A device should be developed which will detect fire and will send a phone call and email to fire brigade, central monitoring system(a city call center for managing automatic fires and theft call), neighbors, mobiles of special recipients, personal security etc.
“This island city-state, thanks to its small size and a big public investment, could soon be the first country blanketed with a fiber optic infrastructure so fast that it would enable the contents of a DVD to be downloaded in only a few seconds.”
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[F]rom Kenya to Colombia to South Africa that cellphones are becoming the truly universal technology. They are the kind of places that have built cellphone towers precisely to leapfrog past the expense of building wired networks that have linked Americans for a century.
The number of mobile subscriptions in the world is expected to pass five billion this year, according to the International Telecommunication Union, a trade group. That would mean more human beings today have access to a cellphone than the United Nations says have access to a clean toilet.
Because it reaches so many people, because it is always with you, because it is cheap and shareable and easily repaired, the cellphone has opened a new frontier in global innovation.
”Currents - The Triumph of the Ordinary Cellphone - NYTimes.com
…nice to see the mainstream finally picking up on this (cf Park Paradigm 2006…)
(via parkparadigm)
Last fall, we told you about an exciting and innovative competition to find - and fun - civic-focused web and mobile apps in New York City.
Tonight, after an all-star panel of judges had reviewed more than 80 apps over a month-long period, a handful of winning applications were announced.
These apps include WayFinder, a resource for navigating around the city; Taxihack, a live-feed commentary on New York City taxis; Big Apple Ed, a guide to New York City schools; and seven others
NYC’s BigApps Winners Announced: WayFinder, NYC Way Lead the Pack | ReadWriteWeb.
(Some) Nokia Phones Get Free Turn-by-Turn GPS Directions
Not wanting to be left behind by the likes of Android, Nokia is today rolling out a free turn-by-turn GPS app for 10 of its phones: the Nokia X6, N97 mini, E72, E55, E52, 6730 classic, 6710 Navigator, 5800 Xpressmusic, 5800 Navigation Edition, and 523. All GPS-enabled phones will eventually be able to download the software, and new Nokia phones shipping in March will come with the service pre-installed
CitiSense: Cellular Environmental Monitoring » dailywireless.org »
CitiSense, a cell-phone based sensor network system, has won a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop and deploy hundreds of small environmental sensors carried by the public in San Diego. The goal of CitiSense is to build and deploy thousands of small environmental sensors that use cell phones to relay data. The sensor-wearing public may also wear biological monitors, collecting basic health information, such as heart rate. The data will be analyzed, anonymized and reflected back out to individuals, public health agencies and San Diego at large.
