Teens start sexting as a way to fit in, says Australian study

Teenagers are feeling pressure to send sexual images of themselves and others by mobile phone in what is becoming a potentially pervasive practice of ''sexting'', according to an Australian government-funded research.

Young people are experiencing pressure not only from each other but also from the "insidious" influence of a sexualised media culture that pressured them to be involved in sexting in order to fit in, Melbourne University researcher Shelley Walker says.

Read full article in The Sydney Morning Herald.

QRpedia: QR Codes + Wikipedia

Wikipedia introduced a program called QRPedia.

QR codes – barcodes for the internet – have been around for decades and the technology is increasingly being used in everything from street advertising to museum object labels. QRpedia takes the concept one step further to allow a single QR code to send you seamlessly to the mobile-friendly version of any Wikipedia article in your own language.

When you scan the code the language setting of your phone is also transmitted. If there is no article (yet!) in your preferred language it will show you the most relevant article instead.

[Wikimedia Foundation via The New York Times]

Dog tags get QR codes

Platinum Pets has adds a QR code to your dog's ID tag.

This way anyone who finds your wandering pet will have access to all kinds of important information, including contact details, vetinary and insurance information and whether you'll offer them a reward.

[via Popgadget]

Sling Shot camera captures frightened faces of people before they get hit.

Spotted on technabob, a Sling Shot camera concept that captures frightened faces of people before they get hit.

By designers Sung Young Um and Jung Eun Yim.

[via Yanko Design]

Instagram signs up a new user every second

Less than a year after it launched its photo-sharing service for the iPhone, Instagram has more than 10 million users who are uploading an average of 26 new pictures every second, co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom told attendees at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

[via GigaOM]

Previously: - Exhibition in London dedicated to Instagram app lovers

@mobileactive.org: Libyans being trained as citizen journalists

Small World News is on the ground in Benghazi training Libyans to capture and tell video stories of events in this volatile region. Along the way, the team has also captured footage that no other main stream media outlet has been able to get.

Small World News is a documentary and new media company that provides tools to journalists and citizens around the world to tell stories about their lives.

s part of its work in Libya, Small World News captures audio reports from individuals on the ground to broadcast to a larger international audience. It does this via Speak2Tweet, a collaborative project from Google, Twitter, and SayNow, which allows a caller to Tweet by calling a phone number and leaving a voicemail.

[via mobileactive.org]

Exhibition in London dedicated to Instagram app lovers

Earlier this year, a few of Instagrammers who live in and around London organised their first Instameet, a ‘real-life’ meetup for avid Instagram app users.

Following that first Instameet, helped to grow by Instagramers.com (a worldwide network of avid Instagrammers), many other meetups were organised, where the idea of having an Exhibition was born.

My World Shared is the first exhibition by IGers London. IGers London are a group of individuals from London and beyond with a shared passion for iPhoneography, and more specifically a free iPhone app called Instagram.

My World Shared captures the concept of Instagram – to record in images our world around us, our lives, our outlook, our views, and share that view with the rest of the world. It is an individual view, but one that others can relate to, like postcards from a friend.

The Exhibition will take place at the East Gallery – Brick Lane – London Ocober 22 and 23.

[via @Steffen Konrath]

5 Ways QR Codes Could Shake Up the 2012 Election

Next year’s candidates will be expected to increase their digital presences beyond major platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and the president’s social network, My.BarackObama.com. So, what channels are politico tech geeks watching?

With millions of potential voters using mobile devices, strategists would be remiss to write off QR codes as a risky early-adopter consumer trend untranslatable to the political space.

Mashable outlines five ways QR codes will be used in the next presidential elections:

1. Field Organizing

2. Donations

3. Endorsements

4. Merchandise

5. Get out the vote

Google is bringing Google+ Hangouts to mobile phones

Google’s Hangouts video conferencing feature – which lets multiple friends video conference each other at once – is coming to mobile devices, the company said. Silicon Republic reprots.

Among the first of the new features is a mobile version of Hangouts that users can activate by simply finding an active hangout in their friend Stream and tapping ‘join.’ This feature will be available on Android 2.3+ devices and will come soon to iOS devices.

A new Hangouts mobile app is also rolling out on Android today.

Read more.

140 billion photos stored on Facebook thats more than in the Library of Congress

Digital cameras are now ubiquitous - it is estimated that 2.5 billion people in the world today have a digital camera. If the average person snaps 150 photos this year that would be a staggering 375 billion photos. News3.0 Media:Lab reports.

That might sound implausible but this year people will upload over 70 billion photos to Facebook, suggesting around 20% of all photos this year will end up there.

Already Facebook’s photo collection has a staggering 140 billion photos, that’s over 10,000 times larger than the Library of Congress.

[via 1000Memories.com]

Fotobabble app lets you add voice to photos

Fotobabble app lets you quickly create and easily add your voice to photos and instantaneously share those talking photos with friends.

According to Mashable, "what’s most impressive about Fotobabble is that, unlike the majority of photo sharing apps, it has a concrete plan for monetization. While people have used the consumer-facing app to send photos to grandma, make baby announcements and narrate their travel photos, businesses have also found the technology useful for interactive marketing campaigns."

Protesters Use QR Codes To Get Through To Russia

Protesters who want Russia to stop supplying arms to Syria brought a cyberspace approach to a protest Monday, stapling QR codes to posts outside the Russian embassy on Charlotte Street.

The codes, which can be scanned by most smartphones, open a web page to view an open letter the demonstrators wrote to Russian President Dimitry Medvedev.

“We sincerely hope you will join the conscientious international community in seeking to isolate the Syrian regime and bring to justice those involved in shedding the blood of our people,” the letter reads.

[metro via savent7]

Australia: Federal Court to rule on right to broadcast mobile football matches

OPTUS and the nation's top football bodies will clash in court today over the rights to broadcast matches on mobile phones. The Daily Telegraph reports.

The Federal Court will hold a hearing brought by Optus to restrain both the AFL and NRL from suing Optus for breach of copyright for its newly launched TV Now service.

Launched in July, it allows customers with an iPhone to watch live sporting games on a two-minute delay - with Android customers able to watch immediately after the match ends.

Telstra recently reached a $153 million deal with the AFL for the exclusive rights to stream live matches over the internet from 2012 to 2016.

NRL boss David Gallop said a victory for Optus would seriously dilute the value of its upcoming broadcast negotiations.

Read more.

Conference honors first cameraphone photo taken in 1997

Bolt | Peters and Blurb are honoring the date the first camera phone photo was taken, June 11, 1997, with a one-day conference dedicated to iPhoneography and mobile photography called 1197.

[via The Laughing Squid]

According to Wikipedia, the irst camera-phone image (above) taken by Philippe Kahn at the birth of his daughter Sophie on June 11, 1997 and wirelessly shared with more than 2000 people around the world instantly.

Instagram iPhone app stealing the show at Fashion Week

Amateur photographers use the free iPhone app to filter camera-phone pictures and make them look as if they’ve been processed using old-fashioned darkroom techniques. Fashion enthusiasts—an image-obsessed group—are enamored with how Instagram turns a low-quality image into a moody composition.

At the tents in New York this week, editors, bloggers and publicity people are donning Instagram’s digital rose-colored glasses and uploading images by the thousands, to the chagrin of some professional photographers.

[WSJ via All Things D]

Forbes Reviews Posterous App For Private Photo Sharing

Forbes reviews Posterous, an app designed to help people easily privately share photos and videos with friends or family.

People can create individual Spaces for each of their social groups, such as family, rooommates or friends, or for special events such as weddings or parties. The groups can be public or private, but will likely be attractive to people who want to create their own private photo sharing groups.

Read more.

New App Can ID Complete Stranger's Facebook and Social Security No.

Facial recognition technology always sounds scary in terms of privacy. Here's another one reported by Daily Tech.

The application's name is PittPatt and it allows a complete stranger to find your identity -- your real identity -- in under 60 seconds. Here's how it works. A client code calls the PittPatt interface with a picture it's taken. PittPatt jumps online and compares that picture to millions of images in Facebook and in Google Inc.'s image search, using advanced facial recognition technology. And within 60 seconds, it can identify an individual.

It also incorporates searches of public databases that allows it to make a good guess at your social security number. If it knows your date of birth (e.g. if your Facebook profile is public), there's a good chance it can ID your social security number.

... PittPatt was a Carnegie Mellon University research project, which spun off into a company post 9/11. At the time, U.S. intelligence was obsessed with using advanced facial recognition to identify terrorists. So the DARPA poured millions into PittPatt. The company was recently purchased by Google.

Read more.

Related:

-- Google debates face recognition technology

-- New Software Brings Facial-Recognition Technology to Mobile" Phones

OWLE Bubo transforms iPhone 4 into fully fledged video camera

Spotted on Pocket-lint, the OWLE Bubo which transforms your iPhone 4 into a miniature HD camera, complete with macro and wide-angle lens.