Carmageddon is poised to bring Los Angeles to a standstill this weekend, but several mobile tech companies are helping commuters handle the chaos.
Carmageddon is the term many Los Angeles residents are using to describe the planned closure of the 405 Freeway, a road that carries more than 280,000 cars per day across L.A. The city of Los Angeles plans to close a 10-mile section of Interstate 405, starting at 7 p.m. Friday and reopening at 6 a.m. Monday.
The 405 closure is expected to bring the city’s traffic to a crawl. Many business are shutting down early so their employees don’t get caught in the traffic, while others like the Getty Center are closing entirely for the weekend. The entire city will be affected.
While some companies are dreading the upcoming weekend, several companies are seizing Carmageddon as an opportunity. Mobile traffic app Waze, for example, has teamed up with ABC to provide its local L.A. television station (KABC-TV) realtime traffic information. Waze determines traffic conditions by tracking the GPS data provided by the 4.5 million users of its mobile app, which provides greater detail and insight into a city’s traffic conditions.
Waze has also partnered with UCLA, Metro and other others “to get the word out about alternate routes.” It’s even started a website, BeatCarmageddon.com as part of its campaign.
AT&T is also helping commuters avoid the pain of Carmageddon. The wireless provider will be sending text messages to AT&T customers within 25 miles of the Carmageddon zone, warning them of the closure and suggesting they use a navigation app like AT&T Navigator.
While these initiatives aren’t going to help Los Angeles residents avoid Carmageddon (there is no avoiding it), smartphone technology will likely give smart commuters an edge as they try to navigate L.A.’s congested roads.
Image courtesy of Flickr, neoporcupine
More About: att, Carmageddon, L.A., Los Angeles, Mobile 2.0, waze
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What does it feel like to fly like a bird by using a jet-propelled wing? Only one man on Earth knows, and he shared his story with the crowd at TED Global in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Tuesday.
Yves Rossy’s invention allows him to fly by attaching to his back a four-engine jet suit with wings, which he starts up after jumping out of a helicopter or plane.
Unlike similar aircraft, Rossy’s has no steering controls. Rather, he uses his body to steer — arching his back gains altitude and pushing his shoulders forward sends him into a dive. “If you put steering in it’s more like an airplane. … I wanted to keep freedom of movement,” Rossy told the TED Global crowd.
Traveling at speeds of up to 190 miles per hour and a height of 3,000 meters, the aircraft can stay in the air for about 10 minutes, which was enough time for Rossy to cross the English Channel. He also recently flew above the Grand Canyon.
The device isn’t quite ready for mass consumption, however. Rossy, who served as both a commercial and military pilot earlier in his life, has had to use the wing’s escape parachute about 20 times — sometimes after becoming disoriented in the clouds, others after more than one of the engines fails.
Rossy, who does hope that one day his invention or something like it could be used by anyone, summarized the experience by saying, “I don’t have feathers, but I feel like a bird sometimes. It’s an unreal feeling.”
You can check what one of his flights and invention look like in the video below from his Grand Canyon mission:
Image courtesy of James Duncan Davidson / TED
More About: aviation, TED, ted global, yves rossy
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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Name: Percolate
Quick Pitch: Percolate bubbles up relevant content for you to comment on.
Genius Idea: Re-imagining the blog and what it means to be a publisher.
Content creation abounds on the web, whether it be on blogs, Facebook, Twitter or via other self-publishing tools. Still, James Gross and Noah Brier, co-founders of private alpha startup Percolate, believe that the barrier to create content is too high for most people.
It’s fitting, then, that the Percolate product is designed to streamline the flow between what we consume on the web and what we produce.
The application is structured into a two-pane dashboard that presents the user with content “percolating” — or bubbling up in popularity — from sources such as Google Reader and Twitter in a right-hard pane called the “The Brew.”
The Brew is meant to be your muse, a place to peruse hot stories and get inspired to add your own commentary. Here you can tag a post as “interesting,” “win,” “awesome,” “fail” or make up a tag of your own, and add a comment in the process. In so doing, as Gross sees it, you become self-publisher with as little friction imaginable.
To the left of The Brew is the second “What’s Percolating” pane. This is where Percolate-published stories from the folks you follow will appear.
Ultimately, Gross sees Percolate as the next big evolution of the blog. Twitter first transformed blogging by shrinking the big empty box, he says. Now Percolate is taking the box away completely.
It’s an ambitious mission, no question, but Gross and Brier may be able to pull it off. For starters, Percolate in its current form is just an early-stage, 1.0 product. Its pane design hints at a not-too-distant mobile future where users will able to browse and create content with their fingers in touch-driven environments.
Percolate’s primary flaw is that the intended experience does not automatically manifest itself to new users. “Just like Twitter, until you start to follow other people, it doesn’t make any sense,” Gross admits.
Gross and team hope to address the on-boarding obstacle in the months ahead. The bootstrapped startup also plans to announce that five Fortune 500 businesses are licensing its API, at a cost, some time in August. API license fees will be the startup’s moneymaker, as Gross sees huge opportunity in helping brands figure out how to create content and become better publishers in their social channels.
Percolate is still mid-brew, but 500 Mashable readers can get private beta access to the product now.
Image courtesy of Flickr, pkhamre
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
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Sevenly is bringing social good to online shopping by selling a new T-shirt each week designed for a partner non-profit. Each shirt will be available for seven days, with $7 from each sale going towards the charity.
Like TOMS shoes, Sevenly is embarking on philanthropic ecommerce. Where TOMS shoes on a one-for-one model (every pair of shoes purchased also donates a new pair to a person in need), Sevenly is pairing up donation and design in a social way.
Sevenly is based on a model where (hopefully) everyone who buys a t-shirt will share their purchase on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media profiles, thereby creating a chain of giving and cool shirts.
Co-founders Dale Partridge and Aaron Chavez were motivated to create the site after seeing the amount of worthy non-profits that shut down within their first year open. The problem isn’t apathy so much as a lack of following, funding and awareness.
Partridge hopes Sevenly’s model will address all three of those challenges, helping new organizations stay afloat. “People just wanted to help and they had no practical way of giving,” Partridge says. “Clicking the donate button on a charity’s website doesn’t work for our generation.”
During its starting period, Sevenly is partnering with more established organizations in order to build their own brand reputation. Their first partnership with International Justice Mission raised $6,125 by selling 875 shirts. Each shirt’s sale provided care for one day for a girl rescued from the sex trade.
This week’s design benefits World Relief, an organization aiding raped and abused women in the Congo. The shirt comes in grey for men and white for women and costs $24.
Later this summer, Sevenly plans to shoot videos in the countries they’ve benefited, showing their supporters how that t-shirt money has been put to good use. A planned partnership with Malaria No More will hopefully lend some celebrity star power to the site and its mission.
Does a good cause make you more likely to buy a t-shirt? Let us know in the comments.
More About: non-profit, sevenly, shirt, social entrepreneurship, social good, social media, startup, t-shirt
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Grammy Award-winning musician Imogen Heap used her time on the TED Global stage on Tuesday in Edinburgh, Scotland to not just perform, but to demonstrate an entirely new way of creating music.
Using a pair of gloves equipped with wireless mics, an accelerometer, a magnetometer, a gyroscope and a variety of other sensors, Heap created a song on the fly — complete with sounds from a multitude of instruments and effects — using only her body movements and hand gestures.
The performance was more than two and a half years in the making, the culmination of a project that Heap first became interested in after seeing the beginnings of such technology at MIT. In an interview with Mashable afterwards, Heap told me she wanted to use body movement to create music so she could “communicate the hidden 50% of the performance.”
Those movements include, for example, the ability to record a loop by opening her hand, filtering sound by bringing her hands together and panning by pointing in the desired direction. Volume can also be manipulated with some fitting gestures — a “shh” movement initiates quiet mode and a horn sign prompts “rock out mode.” The sensors that Heap’s gloves are equipped with send the movement data back to a computer that then blends it all together to create a relatively robust piece of music in real-time.
Seeing is most certainly believing in the case of Heap’s gloves, and the artist now plans to start using the gloves with some regularity during performances. Ultimately, however, she wants to be able to add features that would enable her to create an entire 60-90 minute performance “walking on stage with nothing but the gloves,” she said.
Enhancements that would enable that to become a reality include the ability to play a wider variety of instruments using hand gestures, let multiple musicians performance simultaneously (like a drummer) and the ability to let the audience participate in song creation. Thinking even further out, Heap told me she wants to be able to, “invite fans on stage … and let them be a part of the performance from their own bedroom,” by leveraging connected gloves and hologram technology.
Of course, that would require the gloves to become more than a one-of-a-kind item, but Heap says she’s been thinking about how to do that in the wake of the response so far. Commercializing them isn’t her primary goal, but she says she’d be very excited to see how it can empower other artists.
“I love the idea that you can buy a pair of these gloves … be connected to an iPhone app … and capture sound on the street and start making beats while you’re waiting at the bus stop … and upload that to a database,” she said.
Image courtesy of James Ducan Davidson / TED
More About: imogen heap, music, TED, tedglobal
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Already using Google+? Follow Mashable News for the latest about the platform’s new features, tips and tricks as well as our top social media and technology updates.
Are you addicted to Google+ like millions of others early adopters? Do you spend your Saturday nights hanging out in Google+ Hangouts?
You’re not alone. As Google releases more invites to its social network, more people are trying to learn the ins-and-outs of the Google+ ecosystem. We’ve already taught you how to upload iPhone photos to Google+, make a Google+ desktop app and get your own Google+ vanity URL, but there’s still a lot to Google+ ewe haven’t mastered yt.
That’s why we were excited when we stumbled across a Google+ cheat sheet, whose origin we’ve traced to Google+ user Simon Laustsen. The cheat sheet includes most of the common syntax, hotkeys and tips you need to know to use Google+ like a pro.
We’ve embedded the English version of the cheat sheet below. If you’re one of our many international readers, we have good news for you: it’s been translated into a dozen languages already.
[via Buzzfeed]
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“C.I.A. John,” the AP-profiled analyst-of-mystery responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden for more than a decade, has been spotted in a photo posted to the White House’s Flickr account.
The Observer now claims to have used the photo to identify John — John is his middle name — though it has yet to publish his full name. In exchange for keeping mum, The Observer reporter Aaron Gell was granted off-the-record conversations with John’s associates.
“An acquaintance volunteered that he recognized the man in the photo and proceeded to put a name to the face,” Gell writes of the identification. “A few web searches turned up details of the man’s personal life. In college, he’d played basketball. No superstar by any means — he was mostly a practice player — he’d been aggressive enough to catch the eye of the team’s coach, who later spoke glowingly of John’s unusual shooting style.”
The photo at the center of the accidental reveal is one of the now famous behind-the-scenes Situation Room photos the White House uploaded to Flickr in the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death.
“C.I.A. John” makes an appearance in two of these photos, one clearly depicts the proclaimed hero standing tall in the back of the room, behind Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta, with his eyes shut as President Obama addresses members of the national security team on May 1, 2011.
How do we know that this is, in fact, “C.I.A. John”, the man the Associated Press calls the most important person in the hunt for bin Laden? As The Observer notes, “the story also dangled a more tantalizing clue.”
That clue actually comes in the second paragraph of the piece. “Hidden from view, standing just outside the frame of that now-famous photograph was a career CIA analyst,” the AP reveals.
After the AP piece was published on Tuesday, July 5, Cryptome’s John Young took just nine hours to locate John in the photos.
“He did it with the sort of simple deductive reasoning that wouldn’t be out of place in a Miss Marple novel,” Gell writes. “It seems that although the man’s face was cropped out of the famous Situation Room photo, his pale yellow necktie was not. He also appeared to be unusually tall. The White House, as part of an all-out effort to trumpet its signature intelligence triumph, had released a number of photos on that day to media outlets around the world. Mr. Young simply checked the administration’s Flickr feed for shots of a man with the same build and taste in neckwear.”
Now, John’s appearance in the official press photos is raising questions as to whether the White House intended its hero to be publicly celebrated after all. Some, like Young, believe this incident to be intentional, while others will find this to be an epic blunder of an administration that has been perhaps too avant garde in its approach to social media.
The White House Situation Room Flickr Photos
Obama in the Situation Room
President Barack Obama makes a point during one in a series of meetings in the Situation Room of the White House discussing the mission against Osama bin Laden, May 1, 2011. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon is pictured at right. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
Obama in the Situation Room
President Barack Obama listens during one in a series of meetings discussing the mission against Osama bin Laden, in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
Preparing to Address the Nation
President Barack Obama talks on the phone in the Oval Office before making a statement to the media about the mission against Osama bin Laden, May 1, 2011. The President made a series of calls, including to Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and others, to inform them of the successful mission. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
Preparing to Address the Nation
President Barack Obama edits his remarks in the Oval Office prior to making a televised statement detailing the mission against Osama bin Laden, May 1, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
Obama and Staff in the Situation Room
President Barack Obama talks with members of the national security team at the conclusion of one in a series of meetings discussing the mission against Osama bin Laden, in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
Obama and Staff in the Situation Room
Staffers get a key update on the progress of the bin Laden compound raid. A confidential document has been pixelated in the foreground.
More About: C.I.A. John, flickr, osama bin laden, president obama, social media, the observer, White House
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Sanjay Dholakia is CEO of Crowd Factory, the leading provider of crowd-powered marketing applications that add a quantifiable social boost to every digital interaction.
Nearly every brand has realized that integrating social elements into most or all of its marketing programs is essential. Companies are also thinking about social media as an integrated element that spans all of its campaigns and channels – not as its own silo. But enabling people to share a campaign with friends is only half the battle; you’ve got to give them a compelling reason to socialize.
Here are five creative ways to motivate social sharing. We’ll provide insights as to how you can structure campaigns to encourage more people to share, alongside examples of brands that are getting it right.
1. Increase the Payoff When People Share More
With the advent of DIY group deals, you can create campaigns in which the more people share among themselves, the more they all save. The idea of collective benefit also plays to team dynamics: people will mobilize when lots of folks can get a benefit.
Oscar Mayer’s recent program for its new Oscar Mayer Selects hot dogs provides a good example. Oscar Mayer offers consumers a coupon to try the product, and encourages them to come back to share a “Taste-a-Monial” (essentially their personal review of Selects Hot Dogs) to get a second coupon. But this second coupon is progressive in nature: for every 5,000 people who share their Taste-a-Monial, the value of the coupon will increase by $0.50. The value continues to increase until the deal becomes a free pack of hot dogs, or until the promotion ends on August 15. At that point, everyone who shared a Taste-a-Monial will be rewarded their coupon.
Snoop Dogg made headlines recently for the progressive group deals he runs from his Facebook page’s “Shop Snoop Now” ecommerce tab. Each day, one product is featured for a special group deal – the more “Likes” the product gets, the lower the price for the product.
2. Give Them Something Exclusive
Giving people something unique or exclusive in return for sharing can be a powerful motivator — we all want to feel privy to something special.
For example, in a recent campaign to build awareness for recording artist Cady Groves, RCA offered fans a free song download for registering on the Cady Groves website. RCA also incentivized fans to share Cady’s music with their friends by offering a free merchandise pack to every fan who convinces five people to download the song.
Many brands are also rewarding fans by providing early access to content. For example, a big trend we’re seeing in the music industry is “share to reveal,” where fans get advance access to music videos or song tracks in return for sharing with friends.
3. Appeal to Their Altruism
People are inherently good. If you make it easy for them to help, they often will — and your brand will get a major boost along the way.
For example, Clarisonic recently ran a fundraising campaign for “Look Good, Feel Better,” a program that helps women battling cancer cope with treatment-related skin changes and hair loss. It contributed a $1 donation for each new “Like” on its Facebook page. The campaign made it fun and easy to share the program with friends by designing different “calls to action” that visitors could choose to share. As a result, Clarisonic generated over 30,000 new Likes on the page.
Of course, many fans will share simply because they love the cause and want to spread the word — so make sure you’ve at least added social elements to all your customer touch points.
4. Let Fans Help Create the Offer
Giving fans the ability to choose which version of a product should be offered, or to vote for the discounts or special offers they want to receive, helps ensure they’ll share it. For example, HarperCollins’ Bookperk website, which keeps readers up to date on new books and special deals, lets members select which books will be offered at a discount. Once members have chosen a book, they have the option to log into Facebook and share their selection with friends, therefore spreading the word about the discount.
5. Identify, Recognize and Reward Superfans
Humans are inherently social beings, and like to be recognized for their expertise and achievements. Recognition can be a powerful motivator for social activity.
In the Cady Groves example mentioned above, not only was the campaign successful in getting many fans to share with their friends, but furthermore, quite a few “superfans” took sharing to the next level. They generated their own tweets, direct messages and Facebook posts. Some individuals managed to recruit several hundred new fans to the Cady Groves website and Facebook page.
These superfans aren’t necessarily motivated by the incentive; they’re interested in promoting the artist, getting free merchandise for their friends and establishing their reputation as someone in the know. Smart marketers will look to identify and reward these superfans on an ongoing basis, and further provide them with ways to carry on their message.
Once you’ve identified your superfans, make them part of your marketing mix. Give them preferential or early access to new items, and reward them with recognition on your Facebook page, Twitter or your website.
Whatever your methods, find a way to incorporate a social element into every marketing campaign you run by finding compelling reasons for people to share. That’ll make every dollar you spend on marketing look like two.
Disclosure: Cady Groves and HarperCollins are clients of the author’s company.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Anne Helmond.
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When Netflix announced an end to its popular $9.99 plan for one DVD at a time and streaming service earlier today, the company was taking a giant gamble. Users who want the same service, as of this fall, will have to pay two monthly fees: $7.99 for streaming, as well as $7.99 for one-at-a-time DVDs. That adds up to a 60% price hike.
So is that enough to make you dump the service? Will you switch to streaming only and save a few bucks a month? Or will you try some other combination, like Netflix for DVDs and Hulu Plus for streaming content? Sound off in our poll, and let us know in the comments if there are other options we’ve missed.
Will You Stick With Netflix Now It Has Hiked its DVD & Streaming Rate?
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In addition to acting, investing in various apps and heading up a philanthropic foundation, Ashton Kutcher is also reportedly getting into magazine publishing. The actor will be gracing the cover of the September issue of Details magazine, as well as creating an online-only bonus edition.
Industry sources inform us that the magazine’s September issue will include an online-only companion that can be accessed via Facebook and Flipboard (which Kutcher invested in). The issue is free, and will include content curated by Ashton Kutcher — apps, entertainment, styling products and so on.
Although the social issue seems an intriguing idea, Details has yet to launch a magazine iPad app, which seems a more natural venue for such an edition. The first iPad issue is slated to be released this fall.
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