New York City is gearing up for any hurricanes that might come its way this year. The mayor’s office has begun installing free solar charging stations for smartphones around the city in a move to help make it easier for victims of a storm to charge up devices.

Reuters has more: “The Street Charge stations are New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s latest answer to flaws in infrastructure and operations exposed by the historic storm that ripped into the East Coast in October 2012 and left about 900,000 New York City dwellers and millions of others in the region without power.”

The city has installed 25 of these solar power stations paid for by AT&T. The stations will provide electricity to charge up phones and tablets even when the city’s power is out.

Eesha Khare of Saratoga, CA was tired of waiting for her phone batteries continually dying so she invented a solution. That solution was a fast charging device capable of getting a full charge in as little as 20 seconds. The invention won Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award – a total of $50,000.

What’s even more remarkable about the nano-scale battery is its ability to last for 10,000 recharge cycles unlike traditional rechargeables that lasts for about 1,000 cycles. Khare mentions that the battery is also flexible – it can be rolled up like fabric. Intel’s website also mention that the invention has potential application in car batteries as well. Congratulations Eesha!

Do you use a stylus for your iPad?

In the video embedded above, you can see how a stylus can help you in different aspects of your reading and writing life. I recently tested a review copy of TruGlide Pro Precision Stylus and found the super-small point worked best for scribbling on the iPad.

Last year, Evernote acquired Penultimate, the note-taking and handwriting app for the iPad–pointing towards a future where more people scribble notes on tablets. To help iPad writers adapt, we’ve rounded up stylus recommendations from different review publications…

Read more

We haven’t seen the death of paper books yet, but there’s already a documentary about its impending demise. EBooks are not as tactile, aromatic, or spatial as traditional forms of reading, but they are helping to spread the joys of reading to places where transportation is problematic. The works of philanthropic organizations like Worldreader and The  Information Heritage Initiative would be impossible without digital books.

Read more

Taiwainese LED glass manufacturer Polytron Technology is developing a transparent smartphone. The see-through device is only in its initial prototype phase, but it promises to be interesting at the very least.

The prototype shows the hardware potential of a transparent phone with clear, laminated sheets, batteries, speakers, and a micro SD card. The design is even more sleek and modern than Apple products and reminds me of the clear backpack phase in my high school years – except those backpacks were mandatory for security.

Polytron’s clear phone will use Polivision glass:

When the power is off, the liquid crystal molecules are randomly oriented [way] that scatters incident light and the screen becomes opaque. When electricity is applied, the liquid crystal molecules line up, the incident light passes through, and the screen looks clear.

Read more

There is nothing worse that getting in a cab at the airport only to reach into your pocket and find that you’ve left your phone behind. To help travelers remember their tools, JetBlue has put together a list of tips for remembering your gadgets while you are traveling.

Here is an example:

Avoid the seat-back pocket – I know it’s a convenient place to store your iPad and phones while in flight but that seat-back pocket is the black hole when it comes to gadgets.  Most of the items we’ve found have been left in the seat-back pockets.  If not found during the cleaning phase of the flight turn, the plane travels to other Jetblue cities challenging the recovery of that item.

It’s been a couple of years since book retailers first started battling over the price of eReaders which increased sales of the devices, so it’s not a surprise that many households have some extras kicking around.

In fact, according to a new report from NextMarket Insights, a new research firm led by Michael Wolf (the former VP of research for GigaOM’s research service GigaOM Pro/eBook publisher) more than half of all households where people read eBooks have more than one eReading device, and 17 percent of all eReading households have three or more eReading devices.

Read more

Locating your invisible cats, keys, and cars just got easier, according to founders of Stick-N-Find, whose quarter-sized bluetooth gizmo enables radar technology on smartphones and mobile devices for forgetful owners.

The tiny stickers are battery-powered and can last up to one year with about 30 minutes of daily use. Unfortunately, they are not waterproof so if your cat is particularly fond of bathing, this might be a deal-breaker.

The project is under flexible funding at Indiegogo so even if they don’t meet their ambitious $70,000 goal, you can still get two for an early bird pledge of $35. That’s a bargain for a potentially lethal game of capture the flag in the dark, though I am personally waiting for bluetooth linked socks.

Press play below to watch the video…
Read more

It’s been a couple of weeks now since Hurricane Sandy, and while New York City is definitely getting back to normal for many, some New Yorkers are still living without power or without shelter.

To help out, Time Warner Cable has set up trucks where residents in need can get a hot meal, charge up their device and access free Wi-Fi. To help get the word out, Time Warner is using Twitter, a central tool for communication during the aftermath of the storm. The Twitter handle @TWCable_NYC is tweeting out real-time updates on locations for these charging stations and food trucks, which are on the move.

Time Warner is not alone in reaching out to New Yorkers. AT&T and others have been hosting mobile charging stations around the city, where residents could charge up and access the Internet.

Dad hoc blogger Chad Ruble shared a heartwarming video (embedded above) showing how he modified a Microsoft Kinect to help his mother send simple emails.

Twelve years ago, a stroke impaired his mother’s ability to use language ability. This condition is called aphasia, and in some cases, can prevent a victim from speaking, reading or writing. Ruble created a new interface for his mother using the motion-sensing controller, check it out:

The first step was coming up with a visual “dashboard” to help her compose simple messages. Each icon is associated with a specific emotion, which can then be qualified by an amount. I used a Kinect with the SimpleOpenNI library for Processing along with some gesture recognition code from Matt Richardson to track the position of my mom’s hand. I then used a sample Processing sketch from Daniel Shiffman to generate and send the email by using the green arrow button. The red “X” resets the screen … In the future, I plan to add other “boards” and “pages” later to allow for a greater variety of messaging, but maintaining a super simple interface for my mom. (Via CNET)