Online newspaper publicly shames bad drivers with mobile app

Harnessing the power of mobile smartphones to bring about public humiliation, a digital newspaper in Russia is going after poor drivers.

Created by an online newspaper in Moscow called The Village, people within Russia can use a mobile application called Parking Douche to inform the public about poor drivers that like to park on sidewalks or other areas that aren’t acceptable for parking a vehicle. After someone downloads the application to their Android smartphone, they can start taking pictures of a driver that’s parked their vehicle illegally. The application requires the person to take two pictures of the vehicle. The first picture should be a wide view to demonstrate the car owner’s poor parking skills and the second picture should be a close up photo of the driver’s registration plate.

The application automatically converts the picture of the registration plate to a text field and asks the smartphone owner to check the validity of the registration plate number. In addition, the user can select the exact color of the car using a color field on the touchscreen as well as the general body shape of the car. Using GPS within the smartphone, the exact location of the parked car is also noted by the application.

After uploading all the data to the newspaper, people that live in the immediate area will start to see pop-up advertisements on The Village and other partner sites. While reading an article, a pop-up advertisement shows a replica of the car’s design and color in addition to the exact registration number on the vehicle’s plate. The caption reads “This parking douche annoys you on this site like he does on ‘Street Name’.“

The Village then encourages people to share the poorly parked car on Facebook to get rid of the advertisement. In order to avoid annoying readers of the newspaper that don’t live in the immediate area of the illegally parked car, the advertisements are specifically localized by IP address. Only people living in the immediate area will see the advertisement. Due to requests from people in countries like the United States, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom, management at The Village has made the application open-source software.

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/newspaper-shames-bad-drivers/

Read More

RIM boss Thorsten Heins hits back at BlackBerry-bashing NY Times article

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins has hit back at a recent NY Times article that interviewed a number of disgruntled BlackBerry owners. In a letter published by the newspaper on Wednesday, Heins accused the piece of lacking balance and said there were still "millions of BlackBerry fans out there."

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins must have had smoke coming out of his ears when he read a New York Times article on Monday entitled The BlackBerry as Black Sheep.

His company is struggling, for sure, but he’s hoping it can turn things around with the launch of its next-generation operating system, BlackBerry 10, early next year. Until then, he needs to hold on to his customers, and prevent the company’s image from being bashed about any more than it is right now. His heart will have sunk when he read the NY Times piece.

It pretty much ripped into the phone maker, interviewing users who had apparently become embarrassed about pulling their BlackBerry phone out of their bag. “I’m ashamed of it,” said one, who claimed to hide her device under her iPad for fear of being judged by clients.

Another said she wanted to “take a bat to it,” which, let’s be honest, seems like something of an overreaction when it comes to feelings about a mobile device. There were a few favorable words towards the end of the piece from a BlackBerry owner called Mr. Fenton who said he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about when it came to the iPhone, but in case the reader might start to think that perhaps RIM’s phones weren’t so bad after all, the article finished off with someone called Mr. Mindel laying the boot in, saying, “I’m considering removing my BlackBerry battery, pouring in cement, and using the BlackBerry as an actual paperweight.” You get the picture. 

So imagine Heins in his office earlier this week, NY Times in hand, reading this article. Of course he wasn’t going to let this go without saying something. He hammered out a response and on Wednesday the newspaper published it.

In his letter, Heins accused the publication of lacking “the balance your readers expect,” before going on to explain that carriers and partners around the world have recently told him “there are millions of BlackBerry fans out there who not only find great value in their device, but also pride in being a BlackBerry owner.”

He says that he takes reports of dissatisfaction among BlackBerry users very seriously, adding that he was encouraged by the supportive comments received in response to the NY Times article.

After trotting out a couple of stats, Heins ends his letter confirming that RIM is on track to deliver BlackBerry 10 in the first quarter of 2013, and offers thanks to “the customers who have remained loyal to the BlackBerry platform.” He also says RIM is looking forward to “winning back many who have left.”

Heins is all too aware that having nothing to show for at least another 10 weeks gives BlackBerry bashers ample time to keep on bashing, and that what RIM must do is keep current users on board while trying to put a positive spin on a very difficult situation. Of course, there will be those who say RIM has done a decent job of beating itself up in recent years with various PR blunders and missteps, but Heins is steering the ship now and is doing everything in his power to save the company from collapse.

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/rim-boss-thorsten-heins-hits-back-at-blckberry-bashing-ny-times-article/

Read More

Amazon to buy Texas Instruments, make Kindle Fire HD processors in-house?

Kindle Fire HD - a chip off the old block

Amazon is reportedly in the last stages of snapping up Texas Instruments' mobile processor business.

Israeli newspaper Calcalist cites a source who reckons that Amazon is in "advanced negotiations" with the chip-maker.

TI's hardware is currently found in the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and it sounds as though Amazon wants to bring the processors in-house in order to save a bit of cash.

Process that

It emerged last week that the online mega-retailer-turned-tablet-maker doesn't make any money on its hardware, including the Fire tablet range, instead bringing in cash from sales of apps, ebooks, films, music and more from its store.

For its part, TI has been looking to offload the mobile processor side of its business for a while now.

It could mean a healthy cash injection for TI as the deal is predicted to be worth "billions of dollars" – the company can put all that lovely cash towards its new focus of embedded chips for cars and that, where it sees dollar-signs in its future.

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/tablets/amazon-to-buy-texas-instruments-make-kindle-fire-hd-processors-in-house-1104441

Read More