February 2007

From an NPR interview with Principal Ed Kovochich, who has banned cell phones in his Milwaukee high school because they’ve been causing flash crowds at what would otherwise have been a simple one-on-one fight:

Quite a bit of the school was text messaged where the fight was taking place, and soon there were hundreds, and they were cheering and jeering and usually you get into that mob violence mentality. And suddenly what was 3-on-1 became 3-on-2 and then 3-on-3 and etc. and before you knew it we had a lot of kids fighting.

The New York Times discusses the new trend towards building your own custom television commercials via the Web:

They can automatically add names of local sales agents or dealership addresses, and they can change the content of the ad, depending on where it is showing, to appeal to various demographic groups. Among the companies that have used these services are Wendy’s, Ford Motor, Coldwell Banker and Warner Independent Pictures… The automated system it is offering to advertisers, called Pick-n-Click, is currently available only for automotive advertisers and has 150,000 components —like voice-overs, video footage and text options.

Polymervision has announced a partnership with Telecom Italia to roll out (pun intended, sorry) an e-book reader with a flexible display:

While smaller than a typical mobile phone, the new device features a display which extends up to 5-inches and may simply be stored away after use by folding it, thanks to the flexibility of the polymer based display material. The device features the largest display available in the industry for the same form factor, the 16 grey levels combined with a high contrast and high reflectivity display for paper like reading experience enables comfortable reading, even in bright sunlight. Future developments include colour and moving image capable display.

(Thanks to Dirk for the link.)