In its fifth year, Google's Summer of Code continues to usher advanced education students into the open source environment. For a three-month period, 150 open source projects benefit from the work of 1000 students and 2000 mentors. Some of the organizations involved include Creative Commons, Drupal and the Sunlight Foundation.
Austrian augmented reality startup Wikitude announced today that it has released the 3.0 version of its software for Android handsets, fully integrating its OpenID-enabled wiki markup of physical locations around the world with a more sophisticated mobile user experience and preparing for the launch of its iPhone version. Unfortunately, the company's content-adding site, Wikitude.me, appears to have crashed already.
Wikitude is one of the most high-profile augmented reality services on the market. It's a market that's getting crowded fast, and everyone wants to know if interoperability will be a priority or if we're looking at the next browser war.
Google just announced that it will now allow users to download over 1 million public domain books in the EPUB format. Google had already made this archive available to some of its partners, including Sony and Barnes and Noble, but until today users weren't able to download these free EPUB texts from Google directly. Google will continue to make PDF versions of these books available for download as well, but users with eReader's will find the new EPUB files far more useful.
Over the last few days, we have read a lot about how Wikipedia's new 'flagged revision' policy will radically change how entries about living persons will be maintained. Even mainstream media organizations like CNN have now picked up on this story, though there seems to be some confusion about the extent to which these new policies, once implemented, will change the nature of Wikipedia. According to some of these reports, Wikipedia will cease to be free and open. Instead, a group of editors with dictatorial powers will patrol the site. The reality, however, is far less dramatic.
TestSwarm is a new Mozilla Labs project that aims to give developers an easy way to quickly test their JavaScript code on multiple browser versions. According to John Resig, who originally initiated this project as a tool to support the jQuery team, today's methods of cross-browser JavaScript testing simply don't scale. As a solution, he proposed to crowdsource these tests and farm them out to the browsers that people are already running on their computers. If you want to contribute to the project as a tester, simply head over to TestSwarm.com and the site will tell you if your browser is currently needed.
We've been writing a lot here about Augmented Reality (AR), technology that displays layers of data on top of our view of physical reality through mobile phone cameras, projected images and webcams. It seems like a red-hot field and something we should cover all the more. Some people think that's not the case though; they say it's just hype, a technology looking for applications or a recipe for disappointment.
Below we offer you a chance to let us know what you think. Please take our poll and let us know if you think these services being heralded as Augmented Reality are the real deal or something not worth reading about. Just below the poll we offer some links to a few of our most important articles about AR and some opposing viewpoints from readers. Let us know what you think!
Urban Airship, the Portland, Oregon-based iPhone infrastructure service provider, just announced that it is offering in-app purchase provisioning for iPhone apps. The company says customers can implement the service in four minutes and will be charged 5 cents per transaction. The service also enables delivery of free content to app users for the same cost.
Urban Airship's primary product prior to now has been push notification provisioning. The company says that both push and in-app sales are complicated enough to warrant outsourcing to specialists like them. We've written about the company's vision at launch and its dramatic success on iPhone OS 3.0 launch day.
If you are a frequent traveler and flier, WorldMate for the iPhone might be just the app you have been waiting for. WorldMate lets you create travel itineraries by simply forwarding your confirmations from hotels, rental car agencies, and airlines to the service, which will then appear in the application. WorldMate for the iPhone comes in two versions: a free version (iTunes link) and a paid version, WorldMate Gold (iTunes link), which, for $9.99 per year, will send out push notifications whenever a flight is delayed or canceled. WorldMate gave us 15 free copies of WorldMate Gold to give away. Read on for details about how you can claim yours.
Microsoft doctored a stock image to appeal to its Polish customers by literally whitewashing the color from one of the photo's subjects. While US web visitors were greeted by 3 racially diverse business people, Polish visitors saw one man replaced by a Caucasian doppelganger. And it was so poorly done we wondered if it was a joke. The Polish site now bears the original US image, but the damage has been done. Said CNET's Ina Fried, "Although Microsoft would be within reason to use a different photo on its Polish site--the country is very racially homogeneous--the company is coming under significant criticism."
Yahoo announced its acquisition of Maktoob today in a deal meant to improve programming in areas like the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Wrote VP of Emerging Markets Keith Nillson, "We're committed to responsible global engagement. This means being sensitive to local laws, customs, and norms." As critical thinkers, are we going to sit back in our English-only culture bubbles or do we also want a taste of that global engagement? If you're a Firefox user and you're interested in accessing foreign language sites, you may want to try the Worldwide Lexicon's new Universal Translator Toolbar.
