Got an N95? Want free sat nav?

One of the hottest phones of the year is about to get even hotter. One of the hottest features of the phone can now be used for free.

Nokia's groundbreaking handset features GPS 'sat nav' although this feature has been 'crippled' until the end user signs up to a subscription service. Now there is a viable alternative.

offers free sat nav for any handset with either an internal sat nav receiver or one attached via bluetooth. Users can search for addresses in a few countries and although the software is still in developlment, it is quite usable.
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One note of caution, if you leave your handset to display sat photos for the landscape, the handset will download the data over your connection which may incur a charge so read the setup documents properly.

Here's a flash demo of the app in action.

From flickr to BBC One

It's a well known fact within media circles that the age of user generated content is well and truly upon us. I experienced this first hand today thanks to a digital camera and flickr.

As part of my work with the BBC, I have taken a number of photographs from central Manchester and today I saw one of them, in widescreen, on BBC One, after the national news.

In itself, that's not surprising. The picture was taken for the BBC in the first place however what is great to see is how web 2.0 apps are helping people like myself, share information via web services and get it out to a wider audience. In this case a much wider audience...



From flickr to BBC One... from pthurst and Vimeo.

Oh no!... Not AGAIN!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back onto the internet. Paul Hurst strikes with yet ANOTHER blog!

Mediawatchblog.tv is my latest pet project which is pretty self explanatory. For those who may need a bit more info, its a blog dedicated to cataloguing and commenting stories from the media perspective.

The blog may sit uncomfortably close to mediawatchblog.com however I thing that I'm offering something quite different than my fellow bloggers and hope they don't mind their new Tuvaluan neighbour too much!

You can check out the new blog at www.mediawatchblog.tv and please let me know what you think and throw me the odd-link or two if your a fellow blogger. I'd be very grateful.

Blogging in schools

Today has seen the official launch of a school blog after six weeks of training with sixteen students.

Pupils from St Peter's High School in Orrell have been finding out all about blogs as part of their english coursework and ICT across the curriculum. They have had lessons in Creative writing, journalism skills and of course web safety and security.

You can have a look at their school blog and their write-up of the course here and as the team continues to create more content, I'll be back in the school to work with more students and staff in this exciting area of creative education.

As most of you may know already, a lot of my work centres around the use of podcasting, blogging and photojournalsm in education and I set up the Rock FM bus blog as part of my vision for journalistic skills such as research and presentation to be featured more prominently within our schools.

Students love the challenge of creating podcasts and school blogs, especially when they can work alongside creative professionals and broadcast partners such as Rock FM so if you're connected with a school in the North-West of England and you'd like more information or maybe like to meet for advice then feel free to email me.

pthurst@gmail.com

Photo Portfolio from Paul Hurst

Here's a shot presentation with some of my photographs in it. Hope you like them!




My Photo Portfolio from pthurst and Vimeo.

Want to see what the future holds for Your pictures?

This video, which demonstrates Microsoft's new technology called 'Photosynth' shows that with a bit of lateral thinking, some amazing things are still possible with computers. Things that haven't been thought of before.

The video shows how sites like flickr, which host millions of pictures online, can be used to join millions of photos from millions of photographers together to create a 'seamless' 3D photo, where users can navigate around a space and examine the scene in minute detail.

The principal works on the basis that millions of pictures may be taken of one object, some on purpose, but also some by chance. These pictures can be analysed and then 'mapped' together to create a navigable environment. This is because each photo may capture the same building or scene but from a slightly different angle. By overlapping these pictures and by skewing or distorting them to include distance information, it's possible to create a navigable virtual world which is overlayed with real-world photographs. Even though The pictures may have been taken on all kinds of different cameras and for all kinds of different reasons.

The technology is new and slightly 'gimmicky' at the moment but in the future, it could offer invaluable evidence at crime scene locations where members of the public have recorded material on their mobiles which when joined together spatially, could offer a new insight into events as they actually occurred. The basis being that although one picture may lie, tens, hundreds or even thousands will not. If only this technology had been around in 1963 with the Kennedy Assassination?

The technology video is included in its entirety below although the 'Photosyth' section starts from about 2-3 mins in.