Philadelphia

Philadelphia (/ˌfɪləˈdɛlfiə/) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the fifth-most-populous in the United States, with an estimated population in 2014 of 1,560,297. In the Northeastern United States, at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill River, Philadelphia is the economic and cultural anchor of the Delaware Valley, a metropolitan area home to 7.2 million people and the eighth-largest combined statistical area in the United States.

In 1682, William Penn founded the city to serve as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony. Philadelphia played an instrumental role in the American Revolution as a meeting place for the Founding Fathers of the United States, who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution in 1787. Philadelphia was one of the nation's capitals in the Revolutionary War, and served as temporary U.S. capital while Washington, D.C., was under construction. In the 19th century, Philadelphia became a major industrial center and railroad hub that grew from an influx of European immigrants. It became a prime destination for African-Americans in the Great Migration and surpassed two million occupants by 1950.

Free Library

Free Library may refer to:

Free Library of Philadelphia

Coordinates: 39°57′34″N 75°10′16″W / 39.9595°N 75.1710°W / 39.9595; -75.1710

The Free Library of Philadelphia is the public library system that serves Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is the 13th-largest public library system in the United States. Unique among public libraries in the United States, it is neither a city agency nor a nonprofit organization; instead, it is governed by both an independent city agency managed by its own board of directors and a separate nonprofit organization, The Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation.

In fiscal year 2014, the Free Library hosted nearly six million patrons in person and eight million more online.

History

Founding

The Free Library of Philadelphia was chartered in 1891 as "a general library which shall be free to all", through efforts led by Dr. William Pepper, who secured initial funding through a $225,000 bequest from his wealthy uncle, George S. Pepper. However, several libraries claimed the bequest, and only after the courts decided the money was intended to found a new public library did the Free Library finally open in March 1894. Its first location was three cramped rooms in City Hall. On February 11, 1895, the library was moved to the old Concert Hall at 1217-1221 Chestnut Street. Library officials criticized their new home as "an entirely unsuitable building, where its work is done in unsafe, unsanitary and overcrowded quarters, temporary make-shifts". In December 1, 1910, the Library was moved again, to the northeast corner of 13th and Locust Streets. Today, the Free Library of Philadelphia system is composed of 61 locations including Parkway Central Library, three regional libraries, 49 neighborhood libraries, five community Hot Spots, the Regional Research and Operations Center, and the Rosenbach Museum & Library, which became a subsidiary of the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation in 2013, retains its own board, and is managed separately from the public library system.

Free

Media

Arts and philosophy

Computing

Mathematics

Pokémon GO

Pokémon GO is an upcoming augmented reality game for mobile phones developed by Niantic, scheduled to be released in 2016 for iOS and Android devices. The game will be released alongside the Pokémon Go Plus, a small wearable device developed by Nintendo, which uses a Bluetooth connection to notify users when a Pokémon is nearby with a LED and a light rumble. The game will allow players to capture, battle, train and trade virtual Pokémon who appear throughout the real world. The game will be free-to-play, although it will support in-app purchases.

The idea for the game was conceived in 2013 by Satoru Iwata of Nintendo and Tsunekazu Ishihara of The Pokémon Company. In 2015, Ishihara dedicated his speech at the game's announcement on September 10 to Iwata, who died two months earlier. Ishihara and his wife had played Ingress. Different Pokémon will live in different areas of the world - for example, water type Pokémon will live near water. There will be events held where players can trade Pokémon to build up their collection. A wristband device called the "Pokémon Go Plus" will ship with the game, to allow a more "heads-up" gaming experience than Ingress, where the player can be alerted to a nearby Pokémon by the Go Plus vibrating, press the button in a coded sequence to capture it and check the app later to find out what they've captured. The decision to create the Go Plus rather than create a smart watch app was to increase uptake among players for whom a smart watch is prohibitively expensive.