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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Got A Beef with Your City? There’s an iPhone App for That

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If you’re lucky enough to live in Pittsburgh, you can report stuff like potholes, graffiti and other everyday annoyances straight to city hall via an iPhone app called iBurgh.

Peeved Pittsburghers first download the app, gratis on iTunes. First time users need to fill in name, phone number, email and home address — stored automatically for logging future complaints.

Users snap pics of traffic gridlock, abandoned cars or whatever.  The photos are geotagged and sent immediately to the city complaint hotline 311. Officials hope that if enough people use the app (they already get about 200 rants a day) they’ll have a cluster map of trouble areas to plan for future maintenance and repairs.

There were a few snafus as iPhone wielding citizens tried complaining via smartphone when the service debuted yesterday — a server restart was necessary at one point –  but at least one user managed to report that pothole successfully.

It’s the first app available on iTunes from a Carnegie Mellon spin-off whose other product was mobile video technology for sports events, called “yinzcam“  that let users at hockey games pick what to zoom in on with their iPhones.

Via AP

About the author

nicole_martinelli

Nicole Martinelli was born in San Francisco and has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. Cultish tendencies and love for DIY increased while living on the Old Continent, where tech came late and cost more in Big Mac index terms. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek, and since 1999 on her site, Zoomata. If you're so inclined, friend her on Facebook or connect on Linked in.

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One comment

    In case yinz don’t know, the ‘yinz’ in ‘yinzcam’ is Pittsburghese for ‘you’, as in ‘yinztube’, etc.

    Jist in case yinz weren’t sure, ‘n ‘at.

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