Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Dive Tech-OnLive Now More Than Just a Game
Dive Tech-OnLive Now More Than Just a Game
Way back in June, OnLive demoed its cloud-based mini gaming console in front of a packed house at D8. Today, it is attempting to level-up, announcing a new extension of the OnLive cloud service platform-one that turns just about any device into a console for their cloud system.
Foursquare Founder Dennis Crowley at D: Mobile
Foursquare Founder Dennis Crowley at D: Mobile
If Dodgeball was, as founder Dennis Crowley claims, the perfect storm of bad timing, then his latest venture Foursquare is a sunny day. In this video Crowley talks about the mechanics of merchant relationships, valuations and frothiness and the difference between Dodgeball and Foursquare.
Google's Susan Wojcicki at D: Dive Into Mobile
Google's Susan Wojcicki at D: Dive Into Mobile
You'd have to search a long time to find someone who's been closer to the evolution of Google than Susan Wojcicki. It was in her rented garage that Sergey Brin and Larry Page launched the company, which she joined in 1999. Now, as one of only eight senior vice presidents, she runs Google's most important business units.
Video And Screenshots Of Android 3.0′s Surprise Appearance
The video of Andy Rubin’s talk at the Dive Into Mobile event is up, and you can watch the juicy bit above, where he takes out the prototype Motorola tablet and toys with it for all to see, demonstrating the new Google Maps and “accidentally” teasing video chat capability and some other things.
The pad looks bigger than 7″, the size we heard about, but I can’t swear to it. If I had to take a guess at the screen resolution, I’d go with 8-9″ at 1024×600. It looks thin and rather unadorned right now, but this likely isn’t the final industrial design, so let’s just not worry too much about that. He seemed proud that it had no buttons on it, though, so I’m guessing that’s final.
Rubin mentions toward the beginning of his Maps demo that it’s running a dual-core NVIDIA GPU. So there’s that. I wonder what the CPU is — not an ARM SoC, since the graphics wouldn’t be discrete like that. A new dual-core Atom? Or something new, something custom? He does say a “new” processor, and for that matter a “new” screen, so it could be anything, and the screen might be different from the current crop. (as commenters point out, it’s likely that this it is running a Tegra 2 and Rubin was simply not describing it well)
Here are a few screenshots from the video. Sorry they aren’t very clear, but they’re better than the blurry ones from before.
As for the price? TBD. Unless you want to buy the prototype, about which Rubin said “literally, this thing is probably like ten thousand dollars.”
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The Google Map App on Android phones will soon get a major upgrade which will allow it to render map images a lot faster, incorporate 3D buildings, offer offline caching, and use the compass to orient the map. In a talk this evening at the D Mobile conference, Android chief Andy Rubin gave a sneak peak of the new app.
At the heart of the new app is a dynamic map rendering engine which draws maps as you use them, and offers smoother transitions when zooming in and out of different levels. The dynamic rendering will also make it possible to start to show 3D buildings as you zoom into the street-level view. The touch screen will allow you to tilt and rotate the map and buildings.
The new maps load faster because they require 100 times less data each. Instead of downloading the entire map image for each level, the app downloads meta data which describes the entire map at all different levels and then renders the appropriate sector on the fly. This will start to give Google Maps offline capabilities on mobile phones. It may be possible to cache a map of an entire city on the phone. And for people who use the turn-by-turn navigation in Google Maps, when the new app comes out it will be able to recalculate the route even without a data connection.
The Google Maps app will also use the built-in compass on Android phones to automatically flip the orientation of the map to the person holding the phone. That orientation feature will come in handy when you are coming out of a subway station in an unfamiliar stop, or exiting a building.
Meaningful Work through Passion, not Genius
At the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Blink" and the upcoming "Outliers," gives two examples of hard work that later looked like genius. Bill Gates got up at 2am to program as a teenager, while the Beatles played together 1200 times, far more than most bands, before they ever got famous. Success, he believes, is the result of putting your heart and mind into something to create successful, meaningful work.
Are you doing what you were made to do?
Everyone has a passion and something that drives them. What is yours? Are you doing what you were made to do? Watch Joel Comm discuss how to find your passion and live your life to the fullest.
Monday, December 06, 2010
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Saturday, December 04, 2010
RedLaser: How A Company That Nearly Died Sold To eBay – with Reddy and Powers
RedLaser: How A Company That Nearly Died Sold To eBay – with Reddy and Powers
Posted on Dec 2, 2010 - 2:59 PM PST
How could two guys whose company nearly died end up selling millions of apps and changing the way people use their mobile phones?
That’s the seemingly impossible feat that Vikas Reddy and Jeffrey Powers, founders of Occipital, achieved. They created an app called RedLaser that made the cameras on people’s mobile phones into smart barcode scanners. With their app, users can, for example, scan items in stores and see if you can buy those items cheaper online.
They sold RedLaser to eBay for an undisclosed amount and now they’re working on 360 Panorama, which offers real-time panorama creation.
Posted on Dec 2, 2010 - 2:59 PM PST
How could two guys whose company nearly died end up selling millions of apps and changing the way people use their mobile phones?
That’s the seemingly impossible feat that Vikas Reddy and Jeffrey Powers, founders of Occipital, achieved. They created an app called RedLaser that made the cameras on people’s mobile phones into smart barcode scanners. With their app, users can, for example, scan items in stores and see if you can buy those items cheaper online.
They sold RedLaser to eBay for an undisclosed amount and now they’re working on 360 Panorama, which offers real-time panorama creation.
Friday, December 03, 2010
Canada-Israel: The other special relationship
Canada-Israel: The other special relationship
Seen as an honest-broker in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Canada has become one of Israel's most fervent supporters.
Thursday, December 02, 2010
FUTURE OF SCREENS – EXPERIENCE VIDEO
Capacitive screens has now become a commodity for touch screen devices. Screen technology is now taking the next leap and the coming years imagination is the only thing stopping us. We will soon have dual screens, malleable screens, screens built into wifi connected mirrors, desks or backside of gadgets clothed with e-ink screens, tactile feedback, color screens with great contrast in sunlight, holographics/stereoscopic screens, color e-ink touch screens, or screens actually knowing where they are in relation to other screens thanks to ultrasonic emitters and microphones.
We want to show some of these things in an “experience video”, that shows a normal day in a couple of years when all these technologies are affordable enough to be used everywhere. This video is the result of our experiment with open innovation, read more about our experiment here. Big thanks to all the people from TAT and around the world who helped out and sometimes shared their ideas and sometimes gave us homework on our own ideas.
The video of Paul Blomdahl showing off some of our demos on episode 13 of The Engadget Show on September 17th is now available. They start talking about the Future of Screens concept video that is shown just before we come in, and then they look at and discuss the Horizon demos.
Zuckerberg , Bush At Facebook HQ [Video]
Watch live streaming video from facebookguests at livestream.com
Looks like President Obama isn’t the only one resorting to Facebook as a way to reach the American people. In a first for a U.S. President past or present, former President George W. Bush will hold a discussion and Q&A live from Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto. The event will start in about 20 minutes at 2 pm PST.
Bush will be talking to Facebook employees about his new book Decision Points, and those of us not employed by Facebook will have the opportunity to watch it on Facebook Live and the Livestream above. According to The Next Web, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself will in fact moderate the discussion along with Facebook General Council Ted Ullyot. Ullyot also happens to have been an attorney for the Bush White House, which might explain why the former President’s only Bay Area appearance is at the social network.
Bush belatedly joined Facebook over the summer primarily to promote Decision Points through his fan page. W. currently has 619,516 fans as opposed to the 16,889,927 people “liking” the decidedly more web savvy Barack Obama.
We’re hoping the Q&A will also extend to the folks at home, or that some Facebook employee will muster up the courage to ask Bush what he thinks about Wikileaks. Stay tuned!
Boxee CEO To Big Media: “Resistance Is Futile”
With all the new Internet TV boxes and services sprouting this holiday season—from Google TV and Apple TV to the Boxee Box, Shufflr, and beyond—there is a lot talk about people cutting their cable cords and just getting all of their TV from the Internet. That is not going to happen anytime soon until the best TV shows and movies become available online at the same time as on TV, but the direction is clear. Today at the SAI Ignition conference in New York City, Boxee CEO Avner Ronen declared, “Resistance is futile.”
Ronen was responding to the question of when will there be something worthwhile to watch on the Web. Getting Web video to your TV is becoming increasingly easy, but there are so many restrictions on the best video (network TV shows and Hollywood movies) that it is still not worth watching on the Web for anybody but geeks. Ronen himself admits that his modest goal is to get “from geeks to early adopters.”
Clicker CEO Jim Lanzone, who was also on the same panel, argued that quality isn’t really the issue. “At some point, 80 percent of major network TV content was online.” The problem is that “it doesn’t stay there.” As a viewer, you have to know when to catch the shows, because unlike all other content on the Internet, TV shows and movies don’t stay online. They get placed online and then plucked off based on the different licensing windows the media companies adhere to in order to squeeze more profits from their shows and movies by making them available at different times through different distribution channels (theaters, DVDs, pay-per-view, cable, and now online).
Internet TV, however, doesn’t really fit into this distribution model because the generation of viewers who are growing up now on Youtube and Hulu want t watch TV or videos whenever they want to, not when the media companies tell them they can.
“The Internet is just a distribution model, it does not dictate business models,” argues Ronen. The existing media companies may not like the new competition that the Internet is bringing, but if consumers move there they won’t have a choice but to follow suit. He predicts that 50 percent of households in the U.S. will have Internet-connected TVs in five years and that “Netflix is going to have more paid video subscribers in two years than Comcast.” People will pay for broadband from one provider and pay for content from others (perhaps Netflix or Hulu or Boxee). Resistance is futile because over time, the Internet will prevail.
Below is a video interview I did with Avner a couple weeks ago on the same topic:
Ronen was responding to the question of when will there be something worthwhile to watch on the Web. Getting Web video to your TV is becoming increasingly easy, but there are so many restrictions on the best video (network TV shows and Hollywood movies) that it is still not worth watching on the Web for anybody but geeks. Ronen himself admits that his modest goal is to get “from geeks to early adopters.”
Clicker CEO Jim Lanzone, who was also on the same panel, argued that quality isn’t really the issue. “At some point, 80 percent of major network TV content was online.” The problem is that “it doesn’t stay there.” As a viewer, you have to know when to catch the shows, because unlike all other content on the Internet, TV shows and movies don’t stay online. They get placed online and then plucked off based on the different licensing windows the media companies adhere to in order to squeeze more profits from their shows and movies by making them available at different times through different distribution channels (theaters, DVDs, pay-per-view, cable, and now online).
Internet TV, however, doesn’t really fit into this distribution model because the generation of viewers who are growing up now on Youtube and Hulu want t watch TV or videos whenever they want to, not when the media companies tell them they can.
“The Internet is just a distribution model, it does not dictate business models,” argues Ronen. The existing media companies may not like the new competition that the Internet is bringing, but if consumers move there they won’t have a choice but to follow suit. He predicts that 50 percent of households in the U.S. will have Internet-connected TVs in five years and that “Netflix is going to have more paid video subscribers in two years than Comcast.” People will pay for broadband from one provider and pay for content from others (perhaps Netflix or Hulu or Boxee). Resistance is futile because over time, the Internet will prevail.
Below is a video interview I did with Avner a couple weeks ago on the same topic:
Real time monitoring of your energy consumption
Would you conserve energy if you could monitor your consumption by the hour? Lucid Design Group has developed new software that provides users with instant feedback on how much energy they're using. SmartPlanet visits the start-up to see their dashboard up close.
TED Featured on Ignite OTC by David Glover.
Stroke victims: Tiny coil saves lives by pulling blood clots from the brain
A device known as the Merci Retriever is a potential life saver for stroke victims, but it must be used within 8 hours. The device looks like a tiny corkscrew and it is used for blood clots that occur in large arteries where clot busting drugs are not effective.
San Francisco water meters get smart
In the future, San Francisco residents will be able to monitor and track their water usage via Web software on the hour instead of monthly, which is the case now. The new automated water meters will be connected to a little gray box that houses a low radio frequency signal and collects data. SmartPlanet visits the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to see how it works.
The Future Of... Hospitals
Hospital stays are rarely relaxing - but at Mountain View's El Camino Hospital, robots run errands, communication devices keep noise to a minimum and patient beds help translate doctors' orders. SmartPlanet correspondent Sumi Das takes a tour of one of the most technologically advanced medical facilities in the world.
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