Camera-Phone
Marc Smith and democratizing our understanding of position, position, position
At the Personal Democracy Forum in NYC last week, I enjoyed a rambunctious interview-turned-rambling-conversation with Marc Smith, a social network sociologist who founded and managed the Community Technologies Group at Microsoft and is currently the Chief Social Scientist at the Connected Action Consulting Group . This wasn’t the first time I’d communicated with Marc; we’d corresponded via email more than two years ago about AURA, a social shopping app he was working on at Microsoft which I was writing about in my thesis on emerging uses of social media for environmental governance. So it was a great pleasure to finally meet Marc in person (and lemme tell you – his gregariousness makes an in-person encounter more than worthwhile).
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Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia, and the Personal Democracy Forum
Given the incessant demands on his time, I was fortunate to snag a whole thirty minutes with Jimmy Wales at the Personal Democracy Forum in NYC on Thursday, June 3rd. And in those thirty minutes, I decided to explore Wikipedia not as a tool for enabling democracy, but as a model of emergent and adaptive governance, i.e.
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Airlines Work to Catch Up to the Digital Age
Airlines have made great technological leaps in recent years, allowing passengers to check in from home or download boarding passes on their smartphones. But if you’ve ever been stranded at an airport during a raging thunderstorm, chances are you will end up standing in a long line watching a gate agent typing furiously on an outdated computer.
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Bike device to keep 2-wheeled mobile mobs charged
“Agence France-Presse reports” … in a story republished by Yahoo reports today that Nokia will soon release a battery charger p owered by the energy generated from riding a bicycle: The charger, which can be fitted into any Nokia phone with a 2 mm charger jack, uses a dynamo to generate electricity from the movement of the wheels, Nokia said in a statement: “Bicycles are the most widespread means of transport in many markets around the world, so this is just one more benefit to be gained from an activity people are already doing,” Alex Lambeek, Vice President at Nokia, said in the statement. The price of the charger kit, which also includes a holder for securing the phone to the bicycle, will vary according to market, but in countries like Kenya, where the product was introduced on Thursday, it would be around 15 euros (18.43 dollars), a Nokia spokesman told AFP. . .
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Bringing European values to the Internet of Things
Full text (pdf) of the speech held by Neelie Kroes, ( press releases ) European Commissioner for Digital agenda at 2nd Annual Internet of Things Conference Brussels, 1st June 2010. Our citizens may not always want to use the technology in all the ways that is possible
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Grassroots mapping of the Gulf oil spill
Researchers at the Center for Future Civic Media are making freely available maps of the Gulf oil spill. Their work has had a great influence on how the public not only perceives this ongoing environmental disaster but also how the public perceives the value of releasing maps into the public domain
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Mobile phone as a tool of reporting
Report on session on “Mobile Phone as a Tool for Reporting” at the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Santiago, Chile starting off the discussion with the question of whether SMS is useful for reporters. SMS can be particularly useful when combined with other media. Many community radio stations in Haiti have used SMS to effectively provide a feedback mechanism from the general population.
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Civic media in difficult places
In a demonstration of globe-straddling communication technologies like Skype, a special MIT forum of the Center for Future Civic Media connected to citizen journalists and activists around the world, some of whom frequently test the limits of governmental authority. Moderator Ethan Zuckerman @EthanZ wonders if these new digital forms are fundamentally liberating, providing users access to public spaces they might otherwise be denied.
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Kiwi U-Powered charger provides greenish solar power
Kiwi U-Powered Solar Charger How many times have you been on the go, out the door, and then found that your cell phone battery is at one bar? Or on a ride only to realize you forgot to charge your iPod or any other mobile device
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iPhone 4G to be available in white
iPhone 4g to be available in white As the last six months have progressed, the world of Apple has been almost totally dominated by the iPhone 4G and its rumors (with the exception of the magical iPad of course). The rumors have ranged from screen resolution , to front-facing cameras, and now the newest one concerns the aesthetics of the device.
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