On July 7th, Fred Lalonde, the founder of openplaces.organnounced in a tweet that Apple had bought the company that produced the Maps API that his company used in their software [CW]. Pushpin is the name of the software API that Openplaces uses and it is made by a company called Placebase. How did everyone find out? Simply a Tweet from the former founder which said “Apple bought PlaceBase – all hush hush. Pushpin site taken offline. Hyperlocal iPhone?”
Waldman thought differently. He decided to compete with Google and other free mapping services by doing two things: One, by offering customizations and tons of features that integrated private and public data sets in many diverse ways. (He knew it would be a while before Google would get around to offering customization). His other twist was to offer a way to layer commercial and other data sets (such as demographics and crime data) onto the maps using an easy-to-use application programming interface (API). The product is called PushPin.
Here’s a video of Placebase CEO Jaron Waldman demoing his product at an O’Reilly conference last year. A good example of the software in use is http://policymap.org. Like Openplaces, Policy Map uses the Pushpin API that Apple purchased as the underlying technology in its mapping product.
Popular car sharing service, ZipCar, just made it that much easier for you techies out there with their new official iPhone app.
You can find, reserve, and even control your ZipCar through the app. Users are able to unlock and lock their car, and even beep the horn if you forget where/what car you were driving.
The app’s free and is currently in the Appstore. Go cop that ish!
Steve Jobs wants to change the way companies’ environmental records are calculated.
For the first time, he’s spilled the beans on exactly what Apple’s carbon footprint is: 10.2 million tons per year.
This may seem like a huge number when compared to other tech industry front runners like HP (8.4 million tons) and Dell (471,000 tons).
What the difference? Apple’s not only taking into account the emissions from manufacturing, they’re also adding the carbon emitted when consumers use their products. Apple’s competitors rarely take this important aspect into account when sharing their emission numbers.
In a recent interview by Business Week, Steve Jobs had this to say:
A lot of companies publish how green their building is, but it doesn’t matter if you’re shipping millions of power-hungry products with toxic chemicals in them. . . It’s like asking a cigarette company how green their office is.
He brings up a great point. Let’s keep the numbers honest. Well done Steve, you’re putting us all on a better road to the future.
Oh no folks, this could be bad. T-pain just dropped his new iPhone app, appropriately titled: I am T-Pain
The app allows you to sing along with T-pain’s songs in your own auto-tuned voice. You’re even able to record your own custom track and share it with your friends on Facebook & Myspace.
App costs 3 bucks. Go cop it, then you can be exactly as talent-less as he is ….respect though, he did help make auto-tune pop, so there’s something to be said for that.
Today is one of Sony’s biggest achievements in the digital music player market in the last 5 years. They have managed to outsell the iPod lineup with its latest version of the Walkman. According to Tokyo-based research firm BCN Inc., for the week ending August 30th, the Walkman series had a 43 percent share of the personal music player market versus 42.1 percent for iPods. Congrats Sony, but BCN forgot to tell you that iPhones don’t count as iPods, so they title will be forever left with an asterik. The iPhone 3GS is currently the best-selling phone in Japan, so if you combine those figures, Apple is sure to have their crown back. Congrats to Sony though, this is not something that should go unnoticed. I didn’t even know they were still making a walkman. (Engadget)
RSS
Email
Twitter
![[Post to Twitter]](http://tinycomb.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter-big4.png){kind=icon}
….respect though, he did help make auto-tune pop, so there’s something to be said for that.
