Citizen Science: How Smartphones Can Aid Scientific Research. Gathering geographic and time-sensitive data from large populations can be difficult, complicated and extraordinarily expensive for researchers.
But collecting massive amounts of sensitive information may be as easy--and cheap--as writing an iPhone app. When combined with a GPS signal and a Wi-Fi or 3G connection, mobile phones can gather data, organize it and send it to a server to be analyzed. These large amounts of cheaply gathered data come at the cost of the control and reliability enjoyed in a laboratory setting--a problem that has come to light in recent years with scientific research that has relied on the processing power of everyday home computers and gaming consoles. With smartphone-based research, participants lose their phones, batteries fail and phones moving in and out of people's pockets and handbags can obscure data collection. Even so, having people constantly collect real-word data with existing technology is appealing to researchers on a budget. Watching Workouts. ArrivedOK.mobi, Your Personal Flight Arrival Tracker.
M-Libraries. OTM 2008 Federated Conferences. From Palm, Finally, a Worthy iPhone Competitor (No, Really) Las Vegas– There’s no avoiding it.
For Palm, the creators of the PDA, and, you could argue, the smartphone, today is do or die. If every great fighter makes a comeback, the question is this: Is Palm still a fighter (or was it ever)? At a much buzzed-about press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Palm finally responded to the iPhone, with a multitouch smartphone of its own.
The Palm Pre is, of course, a lot like the iPhone, with a 3.1-in. multitouch display, similar hard-buttons—power up top, a single central navigation button—and lots of swiping and tapping controls. The biggest differences are a slide-out full-qwerty keyboard, and a micro USB port for power and data transfer, as well as an LED flash for the internal camera. Here’s what drew more screams. The weirdest cheer of the conference came during a demo of web browsing, when the Pre opened up the box office page for Blue Man Group, and zoomed in with an iPhone-like reverse pinch. iPhone 3.0's New Take on Bluetooth: Why it Matters. October 1, 2009 12:00 AM Apple previewed its 3.0 version of the iPhone operating system today (it comes out "sometime" this summer).
Many of the new capabilities coming to the device are answers to longstanding complaints by users. It is, in fact, somewhat amazing that Apple can get such attention for an update that largely introduces functionality–cut-and-paste, MMS, in-phone search–that competing devices have offered for years. But what most got my attention was an expansion of the iPhone's Bluetooth capabilities. Apple has in the past been very restrictive with the iPhone's Bluetooth functionality, but much of that was swept away today.
All right, so support for wireless stereo headsets? Essentially, the new Bluetooth support allows the iPhone to become a potential remote control for any future device. Smartphone Lab Test: iPhone vs. 7 Top Wireless Wonders. How intelligent does a phone have to be to deserve the title of "smartphone"?
Should it be able to retrieve your e-mail? Probably, but not necessarily. Should a smartphone take high-resolution pictures, and play music and movies on the go? Many do--but then again, some don't. "Smartphone" is a nebulous term that is as much marketing spin as it is a distinct category of mobile phone. Nevertheless, smartphones in one form or another have been around for over a decade, bringing e-mail and productivity software to anyone busy enough to carry their office around in a pocket wherever they go.
But the slow evolution of smartphones from business tool to cool got a turbo boost recently because of a single new entry in the category. One of the common observations about the iPhone since its launch in June is that it wouldn't have seemed so innovative if it weren't for the fact that other smartphones are so frustratingly difficult to use. Stopwatches don't lie. Nokia N95 | Overall Grade: C.