| Weekend Project: Make Your Own NFC Tags NFC, or near field communication, is an emerging technology that will power mobile payment systems and mobile wallet solutions, like those in development by Apple, Google, RIM, mobile operators, banks and others. But NFC itself is just a way to send data wirelessly between devices, meaning it can be used for far more than mobile payments alone. One way to take advantage of a phone's NFC capabilities is to make your own NFC tags. These tags, when read by your phone, can perform a number of actions, like open a map, launch a website, change your phone's settings and configurations, plus dozens of other tasks. Wouldn't it be fun to make tags like that? Well, now you can. Here's how.
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Google Survey Reveals How We Use Our iPads Google has released results of a survey (PDF) on user behavior with regard to tablet computers, the vast majority of which are iPads. Responses indicate that tablet ownership significantly changes our media consumption habits and computer use. As one of the fastest-selling consumer technology products of all time, the iPad is an important technology to study the use of. There's something really futuristic and joyful feeling about it, at least in my experience. Given how much other people apparently use theirs, it seems I'm not alone in that feeling.
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What Is Google Getting at With Chrome OS for Tablets? Evidence has surfaced in some Google source code that the company isn't simply looking at using Chrome OS - the Web-based operating system revealed last December - just for notebook computers. Instead, it looks like Google is considering the OS for use on tablets. As some point out, that seems like a confusing move with Google banking so much on Honeycomb. Perhaps, however, Chrome OS isn't meant for high-end tablets at all. Maybe Chrome OS for tablets is Google's play at creating a low-end tablet market or something else altogether.
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Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time YouTube has come to define the era of online video, so let's take a look at its most popular videos of all time. Our latest update has Justin Bieber still at number 1 with Baby, which recently become the first video to earn a half a billion views! Bieber has two other videos in the top 10, at numbers 6 and 9. In fact, Bieber and Eminem between them now make up half of the top 10. Other than "Charlie Bit My Finger," the baby and humor videos can no longer compete with the poularity of the top music videos. We first did this list in August 2007, at which point Evolution of Dance by comedian Judson Laipply was number 1 with nearly 56 million views (it's now outside the top 10). The next update was September 2008, when Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend pop music video was number 1 with 103 million page views. In January 2010, Charlie bit my finger - again ! was number 1, with 148 million views. By the beginning of January 2011, Justin Bieber was at number 1 with over 400 million views for Baby. Here is the top 10, as of April 2011:
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Guardly for iPhone: Your Personal Mobile Emergency Response System As mobile phones become more ubiquitous, they are undoubtedly changing how we respond to and record crises. We can report emergencies and call for help in real-time, rather than having to drive to the nearest phone. But we haven't really built these networks out fully and taken advantage of all the power of the mobile phone to send text messages, phone calls, conference calls, photos, and instant messages - not just to the authorities but to friends and family. Enter Guardly, a new app from a Toronto-based startup that arrives on iPhone today.
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Bahrain Arrests Poet, China Arrests Artist: This Week in Online Tyranny Poet arrested by Bahrain security. After reciting a satirical poem during the Bahraini protests, Ayat Al-Qormezi was arrested. Her parents were tortured by gunmen, who told them their four sons, who had been forced face-down onto the floor, would be murdered before their eyes if they were not told where their daughter, the poet Ayat, was. Mahmood Al-Yousif, the Bahraini "blogfather" who was arrested last week, was freed shortly thereafter due in part to pressure from the U.S. government. Will the U.S. exert equal pressure to free a young lady whose fame is mostly as a poet? Will Bahrainis agitate for her release?
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Google Takes Deals Country-Wide: Will You Check In? Just in time for last month's SXSW conference in Austin, Google rolled out check-in deals at 60 venues throughout Texas's capital city. All users had to do was check-in to a location using Google Latitude, Google's location-based check-in app, and they were rewarded with discounts and deals. Today, Google announced that it would be bringing those deals to thousands of venues throughout the country.
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An iPhone User's First Days on Android: Where Are the Apps and Why is My Phone Frozen? It's been a little over a year now that I've had my iPhone and I've become so used to the simple way that it works, I've begun complaining. "There's little to no customization," I might rattle off one day. "I can't stand Apple's App Store policies," I'll muse the next. But there's one thing I will admit, nonetheless - the iPhone just works. I'm just a handful of days into trying my hand at an Android phone and, while the phone itself is impressive, I've already run into some problems that a year into iPhone-ownership I've never even come close to encountering.
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World's 1st Computer More Complex Than Originally Thought The Antikythera Mechanism, built in the 2nd century B.C. and recovered in 1900, is the most complex machine to survive from ancient times. Looking like a sophisticated time piece, it turned out to be just that. The device apparently calculated the positions of the moon, sun and known planets. But recent work has revealed an additional element of sophistication: it tracks the sun's relative speeds at different times of the year. The Hellenic device, thought by many to have been used as a calculator for religious festivals. is widely considered to be the oldest extant analog computer. It has between 30 and 70 gears and a host of other parts. The two concentric rings on the face contain the Greek zodiac and the Egyptian months.
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Thousands of Bloggers Struggle to Withstand Wave of DDoS Attacks Against LiveJournal Long-time blogging platform LiveJournal said today that it has been subject to "repeated, large-scale DDoS attacks" for the past two weeks. The company says that the attacks have targeted a number of different users' journals, some of whom are political in nature. While a small number of users may be targeted, all users lose their ability to publish and read on the platform when the site is taken down. "LiveJournal believes strongly in the ideal of freedom of expression," the company said, "and we're working very hard to ensure that users around the world have a place where their voices can be heard." Among those affected is Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who began blogging on Russian-owned LiveJournal two years ago this month. "As an active LJ user, I believe the hackers' actions to be outrageous and illegal," Medvedev reportedly wrote in Russian on his blog this week. "Both the administration of the blog and law enforcement agencies must look into the matter."
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