Janis Krums was heading out of New York at 20:23 last night after a busy day, “Leaving the city, had a great day. Trying to beat the traffic. Wish me luck!” he Tweeted.
Thirteen minutes later he was in a position that he couldn’t have imagined – on a ferry rescuing the passengers of US Airways Flight 1549 that had just ditched into the Hudson River.
How do I know? Continue reading Janis Krums’ Hudson Tweet: A Game Changer
The BBC, ITV and BT have announced a proposal to create an “open environment for broadband connected digital television receivers.”
It’s an initiative open for all UK public service broadcasters, device developers and other ISPs, which they hope will lead to a new generation of subscription free devices, carrying free to air channels and a huge selection of on demand TV services like iPlayer and ITV Player, as well as the potential for films, shows and interactive content from a range of other providers in standard and high definition.
Continue reading BBC, ITV & BT Announce Open Broadband STB Project
We really, really wanted to get along to the first HomeCamp event – which covered the now-realistic world of automating your home.
Due to a change of circumstances on our side, we couldn’t make it. Much to our relief IBM Master Inventor and Distinguished Engineer Dr Andy Stanford-Clark (who you may know from his house that Twitters) said he’d cover it for Digital-Lifestyles’ readers. Thanks Andy!
A couple of Saturdays ago I went to the first “HomeCamp,” at Imperial College in London.
HomeCamp was an “unconference” (a conference where the participants decide what form and content it should have, on the day) to look at areas of home energy monitoring and home automation.
Interesting to see that Apple’s iPhone has had its iPhone interface replaced with a version of Linux by a group of determined enthusiastic Linux fans.
From the video that we’ve seen (below) – and who knows if it’s for real? – OpeniBoot gives iPhone owners the choice to start the iPhone up in Linux, as well as the normal Apple OS.
When you’re sitting at home or at work, tapping away in your Web browser, you hardly ever consider where your request queries are being dealth with.
Sure they’re runing on a computer _somewhere_ on the Internet, perhaps in a data centre, but do you really know what goes on behind making that machine run?
Smartphones used to be the preserve of a tech-savvy niche and appointment-juggling business folks shuffling between vital meetings, but feature packed handsets have now hit the mainstream.
According the ‘Mobile Market View’ study published by The Kelsey Group, no less than 18.9% of mobile consumers in the United States are now strutting the streets sporting smartphones, with 49.2% set to grab themselves a piece of smartphone action within the next two years.
Continue reading Nearly A Fifth Of Americans Using Smartphones
When you hear of the vision behind AMEE — The Avoiding Mass Extinction Engine — you’ll know that this project is both hugely ambitious and is serious about helping us all change the way we lead our everyday lives.
The vision? To aggregate all of the energy consumption data on earth.
It doesn’t stop there. Their intention is that by informing people of their power usage, they can modify their behaviour, thus reducing their energy usage.
Wow.
This is not just hot air and dreams. AMEE have made a very strong start to this already and you may well have used the services without knowing.
Continue reading Gavin Starks AMEE Interview: Monitor The World’s Energy Usage (Podcast)
We know that lots of you, dear reader, are into Digital Design. Well, NMK have brought an event to our attention that we think you could well enjoy.
Digital Design Day is part of the London Design Festival and will be running the full day of 17th September 2008 at the Southbank Centre in London.
Scheduled to run between 9am and 11:30pm. The breakdown of the free and pay-for events is below.
Continue reading Digital Design Day Details: 17 September, London
The deal between Getty and Flickr, which exclusively gives Getty the right to pick the best images from Flickr and sell them via gettyimages.com to their customers in the creative, commercial and editorial industries — they call it the ‘first commercial licensing opportunity for photo-enthusiasts in the Flickr community’ — is, in many ways, inevitable.
Getty have caused a considerable amount of heart ache to professional photographers by re-adjusting their rates and contracts for images in their commercial library.
The mania for email in and around UK Plc is multiplying, causing an every increasing expectation of the high speed response to email enquiries.