Paul Raven @ 12-08-2008
If you check out Futurismic’s Friday Free Fiction posts, you’ll have noticed that we link regularly to FeedBooks, a site that aims to supply free-to-read ebooks in convenient portable formats. FeedBooks themselves have noticed, and we’ve been working with them to make Futurismic’s fiction more accessible.
All stories published here at Futurismic are released under a Creative Commons license, so anyone can republish them provided they credit the authors and make no profit in the process. FeedBooks make stories more useful to the reader on the move by making them available in portable device-friendly formats like ePub, MobiPocket and iLiad, as well as printable PDFs.
So, if you keep an eye on the special Futurismic list at FeedBooks, you’ll see our back catalogue of fiction cropping up as time goes by. New stories will remain exclusive to Futurismic for the first three months, after which you’ll be able to pick them up in whatever format suits you best. The following titles are already available, with more to come in the future:
The FeedBooks team seem genuinely interested in getting good fiction into the hands of readers, and I recommend getting in touch with them if your webzine operates a similar model to Futurismic - it’s a great way to give your authors greater exposure.
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Paul Raven @ 29-05-2008
No, it’s not the gibberish it might initially look like. It’s an observation by Jason Stoddard who, in addition to being a damn fine science fiction writer*, runs a futurist-minded publicity agency called Centric.
Jason had a major squee over the iPhone as a platform back in March, but it would appear Google’s recently unveiled Android mobile OS has impressed him even more:
“Combine two highly capable mobile platforms, each with a sales channel for applications and significant incentives for developers to, well, develop on, and you have the beginnings of the next computing revolution. You can hear Bruce Sterling outline all the devices the mobile phone has already eaten, but the number is only going to increase in coming months.”
I can hear your objection coming, because it’s the same one that leapt to my mind - “yeah, like I’ll be able to afford the data charges to make use of mobile computing“.
So what if - and I’m guessing it’s a big ‘if’, because there’ll be a lot of big companies who’ll object to the idea - there was a free-to-use wireless broadband spectrum?
Changes things a little, doesn’t it? [image by OpenHandsetAlliance]
* We’re unashamedly rather biased about Jason’s ideas and writing, as we’ve published him twice here at Futurismic.
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Tomas Martin @ 25-02-2008
Exciting times in the world of electronics as phone company Nokia have designed a wearable, flexible phone. Resembling a normal handset folded in half, when fully unrolled it can be used as a keyboard but it can also be folded lengthways and widthways and curled into a bracelet to wear on the wrist.
Although current battery technology isn’t good enough to join this flexible technology revolution as improvements in nanowire batteries and even static electricity generating clothing could mean that in ten year’s time we wear our phone/mp3 player/personal computer on our sleeve and link up our headphones to it wirelessly.
[image and story via the Guardian]
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Tomas Martin @ 27-12-2007
Since 2002, the Wireless World Initiative (WWI) has been working on a number of user-centric wireless systems that integrate what is currently an extremely disjointed mess of networks and protocols. The five systems - SPICE, MobiLife, WINNER, E2R and Ambient Networks aim to provide a seamless wireless system that connects up all of a user’s gadgets and software in an integrated configuration that doesn’t impact on the usability for the user.
Science Daily has a good article on what ‘Bob the builder’ and ‘Bob the businessman’ might use this new technology for.
“Outside their front doors, the two Bobs wish each other a good morning and head their separate ways. On the train, the businessman watches the financial news on his palm pilot, while the builder tunes in his phone to his favourite digital radio channel and relaxes in the morning traffic to some classical music.”
[via ScienceDaily]
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Paul Raven @ 29-10-2007
Now this is just a great idea, plain and simple - clothing made from fabrics with piezo-electric materials embedded in them, which will generate electric current as a result of the flexing produced by the wearer’s motion. The project has been sponsored to the tune of AUS$4.4million by the Australian Defence Department, and the potential for military applications is obvious enough, but the same technology would be very lucrative in the commercial sector too. Of course, it’s not in the bag yet - the researchers behind the idea suggest a viable product may be ready in four or five years - but the day when I can travel without having to pack an arsenal of batteries and wall-warts can’t come soon enough. [Via SmartMobs] [Image by Mgus]
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