Ingress: The game that reveals Google's secret war to control London. New Chip to Bring Holograms to Smartphones - WSJ. Obsession engineers: Mind control the Candy Crush way - tech - 29 May 2014. Why are we addicted to games?
(Image: Patrick George) How do you design a hit video game? Touch-sensitive video-screen floor is in step with you - tech - 23 January 2013. Video: Smart floor conjures CGI mirror world A prototype floor that senses your every step and displays interactive video could one day bring strange sights and new possibilities into your home.
Consumer Physics’ $150 smartphone spectrometer can tell the number of calories in your food. Would you like to be able to look up the calorie content of the specific apple you’re eating?
You could take it to a lab and run it through a spectrometer, but accurate spectrometers are huge, expensive machines that are often only owned by institutions and require training to use. A new startup, however, wants to make it easy as running an app and pairing a bluetooth dongle. The SCiO is a handheld device that pairs with a smartphone through Bluetooth LE being developed by Consumer Physics, an Israel-based startup funded by Kholsa Ventures. It’s based on near-infrared spectroscopy, which means it reflects light onto an object, then collects and analyzes the light reflected back.
Student game world takes historic London maps into 3D space. Six students from De Montfort University won first prize in the Off The Map challenge when they turned maps of seventeenth century London into a detailed 3D world.
The challenge was sponsored by Crytek (and therefore used the company's proprietary Cryengine) and run in conjunction with the British Library and video game culture project, GameCity. Share a link. Weapons of Mass Distraction. Last Sunday I read a New York Times article entitled, “Learning to Let Go: First, Turn Off the Phone.”
As someone who studies the impact of technology, particularly the impact on our own personal psychology, I was interested to see what Andy Isaacson, the article’s author, had to say about what our omnipresent phones are doing to us. I have to say that I was both encouraged and discouraged. On the plus side, the article tackled what I think is a major issue in our smartphone-inundated world: the fact that in the past five years we have all started to carry around in our pocket or purse a wireless mobile device that purports to be a phone but, in fact, is really more of a computer. Piper monitors security and automates your home. Blacksumac, a developer of remote presence-based smart technology, has announced the US and Canada launch of Piper, a home security and automation device.
It allows users to monitor and interact with their home via a smartphone or tablet. View all Last year Piper raised over three times its targeted amount via an Indiegogo campaign. The device incorporates a wide-angle camera, motion detector, speaker, microphone, siren, Wi-Fi, Z-Wave controller and sensors for humidity, temperature, sound and ambient light. Ring puts the finger on gesture control. We've already seen rings that unlock doors and mobile devices, show the time, act as a mouse or display notifications from a connected mobile device, but, like the Fin, the Ring from California-based Logbar aims to take finger wagging to the next level.
Featuring Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity, the Ring is designed to allow control of mobile devices and home appliances, make electronic payments and even type text in mid air with a wave of a finger. View all Designed to be worn on the index finger, motion sensors embedded within the Ring identify the gesture being made by said finger once the device is activated by tapping the touch sensor on the outer edge of the ring. This allows the wearer to perform everything from simple up and down motions to change the volume of a paired device, to writing letters in the air to compose text messages.
Spike Jonze’s Her and the Big Question. Phil Bowermaster January 29, 2014 [This piece includes spoilers for the movie Her and also for Don Juan DeMarco, but that one is 20 years old, so come on: you’ve had your chance.]
The Hyperlink Gets Reinvented for the Mobile Era to Boost Ads in Apps. In the beginning there was the Web, a thicket of virtual pages connected by hyperlinks that enabled blogging to flourish and companies like Google to make piles of money by directing people where advertisers wanted them to go.
Today mobile apps increasingly rule our free time and require us to dive into separate, walled-off digital containers that don’t link up. That’s now changing as ad technology startups, together with established companies such as Google and Facebook, seek to reinvent the hyperlink. They’re rolling out technology that makes it easy to put links into a mobile app, Web page, or e-mail that with a single tap take a person to a specific section of another app installed on the device. “This should be a fundamental building block of how all mobile apps work, just like URLs are fundamental to how the Web works,” says Sriram Krishnan, a product manager at Facebook. IBM's Next Big Thing: Psychic Twitter Bots.
Using some of the same technologies that allowed the Watson natural language supercomputer to conquer Jeopardy, IBM's next step: Psychic artificial intelligences that read your Twitter feed and can tell when you're about to have a baby, get married, buy a house, or move across the country, and even tell you how these major life events make you feel, then approach you about them accordingly.
Last week, IBM announced a new consulting practice called IBM Interactive Experience dedicated to better fusing business strategy, data, and design. As part of the announcement, IBM revealed that the company had been working on perfecting a couple of tools that are offshoots of the same computer research into natural language that led to Watson. Those tools? This map of the internet is not just super-detailed, but worth framing. Zoom releases the iQ5 external microphone for iPhone.
Biometric App Unlocks Phones With People’s Ears. The way we unlock our phones are no longer limited to simple passwords or PIN codes. What Happens To Music After Net Neutrality? Valve: The future of Virtual Reality is just one year away. The most exciting aspect of contemporary virtual reality is its implications. Even using Oculus VR's early duct taped-prototype, most users immediately "get it. " You're transported to, say, Tuscany, or an underwater exploration vehicle, or a space fighter, and that experience is enough to trigger a flood of ideas for other potential interactions -- interactions that are dramatically heightened by employing a VR headset.
How about deep-sea exploration in 4K? Or maybe Mars? And we're not talking just video games, but experiences. "Not only could VR rapidly evolve into a major platform, but it could actually tip the balance of the entire industry from traditional media toward computer entertainment. " The Internet Of Things Has Been Hacked, And It's Turning Nasty.
Don't say we didn't warn you. Bad guys have already hijacked up to 100,000 devices in the Internet of Things and used them to launch malware attacks, Internet security firm Proofpoint said on Thursday. It's apparently the first recorded large-scale Internet of Things hack. Proofpoint found that the compromised gadgets—which included everything from routers and smart televisions to at least one smart refrigerator—sent more than 750,000 malicious emails to targets between December 26, 2013 and January 6, 2014. Kiwi Move could be the most powerful new wearable. The Move has a full suite of sensors within Image Gallery (3 images) A burgeoning boom in wearables could be underway if the assortment of worn gadgets at CES 2014 is any indication. The most powerful of the batch might be a low profile, thumb-sized piece of plastic packed with sensors from a little Toronto-based company called Kiwi.
Put On A Helmet, And You're In The Story: Why Virtual Reality Journalism Is The Future. Internet of Things Will Burn Privacy for a While, Cerf Warns. How To Transform Consumers' Retail Experience Into A Creative Product. Twitter Founder Reveals Secret Formula for Getting Rich Online. Ev Williams has figured out the internet.
That’s what he told the gathered tech heads at the recent XOXO conference in Portland, Oregon, and while he may have said this with tongue partly in cheek, he spent the next 30 minutes unloading his unified theory of the global computer network, an interpretation formed after 20 years of hard thinking — to say nothing of his experience creating seminal internet companies Blogger and Twitter. A new digital ecology is evolving, and humans are being left behind. Brain-to-brain communication is not a conversation killer. It's a milestone breakthrough you would think came straight from science fiction, but a recent study conducted by the University of Washington claims to have demonstrated direct brain-to-brain communication between humans.
First 'mind meld' to link human brains. A scientist sent a brain signal over the internet to control a colleague’s hand—and made his finger move on the keyboard to play a simple video game. Robert Scoble - Google+ - The future of news and journalism with Google Glass and CNN… The future of news and journalism with Google Glass and CNN.
War of the Screens: Digital Passes TV as a Time Suck For the 1st Time Ever - Derek Thompson. And the smallest device is quickly becoming the biggest. Five hours reading the Internet. Four hours watching television. LED streetlamp aims to improve public's view of stars. 25 April 2013Last updated at 13:14 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter Light pollution prevents nearby residents from being able to see many of the stars in the night sky Researchers believe they have come up with a new type of LED-powered streetlamp that could radically reduce light pollution. World's Biggest Data Breaches - Static. 68% of CEOs still aren’t on any social networks whatsoever - Quartz. False sense of security: Your TV, car, neighborhood may be hackable.
AquaTop Display brings immersive entertainment to your bathroom. Study: Millennials Prefer Traditional Classrooms Over Online Ones. 2013 trends and How to analyse the industry in a mobile first world? What If You Could See WiFi? — The Feed. Smartphones and the rise of child accidents. Stop Saying These Stupid Things On Twitter. Artiphon Instrument 1 heads for first limited production run. Artiphon. White Men Wearing Google Glass.
Creaform's GO!Scan makes large-scale 3D scanning quick and easy. What Your Klout Score Really Means. What You’ll Do Next. How Big Data Is Playing Recruiter for Specialized Workers. Exploring the Space of Human Interaction. Two years ago, we launched an experiment: an... The 3-D Printer May Be the Home Appliance of the Future. Data waves keep your wearable tech in tune - tech - 02 February 2013. What Your Klout Score Really Means. Pebble: E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android by Pebble Technology. LuminAR Demos. How's This for Complexity? The Social TV Ecosystem INFOGRAPHIC. The Instagram Effect: Instacanvas Turns Your Digital Beauties Into Saleable Wall Art. Electric Imp Raises $7.9M From Redpoint & Lowercase Capital To Power The Internet of Things.
How the kindness of (virtual) strangers on Twitter saved my day. iDermal: iPod Nano Watch. Can Klout and Kred scores be “gamed” ? (inc. some tips on how to do just that). A Smarter Government Through Cloud Computing. Gamification: Insights And Emerging Trends. Tracking everything, Placeme is the smartphone assistant of the future — Mobile Technology News. Meet the Urban Datasexual. Becoming a Cyborg should be taken gentlyOf Modern BioPaleoMachines. The Internet of People for a Post-Oil World. Computer Science for Non-Majors Takes Many Forms. DIY printable furniture ships as information, not parts.
Imagining the Internet. Chinese censorship: Fǎ Kè Yóu, River Crab. Internet of Things Day 2012. Rabbit holes: Why being smart hurts your productivity : Sridatta Thatipamala - Developer and Entrepreneur. Younger Shoppers Using Technology, Not Salespeople. Edward Hopper, IBM and the death of email « Recruiting Futurology. Tumblr. Sculpteo aims to be the Etsy of the 3D printing world. Social Innovation Saving 7,000 Vanishing Languages. Exploring the World, Note by Note. An Open Letter to Chris Dodd. IBM touts quantum computing breakthrough. 18 stats to sell your boss on Pinterest. Every 60 seconds in social media (infographic) Social media metrics: Stop trying to reinvent the wheel.
Face-recognizing billboard ad identifies gender: no boys allowed (video) Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses by Year's End. Electronic Security a Worry in an Age of Digital Espionage. M.guardian.co.uk. Formisano + Wilson - here to blow your brains. Your Body Is an API: 9 Gadgets for Tracking Health and Fitness. What Bandwidth Caps Would Mean for Internet Gluttons. The Rise of Killer Complexity. Le Future According To Val, Part One: When Technologies Meet, Interact, and Things Go Boom. Indie video portrays the crazy, notification-driven life of an Apple user. Orangutans using iPads at zoos - soon to use Skype. Video Chat Reshapes Domestic Rituals.
Lawsuit May Determine Who Owns a Twitter Account. One Per Cent: Virtual projection lets you share your phone's screen. The Dilemma of Being a Cyborg. Startup Makes 'Wireless Router for the Brain'