Mom uses BlackBerry to write novel – no ‘BlackBerry thumb’ reported

You'd think that writing a book day and night on a BlackBerry smartphone would eventually render your thumbs useless, but a woman from London has done just that, and now her novel is selling on Amazon.

If you were going to write a book, the chances are you’d sit yourself in front of a full-size keyboard connected to a full-size computer screen before you embarked on your full-size project. Not so Brit Georgina Campbell.

She bashed out a 55,600-word book on, of all things, her BlackBerry smartphone. The 41-year-old Londoner said the idea to put thumb to keyboard came about after watching the 2011 sci-fi movie Attack the Block. While daughter Lorra loved it, Georgina thought it was abysmal and so bet Lorra she could write something better. It was then she grabbed her writing tool of choice and started work on her novel.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Georgina said it took four months to complete the gritty tale of a group of girls growing up in inner-city London, writing it entirely on the phone’s native MemoPad app.

“When I started writing the book I would normally do it after a 12-hour shift at work and it would be a breeze – I loved it and wrote through the night,” she told the Mail. “It was almost like a holiday – I’d just sit down and start typing the book out on my BlackBerry using my two thumbs.”

Georgina said the phone was the ideal writing tool simply because it was with her all the time. “I was writing on the train, on breaks at work, waiting for a bus, having a bath, when I was walking around – anywhere. It completely took over my life – all I thought about morning to night was writing the book.” Four months after tapping out the first word, The Kickdown Girls made it  to Amazon.

Possibly the most remarkable part of the story, however, is that despite her round-the-clock commitment, her thumbs are still fully operational instead of finishing up as mere worn-down stumps; she didn’t even develop BlackBerry thumb, the repetitive strain injury linked to excessive use of the physical keyboard so beloved by BlackBerry users.

Whether Georgina’s work is better than the script of Attack the Block is something for readers to decide, though at the time of writing the publication is languishing at 257,164 in Amazon’s book chart and has no reader reviews.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Apple loses appeal in UK court, will have to run adverts saying Samsung didn’t copy the iPad

Earlier this year the High Court in London ruled in favor of Samsung and dismissed the Apple’s claims the Galaxy Tabs copied the iPad’s design. The judge went even further ordering Apple to advertise the court’s decision for a month in various websites.

As expected Apple appealed the court’s decision, but today the Cupertino-based company lost there, too.

The appeal court once again dismissed Apple’s claims and ordered the US company to run the ads and compensate Samsung for the bad publicity.

Apple might decide to appeal in front of the UK Supreme Court, but somehow I really doubt the effort will be worth it.

If you want to know more about the first case, the ruling and the appeal, just hit the source link below.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Whole shipment of iPhone 5s stolen from French airport

Just before the Japanese launch of the iPhone 5, three stores were robbed of a total of 191 units. Then about a week ago, an employee of a London O2 store made off with an entire shipment of 250 iPhone 5s, which are worth about £100,000.

Now there’s a report that on Tuesday there was yet another major iPhone 5 theft, which occurred in France. The number of units stolen wasn’t confirmd, but the whole thing played out like a heist movie.

The iPhone 5 shipment was being loaded on a plane at Marignane airport when three armed robbers blocked the vehicle used to load the plane with two BMWs. The gunmen then forced the driver to follow the two cars and a Renault Master that lead the way.

About 10km down the road, the robbers stopped and loaded the shipment (which also included a number of Apple laptops) in the van. After they were done, they set the airport’s truck on fire and drove off.

The police investigating is ongoing.

Note: the image above is not an actual photo of the incident, just a photo of something being loaded on a plane with a quickly photoshopped Apple logo.

Source (in French)

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Laundry detergent that creates pollution-eating clothing moves towards commercialization

How do you like the idea of cleaning up the environment simply by going about your day? The UK’s University of Sheffield together with the London College of Fashion have been working on their CatClo pollution-busting laundry detergent for some time, and this week revealed they are currently in talks to commercialize the product.

While the suggestion of pollution-eating clothing may at first sound a little fanciful, or even utterly absurd, the fact is that thanks to the development of a special liquid laundry additive, it’s already a reality.

The latest news is that scientists behind the pollution-busting creation are in talks with a manufacturer of environmentally friendly cleaning products in a bid to bring a detergent containing the additive to market.

The additive, called ‘CatClo’ (short for Catalytic Clothing), is the result of a joint effort involving the UK’s University of Sheffield and London College of Fashion. Additional help came from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The revolutionary additive contains minuscule pollution-eating particles that its inventors claim could have a real, identifiable impact on air quality.

To turn your clothes into pollution-fighting garments, all they require is a single wash in the special additive. Tiny particles of titanium dioxide attach to the fabric during the wash which, when you’re out and about, work to oxidize harmful nitrogen oxides when they come into contact with the treated fabric. The harmless oxidized substances are then removed in subsequent washes.

The scientists behind the product estimate that a person wearing clothes washed in the additive would remove approximately 5g of nitrogen oxides from the air during a typical day, roughly the same amount which is emitted by an average-sized family car in the course of a day.

Cleaner cities

Professor Tony Ryan of the University of Sheffield believes the additive could make a discernible difference to the quality of air in a town or city, provided enough people wear treated garments.

“If thousands of people in a typical town used the additive, the result would be a significant improvement in local air quality,” Ryan said. “This additive creates the potential for community action to deliver a real environmental benefit that could actually help to cut disease and save lives.”

Coming to stores

While CatClo has been in development for some time, those who created the additive believe it is now ready to be commercialized.

“We’re now working closely with a manufacturer of environmentally friendly cleaning products to commercialize our laundry additive,” Professor Ryan said.

“We believe that using the additive in a final rinse with a full washing load could potentially cost as little as 10 pence (16 cents) – a small price to pay for the knowledge that you’re doing something tangible to tackle air pollution and increase the life expectancy of people with respiratory conditions. We’re confident there’s a really big market out there for this product.”

Do you like the sound of CatClo? Would you buy it if it only cost a little more than your regular laundry detergent?

[EPSRC via Tecca] [ Top image: James Weston; bottom: Ljupco Smokovski / Shutterstock]

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Topshop and Facebook join forces for unique London Fashion Week event

If you're into fashion, Facebook and online shopping, you might be interested to hear more about Topshop's plans for its catwalk event at London Fashion Week this Sunday....

Fashion retail giant Topshop has joined forces with Facebook for a unique event at London Fashion Week this Sunday.

Working with engineers from the social networking site, Topshop is for the first time offering armchair fashionistas a ‘front row’ live-stream view of its catwalk event, giving viewers the chance to customize and even purchase garments and accessories worn by models as they appear on stage. It could well be the most intense shopping experience you ever have.

Those who join the live stream will be able to switch the color of the clothes worn by the models, take screenshots to share immediately with Facebook friends with the aid of a special on-screen button, share video clips, buy the show’s soundtrack from iTunes and purchase garments and accessories worn by the models. Shoppers will be able to receive the clothes well before they appear in stores.

“Fashion enthusiasts are sharing the things they love on Facebook more than ever,” Joanna Shields, Facebook’s vice-president and managing director, told the Guardian. “This is where the conversation happens, it’s among friends and it’s where great brands need to engage.”

The live stream from London will be broadcast on the fashion retailer’s Facebook site as well as at Topshop.com. On top of that, the event is set to be shown on big screens at Topshop’s flagship store on Oxford Street in central London, as well as on the websites of over 200 of its media partners.

“We want to take the energy and the excitement of our iconic Oxford Street store to millions of people all over the world through Topshop.com,” says Justin Cooke, chief marketing officer of Topshop. “It’s social, it’s commerce and it’s entertainment all rolled into one.”

The special event could prove to be a decent money-spinner for Topshop, as online shopping addicts and fashion lovers flock to its site on Sunday (10am ET) in search of a new kind of retail experience.

[via Guardian / Mashable]

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Paraplegic Claire Lomas first person to take home ReWalk robotic suit

Brit Claire Lomas has become the first person to take home the ReWalk robotic suit for everyday use. Claire, who completed the London marathon in May using the special suit, was paralyzed from the chest down in an accident five years ago and was told by doctors that she would never again.

Brit Claire Lomas, paralyzed from the chest down following a horse-riding accident five years ago, has become the first person to take home a bionic exoskeleton that allows her to walk.

Claire first hit the headlines back in May when the 32-year-old paraplegic completed the London marathon with the aid of the ReWalk robotic exoskeleton, raising over £200,000 ($317,000) for spine injury research in the process. The impressive feat took her 16 days and won her many fans along the way. More recently, she also had the honor of lighting the celebration cauldron in London’s Trafalgar Square to begin the 2012 Paralympics.

Her life will be changed forever now that she can use the ReWalk during her everyday activities, bringing her a level of mobility she could never have imagined back in 2007 when, following her accident, doctors told her she would never walk again.

‘Excited’

“I am very excited to take the ReWalk home and incorporate it in my daily life,” Claire said in a statement. “With the help of the ReWalk I am able to stand, walk, talk to my friends and family eye-to-eye, and exercise in a way that I have not been able to since my injury.”

Built by Israel-based Argo Medical Technologies, the ReWalk enables a user to control the robotic exoskeleton through tiny changes in their center of gravity. Crutches can be used to provide the user with extra stability and safety.

The robotic exoskeleton is made up of a number of motors and gears strapped to the user’s lower body, with sensors attached to the upper body helping to control motion. When ReWalk detects the user moving their weight onto one foot, it raises the opposite leg and carries the person forward.

The device is powered by a computer and a rechargeable battery housed in a backpack. Once a user gets the hang of it and feels confident enough, even stairs no longer become an obstacle.

Official launch

“Years of research and hard work from a very talented team of engineers has made this product possible,” Larry Jasinski, Argo’s CEO, said. “We are officially launching the ReWalk personal use system in the EU with this start in the UK. It’s our aim to get as many individuals as possible walking again, and the launch of the ReWalk will allow customers to use the technology for a range of activities.”

The robotic exoskeleton was recently given approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, though it is yet to go on general sale in the country.

At £45,000 ($71,000), the ReWalk certainly doesn’t come cheap. However, it is likely to prove popular with rehabilitation centers and other medical institutions.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

How Twitter Reacted to 2012 Summer Olympics

Now that the dust has settled over Olympic Park in London, it’s time to reflect on the games of 2012. This year, the games were seen by billions of people each day from around the world as nations cheered on their country’s athletic representatives as they competed fiercely in an attempt to return home with bronze, silver or gold.

Social media played a key role in the 2012 Olympics with athletes, supporters, families and fans posting news of great athlete feats on Facebook and Twitter. Olympic fever spread on Twitter during the two weeks of the London games with everything from congratulations to random observations. Many well known stars posted regular tweets on Twitter declaring to their followers their undying support for their favorite athletes with some even asking favorite Olympians for some tips after the games.

The athletes themselves took to Twitter to share their glory and to build their brands. Many athletes at the games had their laptops or mobile devices with them so that they could keep family, friends and fans updated with breaking news on everything from their physical condition to their training sessions to the events they participated in. The USOC or United States Olympic Committee said that at least 89 athletes were active on Twitter during the games and according to the USOC, their goal was to tell amazing stories using as many platforms as possible.

During the Summer Games in Beijing four years ago, the use of social network sites was frowned upon by the International Olympic Committee or IOC. This was because it was determined not to be fair as only some athletes had permission to take part in social networking. Athletes who were blogging and using social media in Beijing had to agree not to publish anything negative about the host country, not surprisingly.
Today the IOC looks at social media networking as a perfectly legitimate type of personal communication. The committee granted Olympic participants the right to use Twitter and other social media sites during this year’s summer games. However, athletes are told by the IOC that they must only use social media and their blogs to send messages about their own personal experiences and not to act as reporters.

Twitter did indeed play a key role at the 2012 Summer Olympic games. On day one at the opening ceremony, there were already more tweets posted about the games than there were during the entire 2008 Olympic games. On Twitter’s official blog, the feature story for the week of July 24th was Spotlight on Olympic Stories. Twitter stated then that it was going to put a focus on the incredible stories which were sure to come forward out of the games and It also publically announced  to American sports fans that it was partnering with NBC Olympics – the official broadcaster of the event to create an event page on Twitter for the 2012 games. The page was designed to highlight tweets from participants, coaches, teams, loved ones, fans and Olympic insiders.

This article is written by Cynthia Rupp.rt on twitter

Source : techtalkafrica[dot]com

Twitter users sent more than 150 million Olympic Tweets this summer

The true winner of the London Olympics? Maybe that was Twitter, which found itself setting new records throughout the entire two week run of the XXX Summer Games.

Consider it a last huzzah of Olympic fever. As the world struggles to get used to a life without constant concern over who was leading the pack on the medal table, or whether or not dreams would be dashed thanks to a last minute stumble on the parallel bars, Twitter quietly revealed the scope of the Internet’s obsession with the sixteen day sporting event – or, at least one part of the social media conversation.

“We saw more than 150 million Tweets about the Olympics over the past 16 days,” wrote the company’s manager of editorial programming Andrew Fitzgerald, in a post that appeared on the official Twitter blog last night, going on to add that “The biggest tweeting moments that came during the heat of competition (not at a medal-winning conclusion) included Kobe Bryant’s dunk towards the end of the USA-Spain basketball game, and Hope Solo’s (@HopeSolo) land-diving save in the women’s USA-Japan soccer match.”

In terms of specifics, Jamaican Uslan Bolt’s gold in the 200m sprint is already known to have broken records with more than 80,000 Tweets per minute, but his gold win in the 100m is not far behind, with 74,000 TPM. The next most popular Olympic moment comes from Brit Andy Murray winning the gold in the Men’s Tennis Singles (and in the process, beating his opponent from this summer’s Men’s Final at Wimbledon, Roger Federer), with more than 57,000 TPM, with Bolt returning for the fourth place; the Jamaican gold win in the Men’s 4x100M Relay received an average of 52,000 TPM. The highest American win came with Team USA beating Spain in the Men’s Basketball final; that reached an impressive 41,000 TPM.

(That the top four Tweeted events were non-American wins is surprising, at least to me, but also points to the success of Twitter as an international phenomenon and communication system, as well as the excitement surrounding individual athletes and stories within the Olympics. In short, it’s a kind of a great thing all ’round.)

Unsurprisingly, Uslan Bolt was also the most discussed Olympian during the sixteen day event, but Fitzgerald reported that he was joined by nine other athletes in making it to more than one million mentions on Twitter during the games (They are, in descending order, Michael Phelps, Tom Dale, Ryan Lochte, Gabby Douglas, Andy Murray, Kobe Bryant, Yohan Blake, Lee Chong Wei and LeBron James).

The most-Tweeted-about sport during the games? That would be soccer, again demonstrating the international flavor of the micro-blogging service, but perhaps the surprise of Twitter’s metrics was the most-Tweeted-about event of the entire 16-day span of the Olympics. It wasn’t anything to do with sports at all, but instead something far more important: ” It was the Spice Girls who stole the night, inspiring more than 116,000 Tweets per minute,” Fitzgerald explained, writing about the success of last night’s Closing Ceremony. The Spice Girls? Oh, Twitter, I expected more from you…

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Google Doodle: Olympic Hurdles if You’re Not at the London Games

Image: Google.

Today’s Google Doodle, which celebrates track and field at the London Olympics, is a reminder of why only a select few people ever win gold medals.

The doodle, if you haven’t been playing it for hours already, is an interactive game, and it’s hard until you get the hang of it.  You play a hurdler, running down a track.  The left and right arrow keys will speed you up.  Be ready to hit the space bar on cue.  And be ready to have some spreadsheet to pop up on your screen if your boss comes by.  Jokes about reduced office productivity are rampant on days such as this.

“Having fun is not wasting time,” said Ryan Germick, the Google Doodle team leader. ”We always aim to surprise and delight.”

He added that you’d be surprised how hard it is to create a game that people will understand without instructions — and one that can be played by millions of people at once.

Lolo Jones, Kellie Wells and Dawn Harper are among the American hurdlers to watch in London. They may worry about Australia’s Sally Pearson, the current world champion, but not about any of us at our computers …  or, conceded Germick, anyone at Google.

“There is a fencer here,” he said, “and when she saw the doodle of the fencer we had the other day she thought it was her.  Other than that, we at Google are more of the nerdy sort.”

Is anything else in the works before the Olympics end?  Germick turned coy.  But he let us in on a little trick: Look at Google’s home page for a country where it’s already tomorrow — like, say, Japan — if you want to see what’s coming.

Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com