Latest Gadgets roundup: SLURLs, save@gekko, Wimbledon Seer, Fairsharemusic and SportsMate
Lots of awesome things make their way into the Latest Gadgets inbox every week. Here are some we thought you should know about.
If you are planning on getting away save@gekko is pretty nifty tool for researching hotels from gekko. Totally web-based, the service works by you simply mailing save@gekko.com with hotels picked from any site which it then presents in a simple side by side shortlist. Easy and effective. I just wish I had somewhere to go.
If you are down at Wimbledon this year and have a smartphone why not download the free Android /iPhone IBM Seer application. An augmented reality app, the IBM Seer uses-location based information to pinpoint where you are and pulls in useful Wimbledon related information. Featuring live geo-tagging, the app enables you to pull data about queue lengths, food drink stands and taxi queues etc and can even stream live video footage of games to your device.
Do you remember sniggering at www.penisland.net? I do. I also remember being amused by mp3shits.com (I’m easily amused). However I missed www.effoff.com, oldmanshaven.com and many others. Andy Geldman however didn’t and dedicated his life (or some of it at least) to documenting what he calls “slurls” or badly named URLs. Another website that has been converted into a coffee table book, SLURLS, published this month, goes beyond a list of funny names and takes a peek behind the curtain to show the reader the special charms of technology and big business.
Socially minded music fans should probably take a look at fairsharemusic – a new music downloading site that has partnered with 11 of the UK’s top charities. Offering a reasonable selection of 8.5 million tracks, including new releases, at prices starting from 79p for every track you download, it donates half the profit to your chosen charity. Easy to browse, with tracks heading straight to your music library fairsharemusic are hoping to spearhead “feelgood downloading” enabling you to give while you get – at no extra cost to you. Why wouldn’t you?
Socially minded sport fans aren’t left out of the feelgood factor and can try the SportMate™ World Cup edition app. The £4.99 app brings together all major leagues and matches, all international tournaments and matches, including Champions League and the World Cup, and lets fans follow as many games happening anywhere in the world at once. As soon as an incident (goals etc) occurs the user is updated within 10-15 seconds of it taking place. SportMate’s software developer, Media Delivery Technologies SL, will be giving €2 from every download to Alive & Kicking, a UK charity that has set-up stitching factories in Kenya and Zambia, where leather footballs are made for free distribution to underprivileged children in Africa.
