Giant science publisher Elsevier announced this week that it is developing what it calls The Article of the Future, a new method of leveraging the web's multi-media capabilities for presenting academic articles online. The company says it seeks to offer readers "individualized entry points and routes through the content, while using the latest advances in visualization techniques." It's got AJAX and it's got real-time web search.
Some parts of the available prototypes are interesting but opinion in the scientific community seems split. Is this ground-breaking stuff or yesterday's news repackaged by another industry threatened by the web? That depends on who you ask.
The Associated Press is set to create a news registry to protect their online content from copyright violations. The organization amassed critics on the issue after a number of DMCA take down notices were issued to bloggers who had linked to the AP, used their headlines or paraphrased AP stories. One such blogging network, the Drudge Retort, was asked to remove seven items containing AP quotes. Nevertheless, after prominent bloggers created an uproar on the matter and claimed fair use on the content, the AP backed down. In a conversation with the New York Times, AP spokesman Jim Kennedy said, "We don't want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this" It appears the news registry is the AP's answer.
If you think augmented reality is just a bunch of hype with no usable applications as of yet, think again. Major toy manufacturer Mattel has just announced a new line of products tied to the upcoming 3-D adventure movie "Avatar" directed by James Cameron. While normally we wouldn't cover toys here at ReadWriteWeb, there is something special about this new lineup: these toys are integrated with augmented reality. By way of a 3-D web tag which can be scanned with any computer's webcam, the new toys are linked to an online world of content which makes them "come alive" in an entirely new way.
Spatial View Inc., a company known for developing both hardware and software-based 3D display technologies, recently released a 3D software development kit for the iPhone. Applications developed using this kit are 3D-enabled - with no special glasses required! In order to see the 3D content, however, you will need to purchase a special protective case called the Wazabee 3DeeShell ($49.99) that contains a lens that can be slid in and out as needed. To demonstrate the capabilities of this technology, the company also released a handful of 3D applications including everything from photo viewers to 3D games.
Earlier this week we brought you the story of the house that twitters. In this post we explore another experimental system that uses Twitter to automate tasks. Matt Morey, by day an engineer for Texas Instruments, has developed a two-way, home automation application using Twitter and ioBridge. We all know about Twitter, the now massively popular 140 character messaging service. ioBridge will be new to many. It's a web platform for remote control and monitoring, which bills itself (no doubt with tongue in cheek) as "one step closer to Skynet."
Those with sensitive natures about the Singularity are advised to look away now. For the rest of you, let's see what Matt has built using these two services.
Google announced today that its location based social network Latitude is now available in-browser on the iPhone and many iPhone owners will no doubt give it a try. We'd recommend you check it out and then promptly download the app for Brightkite, a startup in the same sector. Brightkite is so full featured it makes Latitude look like a frustrating joke.
Much has been written already today about Apple's insistence that Latitude be accessed through the browser, instead of as a downloaded app. That's hardly the only thing wrong with it. So far, it's just plain terrible. Here's why.
PayPal announced what it calls the first global payment platform open to outside developers today. The company said it believes the move will make PayPal a bigger business than eBay and help foster a future where online payment capabilities are like electrical outlets - ubiquitous, enabling, financially and technologically fecund. It's an incredibly ambitious vision, but a logical one.
The new Application Programming Interface (API) is due to become available in early November. It will let software developers plug PayPal payment functionality into their systems to leverage the company's transaction, currency and security capabilities. Most interesting to us was the electric outlet analogy.
Apps on the iPhone are a big deal, but there are so many of them that it can be hard to find the good ones. It's fun to compare your own selections with favorites from friends and we thought it could be fun as well to see what some well known geeks around the web say are their favorite apps.
Below you'll find app recommendations from the following people: Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, Chris Messina, open source community organizer, Marnie Webb, co-CEO of TechSoup Global, Baratunde Thurston, Web Editor at The Onion and Andy Baio, founder of Upcoming.org and now CTO at the soon to launch startup Kickstarter.com. We hope you enjoy these recommendations and we encourage you to share your own in comments.
Last month, Facebook finally announced that they would allow users to pick out custom usernames for use in vanity URLs that read www.facebook.com/username. At the time, users were advised to "choose wisely" because the username they selected would be stuck with them for life. That didn't stop some Facebook users from picking out names that were clearly meant as jokes, though, including the guy who decided to go with "rickroll" and the other fellow who just kept pressing the letter "a." We're not sure if those folks are now having regrets about their choices, but if so, they'll be happy to know they now have the option to select a username yet again. But only once, says Facebook.
The 45 million iPhones and iPod Touches sold over the last two years is having a major impact on the worldwide mobile phone ecosystem. Today, nearly half of smartphone web traffic comes from an Apple device. Although the iPhone is still a popular device in the U.S., the number of international users is now growing at a faster rate than here, at least according to the latest Mobile Metrics Report (PDF) from mobile ad firm AdMob.
