The first ‘Made by Google’ phones are here, meet the Pixel.
It has Google Assistant built-in, the “best smartphone camera,” unlimited photo storage and is Daydream VR compatible. The price starts at $649.
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Category: mobile phones
In Brief.
Interscatter communication has enabled the first Wi-Fi communication between implanted devices, wearables, and smart devices.
Researchers from the University of Washington have created a new form of communication that allows devices like credit cards, smart contact lenses, brain implants, and smaller wearable electronics to use Wi-Fi to talk to everyday devices like watches and smartphones. It’s called “interscatter communication,” and it works by using reflections to convert Bluetooth signals into Wi-Fi transmissions in the air that can be picked up by smart devices.
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I never get tired in circuitry thread and any new findings.
Tufts University engineers say that revolutionary health diagnostics may be hanging on a thread—one of many threads they have created that integrate nano-scale sensors, electronics and microfluidics into threads ranging from simple cotton to sophisticated synthetics. “We think thread-based devices could potentially be used as smart sutures for surgical implants, smart bandages to monitor wound healing, or integrated with textile or fabric as personalized health monitors and point-of-care diagnostics,” says Sameer Sonkusale, Ph.D., director of the interdisciplinary Nano Lab in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tufts School of Engineering, Medford/Somerville, Mass.
Researchers dipped a variety of conductive threads in physical and chemical sensing compounds and connected them to wireless electronic circuitry. The threads, sutured into tissues of rats, collected data on tissue health (pressure, stress, strain and temperature), pH and glucose levels. The data helps determine how wounds are healing, whether infection is emerging or whether the body’s chemistry is out of balance. Thread’s natural wicking properties draw fluids to the sensing compounds. Resulting data is transmitted wirelessly to a cell phone and computer.
To date, substrates for implantable devices have been two-dimensional, expensive and difficult to process, making them suitable for flat tissue, such as skin, but not for organs. “By contrast, thread is abundant, inexpensive, thin and flexible, and can be easily manipulated into complex shapes,” says Pooria Mostafalu, Ph.D., postdoctoral research fellow with the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and former Tufts doctoral student.
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My new story for TechCrunch on why a new generation of kids might “really” love robots. What would Freud say?
Robots intrigue us. We all like them. But most of us don’t love them. That may dramatically change over the next 10 years as the “robot nanny” makes its way into our households.
In as little time as a decade, affordable robots that can bottle-feed babies, change diapers and put a child to sleep might be here. The human-machine bond that a new generation of kids grows up with may be unbreakable. We may end up literally loving our machines almost like we do our mothers and fathers.
I’ve already seen some of this bonding in action. I have a four-foot interactive Meccanoid robot aboard my Immortality Bus, which I’ve occasionally used for my presidential campaign. The robot can do about 1,000 functions, including basic interaction with people, like talking, answering questions and making wisecracks. When my five-year-old rides with me on the bus, she adores it. After being introduced to it, she obsessively wanted to watch Inspector Gadget videos and read books on robots.
My two daughters (the other one is two years old) have always been near technology, and both were able to successfully navigate YouTube watching videos on iPhones by the time they were 12 months old. Yet, while my kids love the iPhone, and they want to use it regularly, it doesn’t bond them to technology in a maternal sense like the Meccanoid robot does. More importantly, the smartphone doesn’t bond them to technology in an anthropomorphic sense — where one gives technology human attributes, like personalities.
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Still keeping my optics working looking for news to apply to your cyberpunk games and writings.
A way to defend against counterfeit drugs and maybe food too, miniature edible barcodes. Inexpensive, practical and readable with a slight modification of a smart phone.
For some reason, the idea of edible food wrappers just seems very cyberpunk to me. Full of advertising and nutrition!
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Machines enrich and enhance our lives, whether it’s the smartphones that allow us to stay connected or the supercomputers that solve our toughest computational problems. Imagine how much more productive and innovative our world will be when computers become infinitely more powerful. Indeed, the growing field of quantum computing may make our current technological capacities look feeble and primitive in comparison. It could even transform the workings of the human brain and revolutionize how we think in ways we can’t begin to imagine.
Today, computers operate at the most basic level by manipulating two states: a zero or a one. In contrast, quantum computers are not limited to two states, but can encode information in multiple states that exist in superposition, also known as quantum bits or qubits.
In other words, this technology takes advantage of one of the most fascinating properties of the quantum world: the ability of subatomic particles to exist in more than one state at any given time. Consequently, a quantum computer can perform many calculations at the same time, whereas a traditional Turing machine can only perform a single calculation at once. Such quantum machines will be millions of times more powerful than our most powerful current computers.
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Finally, they may have a chance as we have seen the prediction of the phasing out of smartphones by 2021. Although not all will be phased out by then; the continue struggle of companies trying to play catch up with smartphones is not an ideal route to take anymore especially with technologies such as the AR Contacts with Bluetooth headsets, other things such as BMI technology, etc. it is smart to focus in the next 3 to 5 years on these technologies instead of playing catch up with Apple.
He says the company’s “pivot to software is taking hold”, pointing to the recent launch of BlackBerry Radar, an asset tracking system, and BlackBerry Hub+ for Android, a set of productivity apps.
BlackBerry may not be designing its own smartphones anymore, but that doesn’t mean we won’t see new devices sporting the BlackBerry logo. The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners.
It’s been a long wait, but BlackBerry has decided pulled the plug on its ailing hardware business and will now focus on its software business instead. That’s if we can trust BlackBerry to ensure that future hardware partners maintain its high standards for design and build quality, of course.
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These days there are a quite a few high-tech ways to keep our oral hygiene in check, from toothbrushes that track your technique to smart floss dispensers that encourage healthy habits. Mint is the latest connected solution to hit bathrooms and beyond, and is said to detect signs of gum disease and poor oral hygiene on your breath in the space of a few seconds.
Developed by Breathometer, the same company behind the smartphone-based breathalyzer we covered back in 2013, Mint is small handheld device that hooks up with iOS and Android smartphones to check in on the state of affairs inside your mouth. After a successful Indiegogo campaign in March 2015 and some good attention at the CES conference that same year, the device has finally started shipping today.
A sensor array inside the device measures the volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs) in your breath. Studies have shown these to be key culprits behind bad breath, but their presence might do more than send your significant other running in the other direction. They can also be indicative of gum disease and poor oral health.
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The research lab that developed Siri, SRI International, is creating virtual assistants that can detet your emotional state, and react accordingly. It envisions assistants that can detect emotions and tailor their reactions to those emotions.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is all about getting a machine to mimic a human in every way: thought, speech, movement. That’s why one of the tests for AI is the Turing test: whether a robot can fool a human into thinking it is conversing with another of its own species.
An integral part of accomplishing this is making the AI recognize human emotions. So one research lab is working on the next iteration of virtual assistants, those that can recognize and react to emotional cues. SRI International, the birthplace of Siri, is working on better chatbots and phone assistants that can detect agitation, confusion, and other emotional states, and respond accordingly.
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