Monday, May 13, 2013

The Apartment Hunter's Guide to Classifieds Lingo

Annie_s%20head By Annie Colbert2013-05-04 01:56:50 UTC

Apartment hunting can be a seriously traumatizing experience.

Find an apartment you love and you can't afford it or find an apartment you can afford and your roommates have antennas (or worse, rabies). Not to mention, there's worrying about neighborhood, access to public transportation and whether or not you can bring Fluffy along.

Illustrator and comedian Teddy Hose makes the apartment hunting experience easier with an honest guide to classifieds lingo. For example, "cozy" might sound like a comforting adjective, but it roughly translates to "your toilet is in the kitchen."

Comic courtesy of Teddy Hose. Homepage image via iStockphoto, Maica

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Smart Money: Scientists Embed Radio Chips in Paper

MoneyNic Halverson for Discovery News 2013-05-04 02:23:59 UTC

From hotel towels to soccer jerseys, just about everything seems to be tagged with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips these days. Now scientists have developed a way to embed these chips in paper, which could pave the way for so-called smart money.

Developed by a team of researchers from North Dakota State University, the RFID-equipped smart paper could potentially be used in legal documents, tickets, package labels and banknotes. Researchers say the technology could help prevent fraud and counterfeiting.

While RFID-equipped paper already exists, other versions on the market rely on thicker chips, resulting in bulky and bumpy paper that can’t be printed. However, researchers at North Dakota State developed a process called Laser Enabled Advanced Packaging that creates ultra-thin silicon chips that can be seamlessly embedded in paper.

The process uses a plasma etcher to thin down the chips, then uses a laser beam pulse to insert the chips, as well as antennas, directly into the paper.

Project leader Val Marinov said the process is cheap than current manufacturing methods because less materials are being used and equipment is less expensive. Not only that, the process is twice as fast as other methods.

“About ten years ago the Bank of Japan and the European bank signaled their intention to develop such technology but they aren’t there yet,” Marinov told the BBC. “I believe our scheme is the first to demonstrate a functional RFID tag embedded in paper.”

Marinov and his team recently presented their work at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers conference on RFID in Orlando, Fla. They are currently seeking commercial investors.

“The technology needs to leave the lab and find a place in industry,” Marinov said.

Image via iStockphoto, imagestock

This article originally published at Discovery News here

Topics: electronic payments, Gadgets, money, RFID chip, Science, Tech Discovery News is a Mashable Publishing Partner.

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5 Digital Distractions for Kids and Their Parents

Kids-digital-distractionsRobin%2520raskin-1475 By Robin Raskin2013-05-03 22:31:35 UTC

Entertaining distractions for kids have come a long way since the early days of Concentration and Connect the Dots. That’s especially true if you’re an iPad user.

Take a look at these masterpieces that highlight some game-changing graphics interaction and even how you buy them. You'll find apps that create a full TV-like interactive channel, encourage parents and kids to build and share games, use augmented reality and are produced by animators with award-winning pedigrees, heralding a new generation of kids' apps.

They might cost you as much as a Starbucks latte, but they are much more satisfying. What are your kids' favorite apps?

Image via Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

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The Modern Lives of Disney Princesses

Neha-prakash By Neha Prakash2013-05-03 22:08:46 UTC

In Disney's fairytale world, princesses chat with birds, sing with dwarves and swim with talking flounder. The biggest worries of these ladies are evil step moms or horrid octopus women. But once their prince comes along, it's sunshine and daisies for these leading ladies.

Unfortunately, the real world is not always as sweet as anything Disney could drum up. A series of artwork by Alana Mays shows us what kind of lives the princesses would have without the magic and glass slippers — trust us, it's not pretty.

Mays reversed the movies' gender stereotypes to create harsh real-world effects. Mays tells Mashable that she applied a critical eye to the "body image" and "male dominance" themes, and used her digital paintings to parody those scenarios.

Do you agree with Mays' view of Disney and women in regards to body image? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

"In the Disney film Snow White, the Snow White that we all know of is stereotyped as beautiful. Disney gives the impression that it is important to be beautiful on the outside in order to be rescued.

"In this concept, I have created a twist by making Snow White not beautiful. Snow White has passed out from choking on an apple and she is in need of CPR to be saved. A man is about to give her CPR, but because he does not find her desirable, he looks repulsed. This idea shows that if you are not beautiful, then you will not be rewarded."

"In the Disney film Aladdin, the heroine Jasmine has been stereotyped to be a prize. Men desired Jasmine for her title and beauty instead of her inner beauty. The concept shows Jasmine inside of a life size game machine, surrounded by toy cars, to play on the idea that she is a prize or trophy to be won by a male. She is worried as she knows that eventually she will be won by a man rather than be swept of her feet by a man of her choice. This idea implies that women are sometimes seen as an object rather than as an individual."

"In the Disney film The Little Mermaid, the character Ariel is the sterotypical example of comprimises made to meet the concept of ideal beauty. She transformes her tail for a pair of legs and sells her voice to win the man of her dreams. Disney is displaying ideals of beauty through portraying female characters as not good enough the way they are and that they should be willing to change their body for someone.

"This concept shows Ariel getting plastic surgery transformation which shows that women today are focusing on their outer appearance and are going to the extremes of plastic surgery to meet societies' expectations of beauty."

"In the Disney film Sleeping Beauty, the main character Aurora, that we all know of, is stereotyped as beautiful. In this concept there is an un-attractive version of Sleeping Beauty inside of a kissing booth at a carnival, asleep, as she has been waiting for too long for some one to arrive. This idea shows that if females don’t meet the expectations of beauty then they will be an object of ridicule and will not be noticed by a male."

"In the Disney film Cinderella, the heroine is stereotyped as a poor domestic slave. In this concept Cinderella is in an office where she is working but is still wearing her dirty, used kitchen gloves. This shows that even though women have the right to work these days, they still bear the title of being the domestic housewives when they go home."

Images courtesy of Behance, Alana Mays

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How to Remove Tagged Photos From Your Instagram Profile

Emily-7d5b1d3e6b By Emily Price2013-05-04 03:32:29 UTC

Instagram added the ability to tag photos this week. Similar to photo tagging on Facebook, your friends can now tag you in their Instagram photos so that the image shows up on your profile as well.

It’s a fantastic feature if you want to share those photos with the world, but what if your friend adds a picture of you that you’d rather people not see? Luckily, there's a quick and easy way to remove a tag, as well as a way to make sure no photos make it to your profile without your permission.

Much like how it’s handled on Facebook, when you’re tagged in a photo on Instagram the app sends you a notification. Tagged images are added to a “Photos of You” tab on your profile page.

Tap on the tag in an offending photo to bring up a dialogue box of options. From there you can choose to hide the photo from your profile, remove the tag, or report the photo in general as inappropriate.

If you’d rather not be tagged in any photos you can set things up that way as well. Simply select the Settings menu from the Photos of You section, and then change the selection from “Add Automatically” to “Add Manually.” Now, you’ll have to approve any photos that get added to your profile page.

Have you tagged any photos on Instagram yet? Let us know what you think about the feature in the comments.

Image courtesy of Instagram

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YouTube Comes To Google Glass With Fullscreen BEAM

Google-glass-guyEmily-7d5b1d3e6b By Emily Price2013-05-04 01:14:25 UTC

Google Glass has its first YouTube app.

Fullscreen Labs released Fullscreen BEAM Friday, the first YouTube app for the high-tech glasses.

“Our engineering team loves building better experiences for digital video creators every day and hacking on new initiatives and passion projects into the night,” Drew Baumann, Founding Engineer at Fullscreen said in a blog post announcing the app.

“We host monthly hack days in the office to sharpen our creativity and coding chops….so it’s not surprising that when Google released Google Glass, their foray into wearable technology, our immediate thought was, 'How can we build a seamless experience for YouTubers to capture and share life’s moments?'"

With Fullscreen BEAM, Glass users can record a video using Glass and then use the app to upload it to their YouTube channel, either publicly or privately. Videos can also be shared on Twitter.

Check out this video for a look at how the app works:

You can get started using Fullscreen BEAM here.

Image courtesy of Google

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Routehappy Finds the Best Flights Based on Much More Than Prices

FlightSeth-fiegerman By Seth Fiegerman2013-05-04 03:01:23 UTC

The Launchpad is a series that introduces Mashable readers to compelling startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Routehappy

One-Liner Pitch: Routehappy helps you book the best flights based on the in-flight experience, rather than just by the price and schedule.

Why It's Taking Off: The startup has a team of dedicated data experts who have put together a comprehensive database to find out seat layouts, plane types, travel time and amenities for any flight in the world.

There's no shortage of websites to compare prices and schedules for flights, but what if you want to go beyond that and compare factors like the amount of legroom or whether there's Wi-Fi on the plane? You might have been able to find some of that information spread across different travel sites, but it hasn't all been available in one place until now.

Routehappy, an online service that launched out of beta last week, lets travelers see a "happiness score" for economy and business class flights from every major airline, which factors in everything from how spacious the seats are to the quality of in-flight entertainment. You can also sort flight results by price and arrival/departure times, as you might on traditional travel websites.

For more than a year, a team of data experts at Routehappy have been collecting information about seat layouts, plane types, amenities and more from press releases, company pages and frequent flier websites, among other sources. The result may be the most comprehensive guide to date for comparing the in-flight experience across airlines.

"Flight search has not evolved in years. It's all based on price and schedule," Robert Albert, founder and CEO of Routehappy, told Mashable. "There is this entire category of information that is hidden from users and it's about the actual experience of flights."

Albert worked at Site59, an online travel agency, and then at Travelocity after it acquired Site59. A frequent flyer himself, Albert became frustrated with the lack of comparison tools for this kind of information online and decided to build his own. The startup raised $1.5 million in a seed round last year and currently has eight people on staff, half of whom work on collecting data and half of whom work on the technology side.

Routehappy attracted "tens of thousands" of users in the first few days after launching last Friday, according to Albert, 10% of whom came from abroad, which is impressive considering the startup hasn't even begun to market itself outside the U.S. Routehappy is now working on a new feature that would let users simultaneously filter flights by price and the happiness score.

While the service is certainly useful for consumers interested in learning more about particular flights before booking, Albert notes that it's also helpful for airline carriers. Right now, he says, airlines feel like they've been "commoditized" by price and price alone, but Routehappy may give them a way to compete based on the planes and amenities that they have invested in.

"The airlines are spending billions of dollars enhancing their planes, but when you go to search for flights, there is nowhere for airlines to promote their differentiators," Albert says.

Routehappy plans to generate revenue from referrals to flight booking websites, as well as through advertising on site and eventually selling data about users searches and preferences for flights.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Fields of View

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DabKick Will Change How You Share Photos and Videos

Photo-sharingEmily-7d5b1d3e6b By Emily Price2013-05-03 19:52:01 UTC

There’s something about being able to chat with someone while showing him or her photos from your last vacation, or a video of your child’s first steps, that makes the experience as a whole a lot more personal. Meet DabKick, an iOS app that attempts to recreate the experience of sharing media with friends in person using your smartphone.

Frustrated that he couldn’t find a good way to share media with friends and family, DabKick founder Balaji Krishnan created the app as a way to foster a more natural method of remotely sharing media.

The iOS app lets you share photos, video and music with friends — either through the app or on the web using HTML 5 — in real time, so what you see on your phone’s screen is what your friend sees as well.

The entire process is meant to happen live, somewhat like a phone call, where you send someone a DabKick request and go through images and content together. If your friend isn’t available, however, the app also offers the opportunity for you to leave a message for them, explaining the images as you flip through.

If your friend has the app, then he or she can comment and like photos as you go via text or voice, creating an interactive experience for everyone.

This week the app launched a new Music layer that lets you spice up the experience with some tunes. Now you can listen to free music –- pulled from YouTube –- with your friend while you’re sharing photos and video, listen to music by yourself while perusing pics, or access your friend’s songs and listen to music together.

Social features also let you share your “Dab Name” with someone and communicate within the app without passing out any personal information.

During a demo, Krishnan told me he could also see the feature being used for something like selling items on Craigslist, where you want to talk to someone — and perhaps show them photos of an item — but you don’t want to pass out your phone number or other personal info in the process.

DabKick is available now from the App Store.

Homepage image via iStockphoto, exdez; Screenshots courtesy of DabKick

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Photographer Crafts Mind-Melting Images Without Photoshop

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