Author: Raanan Bar-Cohen

Raanan Bar-Cohenhttps://raanan.com/
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NYTIMES: Can’t Find a Parking Spot? Check Smartphone

This sounds really interesting:

This fall, San Francisco will test 6,000 of its 24,000 metered parking spaces in the nation’s most ambitious trial of a wireless sensor network that will announce which of the spaces are free at any moment.

Drivers will be alerted to empty parking places either by displays on street signs, or by looking at maps on screens of their smartphones. They may even be able to pay for parking by cellphone, and add to the parking meter from their phones without returning to the car.

I do question the premise though that this will ease the fighting over spots:

Solving the parking mess takes on special significance in San Francisco because two years ago a 19-year-old, Boris Albinder, was stabbed to death during a fight over a parking space.

“If the San Francisco experiment works, no one will have to murder anyone over a parking space,” said Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose work on the pricing of parking spaces and whether more spaces are good for cities has led to a revolution in ideas about relieving congestion.

Depends on how they implement it, I actually think you may have the reverse situation where everyone drives like mad trying to descend on that last parking spot causing more fights and chaos.

[ nytimes.com ]

WordPress.com Gears

It’s been live for a few days, but now we have officially announced Gears support for WordPress.com.

WordPress version 2.6 ( currently in beta ) also has Gears support.

So what is Gears ?

Gears? It is a browser extension like Flash or QuickTime/Media Player. However Gears works with the browser to enhance web based applications. It can create local database and file storage, and run JavaScript in the background to update them without slowing down the browser.

Gears has been in the making for over a year and is well known among the web developers. Currently it supports Firefox versions 2 & 3 and Internet Explorer versions 6 & 7. Safari 3 support is coming soon.

On WordPress.com it is used to store all images and other web page components from the admin area to the user’s PC, speeding up access and reducing unnecessary web traffic.

The speed increase is most noticeable when Internet is slow or on high latency and makes everybody’s blogging experience more enjoyable.

How do you turn it on for your blog ?

To enable this new feature, click on the “Turbo” link and follow it to Gears’ site to install it in your browser (if not already installed). Then the browser will have to be restarted and after logging back in WordPress, click the “Turbo” link again to give permission to Gears to work on WordPress.com.

After that Gears will download around 200 files and store them on your PC. It will also update them when needed automatically in the background, no other actions are required.

Update: you can follow the coverage over on techmeme: http://www.techmeme.com/080702/p72#a080702p72

Mosh Ben Ari in NYC

If you are in NYC the next few days and into reggae/world/israeli music, try to catch Mosh Ben Ari.

Sunday he’s playing a free concert as part of summer stage in central park and Monday night downtown in the lower east side @ Pianos — a great spot for music. Then Tuesday July 1 in Brooklyn at the Williamsburg Musical Hall

I was able to see him last week in San Francisco at the Independent and it was a great show.

For those who have never heard of him, here is a clip of a live show below, with tons of other clips and a 3 part interview of him all on youtube.