance on what to do in those first few crucial hours after a child goes missing," says the FBI's website.

The FBI stressed that the app does not collect or store any of the information that parents put into the app. All that data reside on parents' iPhones—unless parents, unfortunately, need to share the info to help locate their missing child.

Consumer Reports

 

"Unique juxtaposition of epicurism and electronics"

"do is a one of a kind restaurant that has successfully married science with sustenance and sustainability by creating an experience that activates all of your senses. The largely paperless restaurant, designed by sound and lighting guru Christian Ruffin, uses Apple technology that allows guests to order from the menu, call for valet and change the music while they marvel in the brilliant video graphics that cover every wall of the space"

After valeting their cars, restaurant goers are "welcomed in a soothing accent by oversized, red lips projected on the side of the building. Upon entrance, they will be greeted by a 20 ft. wide by 14 ft. tall free flowing waterfall with video bouncing off of each molecule. The space boasts 270 degrees of seamless video mapping on the walls that will allow images of birds, cars or even bubbles to move throughout the interior without a single break. Patrons can mix and mingle at do’s 40 ft. lighted bar with a 20 ft. wide by 7 ft. tall video display of the libations served in the restaurant."

Ruffin goes “We have the capability to completely transform the space with the touch of a button. It may feel like you are dining al fresco and enjoying the New York skyline one day, and the next day we may make it feel like a relaxing day at the beach. The options are limitless!”

The menus are on iPads, not paper. And you can also request via iPad the valet to pull up your car (the valet is free by the way).

"The musically inspired restaurant has an extensive music selection and corresponding artist video catalog that will allow music lovers to view live performances of their favorite artists while listening to their favorite songs. Guests are able to change the music on the space’s concert sound system using their Apple iPod Touch and iPhone. The tech enhanced bathrooms possess motion sensored hand dryers and sinks with iPad “mirrors” positioned on the walls. Those making use of the facility can view themselves using the device’s camera feature and Photo Booth App. "

Guest may also follow the restaurant’s RSS feed at DoAtTheView.tumblr.com, “Follow” do on Twitter, @DORestaurant, “Like” do on Facebook, www.facebook.com/DoAtTheView, and “Follow” do on Foursquare for real-time up dates and to enter periodic contests.

And yes, the food. "do’s menu created by Ruffin’s wife, Nacasha, has something for everyone" "Our chicken is growth hormone and antibiotic free, all of the cheeses are gluten-free and made without preservatives, fillers and artificial ingredients, the pepperoni is lean and also has no fillers, the shrimp is wild-caught and the pizza sauce is made fresh daily with San Marzano D.O.P certified tomatoes."