Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists travel the globe in search of innovative solutions to empower girls and women.
What if the world was more deeply aware of the serious, often debilitating challenges that hold back many girls and women? What if people were inspired to do something about it?
Airing on PBS across the United States on January 26, February 2 and February 9, “A Path Appears” is a follow up to “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” which explored the impact of sex trafficking, maternal mortality, sexual violence, microfinance and education on girls’ lives.
For the new series, based on their 2014 book with the same title, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn travel to Boson, Chicago, Colombia, Haiti and Kenya to share harrowing, real-life tales of girls and women suffering from mistreatment, poverty and inequity.
In an attempt to twist fate into positive directions, the series looks at solutions that are often based on care, attention and innovative approaches that are helping women to find new opportunities to empower themselves and use their experiences to improve the lives of others.
Along the way, Kristof and WuDunn are joined by celebrity advocates, including Malin Akerman, Mia Farrow, Ronan Farrow, Jennifer Garner, Regina Hall, Ashley Judd, Blake Lively, Eva Longoria and Alfre Woodard.
“We have an empathy gap in the U.S.,” Kristof told Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), describing how he believes Americans tend to deal with poverty, domestic violence and other complex problems.
“I hope that telling some of these stories, putting a face on these issues, will nurture empathy at home and abroad,” Kristof told OPB.
Intel was one of the sponsors of the series, in line with the company’s commitment to economic empowerment of girls and women, according to Suzanne Fallender, director of the Global Girls & Women Initiative at Intel.
“Today 65 million girls are not in school around the world, due to a number of barriers, whether financial or cultural,” she said. “But we know that the potential social and economic benefits of reducing this number are significant. Each year of secondary schooling increases a girl’s future wages by 10-20 percent, and when 10 percent more girls go to school a country’s GDP can increase by 3 percent.”
Fallender said that in recent years Intel has collaborated on a number of projects to raise awareness about the importance of expanding education and technology access for girls and women, including the “Girl Rising” film and global action campaign, which has reached millions of people around the world. She also pointed out the Intel® She Will Connect program which seeks to close the Internet gender gap by connecting women to opportunity through technology.
“We hope “A Path Appears” will inspire individuals and organizations to learn more and start a conversation on innovative ways people can make lives better for others through volunteerism and by leveraging the power of technology,” said Fallender.
“A Path Appears” builds awareness on the importance of women’s empowerment ahead of March 8, which is the 104th International Women’s Day aimed at celebrating women’s economic, political and social achievements. The theme for this year is “Make it Happen” — conversation around the day can be followed and engaged with at #MakeItHappen.
The conversation around “A Path Appears” can be followed online @APathAppears and on Facebook.
The series airs on PBS across the United States on January 26, February 2 and February 9 on the PBS program Independent Lens. Most stations will air at 10:00 p.m. (check local listings for times).
PBS has also added the ability for U.S. viewers to watch each episodeon their site for seven days following the broadcast. Plans for broadcasting the series internationally are underway.
Tablet desires lead many to try new 2 in 1 computers.
Often the search for a new computer starts from a pressing need to replace a dead or dying PC, yet sometimes it comes from a simple hankering for something new. Whatever starts the hunt, more shoppers are discovering something they never knew existed: 2 in 1 personal computers that are both a powerful touchscreen laptop and a fast, detachable tablet.
Last summer, one in 10 laptops sold in key U.S. and Western European retail markets was a 2 in 1 device, but that ratio is now 1 in every five, according to Ben Young, senior manager of Intel’s 2 in 1 Program Office.
“Sales of 2 in 1 devices have more than doubled (2.5 times) year over year,” he said.
Even though they’ve been on the market for several years, many people still don’t know what they are and most people first experience them inside retail stories, said Young.
He said that a survey by Intel showed that 54 percent of actual 2 in 1 buyers had considered a tablet, showing that 2 in 1s are winning over people who initially intended to buy a new tablet.
“The survey revealed that 2 in 1 buyers buy more out of want than out of need, suggesting there’s an emotional element to selecting a 2 in 1,” said Young.
As innovative capabilities bring new interesting and useful experiences to people looking for a new computing device, says Young, 2 in 1s are changing the definition of the PC.
Increasingly shoppers are becoming aware that these clamshell, keyboard-operated, portable computers also function as touchscreen tablets.
Today, there are more than 70 different designs that transform by folding, twisting and even detaching from the keyboard.
Smaller, lower-cost models powered by Intel Atom processors start at below $300, while larger models with screens ranging from 10 to 15.6 inches come with high-performance Intel Core i7 processors and can be found for less than $1,000.
“We are tracking 50 designs priced at less than $699,” said Young.
While the $200 Windows devices and Chromebooks were very successful during the holiday period, the momentum is growing around new lines of sleek, fanless 2 in 1s, according to Steve Paine, a mobile computing researcher and reporter who runs Chromebook World, Ultrabook News and UMPC Portal .
“The HP Stream 11 led sales in the U.S. over the holidays according to the stats I have from our sites and from top lists seen at Amazon.com,” said Paine.
“But so far this year, the fanless, Intel Core M processor-powered models seem to be getting a lot of attention. Fanless is a trend I’m watching closely in 2015.”
Since 2 in 1s first came on the scene in 2013, the variety of designs and price range have grown.
Paine said that new 2 in 1s come with larger screens and in thinner designs, and increasingly have better battery life. He sees reduced costs of touchscreens and other components helping bigger-screened 2 in 1s hit the market at lower prices.
“Intel Core M processors have brought a reduction in weight and thickness to larger tablets to the point where some of them are reaching the magic 700 gram (1.5 pounds), where they become much more usable for consumers,” he said.
“This 1.5 pound cut-off point seems to be an important choice for 2 in 1 shoppers too, where they want to see a usable consumer tablet that can also function as a laptop,” Paine said.
“Fanless, 12-inch and laptop-capable models are here, and now it’s only the prices that need to fall in line with expectations. At under $500, which I think is possible, we could see huge interest in a Core M-based 2 in 1.”
Tech Radar recently published a list of top 2 in 1s, calling out Microsoft Surface Pro 3, Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro, IdeaPad Yoga 11s, Asus Transformer Book TX300 and Dell Venue 11 Pro 7130.
Paine said the ASUS Transfomer Book T300 Chi is a showcase example of a 2 in 1 powered by an Intel Core M processor.
“It has some great design aspects for consumers and yet there’s enough power there for even most stringent of Microsoft Office users,” said Paine. Paine said current and future 2 in 1 owners can also look forward to the release of the new Windows 10 operating system, which is said to become available to consumers later this year.
“It will bring new user interface and new features, but for 2 in 1 users the most important aspect is the push for applications that run seamlessly across phones and PCs.”
In its January 21 announcement, Microsoft said that for the first year following the release of Windows 10, anyone with a device running Windows 7, Windows 8.1 or Windows Phone 8.1 could upgrade to the to Microsoft 10 for free.
In his second series of TV ads for Intel, actor Jim Parsons gets ironic at an airport security checkpoint, where he shows that a 2 in 1 laptop and tablet computer is in fact one device, not two. Learn more about this and other Intel innovations that are bringing new experiences to personal computing devices.
3D computational camera technology could bring stereoscopic magic to mobile photography.
Smartphone and tablet cameras let us snap and share photos from almost anywhere, but what if our experiences could be captured with immersive, stereoscopic depth so they looked more like real life?
What if each photo you captured could be refocused, give you measurements, animate, and discover things that you didn’t know existed when you snapped the scene?
New Intel RealSense snapshot technology, a combination of cameras arrays and image processing software, is making it possible for mobile devices to shoot this kind of depth photography.
“We live in a 3D world, but our photos capture it as if it were flat,” said Manuel Monroy, a cloud and ecosystem architect for Intel RealSense snapshot.
“We need to allow photos to have depth.”
Monroy sees this as the next big step for mobile photography. It’s like having a mobile device with more eyes, each capturing the same scene from slightly different angles then layering all of that image data into one spatially enhanced photo, he said.
Listening to stereophonic sound makes us feel submerged or surrounded; seeing a stereoscopic photo can make us feel like we’re witnessing real life. “The effect of what we see has a lot to do with math — how distance and angles hit the back of the eye — but a lot has to do with perception — how our brain rapidly fills in the gaps by interpreting light and textures,” said Dr. Gloria Surh, optometrist at Ideal Eyes in Burlingame, California.
When we look at a standard photograph of train tracks laid straight ahead into the horizon, our mind can understand there’s distance, but with a depth-mapped image we can more clearly measure the distance.
By adding depth map data to high-quality images, RealSense snapshot technology allows the user to manipulate their photos in new ways. RealSense snapshot technology is available in the Dell Venue 8 7000, which, at 6 mm thick, is the world’s thinnest tablet.
The first working prototype demoed last year at the Intel Developer Forum, and, in January, the sleek 8.4-inch tablet won the CES Innovation Award.
During his keynote at the International Consumer Electronics show earlier this year, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich showed how using RealSense snapshot in the Venue 8 7000 allowed him to bring different layers of a photo into focus and change lighting and color on specific objects with the touch of a finger.
There are different ways to capture stereoscopic images. The first uses two or more strategically placed cameras that each snaps a shot then overlays them into one photo. The second uses a single camera that snaps the same object or scene from slightly different but overlapping angles.
RealSense snapshot technology in the Dell Venue 8 7000 uses three cameras — an 8 MP camera at the top and two 780p cameras fitted below, spread apart almost at the distance of the human eye. The first prototype required nine cameras and components, which cost around $50. That’s expensive, and it used too much processing power to be practical.
The RealSense snapshot development team came up with the current three-camera model, which simplifies the design and significantly lowers manufacturing costs.
To write the software, the team built a test board using six GoPro cameras with a variety of layouts. This helped find the best way to configure the final three-camera set. The three cameras shoot simultaneously, then combine the overlaid information to create an image file that has many more capabilities than a standard JPEG.
Once an image is captured, it is processed into a high-quality, depth-mapped file.
“It creates a fat JPEG,” said Erhhung Yuan, system architect and lead developer for Intel RealSense snapshot. “It’s essentially a JPEG with more metadata fields, including the computed depth map.”
These depth maps use gradients of grey to depict the distance from each pixel in the photo. This allow apps to generate and manipulate individual objects — depth layers — within the captured scene.
About 30 percent larger than a file capture only by the tablet’s 8 Megapixel camera, the fat JPEGs averages between 2 to 2.5 MB file.
The position, resolution and synchronization of the cameras are essential. “The cameras need to be properly calibrated,” said Monroy.
“Once captured, the image moves through an algorithm pipeline consisting of a number of steps, including dynamic calibration, rectification, and disparity calculation,” he said.
“The end result is a fat JPEG which is then used by app developers, to power such use cases as depth filters, refocus and parallax.”
From there it goes to apps — such as measurement, refocus, background highlighting, filtering, motion effects, saving and sharing.
What started out as low-cost, computational photography to create immersive visual experiences for Android tablets is now being updated to work on forthcoming Windows 10 tablets, according to Monroy.
“Inside there’s complicated depth mapping and algorithm processing, but what you see is really magic,” said Monroy. The Dell Venue 8 7000 is now available on Dell.com and at Best Buy for $399. ZDNet called it “insanely thin” and Gizmodo dubbed it, “The most interesting Android tablet … in ages.”
While most early reviews saw RealSense snapshot imaging technology as something new and interesting, some pointed out that the new cameras and apps require some improvement.
“It’s the first time out in the wild, so we have teams working on improvements and new apps,” said Monroy.
He also said that his team is deploying a cloud platform to enable immersive visual experiences that require higher compute power than what’s available on most mobile devices. He sees it as a backbone supporting multi-user data driven apps.
“Imaging of what we can do with 100 depth photos of the statue of David in Florence, or with 1,000 taken at a rock concert.”
Editor’s note: In his second series of TV ads for Intel, actor Jim Parsons uses a tablet with Intel RealSense snapshot technology to capture a photo and then measure the distance between two objects. Learn more about this and other Intel innovations that are bringing new experiences to personal computing devices.
Mobile World Congress offers a deep dive into wireless technologies from 4G LTE networks to devices that connect to them, which are connecting more people across the globe.
One of the world’s biggest mobile-technology geekfests, Mobile World Congress, hits Barcelona every March. For many, including Nicole Scott and Sascha Pallenberg, co-founders of tech news and review site Mobile Geeks, the event has become an annual pilgrimage.
“It’s the only real mobile show,” said Pallenberg, who with Scott will be livecasting from the Intel booth at Mobile World Congress (MWC).
This will be their eighth year attending the event.
“There’s nothing else that’s focused on the world mobile market.”
Over 100,000 attendees and nearly 2,000 exhibitors are expected to attend MWC this year. Pallenberg said the show just keeps getting bigger.
“About eight years ago it was held at an amazing castle with about 50,000 people, but they had to move to a new venue to accommodate growth.”
In the past five years, Pallenberg has seen the show change dramatically.
“It was all about communication network infrastructure, but there’s so much more to it now.”
A recent report by analyst firm CCS Insight outlined what to expect at this year’s show. First and foremost will be the continued rollout of 4G LTE and related new wireless network technologies built to satisfy the soaring demand for mobile data.
The CCS Insight report also pointed to low-cost, LTE-powered smartphones, new personal wearable devices, and discussions set to shape the issue of Net Neutrality and future 5G wireless technology, which is expected to become available in 2020.
These technologies are increasingly becoming the underpinning of the global middle class, according to Aicha Evans, vice president and general manager of the Intel Platform Engineering Group.
“Mobile technology is becoming a core element of humanity,” she told iQ. “It’s about the problems and opportunities in our global community.”
Evans will be speaking on an industry panel during MWC titled Connected Citizens, Managing Crisis. MWC is where Scott and Pallenberg meet people from the wireless spectrum industry and learn firsthand about new services and devices before they become mainstream.
Scott said the conversations can get intensely focused, allowing her to dive deep into new technologies before they hit the mainstream. While mobile phones are mainstream now in many parts of the world, she expects to see innovations such as smartphones with curved, transparent or dual screens and better front-facing cameras. According to CCS Insight, the biggest breakthrough to hit mobile devices will be 3D cameras that employ perceptual computing techniques. The analyst firm expects to see more devices like the Dell Venue 8 tablet, which has built-in Intel RealSense 3D camera technology, allowing the tablet to capture depth photography.
“Most exciting is what’s happening in sub-$100 smartphone range,” said Scott. “I’d like to see what [kind of functionality] we can get at this price point. Imagine how much more accessible these will be for everyone.”
These lower cost smartphones will help the next 1 to 2 billion users more quickly join the internet. This has peaked Scott’s curiosity about what Africa and other developing places in the world are doing with the mobile Internet, things from so-called frugal innovation or innovation born out of necessity like Kenya’s wireless money transfer service Saraficom, something that the Economist dubbed the world’s leading mobile money system back in 2013.
CCS Insight points out that while the United States has capitalized on its early adoption of LTE technology to remain the most valuable market in the world, there will be subscriber growth in already big markets such as China, India, Indonesia and across Europe.
Beyond seeing all of the new smartphones, tablets and even wearable devices displayed at MWC, Scott believes software will be an interesting thing to watch during the event.
“It may not be so sexy for consumers, but the cloud and how it can help manage all of our data is increasingly useful for people,” she said.
Pallenberg wants to see how companies are tackling interconnectivity of so many personal devices — and the data or media they create — across platforms so that all of these wireless-enabled devices can work together. “It’s becoming much easier to track my daily life with a fitness device, or use my phone to connect to my home or car,” he said.
But he sees the way these devices interconnect as rudimentary.
“At WMC we get a little glimpse into this interconnectivity transformation that we’re just beginning to see in our lives,” he said.
Still, smartphones will be the key to everything, said Pallenberg.
“Smartphones are going to be like our electronic ID. It is how we connect with people, travel our commute, and smartphones are the most important devices allowing people to step into the internet of things.”
CCS Insight marks 2015 as the year when telecom operators become increasingly active in connected home services and machine-to-machine technologies that power so-called smart, connected cities companies to track and monitor logistics.
Worried that the mobile technology industry has become predictable, Pallenberg said that the companies and technologies that will stand out from the show will need to have some unexpected about them.
“You make a big splash when you do something that’s surprising, something like what Intel did with the Edison-powered smart Spider Dress at the Consumer Electronics Show. That brought together design, fashion and technology. That’s the kind of thing others need to do in order to excite people.”
Pallenberg and Scott will interview people behind some of the most compelling technologies and livestreaming them during MWC at their Mobile Geeks site. Here is the MWC 2015 preview by the GSMA, which hosts the event.
Building technology that will connect billions of people and things to the internet, and to one another, without wires.
While much of the world is connecting their personal devices to fast data sharing 4G mobile networks, industry pioneers are shaping next generation networks to feed the world’s increasing appetite for the internet.
5G networks aren’t expected to roll out broadly until 2020, but according to analyst firm CCS Insight, 5G will be one of the hottest topics at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
That’s because talk is significantly shifting beyond smart pipe dreams into a do-anything-anywhere-from-any-device reality.
In a nutshell, 5G networks will provide more data bandwidth and less latency due to built-in computing intelligence aimed at handling more data more efficiently than today’s 4G networks.
By combining communications and computing technologies, 5G networks will leverage more benefits of Moore’s Law, according to Asha Keddy, vice president in Intel’s Communication and Devices Group and general manager of the company’s Standards and Advanced Technology team.
“3G networks were designed for voice while 4G was designed for more complex human interaction with voice and data,” she told iQ just ahead of attending Mobile World Congress for the fifth consecutive year.
Smartphones were a new thing that drove big demand for 3G and then 4G. Just how it was tough to foresee that smartphones would create such a demand on networks, it’s unclear exactly what will be the big, new impact on future 5G networks.
What is known is that 5G networks will need to handle lots of complexity to satisfy all of those smartphones, home appliances, personal drones, robots and driverless cars that will need to connect to the internet wirelessly five years from now.
By 2020, 5G networks will need to handle mobile computing and communications needs of people but also more than 200 billion devices and machines around the world. Smart city sensors, transportation, industrial automation systems and other Internet of Things alone could account for 30.1 billion installed connected things, according to International Data Corporation.
Keddy describes 5G as the first network designed to be scalable, versatile and energy efficient for the hyper-connected world. “Existing wireless networks were never designed with smart door knobs or home refrigerators [that to connect to the internet] in mind,” said Keddy.
And she said they weren’t designed for many of the new experiences people will want from wireless networks when using smartphones, tablets and laptops.
Keddy points out how many sporting events are using more high-definition cameras than ever, giving spectators a multitude of perspectives on a game.
“Imagine getting video streams of a volleyball match or another sporting event then switching between the two from wherever you are using your mobile device,” she said. “Today, 4G networks only let you view one at a time. 5G networks might allow you to watch both. Or if the game was covered using multiple cameras, you could get 360-degree perspective then zoom into what you really want to see.”
Once these kinds of things are possible, Keddy said people will find them irresistible because they will allow personalized experiences.
“You and I could watch the same game but get totally different perspectives,” she said. “It will be all about personalization and getting to choose the angles you want to take on the game.”
Competition for defining 5G is reaching a fever pitch, as strong interest from all geographies intensifies. Keddy remembered when Japanese government said they’d be ready to demonstrate 5G in time for the 2020 Summer Olympics. South Korea responded that they would show trials in 2018 if not by late 2017.
Keddy believes most geographies want to be at the head of the pack when 5G is rolls out.
“You can imagine that some of the early trials will happen around big events like a soccer, something that brings together a lot of people.”
By the time 5G rolls around in 2020, more data will be transmitted wirelessly than ever before. Up to now wireless networks were licensed, so Keddy said that 5G is being designed to provide shared (for a period of time), free (Wi-Fi) and licensed spectrum in order to handle ever increasing demand.
Ultimately, 5G networks will be faster with less latency for most devices. However, for devices that don’t have much computer processing capabilities — a wearable device with a screen, for example — that could connect wirelessly to another device or cloud service that can processes data or media, which then can be sent back to the wearable for viewing.
Keddy said that there will be more bandwidth but also smarter ways of using it that will decrease latency and increase energy efficiency of the network and our personal devices. This makes measurements like energy efficiency, spectrum performance, reliability and cost crucial for 5G.
“Bits per second was a standard way of measuring network performance, but 5G will encompass much more,” Keddy wrote in an article that appeared in Wired Insights last fall.
5G could be the hottest topic at Mobile World Congress, but Keddy is paying close attention to the evolution of 4G LTE, which she said is really just kicking into full gear as it becomes more broadly available around the world and embedded in more devices.
“We expect to see new 4G tech addressing new frequencies and interface designs,” she said, referring to LTE’s improving ability to interact with personal devices as well as autonomous machines. Keddy see a new era for wireless emerging, one where computer processing and communications technologies are combing at the core, edge and access points of wireless networks as well as devices.
In the next five years, riding on a 5G network could feel more like compute power and information are following you around. Wearables, smartphones, tablets and other devices with sensors that are location and context aware will be working together with apps and services to bring digitally augmented experiences to real life.
The race to integrate complex computing with communications technologies could lead to more people using smartphones around the world.
Having a mobile phone that makes calls, accesses the Internet, captures photos and video and performs other computer-like functions has become common in the past eight years, yet for many people around the world these smartphones are simply out of reach.
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, it was evident that premium smartphones will continue getting better. But the compelling story is that many so-called entry-level models will be more affordable than ever, many priced below $100.
While hunger for high-end, premium phones like the sleek new Samsung S6 may never subside, many people are unable or unwilling to spend a hundred bucks for a mobile phone.
“Right now, about 2 to 3 billion of us are connected [to the mobile Internet], but we’re talking 6 to 8 billion of us by 2020,” said Aicha Evans, vice president and general manager of the Intel Platform Engineering Group.
“Mobile technology is becoming a core element of humanity,” Evans told iQ. “It’s about the problems and opportunities in our global community.”
It will require many technological advancements to handle this kind of growth, but one thing seems certain: a smartphone will be the device that brings many people their first ride on the Internet. According to a recent article in
Forbes, about 22 million smartphones were sold in India during the last quarter of 2014, which marked a 90 percent increase from the same period the year before.
Smartphones have become the wallet, keys and utility, letting more people tap into the benefits of what the Internet has to offer, from communications to ecommerce.
While lower-cost smartphones have been available for years, analysts believe that if prices drop even further they will become accessible to more first-time mobile-Internet users, particularly in developing countries.
A 2013 article by Intel Free Press reported that NPS DisplaySearch expected sales of smartphones costing less than $150 to double each year between 2010 and 2016, while Strategy Analytics predicted sales of these lower-cost phones could reach 500 million units by 2015. Informa estimated that by 2017, entry-level smartphones (less than $150) will outsell more expensive smartphones and account for just over half of the mobile phone market.
That’s where the new Intel Atom x3 line of chips come into play.
Debuted this week at MWC, the X3 was shown running 27 different smartphone models, ranging in price from $75 to $200.
Before it was branded Intel Atom x3, the technology was known as SoFIA, which stood for “Smart or Feature phone with Intel Architecture.”
These chips are powerful and cheap, wrote Wired’s Christina Bonnington, “and are sure to drive the industry trend of high-capability, low-cost smartphones to even greater extremes.”
“This…is notable because it could enable much more capable phone hardware at the $50 price point, which will be a huge boon to smartphone adoption in developing nations,” wrote Bonnington.
“For Intel, it’s the first time we have an integrated SOC (system-on-a-chip) with application processor, graphic imaging and wireless,” said Evans.
All of those technologies are squeezed into a small piece of silicon about the size of a human thumbnail.
CNET reported that a system-on-a-chip is usually more desirable for device makers because they can create slimmer and sometimes more powerful phones.
Intel Atom X3 is currently equipped for 3G networks, and later this year, it will be run on 4G LTE networks. Bluetooth, WiFi and Global Navigation Satellite System are supported in every x3 chip.
Evans acknowledged that other technology companies have been doing this kind of thing for years, but complex integration is part of Intel’s DNA.
She believes Intel’s mastery of Moore’s Law – doubling of transistors on a single chip every 18 months to two years – has the potential to change the wireless world.
“You know what happened when we applied Moore’s Law to the PC or to servers [that run data processing and Internet services]? We changed people’s lives, we changed the course of humanity,” said Evans, mentioning that 40 years ago data processing was done by big mainframe computers.
“But since then, Moore’s Law has allowed us to turn mainframe capabilities into personal computers, which changed our lives at home, work and many other places,” she said. “Applying Moore’s law, we can revolutionize the mobile world like we did with PCs and servers.”
She said Intel’s ability to pack more capabilities into smaller chip will push the envelope on what’s available for smartphones and mobile devices.
Introducing it at MWC, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said the x3 provides exceptional performance for the value and entry-level smartphones, phablets and tablets.
“We can get a customer to market in six to eight weeks with this product,” he said.
Smartphones, mobile security and wearables move into the future at global tech show.
Digital devices that we buy or use increasingly compute and communicate wirelessly with the Internet. Technology that makes personal computers and smartphones so useful in our lives is improving rapidly and is making its way into all of things that were never “smart” before.
It’s also unleashing new needs and desires that will been defined in the coming decade.
This was evident in Barcelona this week, where thousands of leading tech innovators gathered for Mobile World Congress (MWC). The annual event foretells the future of our wireless technology.
This year, the promise of 5G wireless networks, expected to become available in 2020, became clear. In the next five years, many parts of the world will have smarter mobile networks built for high speed and efficiency.
According to ABI Research, there were more than 16 billion active wireless connected devices in 2014. By 2020, that number is expected to surpass 40 billion.
So when 5G becomes broadly available, everything from personal computing devices to smart cities and autonomous cars will connect and communicate via wireless Internet.
In addition to futuristic technologies, MWC is where new, cutting edge and more affordable smartphones were first introduced to the world. New tablets and wearable technologies with cameras or voice control leverage wireless connections to the Internet.
With a slick metal design, the Samsung S6 and S6 Edge stirred big buzz at MWC.
The S6 features a savvy fingerprint scanner, fast camera, wireless charging capabilities and the ability to get apps from the new Samsung Pay. The S6 will be available in April, and will come pre-installed with VirusScan Mobile technology from Intel Security.
According to a new report by McAfee Labs, mobile malware, which includes viruses, as well as malicious apps and URLs, increased by 14 percent during the fourth quarter of 2014.
The report also found that the infection rate for mobile malware has increased significantly, with at least 8 percent of all systems reporting an infection since late 2013.
“We live in an unprecedented era of connectivity, where users are doing just about everything on their mobile devices – from banking to shopping to filing taxes – potentially putting their sensitive data and privacy at risk,” said John Giamatteo, senior vice president and general manager at Intel Security in a news announcement.
“All Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge users receive protection to enable safe online experiences.”
The race to create more smartphones that cost less than $100 was in full swing at MWC.
That’s where the new Intel Atom x3 line of chips come into play. Debuted this week at MWC, the x3 was shown running 27 different smartphone models, ranging in price from $75 to $200. Before it was branded Intel Atom x3, the technology was known as SoFIA, which stood for “Smart or Feature phone with Intel Architecture.”
“These chips are powerful and cheap,” wrote Wired’s Christina Bonnington, “and are sure to drive the industry trend of high-capability, low-cost smartphones to even greater extremes.”
She continued, “This…is notable because it could enable much more capable phone hardware at the $50 price point, which will be a huge boon to smartphone adoption in developing nations.”
Introducing it at MWC, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said the x3 provides exceptional performance for the value for entry-level smartphones, phablets and tablets.
“We can get a customer to market in six to eight weeks with this product,” he said.
This BMW Smart Motorcycle pairs wirelessly with a smart helmet using Bluetooth or WiFi, allowing the rider to talk to and hear from the bike’s digital control center.
Intel and BMW fitted the bike and helmet with Intel Edison technology, which brings computer and communications capabilities to the motorcycle riding experience.
“The helmet is connected directly to the CANbus (Controller Access Network) which is the on-board system tied to things such as tire pressure, oil pressure, fluid levels and engine temperature,” said Francis Tharappel, a senior systems engineer for Intel’s New Devices Group, which worked on the Embedded Voice Recognition Engine used in the smart motorcycle.
The helmet is wired into the on-board GPS technology, allowing it to voice turn-by-turn directions in the driver’s ear, according to Intel’s Stephanie Moyerman.
“If you need directions, say ‘take me home’ and it’ll queue up directions and give them over audio. But if there isn’t enough gas, then it will redirect you to a gas station first because it can read the bike’s remaining fuel range,” said Moyerman in a recent interview with Intel Free Press.
“It will also do smart navigation, so if a blind turn is approaching, it’ll give you warning to slow down.”
Intel True Key, a new password-management technology that debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, is now being rolled out in Germany via Deustche Telekom and in Russia via Prestigio.
Currently True Key makes use of facial math, like the distance between your eyes and nose, and provides fingerprint recognition to log securely into personal device.
“The average person today has over two dozen online accounts, each one protected by a password,” says Dr. Richard Reiner, VP of Technology at Intel’s Safe Identity Solutions Division.
“That’s the dilemma people are facing: either use simpler passwords, or re-use the same password in many places, or write their passwords down somewhere — none of which are secure,” says Reiner.
True Key can be installed on a smartphone, tablet or computer, and it puts you in control of creating and managing all of your passwords.
It helps generate tough-to-crack passwords using military-grade encryption and multiple advanced-security technologies.
Joining the list now will get you a free six-month premium subscription (join here). In the first 10 days, 23,000 people signed up for the waitlist.
Imagine if you could see what soccer great Lionel Messi sees. First V1sion is designed to share the player’s point of view by integrating a high definition camera, pulsometer, accelerometer and transmission system in a sport-optimized T-shirt. First V1sion, based in Barcelona, competed in the 2014 Make It Wearable challenge.
The startup sees a future where a player’s point of view is shown in sports, from basketball, football, tennis, athletics and many more.
In addition to using more high-definition cameras than ever, sporting events could give spectators a multitude of perspectives on a game, including the player’s perspective.
“Imagine getting video streams of a volleyball match or another sporting event then switching between the two from wherever you are using your mobile device,” said Asha Keddy, vice president in Intel’s Communication and Devices Group and general manager of the company’s standards and advanced technology team.
“Today, 4G networks only let you view one at a time,” she said. “5G networks might allow you to watch both. Or if the game was covered using multiple cameras, you could get 360-degree perspective then zoom into what you really want to see.”
How one man is staying ahead of his cancer by finding the genetic factors that fuel it.
The thought of leaving behind his wife and seven-year-old daughter is driving Bryce Olson to the edge of life sciences, where computational analysis of human DNA is pushing bioscience and healthcare into a new era of precision medicine.
“When my doctor told me I had prostate cancer, those two words turned my world upside down,” said Olson.
In spring 2014, at age 45, Olson was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer, which has a five-year survival rate of just 28 percent.
Olson is one of 2.8 million Americans now living with the disease. The average age for being diagnosed with prostate cancer is 66, according to Cancer.org.
“The stats for people like me are gloomy, but I’m set on staying ahead of it by finding the right treatments that will slow down or even stop my cancer,” said Olson.
He has been through prescribed surgery, hormone therapy and chemotherapy treatments, all of which temporarily wrestled his cancer into submission.
It’s a matter of time before his tumors begin to grow again, so he’s leaving no stone unturned in his fight to stay alive. It’s a fight he believes will benefit others living with cancer now and in the future, especially if they better understand the new world of personalized, molecular treatment.
Olson is a global marketing director at Intel, a place that’s seen its share of brave people fight against diseases. Former CEO and Chairman Andy Grove was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1995 and the following year wrote a Forbes’ cover story “Fighting Prostate Cancer,” which outlined his analytical approach to finding the right, state-of-the-art treatment.
Eric Dishman, an Intel Fellow and general manager of Intel’s Health and Life Sciences, was diagnosed with two rare kidney diseases at age 19. After trying a variety of treatments, he underwent a successful kidney transplant in late 2012.
A long-time surfer, Olson sees himself dropping into a giant peak-shaped wave, where the forces of technology and bioscience are coming together to help improve early detection and attack advanced cancer.
In his fight against cancer, the Oregon resident decided to have his tumor DNA analyzed to gain better understanding of his cancer at a molecular level. By uncovering the cause of his aggressive form of cancer, he hopes to find clues that will lead to the right treatment.
“Genomic sequencing will help guide my future treatments,” Olson told iQ. “Unfortunately most people with cancer have no idea what specific genetic mutations are actually fueling their unique cancer growth, and not knowing that is dangerous.”
He had his tumor analyzed at the nearby Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), which helped pioneer personalized medicine and is an international leader in research and cancer treatment. OHSU is working with Intel to use high-performance computing and cloud technology to speed up and lower the cost of analyzing DNA, so that precision care becomes the standard for treating diseases.
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the chemical that carries instructions to cells in the body. Chromosomes from each parent combine to create a person’s genome, which consists of six billion individual DNA letters.
When chemicals that carry instructions deviate from the norm, cells can grow out of control and mutate. Mutations can be inherited or triggered by environmental factors or lifestyle choices. Typically it requires several different mutations to result in cancer.
Genome sequencing is the process to figure out the order of those individual letters that make up a person’s DNA.
While gene sequencing at birth or an early age could help people understand their own health risks and potential health risks of family members, until now the process has been used primarily for people diagnosed with terminal diseases.
Sequencing presents huge promise, but it has yet to spark a widespread revolution in healthcare outside of leading cancer institutions, according to Christopher Corless, M.D., Ph.D., director and chief medical officer of the Knight Diagnostics Laboratories, which are part of the OHSU, Knight Cancer Institute.
“There is a fundamental shift underway, but it’s incomplete,” Corless said. “Only some people understand genes and the implications of mutations. Democratizing this is a ways down the road.”
At academic centers sequencing is becoming more routine, but not yet at smaller clinics and hospitals, he said. The challenges include costs, insurance reimbursements and the proper medications for targeting those mutations.
This is where Olson finds himself, between a hospital treating him using traditional means and a research facility that is helping him uncover more precisely what’s driving his tumor’s growth, and to work this into clinical decision making.
Even if sequencing helps analysts find the problems, there may not be an FDA-approved medication that meets Olson’s specific needs. But sequencing may help doctors find a new clinical trial in which Olson could be offered an experimental drug that could be the best treatment option for his specific disease.
While this may seem an uphill battle, it’s not insurmountable, according to Dr. Brian Druker, M.D., director, OHSU Knight Cancer Institute.
“When we understand what is broken, we can fix it,” Druker said.
Druker’s research nearly 20 years ago led to the development of Gleevec, the first molecular targeted drug able to kill cancer cells while leaving healthy tissue unharmed. It was first used to fight chronic myeloid leukemia, but has since been determined effective in treating about 10 types of cancer.
Controversial at the time, Druker’s specific targeting of a cell’s mutation is leading to molecular treatments that, for many, are less toxic than carpet-bombing therapies like chemotherapy.
Druker said we can defeat cancer. It requires knowledge, and computer technology is accelerating that collective understanding.
“The first human genome was sequenced in 2001,” said Druker. “It took about 10 years and cost $100 million. Today, a person can have their DNA sequenced in about four weeks for about $1,000. We have a remarkable ability to generate data and it keeps improving.”
Each time someone gets their full genome sequenced, it generates information for 30,000 genes, which means terabytes of computer data. Analyzing that data into meaningful, actionable results is expensive and time consuming.
Since 2013, OHSU has been working with Intel to shape how this data can be generated faster, cheaper and securely so it can be shared quickly with the right people at the right time.
The notion that everyone is unique could lead to a future of infinite complexity, creating a Sisyphean task for medical scientists and doctors who need to make sense of all of this data. However, Druker believes that as more genomes are sequenced, patterns will emerge.
“Computation will make it clear,” said Druker. “It will help us more rapidly identify which drugs will help. It will take days to weeks instead of years.”
And if no drug exists and there’s a significant need for it, pharmaceutical companies can start working on those right away. In Olson’s case, searching for precision treatments that go after his specific mutations is where he’s focused now.
“Things are more clear and at the same time more scary now,” said Olson.
“Most prostate cancers feed off of testosterone. They are stymied by therapies that either reduce the level of testosterone in a guy’s body or prevent the cancer’s cell’s receptors from binding to testosterone,” he said.
Sooner or later his prostate cancer will learn how to survive and grow even in low- to non-existent circulating testosterone levels. It feels like he is in no-man’s land because there are very limited FDA-approved treatments for fighting prostate cancer that resists hormonal treatments.
“Genomic sequencing opened my eyes to something called the PI3K signaling pathway that actually drives resistance to hormone therapy and stimulates tumor growth. It’s scary knowing that my tumor appears to be using that actual pathway to grow.”
To Olson, this discovery means that he needs to avoid spending time and insurance money on population-based treatments, which don’t impact his specific needs. Instead, he and his doctors will spend more time getting him on clinical trials for experimental treatments that could attack his cancer more precisely.
Nearly 12 people die from cancer every minute, leading to more than 1,700 deaths each day, according to World Cancer Death Clock. Cancer accounts for one in seven deaths worldwide. In the United States, Cancer is the second-most common cause of death, exceeded only by heart disease, and accounts for nearly one in every four deaths.
According to Corless, today’s gene sequencing focuses on panels of genes that are known to play a role in cancer. This type of sequencing zeroes in on the most important information needed urgently.
“In our first foray into using modern sequencing, we’d look at 23 to 76 genes, depending on the cancer,” said Corless.
He said that this kind of targeted sequencing has generated a lot of data and has helped many patients. It can find mutations that are interesting and important in 50 to 60 percent of patients.
“Today, targeted sequencing has a potential impact on patient care in about 20 percent of cases. We think that number will go up when we go to exome sequencing.”
He and his team at OHSU are now shifting from focused panels to broad-based, ‘whole exome’ sequencing that looks at all the protein-coding regions of the genome (about 1.6 percent of the total DNA).
“We are scaling up from an average of 50 genes for one patient to an average of 20,000 genes,” said Dr. Corless. “It’s a massive step forward.”
Gene sequencing is accelerating the availability of new treatments beyond chemo, he said.
“There are 500 different compounds in clinical development. Some are being developed in conjunction with universities, others in conjunction with pharmaceutical companies.”
Using genomic sequencing in the treatment of cancer has profound implications for the future of cancer patients everywhere. Instead of throwing darts at a blank wall, as Olson puts it, doctors and patients will be able to learn what drugs successfully treat what mutations.
OHSU’s work with Intel to build a huge database or so-called “cancer cloud” could allow researchers in Oregon to privately share critical information with doctors across the nation and around the world.
“This will one day become a reality for all patients, where targeted therapies can attack the genetic abnormalities that are driving a person’s cancer and stop the tumor in its tracks,” said Olson.
For now, Olson is navigating new ground that he believes could lead to identifying new drugs or help doctors find the right combination of drugs to halt his cancer.
“I’m going to fight this thing as long as I can,” said Olson. “If it does take me down, I’d like to think that my efforts are accelerating personalized cancer care opportunities for others. This experience is showing me and my family how critical new technology and gene analysis are to our lives.”
Fashion news and tips, daily horoscope and other internet-connected services make women’s wrist accessory more useful for work, social and family life.
A stylish bracelet for women created out of a cross-industry collaboration is now evolving into something even more useful for fashionistas as new lifestyle apps take advantage of nearly invisible computing technology nestled inside the precious-stone-adorned wrist accessory.
MICA, short for My Intelligent Communication Accessory, is a smart bracelet designed by Opening Ceremony and engineered by Intel. It first became available in late 2014. While it is designed to be eye-catching, the technology inside is bringing new capabilities to MICA wearers by adding features powered by Refinery29 that include fashion alerts and daily horoscopes. These enhance the current features, which include text messaging, emails, Google calendar, Facebook events, Yelp and intelligent reminders.
It is also creating new ways for fashion brands to connect with their loyal customers.
“To ask someone who cares deeply about fashion to wear an item every single day, it better be insanely good-looking and versatile,” said Connie Wang, Fashion Features Director at Refinery29, the new-media company behind some of the new services available on MICA.
“It’s got to work with a wide variety of outfits, while also looking appropriate for a wide variety of occasions,” said Wang (pictured below).
Until recently, most wearable technologies were largely geared toward males and focused on health efficiency or fitness apps, said Ayse Ildeniz, general manager of strategy and business development for Intel’s New Devices Group, the team that developed MICA.
“With MICA, we wanted to create a piece for women who were busy and on the go, style-conscious and wanting to be connected to loved ones,” said Ildeniz.
She said [tweet_quote hashtags=”#wearables”] MICA was designed to help women stay in the know while staying in the moment.[/tweet_quote]
One bracelet design features black Ayers (water snake skin), pearls from China and lapis stones from Madagascar, while the other features white Ayers, tiger’s eye from South Africa and obsidian from Russia. Both feature 18-karat gold plating and integrated mobile technology that allows wearers to see their Google calendar, Facebook events, and receive Gmail notifications and intelligent meeting reminders.
The new R29Fashion and R29 Horoscopes features are powered by Refinery29 and provide styling tricks and fashion news, as well as essential cosmic insights.
Currently available in the U.S. for $495 at Opening Ceremony and Barneys New York, MICA comes with a two-year AT&T wireless data plan.
While fashion is one of many market segments for wearables, which range from health tracking to industrial applications, BI Intelligence, the research arm of Business Insider, estimates the global wearables market will grow at a compound annual rate of 35 percent over the next five years, reaching 148 million units shipped annually in 2019, up from 33 million units shipped this year.
Ildeniz said that by interacting with fashion industry leaders, Intel is helping grow an ecosystem that could ultimately speed innovation around wearables by sharing best practices and driving down costs.
By bringing the two worlds together, Ildeniz said this convergence between industries will endeavor to make wearable technology address the needs of broader audiences. This is what’s needed to break away from what exists today, which she believes is overly focused on male consumers.
“Together we can make products for people who care about what things look like, and that’s happening because we’re getting input and having brainstorms between fashion designers and technology engineers.”
Refinery29’s Wang says that while style is essential, the people she covers in the fashion industry know that the most effective wearables need to be tech first, fashion second.
“It’s also important to get the fashion part right, but a product’s success is going to hinge on how well it works.”
The fashion industry is certainly influencing the wearable tech industry, according to Ildeniz. It’s encouraging companies like Intel to create user experience teams to conduct field research that can be merged with fashion industry insights to inspire wearable technology that offers the types of notifications and features that people desire in a wearable vs. other devices that they already own, like smartphones.
The collaborative work on MICA continues to be eye-opening as cross-industry interests and synergies are discovered.
“When we ask fashion experts what they’d like us to do, it’s clear they want us to make things that defy physics,” said Ildeniz. “But we also learned many want to find ways to stay linked with customers, not only after a purchase but also when the purchased item is being used.”
In the product development process, Opening Ceremony indicated that horoscopes and fashion tips would enhance the MICA experience and believed that Refinery29 would be the most appropriate content partner given their focus on fashion as well as on millennials.
Results from the Refinery29 March 2014 study, Her Brain on Digital: Inside the World of the Millennial Minded Woman, showed that two in three readers consider themselves early adopters. Nine in ten readers embrace technology and seek ways it can increase productivity. Four in five readers are experimental with technology.
The report also revealed that 86 percent of Refinery29 readers agree that “all of the available resources make it easier to develop my personal style” and that 87 percent of readers like when brands promote new product lines and launches.
Ildeniz sees the fusion of fashion and technology industries not only meeting the desires of fashion consumers, but also shaping the future of consumer electronics and the way people interact with them.
“With today’s interfaces, most assume we need to look at something like a screen, but voice will be a big factor in how we interact with wearable technologies,” she said.
She also points to how the world is bifurcating.
On one hand, smartphones are the hub or main computing and communication devices that feed wearable technologies. On the other hand, there’s the notion of having sensors distributed on the body and beyond to other devices, cars and objects at home.
“When everything talks to everything, the possibilities seem limitless,” Ildeniz said.
Although this distributed model may not hit mainstream for another 10 years, she said that it could render today’s form factor less relevant. The need for screens could diminish. Computing could happen anywhere and be communicated with a hat, a pair of glasses, a dress, basketball, car or almost anything we use in everyday life.
“Intel Curie has lots of potential because of its small, low-power ability to fit in tiny things,” she said, referring to the new button-sized computing module prototype first shown in January 2015.
“We’ll likely see interesting proof of concepts, but there’s lots of work to be done to improve battery life and other things, like making it washable,” she said.
Fashion and tech depend on each other, said Wang.
“Both are tools to help us live more expressive lives, and as technology becomes as essential as clothes are, there will inevitably be more and more overlap between the two,” said Wang.
“However, a big issue that tech has to solve to appeal to the fashion set is the problem with being able to customize your hardware on a whim. We change our clothes every day, but we can’t yet change the look of our tech.”
landonjx: duplicate of 3409497185001, forcing black blackground (iq-realsense requirement).
Image of models wearing MICA photographed by Collier Schorr.
How a Tweet inspired Instapainting founder Chris Chen to build a master painter robot controlled by Twitch viewers.
Since he couldn’t paint like a master, Chris Chen made a painter robot that could.
Chen is the founder of Instapainting, a company that hires accomplished artists to turn photographs into paintings on canvas. When a Twitter user attempted to steal a customer by offering to have a robot paint the customer’s image, Chen was inspired to make a painter robot of his own.
Three weeks and $250 later, Chen had his first prototype. His bot quickly evolved from mimicking human painters to taking paint stroke commands from live TwitchTV users.
“I don’t think there was ever a real, physical world collaborative Twitch stream,” said Chen.
So he started one.
For years Twitch has been the social video platform of choice for gamers — a place to chat with fellow enthusiasts, stream play-throughs or watch eSports pros battle it out in gaming tournaments. When Twitch switched on new flavors of programming last fall, millions of art fans tuned in to watch a nine-day marathon of “The Joy of Painting,” the 1980s TV show hosted by frizzy-haired, mellow-talking painter Bob Ross.
It was Chen’s second Twitch Paints livestream collaboration. In the debut episode, which made the front page of Hacker News, Twitch commenters had to write code commands to tell the robot where to paint.
For the second show, which attracted more than six thousand Twitch viewers, Chen made it easier, allowing viewers to control the robot painter by typing simple x and y axis coordinates. The finished work is being sold via Ebay with proceeds from the auction going to Watsi, an organization that uses crowd-funding to provide medical care to people around the world.
The end result of the Twitch Paints stream was a bit of a mess because the event was 36 hours long and only one sheet of paper was used. By the end, the famous Mona Lisa smile was covered by three-day’s worth of paint.
A History of Robot Painters
Chen’s may be the first painting robot that is crowd controlled via the internet, but it’s not the first robot artist.
The Basel Academy of Art and Design’s “mobile sensory image production mechanism” BNJMN began signing his name to original works in 2013, and E-David (“Drawing Apparatus for Vivid Interactive Display”) started creating visually optimized works of art from the University of Konstanz in 2009. But it was Chen who took the robot art game to the next level of crowd-control creativity.
Chen became curious about crowdsourcing the painting process after seeing a group of Twitch users collaborate on a more scientific project.
Linux is an operating system like Apple OS X or Microsoft Windows, but unlike those systems, Linux is free and open-source. During the Twitch stream, the most popular keystroke every five seconds in a Twitch chat was used to command an Arch Linux virtual machine, giving an entire community of Twitch users control over a single machine. Goals for that stream included booting Arch Linux from the hard disk and configuring a fully working X server.
Building a Rembrandt Robot
Though the technology may looks and sounds complex, Chen said the execution was simple. When an artist draws, the movements are recorded digitally in three dimensions: X and Y (up, down and across the canvas) and Z (for applying pen pressure to the canvas).
The robot then plays the movements back to recreate the painting. Because it skips lulls in movement, the robot can recreate a precise replica faster than humans.
“The robot uses two stepper motors and a servo motor,” explained Chen. “It is modified from a 2D plotting system,” which creates images by moving a pen or instrument across a canvas. This plotting system is essentially the X and Y axis the robot uses to place paint on the canvas.
A robot vs. human painting comparison
He added a water brush and DC peristaltic pump so the robot could wet the watercolor palette and apply the paint to the paper.
“The motors are connected to an Arduino Due, and that can plug into a computer where additional software is run to control it and interface with control inputs like a Wacom tablet, mouse or even a Myo armband,” he said.
According to Chen, it was equally simple to connect the robot to Twitch.
“For the Twitch Paints project, the computer was substituted with a Raspberry Pi, which sent commands to the robot,” he explained. “It was hooked up to read commands from the chat window and access a special database to read commands from the point-and-click GUI control.”
The graphical user interface (GUI) allowed viewers to add coordinates in the chat window rather than type elaborate software code instructions.
This futuristic technology has the potential to help anyone paint like a pro, and Chen has considered experimenting with new designs for the robot that would include using analog feedback and automatic color mixing.
For now, he’s focusing on Instapainting, helping it expand the types of handmade art it offers.
“While the robot is cool, it’s not going to replace the breadth and depth of human-designed art any time soon.”
One of the more humorous examples is the chainsaw wielding octocopter. Apparently it has a vendetta against snowmen.
Created by a couple of Finnish farmers, this so-called #killerdrone is the stuff of nightmares because it shows drones can be trained to do almost anything. This flying chainsaw massacre showcases one absurd example.
Over in Germany, a pilot from e-volo flew a hybrid helicopter-drone. It was the first certified manned multicopter flight, and made many people wondered how drones might take Uber to new heights.
The Volocopter VC200 is a fixed-pitch multirotor with 18 electric motors powered by 50 kilowatts of battery power. It’s built with collision-avoidance intelligence by Ascending Technologies, making it easy to fly.
ETH Zurich, the so-called “Silicon Valley of drone innovation,” is a Swiss-based university focused on technology and the natural sciences.” Several of the university’s research projects led to startup companies that focused on using drones to solve a particular problem.
Wingtra, for example, builds drones that have the characteristics of two different aircrafts. These VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) drones have the range and flight time of a fixed-wing aircraft with the precise landing and takeoff capability of multirotors. Wingtra believes drone technology can aid the agriculture and mining industries and assist with industrial inspections.
Another ETH Zurich spinoff is Aerotain, the company behind the Skye blimp drone. The Skye is a helium filled ball with three electric motors that can rotate 360 degrees around each axis. The result is an aerial platform that can perform precise movements while carrying heavy cargo for long periods of time.
Since the Skye is essentially a helium-filled balloon, Aerotain claims it can fly over crowds safely. The Skye uses drone technology to create new modes of advertising, including at sporting events where it can be flown around a stadium.
Golfers everywhere will appreciate Rakuten, a Japanese company that’s experimenting with a multirotor done that delivers golf balls and drinks on the green. The company is also testing a mobile-based service that will allow golfers to order drinks and balls right from their phones.
Assuming the delivery drone is able to avoid the wayward shot across the fairway, deliveries will start in May.
In Dubai, drones are beloved by the crown prince, who hosted the World Drone Prix race in March. Fifteen-year-old Luke Bannister took home $250,000 in prize money after winning what many called “the largest and most extravagant drone race to date.”
With such an overwhelming cash prize and drone racing quickly becoming a global pastime, the population of pro drone racers is poised to explode.
Even ESPN is getting in on the action. The network announced it will broadcast live drone races at the US Drone National Championships in August 2016.
Dubai is also putting drones to work as aerial “robocops,” using flying cameras to catch illegal garbage dumpers and litterbugs red-handed. Dubai Municipality will employ drones to monitor trucks that dump illegally and popular campsites where citizens are known to leave trash behind.
In Italy, a group of Jesuit students in Rome gave Pope Francis a drone as a gift. This homebuilt quadcopter is meant to represent “the values of technology in the service of man.”
With so many drone innovations in the pipeline, it’s tough to know what’ll happen next. Who knows, maybe the Pope will use his new drone to create a 3D model of the Vatican using photogrammetry techniques. Now that would be cool.
As performance analysis used by professional athletes goes mainstream, personal trainers can help people turn their fitness data into a personal health plan.
The baseball movie “Moneyball” and the 2014 German Soccer team’s use of Match Insights both showed how athlete data analysis can help win championships. Today, anyone can track their activity like professional athletes and quantified-self fitness buffs, but not everyone can bear the brunt of data overload from wearable technologies.
Wearable technologies and mobile applications that track daily steps, runs or bike ride distances, heart rates and sleep patterns can be extremely rewarding, according to Craig Friedman, vice president of the performance innovation team at EXOS, a health and fitness company that helps measure athlete performance.
“Technology has really helped facilitate a better understanding of what’s going on with the whole body,” said Friedman.
“It’s giving people insights that once required an exercise physiology lab, but the data has come faster than the ability or knowledge to know what to do with it,” he said.
Friedman specializes in MLB spring training preparation, worked with the German men’s national soccer team in 2006, and travelled with the WTA tennis tour in 2001. Over the past few decades, he has witnessed the rise of quantifiable training in professional sports.
“Data for data sake without insight and context really isn’t valuable to many people beyond the subset of quantified-self individuals,” he said.
It’s clear to him coaches will play a critical role in helping people use performance data to develop truly personal fitness regimes.
Friedman said that’s the gist behind EXOS’s decision to team up with Intel. If coaches and trainers learn how to use technology that collects and analyzes performance data, they can help more people reach optimal health.
“Taking a step back from the data then really understanding the individual and what they want from a benefit standpoint helps us frame up that data in different ways that are more relevant to a particular person’s needs,” said Friedman.
Taking a certain number of steps each day, feeling more energetic or less stressful or losing weight are all different priorities for individuals, said Friedman. Starting with benefits or desired results can indicate what data to use.
“If you want to lose weight, are you active enough?,” asked Friedman.
Tracking the number of steps and other daily movement as well as data about diet and sleep over time can help identify areas where behavior changes increase changes for achieving health goals.
Looking ahead, Friedman points to people’s desire to “be like Mike (Jordan),” or other professional athletes. He sees performance data as a great motivator.
“Many people, especially younger fans participating in the sport, are interested in how they stack up against pro athletes,” said Friedman.
Although comparing personal fitness data with professional athletes isn’t easy today, Friedman believes a common language around performance standards would help. It’s something EXOS does today with professional athletes.
“We take data about someone’s performance capabilities across mindset, nutrition, movement and recovery, and quantify it into an overall performance quotient score,” said Friedman.
Once people have their own performance quotient score, Friedman said they could use it to create a healthy training regime so their performance data can compete against their favorite athlete.
People are being exposed to new kinds of performance data from professional athletes in many sports. For snowboarders, hitting earth with a force of 10Gs could be considered a soft landing, but until a small tracking device placed on snowboards at the Winter X Games delivered the data, it was difficult to tell for sure.
Like runners wearing fitness trackers, X Games athletes in two men’s events – Slopestyle and Big Air – fitted their snowboards with a pencil eraser-sized Intel Curie compute module.
The module connected to an accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, barometer and GPS technology to get measurement for things like velocity, air time, height, distance and rotation.
By knowing an athlete’s acceleration in relation to free-fall speed, fans watching the snowboard competition now had a new scientific statistic to compare across other daredevil athletes. It also made many amateur snowboarders curious about the G-force threshold they’d need to maintain for a smooth landing.
If the Winter X Games is any indication, having insightful performance data is a great motivator for pro and amateur athletes alike.
We live in an invisible world of waves, from natural ones like heat, motion and light to those of the technological variety like WiFi, 4G and LTE. We can’t see these waves with our own eyes, but what if technology like the Galileo Board could help us to visualize them?
That’s the thinking behind ‘Inside the Blue,’ a community project the Noise agency developed in collaboration with Intel that launched recently and can be seen on display at Intel’s Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco this week and at the World Maker Faire in New York on September 20 and 21.
The concept behind Inside the Blue is an ecosystem of creatures that live inside the ocean — like a jellyfish or a whale — which detect different invisible waves using the sensor capacity of the Galileo. The invisible waves are converted and displayed into light, sound or motion, making the invisible world visible.
At the core of the program are two tutorials hosted on the Intel Maker Community site, as well as a series of inspirational posts designed to ignite the imagination of Makers to build and develop their own creatures.
These two tutorials work in tandem. Brain Coral acts as a wireless base station with an analog motion sensor that blinks based on how close or how far a person is from it, and it also communicates wirelessly through Xbees with the flying Signal Fish.
In the words of one of its creators, 29-year-old Kanish Patel, the Signal Fish is, “An autonomous WiFi-detecting flying machine that lights up when it likes the WiFi it is detecting.” ‘Like’ in this case indicates a quality signal that triggers the Signal Fish to play an animation. (How exactly this occurs is that the Signal Fish ‘finds’ the WiFi signal and relays that information back to the Brain Coral.)
The Brain Coral blinking in reaction to motion around it.
Talking with Patel you get a real feel for the fun and infectious nature of the Maker community and the diverse talents it draws upon.
“As an electrical engineer it was fun for me to try to create something that flies and does weird stuff. And I got to play with electronics which I don’t get to do much anymore.”
When he talks about the design process he embarked upon to figure out just how to create this flying, signal-seeking balloon from scratch, he makes the possibly painful trial and error seem like the most fun a person could have outside of an amusement park.
Everything had to be created from whole cloth, from the balloon that was the bulk of the 7-foot creature, to the 3D-printed propellers that enabled flight, to the undercarriage that housed the motors.
An early rendering of the blimp-shaped Signal Fish with the undercarriage that houses the motors and propellers.
“We needed something that flies around and looks cool. That was essential,” said Patel.
Working with teammates Paul Ferragut, an industrial designer, and fashion designer Ann-Kristin Abel, they collectively came up with the shape of the Signal Fish and, after a few abortive attempts with off-the-shelf mylar, arrived at the translucent version you see Ann-Kristin ironing together and assembling in the video below. Christian Bianchini, a Physical Computing Engineer sourced the necessary components and designed the circuit with Paul that would enable the Signal Fish to achieve flight.
Having figured out the necessary materials for the exterior for the Signal Fish, they then had to embark on the non-trivial task of visualizing what happens when the Signal Fish found its WiFi.
“We decided to fill it [the Signal Fish] with smoke for effect but smoke and helium don’t mix,” said Patel.
Then explaining another abortive effort Patel explains, “We wanted to have trailing tails that lit up like a jellyfish, but we couldn’t get that to lift off either.”
In the end, they arrived at having a “cool animation” that starts from the front and goes to the back when the Signal Fish finds the WiFi.
Patel was impressed with the Galileo. Having played with Arduino previously, he summed up his experience with Intel’s Galileo succinctly.
Leaning into his Electrical Engineering background, he said, “Arduino is tailored for people who aren’t like me. Galileo is good for people like me.”
Spiderbots, a spinball game and mood-sensing clothes turn a technology industry forum into a maker’s circus.
At the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), you never know who or what you’ll bump into, but you can be certain it’s all worth a second look.
One minute you’re watching yoga acrobatics performed in front of the wearable technology zone, and in a blink of an eye, Google co-founder Sergey Brin climbs out of the crowd to bust a move.
This year’s event in San Francisco was a mindblower, filled with smart, Internet-connected things created by amateur and professional makers, as well as Intel Labs researchers.
Head turners included a creepy robotic spider, a mood-sensing shirt and a pinball-like game powered by tiny sensors, servos and Legos.
Each handmade project was built using Intel Edison and Galileo technology, which provide makers with substantial computing performance and software that makes it easy to turn ideas into reality.
“More things are being connected to the Internet not just because of personal devices [laptops, tablets and smartphones], industrial machines and things like smart-cities technologies,” said Ed Ross, director of inventor platforms for Intel’s New Devices Group.
“Crowdfunding, 3D printing and the open source movement are driving more people to make their own things that connect to and run on the Internet.”
Using software tools that come with Galileo and Edison, makers can design new things that connect to the Internet, use cloud services to analyze and store data and even connect to other wireless-equipped devices.
Matt Bunting first developed smart hexapod as an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, 3D printing the legs at one of the school’s lab.
Now a PhD student, Bunting recently transformed his crawling creation into a Spiderbot using Intel Edison technology, which helped him lessen the load on the robotic structure and add new capabilities.
He brought two Spiderbots, one connected to his laptop with wires and another that operates wirelessly.
His goal now is to see how it gets around on different types of terrain. It could make for an even better trick at Halloween.
One team of Intel developers rummaged through some old storage items and found a blender, four fans and some ping pong balls. Thus was born the Spinball Machine.
Using a second generation Intel Galileo development board, a team led by Intel Labs connected buttons and switches linked to motors that control the game’s flippers. Fans on each corner blow the ping pong ball around after a player scores.
This one-on-one pinball for makers has been demonstrated before at places like Lighthouse Community Charter in Oakland, California, and at after-school programs like TechGYRLs. Researchers say it’s been a great way to get young students interested in coding and making.
This autonomous rover can sense obstructions and redirect itself without human intervention.
Rick Waldron made the rover with a Galileo Gen 2 development board, three sensors, steering equipment, wheel motors, a battery, a GPS and Lego parts.
A wave of a hand and the two feeler-like wires at the front of the rover turns its front wheels right or left and the back wheels into reverse.
The Octoblu team scoured Twitter for tweets with the IDF hashtag (#IDF14) and ran them through a sentiment-detection algorithm that triggered different colored lights. Red signified negative tweets, green for positive and blue for neutral.
The team is working to get machines and software talking in an effort to improve home automation systems like thermostats and lights.
China has harsh winters and an increasingly isolated aging population. So some developers at Intel Labs China created a light-up undershirt that uses Edison to collect ECG data.
The data it collects can be analyzed by a tablet, which displays the wearer’s emotions.
This novel way of visualizing someone’s mood let the team to create a decorative necktie that lights up in different patterns depending on the heart rate and mood of the person wearing the undershirt.
Michael Tsvetkov developed a voice-controlled running backpack that displays words and recognizable icons.
“Turning left,” said Tsvetkov, and an arrow pointing left appears in lights along with a person walking in that direction.
Tsvetkov said he hopes the device, made with an Edison development board, will help marathon runners. With so many backpacks in the world, he says it could be used in a variety of fun and useful ways.
This drone from 3D Robotics adjusts its position to always keep a person in the camera’s frame.
Some drone videographers rely on GPS, but that’s not precise enough to follow someone in motion, said Arthur Benemann, who manned the company’s booth at IDF.
The 3D Robotics drone “tracks the biggest red blob,” he said. For now, that means users need to wear a red shirt or hat.
Oregon State University student Tuan Truong, along with some other summer interns at Intel, built an autonomous water-sensing rover that helps farmers determine how often they need to water crops.
A sensor on the rover takes soil samples to determine moisture level, and an infrared webcam captures information about plant health and age.
Truong said his goal is to make the rover fully solar powered.
After a new building went up near Intel’s office in Guadalajara, Mexico, 12 Intel employees there decided to spend their spare time developing a better construction helmet.
The result, said team member Roberto Burgos, is a helmet that uses Edison and an expansion board to detect a variety of anomalies.
In the case of an impact, a foreman can then determine whether a worker needs medical attention.
The helmet also has sensors that can detect gas leaks. Canaries everywhere are rejoicing.
As all eyes turn to the World Maker Faire in New York this weekend, there’s a digital makerspace where DYIers and tinkerers can meet to share ideas, resources and laughs.
Before, during and after Maker Faires, makers can get Inside the Blue, an online community by Intel aimed at inspiring makers to build creatures with the Intel Galileo Board.
The initial phase of Inside the Blue featured a small group of makers from all walks of life, like Juan Pablo Buritica, a one-time chef and pharmaceutical chemist, and Thor Muller, founder of Get Satisfaction and author of the New York Times Bestseller “Get Lucky.”
They were given reference designs and then went off and built creatures based on the Galileo, and they have begun to share their stories in the Intel Maker Community.
Now as the program has found its collective legs with new creatures being built based off of reference designs, Intel is seeking to expand the audience by asking for a new round of builders and makers to start dreaming, creating and sharing their projects.
This video lets you can click through to discover a variety of maker projects in the makerspace.
“Making is a social activity, not just something you go off and do on your own,” said Dale Dougherty, CEO and founder of Maker Media, which puts on the Maker Faire.
“We’re all makers,” he said in an earlier interview with iQ. “I don’t know where that comes from but it seems to be a very fundamental human quality. If we don’t develop it, we’ll lose it. That’s what I see happening today. We have the opportunity to develop this and gain the opportunities that come through making.”
One of his top concerns is that while Make magazine and Maker Faires can help distribute technology kits, more needs to be done to combat what he called “The Monday Problem.” This is what happens after people return home from a Maker Faire and put aside their new-found interest or don’t have makerspaces in their local communities.
Dougherty encourages innovators to keep plugging away and keep sharing their passion and knowledge with children.
“Engaging [children] in the physical world and with physical things is really important,” he said.
It can lead them to new, satisfying discoveries that just might change the world.
Doing social good is about taking action with conviction, but it’s also about sharing best practices and pointing out the real progress of those actions so others can understand, be inspired and take part in their own social-good doing.
While that was the impetus of the Mashable Social Good Summit in New York on September 21-22, it was also pointed out that technologies used to tackle the world’s challenges are often the same technologies that expose us to controversial issues.
On day one of the summit, Stacy Martinet, chief marketing officer for Mashable, moderated a talk about the conflict-free movement, which has gained significant momentum from college student activists, such as Roxanne Rahnama, and industry leaders, such as Intel CEO Bryan Krzanich.
Rahnama, a UC Berkeley student activist who started the Conflict-Free Campus Initiative at her campus before becoming the national organizer for the overall initiative. Now she is part of the national coordination team for the CFCI.
She told the Social Good audience that she was in eighth grade when she first learned about the conflict mineral issue in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
There, the extraction of minerals — including tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold, which are essential for making computer microprocessors — has been linked with corruption, violence and killing, as warlords, rebels and militia groups have taken over mines and forced others into slave labor. This illegal trade has enabled these groups to buy weapons, commit unspeakable acts and terrorize the region.
“I felt is was a moral imperative to turn this knowledge into action,” said Rahnama. The college-campus initiative she sparked is spreading across the United States to other colleges in an effort to encourage universities to adopt policies the support the conflict-free movement and use of conflict-free products.
Earlier this year, Krzanich kicked off a supply-chain program that would allow Intel to remain in the Congo but use only conflict-free minerals. He equated the program to open source software.
“Anyone can use it,” he said.
Today all of Intel’s microprocessors are made with conflict-free minerals, but Kzranich said these computer brain chips are only half of all products Intel makes. Intel also makes graphics chips, solid-state drives and many other products.
“We can get everything we build and everything we buy to be Conflict-Free by the end of 2015. That’s our new goal,” he said.
The second day of the Mashable Social Good Summit kicked off with a challenge from UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon: continue to innovate with technology in order to help those less fortunate around the world.
As technology makes lives in the first world easier, it cannot be blind to the needs of the third world. Providing access to this technology and educating people in its use is necessary for the developing world to advance.
Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, believes the most important factor in opening up technology to the disadvantaged is reducing production costs. Cheaper tablets and laptops will put those devices in the hands of the people who need them most.
Dell went on to state, “I think the outlook for the world that embraces technology and innovation is incredibly positive.”
The proliferation of education was also a major talking point. Peter Diamandis of XPrize, a driving force behind encouraging technological development for public use, recently announced the Learning Prize endeavor. Learning Prize is challenging developers worldwide to build software that can take a child from illiteracy to reading, writing and arithmetic in just 18 months. Diamandis plans for this app to be open source, so it will work on any platform and any mobile device.
In his roundtable discussion, Diamandis emphasized just how difficult it is in some places to get children into classrooms. With this app, he states, “the power of learning will be placed in the hands of every child in any country.”
A roundtable discussion between four leaders in the world of women’s empowerment took the importance of education a step further. Actress Connie Britton, Jane Wurwand, Rosa Wang and Vicki Escarra discussed how educating women in the use of technology can greatly help their social standings in the developing world.
Rosa Wang, the director of Mobile Money at Opportunity International, shared the story of a woman in Malawi whose husband had recently passed away. The man’s brother attempted to withdraw all of their life savings but was thwarted by the biometric security measures she had implemented using a mobile money management app.
Stories like these are not unique in the developing world, unfortunately.
In countries like Uganda where mobile phones are more common than light bulbs, women are taking it upon themselves to get educated in the use of mobile money management to better protect their families’ livelihoods and futures. Melinda Gates, philanthropist and co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, shared her own stories of using mobile phones to help track disease and pregnancy rates in the developing world.
Gates stated, “If we don’t empower women, we don’t allow them to unlock the potential of themselves and their children.”
In Sub-Saharan Africa, wildlife is at constant odds with illegal poaching, which technology is working to solve. Recently, wearable tech has been enlisted to save the lives of endangered black rhinos, but with more than 100,000 elephants poached in the last three years alone, other steps must be taken.
Enter Strathmore University student Mercy Chepkoech Sigey. She took the stage to share her personal story in learning to code with Arduino and motion trackers in an effort to curb wild elephant poaching in Kenya.
Along with two other classmates, Mercy enlisted the help of Google’s Innovate Kenya organization to learn the ins and outs of Arduino programming. The three women built motion-sensing arrays to help track poacher movement in protected wildlife zones. These motion trackers detect irregular movement patterns characteristic of vehicles and humans allowing the women to alert authorities before any animals can be harmed.
Mercy and her classmates are hoping their work can put an end to this unjust cruelty.
Fall season always brings a wave of new devices, from smartphones to tablets and computers. But this season is seeing an influx of new wearables and technologies that allow amateur and professional innovators to create their own mindbending maker projects, such as robots, mechanical games and personal spacecrafts.
Many of those gadgets and gizmos, some available now and in the months ahead, were shown for the first time at the Intel Developer Forum 2014 in San Francisco earlier in September. While the Internet of Things and the spread of data analystics capabilities stirred buzz among developers, new consumer products, prototypes and maker creations generated a lot of excitement among attendees.
The Dell Venue 8 7000 Series
It’s been billed as the world’s thinnest tablet, and it was a big enough deal it had Dell CEO, Michael Dell, join Intel CEO, Brian Krzanich, onstage to talk with developers at IDF.
Not only is it super thin, but it’s the first model to be shipping with Intel RealSense snapshot technology, which means it’s equipped with camera technology that allows it to capture depth photographs and manipulate your photos in a whole new way after the picture is taken.
“The Venue 8 7000 places the dual-lens camera on the back of an Android slate, opening up a whole new world of possibilities,” wrote Avram Piltch, online editorial director for Laptop magazine.
“The first thing we noticed on the Dell Venue 8 7000 is its absolutely gorgeous, 8.4-inch display. A background wallpaper image of a mountain scene seemed to come alive on the 2560 x 1600, OLED panel with brilliant greens, blues and beiges. Dark areas on the picture were particularly rich, perhaps because OLED technology offers the most accurate shades of black. This just might be the best screens we’ve seen on any tablet,” said Piltch.
Intel RealSense snapshot technology allows the Dell Venue 8 7000 to take depth-enhanced photos up close and far away. Once captured, the technology lets you change the focus of a photo or see a measured distance. With a touch of a finger, you can measure the length of a fresh-caught trout, the width of that new fridge or how high the college basketball star jumped when he made that power slam dunk. You can even tell different stories by refocusing subjects and objects in the foreground or background.
Another Intel RealSense technology coming soon uses a front-facing, 3D camera that focuses on you, the device owner. It will bring human-like senses to laptops, 2 in 1 computers and all-in-one PCs in the coming months. It lets personal computers see their owners in 3D, bringing new ways to control your computer, blending voice, touch and hand or facial gestures.
“Everything that’s autonomous — such as robots and drones — should have senses,” said Dr. Achin Bhowmik, Intel’s director of perceptual computing, in an interview with Business Insider Studios. “The human senses receive information via seeing, hearing, touching, etc., and the human brain processes that information to allow comprehension of the physical world and enable effortless movements and interactions. The same should go for these devices.”
Intel Core M Processor-Powered 2 in 1 Computers
Set to hit the market in October, with nearly two dozen new models currently in development, were a slew of new 2 in 1 prototype computers that function as a tablet and a laptop. Powered by Intel Core M processors, which have new 3-D transistors that measure 14 nm, smaller than the current state-of-the-art Intel Core i7 processors, which measure 22 nm.
The new processors and a slim tablet form factor demonstrated the platform’s potential as a low-power, high-performance mobile chip.
The 2 in1 has a smaller energy footprint, which allows it to provide a long battery life and to be fanless without compromising performance.
Nicole Scott, co-founder of Mobile Geeks, attended a developer session at IDF and reported on the performance she saw from Intel’s Llama Mountain Reference Design, which was built with the new Intel Core M-5Y70 processor.
“It has a low TDP or thermal design threshold, which makes it suitable for fanless designs as well as super thin and light devices,” she wrote in her review.
She even got geekier, and looked at how different materials used to make future 2 in 1s could bring even better performance.
“A pressed aluminum case is easier to make but will only yield 3-4W of thermal dissipation, the uni-body aluminum frame can handle 6-8 Watts. They even showed a copper tablet that has the best numbers with 10-12 Watts,” she wrote.
Big All-in-One PCs With 4K and 12 Touch Points
All-in-one PCs, sleek desktop computers that are portable and can be used like a giant tablet around the house, continue to evolve rapidly, including a collection of all-in-ones that run 4K video.
Typical high definition with 1080p resolution delivers a picture with two million pixels (1920 x 1080), while 4K ultra high definition has over eight million pixels (3840 x 2160). That’s around four times richer resolution compared with 1080p.
The all-in-one that got the most hands-on action at IDF was the Lenovo Horizon powered by an Intel Core i5 processor. It’s a tabletop gamer’s dream, measuring 26.3 by 16.1-inches and only .8-inches thick
The ability to have 12 simultaneous touch points allows for all kinds of gameplay from air hockey to Monopoly, shifting family board game night from the analog to the digital.
The Basis is considered by many to be a pioneering personal health tracker. It tracks everything from sleep to stress and knows when you’re running, walking and cycling. The ability to visually display data on the watch, and even more vividly on personal smartphones, tablets and computers, is something that could become more common in future wearable devices.
Mike Bell, vice president and general manager of Intel’s New Devices Group, recently told developers that Intel, which purchased Basis in March 2014, would provide them an API so they could create applications that allow people to use the collection of personal health data beyond the Basis device and app.
“We want to provide a common way … to use these devices and for developers to take these common building blocks and turn them into reality,” Bell said in a PC World article.
The new Basis Peak, slated to hit the market in time for the holidays, was first revealed at the Intel Developer Forum.
Make Your Own Jimmy the Robot
From robot wars to robot makers, there’s something indescribable about our fascination and adoration of autonomous creatures, especially when they look like people or even aliens.
For many, Jimmy is among the cutest robots of late. Its creator, Intel futurist Brian David Johnson, sees Jimmy as many things for many people, especially young students interested in building and programming their own personal robot. He’s on a quest to bring the 21st Century Robot to any robot fan.
While he sees robotic vaccuums from the last decade as the equivalent of laptop computers when they first hit the scene, Johnson is making Jimmy like a smartphone of today.
The latest Jimmy, built with Intel Edison technology, is a tenth of the cost he debuted at, and he’s getting more customizable with each new development. An earlier version of Jimmy used an Intel Core i5 processor and cost about $15,000 to make, while the newer version using Intel Edison costs $1,600.
“When I’m out talking with grade school students, the number one thing they want Jimmy to do is to be funny,” said Johnson. “Yes, they also want him to make fart sounds.”
Jimmy the Robot has been making the rounds, visiting schools, developers and Maker Faires.
Our dependence on data centers makes these vaults of information storage some of the world’s most valuable property.
September’s 6.1 magnitude earthquake that rocked Napa, California, was a stark reminder to everyone of Mother Nature’s destructive potential.
It was a warning that, at any time, damage caused by forces beyond our control can wreak havoc on our homes, business and even our historic wine cellars. We can eventually rebuild those possessions, but what happens when our information is threatened?
Today, much of our lives rely on data centers. Our daily social media interactions, the transport infrastructure we depend on, the accessibility and management of personal and corporate finance and the provision of our power and utilities. Data centers are critical for accessing medical records, running banking and stock market systems and feeding the communication and commerce needs we have every day.
Currently, there are more than 500,000 critical data center facilities worldwide that occupy an estimated 285 million square feet of space. These bedrocks of information processing and storage are essential to our increasingly Internet-connected lives.
Looking ahead, the number of devices relying on data centers is expected to rise sharply as the Internet of Things (IoT) trend brings data, often in real time, to more personal, community and corporate devices.
Data Center Dependence
The financial sector is all too familiar with the challenge of safeguarding data centers. IT issues and data center outages can cost banks, for example, billions of dollars in lost revenue and fines every year. While these issues can impact investor confidence and profits in short-term sector, it is the public who suffers through data-center downtime.
Imagine being on vacation with no access to your bank or credit card account. What if your salary couldn’t be paid or your new car or home mortgage couldn’t be processed because data centers were down? Our world grinds to a halt. It’s a scenario depicted in Intel’s satirical video “What Would a Day Without Data Centers Look Like?”
The truth is less amusing for those bearing the brunt of outages.
Any disruption of data centers highlights just how fragile the global economy is and how the most mundane activities are dependent on access to data via the internet.
Moving People by the Billions
Water and power distributed to your home is most likely managed by data centers. Traffic lights, train signals, bus routes, even the live traffic information delivered to your car, are reliant on data center facilities.
Consider Google and its ambitious efforts to bring automated cars to the mainstream. These so-called “driverless cars” could generate over 1 GB of data per second using their advanced image collection and computer processing technologies.
Multiply this by how many cars Google expects to manufacture in the near future and the mountain of data becomes unfathomable. If a particular data center does go down, your car could be nothing more than somewhere to stay dry while you wait for a bus.
The same pressures apply to airlines. Planes only earn money when in the air and if a carrier is experiencing mass delays it only adds to the financial strain. No data, no takeoff.
Closer to home is your daily shopping routine. Amazon reported that last year it took the company just 49 minutes of downtime to lose $4 million in sales, while a similar half-hour data center incident saw $65,000 hemorrhaged every minute. Data center downtime might make shoppers scream, but for a company like Amazon it really hurts.
Targets of Destruction
Emerging technologies highlight how exposed the modern world is, especially in an era of global terrorism. Data centers are considered strategic targets as much if not more than power stations and airports.
The whole of Syria was taken offline in 2013 when the government blocked external communications services. Iraq, North Korea and Sudan saw similar treatment at the hands of insurgents and their oppressive regimes. Data blackouts can and do happen.
Even when intentions are not sinister, events out of our control are unavoidable. Level 3 Communications famously cursed squirrels in 2011 for chewing cables, a pest that was responsible for almost 20 percent of outages. Undersea cables that carry data traffic between continents — regular targets for hungry sharks and clumsy ships — are even more susceptible.
Most major governments and businesses are focusing more stringently on data center security. The most famous example is Visa’s Operations Center East with an address “somewhere on the Eastern seaboard.” A genuine fortress with 130 former military personnel guarding its grounds, it has a moat and hydraulic bollards that can be raised to stop a car traveling at 50 mph.
Putting Our Lives in Digital Hands
The data center is now omnipresent. Its significance in our personal and professional lives cannot be overstated. From a misplaced server holding financial data to the loss of Netflix on a Sunday afternoon, data centers are now symbiotic entities we cannot separate ourselves from.
They will only increase in importance as the last non-digital services are disrupted by technology. Tech research firm Gartner predicts more than $143 billion will be spent on data centers globally this year. Given their monumental importance, this seems like money well spent.
This story was contributed by Richard Jenkins, vice president of worldwide marketing and strategic partnerships at RF Code, a real-time asset management and integrated sensor networks company based in Austin, Texas.
The so-called Shenzhen innovation ecosystem, with its high-caliber talent and low-cost, rapid development capabilities, is raising to take on more established global designers and manufacturers to bring new consumer electronics fast.
There’s a new ecosystem of innovation springing up amidst the leafy green of subtropical southern China. Thanks to an enviable combination of engineering talent and entrepreneurial ‘can-do’ drive, it’s a place where the future of tech snaps together at breakneck speed. Already in-market are products from Shenzhen-based Huawei, ZTE and TCL. It’s also home to R&D centers for major Western tech brands.
Though often referred to by its most well-known city — Shenzhen — the China Tech Ecosystem (CTE) is much more than just one city. It is a contiguous urban belt stretching all the way from Hong Kong via Shenzhen and Dongguan to Guangzhou and Foshan, with branches snaking out to Huizhou, Zhuhai and Macau.
Also known as the Pearl River Delta megacity, this huge conurbation spans some 100 miles of near-continuous high-rises, and is home to more than 80 million people.
But for the purpose of IT, Shenzhen may be considered its core.
This isn’t the centralist China of long-gone Maoist smokestacks. Instead, this is the modern China of spacious boulevards and spotless high-tech parks, where a liberal and efficient banking and regulatory environment allows for incorporation within a day, and where per-capita incomes, particularly in some districts of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, are fast rivaling more established Asian neighbors.
“China today is as capable of high-end design as it is at driving out cost,” said Nebojsa Novakovic, a longtime Asia computing expert.
“It’s true there are many cheap products of questionable quality, but there are also many quality products that are getting even better fast. Anyone who underestimates or belittles this is being short-sighted.”
Novakovic has first-hand experience. Over the years, he helped build everything from high-end tablets to workstations and supercomputers in the region. “Once bureaucratic formalities are out of the way, the speed of execution is impressive.”
The CTE already has its well-known leaders. Huawei, ZTE and Foxconn are just a few. It has long been a design hub for Western brand-owners, but the demand for tablets worldwide is now thrusting a whole new crop of CTE players to the fore.
Outliers such as Xiaomi are rising rapidly. Novakovic predicts there will be many new powerhouse brands coming out of China, including companies like Changhong, Konka, Skyworth and TCL. As for CTL, the company name is now on Hollywood’s Chinese Theatre.
Given tablets are not new, and that many of today’s CTE heavyweights already are in the multibillion-dollar space, why are we only hearing about them now?
“With the support of multinationals like Intel and others, emerging CTE players are reaching a level of maturity that allows then to step onto the global stage,” said Novakovic.
“They increasingly get that it’s about more than just price, and are creating products good enough to compete globally. Quite a few of them already had to learn the hard way that quality matters. Now they’re catching up fast.”
The sprawling southern Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen, with a population estimated at anywhere up to 17 million, is still somewhat nascent. And so too is its population, two-thirds of which falls below age 34.
This driven and well-educated population is bucking the usual ‘made in China’ stereotypes. For one, they’re not the least expensive talent around. An engineer in Shenzhen earns the same wages as counterparts in Taiwan. Sometimes they earn even more.
What the CTE does offer is speed, scale and density.
“If you need 600 quality engineers for a project fast? No problem,” Novakovic says.
This unique combination can come together at short notice, helping both established and start-up companies innovate at breakneck speed, resulting in products that are low cost, good quality and, increasingly, cool in the eyes of consumers.
Where to next for the CTE?
Shenzhen’s upcoming Qianhai zone, with business and legal systems akin to Hong Kong, will become one of the centerpieces of the region. Infrastructure is improving fast, as is transportation. Expressway networks are extensive, and within a few years high-speed trains (HSR) will link Hong Kong with Shenzhen, Dongguan and Guangzhou.
Those in turn will connect to other HSR networks serving Foshan, Huizhou, Zhuhai and right down to Macau’s border. Much of this is ready today.
Meanwhile, metro networks connecting Foshan, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Shenzhen and Hong Kong will allow for a 150 mile urban trip — almost as far as London to Manchester — just by hopping interconnecting rail lines.
Shenzhen is already an efficient place to get things done but attention to detail can be improved, Novakovic points out. Examples include the metro systems, where escalators may not work at station exits. There are magnificent skyscrapers with hard-to-clean facades. And its common to see otherwise excellent electronics products fall short because of careless cosmetic finish.
This is where more established global companies can help fast-growing local players cross the chasm from cheap, almost disposable gadgets to focus on brand equity and customer loyalty through quality.
“Intel needs to come to them with the same kind of transformative proposition as it did with ultrabooks in Taiwan,” said Novakovic, referring to the company’s role in encouraging Taiwan’s PC manufacturers to collectively reinvent laptops into thin, stylish fashion statements.
A crucial part of the solution is encouraging makers to expand the platforms they focus on, from low-margin products designed for content consumption, to more complex designs also capable of content creation.
“That’s what it’ll take to get them to come out of the shadows,” said Novakovic.
Michael Meyers, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Sadako/Samara and Pinhead are on their annual trek to your neighborhood. That means it must be Halloween again. With it come the trick-or-treaters, the parties and the need to climb into the attic for the latex scars, spirit gum, face paint and vampire costume you piece together every year.
But wait — we’re in the age of the smartphone. Why not use it to make this one very creepy All Hallows’ Eve? Go to your search tool, type in “Halloween apps” and you’ll find all the traditional scare-tactic tools, such as Halloween-themed games, ringtones, desktop images and streaming classic horror films.
A deeper glance into the witch’s cauldron will uncover truly over-the-edge apps designed to really scare people.
Best of all, these apps won’t cost you an arm or a leg … just a few taps on the touchscreen.
Tell-Tale Heart and Other Organs
The classic Halloween accessory, the festering wound or scar, goes a step toward maniacal with the iWound. This truly “organic” app combines your iPhone or Android phone with a fleshy case and a ripped shirt to create the illusion of a vital organ, such as your heart, beating outside of your body. iWound manufacturer, Morph Suits, supplies the app for free; themed T-shirts are $20 to $50, plus shipping.
iWound’s creator, former NASA employee Mark Rober, went on to found Digital Dudz, which created a line of T-shirts that seem to follow you everywhere. The company’s free app allows people to match up the shirt with the proper video on their phone, which slips into an inside pocket.
The result is an easy yet eye-catching costume, from a twitching eyeball to a doe-eyed (and terrified) cartoon kitten. The “I see you there” effect only lasts until your smartphone battery runs out. (Note: Digital Dudz was recently sold to Morph Suits and is now a subsidiary of that company.)
iZombie
If you’re dying to join the zombie craze but don’t want to deal with hours of makeup and layers of latex, turn to your iPhone or Android.
iTunes and Google Play feature numerous free apps, such as AMC’s Walking Dead’s Dead Yourself, or Zombiematic Camera, that can transform a photo of you, your friends or your pets into the living dead.
You can then share your new look with anyone who can open a jpeg.
For $2.99, ZombieBooth Pro goes a step further by taking the transformation 3D and animated.
Here’s Johnny
If your little monster is making the rounds through the neighborhood alone (or at least, without your presence), or if there are too many kids to keep track of during the night, let technology simplify the job. Free smartphone apps like Scan Me Kidz (in conjunction with a QR-coded bracelet) use GPS to track your child’s whereabouts, while the QR code contains information that can bring your youngster back home.
There’s also Trick or Tracker ($4.99 normally, but free on Halloween), which allows children to send parents their exact whereabouts at predetermined time intervals. The bonus with these apps is they’re useable all year, and not just by children.
Images from Zombiematic, Digital Dudz, ZombienBooth, Trick or Tracker.
Paine said current and future 2 in 1 owners can also look forward to the release of the new Windows 10 operating system, which is said to become available to consumers later this year.
“The effect of what we see has a lot to do with math — how distance and angles hit the back of the eye — but a lot has to do with perception — how our brain rapidly fills in the gaps by interpreting light and textures,” said Dr. Gloria Surh, optometrist at Ideal Eyes in Burlingame, California.
The first prototype required nine cameras and components, which cost around $50. That’s expensive, and it used too much processing power to be practical.
The Dell Venue 8 7000 is now available on 
According to CCS Insight, the biggest breakthrough to hit mobile devices will be 3D cameras that employ perceptual computing techniques. The analyst firm expects to see more devices like the 
“It’s becoming much easier to track my daily life with a fitness device, or use my phone to connect to my home or car,” he said.
“Existing wireless networks were never designed with smart 
