iPhone Powered By Viruses? Berkeley Scientists Move Closer. Image credit: Berkeley Lab Viruses might eventually be able to power the very phone, computer or tablet you're reading this article on. And we're not talking about those digital viruses or infestations - trojans, worms, and whatnot. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Berkeley Lab have found a way to generate power using human viruses. Yes, those viruses inside your body. "In near future, we believe that we can develop personal electric generators. So how does it all work? And that force is critical to the equation.
But the scientists are picturing even broader uses. However, this is still a ways out. "We are currently working on enhancing the power output of the virus-based piezoelectric generators," Lee told us. EnvironmentNature & EnvironmentBerkeley Lab. Open Web Device. How Patent Battles Threaten the Simple Act of Unlocking a Phone | Gadget Lab. Unlocking a smartphone is perhaps its most basic function. Swipe your finger across your lockscreen, and you’re granted access to the home screen beneath. It’s a no-frills feature, but an important one. And yet over the past six months, the simple act of unlocking a phone has grown absurdly controversial. In fact, it’s morphed into a different animal entirely, a weapon in a war of patent litigation.
Apple claims the familiar “slide-to-unlock” function as its own. Google and its third-party manufacturing partners, meanwhile, doth protest, filing their own patent requests in order to fight back. “A patent is not a guaranteed right to do something,” said Florian Mueller, a patent expert who has followed the ongoing litigation closely. So when one manufacturer wins a patent infringement claim, it’s a small yet significant win that spurs even more litigation. So what, exactly, does this mean for Android handset owners?
So why would Apple want to wage war in Germany at all? For Texting Without Looking, Researchers Adapt Braille. Touchscreens on everything from coffee makers to treadmills are intended to provide better user experiences, but they can create a navigational nightmare for the visually impaired. A new technology developed at Georgia Tech, however, makes touchscreens more accessible to the estimated 22 million American adults with vision loss by adapting the same system used to type Braille. "Mobile keyboards have too many buttons that are too small, and it turns the sighted into the blind and makes it so the blind can’t even use the device," says Mario Romero, a Postdoctoral Fellow who led the project. Once installed as an app, the technology pulls up a six-key braille-based keyboard rather than the standard QWERTY 26-letter keyboard.
Many visually impaired already use smartphone touchscreens without a problem. The iPhone's gesture-based VoiceOver mode, for instance, reads aloud whatever text someone touches on the screen. Android has a similar feature. “Braille was not optimized for texting," he says. Breakthrough: Organic Computer Could Change Everything. Scientists have created a biological computer capable of extracting hidden images on a DNA chip. There's nothing new about a computer reading images encrypted on DNA chips, but this is the first computer made only of biomolecules.
The scientists behind the research in California and Israel say they don't expect biological computers to compete with electronic computers. The biological computer isn't pretty and doesn't look like a normal computer since it was created in a test tube by mixing chemicals in a solution that appears clear, said Ehud Keinan, the professor who led the research.
Scientists don't know what impact their findings will have on technological advancement, but biomolecular computing devices could redefine what a computer is. A computer is defined "as a machine made of four components — hardware, software, input and output," Keinan said in a statement. SEE ALSO: From Fantasy to Reality: Scientists Create Time Invisibility Cloak. Engineers boost AMD CPU performance by 20% without overclocking. Engineers at North Carolina State University have used a novel technique to boost the performance of an AMD Fusion APU by more than 20%. This speed-up was achieved purely through software and using commercial (probably Llano) silicon. No overclocking was used. In an AMD APU there is both a CPU and GPU, both on the same piece of silicon. In conventional applications — in a Llano-powered laptop, for example — the CPU and GPU hardly talk to each other; the CPU does its thing, and the GPU pushes polygons.
What the researchers have done is to marry the CPU and GPU together to take advantage of each core’s strengths. To achieve the 20% boost, the researchers reduce the CPU to a fetch/decode unit, and the GPU becomes the primary computation unit. Now, unfortunately we don’t have the exact details of how the North Carolina researchers achieved this speed-up. If the 20% speed boost can be brought to market in the next year or two, AMD might actually have a chance. IBM and 3M Discover the Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster. If you want to make processors 1,000 times faster, you're going to need some serious technology, right? That would be the conventional wisdom.
But 3M and IBM have unlocked a secret low-tech shortcut. The companies found a much simpler way to hit that elusive goal — not by creating some spectacular new circuitry or using exotic quantum mechanics, but with the invention of a new variety of a mundane substance: glue. This is not just any glue. With IBM supplying its microprocessor and silicon expertise and 3M contributing its super-cool adhesive, the two companies aim to stack together processors, memory chips and networks into monster "skyscrapers" of silicon they say will be 1,000 times faster than today's fastest processor.
When can we get our hands on this breakthrough tech? And to think, we were impressed with a promise of processors that will be 20 times faster. Here's a video illustrating this exciting new breakthrough (no sound): [via IBM and DVICE] DisplAir: Minority Report’s Gesture Interface, Only Real. And Russian. Ever since Microsoft Kinect debuted last year, controller-free gesture interfaces have gone mainstream. As popular as it is, the tech could stand some improvement: it would be more precise if users were able to manipulate 3D images in midair, a la Tom Cruise’s elaborate setup in Minority Report, instead of eyeballing things on a screen. Now a company from Russia has a working prototype of just such a device.
Called DisplAir, the technology combines an infrared camera, a projector, and cold fog to project 3D images and capture the user’s hand movements as they manipulate them. A user can “press” items to select them, swipe things to the side, and even use two hands and fingers to make objects larger or smaller, the 3D equivalent of multi-touch. You can see it all being done in this demo video: This being a prototype, the technology is far from polished. Nonetheless, it’s an impressive achievement, especially considering the technology was developed in a dormitory. Via TechCrunch Europe. Microsoft Surface 2.0: From 'Minority Report' to Reality. The Designer Tech Series is supported by the exquisitely crafted, new 2013 Lincoln MKS with Lincoln Drive Control. Now it gets interesting. The idea of surface computing — interacting with gestures, movements and objects, is quickly moving from the big screen (a la Minority Report) and into reality.
From smartphones to tablets to thermostats, touch is becoming the computing input mechanism of choice. With Surface 2.0, Microsoft is actively taking surface computing to the next level. First released in 2008, the Microsoft Surface was a tabletop touch computer with support for multi-touch and multi-gestures. At CES 2011, Microsoft unveiled the Surface 2.0. Last month, Samsung started accepting pre-orders for the Microsoft Surface 2.0 SUR40 in 23 countries. How It Works For the Surface 2.0, Microsoft employs a number of different technologies to make the product really sing. The iPad (and leading Android tablets) can support up to ten simultaneous points of interaction.
This is how it works: Your Smartphone Is One Step Closer to Becoming Invincible. It seems technology companies are finally tuning in to that most basic of tech consumer problems: dropping devices in the toilet. Unveiled this week at CES, Liquipel is a clear coating that protects smartphones from dying in a watery grave. And if Liquipel can connect with enough smartphone vendors this week at CES, it could come with your next phone. The new coating uses nanotechnology vapors to seep into every part of your phone and protect it from water damage. The coating is "1,000 times thinner than a human hair," says Danny McPhail, co-president at Liquipel.
At CES, a smartphone coated in Liquipel is tossed into a dish filled with water. Even though the Liquipel-coated phones can take a splashing, or even a dunk, going for a swim with the coated phone is not advised. Liquipel plans to close deals with smartphone manufacturers this week at CES to get their coating on new phones out of the box. Right now, if you want your smartphone coated with Liquipel, it costs $59 plus shipping.
USB 3.0 Is Coming to Smartphones and Tablets. By the end of 2012 smartphones and tablet devices will sport a USB 3.0-based microUSB connector, which will allow speedier data transfer than the current USB 2.0 standard. USB 3.0 theoretically allows for data transfer rates of around 625 MB/s, which is 10 times faster than USB 2.0, whose maximum data transfer speed is 60 MB/s. The USB 3.0 transfer speed on mobile devices won't be that fast, but it will be much faster than now. "What takes 15 minutes will roughly take 1 minute and 10 seconds," said Rahman Ismail, CTO of the USB Implementers Forum at the CES trade show in Las Vegas. Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets will also recharge more quickly through USB 3.0.
To be able to implement USB 3.0 in the context of mobile devices, the USB Implementers Forum will have to develop new specifications for the standard. "We're coming out with new specs, new areas where we will make it very power efficient, power friendly," said Ismail. The Future of the Camera. First it was smartphones integrating cameras. Could we be about to see the inverse - cameras integrating smartphone technology?
That's the concept being explored by Seattle design company Artefact. They've come up with an intriguing prototype for a camera that incorporates smartphone technology - a.k.a. a SmartCam. Artefact claims that innovation has stalled in the camera industry, that there hasn't been much new in camera devices over the past 10 years. This is the fifth post in our series looking at how the user experience (UX) of consuming - and producing - media is changing with the increasing popularity of devices other than the PC. Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we're re-publishing some of our best posts of 2011. The camera has been a staple of the technology industry since the 19th century.
As smartphones integrate ever more powerful cameras, what can the traditional camera companies do to compete? Microsoft Wants You to Control Your Phone by Touching Yourself | Fast Company - StumbleUpon. Kinect's "using your body as a controller" feature was one of technology’s big hits last year--not only have users had fun dancing up a storm and racing cars with official Kinect games, but a whole community has emerged to dream up new and inventive ways of hacking the system that tracks 20 joints in your body.
But if you think that's Microsoft's last foray into unconventional means of controlling digital devices, think again. The Seattle giant has a whole team of smarty-pants researchers tasked with imagining new and freaky ways we might one day turn on our mp3 players, dial phones, and, who knows, maybe even power up a microwave for a little burrito action. One of the projects they’re working on is "Skinput," a system that would allow you to control devices simply by hitting specific points on your arm. Not a device on your arm. Just your arm itself. Here’s one way you might use it: You’re on your usual early-morning jog.
[Image: Microsoft]