Google Uses Street View Technology to Document Japan’s Tsunami Damage and Reconstruction Read more: Google Uses Street View Technology to Document Japan's Tsunami Damage and Reconstruction | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

The camera-clad vehicle will not only help to document the damage from the disaster, but also track reconstruction in the streets of the seaside town, Kesennuma. The system is the same as Google’s Street View, which is a feature in Google Maps. Before the disaster, Japanese citizens did not look on Street View favorably. They found the cameras to be intrusive, and a violation of their privacy. In fact, Google even opted to refilm their Japan footage for Street View with less sensitive cameras to assuage citizens.
But Street View’s new use has been welcomed with open arms, with other cities signing up to have their streets photographed and documented. They feel that it will not only show future generations a firsthand account of the extent of the damage, but also, by making the reconstruction images publically attainable, it could keep momentum for the progress going.
The new use for Street View complements Google’s other disaster efforts. Immediately after the tsunami struck, Google implemented Person Finder, which tagged 616,300 missing persons reports. By contacting everyone from local authorities to radio stations to newspapers and the National Police Agency, Person Finder brought together all of the information provided by each organization and shared it, creating a giant searchable database of information on missing persons from hospitals, shelters, and even from hand written posters.
Using Street View as a disaster documentation service, Google will not only help Japan’s recovery effort, but also make Google a household name associated with help in Japanese homes.

New MORTAL KOMBAT DLC Trailer Previews Aquatic Fighter Rain

Mortal Kombat's newest kombatant lands with a splash July 19. A new trailer shows the Purple Prince in action, using his signature water-based powers to destroy his opponents.

After centuries of Mortal Kombat, Emperor Shao Kahn has finally defeated Raiden and his allies. Faced with extinction, Raiden has one last chance. To undo the Emperor’s victory, he must strike Shao Kahn where he is vulnerable… the past. With a return to the mature presentation and classic 2D fighting plane, Mortal Kombat is the most accessible and competitive MK game to date, available now on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Mortal Kombat further extends the brutal experience with a visually striking story mode that will rewrite the ancient history of the Mortal Kombat Tournament.

Mortal Kombat is available now for the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles. Rain will be available for download July 19 on Xbox LIVE and the PlayStation Network.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 preview [360/PS3/PC]

It’s the game that needs no introduction. Except it does, because we have this space to fill. So here’s why we’re both wildly excited, and mildly concerned, about CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 3.

As inevitably as night following day, Call of Duty returns this November the phenomenally successful Modern Warfare sub-series. The world is deep in the grips of all-out war and the NATO forces aren’t doing so well. This installment sees us fighting on more familiar fronts, in locations like New York, London, Paris and Germany.
Much of what we’ve seen so far has focused on New York, and continue the series’ tradition of massive set-pieces with the added bonus of impressive environmental effects. At E3 we saw Navy SEALS hijacking a submarine to help take down an attack fleet off the coast of NYC, and later the combat moves to the ground in downtown New York, heading up to the steps of the Wall Street Stock Exchange.
The visuals have been ramped up again and the new environmental effects – such as astonishing water in a speed boat chase, or falling masonry in the New York City sequences – really add to the grandeur of the events unfolding.

Openly epic

There are plenty of reasons to be excited about Modern Warfare 3, aside from the bigger action sequences and higher visual fidelity. There are more chances to meet familiar characters, with the return of Soap MacTavish. And there’s the chance to fight through more open and epic locations than ever before. This appears to be a singleplayer campaign that, while still tight and compact, is delivered on a scale that the series hasn’t quite achieved to this point.

Of course, there’s also the return of Call of Duty’s main draw, the multiplayer. CoD fanatics will cry out for more of the series’ trademark speedy and accessible yet complex play that will allow them to assert their superiority over the anonymous masses over the internet via Xbox Live, PSN and Steam.
Also making its full debut this time is the Call of Duty Elite service, which will allow you to keep up with your CoD comrades even when they’re not jacked into the game via their platform of choice, adding a whole bunch of extra communication and statistics tools well beyond what we’ve seen before.
It looks set to be a shining beacon for Call of Duty, then – one that should even impress those who were a little disappointed with what Black Ops offered, and are wishing for a return to the Infinity Ward-built efforts which have always had the edge in terms of playability in the past.

Upper limit

But while it’ll offer incremental improvements on the experience that Infinity Ward brought with Modern Warfare 2 and Treyarch refined again in Black Ops, and the Call of Duty Elite service will definitely add an extra, more social dimension to proceedings, there’s still a feeling that Call of Duty has reached its limits in terms of how it can define the military shooter genre.

If we strip away the cosmetic updates and discount the Elite service, which was developed by Beachhead separately as a service that will serve multiple COD titles in the future, what have Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer really given us this time?
Once the spectacle of the New York skyline crumbling under A10 missile fire and escaping a sinking submarine are done with, we’re left with a core game that’s pretty much more of the same. You might be okay with that. That’s fine.
The greatest innovation we’ve seen in the Call of Duty series since Infinity Ward shook it up with Modern Warfare back in 2007 was the zombie mode, which Treyarch added with World at War. It’s fun, but hardly an earth-shattering addition to the series, and is in no way as important as Modern Warfare was. This is compounded by the ubiquity of zombie games in varying forms ranging from the supreme Left 4 Dead series to the slightly bizarre Yakuza: Of The End zombie spin-off which SEGA has just released in Japan.
And, predictably, zombies return in MW3′s Survival mode, only adding to the sense that there’ll be nothing new on offer here. Call of Duty has sat atop its genre for almost a decade now – and I can’t help but feel like it’s time for a bit of a change of pace. Nevertheless, Modern Warfare 3 is shaping up to be another fun addition to the series, one that’s sure to sell millions of copies as long as it keeps giving us FPS gamers what we want. After all, if it ain’t broke…
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will be released by Activision, Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games on November 8th 2011, for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

“Apple's… Exclusive Supply Chain Of Advanced Technology [Is] Literally Years Ahead Of Anyone...

  What Apple does is use its cash hoard to pay for the construction cost (or a significant fraction of it) of the factory in exchange for exclusive rights to the output production of the factory for a set period of time (maybe 6 - 36 months), and then for a discounted rate afterwards.

Google Plus’s Real Goal is Not to Kill Facebook, but to Force it to Open

I’ve been so focused on the user experience of Google’s new social network Plus that I haven’t thought very much about the big picture, I must admit. Listening tonight to an interview with Plus designer Joseph Smarr on the IEEE Podcast it became clear to me that for at least some of Plus’s leadership the goal is not to win social networking outright, or to kill any competitors, but to disrupt the social networking economy with a big enough, good enough and popular enough service that the walled gardens (Facebook in particular) are forced to open up interoperability enough that their users can communicate with the significant enough number of people in their lives that use a different social network. Back in the bad old days, customers of one phone network couldn’t call customers of other phone networks, then people couldn’t email out-of-network. Today people can’t be social across networks, but few people mind because everyone they care about is on Facebook. Plus is a big push to change that. Interoperability will be better for the open web and thus better for Google. It should also be better for consumer choice and satisfaction, in the long run. As long as Face-oogling or whatever doesn’t become as frustrating in the future as dealing with phone companies is today. But they do have interoperability!
I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about it this way before. I hope the plan works. One more cool thing about Plus.
I’d post a link to my Plus profile here but I wrote this whole post on my phone, sitting on the sidewalk in front of my house, in the dark. (Cutting sod that’s grown over my walkway.) I’m not hard to find there though and am lots of fun to talk to, I promise.

Porsche car sales jump 36 pct in H1

(Routers) - German sports carmaker Porsche (PSHG_p.DE) has sold 60,650 cars in the first six months of the year, a 36 percent increase on a year ago, sales chief Bernhard Maier told news agency dpa.
He also confirmed Porsche expects to reach annual sales of over 100,000 for the first time this year, with the Cayenne SUV model proving a particularly good seller.
Maier said however, this popularity had resulted in long waiting times for some models.
"In Germany with the Cayenne for example it can sometime be between 6 and 12 months depending on specification," he said. (Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Louise Heavens)

Paramedic uses iPhone app to help treat patient

Paramedic uses iPhone app to help treat patient

A paramedic who used an iPhone app to help treat a Polish lorry driver has been praised for her quick thinking.
Nicola Draper, who is based at Witham ambulance station, downloaded the Medical Polish app to help her assess the driver who did not speak any English.
She was called to the collision on the A12 near Kelvedon between the lorry and a car on Friday where the drivers and passenger had escaped unhurt.
She said: “This simple and free application is a great tool."
See this week's Witham Times for the full story.