Adidas builds intelligent soccer cleats that can outwit even Joey Barton
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New NFC spec enables two-way communication, potentially makes Bump obsolete
The NFC Forum just released the latest update to the growing close-range standard and it includes a nice little treat called SNEP, which stands for Simple NDEF Exchange Protocol. (Side note: the NDEF in SNEP, stands for NFC Data Exchange Format — it’s like a matryoshka doll of abbreviations.) What makes SNEP exciting is that it allows for sending and receiving of data between two devices. This could be used to exchange contact information between phones (similar to Bump, but without the need for an app) or collect links to trailers from movie posters which could be played back on your TV at home. It’s potentially exciting stuff, so long as manufacturers actually make use of it. Check out the PR after the break for a few more technical details.
[engadget]
Google Analytics Catches Up With Real-Time, Launches Enterprise Tier
Google Analytics, the immensely popular suite of tools that Google offers to help webmasters track their site traffic, is getting a big boost this week: the service has launched a real-time dashboard that updates with user events as they happen.
That’s a big deal, as it brings Google more in line with popular real-time analytics products like Chartbeat, which allows you to track things like how many people are currently on your site, and how much traffic each individual article has gotten in the last few minutes. Prior to today’s launch of real-time, Google Analytics reports typically had a delay window upwards of three hours (and often longer), which meant this kind of tracking wasn’t possible.
In its blog post announcing the news, Google highlights how you can now use Analytics to gauge the impact of various social channels, like Twitter and Facebook — and you’ll be able to quickly tell if your custom analytics query is working as intended, without having to wait 24 hours to see the results. In order to see the new Real-Time feature you’ll need to activate the ‘New Version’ link in Analytics, which is in the upper-right hand corner of the screen.
In addition to Real-Time, today the Analytics team has also announced a premium tier for enterprise companies who want more support (and datapoints tracked) than Google offers with its free service. Google says that for an unspecified price, companies will be able to get phone support, SLA guarantees, and increased data limits.
[techcrunch]
Ice Cream Sandwich Bawa Fitur Facial Recognition
Takut perangkat bisa dimanipulasi oleh orang yang tidak diinginkan? Android mengembangkan fitur baru untuk OS Android terbarunya, Ice Cream Sandwich, yaitu adanya facial recognition. Fitur ini memungkinkan hanya kita yang dapat mengoperasikan dan membuka perangkat Android tersebut.
Fitur ini diketahui dari beberapa file Nexus Prime yang bocor terdapat aplikasi dengan nama FaceLock.apk. Tentunya ini bukanlah fitur pertama yang pernah ada, sebelumnya Motorola Atrix juga mendapatkan fitur ini, Fingerprint scanner, untuk mengamankan perangkatnya. Fitur terbaru Android ini mungkin merupakan pengaman dari Google Wallet yang sebelumnya sudah diluncurkan sebelumnya.
[teknoup]
Android Ice Cream Sandwich detailed on video
The forthcoming Android update Ice Cream Sandwich has been detailed on video thanks to an eBay user who bought a Nexus S handset that mysteriously arrived loaded with the OS. The supposed lucky bidder took a two-minute video and screenshots of ICS running on the Samsung device and sent them to the Engadget blog. If the video walkthrough is legitimate, it shows more of Ice Cream Sandwich than we’ve ever seen before. Earlier this month, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt confirmed that ICS, which is set to unite the Gingerbread and Honeycomb ecosystems, will arrive in either October or November.
Fresh features
Among the fresh features seen in the shaky-cam video is a Google apps icon on the homescreen, which opens into a drawer that looks similar to folders in iOS. There’s also a vertical multi-tasking menu that appears when the user holds down the home button. Also the main menu is now split into apps and widgets. We also get a look at the much-changed notifications bar, a different camera interface and a new Honeycomb-esque lock screen. Take a look for yourselves in the clip below.
While we’re not entirely convinced by the ‘just bought it off eBay explanation’ this is entirely different to anything we’ve seen on Android before and seems to fit in with previous Ice Cream Sandwich leaks. [techradar]
20 Years Of Microsoft Research
This month marks the 20th anniversary of Microsoft Research, perhaps the most consistently interesting division of the hulking software company. Take a few minutes to peruse the timeline of their work, which ranges from consumer-facing work like Cleartype and spam recognition to the obscure, academic, and quixotic. The names behind the ideas are unlikely to be recognized, but they include geniuses, visionaries, knights, and humanitarians. Billions of dollars per year being expended towards furthering the reach and worth of technology constitutes an important but largely thankless endeavor.
Sure, products like Office, Exchange, and other enterprise stuff make up the majority of Microsoft’s income, but I don’t think Microsoft was founded to be a office-tools company. The vision of Microsoft was putting a computer in every home and making that computer as versatile and powerful as possible. Microsoft Research is perhaps more in line with that philosophy than its parent company has been in years.
If I had to pick a place to work at Microsoft, Research would be it without a doubt. Unfortunately, I’m not an accomplished computer scientist or engineer, so I have to be content with occasionally reporting mind-blowing creations like using a Kinect to map a room in 3D in real time. Things like that make me actually excited about what they’re doing. So many companies featured on this site have their sights set on such miniscule problems, such niche applications, that I can’t bring myself to feel anything at all about them, however much funding they score. If Instagram had a billion dollars a year to spend on R&D, what would they spend it on? More filters?
Watching for interesting projects is especially easy with both MSR and Google, because both companies want this stuff out there. And with the Motorola purchase, I think Google might just be getting started with the tinkering. There is probably quite a lot of interesting research being done at Apple as well, but their secretive nature over there doesn’t permit snooping. That’s why I like Microsoft Research. Their semi-academic model for collaborating and sharing means the papers and demonstration videos are often right there for you to browse. Sure, for budding products like Kinect they have to keep the lid on tight, but for more esoteric projects it’s all in the open.
Rob Knies describes here MSR Redmond Director Peter Lee’s optimism at the next few years for the division, and looks back at the last 20 years of discoveries and investigations. Research has grown to encompass more than 850 researchers at 12 facilities around the globe. Microsoft spends $9 billion per year on R&D, and while they may have some trouble turning them into products, MSR is still an idea factory well worth the money.
[techcrunch]
The Future Desktop
The PC era is here to stay as long as the Internet lives. That is not to say however that it won’t go through some physical changes along the way, in much the same way the QWERTY keyboard has been made more ergonomic, virtualized on touchscreens, and tucked away in tiny cellphone trays, but remains essentially the same.
Certainly other manifestations of the desktop’s evolution, such as in this interactive exhibit at the DDR museum in Berlin will appear in mass production eventually.
Projected screens and keyboards that can be used on walls and other surfaces are also a given. As are hologram projection screens and keyboards, both 3D and flat.
But smartphones and other mobile devices will also have the features below. What makes a desktop remain a desktop is not these physical changes to it and its peripherals, but the fact that some data will remain local and therefore some processing and storage capability must also remain local. The computing process has remained the same for many years, and the desktop PC is its best incarnation.
Yes, I know that smartphones and laptops and other devices of today are tremendously more powerful than desktop computers of just a few short years ago. Even so, the desktop has continued to provide more processing and storage muscle than any of its mobile brethren.
Eventually the silicon revolution will end and Moore’s law will collapse. It is at that point that we will entirely change how we compute. Some people predict we will change over to quantum computing, change from bits to qbits (or qubits), and do our processing on electrons rather than on chips. American theoretical physicist Michio Kaku predicts that molecular computing will see widespread adoption before quantum computing does.No matter if we end up with molecular computing or quantum computing, we will radically disrupt the computing process — processors, programming, storage and, yes devices — all of what we use today will no longer fit into that new computing process and thus will all become obsolete. And then, the desktop will finally die.
And that, says Kaku, is as important to the world economy as it is to humanity’s ability to compute. When we drive headlong into the silicon chip’s dead end, devices will no longer sell at a fast pace simply because there will be no improvement in new models over old models. However, with the birth of a new computing process and all the new devices that it will spawn, the world economy will thrive.
And therein lies the answer to why hardware manufacturers are so eager to prematurely declare the PC dead: they need to sell more devices quickly before the silicon chip maxes out. And, they can already see that Moore’s law will collapse entirely within the next 10 or so years. In other words, their desperation is showing.
[RWW]
Dibuka Seminggu, Google+ Raih 50 Juta Anggota Baru
Tidak sampai seminggu sejak Google membuka Google+ untuk umum, popularitas situs jejaring sosial tersebut terus menanjak.
Menurut sebuah statisik yang menghitung pertumbuhan Google+, Paul Allen, Google+ saat ini sudah mencapai lebih dari 50 juta pengguna. Jika dibandingkan dengan Facebook memang jumlah ini masih sangat kecil, sekitar 1/15 kali nya, tetapi Google+ mampu meraih jumlah tersebut hanya dalam waktu 88 hari, sedangkan dulu Facebook butuh waktu sampai 1.325 hari.
Beberapa angka pencapaian Google+ yang lain adalah:
- Lebih dari 1 juta pengguna (1,7 juta) pada tanggal 4 Juli 2011
- 4,5 juta pengguna pada 10 Juli 2011
- 10 juta pengguna pada 12 Juli 2011
Pertanyaannya adalah apakah Google+ mampu terus mempertahankan tren positif nya saat ini, mengingat dulu MySpace juga meraih jumlah yang sama dengan waktu lebih cepat daripada Facebook tetapi nasibnya kini seperti mati suri.
[teknoup]
Jerry Yang: Yahoo Akan Dijual
Salah satu pendiri Yahoo, Jerry Yang telah mengakui kalau perusahannya akan dijual. Sebuah memo internal yang didapatkan oleh Business Insider mengungkapkan kalau direksi Yahoo telah bekerja sama dengan Allen & Company untuk mengisi daftar beberapa pihak yang menyatakan minat membeli dalam angka yang potensial. Yang juga menyarankan kalau perusahaan sekarang sedang dalam proses pencarian CEO permanen pengganti Carol Bartz yang dipecat beberapa minggu lalu.
Yang juga mengindikasikan kalau direksi Yahoo sedang dalam proses meninjau secara luas operasi perusahaan untuk memberikan nilai lebih bagi para pemegang saham. Yang menjelaskan kalau Yahoo sudah memiliki 680 juta pengguna.
Sebelumnya Yang pernah menolak tawaran Microsoft yang ingin membeli Yahoo dengan uang sebesar $44,6 milyar tiga tahun lalu. Ketika itu Yang, yang merupakan fans Apple, sedang mengepalai Yahoo. Waktu itu diklaim kalau tawaran itu ditolak karena penawaran tersebut dirasa kurang banyak. Sejak saat itu, Yahoo dibawah pimpinan Carol Bartz, menandatangani persetujuan mesin pencari dengan desain Microsoft untuk menambah pengguna Yahoo. Tidak diketahui apakah Microsoft masih berminat untuk mengakuisisi Yahoo.
[teknoup]
BlackBerry Developers Make More Than Android or Apple Developers, According to Study
Other highlights from the study:
- Visibility for their apps is the biggest complaint that developers have about app stores in general with 37% citing this as the biggest problem.
- Paid apps with no ads is the monetization model more developers use followed by subscriptions.
- Games are the most likely type of apps to wind up in app stores, with 27% placing that type of app in a store, followed by business apps at 21% and productivity apps at 20%.
Check out the cool infographic below from WebPageFX showing some of the data regarding the ‘Store Wars’. It is pretty cool to know that BlackBerry developers are the most profitable, but then again the average top 100 app is priced at almost $6 compared to the lowest in Apple App Store at $2. The average BlackBerry user is said to have only 15 installed apps, as opposed to iPhone at 48 and Android at 35. Sound off in the comments letting us know how many paid apps you usually rock.
[n4bb]
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