Composting, New Hampshire

A new green business startup is helping restaurants save money and compost in New England. Inspired by San Francisco’s composting mandate—a law which requires residents to compost biodegradable materials such as produce food scraps– Ryan Bedard recognized the demand for alternative waste disposal services back home in Maine and New Hampshire and founded the company [...]

iPhone Banking

JP Morgan Chase’s new Banking application for the iPhone makes managing your personal finances unimaginably convenient. It may be that the days of rushing to the bank during your lunch hour and spending countless minutes waiting for a teller are over. With Chase’s new application, you can take a photo of any personal check (with [...]

Museum Mobile Phone Apps

In the current issue of Museum Practice, a journal that focuses on trends in curatorial practices, Simon Stevens presents us with an informed perspective on the costs and benefits associated with implementing mobile applications in the museum-going experience. The premise of this piece is that it may serve many museums well to pause and think [...]

Toxin Sensing Mobile Phones

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have just finished the first phase of an initiative to develop a mobile sensor capable of detecting toxic chemicals in our environment. With a small startup called Rhevision Inc., the chief researcher on the project, Michael Sailor, has devised the sensor, a porous flake of silicon which [...]

Twilio, San Francisco

According to The Business Insider, the Silicon Valley startup Twilio is the hot silicon valley startup to watch this year. Though I’ve heard a lot of humming about this company over the last year, I wasn’t exactly sure of what they do or what they offer. So I snooped around their website for a while. [...]

All City Art

Semaphore Mobile recently developed a new application, All City Art, essentially a handheld mobile guide to global street art. Addictive and accessible, the application is ripe for graffiti enthusiasts and the average voyeur alike. Easily tag and upload street art spots you find and discover new ones you haven’t seen yet. And, connect the dots.

A Museum Visit at the Airport

At the airport? Why not check out the latest exhibit? That’s right, the San Francisco International Airport is the only airport in the U.S. with a museum program accredited by the American Association of Museums. Exhibits are scattered through various terminals and change several times a month. At the moment, travelers can see 18th-century porcelain [...]

The art of taxation, Mexico

Here’s an interesting tidbit to start your week with…In Mexico, visual artists can pay their taxes with art works. According to USA Today “That’s the deal Mexico has offered to artists since 1957, quietly amassing a modern art collection that would make most museum curators swoon. As the 2009 tax deadline approaches, tax collectors are [...]

SimpleGeo

This week, the New York Times technology blog, Bits, highlighted the technology startup SimpleGeo. SimpleGeo is a small firm which is capitalizing on the scarcity of access to local location data. In recognizing that many mobile games, mobile services and mobile applications are inherently limited by their access to location data, the founders of SimpleGeo [...]

Mobile App Lab in Africa

The World Bank in partnership with Nokia is set to create a mobile application laboratory in Afria in an effort to push innovation in the field, while providing special support to innovative solutions that address the diverse challenges facing Africa.

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