Web Concepts

Posts Tagged ‘apps’

Cloo, which very Britishly stands for Community Loo, is an app currently under development (as in, not yet available) which will show a Google Maps layer overlaid with locations of friends and friends of friends who have put their own private bathrooms, in their own homes, where they live, up for grabs. (Presumably, that "friends of friends" thing will be done through Facebook, though Cloo hasn't made that clear.)

There are a few higher-level ideas at work, like a payment system that works kind of like that Bump app (you tap two phones together to exchange data, or, in this case, currency) and some vaguely-defined partnerships with toilet-supply companies so you don't have to cut into your own profit to buy toilet paper or hire professional cleaners like you'll probably want to, every week.

The app isn't out yet, though you can follow the Cloo team's progress on Twitter. For now, it seems like the kind of idea that one side of the userbase (the side that has to pee, or poop, or whatever, no judgments here) would absolutely love, while the other side (the side with the bathroom) would be pretty leery about. At least we can be thankful the app doesn't have a urination-related pun as a name. (Though we would kind of love it if you guys contributed your own ideas in the comments.)

[Cloo]

At the moment, the FDA does bestow its approval on some apps, including a radiology tool called Mobiel MIM, but that approval at the moment is both pretty scarce and totally optional--it's a nice bonus if your app is FDA-approved, but the only organization an app developer really needs approval from is Apple. The FDA strikes a tone of total support for the surge in medical apps, but states concern that there is no real approval process that vets medical apps prior to release. If you've got a weird rash or a pain somewhere in your abdomen (could it be the spleen? What is a spleen, anyway?), or want to use your phone's sensors to monitor your organs (like a spleen, which I am 99% sure is in the abdomen), you might consult an app, and the FDA wants to make sure you're getting the right information.

The FDA proposed a guideline that would have the organization overseeing certain kinds of apps. Specifically, they'd want to examine any app that is "used as an accessory to an FDA-regulated device," which seems reasonable--of course the FDA would want to make sure that any device they approve would be used with accessories of which they also approve. The other kind of app the FDA wants to regulate is any software that turns a smartphone into a "regulated medical device," like an electrocardiography machine. Again, pretty understandable--the FDA monitors EKG machines, so if you're using an iPhone as an EKG machine, that should also be monitored.

There's no mention of the FDA examining WebMD-type diagnosis apps--the proposal seems much more geared to apps that turn smartphones into legitimate medical tools, rather than just references. FDA approval might slow down the release of some of these apps, but the agency thinks added oversight will be worth the delay.

[FDA via Gizmodo]

Swedish startup 13th Lab is implementing a computer vision technique called Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), which constructs a 3-D map of a local environment in real time and calculates the current position within it. The result is a new iPad app called Ball Invasion (get it here), wherein the camera’s view becomes a playing field. Instead of advanced robotic sensors and controls, the app just needs the camera and other sensors native to mobile devices.

This is quite a feat, and a potential new avenue for augmented reality. Unlike most AR systems, it doesn’t require previously known markers to trigger the virtual display — it can augment any environment, previously seen or unseen, simply by using the iPad2’s camera.

The goal of the game is to shoot malicious balls hiding in the real world, which becomes part of the playing field — you can bounce virtual items off the actual walls, for instance. The video below shows it in action.

SLAM was developed to help robots determine where they are, by looking around and building a 3-D model of their environment and then determining their place in it. It’s a tough chicken-or-egg problem and one of the most complicated topics in robotics sensing, but, as GigaOM points out, 13th Lab has figured out how to compress this complex capability into a consumer device. So far, it’s only possible with the iPad2’s powerful dual-core A5 CPU, 13th Lab says (though they probably haven't tried using the next-gen quad-core Kal-El yet).

13th Lab’s overall goal is far broader than 3-D games: they want to build a 3-D toolkit for other app developers, according to GigaOM. Ball Invasion is simply the first example.

This type of technology could conceivably be used for many other things, from architecture design to augmented-reality tours. For now, though, this game seems pretty fun:

[via Slashdot]

Dubbed TagSense, the new app was developed by students from Duke University and the University of South Carolina who combined smartphones’ many sensors into one all-encompassing tag suite. The technique goes way beyond GPS technology to recreate a photo’s location and context.

A phone’s built-in accelerometer could tell whether a person is standing still, dancing or engaged in some other activity, according to a Duke news release. Light sensors in the phone, normally used to dim or brighten a display screen, can be used to tell whether the picture is inside our outside; weather conditions can be checked against the phone’s location; and it can even use a microphone to tell whether the subject of the photo is laughing or quiet.

All these attributes are assigned to each picture, and a user can search according to various categories, the news release says.

“So, for example, if you've taken a bunch of photographs at a party, it would be easy at a later date to search for just photographs of happy people dancing,” said Chuan Qin, a visiting graduate student from the University of South Carolina.

The students tested the system using eight Google Nexus One mobile phones, snapping more than 200 photos at various spots on the Duke campus, and found it was more sophisticated than Google’s Picasa or Apple’s iPhoto tagging systems, according to Romit Roy Choudhury, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke.

The team unveiled the app at the ninth Association for Computing Machinery's International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys), being held in Washington, D.C.

SceneTap is a start-up that is using facial recognition tech to help you eschew the sausage fest at your usual watering holes and find the hangouts where you might actually have a chance of conversing with someone of the gender you’re looking for (whatever gender that might be). It will do so via a handy smartphone app that will map the joints where the objects of your desire are congregating at any given moment.

It works like this: bars install facial recognition cameras at their entrances and exits. These cameras, we are assured, are not equipped with good enough technology to actually identify you or cross reference images with something like Facebook. They simply detect gender. And in doing so, they keep a running tally of how many guys and dolls are in a given juke joint at a given time.

Using the accompanying app, you can get a good read on what your chances are at a particular place before you pay cab fare across town or drop a cover charge on some velvet-roped joint that turns out to be empty. But that’s as far as SceneTap will get you. As far as actually approaching the bar and tapping him/her on the shoulder--unfortunately for you, Casanova, there’s no app for that.

[Forbes]

Genome Wowser--the name is derived from the Genome Browser Website set up by UCSC in 2000, but with additional “wow”--is kind of like a Google Maps for the genome. You can search for a specific gene by entering its name in the search box, or you can simply browse for points of interest. Annotations added by researchers serve as guideposts, offering insight into genes’ particular known or supposed expressions.

There’s also information embedded about epigenetics--how genes are modified by chemical processes, and all of that information is updated regularly. Factor in the upcoming versions that will include more than three dozen other species--including cats, dogs, chimpanzees, and 11 species of fruit flies--and Genome Wowser is a pretty powerful tool for geneticists and the scientifically curious alike. Try doing all of that on Kindle.

Oh, and they tell time

Now: Text Check
Tethered to your BlackBerry or Android handset with Bluetooth, the inPulse watch (pictured above) displays texts, e-mails and your call log on its 1.3-inch screen, so your phone can stay tucked away. Downloadable apps allow users to check in on Facebook and load Twitter feeds.
Allerta inPulse $150; inPulse

Soon: Long Life
Most Bluetooth-equipped devices run on lithium-ion batteries, which require daily charging. Casio’s prototype uses a new, low-energy form of Bluetooth to pull caller ID and texts from your cellphone, so the timepiece runs for two years on one watch battery. The new Bluetooth standard, which will arrive next year, saves power by transmitting data intermittently, not continuously as it does now. We previewed the inPulse back in January at CES--it didn't even have a name at that point, but we were still pretty impressed.
Casio watch prototype with Bluetooth Low Energy; Casio

Later:Wrist Net
As high-speed-cellular radios shrink to fit behind watch faces, your wrist could become a hotspot. The MetaWatch prototype, based on a concept by HP and built by Fossil, could one day create its own Wi-Fi network to share with nearby phones, tablets and other Web-ready gadgets. Similar watches may also have flash memory to store data--such as maps and calendars--for quick access.
Metawatch; HP, Fossil