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OpenELEC 1.0 released

Team XBMC would happily like to congratulate Team OpenELEC on their release of v1.0.

OpenELEC, for those who don’t know, is somewhat similar to XBMC Live. The basic concept is that the user interacts with XBMC without once having to visit a non-XBMC screen. The similarities between XBMC Live and OpenELEC end there though. Live is based on a modified and stripped down release of Ubuntu. OpenELEC has been built from scratch specifically to act as a media center. Live is based on minimal Ubuntu, thus you can easily install all services and applications that are available on Ubuntu repositories, and as a pre-requisite, Live includes all the system files necessary for the Ubuntu ecosystem.  Essentially, the user who is looking for an XBMC-optimized customization of the standard Ubuntu OS would likely prefer XBMC Live. The user who would like XBMC stripped down to the very most basic essentials for ultimate boot time would likely prefer OpenELEC.

In the streamlining process, OpenELEC cuts out any and all unnecessary drivers and optimizes those drivers that are present. In furtherance of this, specific NVIDIA ION and AMD Fusion-based systems have been developed, in addition to the generic build.

Beyond enhanced boot time, perhaps the most interesting features of OpenELEC are the network of additional addons that are separate from XBMC-proper, which allow for LiveTV functionality, GUI configuration, self-updating, and media downloading, among other things.

With release 1.0, OpenELEC becomes fully compatible with XBMC 10.1 Dharma. Now that most of the underlying architecture is in place, OpenELEC should be able to update to XBMC Eden relatively quickly, once Eden has been released.

For a relatively easy to follow guide on installing OpenELEC, feel free to check out the Lifehacker article on OpenELEC. And, of course, go to OpenELEC to download the goodness. For those of you who have already tried out OpenELEC in the past or are going to in the near future, head to the comments to let us know how the experience went.

Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress and Responsive Web Design

A few days ago, I mentioned that a responsive design was my favorite WordPress theme feature. Of course, I wouldn’t be doing well to promote my favorite feature without at least pointing you in the right direction to learn how to do it yourself.

Straight from WordCamp San Francisco 2011, here’s Sara Cannon with a great presentation on responsive web design in WordPress.

AppMobi Creates XDK Framework for PhoneGap Development

HTML5 development studio appMobi is releasing a new tool today for developers to create, emulate and test PhoneGap projects. The appMobi PhoneGap Mobile App XDK is an integrated developer environment (IDE) that offers a full suite of developer tools for creating HTML5 and PhoneGap applications. The new appMobi XDK is the first of its kind for PhoneGap development and is an intuitive tool for developers working on PhoneGap projects.

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PhoneGap is not actually called PhoneGap anymore. It will soon be going by the name Apache CallBack as part of its entrance into the Apache Software Foundation and Nitobi acquisition by Adobe. AppMobi is known for pushing the bounds of HTML5 development and this new framework fits well within its vision for free tools to help developers create apps for the mobile Web. With PhoneGap integration, those apps can now easily be made native.

The appMobi PhoneGap XDK is a full development environment that also works with other programming editors such as DreamWeave 5.5 or NotePad++. Hence, developers do not really need to learn a whole new editor to be able to use the framework The goal is to reduce the coding and debugging cycles for developers. The PhoneGap XDK allows for testing and emulating of PhoneGap code to see how it will function on either iOS or Android devices with features.

Some may think that appMobi's PhoneGap XDK is a curious move for the company. After all, appMobi is one of the biggest proponents of going away from native frameworks and using HTML5 to build mobile Web apps. The answer is a simple business proposition - if you are building in PhoneGap, you are building in the mobile Web. PhoneGap just wraps it in a native format. Though appMobi's frameworks are free, it offers paid cloud services (in the same way as Kinvey, Parse, StackMob and Urban Airship, to a varying degrees) that can offer in-app purchases, push notifications, analytics and live updating. Business 101: get them in the door and they are more likely to buy a product.

It is not that appMobi has created a honey pot to lure developers into using their cloud services. There really is a need in the ecosystem for a dedicated PhoneGap IDE that works outside of the native frameworks. In a way, appMobi wants to turn PhoneGap around and instead of publishing PhoneGap projects to native frameworks, actually publish them to the mobile Web. It is a clever strategy as appMobi works on evangelizing HTML5 and the company's tools that developer for it.

Check out the video below that reviews the PhoneGap Mobile App XDK from appMobi and let us know in the comments if this is the type of tool that would work in your development environment.

WPTavern: Video Featuring Matt Of WordPress With Dries Of Drupal

Here is the recorded video featuring the presentation of Matt Mullenweg of WordPress with Dries Buytaert of Drupal discussing open source. Kudos goes out to the Schipulcon group for getting these two together for an awesome presentation. The audio is terrible until you hit the 4 minute mark. If you want to see a transcript for some of the questions you can read them on the Schipul Blog. Definitely watch from 32 minutes onward as that is when the audience starts asking some pretty good questions.

Related posts:

1. The Crossing Paths Of Drupal And WordPress
2. Drupal And WordPress Founders Share The Same Stage
3. Saying Goodbye To Drupal And Hello To WordPress

Desktop remoto su Chrome e Chrome OS

Chrome Remote Desktop è una nuova estensione per Chrome OS e Chrome (browser) capace di abilitare il controllo remoto tra pc. Non è nulla di nuovo nello scenario software attuale, perché esistono altre soluzioni simili, ma indubbiamente abbiamo a che fare con qualcosa di integrato nel browser, uno dei pochi programmi di cui non si può fare a meno. In più, questa estensione è del tutto gratuita, compatibile con PC, Mac e Linux, e con il Chrome OS pre-installato nei [...]

GAMELOFT – Promozione Gamers Fest: download gratuiti di giochi Android HD e tutto il catalogo a 1 euro

Gameloft presenta la nuova promozione “Gamers Fest: tutti per 1€ – 1 GRATIS per tutti”: tutti i giochi Android HD costano solo 1 euro e alcuni saranno GRATIS! Si può accedere alla promozione SOLO dal seguente link http://gloft.co/09809557, dal codice QR in allegato, dal Gameloft Bookmark HD (100% Giochi HD) e dai link comunicati sui canali Facebook e Twitter di Gameloft.

Durante la promozione Gamers Fest tutti i titoli Gameloft Android HD saranno proposti al prezzo speciale di 1 euro. Inoltre, per due ore ogni giorno dal 7 ottobre al 9 ottobre, un gioco Gameloft per dispositivi Android HD sarà disponibile gratuitamente solo per 2 ore. I download saranno illimitati durante le due ore di promozione. Tre diversi giochi saranno distribuiti gratuitamente durante la Gamers Fest.

Attraverso il canale Twitter di Gameloft Italia (http://www.twitter.com/gameloft_italy) e quello Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/gameloft) sarà annunciato l’orario di partenza del download gratuito che sarà accessibile SOLO dal seguente link http://gloft.co/09809557, dal codice QR in allegato, dal Gameloft Bookmark HD (100% Giochi HD) e dai link comunicati sui canali Facebook e Twitter di Gameloft.

Le comunicazioni giornaliere relative ai giochi gratis avverranno ad orari diversi che cambieranno randomicamente: i partecipanti sono così incoraggiati a seguire Gameloft Italia su Twitter  e Facebook per essere i primi ad essere aggiornati sulla promozione in tempo reale.

In allegato il codice QR per accedere direttamente alla promozione Gamers Fest

What Steve Meant Back Then

I promise I didn't write this in advance, waiting for the appropriate moment to unleash it from the vault of pre-conceived, pre-digested stories about the deceased the way one fills in the Free Space in the middle of "N" on the Bingo card. When people would ask me, what will you write when Steve Jobs dies, I declined to answer because I didn't want to think about it. I sincerely believed if anyone could beat pancreatic cancer, it would be him.

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I hear the three words, "He gave us..." as a jump-starter, or what Steve Wozniak would call a "bootstrap," for sentences that precede a recitation of all the technology milestones presented to the world by Steve Jobs. Right off the bat, those three words are wrong. Steve Jobs did not give us anything. To presume that he did is an insult to what the man genuinely believed, and to the ethics and goals he personally championed from the beginning of his career.

Kids in garages

Apple was an empowering company. It empowered people to build the personal computer - to build it for themselves, to make it individual and adaptable. The Apple II, I wrote in 1985, is a box of promises. What had sustained its popularity and its magnitude to that point in time was its users' belief in those promises. The fire that fueled that belief was sparked, kindled, and spread by Steve Jobs.

I blatantly leveraged his image to jump-start my career. The only way a kid as young as I was, as removed from the technology centers of the world as I was, and as flat broke as I was could ever hope to get in on the ground floor of the only revolution that America would see in the latter quarter of the 20th century, was to dress, look, and talk like one of those garage inventors. What amazed businesspeople back then - the type who would become my first clients - was that these wunderkinds, these Bill Gates and Steve Jobs-types, were so young, sure of themselves, arrogant, and could assimilate everything they touched.

Steve had a moustache, so I grew one too. I was 14, pretending to be 19. I looked like I was caught red-handed eating a Ding-Dong. But I looked enough like these smart, garage-inventor types to pull it off, wearing a tailored suit with a tweed jacket and the leather elbow patches. At the first computer conferences in the nation, I struck deals with the companies representing Apple. This was back before Apple had a national sales team big enough to cover the nation. Put me next to your computer, I bargained with them, and I'll demonstrate to people how to use it. I'll sell your Apple II, and you refer them to me as clients.

It was 1979. I lived and breathed Microsoft BASIC, and could diagram its statements and functions in every dialect, including Apple. I had developed a stump speech - what I'd say to people who looked at this thing and asked me, "What does it do?"

"Well, let me tell you, the two men who created this thing," my speech began, "are named Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak." ("Steven" was his name back then; it was "corrected" later.) "Jobs is this guy who came from Hewlett-Packard, which is the company over there in the center aisle that makes those huge pen plotters. Wozniak is this designer from Atari. You've seen that home video game called 'Video Pinball?' He designed it." That qualification impressed folks right away - a guy who could put a pinball machine on a TV.

"Anyway, they'd gone to some of these conferences a few years ago, and they'd seen the first home computers - the ugly ones in the blue boxes with the switches and wires - and they asked, 'What does it do?' And they'd get all kinds of responses, but nothing that had anything to do with what someone like you or me would want to do with it. So they built the first Apple I prototype in their garage, that's why this one is called 'Apple II.' And what they decided was this: Let's make a mass-production machine using HP standards and Atari construction. But let's make it really, really programmable. So if you try something, even off the top of your head, you might be able to find a way to make it work. Here, let me show you an example."

Then I'd do something mind-boggling for them, like write a Microsoft BASIC program right there on the command line, that calculated the distance between two points on a map. (It's the Pythagorean Theorem, and I wish I'd patented it because I'd be a rich man today.) Then I'd plot a little graph for them in their choice of 16 fabulous colors. Ten minutes later, they were plunking down twelve hundred bucks for something they weren't sure what it was, and I was handing out business cards.

A television ad produced by the store I consulted for in the late 1970s.

Containers for ideas

The things which the cable news anchors are saying Steve Jobs "gave" us (as if they were old enough to remember) are actually containers. They're beautiful containers, but they're open. They're made for us to fill them - with information, with functionality, with the pictures and songs and dreams that remind us of who we are, or believe we can be.

To my knowledge, Steve Jobs invented nothing. As I've said here before, he was a brilliant businessman who could look into your eyes (and make you look deeply into his), and sell you on an idea. That idea, from the very beginning of Apple, was this:

You can make it work. It doesn't have to be a multi-function gizmo box. You're already smart enough and capable enough to make the box do what you need it to do. The box changed shape over Apple's history - Apple IIc, Apple IIgs, Macintosh, Macintosh Plus, iMac, Power Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad - and it was certainly exciting when the box got small enough to fit into the spare-change pocket of Steve's Levis. But it was always small and big at the same time. And Steve's idea of "scale" was that making it smaller made it bigger.

Icons and ideals

Fewer Americans than ever before in this country's history are iconic symbols of something great and powerful. Folks today stare with sadness at the "HOPE" poster, and wonder what it was they had conjured in their minds that made it seem so real. Icons (not the desktop kind, but the ones that take human form) are often full of other people's hopes, but they usually don't keep there for very long.

There are many falsehoods being attributed to Steve Jobs - that he "invented the personal computer," that he "dreamed of the mouse," that he "created graphical computing," that he "made the first tablet PC," I've heard all these things just tonight. Clear away all the false attributions, erase the whiteboard of all the things "he gave us." Let there be, for one moment, just the man, devoid of the stuff. What did he do?

Well, let me tell you. For an entire generation of young Americans who had every reason to believe what they were being told by their teachers, their friends, their bosses, even their family - that their dreams and ambitions were unattainable and that we were just cogs in a great machine we could never understand - Steve Jobs was living, breathing, human proof that it was all wrong. We were all vessels for something greater, we had it within ourselves to put on a game face and stand up to everything and everyone. He was the personification of "Hell, no!"

The gauntlet

On a cheap plastic TV in the middle of an Oklahoma art studio, my friends and I watched the 1984 Super Bowl. We weren't interested in the football; I don't even remember who played. We had known in advance about that ad, because the firm I consulted for gave me a heads-up. We watched that gorgeous blonde girl (great choice there, Ridley Scott) hurl that gauntlet. But we knew it was Steve who guided it right up Big Brother's nose. We cheered louder than for any touchdown that had ever been scored. Three weeks later, I was a nationally published computing writer.

Steve Jobs did not give us anything. He challenged us, and his charisma and doggedness and determination not to let failure define him, made us respond. We know him mainly because of the things his company built, and mainly for his charismatic demos, which in the larger scheme of things is actually not all that much.

Take away those products and their demos as though they never existed, and what remains is the single best creation of his life, more valuable than anything Apple has ever produced. And right now, this moment, despite all that Apple has enabled me to do in my life, I would give it all for an eraser that could wipe out every Apple device ever made, in exchange for the one technology that matters this moment, in the here and now - or, better yet, 24 hours ago: the cure for his pancreatic cancer.

There are bigger problems to solve than can fit in an iPad. In his memory, we should revolutionize our approach to conquering death the way Steve Jobs revolutionized our approach to living life.

Discuss

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, has passed away at 56

Continue reading Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, has passed away at 56

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, has passed away at 56 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The mathematical internet is a great opportunity to promote yourself, but be polite!

I just posted this over on a discussion thread at meta.MO, and I thought it might deserve more visibility.

We’ve had some questions on meta.MO about how undergraduates applying to graduate school should view a presence on Mathoverflow, math.SE or in the math blogosphere. I was on the graduate admissions committee for the University of Michigan last year so, for what it is worth, here is my take:

I did not make a routine practice of googling applicants, because I didn’t have time. I read every file I was given but, if that gave me enough data, I didn’t go looking for more.

However, when I felt I needed more data, I would often google the applicant’s name, and I often found Mathoverflow or blog activity. This might be because the candidate’s file was borderline, but it more often meant that I felt there was a part of the picture missing. Perhaps the applicant was in 2 REU’s and claimed to have produced research papers, but the file didn’t give me a place to read about the research. Or recommendations talked about the applicant’s strong involvement with his undergraduate math club, but the applicant’s own statement said nothing about it. Or, of course, if recommendations said “the candidate has given several interesting answers on MO”, as happened more than once.

There was much more opportunity to impress me than to disappoint me. My default assumption, and one which was born out by the majority of the files, was that the applicant was a standard undergraduate with little knowledge of advanced math. If what I found confirmed that, I moved on and didn’t note it. In order to get into a top grad school like UMich, you need to stand out from that assumption, so anything which showed more mathematical knowledge or interest than that struck me as positive. Even MO questions which were below the level of the site struck me as a sign that the applicant was seeking out professional fora, and had mathematical interests outside his or her classes.

By the way, evidence of a social life was neither a positive nor a negative. I went to parties in college; if my applicants did likewise, I didn’t hold that against them.

However, there is one thing that could be a negative. Our committee chair, Sergey Fomin, clearly told us to flag any file that indicated a student who would be socially difficult. I don’t mean loners or odd people — our department has plenty. But if there were signs of an applicant who was regularly in fights with others, if there was someone whom we wouldn’t be able to trust with the responsibility of teaching an undergraduate class, if we had someone with a record of blowing off assignments and deadlines, that was a problem, and we would have to look at the issue seriously no matter how skilled their mathematical level.

Now, this issue didn’t particularly come up in my google searches. But I could easily imagine it; there have been people who have made a bad impression through rudeness on MO, and it could be relevant when they apply to schools or for jobs. (Please don’t mention specific examples in the comments. I will delete any comments that do so.)

In short, being mathematically active online is a good thing, and you don’t have to look smarter than an interested undergraduate. But being rude online is a bad thing, and it can turn up in google. I would imagine this might be good advice for people other than grad school applicants.

How to Create a Responsive Portfolio Site with WordPress and Semantic.gs

FLOWCHART: Navigating NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books

Over the summer, NPR solicited the input of its listeners to rank the top science fiction and fantasy books of all time. Over 60,000 people voted for the top picks which were then compiled into a list by their panel of experts. The result? This list of 100 books with a wide range of styles, little context, and absolutely no pithy commentary to help readers actually choose something to read from it.

We at SF Signal have, once again, come to the rescue. This flowchart is designed to help you follow your tastes, provide context, and fulfill (indeed exceed!) any need for pithy commentary you might harbor.

Designer's Note: This is the mightiest flowchart I have ever encountered let alone tried to develop. There are (obviously) 100 end points and over 325 decision points. A chart of this size presents a number of readability challenges. For people with lower resolution monitors, netbooks, or tablets, this 3800 x 2300 image is going to a scroll-fest. But it's totally worth it.

Update: Those looking for a printable version of this flowchart will find happiness here. This is a 300 DPI bitmap version that should print nicely on 11x17 tabloid paper. Warning! The file is 26MB compressed and a whopping 173MB when unzipped.

Best.Simpsons Clips. Ever.

How Tech Is Changing the Museum Experience

Museums are exploring digital and mobile technologies to enhance visitor experience. Initiatives go beyond technology within exhibits and installations, but also include more pervasive uses of tech to create interactive experiences for visitors throughout a museum, as well as remote experiences for those who cannot get there.

Here, we highlight what three museums are doing to make the experience interactive, educational and engaging.

The Smithsonian — Washington, DC

One of the leaders in the space of digital and mobile tech in museums is the Smithsonian. Its initiatives run the gamut from more “traditional” cellphone tours to mobile apps to crowdsourcing to interactive gaming and even augmented reality. Nancy Proctor, head of mobile strategy and intiatives at the Smithsonian, publishes widely on the topic of mobile in museums and is often cited by other museums as a main source of learning and inspiration on the topic.

The Smithsonian has an array of mobile apps and websites that allow museum visitors to interact as they go through an exhibit or to experience the exhibit remotely. Apps include Infinity of Nations for the National Museum of the American Indian, which provides an English and Spanish mobile tour, and includes slideshows and video in versions for both children and adults. Another is called Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers (produced using the Toura apps platform) that provides an overview and insights into select art pieces with hi-res images, video, audio and quotes directly from the artist. This app traveled with the exhibition to the Walker Art Center, and they were able to add more content to the app specific to their own installation of the show.

The Set in Style iPad application showcases 65 of the 350 objects on view in an exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, including jewels, timepieces, and fashion accessories by Van Cleef & Arpels. The app Artists in Dialogue 2 for the National Museum of African Art provides a mobile tour in English and Brazilian Portuguese, led by curator Karen Milbourne and the artists — Sandile Zulu and Henrique Oliveira. They discuss the the art, their fellow artists and and their collaborative process. A user can also join the related conversation via Twitter, test their knowledge of South Africa and Brazil, and even experiment virtually with the artists’ technique in a built-in game.

The Smithsonian released a crowdsourcing app called LeafSnap that encourages users on the Eastern Seaboard to take photographs of leaves with their smartphones, identify trees from a vast database and then upload these to a central location, automatically tagged with GPS coordinates. The data helps give researchers a better picture of the distribution of species across the region while also honing people’s skills and knowledge in identifying trees in a fun way.

With an augmented reality app in review at the Apple store, The Smithsonian has a proof-of-concept for working with a 3D AR model with several additional AR projects in the works. Regarding geo-location in museums, Proctor points to the limitations of GPS within buildings. Most of the Smithsonian apps that can be used in conjunction with exhibits require a manual trigger by the visitor, such as typing in a number from a label on an exhibit sign.

However, Proctor sees a lot of potential in combining various indoor positioning systems to help visitors find their way and to access additional content. The Smithsonian is working with Wi-Fi-based solutions and visual recognition systems like Google Goggles. Visual recognition works well on 2D images, says Proctor, but is still challenging for 3D objects. Still, visual recognition systems (VRS) can be more cost-effective indoor positioning solutions for museums that have Wi-Fi. Many can leverage their existing and often comprehensive photographs of galleries and collection objects to do location matching.

“VR and AR are the two most interesting and most likely to be fruitful new technologies for museums simply because you’re able to enhance what someone is seeing through their phone,” explains Proctor. “For visitors, holding up their camera to scan an object of interest is a natural gesture — the same action as taking a photo. If that gesture triggers delivery of content to better understand something, it is a better, more organic experience,” Proctor explains.

For any in-museum digital or mobile initiative, the challenge becomes bandwidth, says Proctor. “There needs to be a Wi-FI high speed connection to enable the transfer of the image from the visitor’s camera phone to the image databases and then to return content to go with that location. This requires installation of access points, wiring — and in some museums, that is not possible or doesn’t work very well.” Proctor cites historic buildings like the Louvre, where the gold leaf interior makes Wi-Fi radio signals bounce in certain areas as well as “concrete bunker”-style museums where Wi-Fi is a challenge.

Proctor is excited about the two-way and multi-way nature of using social media and mobile in the museum experience versus typical one-way narrowcasting, and of the exchange of commentary, opinions, ideas and responses to collections, themes and concepts. She says that the networked nature of mobile today makes it a social media platform, in contrast to the traditional audio tour, and those mobile conversations help make the museum and its messages more sustainable.

The Smithsonian’s mobile strategy is available on a wiki, and additional resources about mobile and museums are available online and managed by Proctor. She welcomes feedback and collaboration on the development of next generation mobile for museums.

The Museum of Jewish Heritage — New York City

On September 19th, The Museum of Jewish Heritage will launch a free mobile walking tour app that gives users a glimpse into Gilded Age New York as seen through the eyes of Jewish-American poet Emma Lazarus, the subject of the museum’s fall exhibition. The app, Emma Lazarus: Poet of Exiles, A Companion Walking Tour, includes 19 historic sites in lower Manhattan, Greenwich Village, Union Square, Chinatown, Chelsea, Midtown and the East River.

The tour was produced using Tristan Interactive’s platform, Autour, and includes GPS recognition and a map. Each stop will consist of annotated historic tour sites, a slideshow, and audio commentary. Actress Julianna Margulies narrates the tour, and the app also includes a reading by Meryl Streep of Emma’s most famous poem, “The New Colossus,” which appears on the bronze base of the Statue of Liberty (which is pictured below, as shown in the app).

“We were going to conduct an actual walking tour of Emma Lazarus’ New York, and I was at a presentation about mobile apps in museums and a light went off in my head. It seemed the perfect marriage,” says Alice Rubin, senior project manager at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Rubin says she read up on mobile apps for museums and attended several conferences and online webinars about the growing use of apps in museums and heritage sites.

Once the app is launched, the user can see what tour sites are in close proximity or travel to the sites in any order. Some are within walking distance, but many are located in different parts of the city. At a location, users can listen to the audio narration and view photographs from 19th century New York City, including illustrations and images of the buildings and structures that once stood at that location. The tour also features audio commentary from experts, including curator Melissa Martens, a biographer and historian. Locations include Delmonico’s Restaurant and The Century Building, home of the literary journal The Century, where many of Emma’s articles about immigrant causes were published and which is now a Barnes & Noble store.

Powerhouse Museum — Sydney, Australia

When it comes to experimenting with new technology, the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney Australia has been doing it for several years now, documenting their explorations and learning on a blog. They’ve hosted developer hack days where experimental applications have been built using their collection API and when Layar first launched, a Sydney-based AR company called Mob Labs developed an AR layer of historical photography for the museum.

Inside the museum, they are starting to use iPads to replace LCD and plasmas for audio/visual displays, and they’ve found the smaller screens result in a closer engagement between museum visitor and content. They’ve also deployed touchscreen games on iPads versus traditional touchscreens, and are getting a higher usage rate among visitors.

The Powerhouse has been experimenting with the mobile web for a few years now, and recently incorporated QR codes in the Love Lace exhibit. There is also the Love Lace App that can be used in the gallery to add an information layer for visitors without overwhelming the exhibition design with text. The Love Lace website serves as a hub for before and after visiting the museum.

Additional apps in their repertoire include one for their annual Sydney Design Festival, and another for cross-agency school holiday planning.

“I like to think that at the Powerhouse, we’ve been looking a little further than most by thinking about and prototyping the use of mobile and social technologies as a way of rethinking the entire notion of a ‘museum visit,’” says Sebastian Chan, head of digital, social and emerging technologies at the Powerhouse Museum. “Obviously, once a visitor can access almost any ‘facts’ on the device they carry in their pocket, the idea that a museum should be about ‘facts’ is almost made redundant. This opens up a whole lot of possibilities for making museum exhibitions far more immersive and experiential, leaving the ‘fact’ layer for mobile and online delivery either during or before and after the gallery visit.”

The museum’s strategic plan is available online, and it mentions “cross platform content delivery,” embracing “open access” and being an “open museum,” ensuring the content they create is available both in-gallery and online, and where possible, with open license to re-use.

As more museums look to engage visitors in new, more pervasive ways, implementing technologies to leverage smartphones and other mobile devices will not only become more prevalent but more effective over time.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, franckreporter, t-lorien

The Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles; it delivers smart mobility services within and beyond the car. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter.

Are you an innovative entrepreneur? Submit your pitch to BMW i Ventures, a mobility and tech venture capital company.

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YC-Funded AeroFS: It’s Like Dropbox, But It Runs Inside Your Firewall

I’ve been a fan of Dropbox for a long time. It’s convenient, it ‘just works’, and 2GB of free storage can go a long way. But it isn’t perfect — if you’re dealing with very large amounts of data, like movie footage, then you’ll quickly find yourself in the service’s most expensive tiers. And some businesses and professionals dealing with sensitive data simply aren’t permitted to store it on third-party servers for security reasons.

If any of these concerns sound familiar to you, you’ll likely be very interested in a Y Combinator-backed company called AeroFS. The pitch is straightforward: it’s basically Dropbox, but instead of using servers controlled by a third party to store and sync your data, you transfer the data directly between your own devices.

If you’ve used Dropbox, you’ll feel right at home with AeroFS. After installing small clients on your computer (the service supports Windows, Mac, and Linux), you drag and drop the files you’d like to sync between machines into a special folder, called a Library. Add a file to that folder, and it’ll automatically sync to your other devices, which send the data to each other through peer-to-peer connections rather than through a third-party server.

This setup a few benefits. For one, it means that your data is never stored on AeroFS’s servers, which makes it appealing for the aforementioned companies that can’t use cloud services like Dropbox. Second, it means you can sync as much data as you’d like without having to pay for additional server-side storage, making it appealing to people who deal with large amounts of data.

Of course, this peer-to-peer system has one downside. Unlike Dropbox, which lets you access and sync your data any time you have an Internet connection, with AeroFS there’s an additional requirement: you can only access a file that’s stored on a different machine if that machine is turned on. Say, for example, you edited an important document on your desktop machine at home, then jumped on a flight and attempted to access it a few hours later from your laptop. If you forgot to leave your desktop machine turned on, you’d probably be out of luck.

AeroFS founder Yuri Sagalov acknowledges this could potentially be an issue, but says that in many cases it isn’t really a big deal. One reason why, he explains, is that many offices already have servers and computers running all the time anyway; they can just install AeroFS on these machines and use them as their main datastores.

And AeroFS gives you another option for those mission-critical files: you can opt to selectively backup certain folders to AeroFS’s servers, which means you can access the files at any time. This feature is essentially a clone of Dropbox, and you lose the security benefits of a purely peer-to-peer sync. But it makes sense — you probably have some files that you’re fine storing in the cloud, and others that you’d rather keep inside your firewall. AeroFS gives you the flexibility to have it both ways.

The company says there’s a big market for this, particularly among healthcare providers, lawyers, finance firms, movie professionals (who can use it to securely share content between machines), and other companies who have data that can’t leave their internal firewall.

AeroFS also has an impressive list of backers. Y Combinator founder Paul Graham says that company is one of the most important from any of the firm’s batches. Other investors include Ron Conway, Ashton Kutcher, Andreessen-Horowitz, Ash Patel, Jerry Yang, Naval Ravikant, Chris Sacca, Ace & Company, Geoff Ralston, Paul Buchheit, and Maynard Webb.

Minus: un’altra alternativa a Dropbox con 10GB di spazio!

Sono tantissimi i servizi che permettono il salvataggio di dati in cloud nati sulla scia del successo di Dropbox. Minus è uno degli ultimi nati e offre un’interfaccia semplice e ben 10GB di spazio a disposizione. Tramite l’applicazione Android è possibile uppare qualsiasi tipo di file e poterlo poi condividere con un semplice link agli amici. 

Minus offre anche l’anteprima per alcuni fila, sopratutto multimediali, anche se speriamo che il supporto possa essere esteso anche per documenti e altri formati nel tempo. Uppato un file possiamo renderlo pubblico per la condivisione online, o lasciarlo privato. Il link che condivideremo permette di andare al download dell’applicazione da qualunque strumento che abbia un browser web.

App nuova, semplice e con tanto spazio a disposizione. Vedremo sviluppi futuri anche se DropBox al momento è ancora imbattibile.

Nome: Minus
Sviluppatore: Minus
Prezzo: Gratis
Installa App dal PC

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The Multi-Size Web

HERE IS a fine collection of articles, frameworks, and other tools for a “mobile first” approach to (mainly responsive) web design. Well done, Mr Haidara. The Multi-Size Web: a Computing bag by Eric Haidara at Bagcheck.

Comic book introduction to Arduino

Introduction to Arduino, PDF link