ExtraBITS for 27 June 2011
Among much else, we spent last week reading about the New York Public Library’s digital initiatives, a possibly revolutionary new camera, ways of extending iPhone battery life, Verizon Wireless’s move to tiered data plans, and larger Time Capsules.
The Atlantic on What Big Media Can Learn from the NYPL — Alexis Madrigal has written a fascinating article for The Atlantic about how the New York Public Library is not only not floundering in this digital age, but is flourishing in ways that the beleaguered newspaper, magazine, and television industries would do well to examine.
Lytro Promises to Revolutionize Photography — By recording and processing the direction of light rays entering its sensor, the forthcoming Lytro camera promises to provide previously impossible features, such as the capability to focus on any part of a photo, at any time, or even bring an entire photo into focus at once. The camera isn’t slated for release until later in 2011, but you can play with refocusing photos and read more about the technology on Lytro’s site now (the picture gallery requires Flash on a Mac, but does work in iOS via HTML5).
Pogue’s Tips for Extending iPhone Battery Life — This blog post from David Pogue of the New York Times offers some useful tips for how to extend iPhone battery life. Nothing truly surprising, but it’s a great reminder to check on push, location, and notification settings to make sure you’re not allowing apps to waste battery life working unnecessarily in the background.
Verizon Wireless Switches to Tiered Plans in July — Verizon Wireless told AllThingsD that the current unlimited mobile broadband plan for iPhone subscribers would be replaced with tiered offerings. These would affect new subscribers and those changing their plans. Verizon didn’t confirm a report that plans would range from $30 per month for 2 GB of data to $80 per month for 10 GB, similar to their iPad 2 data offerings.
Time Capsule Capacity Boosted to 3 TB — Apple has made a minor change to its Time Capsule base station and backup system. Apple formerly offered 1 and 2 TB models, and the new models bump the Time Capsule’s storage to 2 TB ($299) and 3 TB ($499).