The city of Boston’s iPhone app, is available for download today. The email archiving pothole-and-whatnot-reporting app allows residents to send the city service requests, including photos and location information.
Mayor Menino is holding a 2 p.m. press conference to announce the app’s availability with Bill Oates, the city’s CIO; Nigel Jacob, the mayor’s emerging technology adviser; and Dave Mitchell, founder of Nashua, N.H.-based software company Connected Bits, which developed the app.
God is coming to your iPhone. Or at least, a new Mass application from the Archdiocese of Boston’s television operation is making an appearance.
Called CatholicTV, the application includes reflections, Mass celebrations, recitations of the rosary and a few other features.
A test found the application to be a bit clumsy, but any newspaper stock analyst will tell you that divine hostility toward the media is no surprise these days.
–Eric Convey
Cambridge-based Sparkfish Creative has developed an iPhone app that lets a user browse the T’s scheduling info and find out when your bus or train is coming.
All of these T schedule applications have me wondering — am I the only one who didn’t know the Red, Orange, Green and Blue lines even had a schedule?
Via Universal Hub.
If you’re afraid of contracting H1N1, or you’re a hypochondriac, or you’re just morbidly curious — and you have an iPhone — then get yourself to the App Store ASAP. Children’s Hospital reports it has developed an H1N1-alerting and reporting iPhone app with the MIT Media Lab:
The new application also features an option for users to submit an outbreak report. This will enable individuals in cities and countries around the world to interact with the HealthMap team and participate in the public health surveillance process. Users may take photos – of situations and scenarios of, and/or leading to, disease – with their iPhone and submit them to the HealthMap system for review and eventual posting as an alert on the worldwide map.
The free app, called OutbreaksNearMe, is based on HealthMap, another Children’s project — in conjunction with MIT and Harvard — marking cases of infectious diseases on an interactive map.
MIT professor Missy Cummings and her students at the Humans and Automation Lab at MIT Aero/Astro have developed an iPhone-app to control unmanned aerial vehicles. UAVs usually have unwieldy remote controls about the size of a briefcase.
Not only would a iPhone-like controller make soldiers’ jobs much easier, it also opens up UAVs to a whole new, non-military market. If robot control is cheap and intuitive, people might find all kinds of new uses. Cummings’ own favorite: “Being able to launch one out of the window and fly it down to the Starbucks, to tell me how many people are in line, so I know when to get coffee.”
UAV technology will definitely develop at a faster pace than my sense of ease with seeing a flying robot spying on the coffee shop I just left.
Opening doors has been killing me lately, and I’ve been looking for a solution combining state-of-the-art mobile communications technology and plumbing. Luckily, MIT is nearby for just such situations. Recent grad Chris Varenhorst has given the world iDoor, a hydraulic door-control system controlled by his iPhone:
I spent my senior year living with this door, and besides having to replace a servo, it pretty much worked flawlessy. The only trouble was my hallmates hacking the door, and random EM noises doing weird things to it. I’m not sure if I’ve actually saved time in the long run, but it was definitely fun. Some of my favorite uses of the door are opening it remotely for friends that need to get stuff out of my room, (though it can be confusing for people that aren’t familiar with it). If I leave in a hurry, I can also just tell my phone to close my door when I remember later. Another good trick is opening and closing the door randomly during parties on my hall, confusing bystanders endlessly.
Via PopSci.
Raizlabs has released an iPhone app that uploads video to Facebook. VideoUp works with the recently released iPhone 3GS’ video capability.
The Brookline-based company talked to MHT news editor Rodney Brown last week for his roundup of local companies making apps for the iPhone 3GS.
Raizlabs, which popped up in the Pitch last year, also developed the RunKeeper iPhone app for FitnessKeeper.
In today’s NewsFlash Roundup, gadgets, biotech manufacturing and, as always, fruit juices.
• Genzyme drug shortage aided by Israeli firm
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has contacted Israel-based Protalix BioTherapeutics Inc. about the possibility of initiating a treatment protocol for use of its Phase 3 drug target for Gaucher’s disease. The drug has not yet been approved for use in the U.S. but would be used to blunt the effect that the Cerezyme shortage is having on patients, who have no other approved treatment options.
• NMT Medical eyes conservative plans amid slow sales
The Boston-based company (Nasdaq: NMTI) said revenue for the second quarter that ended June 30 will be around $3.2 million, down from the $3.8 million to $4.3 million predicted in May.
• From the print edition: Ocean Spray, Welch’s pursuing scientific claims of fruits
Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. has won a patent for a method of extracting oil from the tiny seeds of cranberries, which the patent claims can be used for “treating or reducing the occurrence of breast cancer,” among other diseases. It’s a bold claim, but when asked if he believes the yellowish oil that smells and tastes faintly of cranberries could really have that power, inventor Wassef Nawar says, “Absolutely.” (more…)
Zipcar’s iPhone app will be ready to go in about a month, its CEO tells Scott Kirsner, who’s pretty excited:
Zipcar showed off a new iPhone app last month at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference that got me salivating (I’m a Zipcar member): it offers GPS help finding cars that are available, and can even honk the car’s horn to help you locate it in a parking lot.
MHT’s Rodney Brown talked about his story on local coders making apps for the latest iPhone on New England Business Day Friday.
In the report, Rodney checks in with Char Software, Raizlabs, ThinkFlood, Apperian and Scvngr.
New England Tech Directory
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