Tag: techeye

Get your mind melded

Posted on September 5, 2014 by - News

mind-meldHumans just got a step closer to being able to think a message into someone else’s brain on the other side of the world.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Starlab Barcelona in Spain, and Axilum Robotics in Strasbourg, France have successfully achieved brain-to-brain transmission of information between humans.

The team used a number of technologies that enabled them to send messages from India to France without performing invasive surgery on the test subjects.

The test involved seeing if a person could communicate directly between two people by reading out the brain activity from one person and injecting brain activity into the second person.

Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PhD, director of the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre wondered if it was possible to bypass the talking or typing part of internet and establish direct brain-to-brain communication long distance.

Using a combination of internet-connected electroencephalogram and robot-assisted, image-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation, the team was able to communicate words from one human to another.

The set up was similar to those used in brain-computer interface studies. A human subject had electrodes attached to their scalp, which recorded electrical currents in the brain as the subject had a specific thought.

Normally the data is interpreted by a computer however this time it the output device was another human.

The words “Ciao” and “Hola” were translated into binary. This was then shown to the emitter subject, who was instructed to envision actions for each piece of information: moving their hands for a 1 or their feet for a 0. An EEG then captured the electrical information in the sender’s brain as they thought of these actions, which resulted in a sort of neural code for the binary symbols — which in turn was code for the words.

The researchers think that this represents an important first step in exploring the feasibility of complementing or bypassing traditional means of communication.

It is not quite a Vulcan mild meld yet. The bit rates were two bits per minute which is slower than an asthmatic ant with a heavy load of shopping.

Potential applications, however, include communicating with stroke patients.

Microsoft shows off three smartphones

Posted on September 4, 2014 by - News

skippieSoftware giant Microsoft said it has released Nokia Lumia smartphones all using the Windows Phone 8.1 operating system.

The Lumia 830 comes with a 10 megapixel PureView camera that uses Zeiss optics, comes with Office Mobile, and 15GB of free OneDrive storage.  It will cost around £300 or so.

The Lumia 730 Dual SIM and Lumia 735 have front facing wide angle five megapixel cameras, and are intended to be used for Microsoft Skype – both of these will be introduced this month and cost around £200 or so.  They both come with 15GB of free OneDrive storage.

Microsoft also introduced Screen Sharing for Lumia Phones HD-10 which lets you beam content from a smartphone to an HDMI screen.

It has also updated Lumia Denim for the 930, Lumia Icon and the Lumia 1520.

Posted on September 4, 2014 by - News

Dyson 360 EyeJoining a gaggle of other producers of robotic vacuum cleaners, Dyson said it will introduce its own model, dubbed the 360 Eye.

According to the company, the machine uses a 360 degree vision system to map out the room it’s cleaning so that it knows where it’s been and knows where to go.

The machine generates high centrifugal forces to grab dust and pollen from its surroundings. The motor can spin at up to 78,000RPM and Dyson claims it will generate the highest suction of any robot vacuum cleaner.  It uses the Dyson equivalent of continuous tank tracks to trundle round the room and has two types of bristle that can handle both carpets and hard surfaces.

It also comes with an app for iOS and Android devices that lets you control the unit when you’re not at home and see maps of cleaning progress.

The robo cleaner won’t be available until next year, and Dyson gave no hint of how costly it will be.

Citrix intros tablet access app

Posted on September 4, 2014 by - News

shareconnectAn app that lets you connect Android tablets and Apple iPads to business applications and networks is being introduced by Citrix.

ShareConnect lets people access and edit files using native desktop applications on business networks.And it can use business applications that require resource intensive functions running on an enterprise network.

Desktop applications, said Citrix, are optimised for tablets and open in full screen mode.  And you can use tablet functions such as swiping, pinching and zoom and can edit Microsoft Word files and the like.

The company said that ShareConnect also comes with 1GB of cloud storage from its ShareFile service.

The software is available for freedownload in Apple’s App Store and in Google’s Play store.

Jesse Lipson, a VP at Citrix said: “Not all data is stored in the cloud and many desktop apps are not fully functional through mobile apps.  With ShareConnect, users can access and edit files, use industry specific desktop apps, and even use their business neworks.”

Language goes West

Posted on September 4, 2014 by - News

Tower of BabelOne hour translation said it has released another version of WeST – software that can localise websites for other languages.

The software works by using lines of Javascript into a site’s template. It then counts the number of unique strings and gives translators an InContext interface, letting them translate directly onto the site.

The updated software also lets people based in other countries to access WeST, look at the translation and give their own feedback.

The company claims that it’s a cost effective way of providing local versions of websites without plunging much time and money into localisation.

One Hour Translation claims to be the fastest professional translation agency in the world and the largest online.  It has a community of over 15,000 translators and offers medical and legal transcription services as well as email translation, API and CMS translation plug ins too.

You can find more information on WeST by clicking here.

Phablets will beat tablets

Posted on September 4, 2014 by - News

cheap-tabletsPhablets are smartphones with screen sizes between 5.5 inches and seven inches. And, according to market research company IDC, 175 million of them will ship this year, beating the 170 million portable PCs expected to ship this year.

It’s a horrible word, phablet.

But next year the devices will ship 318 million units, more than the 233 million tablets IDC predicts will ship in 2015.

Melissa Chau, research manager at IDC, said Apple is expected to announce it’s entering the fray in the next couple of the weeks. And by 2018, she said, phablets will grow market share from 14 percent now to 32.2 percent then.

Average selling prices for phablets and smartphones are set to drop and will dominate the portable sector in 2018, with 75.6 percent of the market.

Tech companies start talking about hiring

Posted on September 4, 2014 by - News

Slaves_ruvumaApple, Google, Intel and Adobe have gone back to the drawing board to come up with a more reasonable deal with tech workers in a high-profile lawsuit over hiring practices in Silicon Valley.

The four were sued for conspiring to avoid poaching each other’s employees. Last month, US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California rejected a proposed $324.5 million settlement in the class action case, saying it was too low, considering what the four actually did.

Both sides have said they had resumed mediation but provided no additional details on the talks. They also asked Koh to set a new trial date.

The employees said that the conspiracy limited their job mobility and  kept a lid on salaries. The case, filed in 2011, has been closely watched because of the possibility of big damages being awarded. It also showed the antics of the likes of Apple’s Steve Jobs, former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt and some of their rivals.

Koh cited “substantial and compelling evidence” that Jobs “was a, if not the, central figure in the alleged conspiracy”.

Jobs had previous form for setting up conspiracies which helped him and Apple at the expense of workers or customers. He was also named and shamed as the bloke who set up a conspiracy to make sure that customers paid more for ebooks.

Given the strength of the case against the companies, the plaintiffs should have got more money, Koh wrote.

Smartphone designers run out of ideas

Posted on September 4, 2014 by - News

Samsung rules the roostSamsung has just confirmed what many in the industry had thought – that there is nothing you can do to a smartphone which will make it much different.

Samsung unveiled new versions of its Galaxy Note smartphone to a loud sounding yawn from tech journalists.

To be fair there is nothing wrong with the phone,  at least not this time.  The new Galaxy Note 4 features a crisper, 5.7-inch display in a metal frame and accessories designed to attract gamers and an improved pen stylus and related software as a handwriting alternative to typing on a keyboard. It boasts easier to use multi-tasking features that take advantage of its large screen.

But really there is not much more you can do with a smartphone which has not already been done or would cost too much to be bothered with.

Samsung is pinning a lot on the Note, which came under a lot of mockery from Apple fanboys because of its size. Apple later realised that the large scale phone was popular and copied it in the designs for its iPhone 6.

However now the idea of a large smartphone has no novelty and users need something a bit more interesting to engage them.

Mobile phone analysts said that, while packed full of hundreds of features and many of the latest hardware specs, there is little in the Note 4 to excite new users.

Forrester told Reuters that all the phones could manage were incremental changes. Analyst Thomas Husson said Samsung needs to distinguish its devices from dozens of cheaper rivals and it could not manage it.

Samsung lost control of the Chinese market to Xiaomi during the April-June quarter. It continued to lose market share in other emerging markets, analysts say, undercut in part by rivals producing increasingly attractive products at much lower prices in the lower end of the market.

The company experience some major headaches with the Galaxy S5 which did not make the impact onto the market that users hoped.

The Korean electronics giant says it will get more aggressive on pricing and focus on a narrower set of products for its mid-to-low tier products.

Unsinkable Apple hits Selfiegate iceberg

Posted on September 4, 2014 by - News

Der Untergang der TitanicHistory says that Apple’s share price should be going sky high right now buoyed by the expected launch of a new iPhone6 and whipped to a frenzy by its free publicity provided by the Tame Apple Press.

However, the company shares are suffering their worst day and one brokerage warning of a stock downgrade unless its new products show better promise for profit growth.

Shares of the smartphone maker slumped four percent as users realised that the company’s iCloud was not the safest place to store their snaps. Apple has done its best to say that its security was not at fault in its Cloudgate boob, which saw naked snaps of Hollywood stars appear online, however evidence is mounting that is not the case.

It seems investors are starting to realise that Apple has not introduced a new product since the iPad in 2010 and is not expected to create anything brilliantly new with its coming iPhone.

It has been thought that an increasingly desperate Apple would unveil a version of a smartwatch next week but even the technology for that has been done to death as Jobs’ Mob’s own version was constantly delayed.

Pacific Crest Securities analyst Andy Hargreaves said unless next week’s shows massive incremental profit opportunities, he was likely to downgrade Apple’s rating.

Apple needed a security flaw in its iCloud exposing like a hole in the head. Apple wants its clouds to become repositories of sensitive home and healthcare data, and payments and financial information too.

Security experts have been warning for ages that Apple’s cloud is not up to snuff security wise and the current breach just proves how untrustworthy it is.

Facebook feature stuffs up your phone bill

Posted on September 4, 2014 by - News

shockThe phone companies are rubbing their hands with glee thanks to Facebook’s decision to autorun movies on their news feeds.

Facebook introduced a system where your films of cute cats, guilty dogs, pigglets being thrown into sausage machines and people being beheaded play automatically as you scroll down.

While that is not a problem for those on home broadband, it has been a major killer for mobile users.  Reports are coming in from the US where smartphone users are maxing out their data plans because their phones are downloading movies they are probably not even looking at.

Consumer finance site MoneySavingExpert.com, said it had “seen many complaints from people who have been stung with data bills after exceeding their monthly allowance and who believe it to be because of Facebook autoplaying videos”.

It is not that difficult to fix as the autoplay feature can be switched off but it is not as if Facebook, or anyone else is rushing to tell users.Tap your “Settings” button and then scroll down and click “Facebook.” From there, click “Settings,” “Auto-play,” and then choose “Wi-Fi only” or “Off.” On Android, bring up the Facebook app and go to your account settings. Click “App Settings,” and then choose ‘Auto-play only on Wi-Fi’ or ‘Off.’

 

Intel re-ARMing

Posted on September 4, 2014 by - News

rearm 2It seems that Intel has decided that in the long term its rival ARM has the right idea. We revealed that in the Eye a couple of weeks back.

Intel’s Brian Krzanich told the Citi Global Technology Conference that while ten years down the road the company will continue to get a bulk of its revenue from PCs and servers, a significant part of its revenue will come from mobile, Internet-of-Things and other emerging market segments.

To do that it will need to come up with some ultra-low-cost devices that will still need computing and communications capabilities.

That will mean working out a way to “take our silicon leadership and our architecture down into we talk about parts that may only cost $0.50 and have comms, CPU, everything down there and can run on small batteries.”

Although this is the normal “internet of things” style talk, it is the first time that Chipzilla has given the world its coming vision. In this case it is a super small chip which can run an entire computer’s services for less than 50 cents.

Intel has stayed out of the cheap chips market because the margins are incredibly small, but it is starting to look like it has realised that the Internet of Things will mean low-margin, micro-controllers and other low-cost chips. This will make it difficult for Intel to maintain its traditional 60 percent mark up.

Krzanich said that in a decade, Intel is definitely going to be a broader company across the much broader spectrum of computing. He is also not predicting the death of the PC or the server any time soon.

 

Server makers to cut out middle men

Posted on September 3, 2014 by - News

server-racksA report from Gartner today suggested that original design manufacturers (ODMs) are set to cut out brand vendors in the global X86 server market.

It estimates that sales of servers by ODMs directly to customers will be worth $4.6 billion by 2018, representing 16 percent or so of the market.

The traditional route to market had OEMs hiring ODMs and selling branded goods. But Gartner reckons that the manufacturers are changing their business models to directly target “hyperscale” customers, that is to say to data centres.

Data centre operators prefer ODM supplied kit because the machines are cheaper and they can customise systems.

Naveen Mishra, a research director at Gartner, said: “Direct engagement with hyperscale data centres is the biggest contributor to ODM growth.”   He said that ODM success is right now restricted to server but he thinks that similar technologies, such as storage, will follow suit.

The ODMs are largely based in China and Taiwan so can make cost efficiencies that can’t be replicated in other geographies.  They are also aggressive on pricing.

Kyocera floats solar panels

Posted on September 3, 2014 by - News

solarsJapanese giant Kyocera said it is cooperating with Ciel et Terre to create what it claims will be the world’s largest floating solar panel power plant.

Kyocera, which makes ceramic knives as well as solar panels and a heap of other kit, said construction will start this month on two installations on lakes in Japan.  One planned for Nishihira Pond will generate 1.7MW while the other at Higashihira Pond will churn out 1.2MW.

The companies have turned to floating installations because of shortage of space on terra firma in Japan.  But there are many reservoirs throughout the country which can be used for floating power plants.

The floating solar platforms were developed and patented by French company Ciel et Terre.

Plants on water have the advantage that they generate more juice than ground mounted and rooftop systems because they are cooled by water.  They also have the benefit of reducing reservoir evaporation and preventing algae growth.  The platforms are recyclable and the floating platforms are designed to withstand typhoons.

IT ready for Big Data

Posted on September 3, 2014 by - News

clouds3A survey of 100 IT decision makers from top dollar firms has revealed that enterprises are more than dabbling their toes in the ocean of Big Data.

Syncsort, which is in the Big Data business itself, said that 62 percent of its respondents will optimise their enterprise data warehouses by sending data and batch workloads to Hadoop.

And 69 percent of the people it polled said they expect to make their enterprise wide data available in Hadoop.

Meanwhile just over half of the respondents are likely to spend between five to 10 percent of their budgets on Big Data projects.

Over seventy percent of the respondents work for companies with turnovers of over $50 million plus.

It seems that the IT guys don’t have problems proving the benefits of Big Data to the senior suits that authorise the buys.  It appears from the survey that less than 25 percent of those polled have problems allocating budgets to their Big Data plans.

Teradata snaps up Think Big Analytics

Posted on September 3, 2014 by - News

doshAnalytic data company Teradata has bought Think Big Analytics.

The reason it’s bought the company is for its Hadoop and big data consulting capabilities, it said in a s statement.

Teradata didn’t say how much it paid for the firm, but said Think Big’s team will stay in place.  It will continue to use the Think Big brand.

CEO Mike Koehler said it is Teradata’s third buy in six weeks. All, he said, will help to achieve its goal of being the market leader.

“Think Big’s consulting expertise enhances Teradata’s capability to advise customers on the best way to leverage diverse, open source big data technologies to grow their businesses,” he said.

Think Big, said Teradata have heaps of experience with a number of Hadoop distributions including Hortonworks, Cloudera, and MapR.