internet cool?!

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Heyho. I am thrilled and honored to tell you that POKE has been nominated in the Mobile and Experiences category of this year’s Webby Awards. We want to win and we need your vote!

Vote here.   

The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. The online community, determine the winners of The People’s Voice by voting for the nominated work that you believe to be the best in each category. That’s where you come in. Thanks for all your tweets, shares and votes!

The more real world objects pop up that connect to the Internet, the more demand there is for network infrastructure like sensors and routers. 

Cisco has designed an infographic that offers a simple example of how Internet of Things will affect you in your everyday life. It also states that by 2020, there will be 50 billion ‘things’ connected to the Internet - everything from your body, car, alarm clock and even cows.

The number of things connected to the Internet has already exceeded the number of people on earth. So this is a big trend - and big business for Cisco and other technology companies.

via readwriteweb

Meet MarkUp.io It lets you draw on any webpage with a variety of tools to express your thoughts, make a point or just simply edit. Just grab and drop the bookmarklet from the site to your bookmarks bar to use any time. Yes, no downloading needed! When you want to make notes on a webpage, click your bookmarklet to load the MarkUp toolbar. Publish when you’re ready to share your thoughts.

Seriously rad.  Lucky you for knowing me.  :)

Psst! I Tweeted about this one today, but loved it so much I thought it was worth a post. So here y’aar. :)

Assuming you haven’t been tweeting under a rock recently you’re prolly aware of Google’s aggressive run at the local business market. (Its Places offering and Interior store view endeavor for example). And as geolocation departs from trend to basic need and digital desire many a digerati have found themselves hunting for more out of the geo-apps they rely on. (Personally, I’ve been using Foursquare by proxy through Instagram because of its robust photo sharing feature, for example).

Well get ready peeps! Local is heating up fast and Google isn’t the only one looking to give a simple, smart and social kick in the arse to the run of the mill location model. Meet What Spot Now. It’s bound to be on the tip of your tongue a few times this year. (And lets face it, I’m right about these things.  :) )

Unlike any other location-based app on the market, What Spot Now? combines software and hardware to help patrons both save money and discover new places to hang out – discovery not based on hearsay, but reality — through its trademarked “SpotCams” mounted inside neighborhood venues. (How flippin’ awesome would it be to get a quick stream (or photo set, even!) of a potential spot on your hit-list?) You can! If you live in Portland. :)

WSN currently has 11 Portland locations you can view from your phone before leaving your home. Portland residents will recognize such names as Saucebox Café & Bar, Bridgeport Brewing Company: Brewpub, 23 Hoyt Restaurant & Bar, The Someday Lounge, Schmizza Pub & Grub, Backspace, On Deck Sports Bar & Grill, Bo Restobar, Bailey’s Taproom, La Costita on Barbur, and the Crown Room.

Im big on this one, Portland. You’re privy to exciting technology that might very well change the way patrons and venues think about the age-old concept of “happy hour”.

Kudos to Spotlight Mobile. WSN is a slick way to discover nearby venues and a practical alternative to the location-sharing services offered by Foursquare or Facebook. Its a sure hit if you can keep that WiFi network in place. Keep it comin’.

Alrighty. I was browsin’ the interwebs looking for a few new ways to discover music because welp, my collection sucks. And after a pile of usual (and not so usual suspects) I found a few that are pure awesome. Longer post on the lot of them coming, but for now meet my new favorite way of discovering music - Shuffler. Internet-radio made by music blogs. (Think Blip.fm but (you do know what Blip is, right?) but across the internet instead of locked in one site.

Huh? Think of it this way. You’re channel surfing the music web. The web is your player, bloggers are your dj’s. It’s rad. I wish I thought of it. It leverages the Mesh. It’s Simple Smart and Social. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve have some new music to go listen to.

Mercedes-Benz just announced a new app that connects its in-car navigation systems with its customers’ iPhones. Mbrace version 2.0 still lets drivers unlock their vehicles and, more importantly, find it in a crowded parking lot while adding location-based personal assistance ranging from entertainment, restaurant, directions, and traffic updates via Mercedes-Benz’s Concierge service — assuming you’re are an mbrace PLUS customer. Destination information is then fired off directly to your in-vehicle navigation system to get you there. The updated app also includes enhanced Roadside Assistance that transmits the driver’s location whenever a call is initiated.

I got a bit tired of my Apple TV last year and decided to hack the Boxee Beta onto it (among other things). The promise of a Boxee set-top box was amazing. I had played with the app on my computer for some time, and it worked fairly well when I installed it on my laptop. I figured the jump to Apple TV would be just as good an experience. Nope. Well, maybe that’s too harsh. It worked pretty well at first. But over time it became sluggish, unresponsive, and would crash more than actually do what it was supposed to. Par for the course for Beta stuff, I suppose.

All in all, though it was a great conversation piece in the home, and really demonstrated for me how close we really are to completely transitioning from clips on your ‘puter to clips wherever you want them. Then YESTERDAY I got fed up enough with it crashing, etc I decided to reset my Apple TV and updated it to the latest Apple firmware. I gotta say - I love it all over again. It’s not quite Boxee, but I seriously love my Apple TV. Good news!

better news

Holy shit balls, look at this little gift from our friends at Boxee. A clever, handsome, useful piece of hardware that promises to work just like the Boxee app (and then some).

Getting the awesome web-to-TV software, set up in your living room used to be a headache if not disfunctional. Not anymore thanks to the Boxee Box (around $200; Q1 2010). This angled wonder lets you consume all the free movies, TV shows and music from the internet, all from your couch — and hooks it up to your system with just a single HDMI cable. Like the standard Boxee software, it also sucks in your own videos, music and photos, playing just about any media format that still resides on your broken down laptop. I’m in. Santa, you listening?

:)

I just found a great explanation of it online. It’s everything you need to know about “the cloud” but were afraid to ask. And now I’m posting it here for you. Go ahead. Print it out. Take it with you. Whatever you want. Just uh, next time ASK when you don’t understand something, OK? Geez.

The latest Did You Know video will blow your mind with interesting facts and figures about the social web and how it’s changed your world.  Here’s a uber-post of all of them, starting with the latest (version 4). (Also, see below for some screen grabs if you don’t have the time to watch).

Version 3:

According to Digital Inspiration, This video is part of the popular “Did You Know” series that originally started out as a PowerPoint presentation [Shift Happens} and, once people caught on, the presentation was converted into a video by xplane. You can watch all the previous versions of the “Did You Know” series here or download source presentations and high-res videos from the Shift Happens wiki.

Version 2:

And finally, Version 1:

Screen grabs:

360° video isn’t new, necessarily (there are a lot of programmers who have done created similar executions). But this is the first time I’ve really seen making video like this get so accessible, so quickly.

Meet Yellowbird. BTW, their URL is “yellowbirdsdonthavewingsbuttheyflytomakeyouexperiencea3dreality.com” (which is awesome in it’s own right).

By using a Google Streetview-like camera, a system with six lenses, not as a photo but as a video camera, an all-encompassing picture is captured. From the point where the images were recorded, the viewer can look in any direction, let his eyes wander through the crowd, or stare at the ground or the air, which makes viewing a video an experience without boundaries.

Oh, and as soon you figure out how to strap your 6 iPhones together with Duct Tape, you’ll even be able to embed and share all your 360 videos with your nerdy, jealous friends.

You’re welcome. :)