Tuesday Tech: 360

Two apps I was reading about struck me as potentially useful for not for profits. One is free and one is 99 cents (I don't make any money from the apps!).

The first is called Microsoft's Photosynth (free) and the second is called 360 Panorama. They both allow you to take a series of photos in a circle and the apps will turn them into a full panorama. Both look amazing. Photosynth is from Microsoft.

There is great potential for use in volunteer recruitment, at events, in trainings.

The pictures can then be emailed, added to Facebook etc.

Let me know if you end up using them. Any other photo apps that you are using?

Tuesday Post: World Meeting Planner

Love this tool especially when I am travelling.

 timeanddate.com’s allows me to arrange an international teleconference online and on my Iphone.

Anyone else use this or something similar?

What do you sleep with?

I initially banned all electronics from my bedroom in my new house- no laptop, no phone, no TV, no computer, no digital alarm clock. Its a rule I have tried to keep in most of my houses.

Until my Iphone!

Because of its function as an alarm clock it now sleeps next to me when I sleep. This is the same phone I now check email on before I get out of bed, the same one that I use to pace me when I run, the same one I use to text, skype, check in to flights, buy things, do my banking, take photos and listen to music.

You get the picture.


Associated Press reports that "Psychologists and others are concerned about another equally troubling issue: the growing obsession among people who would much rather interact with their smartphones than with other human beings."


Have a look around you. On the subway/commuter train/bus/streetcar/ferry, in coffeeshops, offices, lectures and family dinner tables. I used to have another rule: "no phones on the table at a meal". Last week, I went out to dinner with five friends. We all had our phones out! We were comparing apps, showing each other photos

We also use phones to avoid others. There is even a Facebook page Pretending-To-Be-On-The-Phone-To-Avoid-Someone!

Associated Press refers to "Michelle Hackman, a recent high school graduate in Long Island, New York, won a $US75,000 prize in this year's Intel Science Talent Search with a research project investigating teens' attachment to their mobile phones. She found that students separated from their phones were under-stimulated — a low heart rate was an indicator — and lacked the ability to entertain themselves."


My third rule is an electronics Sabbath - no electronics one day a week. At times, even this gets stretched. Going to the footy and not getting the commentary and scores via the phone from friends and media outlets is too hard!

These phones are new.

What rules do you have/need to have to manage the ubiquitous nature of these phones:

•  for yourself? 
• your workplace (amazed at how many train drivers I have seen looking at their phones as they travel along)
• your home?

They are Watching Me

I just learnt something about my Iphone that I am not sure I wanted to know.

I use my iPhone to check into places with Four Square. I know that when I take a picture that the IPhone "tags" the picture with my location information. I know that the GPS can track wherever I am with the phone.

I did not know that my IPhone keeps a record of every cell phone/Mobile phone tower that it receives a signal from. From the day I switched it on, it has recorded where I am.

On top of that, my IPhone records that information and saves it. In addition, that information can be downloaded from my phone to ANY and EVERY computer it syncs with.

Peter Warden and Alasdair Allan,  "data scientists" discovered this whilst doing research and announced it this week. They describe the situation in this blog post saying: "our iPhone, and your 3G iPad, is regularly recording the position of your device into a hidden file. Ever since iOS 4 arrived, your device has been storing a long list of locations [latitude and longitude] and time stamps. "
I decided to check it out using a tool they they have developed called iPhone tracker. Sure enough here's my world map of all my activity since July, 2010  (I could not get my IPhone to work on my last Middle Eastern trip).

 I use three different mobile phone carriers- Tmobile in the USA/Canada, 3 in Australia and 2degrees in NZ. The system keeps tracking me no matter what. Warden and Allan note that "only the iPhone records the user's location in this way"
They add: "We're not sure why Apple is gathering this data, but it's clearly intentional, as the database is being restored across backups, and even device migrations." 

This is the picture of my cell phone usage in Australia and New Zealand since July, 2010:

"By passively logging your location without your permission, Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements." Take a look at my city: Melbourne on 7th October, 2010". I had a busy day in Geelong (a city west of of Melbourne), the downtown and Eastern suburbs of Melbourne . I think the clumps in the west occurred in my travel out to Geelong. I can even zoom down to my house!

The scarey thing is that I gave Apple permission to track this. In their terms and conditions for  iTunes program (which is pages long) there is a paragraph about "location-based services" which says "Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services."

The good news is the researchers said that at this stage, the data "does not seem to be transmitted to Apple itself".

If you want to encrypt your data, here advice on how you can do it.