A group of Belgian researchers has come up with a novel way (pdf) of mapping the distribution of wealth in Côte d’Ivoire—by looking at purchases of mobile airtime minutes. After combing reams of data on individual purchases from a national mobile operator (unnamed in their report), they discovered that, in a country where prepaid phones dominate, there are basically two kinds of airtime buyers: those who make big infrequent purchases, filling up on minutes, and those who buy fewer minutes more regularly.
Archives for October 2013
T-Mobile offers U.S. tablet owners free data service
Wireless provider T-Mobile will give U.S. owners of iPads and other tablet computers free data service for life as part of an effort to broaden its customer base beyond phones.
The free service would be limited to 200 megabytes of high-speed data per month — enough to upload about 800 Instagram photos or listen to more than three hours of streaming music, the company said.
Why GPS eats so much battery power, explained by a Google engineer
NAVSTAR satellite, ready to join up with at least two others to drain your phone.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
File this under “blog posts that mostly just point at a thing and ask you to look at/click them”: a Quora answer to the question of why GPS eats so much more battery life, so much more rapidly, than anything else on your phone (other than flashlight apps, that is).
Two New Challenges for Developers Participating in the Apps4Halifax Contest
Access mapping technology, data and content that can be used with Halifax’s open data to build innovative Web apps for a chance to win great prizes. Esri Canada, which provides geographic information system (GIS) solutions, has launched a new Web site (apps4halifax.maps.arcgis.com) designed specifically for Apps4Halifax, the open data app development contest hosted by the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) as part of their Open Data Pilot Project. [Read more…]
How to Turn Off Location Data for Photos in iOS 7
Every photo that you take with any camera comes with what’s called EXIF data, which consists of the settings used for taking the photo (shutter speed, aperture, etc), as well as the date and time the photo was taken. Furthermore, if your camera has GPS built-in, it has the ability to store the location of where the photo was taken, right down to the exact coordinates.
Google Maps tricks out iOS app with more navigation features
Google Maps updated its iOS app on Tuesday with new route and traffic features. According to Google, the update brings “faster access to navigation,” “tips and tricks” for beginning users, and support for Arabic and Hebrew.
To Boldly go Where no Pumpkin has Gone Before!
Total Produce launches the video “Pumpkins In Space!” to celebrate their new Smartphone App, the “TOP Fruit Hub”
Halloween is famous for pumpkins, but one Irish grown pumpkin called ‘Patches’ is destined to become infamous following his amazing journey into space! Not content with resting on someone’s doorstep or sitting on a window sill, Patches is a pumpkin destined for a higher calling.
Opera Mobile Store triples the number of apps, monthly visitors grow 63%
Cross-platform mobile app store now serves 140,000 apps to 75M monthly visitors — The Opera Mobile Store provides more than 75 million monthly visitors, an increase of 63%, with mobile apps and games across most platforms, including Android, Java, BlackBerry, Symbian and iOS. [Read more…]
Google tries to bring business data down to earth with Google Maps Engine Pro
Google Apps for Business is getting a new entry today, in the form of Google Maps. At an event at Google’s San Francisco office, VP of Google Maps Brian McClendon and his team just announced Google Maps Engine Pro, a tool that the company says will let companies of any size help plot any location data they want to Google Maps. At a high level, it lets users import a spreadsheet of data and view it on Google Maps — the company says it’ll be a more intuitive way to make sense of data in relation to real-world surroundings rather than in the columns of a spreadsheet.
Apple’s new OS X Mavericks makes it harder for NSA to snoop
Top-secret documents disclosed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden have exposed an array of programs that put the digital privacy of computer users at risk. But as security concerns continue to amount, the industry appears to be answering. Some are now making that argument, at least, after experts became aware of a fix in Apple’s newest operating system that stifles at least one of the National Security Agency programs made public through unauthorized leaks attributed to Mr. Snowden.