Personal Picks: Bluetooth Fashion, Flickr's "Nearby on Your Phone," Collecta's Real-Time Search and More
Laura
Maria Sharapova Models Cell Phone-Enabled 'Light Up' Dress
Not since Ben & Jerry's "Half Baked" have two of my interests collided so elegantly. A British fashion student, in partnership with Sony Ericsson, designed a dress that can be connected to a wearer's Bluetooth device. When said wearer receive a call or text, a portion of the dress lights up. While some may be quick to dismiss this as pure novelty, I urge them to consider the age old "loud-party-missed-call" conundrum. Efforts to fuse fashion and technology are not new, but practical, useful execution is - to a large extent. And launching the creation with Maria Sherapova in a store window? That is just PR icing on the cake.
Reming
Nokia Wireless Recharging Phone
If you're like me and constantly forget to charge your cell phone only to have it die at the most inopportune time, help is on the way. Nokia recently announced it is developing a phone that recharges itself through ambient radiowaves from TV, radio and other mobile devices. The system collects bits and pieces from these waves and uses the energy to create an electrical current to recharge your phone’s battery. In other words, no more plugging in your cell phone! But don’t get too excited yet—Nokia says it hopes to market this technology in the next three to five years. Hopefully soon the absent-minded can breathe a small sigh of relief!
Jeremy
Flickr has done a good job allowing users to add and view location data about where photos are taken. Their map feature already allows users to search by place and tags on Flickr’s online site. As of yesterday, iPhone 3.0 and Android users can also search that same location data on their mobile devices. Using the phone’s built in location tools, Flickr’s mobile site can now pinpoint your phone’s position and show photos taken nearby.
Andrea F.
"I can't seem to get enough of the hype and press around the new iPhone, it seems it's all I have been reading about lately; maybe it's time I went for an upgrade!"
Allison
Collecta and real-time search
As microblogging and lifestreaming flood the web with real-time information, search functions have yet to keep up. Collecta is hoping to fill this void. The new “real-time search engine” monitors the update streams of news sites, popular blogs and social media, and Flickr.
While this sounds like a great thing—and definitely where we need to be headed—there is the issue of “real-time spam,” as Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land put it in last Sunday’s NYT. Will we sacrifice quality for speed?
Another real-time search start-up called OneRiot is looking to reduce this spam by indexing links from sites such as Twitter, not text. While this may reduce the noise, I’d think it could weaken the signal as well.
Right now, Google is responding by basically saying ‘Chill, you can wait another minute or two for good results.’ I just wonder how much longer that will hold true.
