I follow Rhymo and Dutchcowboy for a while now on twitter. These two blokes from the Netherlands are hardcore mobile fanatics who can’t sit still. Yesterday they launched Layer, worlds first mobile Augmented Reality browser for mobile. After a couple of hours they reached +40k views with the demo, today they added another 60k!

The demo looks quite impressive:

Now all we have to do is buy a G1 or a HTC Magic phone and move to the north.

Anyway, well done guys, (quote from Youtube comment) this is putting Holland on the innovation market.

Besides Radiohead, American Industrail rockband Nine Inch Nails (NIN), founded by Trent Reznor, is a real 2.0 band. Wired had an interview with Trent about the launch of the NIN iPhone app.

via

Next time when you’re on the train or in the cinema and see a font of which you wonder: “What the Font?!” there’s a quick answer to your question for all you iPhone adepts. Shazam for typographers! It’s magic.

WhatTheFont/iPhone/

I wonder how long it will take before Jamba starts selling these things… Obama ringtones! Celebrating change on Obama Ringers dot com. All in favor of the R&B-ringtone, say ‘change’

Big up for the writers of these lyrics…

Barack, Barack, Barack Obama
Barack Obama (yeah!)
Bringing in change with no drama
(uh-hu, uh-hu)
Celebrate a brand new day
President of the USA
Barack Obama (yeah!)

via

As a real ‘King-getting-lost’ I would like to test and use the following app anytime: BreadCrumbz is a picture-based navigation system for your mobile phone. Currently avaiblable on the Google Android Platform.

When it comes to finding directions to a particular place, traditional maps can be an imperfect tool. They’re abstract and two-dimensional. A new application built for Google’s Android cellphone platform incorporates pictures and personalization to help people answer the question, “Can you show me how to get there?”

Link: www.bcrumbz.com

A couple days ago I posted some pics from a shooting for MTV!
Well, this is the result:

MiaMia is a free answering service for all your questions. You can either call to it, send a text message or get your answer via email. Their baseline ‘Ask anything’ was screaming for a little test.

First question: “Where can I download the latest version of Ubuntu?”
I thought this was an easy one. Two minutes later the following answer was in my inbox:

You can download the Ubuntu 8.04 beta at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/hardy/beta. MIAMIA Thanks you for your question.

Sweet.

Now I tried something a little bit harder: “What is the chance Obama will win the American elections?”

The answer:

In a new Gallup survey, Obama leads McCain by eleven percentage points-52 percent to McCain’s 41 percent-on the question of who Americans believe will win the White House this November. Seventy-six percent of Democrats believe Obama will win while 67 percent of Republicans believe McCain will keep the presidency in their party.

Wow.

First question that popped into my head was: are you human?

The FAQ helped me out with that one: MiaMia® is a hybrid system: part of the Natural Language Processing and data base and information search is handled by machines and software, and part by Humans Transcription Agents and by Human Knowledge Agents. As we grow in size and number of handled questions every day, the “memory” of MiaMia® grows as well, and percentage-wise the number of questions totally handled and answered by machines versus by humans grows as well.

Now I’m also testing the SMS feature and it seems to work fine. Although, I recieved a text message telling me the system was overloaded. 10 minutes later I recieved this answer to the following question: ‘At what time I can take a train from Antwerp Central Station to Mechelen today?’

The answer:

I hope I never have to ask something like ‘What’s the number for 911 in Belgium’, because it will probably be too late .

(BTW, the answer to that question is ‘100 or 112′. Smart software, I say!)

MiaMia seems to be a product of Jo Lernout, better known as one half of Lernout and Hauspie Speech Products.

Try it yourself on www.mymiamia.com

Via a tweet from Clopin

Today, at 16h00, the Cowboys will split their vision. One eye will keep working, the other eye will have a look at the Live Stream at Mobile Monday in Amsterdam.

Maybe you should too?

“Send Tweets by dialing a local number and speaking your message to TwitterFone. Sweet!”

Sweet indeed!

Unfortunately not for Belgium…
Link: http://twitterfone.com/

I don’t think I would use it, but it’s the next step for advanced twittering I guess.