The Buzz: Steampunked Droid, the Terror on Your iPhone, and more
RSSBy Kathy Ishizuka
Where’s My Stuff? If you’ve ever felt the pain of losing your cell phone or keys, there’s a gadget/app for that. The Cobra Tag combines a key fob device paired via Bluetooth with a smartphone app. Download the app to an Android or Blackberry handset and attach the fob to anything you want to track: keys, purse, or laptop bag. An alarm sounds if the phone and tagged item become separated by 30 feet. The app can also send your stuff’s GPS location via email, text, Twitter, and Facebook. $60. The World in Your Hands How well do you know your neighborhood? Load a free iOS app by geolocation data outfit SimpleGeo and you’ll get layers of information about wherever you happen to be, from local politics and demographic data to native fauna. The “context” tab offers an interesting mix of info-layers from Wikipedia, Flickr, Geonames, and Project Noah, a start up that collects user-contributed documentation of local wildlife. You can also add your own data to the mix. The Terror on your iPhone A new app, Beware Madame La Guillotine!, takes teens on a novel tour of Paris, highlighting the sites associated with the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Their guide: Charlotte Corday, the 24-year-old from Normandy who killed journalist and Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat in his bath in 1793. While there’s plenty of content out there to occupy younger kids while on the road, “tweens and teens have thus far been overlooked” in the travel genre, says Sarah Towle, Guillotine’s creator. An app’s interactive features aside, “it’s good content that rises from the pack every time,” she says. “Everyone loves a good story.” $7.99. Talk to Me Chatting with someone who speaks a different language is difficult. And gesticulating rarely helps. Enter Converse. This smart app turns an iPad into a dual-keyboard platform for overcoming the language barrier and enabling discourse face-to-face. At one end of the device, your partner enters text in his or her native tongue and voilà, their message instantly appears on your side in your language. Converse translates between English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Dutch. $4.99. Going Digital Here for the revolution? Next month, the library, publishing, and school communities will consider the print-to-digital shift at “Ebooks: The New Normal,” a virtual conference presented by Library Journal and School Library Journal. The October 12 event will feature two K–12 specific programs, one addressing the implementation of ebooks in schools from the site to regional level, the other looks at digital content in school libraries and where that’s headed. Steampunked Part-time artist Sillof has recast the Star Wars characters in a style reminiscent of the industrialized 19th century. “It is kind of steampunk, but not really,” he writes on his blog description of the work he says was influenced by Jules Verne and Terry Gilliam. There’s a scroll-plated Stormtrooper and C-3PO’s geared out in patinaed brass. A high school history teacher, Sillof has rendered the franchise in other styles.
