Some students are questioning the logistics of Arlington Public Schools’ plan to roll out locked phone pouches in all of its high schools this school year.
When APS high schoolers go back to school, they’ll be required to lock their phones away in a magnetically sealed pouch for the entirety of the school day. The intended purpose is to combat negative impacts of phones on learning and social-emotional health.
Last month, a peculiar cybersecurity incident derailed class at Washington-Liberty and prompted a police investigation that is ongoing.
Around 10:10 a.m. on Nov. 30, police were dispatched to the school for “the late report of suspicious circumstances,” says ACPD spokeswoman Ashley Savage.
The latter, with its facial recognition, advanced camera technology and “Super Retina” screen, reaches the $1,000 price mark, something that has raised the eyebrows of more than a few Apple critics.
Walk around Clarendon or other Arlington environs and it’s clear that the iPhone is king here, disproportionately more popular in Arlington than it is in other parts of the country, where Android has the market share lead.
The county this week added these and a few other new features to My Arlington, the app for iPhone and Android devices that launched in February.
Users can now use the app to access real-time information on paving and milling operations on county-owned streets, view traffic camera feeds and get traffic updates using data from Google Waze, said Shannon Whalen McDaniel, a communications manager for Arlington County.
Want to see for how much your neighbor just sold her house? That’s one of the streams of information in Arlington County’s new mobile app.
My Arlington, the recently-released app for iPhone and Android devices, “puts popular County information about events, real estate, permits and more in the palm of your hand,” says a county press release.
Board Approves Hospital Land Swap Option — The Arlington County Board has taken a first step to completing a deal to swap land with Virginia Hospital Center. The Board unanimously approved a non-binding Letter of Intent giving the hospital an option to purchase five acres of county-owned property adjacent to it. [Arlington County]
Apple iPhone Launch Day — A man has been camped out in front of the Clarendon Apple Store since Wednesday, in anticipation of today’s launch of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. The man, whose name is Joe, said it was his fourth year camping out for a new iPhone. [WJLA]
Joe Tenne packed his black Tundra truck full of camping supplies Wednesday night, said goodbye to his wife and son — and then headed to the Clarendon Apple store.
Tenne, 43, was first in line at the 2700 Clarendon Blvd. shop to buy the new iPhone 6. The Woodbridge resident, who got a tweet of support from William Shatner, arrived Wednesday at 8:00 p.m.
Police say the suspect, 19-year-old Chauncey Myers of D.C., grabbed a victim’s iPhone on N. Glebe Road in the Buckingham neighborhood, then took off in the direction of Ballston. The alleged crime happened around 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, and the 22 officers who were providing security at the Taste of Arlington festival in Ballston were notified that the suspect was heading their way.
Numerous officers fanned out from the festival, and the suspect was arrested at the intersection of Fairfax Drive and N. Vermont Street, three blocks from the Ballston Metro station.
The incident started when a resident of a house invited a woman inside for a drink early Sunday morning, according to Arlington County Police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck. After the woman left, one or more of the home’s residents noticed items missing, including an iPhone. The victim called police and used a GPS tracking feature to point police to the whereabouts of the stolen iPhone.
Police went to the address provided by the victim and found the stolen items, according to Sternbeck. The suspect confessed on the scene, he said.
A recently-updated app called It Happened Here detects your location and tells you interesting things that happened around you. Currently the app has information on six metro areas, including Washington. Among the interesting waypoints it will tell you about in Arlington:
It Happened Here was developed by Ken Dodelin, an Arlington resident, with the help of some students in an Entrepreneurial Journalism class he teaches at Georgetown University’s Clarendon campus.
The free app, which can be downloaded from the Android Marketplace and the Apple App Store, gives residents tips on what to do in the event of specific emergencies, provides a feed of Arlington’s emergency alerts, offers a checklist of emergency supplies and lists information about several emergency-related volunteer opportunities in Arlington.
Among the 10 emergencies covered in the “What Do I Do?” section are tornadoes (“if you are inside, seek a place of refuge such as a basement”), earthquakes (“many of the 120 fatalities from the 1933 Long Beach earthquake occurred when people ran outside of buildings only to be killed by falling debris”), and chemical attacks (“immediately strip and wash… look for a hose, fountain or any source of water”).
According to the rumor mill, today’s announcement may only reveal an incremental improvement to the existing iPhone 4. Die-hard Apple fans may be disappointed, as tech blogs predict an “iPhone 4S” to be revealed, as opposed to a more thoroughly-redesigned “iPhone 5.”
Nationally, the iPhone has 27 percent of the overall smartphone market, according to the latest data from Reston-based comScore. The smartphone platform leader is actually Google, which has 42 percent of the market thanks to its Android operating system. Blackberry’s market share is falling rapidly, but it still claims about 22 percent of smartphone users.
