In my last post I wrote about several wearable devices I used while studying in Germany. With all the chatter about wearable displays at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year I decided it’s time for a post about wearable display devices that look promising. Several of the companies making the devices have been researching and developing this technology for several years now and appear to be on the verge of creating usable devices that consumers can afford. Keep in mind there are two main purposes for these displays: media consumption and augmented reality.

According to MITs Technology Review, most of the companies working on these wearable head mounted displays started out building systems for the military. My interest in wearable devices is centered around consumer products for recreation and leisure time, however it’s fascinating to see some of these companies building innovative communication products for industries like aviation and hospitality first, in order to generate enough revenue and research to get themselves into the consumer market. Read more…

Okay, so this isn’t really quite “Frogger,” but it is a frog. And a video game. And someone losing at the end. Our takeaway: in addition to cats, frogs are also a source of viral video win (four-plus million views in five days).

At first I felt bad for the frog, because I thought the owner was teasing it unfairly. And then Mr. Bullfrog got his revenge…

ViKi.com, Singapore based startup, is making international TV and movies more accessible to world-wide audiences via crowd-sourced sub-titling - in approximately 160 languages. Yes, even Klingon.

ViKi acquires the rights to programs, uploads them to viki.com and then leverages the power of its translator community. These willing translators provide real-time subtitling of world TV and movies–from Japanese Anime to Spanish Novelas to Korean dramas to Egyptian movies to the latest from Bollywood as well as TV series from Hong Kong, Venezuela, Russia, Korea and the UK.

According to TechCrunch.com, ViKi is attracting around 8.5 million unique visitors with approximately 36 million visits per month, representing a four-fold increase over the past year.

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Three weeks ago I began the course that originally brought me to Bremen, Germany – Wearable Computing. This subject is part of the Artificial Intelligence research group within the Center for Computing Technologies at Uni Bremen and is traditionally offered to computer science students. Recently this research group began offering their classes to digital media students in an effort to help the digital media program provide a more well rounded education for their students. This course in wearable computing takes primarily a theoretical approach while also looking at many of the practical aspects.

On the first day we covered what wearable computing is and the history behind basic computing going all the way back to the 1950s. It was quite fascinating to see how the purposes for using computers has evolved over the years. It all started with specific tasks and business computing in the 50s & 60s, then in the 80s we had the addition of more entertainment computing and in the 90s communication and information computing became mainstream. Read more…

It’s no secret that getting medical care to many millions of Africans remains one of the biggest challenges facing the continent today. For example in Kenya, one of the more progressive and economically sound African nations, according to the World Health Organization there are only 140 doctors for every 100,000 people. Compare that to 2,600 for every 100,000 people in the USA. As the Kenyan government also bans doctors from advertising their services, there is little way for ordinary Kenyans to find out who might be able to help them with their medical needs. Consequently, many people go without any kind of medical care and are vulnerable to a large army of “quacks” who operate in the vacuum.

Mobile technology is the preeminent form of digital communication in Africa and is growing rapidly. As a result of the increasing connectivity that mobile technology has bought to sub-Saharan Africa, there is a lot of buzz around innovative applications and technologies that are making quality information much more accessible to millions of Africans. Read more…

In a move that is surely related to the growing competitiveness of music subscription services, Rhapsody announced a unique partnership with MetroPCS this morning that stands to shake things up a bit. The Seattle-based music entity struck a deal which allows Android users on the MetroPCS system to have unabated access to the Rhapsody Unlimited Music service. That’s a music catalog with roughly 12 million songs — by comparison, Spotify’s music catalog is roughly 15 million songs. It almost goes without saying that Rhapsody’s decision to partner with MetroPCS was driven not just by competition (there’s plenty) but from a need to have a new vehicle to help drive their cloud music service forward. The financial specifics of the deal were not disclosed, but both parties have plenty to gain from the partnership.

The service will be offered to MetroPCS customers with premium plans of $60 per month. MetroPCS users with monthly plans lower than premium can sign up for Rhapsody’s regular $10 per month subscription and have access to the same catalog on their mobile devices. From a consumer standpoint, that’s not a bad deal.

With MetroPCS existing at the lower tier of cellphone service in the United States with roughly 9.1 million subscribers, it stands to reason that their numbers will surely grow now that a cloud music service is attached to their plans. MetroPCS, which is the fifth largest mobile carrier in the nation, also needed a more enticing strategy to stay competitive as other mobile carriers like Virgin and AT&T continuously outmaneuver them.

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Flip the Media is always looking for local tech disruptors to feature, so when a MCDM student approached us with a contact at RootMetrics, we couldn’t resist. RootMetrics is a Seattle based business that crowdsources data in order to offer a free, independent source of cellular carrier performance ratings. We threw a couple of our best questions at Julie Dey, the VP of Marketing for RootMetrics and found out it’s even better than we originally thought! If you’re in the market for a new network, we think you’ll agree, skipping the carrier’s marketing funnel and going straight to RootMetrics’ Carrier Coverage Map will save some big headaches.

Here’s the full Q&A:

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Rise of the Mobile App Store and Mobile App Development

Earlier this year, Apple’s App Store reached its 10 billionth web application download goal. What is amazing is that they did this in about 30 months’ time. Apple’s first iPhone was released to the US market at the end of June in 2007. At the time, the smartphone was seen as a huge leap forward in innovation. Users were able to interact with this new device in ways that they never could using just a cell phone on a wireless carrier. This was more than a phone – this was the beginning of the mobile web.

When the iPhone was released, Apple announced that the iPhone would support third-party web applications written in Ajax (asynchronous Javascript and XML) so long as the apps maintained the look and feel of the iPhone interface.  In March 2008, Apple released a software development kit to third-party developers and a slough of developers set out to create native applications for Apple mobile devices.

Apple’s App Store opened for business on July 11, 2008. The apps that were offered in the beginning were primarily Apple developed educational programs, mobile commerce and business productivity tools.  There was no Angry Birds, Bejeweled, or my personal favorite, Flick Fishing.  Games hadn’t really come along yet – they came along later and have proved to be “crazy popular” with users–dominating all app store categories over the last two years.

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