New York City Subway Riders To Get Cell Phone Coverage
While Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) riders have had cell phone coverage--both for talk and data--for a while now crossing the tunnel from the East Bay into San Francisco, it seems that Manhattanites are finally going to get their gab on in the subways. MTA city transit officials had agreed to a deal with Transit Wireless to bring cellular reception underground three years ago and now the company is finally getting serious about its plans to bring voice and mobile data access to New York subways. Transit Wireless will have two years to install the tech in six test stations and another 8 years to completely connect all 277 subway stations. For the city that never stops, talking will now never cease, at least in the noisy comforts of passing trains. Of course, with the convenience of calling the above-ground world, you'll also have to deal with "Can you hear me now" if reception cuts out suddenly.
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New York City Subway Riders To Get Cell Phone Coverage
From automaking might to solar power by Eric Strebel
I am an Industrial Designer living in Southfield where I share my life with two beautiful children. I'm not originally from Michigan. I moved here after graduating from Pratt in 1990 to work as an Industrial Designer in the automotive industry.
For my first job, I interned at Ford, in the "Color and Trim" department, and then went on to work as a clay modeler for Ford for a bit before being laid off for the first time. I then started my own design studio in the Old Packard Plant in Detroit, designing and building anything I could. I built exhibits and small-run prototypes for all kinds of customers. Unfortunately, with the deterioration of the Packard Plant, the City of Detroit kicked out all occupants from the building and that pretty much killed my business. From there, I went to work for an exhibit house for a short period until I was eventually laid off for a second time. I continued to do freelance work and then went to work as a designer for a Japanese automotive supplier in Auburn Hills. In 2007, I was laid off for a third time, due to the economy and downsizing of the company.
I now have a home-based design studio and teach Industrial Design at Wayne State University. When I was laid off from my last job in 2007, I told myself: "That's it, I will never work in the automotive industry ever again." I started an equipment recycling business. I go into companies and remove excess equipment that's no longer needed or that is obsolete. I research and resell the equipment. Depending on the company and the equipment they have, I either accept the goods on consignment and they receive a percentage of the sale, or I remove and dispose of the equipment for them. When I ship/package an item that I'm sending out, I use recycled materials that I shred, e.g. junk mail, envelopes, advertisements, or the kids' old school work. I'm definitely into doing my part to save the planet. We just cannot keep on trashing it and expect our children's children to have a nice place to live.
Since I am and always will be a product designer, I recently started working on designing a solar charger that I call the "Solar Vox." I was inspired to design this product when I saw media coverage of the dangerous makeshift charging stations from the recent devastating earthquakes in Haiti/Chile. Solar Vox makes this world a "greener" planet by using solar power. It is your solar lifeline. This charger is very versatile as it will charge cell phones, iPods, DS's, and other devices. It also has the capability to charge two standard "AA" rechargeable batteries and is USB-compliant. The unit is light, compact, and rugged. and will be able to be used in any area of the world. It can be set at four different angles to capture the sun in any position. Solar Vox is built for today's global citizens with demanding mobile power needs, environmentally conscious individuals, techies. and people interested in a functional product with some character.
If you would like to contact me, please do so at eric@botzen.com or visit my website. And if you're going to be at Maker Faire Detroit, come find me. I'll be showing off the Solar Vox.
About My Work:
I do all kinds of design work, ranging from products, such as a recent "Power Matt" product for Homedics, to Ray-Ban sunglasses for Bauch & Lomb. I have designed monsters for Clive Barker, sets for GM Camero brochures, built dozens of full-size wire vehicles for auto shows, fabricated kiosks, and numerous displays big and small. My work has always focused on the practical and functional side of things. I love the complexity of life and enjoy it most in its simplest form. When form and function come together, the world is a wonderful place.
More:
- An experiment in industrial coworking by Bob Stack
- Helping young people excel by Steve Teeri
- Back to the future by Stuart Gannes
- Repository of objects by Nina Bianchi
- Making Detroit: Changing the story by Dale Dougherty
The power of museums and libraries by Marsha L. Semmel
Detroit is my hometown. I grew up here during the 50s and 60s, lived in a neat and homogeneous white, largely Jewish, neighborhood in Northwest Detroit, and walked to the tiny Arthur H. Vandenberg Elementary School every day from kindergarten through eighth grade, coming home for lunch at noon. My world changed when I (along with four 8th grade boys) was invited to attend Cass Technical High School downtown, near Tiger Stadium. Dating back to 1904, Cass Tech in the 60s was a huge place, occupying an entire city block; nine floors high; drawing about 4,000 students from all over the city, who majored in any number of subjects—from science and arts (like me) to design and drafting, chemistry, music, performing arts, and electrical engineering.
My inclination was to opt out of the offer. The prospect of being the only girl in the group (and being labeled "smart" to boot) was not appealing. In fact, it was frightening. But in this case, my mother really 'knew best." She insisted that I give Cass a try, and taking that opportunity changed my life. The world I entered was diverse in every way and full of intellectual and social challenges. My teachers and peers stretched my mind, piqued my curiosity for learning, and set the academic bar high. I was a cub reporter on the Cass Technician, the school rag, interviewed visiting luminaries like Charlton Heston and homegrown talent like The Supremes (Diana Ross went to Cass), and I eventually became editor-in-chief. As a fine arts minor, I made jewelry, tried watercolor and calligraphy, and took my first art history course.
Google Releases ‘Google Apps for Government’
Google's mobile apps have long provided normal clients with an easy way to manage their e-mail accounts, calendars and personal data. Now, though, the company is turning its attention toward the public sector, with a new set of Google Apps for Government.
Designed with guidance from the federal government and the city governments of Los Angeles and Orlando, the new apps include many of the same features available on normal Google apps, along with extra quirks to meet the specific needs of government workers. Public servants at the local, state or national level will now be able to use Google Apps for Government to store their Gmail and Calendar data in an exclusive, cloud-based format in the continental U.S. Because the apps don't require users to install or maintain extra software, the company is confident that the system will provide an easy and cost-effective alternative to traditional data maintenance.
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Google Releases 'Google Apps for Government' originally appeared on Switched on Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Using photography software to see through space and time
It’s interesting to see pictures of areas of your city or town from the past, and it can be even more interesting to try to reproduce those pictures. Typically, it’s very difficult to get everything to line up exactly right, but researchers at MIT are developing software to automate the process.
The official name is “computational rephotography”, and it involves finding the exact same location that the original picture was taken. At the present time, the MIT software is only a concept, and requires a laptop to use. The software connects to a digital camera, and then allows the user to make sure that everything lines up properly. As Gadget Lab suggests, why not put the technology into the camera? Given that many cameras panorama software, or smile recognition already built in, it can’t be that difficult right? Personally, I just want a copy of the software. Sounds like fun to me.
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Using photography software to see through space and time
Has Comic-Con become too big (or too Hollywood) for its own good?
Earlier today on the Ron & Fez show on Sirius XM, the great Ron Bennington made an astute point: Comic-Con may be too big for its own good. It used to be a place where geeks and nerds could get together to talk about storyline inconsistencies in the latest Batman series. Now? It’s just as much about A-list-ish celebrities “being seen” and hawking their trash as it is celebrating the spirit of nerdiness. Maybe it’s time Comic-Con split into two parts: you Hollywood jerks have a mini movie fest in Los Angeles, fawning over how great you are in the process, and leave the comic books and video games to San Diego.
There’s already rumors that Comic Con will have to leave cozy San Diego because it’s become too big for the city. Possible new locales include Los Angeles and Las Vegas—two soulless dens of sin and vice.
Nerd culture, such as it is, is being HIJACKED~! ($1 to TechLand for the word) by the very people nerds should be mortal enemies of: the popular kids. You go to Comic-Con expecting to talk about Dragon Quest with a man dressed in a Wonder Woman costume, not listen to Angelina Jolie talk about her latest terrible movie.
It’s pretty disappointing to see the show commercialized to such an extent.
I have no solutions, per se, especially as the Hollywoodization of Comic-Con can only mean more exposure (and hence, more money) for the show itself.
But it just seems so wrong.
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Has Comic-Con become too big (or too Hollywood) for its own good?
Back to the future by Stuart Gannes
For a transplanted Detroiter like me, Silicon Valley took a while to get used to. The brown hills and spreading oaks looked unreal as I cruised along I-280 in the 1980s. But once I got off the main arteries, I felt right at home. Back then, Silicon Valley was focused on semiconductors, computers, and defense electronics. The streets were filled with light industrial buildings, parking lots, gas stations, and ethnic restaurants. "Just like home," I said to myself. "This is a place where people make things."
The Detroit where I was born and grew up in was filled with countless small manufacturing shops and warehouses. My dad ran one of them, a steel supply center, and I hung out there as a high school kid. In college, one summer, I worked shifts on a massive Ford Assembly line — in the suburb of Wixom. We made Ford Thunderbirds and Lincoln Continentals. In those days, you could apply for a job and start the next day.
Detroit was also a beautiful city with a central street plan modeled after Paris. Bounded by a spectacular riverfront and ringed with miles upon miles of single-family homes, Detroit was an inspiration for generations of immigrants. The heart and soul of their motivation was economic promise. Detroit was a city where you could earn a good living. It was a city to which people gravitated.
During World War II, Detroit called itself the "Arsenal of Democracy." Hundreds of thousands of laborers from other states arrived to build tanks, trucks, and airplanes. My dad, who came from the East Coast to work in a tool and die shop, was one of them. Many others, white and black, came from Appalachia and the deep South. All brought their traditions and their conflicts. That heritage defined our city and its rich "Motown" culture of music and art.
Making Detroit
Since visiting Detroit last summer, I've a felt a connection to a city that I had never before set eyes upon. I don't know exactly why. On my own, I explored the ugly, decrepit parts of the city and I felt I was looking at a disaster zone like New Orleans after Katrina. When I mentioned that analogy to someone, he replied that Detroit was a disaster more than 50 years in the making. What a terrible story to be telling, even if it rings true.
However, as @NutureGirl pointed out in a recent blog post, entitled "Catastrophe Thinking" -- if you want to make change, you have to change the story. Maybe that's what attracts me to Detroit: might it be time for a new story there? This is my Detroit story, which is the back story to my organizing Maker Faire at The Henry Ford.
On my first visit to the area, I gave a talk at A2 Mechshop, a co-engineering space organized by Dale Grover and Bob Stack. They host a monthly "Go-Tech" meeting for the tech community. After my talk, someone said: "We could really use a Maker Faire here." There was immediate agreement by all.
I began to wonder how a Maker Faire in Michigan could happen. Others on the same trip expressed a similar idea, emphasizing what it would mean to the area. I was intrigued, but I thought it would be hard to do.
Before I visited Detroit, John Law had put a bug in my ear at a previous Maker Faire. I should probably say legendary culture-hacker John Law, a co-founder of Burning Man. John had been to the first Maker Faire where I asked him to tell some of his amazing stories of his wild and subversive escapades in San Francisco. At Maker Faire in 2009, John told me that he was buying a house in Detroit. He was going to start spending time there because artists were moving Detroit, and he thought we should consider doing a Faire in Detroit. It sounded like a crazy idea at the time I heard it, but I didn't lose the thought.
What made me think it was possible to do a Maker Faire was that I met people who were doing cool things. Ann Arbor certainly had a lot going on. There were about a hundred people at the GO-Tech meeting, including Rick Chownyck (at right) who did a metal-casting demo that I blogged. Dug Song's A2 Geeks was a great example of fostering an open culture for hackers and developers by networking the geek community.
I attended an A2 Ignite hosted by Ryan Burns, which was a Friday date-night for hundreds of people at the University of Michigan. Later the same night, energetic Bilal Ghalib showed me a screen-printing space he'd set up at a local teen center. I visited the I3 Detroit hackerspace, which was just getting started. In a day or two, I had the feeling that a nucleus of makers already existed. They weren't all connected to each other, but they could be.
I also visited The Henry Ford in Dearborn and met with curators Marc Greuther and Suzanne Fischer. They'd heard about Maker Faire, and were very interested, but they also realized it was unlike any event that had been at The Henry Ford. On a tour of the museum, I got very excited by what The Henry Ford represented: a history of American making.
Walking amongst the steam engines, automobiles, planes, and bicycles, I saw it as the ultimate maker destination. Designed by Ford himself, he wanted others to learn and experience what previous generations had made -- these marvelous machines. As I enjoy reading history, I was fascinated by the long history that was spawned by the tinkering in Henry Ford's garage. I thought The Henry Ford would be a perfect place to host a Maker Faire, and allow us to connect what's happening today with a past that shows us what's possible.
Detroit is a city and a region that grew up because Henry Ford not only built a car but realized what it would mean if cars were affordable for nearly everyone. Others were building luxury cars. Ford built the car "for the rest of us."
Henry Ford's "999" race car
Coulomb gets in an Empire State of mind, switches on NYC’s first public EV charging station
Big Apple residents, get ready to rock the H to the O-V lane in your EV, because downtown recharging just got a little bit easier. Coulomb has dropped one of its ChargePoint stations in a parking lot near the Port Authority. It's just the first of 100 hitting the city and 4,600 coming to other major metropolitan areas around the US by September of next year. And, unlike other NYC-based charging stations, you can use this one. Parking is even free for customers, amazingly, but you'll need to sign up for an account to get access to that sweet 120 and 240V current. Even recharging won't cost you a penny -- but only for a month. After that the fees start. Sadly, even when saving the planet only the first one is free.
Coulomb gets in an Empire State of mind, switches on NYC's first public EV charging station originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Jul 2010 09:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.