Monday, February 10, 2003

BBC's Smart Moblog. Nearly a million phone cameras have been sold in the UK, and if the experience of Japan is anything to go by, soon millions of us will have the ability to send pictures from our mobile phones. And with digital cameras, people are now regularly taking pictures and sending them around the world within hours, sometimes sooner. [Smart Mobs] 7:33:34 PM    comment []

"THE CONSTITUTION WAS WRITTEN ON HEMP!" One of the few bizarre notes in an otherwise orderly pro-America demonstration reported by... [Instapundit.com] 7:32:45 PM    comment []

Wired Firefighters. We are developing a context-aware emergency response system that provides effective support to victims and rescue workers. In particular, we will focus on addressing the following questions: Context-aware decision support: how to provide victims and rescue workers real-time context information, from both sensors and other human-beings, in a form that is adapted to the human decision-maker’s thought processes. Novel interaction techniques: how to provide victims and rescue workers usable interaction techniques so that they can obtain effective assistance without being distracted or having to learn Survivability by design: how to better design interactions and coherent response strategies to achieve survivability for humans in emergencies Privacy and safety: how to protect individual privacy in normal situations while still maintaining the ability to support emergencies effectively [Smart Mobs] 7:27:10 PM    comment []

Austrian hot-spot operator Metronet adds gas stations: Alan Reiter runs down the advantages of hot spot deployments in smaller countries, while criticizing the high price of access. (Hey, gas is $5.00 a gallon, too, Alan!) Metronet has 250 hot spots, and will introduce 15 at these gas stations, in addition to 20 hot spots close-by to existing highways. [80211b News] 7:26:14 PM    comment []

Another reason to love German is from the press release: Ab Mitte Februar können OMV Kunden mit WLAN-fähigen Notebooks oder PDAs die Tankpausen zum drahtlosen Abrufen und Versenden von Emails oder für einen VPN-gesicherten Zugriff auf das eigene Firmenlaufwerk nützen. In English: By the middle of February, OMV customers can (take a deep breath) -- with WLAN-capable notebooks or PDAs -- the time while filling a tank with wireless sending and receiving of email or with a VPN-secured connection to their own company network (release breath) use. [80211b News] 7:26:05 PM    comment []

BBC asks Britons to pan-surveil events with cam-phones. The BBC is inviting news-civilians to shoot pictures of noteworthy events with their cameraphones and submit them for inclusion in news-reporting. So, if you have been active with your phone camera, or any other digital camera, send us your pictures. Our picture editor will choose the best each week and publish them on this page every Friday... If you want to send your picture from your mobile phone, dial 07970 885089. You can send them from any network or phone. Please send the large full size images (usually 640x480 pixels) taken by the mobiles. Otherwise they are too small to publish. If you want to email it to us, send it to yourpics@bbc.co.uk And don't forget to include your name and a bit of context about your snap. Link Discuss (Thanks, Matt!) [Boing Boing Blog] 7:25:24 PM    comment []

Digital Needle is a virtual grammaphone open source program that converts scanned--yes, scanned--vinyl records into audio. Rip this! [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] 7:25:03 PM    comment []

Long-haul mailing list: Simon Woodside has launched a discussion mailing list for dealing with low-cost, long-distance and rural wireless Internet connectivity. The topics include, point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, long-haul or back-haul data links. Generally oriented toward commodity, open-spectrum products, like 802.11b (Wi-Fi), 802.11a, 802.11g, etc. as well as HF and packet radio. To subscribe visit this link. [80211b News] 7:19:36 PM    comment []

Australia offers worldwide community node-mapping server: Duane from Sydney Wireless want to alert me and the world that the NodeDB site is back from an overload and better than before, mapping nodes worldwide. He writes: NodeDB.com, after its hardware and code updates, is more capable ofhandling higher loads, and also gained a much better user interface with greatly increased feature set. NodeDB.com was expanded upon to cover the globe, with new areas and nodes constantly being added. Currently there are over 4,400 sites listed in about 350 separate geographical locations, with no sign of slowing down in sight. [80211b News] 7:19:08 PM    comment []