Newseum
Latest
Step inside the Unabomber investigation in VR
In 1996, law enforcement officials arrested Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, after nearly two decades of investigation. But it wasn't until the Washington Post and the New York Times published Kaczynski's anonymous 35,000-word manifesto that a tip from his brother David led officials to Kaczynski and his isolated cabin in Montana. The massive nationwide hunt for the Unabomber, whose seemingly random attacks with lack of traceable evidence stumped law enforcement officials for years, is an interesting case and one that the Newseum in Washington DC has hosted an exhibit on for the past few years -- a display that includes Kaczynski's actual cabin. The exhibit has also featured a VR experience that let visitors explore the cabin from the perspective of an FBI agent, decide whether to publish the manifesto and even disarm the live bomb found in Kaczynski's cabin. Now, Variety reports, Unabomber: The Virtual Reality Experience is available for anyone to explore.
Extra! Extra! app may be scraping news museum's feed of front pages
TUAW came across the US$3.99 app Extra! Extra! when developer Finbarr Brady solicited a review. Extra! Extra! bills itself as an app that will supply you with the daily front pages of more than 800 newspapers from around the globe. This sounded suspiciously similar to one of the features on the Newseum's website. The Newseum, located in Washington, D.C., is a museum that documents news media history. Each morning, more than 800 newspapers from around the world send their front pages as high-quality PDFs to the museum's gallery, which features these pages for educational purposes. In Extra! Extra!, you can select a newspaper either from a list or a map view, and the app downloads the PDF to your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. You can then either mark it as a favorite, e-mail it to someone, or visit the paper's site -- though several of the links I checked were incorrect. I scanned the list of papers provided by Extra! Extra! and found that it closely mirrored the Newseum's list. The FAQ section on the app site claims that it is up to the individual newspaper to decide whether or not it is included with the Extra! Extra! app. Full disclosure: I'm a designer with The Patriot-News just outside of Harrisburg, PA. Part of my duties when I, or my co-workers, design the front page is to send a high-quality PDF to the Newseum. I checked with our executive editor this morning, who confirmed that we only send those PDFs to Newseum and not any other organization. The Patriot-News is one of the newspapers made available through Extra! Extra! Read on for more...
FCC will consider 'free or very low cost wireless broadband' service
Did you know there was a Digital Inclusion Summit going on? We already know the FCC isn't best pleased about the fact 93 million Americans are making do without access to home broadband, and this latest event was an opportunity for it to dish some more info on its forthcoming National Broadband Plan. The major obstacles to broadband adoption identified by the FCC were noted as cost, computer illiteracy, and a sheer lack of awareness about the benefits the web offers (outside of cute kitties). The big Plan will be delivered to Congress a week from today, and its suggestions will include the creation of a Digital Literacy Corps, who'll be performing missionary duties among the unenlightened, and the big whopper: a proposal to "consider use of spectrum for a free or very low cost wireless broadband service." Yeah, if you can't jump over the cost hurdle you might as well eviscerate it from existence. Quite naturally, such radical plans have been met with much grumbling opposition, and Business Week reports that it may be years before the full reforms are implemented ... if at all.
Washington, D.C.'s Newseum a technophile's dream
Interested in taking a peek at a few Christie DLP projectors, Stewart screens, Tannoy speakers and Bag End subs? What if a few HD flat-panels and a "4D" theater are throw in? Astoundingly enough, all of the aforesaid equipment and much, much more has been installed at the soon-to-open Newseum in Washington, D.C. Put simply, the venue "traces the history of news reporting from the 16th century to the present," and needless to say, it does so in impressive fashion. There's no telling exactly how many Benjamins Electrosonic burned through installing the plethora of high-end gear, but with 250,000 square feet of technology-laced area, we're thinking a trip (for "education," of course) may be in order.[Via AboutProjectors]
