Seems like this era might be coming to an end.
Speaking at an investor conference in New York City on Tuesday, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that with smartphone penetration at over 75 percent and soon reaching 90 percent, wireless operators need to work harder to get customers to use more of the network rather than simply getting on the network.
SolarCity has an interesting business model. For years, they’ve provided the solar panels for free and charged you for the power you use. Since they charge less for the solar power than you’d pay the power company, it’s a good deal for you.
Now SolarCity is adding free batteries to the mix.
Now Qualcomm is shipping their version of the Apple iBeacon.
Gimbal is a comprehensive context aware, proximity platform for brands to engage their customers’ mobile devices with highly relevant communications using a powerful combination of physical location, activity, time and personal interests.
Very smart. A place for Siri in your home so anyone can make use of the service.
The Safeplug from Pogoplug is a small, cheap (US$49) box you plug into your home router to create a Tor-driven instant proxy server, allowing computers on your network to act as an internet access go-between. The Safeplug also has an ad-blocker, which is disabled by default.
Safeplug is not a panacea for anonymity:
However, Mehmet Güneş, an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, who studies anonymity tools, says that users of the Safeplug will only remain truly obscure if they adjust their online behavior in other ways. “Tor provides unlinkability from source to destination, and people confuse that with anonymity,” he says. While using Tor people can easily leak identifying information via the Flash plug-in, other media add-ons, or through information they type or send, says Güneş.
And since the Safeplug uses Tor, that’ll slow down your access, too. Still, this seems like a real value to people determined to do everything they can to stay off the grid.
Adam Najberg shares his initial thoughts on the Xbox One. If you are planning on buying an Xbox One or have one on preorder, this is well worth a read. More importantly, I think anyone involved in the gaming space, especially on the hardware side, might take a look as well. There are lessons to be learned.
Apart from a dearth of titles — the Xbox One is launching with 23 games — my main beef with the Xbox One is that games take longer than I want to download, because of their large size and my relatively slow 30 Mbps Internet connection.
Thankfully, games let you start playing well before they’re fully downloaded, and keep downloading in the background until they’re done. And there aren’t enough games that allow you to skip over cinematic scenes. I’m hoping developers and publishers get less self-impressed and let us get to the gameplay faster as fascination with the new consoles’ capabilities diminishes.
One quibble. I get that 30 Mbps is not the fastest connection available, but I would hardly qualify it as relatively slow. Not picking on the author, just making the point that if an experience is a problem at 30 Mbps, it’s a problem for a large slice of your audience.
After laying hands on both consoles, though, I can see where Microsoft and Sony have diverging views of the future and what role your living room will play in it.
Sony has coalesced around the gaming community, trying to grab gamers in an even tighter embrace than ever before.
Microsoft is looking to breed total dependence for games, social media, communications and entertainment through one device. The hope is that gamers who cut their teeth on the Xbox 360 will still gravitate toward the Xbox One and its enhanced multiplayer gaming. Now, though, there’s a whole new, younger and more-easily-distracted generation of gamers coming online, the kids with their smartphones or iPad Minis in their lap as they play, chatting, listening to music or watching a video. With Xbox One, Microsoft is hoping to move their second screen onto the first screen.
It’ll be interesting to watch all this play out. To me, this Microsoft and Sony, burning their powder trying to fine tune their console-based living room experience while Nintendo frets on the sidelines and Apple and Google plot their longer view. Such fun.
Increasing the storage density of batteries is one problem. Extending the lifespan of a battery is another. This Stanford linear accelerator lab work may have just made a leap forward in both of these areas.
Researchers have made the first battery electrode that heals itself, opening a new and potentially commercially viable path for making the next generation of lithium ion batteries for electric cars, cell phones and other devices. The secret is a stretchy polymer that coats the electrode, binds it together and spontaneously heals tiny cracks that develop during battery operation
Researchers worldwide are racing to find ways to store more energy in the negative electrodes of lithium ion batteries to achieve higher performance while reducing weight. One of the most promising electrode materials is silicon; it has a high capacity for soaking up lithium ions from the battery fluid during charging and then releasing them when the battery is put to work.
But this high capacity comes at a price: Silicon electrodes swell to three times normal size and shrink back down again each time the battery charges and discharges, and the brittle material soon cracks and falls apart, degrading battery performance.
”We found that silicon electrodes lasted 10 times longer when coated with the self-healing polymer, which repaired any cracks within just a few hours.”
Welcome to the future. If you are flying through London’s Heathrow Airport, be on the lookout for the UltraPRT pods, little electric vehicles that run on a closed road, taking passengers from terminal to terminal, all with no driver. And Heathrow is not alone. A town in Buckinghamshire is about to get a fleet of taxis that follow a similar model. Google’s autonomous research program has a fleet of very recognizable Priuses and Lexuses out on the road as well. The closed loop model used by Heathrow is how this technology will spread. Good stuff.
Pretty interesting study on the statistical failure rate of hard drives. Have you backed up your drive recently?
I’ve mentioned the Sony QX smart lens before, but this is an actual review.
The Cyber-shot DSC-QX100 is the high-end version of Sony’s newly released iPhone-compatible wireless camera accessories, packing in a Carl Zeiss lens at an attractive price point. Like the low-end QX10, it’s a forward thinking device with a great deal of potential that remains held back by shaky software.
I hope the limitation is, indeed, software-specific and not some form of hardware/networking latency. Software problems can always be fixed.
Before, it would take 10 or more seconds for the PlayMemories application to establish a connection with a QX camera and begin shooting. Now, that connection time is closer to 5 seconds. While this is a big improvement, we don’t feel it’s enough, though Sony may be hampered by the limitations of Wi-Fi Direct.
I sure hope it’s not an inherent limitation of their networking model. I really love this concept and want it to succeed.
This is pretty cool.
Wow. Just wow.
Currently, all wireless broadcasting uses two frequencies, one for transmit, and one for receive.
The underlying technology, known as full-duplex radio, tackles a problem known as “self-interference.” As radios send and receive signals, the ones they send are billions of times stronger than the ones they receive. Any attempt to receive data on any given frequency is thwarted by the fact that the radio’s receiver is also picking up its own outgoing signal.
For this reason, most radios—including the ones in your smartphone, the base stations serving them, and Wi-Fi routers—send information out on one frequency and receive on another, or use the same frequency but rapidly toggle back and forth. Because of this inefficiency, radios use more wireless spectrum than is necessary.
The technique behind the startup is similar to that used in sound canceling headphones.
To solve this, Kumu built an extremely fast circuit that can predict, moment by moment, how much interference a radio’s transmitter is about to create, and then generates a compensatory signal to cancel it out. The circuit generates a new signal with each packet of data sent, making it possible to work even in mobile devices, where the process of canceling signals is more complex because the objects they bounce off are constantly changing.
Not sure if this technology is a game changer all by itself. This is useful when there’s a lot of back and forth, but not so much when receiving or sending large chunks of data. But I suspect it represents the overall direction of WiFi and cellular evolution.
A return rate greater than 30%. If this is true, that is a telling statistic.
Samsung has found that more than 30% of Galaxy Gear purchases are returned in Best Buy locations, and they have asked that Samsung employees on site help try to figure out why this is.
Read some of the reviews. Might be a clue there.
The new MacBook Pro could easily be mistaken for its predecessor. That said, there are definitely some significant differences.
Like the Airs, the Retina MacBook Pro has given up its wired Ethernet port, but it comes with a few others to help earn it that “Pro” label. In addition to two USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, and a combination headphone/input jack, it includes a full-size HDMI port and two Thunderbolt ports that power users can count on to get their wired Ethernet and FireWire ports back if they really need them.
These are the first Macs shipping with Thunderbolt 2 ports. Great if you plan on buying a 4K display.
Those two ports have been upgraded to Thunderbolt 2 courtesy of Intel’s DSL5520 controller, and this is the first shipping Mac that uses the new version of the high-speed interface. The controller includes four Thunderbolt channels, which can provide data bandwidth of up to 20Gbps to each port (or 10Gbps per channel).
The original Thunderbolt used four 10Gbps channels too, but they were separated differently—the controllers provided two sets of 10Gbps channels, and the new ones provide one set of 20Gbps channels. Thunderbolt 2 additionally adds support for the DisplayPort 1.2 spec, which is necessary to support 4K output, though according to Apple’s spec sheet each Thunderbolt port can only support a single 2560×1600 display at once (for a total of three displays, including the laptop’s). The Retina MacBook Pro provides 4K video output through HDMI—that port supports 3840×2160 displays at 30Hz and 4096×2160 displays at 24Hz.
The biggest issue is the Retina display. Most of the mainstream apps support retina graphics, but outside that core, there are many that do not. Most web sites fit that latter category as well.
The biggest problem at this point is actually the Web itself. Having Chrome, Firefox, and Safari Retina-optimized means that text looks smooth and sharp regardless of the browser you’re using, but most sites still use lower-resolution images that look soft and vaguely blurry on a Retina screen. This situation should continue to improve now that high-density displays are proliferating in Windows laptops and Web standards are catching up, but for now browsing is still the least consistent thing about using a Retina Mac.
Lots more good stuff in this review.
If you are considering the highest-end Retina MacBook Pro, you might want to take a read of this review from The Verge.
I absolutely love this. Well done, Xbox team.
Yesterday I posted about the repairability scale, with the comment that a bad score on that scale is bad for the planet. The post generated a number of excellent comments, both here and on Twitter.
A big part of the argument was the bias on the repairability scale. In effect, saying that if a device is easily recyclable, it is not as important that it be repairable. Another related argument stresses that the folks at iFixIt are concerned with user repair and not professional repair.
These and other comments, all good stuff. Thanks for opening my eyes a bit more.
My 2 cents on this? The best solution, the one that is most respectful to the planet and our limited resources, is that of repairability. Better if it’s user repairability, but if it takes special tools and/or a pro, so be it.
Next down on the scale is reusability. If your device still works, but you want to replace it, find a new home for your old one, if possible. Not always practical, so if you can’t find a new home for your old device, recycle it.
One point I really missed out on is Apple’s incredible dedication to recyclability. This is from Apple’s web site:
Apple recycles responsibly. When you recycle with Apple, your used equipment is disassembled, and key components that can be reused are removed. Glass and metal can be reprocessed for use in new products. A majority of the plastics can be pelletized into a raw secondary material. With materials reprocessing and component reuse, Apple often achieves a 90 percent recovery rate by weight of the original product.
Apple meets the requirements of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. All e-waste collected by Apple-controlled voluntary and regulatory programs worldwide is processed in the region in which it was collected. Our recyclers must comply with all health and safety laws, and we do not allow the use of prison labor. Apple recyclers do not dispose of hazardous electronic waste in solid-waste landfills or incinerators. For an example of the stringent processing and operational controls Apple places on its directly contracted recyclers, read an excerpt from our recycler requirements agreement [PDF].
Hopefully, both Google and Microsoft have similar policies for the devices they make themselves and partner policies for the manufacturers of devices that run their operating systems. If not, worth considering I think.
Good to see some benchmark numbers. Worth noting that all the new MacBook Pros use Iris integrated graphics, with the exception of the high end 15″ model. I’m looking forward to seeing the benchmarks for that high end model, which uses Nvidia’s GeForce GT 750m with 2GB of dedicated video memory instead of the integrated Iris solution.
This is bad news. Bad for Microsoft and bad for our planet.
The result is a tablet that is practically unrepairable and is therefore, in essence, disposable. The Reg has criticized Microsoft before for adding to the pile of discarded tech in the world’s landfills, and we’re disappointed to report that the Surface Pro 2 does nothing to slow this trend.
The original Surface tablet got the same score. Was hoping the Surface 2 would show some advancement in that department. To be fair, the 4th generation iPad did not do much better, scoring a 2 out of 10. We’ve got to do better than this.
Homage to William Higinbotham:
Fifty years ago, before either arcades or home video games, visitors waited in line at Brookhaven National Laboratory to play Tennis for Two, an electronic tennis game that is unquestionably a forerunner of the modern video game. Two people played the electronic tennis game with separate controllers that connected to an analog computer and used an oscilloscope for a screen. The game’s creator, William Higinbotham, was a physicist who lobbied for nuclear nonproliferation as the first chair of the Federation of American Scientists.
Can Cher Wang, billionaire co-founder of HTC, keep them from following in the footsteps of other beleaguered smartphone manufacturers? She faces a tough putt.
My favorite part of the article:
It’s worth noting that the 55-year-old, Berkeley-educated Wang personally managed HTC’S relationship with Microsoft during the time when its phones primarily used the Windows Mobile operating system. “Once a year,” the Times noted in its profile, “she flies to Seattle and meets with Bill Gates and Steven A. Ballmer, the company’s chief executive.”
The last mobile-phone chief with close ties to Microsoft was Nokia’s Stephen Elop, who recently presided over the sale of the Finnish firm’s handset business to Microsoft. With Wang taking the helm, will HTC find itself similarly drawn into Microsoft’s orbit?
We’ve all seen sushi restaurants where they put the food on a conveyor belt, you pick off what you like. But this restaurant takes that process to the next level.
So much to see in this video. Special orders on some sort of tablet. Looks like an iPad power plug, but where’s the home button? Is that an iPad?
Got to love the game you can play if you deposit 5 dishes at the end. Motivation to eat more, motivation to clean after yourself.
This is breathtaking speed, crushing the previous record of 40 gigabits per second.
To achieve such a massive data rate, researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) used a massive swath of bandwidth at around 240 GHz — close to the terahertz frequency range. To create the signal, two laser beams (carrying the data) are mixed together (using a photon mixer made by NTT Electronics). An electrical signal results, where the frequency of the signal (237.5 GHz in this case) is the difference between the two optical signals. A normal antenna is then used to beam the signal to the receiver, where a fancy chip fabricated out of fast-switching III-V transistors is required to make sense of the super-high-frequency signal.
Imagine being able to copy a Blue-ray disc (that’s about 50 Gb) in just a few seconds. 50 gigabytes is 50×8 = 400 gigabits. That’s 4 seconds to copy a feature film Blue-ray. Impressive.
Sonos has introduced a new $199 speaker called the Play:1, its lowest-price wireless sound system yet.
Luisa Pereira is a research fellow at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, a programmer, and a musician. Combining her love of programming and music, Luisa crafted a set of devices to generate music based on 300 year old composition theory.
Fantastic stuff. Follow the headline link for the details. One of her inventions, the Counterpointer, takes a melody set by the user and layers in automatically generated counter-melodies. Watch the Counterpointer video below and you’ll get the idea. Lovely.
I love this review.
The frequent “First!” cry of the Internet troll declares some strange pride in being the first to comment on an article. The commenter put little to no effort into the post; it added nothing to the conversation, and it was completely devoid of substance. The troll did secure the spot at the top of the thread, though, and every additional commenter will be forced to scroll past the pointless contribution.
The Samsung Galaxy Gear says “First!” in hardware form. Samsung has beaten Google and Apple as the first major manufacturer to market, but much like the Internet commenter, it has sacrificed substance for the sake of timing. The Galaxy Gear is a product (with some impressive internals, no less) that has such limited use and such crippling compatibility requirements that it is currently the equivalent of hardware spam.
Ouch. I wish I had written this.
One billion dollars in 3 days. Wow. For comparison, it took Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 16 days to hit $1B, back in January 2012. Then Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 hit $1B in 15 days this past December. 3 days is astonishing.
Grand Theft Auto has been keeping Take-Two afloat during the down times, as the series has an extremely long tail (the volume of sales over time following release). Not only does a new release spike revenues, but it also incentivizes gamers to investigate the back catalog (sometimes spurring purchases of already owned games on new platforms). GTA V will be even more significant should the title see staggered releases on PC and next-generation platforms (as I suspect it will). At this point, Call of Duty is going to have a nearly impossible time beating GTA’s sales this year, ending a four-year streak.
With numbers like these, it is no wonder that Apple has added support for game controllers into iOS 7. Will game controller support be the force that erodes the chasm between iOS devices and traditional consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation? Time will tell.
Back in June, at WWDC, Apple first announced iOS 7, detailing a host of new technologies. Hidden among them, with the barest of mentions, was the iBeacon.
Think of an iBeacon as a tiny radio you can put almost anywhere. When your iPhone or other iOS device gets within range (a few dozen feet or so), it detects the iBeacon and can estimate how far away it is. Each iBeacon has its own identifier, too, so if your iPhone is within range of more than one iBeacon, it can tell them apart.
One company that is hard at work making their own brand of iBeacon sensor is estimote. From their web site:
Simply stick our tiny sensors in any physical place — such as your retail store — and your app users will benefit from personalized micro-location based notifications and actions when they walk in to your venue or interact with your products.
Roximity is another company that makes iBeacons. From their website:
Manage your beacons and triggers from a simple yet powerful web based dashboard. View detailed analytics about your campaigns, in store foot traffic, busiest times of day, and much much more!
I think this technology has incredible potential.
When you plug your smart phone into a USB cable, your device will try to pair with the device on the other end of the cable. If the only thing on the other end of the line is your personally owned USB charger, no worries. But if you plug into a public charging station or a stranger’s USB charger, you are opening yourself up to malware. The device on the other end can pair with your phone and cause all sorts of mischief.
The soon-to-be-released USB condom is a dongle that sits on the end of your USB cable and prevents data transfer, meaning you can safely charge your device without fear of contracting malware.
I like the idea of the device, though I think a better answer is a USB cable with a switch built in, to toggle between data and charge-only modes.
There is a bit of a misconception out there regarding 64-bit processors. This is from the linked BBC News article:
However, bearing in mind there will remain many iOS and Android handsets on the market that still rely on 32-bit chips, this may deter developers from taking advantage of the switch in the short-term.
“People who have the old 32-bit processors will not be able to run software that is built specifically for the 64-bit processors because the latter uses a different instruction set,” explained Prof Alan Woodward, from the University of Surrey’s computing department.
“However, if people write in 32-bit, it will run on many of the 64-bit processors because they still support the old instruction set.
“So, you can get the whole market by writing the app in 32-bits, but you can only get a very small part of the market if you write specifically for 64-bits.”
This is a bit misleading. Apple’s developer tools make it reasonable easy to create a build that supports multiple architectures, say a 64-bit iPhone 5S as well as a 32-bit iPhone 5. If the app is built properly, the user will get the proper binaries for their device.
In other words, it just works.