Navizon turns your PC or Mac into a navigation system
Mexens Technology today announced the availability of Navizon for any Wifi or Bluetooth enabled computer. Navizon is a positioning system that works by triangulating signals from Wifi and/or Cellular towers. It is based on a community of users mapping the wireless landscape in their area and collecting Wifi and Cell towers locations all around the world. Once the data collected is shared with the rest of the network, everyone can benefit from Navizon’s virtual GPS, even on devices that do not include a GPS chip.
[Disclaimer: I have absolutely no financial ties with this company.]
Source: Navizon press release, July 9, 2007
Evan Williams has a habit of building software to help people broadcast their thoughts. In 1999, he developed Blogger, the easy-to-use blogging tool that Google snatched up four years later. His latest project is another self-publishing service, a miniblog service called Twitter. Launched in March 2006, Twitter lets people broadcast short messages from computers and phones to anyone in the world. [...] Technology Review caught up with Williams to discuss Twitter and its implications.
Source: Kate Greene, Technology Review, July 9, 2007
Wikipedia remains go-to site for online news
In May, Wikipedia had 46.8 million unique visitors, up 72 percent from June 2006, NetRatings said. Wikipedia also has finished on top of the news and information category every month this year — ranking ahead of Landmark Communications’ Weather Channel site by an increasing margin — topping out with a disparity of about 10 million visitors in May.
Source: Reuters, July 8, 2007
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Labs has unveiled a research project that could help people select colors when shopping for products. The technology uses color-correcting and computer-vision algorithms that reside on HP servers. The idea, explains Nina Bhatti, principal scientist at HP Labs, is that consumers use their mobile phones to take pictures of themselves or objects, and then send these pictures to HP servers. Within seconds, the consumer receives a text message with a color recommendation for matching makeup to skin tone, or for finding the right paint hue for the home.
Source: Kate Greene, Technology Review, July 11, 2007
Pay-for-blogging site raises questions
The controversy around a young Web site called Associated Content boils down to perspective. Does it exist to game Google search results and generate revenue through Google’s AdWords advertising service by displaying contextual ads next to the copy? Or is it a new kind of media site, chock-full of original articles written mostly by average folk about everything from presidential pardons and karaoke to smoker’s guilt and ventriloquism?
Source: Elinor Mills, CNET News.com, July 11, 2007
It’s been 10 years since the blog was born. Love them or hate them, they’ve roiled presidential campaigns and given everyman a global soapbox. Twelve commentators — including Tom Wolfe, Newt Gingrich, the SEC’s Christopher Cox and actress-turned-blogger Mia Farrow — on what blogs mean to them.
Source: Tunku Varadarajan, The Wall Street Journal, July 14, 2007
But the license-plate scanners raise concern about civil liberties.
New York’s Long Beach Police Department is among a growing number of law enforcement agencies using the roof-mounted license-plate reader, the Mobile Plate Hunter.
Source: Michael Frazier, Newsday, July 15, 2007 (via Los Angeles Times: Free registration)
