Tag Archives: New York

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

If Thanksgiving is next week, you can bet your sweet bippy it’s time for the Pop Tech Jam roundup of sites and services to make your journey home for the holidays slightly less tense. Whether you’re going air, rail or highway, here are some apps to consider ahead of Big Food Thursday.

Planes
Navigating flight schedules, airport delays and other joys of modern domestic air travel this season? You can get mobile boarding passes and other tools from your airline’s app (and text alerts  if anything affects your flight), but a good all-around air-travel app can help you track other flights besides your own. There are plenty to choose from — including Flight Aware, FlightTrack or FlightStats — for Android and iOS, and FlightAware also works on Windows Phone and Windows 8. The Flight Update line of travelware works for iOS devices. The Kayak mobile app, which can book flights, as well as track them, is also available for Android, iOS, Windows Phone and the Amazon Kindle Fire.

Trains
If your journey home involves a locomotive of some kind, you have plenty of programs to handle schedules, travel alerts and often, tickets. The national rail company, Amtrak, has its own app, as do the major rail lines for the New York City area — including the Metropolitan Transit Authority (for the NYC subway and bus system), Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road.

If you’re sticking along the Northeast corridor, New Jersey Transit has an app for mobile tickets and information. If you’re in the Philly area, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) has apps for Android and iOS. Farther north, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority has apps and an online trip planner for those in the Boston area; Washington’s Metro has a similar site. The transit systems for Chicago and San Francisco have mobile options listed on their respective sites. Want an app or mobile site that can handle different mass-transit systems? Try and the Embark or HopStop.

Automobiles
There’s nothing like the hell of holiday traffic, but with the right app, you may be able to get a heads-up before you get stuck in a maddening mass of highway congestion (or as many call it, I-95). Several popular apps use real-time crowd-sourcing along with other data to map out the road ahead, so check out Inrix, Waze or Beat the Traffic if you want to see what’s between you and your destination. For another angle, there’s Traffic Cam Viewer for Android or iOS, which taps into Internet-connected highway cameras for a bird’s-eye view of the road. And if you’ve got a long trip with a few stops along the way for bio-breaks and leg-stretching, apps like Road Ninja and iExit tell you want to expect at the end of each interstate off-ramp you pass.

On the road — but not doing the driving yourself? Check your local bus line for mobile offerings. Nationally, Greyhound, Trailways, the Bolt Bus and MegaBus have schedules, service advisories and other info online.

These are just a few of the hundreds of travel-related apps out there. Odds are, you may already have one or more if them loaded up on your device to help ease some of the uncertainly of travel. You don’t need that extra stress — after all, you’ll probably get enough of that from the family once you get there.

Safe travels.

PTJ 99: Bluetooth Audio, Flickr Tips, and Tons of Google News

El Kaiser reviews Logitech’s $40 Bluetooth Audio Adapter. The device allows you to play audio from smartphone or tablet through your home stereo or powered speakers.

Logitech_Bluetooth_Audio_Adapter

Of course he (not so) secretly pines for the $250 rBlink wireless DAC from Arcam which promises superior sound quality and rock solid Bluetooth pairing to mobile devices.

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If you use Flicker and are looking to reorder your snapshots J.D. shares a Hopefully Helpful Hint that will show you how.

Lots of Google news this week as the Big G kicked off its annual I/O developers conference in San Francisco by announcing a new version of Android. Google takes another swing at the living room with Android TV and releases a new software update to the Chromecast streaming dongle.  Their recent acquisition Nest, maker of Internet-connected smart-home thermostats and fire alarms, has opened its platform to outside developers and buys security firm Dropcam. The search and advertising behemoth experiments with its own domain registration service.

In other news, Yahoo releases a replacement app launcher for Android.  Dating sites get hit on hard by phishing scam; Cloud storage prices drop; both houses of Congress hold hearings about proposed merger between AT&T and DirecTV; the Supreme Court rules against Aereo, a service that allows subscribers to view live and time-shifted streams of over-the-air television on Internet-connected devices, in th the Internet company’s battle with broadcast networks; and finally Google, the Girl Scouts, the MIT Media Lab, TechCrunch, the National Center for Women & Technology and others launch the “Made with Code” website.

 

PTJ 99 News: Gonna Party Like It’s Episode 99

mdGoogle’s I/O Conference is happening at the Moscone Center out in beautiful downtown San Francisco this week. As happens at these Big Dev Lovefests, major announcements are made. Among other things, Google previewed its upcoming “Android L” release, which is said to be the biggest update to the mobile operating system yet. “Android L” features 5,000 new APIs for developers and plenty of interface changes for users with the “Material Design” approach that is supposed to add subtle depth and perspective to elements in screen. And after Google TV flopped, the company is taking another swing at the living room with Android TV — which like other streamers from companies with big content ecosystems, ties your phone and tablet to the television more tightly.

The Chromecast dongle, Google’s low-end entry into streaming, also got an update. Developers also got previews of Android Wear, the version of the system for wearables like watches and Android Auto, for the connected dashboard in your motor vehicle.

In other Google News, its newly acquired Nest company, maker of Internet-connected smart-home thermostats and fire alarms, has opened its platform to outside developers and also bought the security firm Dropcam for a reported $555 million dollars. Dropcam makes WiFi enabled video cameras with night vision, microphones and zoom capabilities. (This is not scary, right?) Google is also experimenting with its own domain registration service. It’s called Google Domains, but it’s still in the early-beta invite-only stage. And good news for the Google Play store — in the past year, quarterly revenue from its app sales has more than doubled, thanks to games and free apps that offer paid in-app upgrades.

aviateBut it’s not all Google this week. Yahoo, which has been trying to get attention for its editorial content lately, has a new software product out now in the Google Play store. The app is called Yahoo Aviate, and it’s a simplified replacement app launcher for Android. Aviate basically takes the concept of Google Now — useful little chunks of information displayed on your home screen — and displays them when it thinks you’ll need them, roughly linking your info to the time of day.

Over in Apple Land, a code explorer poking around the beta version of the iOS 8 software claims to found an unpublicized  “City Tours” feature buried in the Apple Maps app. Samples of the feature are on the 9to5Mac site.

Match.com, eHarmony, PlentyOfFish, Christian Mingle and other dating websites are getting hit on hard by phishing scams. Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company, has detailed the attacks, in which hundreds of fraudulent PHP scripts out there stealing user names and passwords to compromise paid accounts. What can you do with a stolen dating-site subscription? For one: dating fraud.

Cloud storage prices are coming down, with users getting more space for less money. Microsoft has added a bonus 8 gigabytes to the 7 gigs OneDrive customers already get for free, making it a total of 15 gigs of server space. Office 365 subscribers using the OneDrive for Business option will soon be going from 25 gigs to 1 terabyte of space. Microsoft, known for its Windows Phone line, just launched its first Android smartphone. It’s the Nokia X2 and it is running a modified version of Android that kind of makes it look like…Windows Phone.

Both houses of Congress held hearings about the proposed merger between AT&T and DirecTV this week as part of their anti-trust investigations.  C-SPAN streamed the hearings, for those who had an interest or insomnia.

cspan

About that other major merger: the Comcast-Time Warner deal, the merger could also be affected by an FCC report on Internet broadband speeds. The report found that DSL was lagging behind fiber optic and cable, so how much choice do consumers actually have out there? This sort of puts a dent in one of Comcast and Time Warner’s big arguments for merging.

In related news, the Washington Post recently had an interesting piece about how the state of New York could but a big dent in that deal if it decides it’s not a good thing for the people of the Empire State. Because New York has its own cable franchise laws in place, it could block the merger from happening within state boundaries.  Governor Andrew Cuomo has his own investigation underway.

Governors aren’t the only ones weighing in on fairness, competition and Net Neutrality. The mayors of several major cities at the US Conference of Mayors have adopted a resolution, which calls on the FCC “to enshrine the values of what is commonly referred to as net neutrality.”

pigThe Supreme Court has handed down its ruling in that case of Every Major National TV Broadcaster v. Aereo, the feisty startup with the teeny-tiny antennas. Bad news for Aereo – the Supremes ruled 6 to 3 that the company’s retransmission of signals without paying a fee to the broadcasters does violate the Copyright Act. Aereo’s chief executive has said before that losing this case pretty much ends it for the company.

Also in regulatory news, The German Publishers and Booksellers Association has submitted a complaint against Amazon to the country’s anti-trust author. And one more bummer for Amazon — the Federal Aviation Administration has ruled that the company cannot use drones for package delivery, at least for the immediate future. Policies do change with the times, however.

And finally, one last word on Google — but it’s not about I/O, acquisitions or product news. Last week, the Big G teamed up with the Girl Scouts, the MIT Media Lab, TechCrunch, the National Center for Women & Technology and others to launch the “Made with Code” initiative. As one might guess from the name, “Made With Code” is designed to get girls interested in coding, or as it’s called these days, the new literacy.

You go, girls. Future coders can find plenty of free instruction on the web. In fact, we talked about this back on Episode 20 and here’s our own Pop Tech Jam roundup of free instructional sites. Summer’s here and it’s time to work on your monitor tan!

PTJ 95: Another Rootin’ Tootin’ Good Time

The Pop Tech Jam crew couldn’t help getting their geek on over this past U.S. holiday weekend.

J.D. spent her time off digging up online Cultural goodies from the British Library and New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art while El Kaiser tried valiantly to install customized versions of the Android mobile operating system onto his Samsung and Google branded devices.

In the news Amazon offers selected users the opportunity to sign up for a free 30-day test drive of the Fire TV set-top box ;  Oculus Rift technology may become an integral tool in the training of cyberwarriors;  Sony will allow customers to download pre-ordered games in advance for the PlayStation 4 game console; Intuit, makers of Quicken, goes shopping; technology paves the way for a new album from Queen with Freddie Mercury on vocals; and the Fine Brother’s “Kids React to Old Computers” video lights up YouTube.

Words and Pictures

The barbecue grills have been rolled out across North America and summer is unofficially here. Those “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer” are not as carefree for some as they used to be, but if you find yourself with more time here and there, check out these new online features from two of our big repositories of Western civilization.

First up, the website of the British Library recently added a Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians section. This electronic collection has more than 1,200 literary goodies, mostly from the 19th century, accompanied by essays from experts and 25 documentary videos.

Items include some digitized manuscripts of Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Austen, Dickens and Wilde, plus the childhood writings of the Brontë sisters. Other historical tidbits can be found as well, like exceprts from a slang dictionary dating back to 1809 (shown below). And remember, since many of these works are in the public domain, you can get free ebook copies of many classic 19th century works from places like Project Gutenberg or the Free section of your preferred online bookstore for some really old-school summer reading.

bl

Visual stimulation more your thing? The Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York City just announced a few weeks ago that it was making more than 400,000 of its high-resolution digital images of public domain works free for download. The files, including some very famous works of art, are available for non-commercial use — including in scholarly publications in any media — without the need for permission from (and money to) the Museum.

met

It’s all part of the new Open Access for Scholarly Content initiative. To download a file, click its thumbnail from the Met’s Online Collection page and look for the little OASC tag and download arrow underneath it; not every work is in the public domain and available. In addition to providing impromptu art-history lessons and high-rez images for your various personal projects, the images also make really classy desktop wallpaper when you need to take a break from your X-Men collection.

PTJ 65 News: Lyin’, Cheatin’ and Stealin’

Don’t be makin’ stuff up— the state of New York is cracking down on fake Internet reviews on sites like Yelp, Yahoo and Citysearch and issued fines of about $350,000 to more than a dozen companies who got caught singing their own praises—or paying others to do it for them, including people in other countries who had never used the services in question. The State of New York has been busy the past week or so, and also introduced “text stops” along the highway for people who need to pull over and send a message.

In other legal news, LinkedIn is getting sued by several of its customers, who claim the professional networking site hacked into their personal external e-mail accounts and downloaded the address books for marketing purposes. A post on a company blog by LinkedIn’s senior director of litigation states that the accusations are false. Stay tuned.

On a happier note, Google is revamping the way YouTube uploaders manage the comments on their sites, which may help knock the trolls farther down and out of sight. (While we’re waiting for the new system to roll out, don’t forget the Pop Tech Jam guide to blocking online comments.)

As expected, Microsoft announced the next generation of its Surface tablets. The Surface Pro 2 runs on an Intel Core i5 Haswell processor. The less-powerful Surface 2 tablet was also announced this week. While Microsoft soldiers on trying to carve out more market share for its tablets and smartphones, BlackBerry reported major losses and layoffs, and also announced it was selling itself for $5 billion to Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd, a Canadian finance firm.

Apple’s new iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s went on sale last Friday and sold more phones over the weekend than BlackBerry did for the entire last quarter. So while the battle of the fruit-themed smartphone companies has been decided, but Apple’s products are taking bites out of other firms as well. After the arrival of iTunes Radio last week, the Web radio service Pandora saw its stock from 10 percent. Apple also pushed out iOS 7 last week, and the bug hunters have been having a ball.

In other Apple news, the childhood home of the late company co-founder Steve Jobs could be made a protected site by the Los Altos Historical Commission in California.

If you thought your Gmail was slow earlier this week, that wasn’t your friends and colleagues ignoring you — that was Google having problems delivering messages and attachments to its 425 million users. The situation was resolved about 12 hours later, with a dual network failure taking the blame.

Worried about someone swiping your Android device and getting into your stuff? You can now lock a lost device remotely with the latest version of the Android Device Manager. To use it, just log into the Android Device Manager Web page with your Google or Gmail user name and password and follow along.

In gaming news, Valve is busting out its own Linux-based SteamOS designed for gaming on TV screens. The SteamOS home page has more information, and the company is also working on Steam Machines (not to be confused with those things you rent a couple times a year to get all the mashed Cheetos and Gatorade stains out of the carpet).

lasereyesDo you hate it when you take pictures of your cat and it has those weird glowing eyes? Adobe has  added a new feature to its brand new Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 software. Yes, now you can use the “Pet Eye” tool to correct those weird green and yellow distortions in the eyes of your cats and dogs, just like you can use the Red Eye tool to get the demon gaze out of human eyes.
Most of the time.

A Night at the Museum

Love museums, but don’t have the time or money to travel? Or are you planning a trip to one and want to get the lay of the land before you plunge in? To the Web! While they don’t replace the feeling of seeing a work of fine art or an historical object up close, museum sites can tell you more than just the current exhibitions and the visiting hours. Many have educational sections that highlight works in the collection so you can see and learn from the comfort of the Internet. In many cases, you can also find an official mobile app to help guide your way around the collections when you do get there. (The museums mentioned below are just a sampling of what’s out there, but museums in major cities like Berlin, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Toyko await as well, so fire up your search engine.)

Art & Design
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a jam-packed Web site, where you can browse highlights from its holdings or search for specific items. The MetMedia section of the museum’s site hosts videos, audio podcasts, interactive quizzes and a kids section. The MetShare page has links to the Met’s various social media and mobile efforts, including its contributions to YouTube, Flickr, iTunes U, plus its Twitter and FourSquare feeds. If you use the Google Goggles app on your iPhone or Android handset when you visit the museum in person, you can take a picture of an object and have the app recognize it and taker you to a page of information about it on the Museum’s Web site. The Met has created specific apps for special exhibitions, like its Guitar Heroes show a few years back or its standing Arms & Armor collection.

The Web site for The Museum of Modern Art here in New York has a collection-search feature, a dedicated online collection with objects that may not even be on regular view in the physical galleries and, (as shown below), mobile apps for iOS and Android. If you visit in person, there’s also free WiFi inside the museum itself.

MOMA

The Art Institute of Chicago has a nicely designed site you can use to search the 54,000 items in the museum’s collection, a multimedia finder, several iOS and Android apps and a feature that lets you make your own collection out of its holdings.

You can also take an online tour of the Louvre, the famous art museum in Paris and home of the Mona Lisa, shown below. The museum has a free iPad app as well.

MONA

If you like design, check out the site for the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, which has videos and other information about its collections. The V&A has assorted iOS and Android apps devoted to specific art and design topics as well. (Also in London: The Design Museum, with its own free iPad app.)

History
The Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, which claims to be the world’s largest museum and research complex with 19 separate museums, a national zoo and 137 million artifacts in its holdings has a one-stop search page where you can comb through 8.1 million catalog of digital records, the Smithsonian libraries, its archives and even Smithsonian Folkways, the record label that specializes American music. The Smithsonian Institution is all over most forms of social media, has its own virtual world and has apps for iOS and Android, along with a mobile Website for other phone platforms.

buckfountainThe Library of Congress site has its own digital collections, where you can see digitalized images of things like early baseball cards, examine archived newspapers and hear more than 10,000 old 78rpm discs from 1900 to 1925 that were converted to MP3 as part of the National Jukebox Project. In the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog area, you can see and download digital copies of about a million images in the Library’s picture archive, including the poster for Chicago’s Buckingham Fountain from the WPA collection that’s shown here. As for mobile apps, you can get the daily Congressional Record or a virtual tour of the Library of Congress for iPhone or iPad, and interactive book of Aesop’s Fables for Android or iOS.

Across the pond, The British Library, which also rounds up the knowledge of the world, has many wonderful online galleries, including a Magna Carta section where you can see the Great Charter (shown below) up close. The site even offers a highlights slideshow tour and various virtual exhibitions. The Library has a handful of inexpensive mobile apps for Android and IOS devices that highlight some of the gems in its collections.

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The British Museum, also in London, has blogs and videos that highlight parts of its extensive collection, and you can even search the museum’s database and check out the Rosetta Stone and other well-known historical objects. You can find apps for special exhibits, like the Android and iOS app for its Pompeii and Herculaneum show; these costs about $3 or $4. There’s also an learning section for kids and an online shop with a place to order prints of artwork in the Museum.

In fact, most museum sites include a link to their online stores, so as in the real world, you can leave through the gift shop and pick up a few souvenirs.