The Official UpNext Blog

(via Fred Wilson)

We were recently honored as one of the winners for the NYC Big App competition.  The entire NYC Big App competition was a fantastic experience and we were honored to be in the company of such great apps.

(You can see one of us on the far right of the stage in the shadows. Ok, so you can’t really see us, but we are there.)

Check out the new and improved UpNext iPhone App with expansion into Brooklyn and Queens. Now you can explore and discover more of NYC with UpNext.

Download it now –> iTunes Link

Watch the video demo below to see all the things you can do through UpNext.

A couple months ago, the city of New York launched the NYC Big Apps contest. In order to become more transparent, accessible, and accountable, the city opened up a large number of datasets and made them available for developers.

This flood of data and government support was a tremendous opportunity and we worked hard to make the most of it. We ended up with a vastly improved UpNext NYC app. Some highlights include, expansion into Brooklyn and Queens, greater visual details and additional data layers.

Take a moment to download the UpNext app for FREE on iTunes

But, this contest is exciting to us on many levels. First, the general movement towards open data by municipalities is something that will benefit all of us. As resident of this great city, only good things can come from more accountability.

Second, as a company that works with geodata, we have faced the cumbersome task of collecting data sets from cities. In an attempt to collect one particular dataset, I was yelled at 5 times, misdirected 3 times, mailed in 3 different forms and made 3 in person visits. Now we can just click on a link and download.

Third, we love data and making that data into something you can use. In essence, we take this raw data and build a digital version of NYC for easy use on your mobile phone. Roads, parks, buildings are all data elements that we utilize and enhance to create UpNext. Through the NYC Data Mine we were able to:

• Expand into Brooklyn and Queens (see screenshot below)
• Enrich UpNext NYC with greater visual details
• Improve our accuracy
• Add new helpful data layers

85 applications have been submitted to the NYC BigApp Contest. Seriously, 85 fantastic web and mobile applications that are all trying to make NYC a better city! We encourage you to check out the application gallery and see what these developers have created.

If you are a fan of UpNext, please take a minute to vote for us, UpNext.

If you haven’t heard yet, FireFox and WebKit (which Safari and Chrome are based on) have enabled WebGL in their codebase. Major browsers will soon have hardware accelerated 3d graphics built into the browser. No need for special plugins. You’ll be able to just download the new version of Firefox, Safari and Chrome and browse 3d interactive websites with ease. Why is this a big deal?

Up till now the only way to get 3d content was through a plugin. At UpNext we use a Java Applet. That requires us to ask your permission to access the video card. This already limits adoption. Flash can do 3d, but only in a limited fashion. Because Flash doesn’t have permission to deal directly with the video card, its 3d capabilities are severely limited. Plugins tend to be messy (they tend to crash often), not everyone has them and they lack ability to easily share content.

The announcement by Mozilla and Webkit can finally bring 3d content to the mainstream. We’ll finally be able to play rich online games without installing something. Full virtual streaming worlds will only require a url address. Social gaming will get another dimension to play with. 3d Avatars will be commonplace. 3d content will be easy to embed, share and load(finally!). In short, this announcement has the potential to change the interface of the web. Rather than all content being structured around text, content will also be able to be structured around polygons.

Quite honestly, we expected this to happen sooner than 2009. Perhaps the fact that the full embrace of 3d by the iPhone had browsers vendors jealous. Now all that rich content will soon be available through your browser. With touch screen interfaces becoming more common place, WebGL can’t arrive soon enough. We’ll be watching the developments closely and keep you updated on what our progress is with migrating UpNext to WebGL.

Check out this blog post by Patrick Laforge,

Third-Party iPhone Apps I Actually Still Use

It is a great list of 35 iPhone App that are useful, fun and worth keeping around.

(I guess it also helps that UpNext made the list!!)