Archive for the ‘Real-Time Information’ Category
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
Once again, another useful resource from the Sunlight Foundation. It’s easy to see how this app could easily be fee-based but, via the Sunlight Foundation, the app is free.
Word of a new iPhone app from Sunlight Labs/Foundation named Real Time Congress.
We want to make data about what’s happening inside Congress more available to the public. It isn’t just who your member of Congress is that matters, but also what they do. It’s also important to see what they’re reading and who they’re listening to, and what the process looks like.
Our new app, Real Time Congress does just that for the iPhone. It doesn’t care so much about who your rep is as it does what they do. Inside the app you can follow live floor proceedings of both chambers of Congress. You can get leaked CRS reports to see what your representatives are reading on the hill, and if you’re on Capitol Hill (or just an avid C-SPAN viewer), you can get a schedule of upcoming hearings from the House and the Senate.
Note: The CRS Reports listed are just some of what’s available sources like OpenCRS. Remember, the report you’re reading might not be the most current version of the report available. Be careful. That said, it’s still great to have some CRS reports iPhone ready.
Other Reports Available via Real Time Congress Come From:
+ GAO
+ OMB Memos
+ Democratic Policy Committee
+ Republic Policy Committee
+ Joint Committee on Taxation Reports
+ CBO
+ Statements of Administration Policy
+ Statements of Republican Policy
The News Section of the App Includes Headlines From:
+ Roll Call
+ Politico
+ Open Congress
+ The Page
+ New York Times
+ The Hill
Source: Sunlight Labs
Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Real-Time Information, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »
Monday, December 14th, 2009
FlightCaster is a resource (an iPhone app is also available) that takes data from numerous sources (real-time, historical) and issues a prediction as to how early, on-time, or late a flight is going to be. The company explains the service this way:
FlightCaster takes data from multiple sources – some historical, some real-time – and crunches them in a database with a patent-pending algorithm and process. We use 10-years of flight data along with current and near-term forecasted conditions to establish likely delay factors and assess the impact they will have on your flight. Our results are based on predicted arrival delays – when you will pull into your arrival gate.
At the present time, the service only works for U.S. flights.
Using FlightCaster couldn’t be easier. Simply enter the flight info and click “FlightCast It.” You can access a specific flight by flight number and air carrier or by route. Here’s what a sample results page looks like.
The FAA has offered on-time and delay causes information for years but FlightCaster takes that info, combines it with more data and makes its prediction. In other words, it puts the government data to work.
Btw, FlightCaster is free to use.
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Real-Time Information, Resources | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
One of our favorite resources, both personal (to avoid traffic) and professional (to demo a truly real-time service) is TrafficLand.com. The service aggregates (usually by city or region) thousands of live traffic cameras from around the globe. It’s one thing to hear a traffic report that is likely a few minutes old versus a live camera at a specific location to quickly see what is going on.
Today, we learn that TrafficLand cameras will now be a part of Bing Maps.
From an Announcement (PDF):
TrafficLand developed a Microsoft Silverlight application for use within Bing Maps to display live traffic video from thousands of cameras showing real-time traffic, weather conditions and major news events. In addition, the TrafficLand application gives Bing Maps customers’ access to “Top Local Cameras.” This feature displays the most viewed cameras from TrafficLand.com, and serves as an indicator of important events (traffic/news/weather) that are of interest to customers.
+ To Access Bing Maps with TrafficLand, head to the Bing Maps Beta (You’ll Need To Have Silverlight Installed)
+ On the Left-Side of the Page, Look for an Arrow Pointing to the Right.
+ Click It
+ Select TrafficLand
+ TrafficLand Camera Icons will Be Visible Where They Are Available (Here’s a List of Cities)
+ Don’t Want to Access TrafficLand This Way? No Problem? Head to TrafficLand.com for Maps and a List of Available Cities.
Posted in Geographic, Real-Time Information | No Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
From a Blog Post
The summer flick “Transformers 2,” most agreed, was terrible. So naturally, one wonders: how much better would the movie be playing on the 2.6-inch screen of a mobile phone?
On Tuesday, mSpot, a five-year-old mobile entertainment company based in Palo Alto, Calif., will resolve that pressing question with a new service making full-length feature movies available on demand to 40 million cellphone subscribers. Owners of 30 different high-end phones, including the iPhone, Palm Pre, BlackBerry Tour and Storm, on all four wireless carriers, will now be able to enter m.mSpot.com into their phone browser for the pleasure of streaming what the company promises will be an expanding roster of films.
The company says it has signed deals with Paramount Studios, Universal Pictures and the Weinstein Company. It also says it is in talks with the other major studios. Movies will be available a few weeks after they become available on DVD, just as the pay-per-view movies are.
The rental charge is $4.99 per film. The amount of time you have to view the film varies by film and studio. At the present time, the service is only available in the U.S.
We wonder when services that offer downloadable digital movies to library patrons will begin doing the same thing. It was just a few weeks ago when nwe posted the Overdrive will begin offering over the air downloads of digital content with an iPhone app is in the works.
Source: Bits Blog (NY Times)
Posted in Real-Time Information, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
Matt McGee writes:
CrowdEye, one of the new Twitter-based real-time search engines that has launched this year, has just upgraded its service with several new features that will remind you of … Google? It’s true. The service now includes a PageRank-like measurement system, a customizable home page (sorta like iGoogle), and the ability to perform site: searches like you would on Google.
Matt continues to review (with screen caps) the new features including:
+ Personalized Home Page
+ CrowdEye Rank
+ Site: Searches
Source: Search Engine Land
Posted in Real-Time Information, Search Tools, Social Media, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
Matt McGee writes:
Surchur has been around for more than a year, but its recent facelift aims to take real-time search toward a new idea: real-time discovery.
[Snip]
…Surchur is going a lot further with its new home page. Founder Todd Hogan calls it a merger of real-time search with real-time discovery.
The home page is now positioned as a “Real-Time Board” that shows trending topics from Google Trends, Yahoo Buzz, Bing xRank, CNN Popular Stories, Twitter, and Technorati. This is the discovery aspect: There’s no need to search for what’s hot when Surchur is doing it already, and ranking what it finds from a number of sites. The hot terms are divided into two categories: Hot Topics, which is based on an overall score, and Catching Fire, which lists the fastest-growing terms. As you’d expect, there’s occasionally some overlap in the two categories.
Hogan says the Real-Time Board is updated every 20-50 minutes. For each term, it ranks the popularity on a scale of 1-10, with separate marks for how hot the term is on Twitter, in the blogosphere, and on Surchur itself. A fourth column reveals where Surchur found the hot term.
Access Surchur
Much more in the review (with screen caps) here.
Source: Search Engine Land
Posted in Real-Time Information, Search Tools, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Sunday, May 10th, 2009
From an E-Mail Update:
+ A location-aware homepage greets you with a real-time traffic summary for your city or most recently viewed city area
+ An enhanced easy-to-use interface gives you quick links to site features and content
+ New “Search Map” and “Browse Traffic” tabs allow you to easily find the information you need
+ One click “Save This Drive” buttons make it fast and easy to personalize your MyTraffic alerts
+ New, more detailed maps display color-coded traffic flow and new incident icons pinpoint hotspots
+ A real-time news ticker alerts you to severe incidents in your city
The NAVTEQ Traffic.com website is part of the NAVTEQ product family. And, as part of the new website design, you’ll see new links to NAVTEQ.com resources, as well as a new NAVTEQ Traffic.com logo.
In addition to new traffic features, you’ll find familiar traffic planning tools like “Check Your Drive Time” for traffic-informed alternate routes and driving directions.
To learn more about our new features, browse our Features overview webpage.
Direct to Traffic.com
Source: Traffic.com
See Also: Phone-Based Customized Traffic Reports at 1-866-My-Trafc
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Real-Time Information, Resources | No Comments »
Sunday, March 29th, 2009
From the Announcement:
Orb Networks today announced the availability of Orb Live Events, a customizable iPhone application that enables any content owner to broadcast their live content on these popular handsets. Live Events provides content owners with a proven iPhone player, already approved and available in Apple’s App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch. In contrast to using other solutions, which can cost millions and take months to implement, a content provider or broadcaster can get up and running in as little 24 hours with the Orb solution.
Learn More About Orb Live Events
Source: Orb
Posted in Real-Time Information, Social Media, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Friday, January 16th, 2009
From the News Article:
Here’s Web 2.0 at its finest: A Yahoo programmer has combined his own project, Yahoo BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service), with Twitter and Google App Engine to create a new way to determine what news is both new and important.
The service, called TweetNews, presents Yahoo news search results in a different way, using results from the same search on Twitter to determine what should get high placement, according to a blog posting about it by BOSS engineer Vik Singh.
Direct to Tweet News
Source: Webware
Posted in News Search, Real-Time Information, Search News, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
+ Eventbox (for Mac Users)
pack your social networks in one box
+ mulist
mulist is a web widget, where you can create any type of list you can think of
+ tweetAhead
Coming at the end of the month.
+ monitter
Real time, live twitter monitor and live twitter embed widget. It’s a twitter monitor, it lets you “monitter” the twitter world for a set of 3 keywords and watch what people are saying.
Source: MoMB & FeedMyApp
Posted in Real-Time Information, Social Media | No Comments »
Friday, November 7th, 2008
Pervasive Media: Delivering ‘the right thing in the moment’
21st Century lifestyles and business practices demand value delivery on the move and in many situations. An explosion in mobile services is being fuelled by the availability of powerful media-rich mobile devices and pervasive networking. Successful solutions in this high growth area will be those that can deliver ‘the right thing in the moment’. That is, high value services will be those that are tuned to the user’s situation and so deliver the best experience. Delivering the right thing in the moment changes the way content is consumed and the timing of its availability. It changes the use of space and time and so: the way the creative industries think about delivering content, the way advertisers think about just in time messaging and tracking; and the way information is accessed throughout an organization. This paper considers the implications for technology and application research. We describe the need for: an extensible and scaleable context framework with privacy, trust and security policies embedded; new modes of interface between the physical and the digital environment; and a programme that builds expertise amongst practitioners as the technology develops in its early stages.
+ Full Paper (PDF; 99 KB)
Source: HP Labs
Posted in Papers, Presentations, Reports, Real-Time Information, Source File, Web 2.0, Webcasts and Podcasts, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »
Monday, August 4th, 2008
From the article:
The Los Angeles Fire Department has been the toast of the blogosphere in recent weeks after its efforts at using the micro-blogging site Twitter came to light.
Twitter allows users to post short (140 characters or less) notes. The fire department uses Twitter to post information about fires or other emergencies that it is responding to. These messages are then sent to users signed up to receive the information on their mobile devices.
Source: PC World
Posted in Real-Time Information, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies, 2008
The PROFIT 100 table ranks the 100 fastest-growing companies in Canada by percentage revenue growth from 2002-07, while the Next 100 table features companies ranked from Nos. 101 to 200.
Sort tables by:
* Rank
* Alphabetical order
* Revenue 2002
* Revenue 2007
* Growth 2002-07 (%)
* Profit margin
* Employees (number of)
* Exports as % of sales
Source: Canadian Business
Posted in Business and Economics, Lists and Rankings, Papers, Presentations, Reports, Real-Time Information, Source File | Comments Off
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
From the NY Times article:
Microsoft on Thursday plans to introduce a Web-based service for driving directions that incorporates complex software models to help users avoid traffic jams.
The new service’s software technology, called Clearflow, was developed over the last five years by a group of artificial-intelligence researchers at the company’s Microsoft Research laboratories. It is an ambitious attempt to apply machine-learning techniques to the problem of traffic congestion. The system is intended to reflect the complex traffic interactions that occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets.
Source: NY Times
Posted in Real-Time Information, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
Two of these cams allow users to pan, zoom, etc.
+ Huntington Beach (Orange County), CA
2 cams.
+ Sydney Harbour, Australia
Tilt, pan, and zoom. Requires Flash and Java.
+ Niagara Falls, ON
4 cams including a tilt/pan cam. Streaming video also available.
Posted in Real-Time Information, Web 2.0, Webcam Collection | No Comments »
