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Google Maps crowdsources info for wheelchair-accessible places
It's important to know whether a restaurant or other building is accessible if you use a wheelchair. While Google already added this information to places in its Maps app a while ago, the company has just announced that it will be crowdsourcing a larger set of accessibility options to help those with wheelchairs know if places are accessible or not. Google claims it has added this valuable information to almost seven million places around the world.
ZTE cancels ill-fated Kickstarter to focus on a better phone
ZTE's plans to crowdsource ideas for its next mobile device has been a mostly smooth-sailing journey. But the company's efforts to make the eye-detecting phone a reality has been far less successful. After feedback from its underwhelming Kickstarter campaign indicated that people were expecting better specs from the device, ZTE is canceling the crowdfunding project and going back to the drawing board.
Your vote will make ZTE's crowdsourced device ideas a reality
ZTE isn't wowing anyone with its new Axon 7 Mini phone, but it does have a far more intriguing device up its sleeve. The Chinese company shared some updates on its Project CSX campaign, which is an effort to crowdsource ideas for a groundbreaking mobile device. Starting today, you can start voting for one of the top 20 ideas in the company's forum.
Google wants your help to improve its automatic translations
Google's ability to interpret and translate handwriting isn't perfect. Sometimes you'll scribble a word or take a photo of a restaurant menu on holiday, only to have a garbled mess thrown back at you. To help its "smart" assistants and services, Google has released a new app on the Play Store called Crowdsource. It's a bare-bones affair, asking you to transcribe digital squiggles and photographed road signs. There are no discernible rewards, only the occasional message ("you're great!") and meaningless 'milestone' when you've completed a certain number of tasks. In short, you'll need to really love Google to open the app more than once.
Mozilla's next logo will be shaped by its users
It's time for Mozilla to get a new look and, true to its open-source roots, the Firefox developer is turning to the community for feedback on what its redesign should entail. The nonprofit has launched an Open Design process to "modernize [its] brand identity."
Mapping project catalogs Instagram sunrises from around the world
Have you noticed the wealth of sunrise and sunset photos on Instagram? Michelle Chandra certainly has, and her project offers a look at the sun's activity around the world in real time. "All Our Suns" gathers snapshots upload with either the #sunrise or #sunset hashtag, using the posts to populate a set of data-driven maps. Two of the crowdsourced cartography pieces catalog every image that's uploaded during the course of a 24-hour period -- one for sunrises and one for sunsets based on a user's location. What's more, you can click on a location marker to view the photo. A third map notes times when two people are posting at the same time, with one updating the beginning and the other observing the end of a day. The whole thing is a study on how our lives literally revolve around the sun and how social networks illustrate time as a never-ending loop.
BRUVELO would be your iPhone-powered coffee powerhouse
What is it with Apple fans and coffee? Perhaps it's the fact that you can totally "geek out" on the process, the beans, the hardware and so on. Add your iPhone to the mix and you've got Apple-loving Coffee Nerd Nirvana. BRUVELO is a coffee maker and companion iOS app, currently on Kicktarter, that will scratch your coffee nerd itch. Typically we save items like this for our "Crowdfunding" post, but the clock is ticking on this one and we think it's worth mentioning. Here's where it gets cool. Connect your BRUVELO to WiFi and store a "recipe" on your iPhone. A recipe lets you get as nit-picky as you like, storing bean-specific instructions on steep times, ratios, temperature and more. Then, the next time you've got that bean in the pot, all you need to do is tap the recipe and the BRUVELO executes all of your instructions. From a single tap on you phone. Neat, eh? There's about a week left to back this, as of this writing. If your blood runs as dark as the beans you roast, this might be the connected coffeemaker of your dreams.
Make My MMO: July 6 - July 12, 2014
This week in MMO crowdfunding news, Frontier explained its relatively high buy-in prices for Elite: Dangerous alpha and beta testing, while Star Citizen gave fans and onlookers another meaty glimpse behind the development curtain. Finally, Forged Chaos unveiled a seven-minute video showing off the progress on Trials of Ascension's technical demo and combat.
LAPD has a new tool for crowdsourcing photo and video evidence
Citizen-provided evidence is clearly on the up. With the amount of cameras knocking about, this is hardly surprising. However, when something goes down at a large public event, the mass of well-meaning user-submitted evidence can cause data bottlenecks, or a stretch of resources making sense of it. This ends up potentially doing more harm than good. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department has sought to resolve such issues by working with Amazon's Web Service to create an app for submitting photo and video evidence that takes advantage of AWS's deep bandwidth pockets. Called the Large Emergency Event Digital Information Repository (LEEDIR), the web, Android and iOS apps serve as a direct line, and central repository for user-generated evidence. Unsurprisingly, some privacy advocates are twitchy about the idea of bystanders caught on video being implicated, but its creators claim that this is something that professional law enforcement is equipped to deal with such issues as a matter of routine. Currently the app is being used as part of investigations for a recent riot in Isla Vista, but it's hoped it could become a routine tool for similar events in the future.
Star Citizen reaches $31 million, no wait, make that $32 million
The stack of cash crowdsourced by Chris Roberts' upcoming space epic, Star Citizen, continues to grow, with the latest tally putting the game over the $32 million mark. As with all new Star Citizen milestones, topping $32 million means that Roberts Space Industries has unveiled a new ship to be included in the game. This time around the reward is the Aegis Surveyor, an "industrial-quality salvage ship" designed for deep-space exploration and the salvage of derelict ships. It's low on firepower, but comes equipped with heavily reinforced hulls making it ideal for transporting large amounts of cargo that you'd rather not see blown to pieces in the inky void of space. Devoted Joystiq readers will notice that we seemingly stopped keeping close tabs on the sum raised by Star Citizen in September, when the game topped $18 million. Not because the game's crowdsourced success is unimpressive, but because Star Citizen continues to break new funding goals on a daily basis. Only three days ago the game was breaking the $29 million mark, and it's now well on its way to $33 million.
FCC will get you to tell it how fast your mobile broadband is
Remember when the FCC said that it'd be studying the best way to monitor mobile broadband speeds? A year (and a new chairman) later and it's finally come to a conclusion: an Android app. According to the Wall Street Journal, the commission will launch FCC Speed Test next Thursday, with the aim of getting users to test their speeds in order to crowdsource accurate data nationwide. We're excited to see if the truth stands up to the advertising, but we do wonder if Tom Wheeler couldn't have just nicely asked Ookla for a peek at its Speedtest.net database.
Gamesplanet Lab: Kickstarter's 'crowd-creating' competitor
As Kickstarter has taken off like – well, a popular Kickstarter project – over the past year, especially in the gaming sector, backers have noticed a few inconsistencies with the platform. For one, projects aren't vetted for plausibility or quality outside of a standard registration form; your grandmother could accidentally promise the world 500 pounds of brownies if she raises $5, and there's nothing holding her to following through or using that money for brownie-related purposes.For another, Kickstarter is US only. Creative ventures outside of the US can't begin a crowd-funded project, though anyone with a major credit card can donate to a project and watch its success with yearning in his heart. Also, Kickstarter caters to a wide range of products and ideas, making its reach broad but its expertise in handling any one industry dim.Gamesplanet Lab is a new crowd-funding platform that handles only gaming projects, has a strict vetting and follow-through contract, and is based in Europe but is able to host projects from around the world. Yes, that does sound like everything you ever wanted in Kickstarter. The only thing Gamesplanet Lab needs now is proof that it can work – it needs a breakout crowd-funding success.
TomTom opens up MapShare to all 60 million of its GPS units (video)
TomTom has seen the inexorable rise of smartphone navigation and decided that it needs a cheaper way of updating its head units. Its cunning solution has been to open its MapShare community to all 60 million TomToms in the wild -- which was previously limited just to smartphone apps and select devices. MapShare works by allowing users to update their, erm, maps, when they spot a change has been made, which is then uploaded when they get home. It'll now be aggregated and pushed out as a free daily download. Users can filter updates, deciding if they want ones submitted by "some," "many" or those officially verified by the company itself -- so don't bother trying to game the system to make your morning commute easier.
Insert Coin: ODDIO1 straps an iPod shuffle to your head, makes you inexplicably cooler
In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line. Micro music players like the iPod shuffle are great when you're shredding the powder, but long cords can be a health hazard, even in the office -- if one wraps itself 'round your coffee mug, you risk having twelve ounces of hot liquid landing in your lap. Designers Jeremy Saxton & Jacob Hall have developed the ODDIO1, a pair of headphones that do away with all that unnecessary cabling -- holstering the shuffle on the right earpiece. If you're interested in getting your hands on a pair of these infuriatingly simple yet elegant cans, ride on past the break to find out more.
Google acquires Zagat: good news for foodies, bad news for Yelp?
Long before Yelp, there was Zagat -- a point-based restaurant rating guide, compiled from the best (or worst, depending) crowdsourced reviews. Today, Google has acquired the brand and plans to integrate Zagat's now expanded shopping, eating, drinking and hotel tips into both search and maps. For gastronomes, travelers and locals, that means crowdsourced tips for superb noms and activity recommendations from around the world. Sounds great, guys, as long as your new found friendship helps us find the best bacon-flavored ice cream cone, we're all for it.
3G coverage survey gives British smartphone users little to smile about
The UK has plenty of endearing olde worlde attributes, but its lack of fast mobile data access isn't one of them. The country has yet to enter the LTE era and, according to a crowdsourced survey by the BBC, it's still plagued by "not spots" where you can't get 3G reception either. More than 40,000 Brits downloaded a tailor-made Android app that recorded their local street level access and their results proved that many city centers and rural areas are effectively no-go swamplands for smartphone users -- although coverage was good over 70- to 80-percent of Her Majesty's territory. It's about time we did a similar survey in the US. Oh, and check out the source link to watch a Galaxy II-owning village vicar vent his frustrations in the politest possible way.
BMW's Ultimate Drive app lets you share your favorite routes, crowdsources day tripping
Are you driving to get somewhere, or are you driving to drive? That's the fundamental question behind BMW's Ultimate Drive -- a new app that allows iPhone and Android users to share and rate their most enjoyable routes. With this arrow in your smartphone's quiver, you can create and upload your favorite paths using Google Maps, while evaluating other user submissions based on traffic, scenery and that ever-elusive thrill factor. As CNET points out, the app won't let you upload maps from your computer, nor does it allow for Yelp-style ratings of locations along the way, though those features may only be an update away. Check out the source links to download the free app and enjoy the journey. Full PR after the break.
Iceland's crowdsourced constitution submitted for approval, Nyan Cat takes flight over Reykjavik
A committee of 25 Icelanders submitted the first draft of a rewritten constitution to the country's parliamentary speaker Friday, and despite our recommendations, Rebecca Black was conspicuously absent from the proceedings. The democratic experiment bravely asked citizens to log on to Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter to engage with the committee in a discussion about the nation's future. While the project's Facebook page played host to pleads for free ice cream and more volcanoes, the constitution's creators managed to stay on task, focusing on issues of decentralization and transparency in government. The draft is slated for review beginning October 1st.
TaskRabbit iPhone app lets you crowdsource your tasks
TaskRabbit is a unique service that lets busy people offload their tasks to those willing to do them. It costs a small fee, but you can have your groceries delivered, laundry done and dogs walked before you return home from a busy day at work. When it launched, the service was web-based only, but TaskRabbit recently developed an iPhone app that lets you manage your tasks on the run. You can create a new task, monitor the progress of a task and even price a task using information based from the TaskRabbit service. It lets you add descriptions using a voice recording or images so the person completing your task knows exactly what to do. It's an interesting use of modern technology that melds your mundane routine with the power of the crowd. And it's now on the iPhone. [Via TechCrunch]
DARPA's XC2V FLYPMode crowd-sourced combat vehicle revealed, now in desert khaki (video)
Okay, so perhaps the specific color here is up for debate, but one thing is clear: the XC2V FLYPMode is one imposing looking vehicle. Also known as the Experimental Crowd-derived Combat Support Vehicle, DARPA has billed this mean machine as the "first crowd-sourced, militarily relevant vehicle design." After being selected as the winning entry to DARPA's design-the-next-Humvee competition, Local Motors tricked out the XC2V FLYPMode in just 14 weeks. For now, it is but a "proof of principle project," meaning we probably won't see this thing riding dirty in the desert anytime soon, if ever. You can, however, see at least a portion of the beast's birth in a time-lapse video after the break.
