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Dave Knows Portland, Google Currents Edition

December 10, 2011 by Dave Leave a Comment

Dave Knows Portland on Google CurrentsSmart phone and tablet computer users have a new, slick, way to read this blog: on Google Currents.

Recently introduced, Google Currents is a new application for Android devices, iPads and iPhones that lets you explore online magazines and other content with the swipe of a finger.

Users can navigate to the standard Dave Knows Portland website through the app, and it actually looks pretty darn good, but I’ve set up a new edition of Dave Knows Portland, customized for Google Currents.

My blog’s content translates pretty well to the Google Currents worldview, and I will be enhancing the edition as I get more experience with it. Leave a comment below if you have any requests or recommendations (e.g. a particular blog category you would like to see as its own section).

Google Currents is now available for download in Android Market and the Apple App Store. It’s free!

TriMet Mobile Debuts

June 11, 2010 by Dave Leave a Comment

TriMetTriMet has launched a mobile-friendly site for riders using smartphones: Trimet Mobile (m.trimet.org)

Now, if you have a mobile device with the right capabilities, you have yet another option to find schedules, arrivals, and assorted TriMet transit information.

TriMet Mobile includes the following rider tools:

  • TransitTracker arrival times
  • Trip Planner
  • Service Alerts
  • Route and system maps
  • Nearby stop look-up (coming soon)
  • Schedules (coming soon)

The TriMet App Center has a fairly comprehensive list of other applications, tools, and websites. (And of course you can always call 238-RIDE.)

A Portland-related iPhone App Roundup

May 14, 2010 by Dave Leave a Comment

Morganica.comCynthia Morgan is a technologist, a glassist, a sculptor and a writer. She writes about all of these things and more at her blog, appropriately called Cynthia Morgan: My Life, My Glass . . . and other things.

In a recent post she assembled a fairly comprehensive list of Portland related iPhone applications, with her reviews:

iPhone gets downright neighborly.

We’ve been so busy using smartphones to weave ourselves into the virtual community, we may not have noticed that the real world has quietly joined the party. Local apps are quickly becoming some of the most realtime, on-the-ground useful of all.

Glassland (AKA Portland) is well-known as a mobile town and has a rich inventory of local apps, but I’d be willing to bet your town (or at least your state) has at least a few of its own.

I found it quite handy. She groups the app descriptions and reviews into categories: Civic Apps, Transportation, Businesses, Food & Fun, and Other Stuff. Some of my favorite apps, like the Portland Pinball Map App, and transit related apps are reviewed (as well as quite a few I’d never heard of or have no interest in). Visit her site for the reviews!

The Oregonian: Twitter pioneer

June 1, 2009 by Dave 1 Comment

In The Twitter Explosion at the American Journalism Review Paul Farhi examines Twitter as a tool for journalism.

For journalists, the real question is whether Twitter is more than just the latest info-plaything. Does it “work” in any meaningful way – as a news-dissemination channel, a reporting and source-building tool, a promotional platform? Or is it merely, to buy the caricature, just a banal, narcissistic and often addictive time suck?

The unsatisfying answer: It all depends.

While celebrity journalists like George Stephanopoulos send out Tweets about breakfast, some news organizations actually capitalize on Twitter’s idiosyncrasies to benefit media consumers. Portland’s Oregonian (and Oregonlive.com I might add), provides an example of the latter:

[Twitter’s] speed and brevity make it ideal for pushing out scoops and breaking news to Twitter-savvy readers. The Oregonian in Portland may have been the mainstream media pioneer in this regard; it began posting its own links and aggregating citizen tweets about flooding and road closures during heavy storms in central Oregon in late 2007, when Twitter barely had 500,000 users nationwide. Other newspapers have subsequently used Twitter to post swift-changing updates following natural disasters in their areas.

TriMet by text message

July 17, 2007 by Dave Leave a Comment

Portland TransportChris Smith at Portland Transport has created an interface to get TriMet TransitTracker arrival times via mobile phone text message. For slow texters like me, using this tool might not be any faster than calling 238-Ride, but it doesn’t hurt to have options.

It’s very simple to use, as he explains:

To get arrival times send a text message to 415-676-8397 or sms@411sync.com with the following message text:trimet <stop #>

Example:

trimet 2719

(a stop on SE Holgate) returns at this moment: 17 Holgate to Portland: 23 min

Read the whole post; Chris asks for readers’ opinions and suggestions on this prototype. Oh, and don’t overlook the disclaimer:

Disclaimer: text message usage costs are the user’s responsibility! That’s between you and your carrier. Portland Transport and 411sync don’t charge for this (although I suspect that 411sync gets a cut from the carrier).

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