We Media Blog
PDF Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences, architecture designed to inform, entertain and inspire
From a city founded in the 2nd Century BC comes a glimpse into how the city of the future might work — with equal shares of brilliance and problems. The astonishing City of Arts and Sciences (many photos here) transports Valencia, Spain, into the future with architecture designed to inform and entertain. Technology and the imagination of architect Santiago Calatrava transform Valencia’s dense monumental heritage into a public center that celebrates discovery and knowledge. In the early 1990s, architects began using parametric...
read moreRachel Sterne to steer NYC’s digital direction
Rachel Sterne becomes New York City’s first chief digital officer. The Ground Report founder, who’ll give up her citizen journalism site as well her consulting practice, has been a friend and frequent contributor to We Media. She’ll work with the city’s Economic Development Corporation to improve New York’s image as a home for technological innovation and to attract and retain more entrepreneurs, a policy initiative of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. First task: produce a report on how the city might raise its profile by using...
read moreThe app in the car
The 2011 Mini Countryman takes the integration of tech, media and cars to a new level.
read moreThe revolution within the revolution: How mobile devices and social media changed Tunisia
What is revealing about this revolution is the way in which citizens discovered it, how they informed one another, and how they mobilized around it. They used their mobile phones, now ubiquitous in North Africa, to communicate via text messaging and Twitter. For many Tunisians, their phones are their Internet. Theirs is a story about the democratization of media, a social revolution that wields the power to change lives as well as governments
read moreRules for civility that Washington might get
Why should we behave politely, act respectfully or show good manners? Because it it matters. What the politicians and pundits in Washington could learn from an earnest community website.
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Old school ads seek a social media guru
A new campaign for a nonprofit health organization reveals the limits of traditional advertising - and the tantalizing lure of online networks. If you're a social media guru, Selfchec needs your help.
read moreDemocracy calls, who answers?
By far the most significant communications innovations of recent years, the mobile Internet and mobile applications have eclipsed the Internet, television, newspapers and radio as the world’s most popular way to access news, data and information. More than half the global population now pays to access information through services and applications on cellphones. Social impact and pattern change have occurred so profoundly, so fast that Wired pronounced that “the Web is dead,” replaced by the personal communications device in your hand....
read moreScreen-sensitive glove keeps info at hand
You want to call a friend, check email or search for a restaurant. Pull out your touch-screen gadget and let your fingers do the work. Problem: it’s freezing and the gloves are on. Your forefinger and thumb slide across the surface of the touchscreen like a frozen puck. Go fingerless? A fashion statement for the grunge crowd, perhaps, but one that leaves fingers freezing and your data untouchable. Put on an Echo Touch Glove and finger-skate to your data. Echo has put small pads of “eLink” fabric on the tip of the index finger and...
read moreFinal Jeopardy: A machine that questions what it means to be human
The battle over intelligence is popular culture’s longest running show. Are computers smarter than people? Is the brain a second-rate technology? Can machines think? Will they become sentient and take over? Can they beat a human on Jeopardy!? The correct answer is: What is “Watson”? Next month, an IBM computing system will compete on Jeopardy! against the quiz show’s two most successful contestants. Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson (“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”) was developed to rival...
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