Misclinklanea, 3

Solar powered hotspots. Beautiful and exciting story. More like these, please --these projects fascinate me!

~

The Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Medio Rural y Marino (Spain's equivalent to DEFRA) doesn't get it: the new version of its own cartographic and satellite maps viewer (SIGPAC) will use Silverlight.

Yet another failed opportunity to jump onto the Open Standards wagon. Who's got the commission for this work?

~

JpegMeta: Javascript library for reading JPEG metadata (includes GPS and EXIF data) from JPEG's, client-side, using HTML5's new File API.

~

Fake Plastic Cubes: Gasman surprises us again with some more realtime Javascript goodness. This time it's a 9K Javascript demo|intro featuring 3D and sound synthesis (!!)

The actual demo has its contents packed in an image using the recently released PNG compression trick, so you can't use the good old "View page source" to have a peek at the intricacies of his mad creation. However he's also published the uncompressed code. Plus there's the accompanying and illustrative blog post.

Exciting times ahead!

~

The Unlibrary --an interesting concept in-between shared office space, a library and a coffee shop. I like the idea, although it looks a tad too claustrophobic for my taste. I personally would remove the computers and replace those big bulky tables with something more cafe-style which invites to more intimate laptop-screen sharing and acquaintance-making. Otherwise it looks like we're in a uni lab!

Anke Holst is one of the founders of the project.

~

Most common words unique to 1-star and 5-stars App Store Reviews. It's not directly applicable to the Android market, because iOS prompts users to rate apps on uninstall (probably the worst moment to ask for a review in the life-cycle of an application), but certainly the behaviour is quite similar.

In my experience, free apps get more reviews, and by pure statistics, more negative reviews too. Paid apps might get fewer reviews, but they are probably going to get nicer, more positive reviews. Unless they're decidedly bad and people feel robbed.

~

By the way, here's the new Licensing scheme for Android. The old copy-protection scheme will be deprecated.

~

Foley sound effects --you've heard them but you don't know it yet! Example:

Frozen romaine lettuce makes great bone or head injury noises #