World-Shaker

I’m doing this the next time I fly.

Apple Maps on a Boeing 737 (by jzzsxm)

"German scientists are developing a technique that allows for very precise positioning anywhere in space by picking up X-ray signals from pulsars. These dense, burnt-out stars rotate rapidly, sweeping their emission across the cosmos at rates that are so stable they rival atomic clock performance."

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Guys. They just invented spaceship GPS. 

BBC News - Dead stars ‘to guide spacecraft’

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emergentfutures:

Paul Higgins: The basic idea behind these sorts of technologies looks good but in the end it tends to encourage more driving and roads full back up to the level that people will tolerate which leads back to the traffic jams.

smarterplanet:

Greenway Wants To Put An End To Traffic Jams | TechCrunch

Traffic jams are annoying, but they are also responsible for extra CO2 emissions and plenty of wasted productivity. Greenway, Germany’s entry into Microsoft’s 10th Imagine Cup student technology competition in Sydney this week, wants to do nothing less than put an end to traffic jams. To do so, the three-person team has developed a mobile app, which is basically a very smart turn-by-turn navigation system, and a cloud-based routing and tracking service that ensures that drivers use streets as efficiently as possible. Ideally, the Greenway team says, its app can cut driving times during peak traffic hours by half. What’s cool about the service isn’t the impressive underlying technology, though, but also the team’s innovative business model.

Here is how Greenway is tackling this problem: most of the time, drivers choose the most direct route between two points and because of this, traffic tends to converge on a small number of roads, making traffic jams inevitable.

What would happen, though, if you could route cars more efficiently and have them use underutilized roads? To find out, the team developed an algorithm that constantly monitors where cars are in a city and then routes them as efficiently as possible, keeping in mind where all the other cars are as well. The team built a number of impressive traffic simulations to validate its approach. In addition, it’s also running a small pilot project in Germany right now that has already validated the team’s approach.

A) This is an amazing and clever idea.

B) I LOVE what students come up with when they’re given resources and a little academic freedom (with guidance).

omnomonster:

katie-shum:

Please.

Alan Rickman’s voice is chocolate to my ears.

Oh dear god yes please :D

I normally don’t reblog things like this, but it was too fantastic to pass up.

Aside from that fact that I would pay the cost of the GPS just to have this happen, there’s also a subcommunity devoted to supporting this idea. They even have a Facebook page that’s picked up almost 5,000 fans in the last month.

"It is by now an old idea in futurology, originating with Alvin Toffler, that modern man exists in a state of constant shock at the changing landscape of the technological world — akin to “culture shock,” but as ceaseless as the progress of technology. But we quickly become accustomed to, and adjust ourselves to, the technologies that increasingly form the fabric of our interaction with the world — and so their novelty rapidly fades. And then we find our experience of moving through the world is not one of perpetual awe and wonderment, but of boredom and restlessness."

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Well put.

GPS and the End of the Road, fantastic long read from The New Atlantis (via curiositycounts)

poptech:

Hackney Hear is an amazing interactive GPS-triggered smartphone app that offers a colorful audio tour of London’s East End. 

Imagine the implications of something like this for education.

Send Destinations via Google Maps to Ford and GM Vehicles →

Every so often I see something new and think, “My kids will take this for granted.”