The wireless network with a mile-wide range that the “internet of things” could be built on Robotics engineer Taylor Alexander needed to lift a nuclear cooling tower off its foundation using 19 high-strength steel cables, and the Android app that was supposed to accomplish it, for which he’d just paid a developer $20,000, was essentially worthless. Undaunted and on deadline—the tower needed a new foundation, and delays meant millions of dollars in losses—he re-wrote the app himself. That’s when he discovered just how hard it is to connect to sensors via the standard long-distance industrial wireless protocol, known as Zigbee. It took him months of hacking just to create a system that could send him a single number—which represented the strain on each of the cables—from the sensors he was using. Surely, he thought, there must be a better way. The result is an in-the-works project called Flutter. Flutter’s range is 3,200 feet in open air, but multiple Flutters can also cover even larger areas in a “mesh” network.
Disney develops 'magical' device to make fingertips sing 10 September 2013Last updated at 07:04 ET By Joe Miller BBC News Disney has demonstrated its new Ishin-Den-Shin audio system Disney has developed a device to transmit sound through the human body. The Ishin-Den-Shin technology uses a standard microphone to record audio and then converts it into an inaudible signal transmitted through the body of the person holding the microphone. When they touch someone's earlobe, an organic speaker is formed and the sound becomes audible, effectively whispering a message into that person's ear. The sound can be passed from person to person using any physical contact. The technology, revealed by the New Scientist, was developed at Disney Research in Pittsburgh and received an honorary mention at this week's Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. Small vibrations It records sounds through a device fitted to the microphone that creates a "modulated electrostatic field" around the user's skin. The recorded sound can be heard only by the specific ear touched.
The real plan for Google Glass may be to sell it to businesses, not consumers Yesterday evening in New York City, Google’s Glass team threw a party. It brought together “Explorers” and “Influencers”—the lucky few people who got to try out the computerized glasses Google is developing. Over cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, the diverse crowd gushed about the joys and dissected the drawbacks of the device, which they’ve been wearing for the last few months. The takeaway? Google Glass is not for who you think it is. Though Google has been promoting the device with heart-warming videos on rollercoaster rides and in children’s playgrounds, for the next few years at least, its main customers will be large businesses. Members of the Glass operations team have been on the road showing it off to companies and organizations, and they told Quartz that some of the most enthusiastic responses have come from manufacturers, teachers, medical companies, and hospitals. Those potential uses are manifold. Other uses of Glass would be in medicine.
Fall asleep to the sound of Wikipedia When one thinks of edits to Wikipedia, back and forth bickering and arguments over minutia generally come to mind. A project called Listen to Wikipedia offers a very different vibe, however, as it translates Wikipedia edits into soothing sounds and pleasant animations. Using the data provided by Wikipedia's recent changes feed, bells are used to convey additions, while string noises represent subtractions from articles. Higher pitched noises are for smaller edits, while larger edits are translated into lower pitched tones. Deep swells of sound accompany new users joining the service. All of the various noises work together in surprising harmony, creating a zen-like mood to go along with the furious edits being made to Wikipedia's database. In addition to the soothing sounds, Listen to Wikipedia also displays circles of various colors and sizes that correspond to the size of edits and who made them.
Keeping Your Laptop Plugged in All the Time Will Kill Its Battery Faster | Gadget Lab Power down. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED Laptops are our indispensable lifeline to the majesty that is the Internet. In order to squeeze as much life out of your lithium-polymer battery, once your laptop hits 100 percent, unplug it. Cadex Electronics CEO Isidor Buchmann told WIRED that ideally everyone would charge their batteries to 80 percent then let them drain to about 40 percent. Buchmann would know. You can battle this degradation by keeping the lid open and your laptop out of your actual lap while using it. While those are simple fixes, Buchmann admits that putting the 40 to 80 percent battery-status workflow into practice is easier said than done. A search of Windows and OS X apps yielded nothing that would alert a user when a computer reached both an 80 percent charge and a 40 percent discharge.
See Some Art While You Can — Google Will Eventually Replace Museums | Raw File The prints in the series Anonymous Paintings are enlarged reproductions of museum artworks that have been imaged by Google Street View technology and later blurred by Google on its Art Project website. They are inkjet prints stretched on cotton panels, but they are also emblematic of the fascination that has built around Google’s Street View glitches and blurrings. Initially launched in 2011, Google Art Project was redesigned in April 2012 expanding the number of museums with the “walk-through” feature from 17 to 51. Now, you can saunter through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA and The Frick Collection from your living room. The blurred Anonymous Paintings were created by João Enxuto and Erica Love. Due to copyright issues, artworks that are on loan at a given institution — and therefore not under its direct ownership — may not be imaged or distributed as part of Google Art Project. In Spring, the duo completed a Whitney Independent Study Program and developed their ideas further.
IBM Developing Computer System That Thinks Like a Human IBM scientists are developing a new software ecosystem that would be able to support cognitive computing systems that interact more naturally with humans. Cognitive computing systems can be trained with artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms. The potential for this technology is elaborated in the video below. If this all sounds complex, well, that's because it is. That's why modeling computing systems after the brain might work better. "Architectures and programs are closely intertwined and a new architecture necessitates a new programming paradigm," Dharmendra S. That's why IBM is developing this "new cognitive ecosystem" to includes a software simulator that has "a network of neurosynaptic cores," a neuron model that can process "brain-like computation," a programming model based on "composable, reusable building blocks" called "corelets" and a program library to store corelets. But what is all this good for? Lead image: Ben Hider/Getty Images.
Review of Spin Video-Chatting Service Cloud, Mobile, Software-Defined Networking Trends Prominent at Interop New cloud competition, the meshing of consumer and network applications, the maturing of software-defined networks, network services to match compute and storage, and the continuing quest for mobile device management are five trends highlighted at this year’s Interop New York conference. I spent a couple of days at Interop (which itself has become a mash-up with the Ethernet and SDN expo and InformationWeek’s CIO summit) and found these five trends and business developments that are the ones to watch in networks. 1. Verizon Terremark introduced its cloud-based service to challenge the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The Verizon Cloud Compute and Cloud Storage product demonstration was impressive with the flexibility of click and allocate compute, storage and network capacity. 2.
Humans Trump Robots at the Grocery Store Power surges 'cripple NSA data centre' 8 October 2013Last updated at 06:19 ET The NSA's data gathering plans have come under scrutiny thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden. Electrical supply problems at a National Security Agency data centre have delayed its opening by a year, reports the Wall Street Journal. Power surges at the giant Utah centre had ruined equipment costing almost a million dollars, it said. The technical problems had also led to lengthy investigations that had meant its opening date had been pushed back. The Utah plant is one of three the NSA is building to boost its data gathering and surveillance capabilities. Over the past 13 months, 10 separate electrical surges have occurred at the data centre in Bluffdale, Utah, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which is reported to have cost $1.4bn (£872m) to build. Each surge had burnt out and wrecked about $100,000 worth of computers and other equipment, it said.