Group items tagged

"Ingress, the Alternate/Augmented Reality (AR) game from Google's Niantic Labs, is a major evolution of mobile gaming. Apparently, it's also a good way to get arrested. According to a post on Reddit (I know, I know - but stay with me on this), an Ingress player in Ohio was detained by police for his in-game actions. Specifically, he was "hacking a portal" near a police station. His phone had technical difficulties, which led him to linger by the portal/police station for a bit, catching the eye of local law enforcement and leading to the detention. After the original post, other Ingress players responded with similar stories. One aroused suspicions by wandering around an empty parking lot at night. Another, trying to hack a portal next to an air traffic control station, had to run from the local sheriff. A third was called in for questioning after hacking a portal outside of a "high-traffic drug area.""

Mercedes will begin to place QR codes onto all of their cars, which will provide all necessary information to rescue injured occupants from any model. This new QR code system will give firefighters, paramedics, and police the details they need to know to help passengers, including the location of airbags, gas tanks, and electric cables. These QR codes will be placed on the gas tank flap and another will be placed on the opposite side of the car.

But if we have learned anything in the last few years, it is that traditional media are now only in charge of part of the story. There is a paucity of facts and an excess of processing power because everyone with a keyboard is theoretically a creator and distributor of content. Most of those efforts begin from behind a firmly established battle line, then row backward to find the facts that they need. Was that a dark spot on the back of George Zimmerman's head in the grainy police video, or evidence of a beat-down? We retweet and "like" what we agree with and dismiss the rest. As if the overheated cable news debate weren't enough, social media are fueling the story with misinformation, along with incendiary calls to action. There is a Twitter account called "@killzimmerman" that suggested George Zimmerman needed to be "shot dead in the street." On Twitter, the movie director Spike Lee passed on what he thought was Mr. Zimmerman's address, but it was wrong and an elderly couple was forced to flee from their home. And what if Mr. Lee had gotten it right? (Mr. Lee has since apologized and reached a settlement with the couple.)

12.2

David Vladeck, the man in charge of policing the internet for the Federal Trade Commission, gave a presentation Monday at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's conference on networks and exchanges in New York.

Waze draws data on roads and traffic by analysing collective data from its users, while also enabling them to actively submit reports on accidents, police traps and other blockages. The company has shown off its crowdsourced data with YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) videos like this one for Los Angeles:

daily 6.18, ill tag more thoroughly later, sorry!

"On March 21, 2011, my MacBook was stolen from my apartment in Oakland, CA. I reported the crime to the police and even told them where it was, but they couldn't help me due to lack of resources. Meanwhile, I'm using the awesome app, Hidden, to capture these photos of this guy who has my MacBook."