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Archive for “iPhone” news
Somebody Sending Creepy Threatening Texts to PGW Employees
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 5/17/2013
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On Wednesday, according to police, a Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) employee received a text from an unknown number on his company cell phone telling him that a family member had been involved in a car crash and had been taken hostage by the sender of the message.
When the victim dialed the provided number, an unknown male informed the victim that the family member would be killed if he did not wire $1,500 USC through Western Union to a male in New York.
But when police located the family member in question, he/she was "unharmed, and completely unaware of the incident." Either
Wharton Grad Wants You to Charge Your iPhone Everywhere in Philly
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 4/12/2013
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If one Wharton grad's start-up takes off, your late-night bootycalls may never again be ruined by a dying phone battery. Douglas Baldasare, through his start-up "ChargeItSpot" wants to install 76 portable charging stations in businesses across Philly by June. Consumers would power up for free, while businesses would pay a monthly fee for the kiosks, in exchange for the boon in customers they would ostensibly receive. To sell local merchants on the idea, Baldasare is sending out 150 cakes to businesses across six city neighborhoods. They'll look something like this:
In June, according to a press release, the start-up will also
An iPhone App That Lets You “Listen” to Rittenhouse Square
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 4/10/2013
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Open toes, picnic blankets, the sun. All have recently made their spring debuts in Rittenhouse Square. So too has an interesting new iPhone app--timed in conjunction with PIFA--that lets you hear the park in an altogether new way. Philly songwriter and composer Michael Kiley has created a song called "Empty Air" that played anywhere but Rittenhouse will sound the same to everyone. But played in Rittenhouse, using the app that accompanies it, the geography of the park transforms it; as you walk about, your phone's GPS will trigger different music samples.
He integrated sound recordings of the Park with music. Ambient
Introducing the Horrid Invention That Is Google Glasses
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 2/20/2013
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Behold: Google's most extensive peek yet at the profoundly invasive new "Glasses" technology (not yet on the market). In the video, you'll witness users snapping pictures, shooting videos, translating words, sending text messages (speech-to-text), telling the temperature, cooking vichychoisse and other stuff your iPhone does. Except you just have to tell your glasses to do it, making it the only computer device mute people can't use.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v1uyQZNg2vE
This invention, which Google previewed to a more limited extent in April, is disturbing for three main reasons. First, you can film people completely surreptitiously. Second, no one will have any idea whether you're really looking
My Apps Wish List for the New Apple iWatch
By Beth Capriotti 2/13/2013
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Recent reports from both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal quoted unnamed sources claiming Apple is in discussion with its primary manufacturing partner to come up with an "iWatch," a real-life, wristwatch-type Dick Tracy gadget. Patrick May, in the Main Line Times adds:
“Generation Light”: The Brave New World of Not Owning Stuff
By Sandy Hingston 2/08/2013
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One of those ubiquitous articles about the death of print journalism—this one from Editor & Publisher, written by “new media consultant” Alan D. Mutter—has introduced me to a term I’d never heard before: “Generation Light.” According to Mutter, twentysomethings these days, in reaction to parents who have to rent storage units to hold their overflow acquired-due-to-rampant-materialism stuff, have become stripped-down, airy-as-gossamer souls flitting from apartment to apartment, job to job, city to city, unencumbered by all the worldly possessions that weigh their plodding elders down.
Seth Williams Taking on Mark Zuckerberg in Battle Over Snitching
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 2/04/2013
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who's in hot water with New Jersey Democrats for hosting a fundraiser for Chris Christie, is now pissing off one prominent PA Dem too. Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams is publicly calling for Facebook to remove posts he says qualify as witness intimidation.
A 20-year-old Kensington man was charged in December with using the social networking site to threaten a woman who was testifying against his friends in a case involving straw purchases of firearms. The site has so far refused to remove posts Freddie Henriquez wrote declaring that he wanted to "kill rats," Williams said. He
John Kerry’s Twitter Handle is Laughing at You
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 2/04/2013
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To let us know when he's tweeting for himself, and when a generic State Department staffer is doing it, newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry will be signing his personal tweets "JK," the very same acronym young folks may or may not still use to denote a comment made in jest.
#SecKerry will start tweeting from @statedept. Tweets from him will have his initials -JK
— StateDept (@StateDept) February 4, 2013
In other words, everything the Dept. tweets will sound serious, and everything Kerry will tweet will sound sarcastic, aloof, and inappropriate. I took the liberty of adding a "JK" to some
5 Easy Steps to a Total Robot Takeover
By Nick Vadala 2/04/2013
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A hostile robot takeover has long been a worry for modern man, and the Cambridge Project for Existential Risk (along with some help from the Stephen Hawking) is now focusing energy on mitigating a coming cybernetic revolt. But I, for one, welcome our new metal overlords. I say, instead of fighting it, we ought to embrace the change. After all, total robot takeover is inevitable. Here's how it will happen—in five easy steps.
Infographic: What a Philadelphia Geek (and Geek-ette) Looks Like
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 1/23/2013
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The winter of Temple Alumni Magazine introduced us to the archetypal Philadelphia tech geek. All that was missing, Technically Philly wrote, was a beard and an girl geek version.
Well here she is.
By the way, these geeks look an awful like most of the hip 20somethings in the city who are in no way connected to the tech industry. [Technically Philly]
