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Android users can now tap to pay for transit rides in the Bay Area
Google Pay joins Apple Wallet in supporting Clipper cards.
Lyft now offers public transit directions in the Bay Area
Lyft's public transit directions are available on the company's home turf. Its app now includes routes, schedules and trip planning for public transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area, giving you an easier way to minimize car use. You can grab a Muni bus after riding a Bay Wheels bike, or save the ridesharing car for the last hop after a Caltrain trip. The company noted that "many" of it most popular bike share stations and ridesharing points in the region are near bus and train stops, making this a logical extension -- this just streamlines the experience for those travelers.
Google gets closer to building its own city in San Jose
Google has been making major development moves in downtown San Jose and yesterday the City Council agreed to negotiate a sale of 16 parcels of land owned by the city. The deal has been strongly supported by San Jose's mayor and vice mayor but the city's residents have been a bit more hesitant.
San Francisco train service plans to run solely on clean energy
Commuter trains are already somewhat eco-friendly by their nature (you're less likely to need a car, after all), but the San Francisco Bay Area's train system is taking things one step further. BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) has unveiled a policy that will gradually move it to completely renewable energy. It starts off modestly by limiting CO2 emissions now through 2024, but the plans will be more aggressive after that. At least half of its energy will have to come from renewable sources by 2025, with 90 percent of it from low or zero-carbon sources. All of it will have to be zero-carbon by 2035, while complete reliance on renewable sources would come by 2045.
A San Francisco housing complex is subsidizing Uber rides
While some communities aren't so sure about ridesharing, an upscale development is actually paying residents to use it. Parcmerced, a planned apartment complex in the southwest corner of San Francisco, has partnered with Uber to encourage residents to ditch their cars. The townhouse and apartment complex offers a $100 transit subsidy toward bus and train services, but residents must spend at least $30 of that on Uber rides. The remaining $70 (or less) can be used on a Clipper card, which gives users access to the BART and Muni light rail services.
Amazon's Echo speaker plays music from multiple accounts
Amazon's Echo speaker has been fine for playing music and audiobooks so far... unless you live in a household with more than one Amazon user, at which point it just gets messy. That won't be a problem any longer, though: Amazon has added support for multiple accounts, making it easy to play solely from your own collection. You only have to tell it to switch profiles to get your tunes. Simply put, this could be a lifesaver if you're going to share an Echo with roommates or a significant other -- you don't have to create a shared account or risk having someone else pollute your song recommendations.
Bay Area transit operator cuts cell service to thwart protest, activists abandon cause for Angry Birds
It looks like not even good old civil disobedience can survive without decent reception these days. In a seemingly successful attempt to shut down a protest of BART -- the Bay Area's answer to a subway system -- operators pulled the plug on cell service to multiple train stations, leaving would-be activists without a major organizing tool. The demonstration would have been the second in as many months in response to the shooting of a man by transit police. Officials had this to say in defense of the disruption: A civil disturbance during commute times at busy downtown San Francisco stations could lead to platform overcrowding and unsafe conditions for BART customers, employees and demonstrators. BART temporarily interrupted service at select BART stations as one of many tactics to ensure the safety of everyone on the platform. That didn't seem to sit well with some, as the cutoff has lead to a campaign by hackers, comparing the system to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who disconnected the country's internet during its recent revolution. It may have a ring to it, but muBARTek does seem a little much, don't you think?
Powercolor expected to unveil double-barreled Radeon at Computex
An unnamed, undressed dual-GPU prototype of AMD's latest in southern-island graphics cards surfaced over the weekend. Flaunting twin Bart chips with 1,120 stream processors a pop, this card totals up at 2,240, with each GPU packing its own memory for a total of 2GB of GDDR5. Although PowerColor is staying tight lipped on specs and official name until Computex in June, two DVI ports, double mini DisplayPorts, and one HDMI-out paint obvious similarities to the existing Radeon HD 6870. One last notable difference? The unknown soldier is powered by two eight-pin PCIe connectors, as opposed to the HD 6870's six-pin variant. We're probably looking at the latest in the Radeon HD 6800 series, we'll know for sure in about a month.
GDC09: If the BART's a rockin' ...
After departing the rather subdued first day of GDC 2009, we were reminded that gaming is everywhere -- even your friendly neighborhood BART station agent booth. Either the employee who was so proudly displaying their purchase in the middle of San Francisco's Powell Street station absolutely, positively had to pick up Rock Band 2 while on the clock, or they couldn't pass up the 50% off, going-out-of-business sale at the Virgin Megastore across the street.If it wasn't for our sheer exhaustion -- we said it was subdued, we didn't say it wasn't exhausting -- we would have gone bargain shopping ourselves at the store. Who knows, maybe we could have scored a few copies of 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand for ... wait for it ... 50-percent off. Witness the sad sign of our crumbling economy after the break.
WiFi Rail finalizes 20 year deal to bring internet to BART trains
Nearly a year to the day after we heard that WiFi trials were beginning on some of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit trains, WiFi Rail has announced a deal that'll last a score and provide high-speed WiFi "throughout the BART transit system and on all BART commuter trains." Reportedly, the network has successfully been tested to handle loads and provide speeds in excess of 15Mbps on trains moving 81 miles-per-hour. As it stands, four downtown San Francisco stations and some segments of the tunnels are already fully functional, but it'll take until the end of 2010 before the entire network is complete. There's no mention of what the price table will end up looking like, though we are told that subscriptions will be available by day, month or year. Now, if only this would filter out to every other mass transit entity in America, we'd be just jolly.
WiFi trial comes to San Francisco's BART trains
Merely hours after hearing that a contactless payment trial was going live on San Francisco's BART, along comes word that a test of a slightly different nature was also underway on the very same public transportation system. Reportedly, a recent Wi-Fi Rail installation on a select stretch of track proved that WiFi could be delivered to passengers at around 15Mbps -- up and down -- and if things go smoothly, the firm hopes to get its technology onto all sorts of rail systems across the globe. Unfortunately, there doesn't look to be any firm plans for the trial to stick on BART, but who knows, keep on refreshing that nearby network list on the morning commute and you might just get lucky.
Contactless payment trial goes live on San Francisco's BART
We knew full well that a contactless payment trial would soon be underway in the city by the Bay, and now it's finally ready for use by 230 guinea pigs. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of details on the Samsung handsets and the technology itself, but we do know that the program is being closely watched in hopes of it operating quite smoothly. If indeed that happens, it could be "expanded," presumably allowing others in the area to have their bank account dinged with the swipe of a cell each time they need a lift. Furthermore, a video clip at CBS5 shows the pilot phone being used to snag some totally nourishing grub from Jack in the Box. Hungry for more? Hit up the read link to take a peek yourself.[Thanks, Hans]
Trains and burgers: Sprint launching NFC trial in Bay Area
For whatever reason, phone-based contactless payment systems have been incredibly slow on the uptake stateside, while others -- those on NTT DoCoMo's well-received Osaifu-Keitai system, for example -- have had no qualms about turning their handsets into wallets. Every so often we catch wind of a trial in the works, though, which gives us hope that we'll eventually all be able to whip our cellies out of our pockets and clog our arteries in one deft motion. Case in point: Sprint has teamed up with Jack in the Box and San Francisco's Bay Area Transit Authority to offer fare and food payments with a tap of a phone in a trial that runs from January through May of next year. Strangely, the pictured phone appears to be the somewhat ancient A920 clamshell, so we're guessing Sprint is modifying the devices for the trial; Boost Mobile customers should be able to get on the action in some capacity as well. If you live in the area, ride BART at least once a week, and are willing to sacrifice that Touch for a trial phone, go sign yourself up -- just take it easy with the bacon burgers, k?[Thanks, Allan]
Breakfast Topic: This is all your fault and all of you suck
Every single time you're in Alterac Valley and your faction starts losing, someone starts whipping out the blame. Unless you ignore the battleground channel, you will be forced to read all about how you suck, how everyone else in this battleground sucks, how you should have done what they told you to do, and so on. Then, the other guy will pipe up with something like "would you shut up, dude? It's just a game," which sends the first one even deeper into his rage. Eventually he may just leave the match, or else quiet down while someone starts a chorus of "Guys, just let them win! I want to get my mark and go home."Personally, I'm a proud believer in the power of reason. Every time this happens, I find myself giving helpful suggestions, calming tempers, offering insights on how we could improve next time, and generally trying to play the peacemaker. Sometimes I can even find a strategy I think will turn the tide in our favor (and sometimes it works!), but usually I count myself a victor if people just see reason and behave civilly.What's your experience of people in battlegrounds who just can't handle losing? Have you been able to contain their blame explosions?
Wii version of Simpsons contains exclusive gluttony
Surprisingly, the new Simpsons game, called The Simpsons Game, doesn't follow the storyline of the Simpsons movie (The Simpsons Movie). Instead, it puts the player in the roles of the Simpson family as they become aware that they are inside a video game, which enables them to use ingame abilities (Remember Bartman? No? Ask your parents.) The game draws from video game culture, poking fun at games like Grand Theft Auto and Zelda.The Simpsons Game is a platformer with two-player cooperative gameplay and a cast of 200 characters. Troublingly, the developers say that of those 200, 100 come from the show. Is EA creating 100 new Simpsons characters? Jiminy jillikers!Wii owners will get a special treat: an exclusive minigame in the form of an eating contest. Using the Wiimote like a fork, players will cram as much imaginary food into their avatar's gaping maw as possible in a limited time.
