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Although they are still lagging behind their colleagues in the US, British academics are slowly but surely moving into the blogosphere. The appeal of academic feedback, as well as the opportunity for public engagement and the potential for enhancing reputations, has those who blog hooked… Yet any sense that there is a united UK community among the academics who blog seems strangely non-existent. "I can see that I am (part of a group of UK scholars who blog) but I don't self-identify," says Prof. Mary Beard, of Classics at Cambridge.
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"An implantable device that alerts high-risk patients when they show signs of a heart attack could shorten the time it takes for the wearer to seek medical attention. The device, being developed by AngelMed, a medical-devices company in Shrewsbury, NJ, is already approved for use in Brazil and is now undergoing clinical testing in the United States."
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"The Guardian newspaper in the UK has today launched its open API which will carry all the content the newspaper produces in print and online. That’s over a million articles which go back to 1999. The “Open Platform” will allow allow partners to reuse Guardian.co.uk content and data for free, in a clear move to try and make the The Guardian an all pervasive part of the Web"
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Interesting commentary on the use value of the burgeoning amount of visualisation of data concerning the urban… "info-porn"?
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"T-Mobile is working on plans to build several devices that run Google's Android operating system but can't really be considered phones, according to internal documents secured by the New York Times this weekend. The revelation appears to provide more evidence to the argument that Android isn't really a mobile phone's operating system because in the future there won't be devices thought of as phones."
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"Every year IBM releases a "Next Five in Five" list, a list of innovations that "have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years". This is the third such list, and it mentions a "Talking Web" among the 5 items. You will talk to the Web and the Web will talk back, according to IBM. In the future "you will be able to surf the Internet, hands-free, by using your voice – therefore eliminating the need for visuals or keypads." In fact this is already starting to happen, as recent iPhone releases from Google and Say Where show."
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Metropolis magazine blog article about vision/anticipation in/for planning re. a recent book: "With traditional planning made impotent by capitalism and NIMBYism, rebuilding the city now requires a “new type of urbanist,” a designer Varnelis [author of book] compares to a computer hacker who reimagines a new use for the underlying rules and codes. It’s a compelling vision, but it’s darkened by a Marxist conviction about the malevolence of the corporation. Infrastructure has always been a public initiative that complements private investment. "
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Hoffmann get excited by his gadgetry… the "Uber boiler".(tags: coffee technology)
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Timo trys to create graphic language for making-visible wireless technologies: "An ongoing Touch theme is about making invisible wireless technologies visible, in order to better understand and communicate with and about them (see a Graphic Language for RFID, Dashed lines and Fictional radio spaces)."
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Google's blog launch of Latitude: "Latitude is a new feature for Google Maps on your mobile device. It's also an iGoogle gadget on your computer. Once you've opted in to Latitude, you can see the approximate location of your friends and loved ones who have decided to share their location with you. So now you can do things like see if your spouse is stuck in traffic on the way home from work, notice that a buddy is in town for the weekend, or take comfort in knowing that a loved one's flight landed safely, despite bad weather."
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Some generally interesting commentary on interface design, lots of speculation about 'what next'.
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"A miniature telescope implanted into the eye could soon help people with vision loss from end-stage macular degeneration. Last week, an advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration unanimously recommended that the agency approve the implant. Clinical trials of the device, which is about the size of a pencil eraser, suggest it can improve vision by about three and a half lines on an eye chart."
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"radar for your iPhone puts you at the center of your news, showing you all the news stories, blog posts, discussion threads, and Twitter tweets happening near the places you care about. Find restaurants, dive into real estate gossip, get the insider view of local schools, track nearby crimes–radar shows you everything that’s happening right around the corner."
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"Once pictures are posted on Facebook, they're there to stay. And it's not just Facebook–an interesting article from ComputerWorld shares the results of an experiment to try to help three people clean up their Google search results, and the results were dismal–only one attempt was successful. The takeaway point seems to be than an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Like some kind of drunken prisoner's dilemma, this throws the onus of good behavior on the individual–"because I cannot trust these acquaintances not to put these pictures up, I should avoid being photographed at all." "
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"Google says it has built the service from the ground up with security and privacy issues in mind, and that the service only stores the last known location of a given user. However, privacy watchdog Privacy International argues that there are opportunities for abuse of the system for those who may not know that their phone is broadcasting its location."
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"Online game Entropia Universe has been granted a licence to be a bank. Issued by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, the licence means the game can be more closely tied to the real world finances of players."
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