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Microsoft's Kinect gaming system uses gesture-controlled technology Microsoft describes waving one's hands to "draw" three-dimensional objects on a computer, while Apple's designs involve allowing users to "throw" content from one device to another. The two technology firms are not the only ones exploring the area. Less well known companies, including Qualcomm and Extreme Reality 3D, have also acted to secure touchless control patent rights.
BBC News - Apple and Microsoft file patents for touchless controls
An Update on Google TV
In the 1970s, there were just a few networks on TV. Cable changed things by adding hundreds of new channels like HBO, ESPN, and MTV. The Internet marks a new chapter for television. This chapter is not about replacing broadcast or cable TV; it’s not about replicating what’s on TV to the Web.Scrappy green-tech start-ups aren't the only ones who make big bets on technology. A spate of articles this week points to the fact that new technologies in the fossil fuel industry are making it harder for alternative clean energy technologies to get a larger foothold. A New York Times article this week says new techniques allow drillers to tap oil and gas from a variety of "unconventional sources" that were once considered too difficult, a shift that changes the global picture on energy supply. The most dramatic example in the U.S. is freeing natural gas from shale rock, largely in Pennsylvania and Texas, using a method known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking."
Look out: Fossil fuels may be out-innovating green tech | Green Tech - CNET News
Apple will likely argue that Android's pattern unlock violates its patent Apple co-founder Steve Jobs believed that the product was a rip-off of iOS and vowed to "destroy" it, according to his recently released biography. However, on Wednesday, an Italian court turned down Samsung's application for an interim injunction on sales of the iPhone 4S in that country. Apple's patent - US patent number 7657549 - states: "A device with a touch-sensitive display may be unlocked via gestures performed on the touch-sensitive display.
BBC News - Apple patents touchscreen unlock gestures
Google+ is the fastest-growing social network in history, with 40 million users since its June launch. To help them focus, Google’s quietly shuttered a number of products, removing iGoogle and Google Reader’s social features and closing Google Labs, Buzz, Jaiku and Code Search in the last two weeks alone. But in doing so, they also killed off one of its oldest and most useful tools, from its most popular product. On Wednesday, Google retired a longer-standing “plus”: the + operator, a standard bit of syntax used to force words and phrases to appear in search results. The operator was part of Google since its launch in 1997 and built into every search engine since. Unlike their other recent closures, the removal of + was made without any public announcement.
Google Kills Its Other Plus, and How to Bring It Back | Epicenter | Wired.com
Android easily outpaces iOS on mobile ad network | Digital Media - CNET News
(Credit: Millennial Media) Android captured 56 percent of all ad impressions on Millennial Media's mobile network over the third quarter, outshining Apple's iOS, which accounted for only 28 percent. Looking at the third quarter as a whole, Millennial Media's latest Mobile Mix report crowned Google's OS the top platform in the Connected Device and Smartphone category, which includes both tablets and phones. Android scooped up the lead over the past year "due in part to their contrasting strategy to iOS, allowing multiple device manufacturers to have access to their platform," said the report.
Professor McCarthy is also credited with coining the term "Artificial Intelligence" in 1955 when he detailed plans for the first Dartmouth conference. The brainstorming sessions helped focus early AI research. Prof McCarthy's proposal for the event put forward the idea that "every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it". The conference, which took place in the summer of 1956, brought together experts in language, sensory input, learning machines and other fields to discuss the potential of information technology. Other AI experts describe it as a critical moment.
BBC News - Artificial intelligence community mourns John McCarthy
CultureLab: Renaissance learning that shaped Galileo's genius
GALILEO was professor of mathematics and physics at the University of Padua, Italy, from the end of the 16th century, a time when ancient learning was being recovered. In Galileo's Muse , Mark A. Peterson is anxious to show how much the great man owed to the legacy of Greek science, Roman technology, and the arts. Providing a lively overview of Renaissance poetry, painting, music, architecture and mathematics, he argues that these subjects must have been a source of inspiration for Galileo.Carbon Nanotubes Enable First Step Towards Artificial Skin - IEEE Spectrum
Researchers at Stanford University have devised a method by which they can spray single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) onto a thin layer of silicone and create a flexible and stretchable pressure sensor. The researchers, led by Zhenan Bao , associate professor of chemical engineering, published their work in the journal Nature Nanotechnology this week under the title " Skin-like pressure and strain sensors based on transparent elastic films of carbon nanotubes ." "This sensor can register pressure ranging from a firm pinch between your thumb and forefinger to twice the pressure exerted by an elephant standing on one foot," said Darren Lipomi, a postdoctoral researcher in Bao's lab, who is part of the research team, in the Stanford article covering the research.