Tube Exits app – saving you valuable time

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Ever find yourself running late for an important meeting and being further delayed by having to queue for that pesky exit at the tube station? No, well me neither – I’m not important enough to get invited to meetings you see – but one day I might be.

And when I am, I’ll use the Tube Exits iPhone app in order to beat the crowds. Available in the App Store, obviously, at an introductory price of £1.79 – which will rise to £2.99 eventually, so get in quick – the app promises to help commuters save valuable time by telling them exactly what carriage they should board in order to be expertly lined up for the exit at their destination or interchange.

Creator Lance Stewart came up with the idea after he himself was late for a meeting because of congestion at a tube station exit. He quit his job – which does seem a little bit extreme – and spent his time travelling around the London Underground network, visiting all 268 stations and working out all of the carriage to exit combinations.

The resulting app works below ground, as no internet connection is needed, and even allows the user to save their favourite journeys. This feature does seem a tad pointless to me though – surely commuters know where to get on the train for their most frequent journeys?

I’m not sure whether Tube Exits would be classed as an awesome app or merely a cr-app in our recent feature, but I reckon, sadly, it may be closer to the latter.

LG launches portable, but not pico, projector

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LG’s got rather a range of projectors, and the LG HS102 is the newest addition to that range. Rather than the business end of things, the HS102 covers the portable side of the spectrum.

It measures 154mm x 117mm x 50mm, and weighs less than a kilogram (780g), so it’s pretty dinky. It can throw a screen size of 500″, though, which is rather more on the impressive side.

Best of all, there’s no costly bulb replacements involved. The traditional projector bulb has been replaced by an LED variant which uses less power and should last for the entire lifetime of the projector. There’s built-in speakers too, as well as a remote control.

STATTACK:

  • DFC: 2000:1
  • Brightness 160 (lumens, I presume, though that’s not specified)
  • Native res: 800 x 600 (not great, but it is a portable model)
  • Lens: Manual focus, fixed zoom
  • Aspect ratio: 4:3 (no widescreen action here)

Not sure how much it costs yet, but I’ve got an email in to LG asking nicely. When they reply I’ll update this post. Meanwhile, ProjectorPlanet seems to be selling it for £500. It’s available now.

SHINY VIDEO REVIEW: 3M MPro 110 projector

I’ve been playing around with 3M’s MPro 110 projector for a couple of weeks now, and I’m not sure what it’s for. It will throw a (small) picture onto a wall in a dark room, sure, but it seems to be built to be portable. The problem is that I can’t see a situation that you’ll encounter on a regular basis where this thing will be useful.

Even in lights-down conditions, it simply isn’t bright enough for you to see what’s going on – a pitch-black room would be fine, but on-the-move – where this product is intended to be used – you’re not going to run into those conditions.

Basically, what I’m saying is that I don’t have a real problem with the product (beyond the cable length issue mentioned in the video) – I just don’t see any demand for it. I guess that’s 3M’s problem, not mine. It can be yours (the product, not the problem) for £299, and it’s available now.

Mileage Tracker: GPS tech comes to the rescue to help with your expenses

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Perhaps now isn’t the best time to remind you that (if you have to do the dreaded Tax Return) you’ve a little over a day left to complete it.

However, if nitty-gritty stuff like car mileage tracking has been a real pain to calculate then the Mileage Tracker could be the answer.

Using GPS (naturally), it can track what distances you’ve travelled in your car and export it to a CSV file (boring) or Google Earth (cool)…

Know a clown who's desperate to listen to music on his bicycle?

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Okay, maybe that was mean. But you can’t claim that that thing over to the right doesn’t look like a pom-pom of some sort. It’s actually a speaker. The Yuen’To Music Ball, to be precise. Straight outta’ Japan, it’ll plug into anything with a 3.5mm jack connector and blare out sounds and music for upto five hours. After that, it’ll need recharging via USB.

It comes in red, blue, yellow, black and pink – nice bold colours – and costs $76.16 (£55 or so). That’s amazingly expensive. Still, no-one ever said that being a contra-auguste was cheap.

GeekStuff4U (via Akihabaranews)

Related posts: Self Balancing Unicycle – no clown skills required | Invisible Nanotube ropes could revolutionise the circus trade

VIDEO: Worldwide air traffic over 24 hours

Click play on the video. Now watch as the world’s aeroplanes cross continents and oceans. It’s strangely relaxing in the same way that watching a trail of ants in a garden on a warm summer’s afternoon is relaxing. One thing that’s worth looking out for – compare Europe at the start of the video to Europe at 0:45 – the flight volume changes dramatically between day and night.

Seen a similarly fantastic depiction of data? Post it in the comments below. I love stuff like this, so if you’ve got a favourite visualization of information then I want to see it too.

Nitmesh (via @damiano)

Related posts: First photo of Hudson air crash surfaces on Twitter | No phones on planes please, we’re British, survey finds

Glasgow tube stations get O2 phone reception today

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That nice gentleman up there has probably just fainted with delight, after discovering that today he’s able to use his O2 mobile on the tube in Glasgow. We’ve known about it for a while, but today, O2 has brought phone reception to the five busiest platforms on the Glasgow subway – Buchanan Street, St Enoch, Partick, Hillhead and Govan.

The move is just a trial, but if it goes well, then you can bet your bottom dollar, or pound, that it’ll show up in London, and any other subway systems around Britain. Get ready to ask loud people to shut up underground, as well as on buses and trains.

Are you in Glasgow and on O2? What’s the service like – perfect? Or a bit patchy? Let us know in the comments.

O2 Press release (via O2UKOfficial Twitter)

Related posts: O2 brings mobile reception to the UK underground | The other first mobile phone use in the UK underground?