GM Developing Safer Wi-Fi Cars: GM is developing Internet based vehicle to pedestrian or cyclist communication which will allow cars equipped with this technology to sense pedestrians or cyclists carrying Wi-Fi devices and alert drivers to their presence as means towards keeping those cyclists and pedestrians safer; because of course, knowing where pedestrians and cyclists are on or near the road is a great tool for drivers to use to avoid hitting those pedestrians and/or cyclists!
Gizmag has a short article on the subject titled GM Working on Wi-Fi Direct-equipped Cars to Detect Pedestrians and Cyclists – here’s the link:
http://www.gizmag.com/gm-wifi-direct/23478/
New York City Phone Booths Turned Into Wi-Fi Hotspots: The City of New York is experimenting with turning phone booths into Wi-Fi hot spots – they are calling this new plan The Payphone Project. And the idea is to turn old, and in the high tech cell phone era mostly unused, public pay phone booths into Wi-Fi hot spots so city residents can access the Internet for free while they are out and about in New York. The equipment to turn the phone booths into Wi-Fi hot spots is already there in the form of electricity and cables running underneath the phone booths so the transition to making them hot spots isn’t difficult; the City is just trying to find a way to make offering free Wi-Fi hot spots profitable.
NPR has an interesting article and podcast on the subject titled Want Free Wi-Fi In New York? Get Near A Pay Phone – here’s the link:
Should You Upgrade To Mountain Lion: Apple released its latest OS (operating system) upgrade for its Macs this week. The software costs $19. 99 from the Mac App Store and the New York Times tech guru David Pogue discusses whether or not you should upgrade. The short answer is yes! And if you’d like the long answer, which answer the question “why?” you can check out his latest column titled The Payout in an Apple Upgrade– here’s the link:
The Benefits of Seeking Knowledge Simply To Satisfy Your Curiosity: This particular subject has little to do with technology per se except for the fact that members of western society as a whole are increasingly reading and searching for information online. However, I found a super cool article on this subject and wanted to share it! It is from the aptly named Brain Pickings website and discusses the benefits of reading and searching for knowledge not to fulfill a simple task or to find information as a means towards getting somewhere; but instead, from a creative, serendipity perspective to read to encounter new ideas and new facts simply for the sake of learning more. This humanist tinged ideology of searching for knowledge simply for its own sake could be described as offering people a blank road map to lead them to discovering new and interesting things – rather like giving a kid a box of Crayola Crayons and blank newsprint to draw upon which allows the child to be more creative by creating something to color as compared to giving the same child coloring books, which already have pictures in them, so he or she can color in-between the lines. The article is called The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge and can be found via this link:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/27/the-usefulness-of-useless-knowledge/
Linda R.
Tech & Book Talk at SSCL 