Scientist Uses Google Earth to Find Ancient Ancestor

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hominid2.jpgAn anthropology professor from South Africa has successfully used Google Earth to find a new human ancestor.

To be exact, he found two partial skeletons, dating from between 1.78 and 1.95 million years ago, that belong to the species now known as Australopithecus sediba.

"Professor Lee Berger from Witswatersrand University in Johannesburg started to use Google Earth to map various known caves and fossil deposits identified by him and his colleagues over the past several decades," according to the Official Google Blog.

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Berger developed a correlation between the appearance of caves in satellite images and the presence of fossil deposits.cradleofhumanity2.jpg

He started with 130 cave sites in the region around the Cradle of Humankind area northwest of Johannesburg, and about 20 fossil deposits. Using Google Earth's high-resolution satellite imagery, he was able to identify 500 previously unidentified caves and fossil sites. It was at one of those sites he found the new hominid.

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Foursquare Enthusiasts Race to Check In at the North Pole

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Fifteen-year-old Parker Liataud and 44-year old David Newman are racing to be the first to check in at the North Pole via popular location-based service Foursquare

Liataud and Newman are leveraging recent hype around the platform to drive attention to pressing environmental issues in the Arctic region. Foursquare, in turn, has created a special Last Degree Badge (see above) for the mission, which is expected to conclude over the weekend.

Parker Liataud was the first to announce his expedition, which began on April 3. Liataud is a California native and a student at Eton College, an elite boarding school in the UK. If he succeeds in his mission, he will not only be the first to unlock the Last Degree Badge, he will also be one of the youngest people to ever ski to the Last Degree of the North Pole — period. General Electric is sponsoring Parker’s expedition as part of the company’s ecomagination initiative.

Liataud has used several social media channels to get the word out about his journey. He has set up a Facebook Page, The Last Degree, where fans can sign a virtual petition, guess Liataud’s arrival time at the North Pole and submit video pledges to reduce carbon footprint. Liataud is also posting updates to his Twitter account, YouTube channel and Flickr photostream.



Liataud’s Competition


His competitor, David Newman, is CEO of the largest motorcycle insurance company in the United Kingdom, Carole Nash. He has tethered a smartphone to a satellite phone to make sure he’ll be able to check in to Foursquare when he reaches the North Pole. Like Liataud, Newman has also set up a website, Flickr photostream and Twitter account to keep followers abreast of his whereabouts.

Unlike Liataud, however, Nash is walking to the Last Degree, rather than skiing. Newman is self-sponsored and is raising money on behalf of Riders for Health, a charity that provides motorcycle transportation for health workers in Africa, and a brain injury treatment center.

But who will be the first to complete the 60-mile trek from Stormy Barneo to the North Pole? It’s hard to say. Liataud, who is expected to arrive either tomorrow or the day after, tweeted at about 10 a.m. EST: “We’ve been drifting backwards at a ridiculous pace. At this stage we don’t know if we’re going to be able to get there.”
Four hours earlier, Newman tweeted that he had just arrived in Stormy Barneo.

What do you think of the competition? Have you read about other creative uses of social media for good causes? Please share them with us in the comments.



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Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter

Tags: foursquare, social good, social media

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Sneak Peek: Twitter’s “Huge Redesign” Is Coming [PIC]

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Now we know for certain: Twitter is working on a major redesign of its web interface. Twitter’s lead designer has just revealed a taste of what’s to come.

Doug Bowman, the head of Twitter’s design team, posted a teaser picture displaying the new interface. While it doesn’t reveal much, it does show that the profiles are being overhauled, and so are the stats that are displayed on profiles.

As you can see from the image, new stats displayed on profiles include the amount of days you have been on Twitter, the average number of tweets you send per day, and the percentage of @replies recently.

It’s not all that much of a look, but it definitely looks like there will be some big changes coming soon. What do you think of the new design? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: trending, twitter

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iPhone 4.0 OS Adds Multitasking and More

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At the Apple event today, Steve Jobs introduced the highly anticipated iPhone 4.0 OS. We’ve heard a lot of rumors about just what it will (and won’t) include, but now the cat is out of the bag. iPhone 4.0 OS will have more than 100 new user features but seven that the company is calling “tentpole” features are of particular importance.


Multitasking


Steve Jobs said at the event, “we weren’t first to the party, but we’re gonna be the best.” Multitasking is coning to the iPhone and it will be done in a way that doesn’t hinder performance or battery life. These are the two biggest issues that other mobile platforms that already support background processes face, so it makes sense that Apple wants to make sure these problems are addressed in its multitasking solution.

gdgt quotes Scott Forstall, SVP of iPhone software as saying:

“How are we adding multitasking while preserving battery life and performance. We looked at tens of thousands of apps in the app store, and we’ve distilled the services those apps need to run in the background. So we implemented those services, and we’re providing those services as APIs to developers so they can add multitasking while preserving battery life.”

He continues:

“We’re providing seven multitasking services. First: background audio streaming. Pandora is great, but until now if you left Pandora to go to another app, the music would stop. Not anymore!”

Tim Westergren from Pandora then demoed how Pandora will work in iPhone 4.0 OS, saying, “it’s s not an exaggeration to say that the iPhone has singlehandedly changed the trajectory of Pandora.”

Another popular app, Skype for iPhone, was also demonstrated on stage — showing how the OpenTable app can be accessed while on a live Skype call.

Background location is a new part of iPhone 4.0 OS. Background location will work with social apps and with turn-by-turn applications. In turn-by-turn apps, if you leave the app, it can still continue to track your location by GPS in the background. This can be heavy on power consumption, so it will likely be best used in the car.

Social apps also use location — with Loopt, Foursquare, Gowalla and others gaining in popularity. With social applications, Apple is taking privacy very seriously and is adding in an indicator to the status bar that will let you know if something is tracking your location or not.

Additionally, users will have control over what applications can use location and which apps can’t. This can be done on an app-by-app basis/

Push notifications were first introduced with iPhone 3.0 OS and have proved very popular, with more than 10 billion push notifications sent in the last nine months. Local notifications will be a new part of iPhone 4.0 OS.


Folders


Many have complained about Apple’s obstruction of any sort of file system layer. Although plenty of apps have utilized workarounds for a lack of file system access, it’s still a pain when attempting to manage data on your phone or iPad.

Folders will be added to iPhone 4.0 OS and they look very similar to Stacks from Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6. You can drag and drop apps onto one another to create application folders. This will take the number of maximum apps that you can visually see on your phone from 180 to 2160!


Mail


Mail is getting a total overhaul in iPhone 4.0 OS.First and foremost, Mail will now feature a unified inbox. For those of us who have several mail accounts on their iPad or iPhone, this is a great, great addition. Oh, and multiple Exchange accounts are supported too, so Google Apps and Exchanged users don’t have to play Sophie’s Choice with push mail anymore!

Mail can also now be organized by thread. Threaded conversations is something that no Apple mail product has, so this is a great, great addition.

Mail can now open attachments within Mail and have the file open in an app on the phone or iPad.


iBooks


iBooks came to the iPad last week. With iPhone 4.0 OS, it’s coming to the iPhone and iPod touch too. This is a clear sign that Apple is in the eBook space to play. They arguably have the largest install base of any eReading device on the market if you count iPhones, iPod touches and iPad devices.


Enterprise


The iPhone never really went after the enterprise phone market, instead, the enterprise came to Apple, by way of executives who wanted to the new hotness and IT guys and gals who had to suffer and find a way to fit the devices into their ecosystems.

Three years later, Apple is ready to really embrace the enterprise in a big way. The first step will be by building better email encryption. They’ll make the APIs available to developers and allow data to be encrypted inside their applications too.

Additionally, Apple is stepping up its mobile device management and deployment management tools. iPhone 4.0 OS also adds wireless app distribution for internal apps (a la BlackBerry’s BES) and support for SSL VPN.


Game Center


Despite Nintendo’s claims to the contrary, the iPhone platform is becoming a mobile powerhouse for gaming. Apple wants to make it even better by adding a social gaming network. Think XBox Live but for your iPhone or iPad.


iAd


Apple’s doing mobile advertising. Jobs says, “users like free apps, developers like to make some money.” iAd is designed to help them do that. However, this won’t be like existing solutions, because according to Jobs, “most [mobile] advertising sucks.” He’s got a point, the AdMob model leaves a lot to be desired.

Taking a wipe at Google he says,

“On a mobile device, search is not where it’s at, not like on the desktop. They’re spending all their time on these apps ‚Äî they’re using apps to get to data on the internet, not generalized search.”

“The average user spends over 30 minutes using apps on their phone. If we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that’d be 10 ads per device per day ‚Äî about the same as a TV show. We’re going to soon have 100m devices. That’s a billion ad opportunities per day!”

Essentially, Apple wants to bring the classic advertising model from television to applications. Because iAd is built into iPhone 4.0 OS, interactive video content can be included in an ad without ever taking the user out of the application.

Users can return to an app anytime they want and Apple thinks that users will be more interested in clicking on interactive ads if no penalty is involved for doing so. It’s true, if clicking on an ad won’t take me out of my application and disrupt what I’m doing, I’m going to be more likely t do it.

They’ll also split ad revenue with developers 60/40 (developers get 60%). In a demonstration, Jobs showed off how a game could be built into an ad.

Stay tuned to Mashable as we update this page with more information from the event as it happens


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Apples Introduces iAds: “Mobile Ads with Emotion”

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Apple has officially unveiled iAd, Apple’s new mobile advertising platform, the “seventh pillar” of the new iPhone OS 4.0.

The new iAd platform, which we learned about just two weeks ago, will be built directly into the iPhone OS interface. During today’s iPhone OS 4.0 reveal event at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, CA, Steve Jobs stated that the company is looking to change the face of advertising by focusing it within apps rather than search and is looking “to change the quality of the advertising as well.”

How will that work, you ask? Apple’s CEO pointed to what he believes to be a flaw of both standard online advertising and TV advertising: the combination of interaction and emotion. The key is that ads will keep users within the app, rather than take them out and onto a browser.


When you click on an iAd advertisement, it will take up the screen utilizing HTML5. Once it is open, you can explore the ad. Apple demoed an advertisement for Toy Story 3, which demonstrated the ability to not only see information about the movie, but watch trailers, play games, and more, all within the same application from which you launched the ad. You will even be able to buy products within ads.

Just like the iPhone app store, there will be a simple revenue split: developers will keep 60% of revenues rather than the 70% they keep for iPhone apps, though. In return, Apple will host and deliver all of the iAds.

We’ll bring you more about iAds as we learn more details.

Tags: admob, apple, Google, iAd, mobile advertising, Quattro Wireless


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I hope the rest of Europe will be smarter -> UK’s Digital Economy Bill approved. Democracy fails, social media wins

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UKs Digital Economy Bill approved. Democracy fails, social media wins

UKs Digital Economy Bill approved. Democracy fails, social media winsThe UK’s controversial Digital Economy Bill has tonight been voted into law by the House of Commons.

Among many other things, the Bill supports compulsory internet disconnection for persistent internet pirates and making owners of publicly accessible wi-fi hotspots liable for piracy committed on their connections.

Powers for copyright holders to force ISPs to block access to websites they say are hosting illegally copied files were toned down in the Bill’s third reading but if a court suspects piracy on site, it can still be blocked.

These are draconian measures that, with an internet connection becoming almost fundamental to life in the UK, will have a huge social impact. That the Bill will now become law has caused something of a stir amongst switched-on, net savvy people in the UK. While many of these people felt democracy failed tonight, social media was a big winner…

Democracy FAIL

Here’s basically what happened:

  1. A handful of MPs showed up to debate the Bill during its third reading. Most of them opposed parts of the Bill and thought that it needed more time to be debated after the General Election that takes place next month. Great points were made, including the fact that Wikileaks would be banned for hosting copyright infringing material, despite the fact that it operates for a wider social good, not for profit.
  2. Then the Bill was voted on. Lots more MPs who hadn’t been in the debate turned up and voted the way they’d been told to by their party whip.
  3. The Bill passed 189 for to 47 against. Oh, and 419 MPs didn’t even show up.

For an important bill with a huge impact on Britain’s future, that’s a shocking disappointment.

Social Media WIN

While many people will be disappointed with the result tonight, it’s shown how social media has the potential to improve transparency in government.

Firstly, thousands of people were following tonight’s events via the BBC’s live web video feed and discussing it on Twitter using the #debill hashtag. Several tweets made the point that politics would be very different if the House of Commons had a Twitter backchannel so MPs could see what the public really thought about what was happening.

This wouldn’t necessarily work all the time; not all bills attract quite as much interest from smart, tech savvy people. However, it was quite a spectacle to watch MPs speak on the video feed and then see a swarm of tweets instantly pass judgement on what was said. If those tweets were fed back somehow to the MPs, it truly would be democracy in action.

In the case of one MP, the tweets probably were getting through. Labour MP Tom Watson, a heavy Twitter user, was seen checking his iPhone during the debate. Could he have been following the #debill hashtag? On past form, we’d say it’s likely the answer is probably yes.

Watson showed himself to be one of the only voices in parliament to truly understand the new digital world, and the support for him in amongst those using the #debill hashtag was immense.

Once the debate was over and the voting was on, Watson started tweeting and he showed that he voted on his principles, not as he had been told to by the party whip…

UKs Digital Economy Bill approved. Democracy fails, social media wins

Breaking whip is a big deal for MPs. To admit it on Twitter so emotively is a significant move by Watson. If only more MPs were so candid.

Meanwhile, over 3000 people have so far chosen to “not recognise” the Digital Economy Bill using a site called What Digital Economy Bill? It’s a valid form of protest, although we’re pretty sure the courts won’t take that as a defence when they cut off your internet connection!

Original title and link for this post: UK’s Digital Economy Bill approved. Democracy fails, social media wins

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