By the Mobile Action Lab

OAKLAND--Have you ever felt like singing your heart out, but you didn't have the moxie to perform your vocals in front of a live audience? There's an app that lets you karaoke to your favorite song with the option of adding Auto-Tune, which corrects your voice to stay on key. Only when you're sure you have a masterpiece do your friends get to hear it. The app's called StarMaker Karaoke with Auto-Tune, and here's one of the company's founders, Nathan Sedlander, demo-ing how it works. 

Youth Radio invited StarMaker's other founder and CEO, Jeff Daniel, to our Oakland studios to bring us behind the scenes in the making of StarMaker. In addition to being potential users, we produce apps through Youth Radio's Mobile Action Lab. So our young minds are always seeking lessons from the pros on how to make our products legit. 

2011 statistics show that college students are highly dependent on their technological devices.

* ¾ of students say they wouldn’t be able to study without technology.

* In a study done at the University of Maryland, when asked to go 24 hours without technology, many students experienced symptoms similar to drug and alcohol withdrawal.

* Sophomores in college use Facebook the most.

Check out the infographic below for more information about students and technology by OnlineEducation.net.

By Ashleigh Kenny

The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, one of the longest and most heavily-trafficked bridges in the world, is undergoing a major retrofit to bring it up to current seismic safety standards in earthquake-prone California. As a result, the 280,000 motorists who traverse the bridge each day have to adapt to periodic changes in traffic patterns. The latest traffic redesign happens on Memorial Day weekend but motorists have some high-tech tools at their disposal to experience the future of the bridge, piece by piece, in three dimensions.

Caltrans has worked with software company Autodesk to create a mobile app that puts iPad, iPhone and iPod users behind the wheel for a drive across the new east span of the bridge during construction. The first edition of the app, called the Bay  Bridge Explorer, enables users to experience the upcoming Oakland touchdown detour in the virtual world before it goes into effect in reality.

I took a test drive of the iPad app at a recent Caltrans press conference, and cruised by virtual traffic across realigned lanes. The experience felt much like playing a video game to this occasional driver, but the virtual orientation can be a useful safety tool for daily commuters.

The construction of the new east span of the Bay Bridge is a complex undertaking- the biggest engineering project in California’s history. 3-D technology is an innovative and resourceful way to help tech-savvy drivers acclimate to abrupt changes in their daily commutes across the Bay.

And in case the app doesn’t offer an immersive enough experience, you can visit the Autodesk Transportation Simulator and test drive the Bay Bridge and detour routes. The Simulator is housed in the [LINK:http://usa.autodesk.com/gallery/] Autodesk Gallery, which is free and open to the public each Wednesday from 12 p.m.-5 p.m.

 Mobile apps are inherently green. Putting aside the environmental demands of manufacturing the devices that run them, apps themselves don’t use fuel or paper. But there are apps that go a step beyond all that and actually promote environmentally conscious awareness, attitudes, and behavior.

Apps are more than a hobby to me. They are what I do. I find enormous pleasure in the magic of a well-designed app coupled with the simplicity of a device you can carry in your pocket. I created apps during my time in grad school, I make them for a living now, and I have a collection of downloads that can rival even the most ardent app aficionados.

To create this list, I spent a month sifting through app stores, my own collection, and my friends’ collections, and I used as many as I could for as long as I could stand. So here you have five of my favorite green apps available today:

 1.  Transporter (iphone):

This Bay Area app lists all the public transportation within the city. You click on the train, bus, or other system you would like to take, then choose the line, pick the direction and it tells you when the next one will be at the closest stop to you. The app is efficient, handy, and usually spot-on for timing, which is very useful when out and about in the city. More often than not, you aren’t wanting to leave the comfort of your apartment, restaurant, or club just to sit on a bench, or in a seedy train station. This app eliminates guess-work and saes serious wait-time. 

The following was originally broadcast on 3/12/11, WABE-FM, Atlanta.

By Mason Gepp

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Two years ago my life was forever altered after I purchased the sleek, innovative, multi-functional iPhone. Besides using it as a phone, I constantly use it to stay connected to the world using the Internet, Facebook and email.

I am a fairly tech savvy person -- seems you have to be nowadays. But my parents, and most people I know older than 50, seem to be technologically challenged. When an adult asks me
if I know how to sync my iphone, download music or use a GPS, they sound like rhetorical questions – of course I do. To me, not knowing how to use these things sounds foreign because I grew up with them.

My parents used to ask me how to turn on the DVD player or how to use the TV remote control. Now, they want me to put music on their iPods or help them navigate their own iPhones. I
can’t really say it’s entirely their fault that they are dependent on me, it’s all new to them. But it frustrates me sometimes. I wish they would make a stronger effort to learn the skills
themselves. And let’s just say they have a lot of catching up to do. I’m not saying my parents -- or people in their generation -- can't figure out these devices, because I know plenty of parents who understand electronic gadgets better than I do. They just need to practice more than people my age. So, I’m willing to make a deal: I will help my parents copy a music CD, if they promise to take the time to learn how to do it themselves from now on.

On October 13, Apple was granted a patent on an anti-sexting device that allows an administrator to censor text messages on the iPhone. The device seems targeted at parents who do not want their children to be 'sexting' their peers or sending inappropriate photos via text message.

CNN reported, "Messages containing blocked material either would not be received or would have the objectionable content redacted.  Unlike other text blockers, Apple's version would also be able to filter content based on a child's grade level and claims to filter abbreviated words that may be missed by other programs."

In addition to censoring text messages, the patent also boasts the ability to turn texting into an educational activity. The tool has the ability to withhold text messages unless they are grammatically correct, preventing common texting lingo like LOL and OMG.

Perhaps the most interesting twist to the functionality of this device -- it can act as a tool to learn foreign languages. Confused? CNN reports, "Parents of kids who are studying Spanish, for example, could be required to send a certain number of messages per month in that language, according to the document. If kids did not meet the foreign language quota, their texting privileges could be automatically revoked until they send more Spanish-language text messages."

When I was an English teacher, I fought a daily battle against cell phones.  Our school had a no-phone policy: if a teacher saw it during class, they could confiscate it. But with 35 cell phones in a room, there is bound to be some texting, game-playing, and music sharing going on under the desks.

One day, I followed a group of students down to the algebra room.  They had forgotten to copy down the homework assignment.  They pulled out their phones, and snapped a picture of the white board.  Pretty smart, I thought. No chance of copying down the wrong page number.
Teachers and principals are now posing this question: Is there a better way to incorporate cell phones into classrooms? 

North Scott High School in Iowa is taking an innovative approach.  Two science teachers, Jason Guerin and Mark Anderson, have started using a site called PollEverywhere to give practice tests. Guerin told the Associated Press, “It’s really neat because it engages the kids.”  These two teachers project practice multiple choice questions onto an LCD screen, and students text their answers to the site.  The teachers can then access the student response data. If the students do not have cell phones, they use school laptops to send in their responses.

The Tiger Woods cheating app is now available. Ok, not really, but if you’re the type that dates A LOT of people there is a new app that can help you juggle those romantic meetings, so they don’t overlap.

DateMate serves as a digital planner, the kind that keeps you're booty calls and potential partners organized. The app lets you rate a date and allows you to keep track of how many times you’ve been intimate with ALL your dates and then breaks it down in a graph form.

The basic idea of DateMate is that it allows you to enter details about your partners—birthdays, contact information, silly things that you should recall—and track your encounters with them. The app offers a calendar so that you can keep track of whose bed you were in on which night and a way to rank the dates and create notes about them. Once you've got a bunch of dates under your belt, you can even generate graphs of your activities and compare frequency, quality, and progress.

via Gizmodo

With this app being a player can get easier.
 

The way people listen to music has come a long way, and is constantly changing. Progressing from record players and tape decks to CD players and walkmans, society has finally stumbled upon the latest ground breaking invention, the iphone 4. One of the first new features to catch my attention was the new industrial design. It is flat on both sides, and unlike its plastic predecessors, is made of glass with a stainless steel band around the edges. With improved speed and access to countless new apps, the iphone 4 is certainly a “revolutionary” new product, much like every other Apple product. A huge wave of anticipation usually sweeps through America when Apple announces their newest and niftiest gadget, but is all the hype really worth it, or is it just in our nature to want the latest greatest technology?

The White House is still keeping up with the latest in technology. If you're an iPhone user you can now download the new White House App for free in which users can get updates direct from the Obama administration. One of the most exciting parts of the app is its live video streaming. People would be able to watch President Obama’s public events at the White House, frequent web chats with Administration officials, and other events like speeches and press briefings in real time.

Over at Switched, Terrence O’Brien says that the Obama administration is technologically ushering the White House into the 21st century but that the app is missing very important one thing.

“The only glaring omission from the iPhone app? Social networking. The ability to share news items and video, or invite others to watch live streams via Twitter and Facebook seems like a no-brainer to us.”

Coming soon to other mobile phones will be the White House’s mobile website, mobile.whitehouse.gov.