But researchers are now working on more affordable, crowdsourced warning systems based on low-cost sensors and cellphone electronics.
off-the-shelf cellphone equipment that manages data gathering and communication. he sensor packages used by the USGS cost about US $30, 000 each,
Why not tap into the GPS sensors in people phones and navigation systems, he says. GPS-equipped cellphones are ubiquitous in developing countries,
and such a crowdsourced system would offer early warning at practically no cost. country like Nepal,
They subjected a Google Nexus smartphone and a commercial GPS module to displacements ranging from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.
They simulated smartphone responses based on census data around the earthquake epicenters and recorded a phone as triggered
If at least 100 phones were triggered, the system declared an earthquake. It took fewer than 5,
000 smartphones to detect the simulated California earthquake within 5 seconds, giving enough time to warn San francisco and San jose. For the Japan quake,
Brooks says. here would be challenges in terms of cellphone service in such a mountainous region, but we think it would be doable there eventually. d
#Full HD Voice Will Soon Give Your Phone an Audio Upgrade HD Voice, the first major upgrade to telephone sound quality since the vacuum-tube era, has finally become widely availableust in time for a new generation of phone service called Full-HD Voice to take its place.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, Fraunhofer IIS (Institute for Integrated circuits) demonstrated a system based on a combination of powerful standard algorithms that can encode
and decode in real time the full audio spectrum to 20 kilohertz in stereo. Switching to Full HD
Full-HD Voice converts speech into packets that can flow through the Internet along with data traffic, incorporating algorithms that can recover from packet loss,
which turns today Voice over internet Protocol (Voip) calls into choppy, unintelligible hash. The technology includes algorithms that encode music and other nonspeech audio,
And the powerful coding-decoding (codec) software can run as a smartphone app. e want to bring telephony into the 21st century,
Modern landline phones have a frequency range of 300 to 3, 400 hertz, a standard based on Bell labs studies of the requirements for intelligible speech dating back to the 1920s.
In 1988, the International Telecommunication Union approved the G. 722 standard for HD Voice, which allows digital phone lines to carry 50 to 7, 000 Hz.
because it would have required upgrading the landline phone network. The first three generations of cellular phones instead retained the 3, 400-Hz narrowband landline audio,
but they often sounded worse because of the way they compressed speech to squeeze more calls into the limited mobile spectrum.
See hy Mobile Voice Quality Still Stinksnd How to Fix It IEEE Spectrum, October 2014.
The broader bandwidth of the Internet allowed Skype and some other Voip services to carry 7, 000-Hz HD Voice,
but Voip calls into the phone network have been limited to 3, 400 Hz. Most 4g smartphones include dedicated circuits running algorithms to code
and decode 7, 000-Hz HD Voice, but they can connect at that rate only if both phones and every link between them can handle the signals.
In practice, that means it works only between 4g phones on the same carrier. Full HD will be able to bridge the audio gap regardless of the network
or the device connected to it. The technological heart of Full-HD Voice is called a standard the Enhanced Voice Services (EVS codec.
and are inevitable on IP networks such as 4G LTE. To verify performance of the codec and its loss tolerance, Fraunhofer IIS and 11 partnersncluding Ericsson, Huawei, Qualcomm,
and Samsungpent millions of euros on human listening tests. Full-HD Voice quality was possible even at data rates as low as 9. 6 kb/s. The processing power of modern smartphone chips is a key enabler for the new codecs.
They can be implemented in digital signal processing chips as the 7 000-Hz codecs in 4g smartphones are,
or as apps running on a smartphone applications processor. The EVS codec s not complex compared to the apps in a smartphone,
says Baumeister. Because Full-HD Voice can tolerate packet losses, it could feed compressed data directly into the Internet data stream for routing directly to other equipped devices,
like a Skype-to-Skype call between computers or smartphones. Fraunhofer Mobile World demonstration did that using apps on Google Nexus 5 phones.
With no need for network upgrades, Baumeister says, ou could conceptually roll out service this year,
but next year is more realistic. ou can hear samples at http://www. full-hd-voice. com,
but be sure to use good headphones in a quiet environment. Stern compares the difference to the shift from standard resolution to HD television. t going to be subtle, not a huge difference in intelligibility,
"a small computer that records data and communicates to a user's smartphone or other systems.
Although we will probably not be using energy storage textiles to power our smartphones any time soon due to the low energy density of the current technology,
hooked through a cellphone with an algorithm and to a Roche pump, linked to it by a Bluetooth signal,
Finally, at the end of the rainbow, the Google self-driving car. The first step toward a robotic pancreas came in 1964,
and Dexcom have developed biocompatible coatings as well as sensors with multiple electrochemical sites that can be polled to see which ones no longer work properly.
The heaters are linked with the control system via Wi-fi, allowing the system to learn your behavior as well as the optimum heating required to maintain a comfortable temperature. arper says the systems will be available in July 2015 through Xefro distributors in the UK.
Prominent billionaire backers include Hollywood director James cameron and Google executives Larry page and Eric Schmidt. But the exact mineral wealth of the asteroids most easily accessible from Earth remains unknown.
#System Does occupied Wi-fi in TV Channels Internet providers have been hoping to get their hands on precious low frequency UHF channels unused by broadcast TV.
created the first device that allows Wireless internet in a UHF channel that is already occupied by a TV broadcast. nstead of all television or all wireless connection,
Such superpowers could allow Internet coverage in secluded areas that traditional terrestrial broadband cannot economically reach.
The system consists of a special Wi-fi transmitter and a receiver in a person home
or Internet to watch television, he says. hat means these TV broadcasters are wasting spectrum.
But under the WATCH system, a user TV viewing information is sent to a spectrum database by smartphone remote control and smart TV.
so Wi-fi streaming doesn interfere with their TV signal, says Zhang. If a next door neighbor wants to watch the channel WATCH is using to stream Wi-fi,
then the system will locate and use channel that has no nearby viewers. The engineers found that their system could provide six times as much wireless data4 megabits per seconds TV white-space systems in use today
says Knightly. here are implications that this could allow Wireless internet access in difficult to reach places and underserved areas.
There is a much larger need for Internet connectivity than television in developing countries, says James Carlson,
founder and CEO of Carlson Wireless Technologies. eople would rather leapfrog technology that will soon be obsolete.
Carlson Wireless plans to deploy 3-G wireless service over TV white-space in Africa and parts of South and Southeast asia later this year
and a laser-based version of Wi-fi. Although previous research has created red, blue, green and other lasers,
Li-Fi ould be 10 times faster than today Wi-fi, but"the Li-Fi currently under development is based on LEDS,"
#Google s Unified Privacy Policy Draws Threat Of $15m Fine In The netherlands The national data protection authority in The netherlands has warned Google that it could be fined up to $15 million
Google January 2012 decision to combine the privacy policies of some 60 different products in order for it to be able to gather more intel on webs users for targeting ads quickly triggered a data protection review in October 2012
launching probes into Google handling of personal data in April last year. The Dutch data protection authority, the CBP, has evidently run out of patience with Google.
In a statement earlier this week, the CBP said it requires Google to gain unambiguous consent from users to combine multiple privacy policies across its products specifying that this consent cannot be gained by a general agreement to a privacy policy
but must be done ia a clear permission screen Google must also clearly explain what personal data is being obtained by which of its services and for what purpose,
and this information must be clearly and consistently conveyed in its privacy policy, it said.
The CBP is concerned also that Youbube be labeled clearly as a Google service albeit the Dutch DPA notes that Google seems to have taken already action on this point.
Commenting in a statement, CBP president Jacob Kohnstamm said: oogle captures us in an invisible web of our personal information without telling us that
and without asking our permission. This has been running since 2012 and we hope that our patience will no longer be put to the test.
The CBP does add that Google has sent a letter to the six data protection authorities which launched reviews namely France, Germany, Italy, Spain,
whether Google proposed measures would resolve its privacy violations. Responding to the Dutch threat of a fine a Google spokesperson told Techcrunch via email:
ee disappointed with the Dutch data protection authority order, especially as we have made already a number of changes to our privacy policy in response to their concerns.
#Baidu Maker Of China s Largest Search engine Confirms Its Strategic Investment In Uber It s official:
Chinese Internet giant Baidu has confirmed that it is Uber s latest investor as Techcrunch reported last week.
Bloomberg previously reported that Baidu had taken the entire $600 million surplus that Uber built into its most recent funding round
however a source at Baidu told Techcrunch that this is untrue. If there is further capacity in the round
and Baidu is more significant than the investment because Baidu Maps will be able to integrate Uber This is similar to Google maps Uber integration after Google Ventures invested in the car-calling app.
Furthermore Baidu s mobile search app will be configured so that Uber is displayed prominently when users make travel-or venue-related queries.
This is a major boon for Uber because Baidu operates China s largest search engine and will help it compete against its rivals##Didi Dache and rival##Kuaidi Dache
which are backed by Baidu-competitors Tencent and Alibaba respectively. The Baidu investment comes just a few weeks after Uber announced that it had raised $1. 2 billion in funding at a $40 billion valuation with##a portion of the capital earmarked for expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.
The deal was struck at a#signing ceremony#at Baidu HQ in Beijing which Baidu chairman and CEO Robin Li and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick both attended.
The deal will also allow Uber to take advantage of Baidu s app distribution channels which include 91 Wireless
which it purchased for $1. 9 billion last year. This is important because Google Play isn t available in China
and 91 Wireless runs some of the largest alternative app stores in the country. Baidu claims it is currently China s largest mobile app distribution platform
and distributed an average of 160 million apps per day. The company s mobile search products currently have over 500 million monthly active users
while Baidu Map has over 240 million monthly active users which has allowed it to create heat maps of travel patterns by users similar to Uber s God View.
Baidu is also currently tackling an expansion into Latin america via Brazil which overlaps with Uber s global aspirations.
In a prepared statement Kalanick said#This collaboration marks a milestone for Uber. We re currently in 250 cities around the world and the Asia-Pacific region has been a key area of growth for us.
Our partnership with Baidu#a premier global brand#reflects our commitment to the region and the growing community of Uber riders and driver-partners here.#
#Uber is currently available in nine Chinese cities including Beijing Shanghai Tianjin Chongqing Shenzhen Guangzhou Wuhan Chengdu and Hangzhou.
For more information about how Baidu and Uber can work##together see our previous article t
#A Wave Crests: Silicon valley Postsecondary education And A Half-Trillion Dollars It easy to forget that these are early days for the Internet.
We still have different ideas on what it is or how it should work. The web is governed by an iterative improvement process that moves faster than any other invention in human history.
Ed tech is no exception. I like to direct your attention to an interesting phenomenon: since 2012, most ed-tech companies have rewritten quietly their product promise from unbridled learning for learning sake to a path to a job
or career goal website copy now essentially says obs, jobs, careers, jobs. That transition may be related to another 2012 development:
MOOCS literally offered college classes on the internet. This seemed promising, and The New york times declared 2012 he year of the MOOC.
Hybrid Online/Offline Institutions Codecademy and Coursera are based two web ed-tech entrants that have created subsequently physical learning environments.
Earlier this year, Hack Reactor launched the online version of its immersive curriculum, Remote Beta, a web-based ALP.
and mix online and offline approaches. If you thought it was dramatic when taxis became tech companies,
Shopify and ebay can use space to both warehouse their goods and then deliver them in urban areas.
In fact, its website is pretty bare bones, only showing a few details about a user Digit account:
the site also has a detailed list of each transfer over time that you can scroll through.
Rather than overwhelm users with information on the website, Digit primary mode of communication with users is via SMS. It sends users daily updates via text with different pieces of information each day.
Also participating in the round are Freestyle Capital, Upside Partnership, Google Ventures, Operative Capital, Garry Tan, Alexis Ohanian, Aaron Harris, Rick Berry, Nate Bosshard, Eric
500 different merchants for its platform, including well-known tech companies like Facebook, Airbnb, Spotify, Evernote, and Groupon.
In addition to its payment network, Adyen has also been investing in offering a mobile point-of-sales system called Shuttle.
including those of e-commerce site Coupang; Yello Mobile; 4: 33 Creative Lab Game Studio; and food delivery app Baedal Minjok.
Now the city government hopes to get more people interested in its startup industry by sponsoring Global Hackathon Seoul,
and large corporations. eoul already has an incredible infrastructure (fastest Internet/mobile speed), highest smartphone penetration,
or insider-y emails about films. That those things were stolen, however? Yes. Especially since former employees weren even being made aware of the situation.
Theye pulled nude photos off celebrity phones and from rivatemessaging app Snapchat. Large companies like Adobe and ebay have seen emails and other personal account information stolen.
And whistleblowers like Snowden have revealed the most private and devastating aspects of government spying agendas.
its employees (and their families) in unencrypted Excel and Word files and carelessly shared emails.
News media has reported on a number of these leaked emails, which have included private jabs, jokes and commentary, including a director referring to Hollywood star Angelina jolie as a poiled brat,
Beyond providing fodder for gossip blogs, the Sony hack has revealed also serious information that arguably more serving of the ublic interest.
Like just how casual internal company HR employees treat email communication, for example. Email is not private;
as a former IT worker, I could have accessed any inbox on my domain (and often did,
though not for reading emails, but for legitimate reasons like backup, archiving, or transfer to a new hire).
But more importantly, employees dealing with sensitive information seem not to understand that email is not a place where an HR employee needs to be detailing a child medical treatment,
Another key item that was revealed by journalists reporting on the Sony leak was that of Hollywood war against Google,
which was code-named roject Goliathin email threads. As detailed by The Verge lawyers from the MPAA and half a dozen major studios refer to oliathas their biggest enemy in their battle with online piracy,
and the Sony emails discuss a variety of tactics to fight oliath, including site blocking,
legal action involving state attorneys general, political lobbying, and more. Things like this (below), make the issue surrounding the ethics of reporting on the hacked content more complicated.
, and Disney joined together to begin a new campaign against piracy on the web. A January 25th email lays out a series of legally
and technically ambitious new tools, including new measures that would block infringing sites from reaching customers of many major ISPS Documents reviewed by The Verge detail the beginning of a new plan to attack piracy after the federal
SOPA efforts failed by working with state attorneys general and major ISPS like Comcast to expand court power over the way data is served.
the result would fundamentally alter the open nature of the internet. Sony Emails Could Be Your Emails Sorkin
(and Sony) are fine to criticize reporterseditorial choices. But Sorkin, in a nutshell, is wrong to say that reporting on the leaks is pectacularly dishonorableas a whole.
hosting them on their own sites, copy and pasting emails in full, or revealing specific personal details like which employees had high medical bills,
or which child medical claims were being denied. The media has reported, however, that is the kind of information these documents contain.
Sony emails could be your emails. They could be your company emails. Those could be your kids.
If an organization of Sony size is susceptible to hacking, anyone is. In the aftermath, Sony has hired now Fireeye Inc. Mandiant forensics unit to clean up this massive cyber attack,
301m Smartphones Sold In Q3 As Xiaomi Muscles Into The Top 5 At Samsung s Expense Smartphones now account for 66%of all mobile phones worldwide
the two-horse race between the leading smartphone vendors Samsung and Apple looks like it may finally be breaking up a bit,
Gartner today published its Q3 numbers for how mobile phones fared globally. A total of 301 million smartphones sold
up 20%on a year ago. Within that, Apple and Samsung combined smartphone share totalled 37%,down 7 percentage points from the same period a year ago.
Mobile phone sales overall were 456 million completely flat on Q3 2013. Within the smartphone space, China Xiaomi made its way into the top five for the first time with a sharp rise over a year ago,
while the world biggest OEM, Samsung, declined. Apple saw its share increase up to 38 million,
or 12.7%of the market on strong iphone 6 sales, a trend other analysts have been tracking as well,
while Huawei also saw a small gain to move up to the number-three spot (16 million devices,
5. 3%).That not to say that Samsung is not in the lead: it is, by some margin.
The Korean handset giant sold 73 million smartphones in Q3, giving it a 24.4%share of the market,
Overall, the company sold 94 million handsets (smart and low-end phones combined) for a 20%share of the market (down five percentage points on a year ago.
Xiaomi sales of 16 million smartphones for a 5. 2%share of the market is up nearly four percentage points over a year ago (it only sold 3. 6 million units in Q3 2013.
In short, it because sales in mature markets (where Samsung traditionally has been strong) are saturated now with smartphones,
Emerging markets, on the other hand, are seeing very sharp sales rises some of the highest ever in smartphone history
with sales of smartphones growing almost 50%year-over-year, the analysts write. This is also another reason why Chinese vendors,
In China, one of the most important markets for Samsung, its smartphone sales declined 28.6%.
and offer top specs Chinese brands are positioned well to expand in the premium phone market too
and address the needs of upgrade users that aspire to premium phones, but cannot afford Apple or Samsung high-end products,
Gartner director Roberta Cozza notes. he smartphone market is more than ever in flux as more players step up their game in this space.
As a point of contrast, Western European smartphone sales declined 5. 2%the third consecutive decline this year.
Among mature markets, the U s. saw the highest growth, seeing an 18.9%increase ostered by the launch of the iphones 6 and 6 Plus.
But put another way, neither of these two, big mature markets are keeping up with overall sales growth of smartphones
Gartner predicts that Apple momentum will continue unabated with its iggest ever fourth-quarter salesof both models of large-screen phones,
although there will be other key moves coming from Chinese handset makers. ver the holidays we expect record sales of the iphone 6 and iphone 6 Plus,
In Europe prepaid country markets and attractive lost-cost LTE phones will also offer key opportunities for these brands.
The big picture for feature phones is not unlike that of Microsoft legacy smartphone maker Blackberry:
Interestingly, Gartner doesn peg this drop to the ineluctable charm of smartphones, but rather says it because of the narrowing price difference between them and basic devices.
Smartphones are already 66%of the world total mobile market and by 2018 Gartner predicts that proportion will be 90
#Nokia s Here Will Power Maps For Baidu Outside China To Cater To China s Globetrotters Search giant Baidu has made no secret of its ambitions to expand its business outside of China by way of mobile services.
Now it struck a deal with Nokia that could help it with that by serving domestic users abroad.
Nokia mapping and navigation business Here says that it will now power maps for Baidu outside of China,
so Baidu is licensing our map data, but we can give any further info unfortunately,
Baidu offers extensive mapping services in China (a screenshot of its existing maps service is pictured above),
and that was one of the key components in a reported investment deal that Baidu is making in car service Uber.
as our smartphones have turned from basic voice and text communication devices into intelligent assistants, location services
Here is a natural partner for Baidu, in that it not a direct competitor as Google might be
and works cross-platform in a way that Apple does not. Here has announced just an update that will make its mapping apps available across all Google Play markets and Android devices,
and is finally republishing a new ios app in early 2015, after pulling it in 2013.
Here parent company Nokia, meanwhile, has also been focussing on the China market for years now
SVP and head of sales for Here, said in a statement. ogether with Baidu, a new customer for us,
Elsewhere, Baidu has been flexing its international muscle by building services for users outside its core Chinese-language market.
Baidu inked a deal with France telecom to load its mobile browser on to Android devices that were getting sold in Africa.
Nokia is not commenting on whether it is going to power any services in these, but it is not ruling it out. ur expertise is in the mapping/location services domain
so that defines the scope of our work with Baidu, the spokesperson says. As we pointed out last week, in the last quarter,
Here posted net sales of#236 million on an operating profit of zero out of total net sales at Nokia of#3. 3 billion
A mere 17 percent of Google tech workers are women. It 15 percent at Facebook.
Similar stats can be found at most of the larger tech companies. Girls Who Code is trying to reverse those digits with an announcement of a major expansion in partnerships today.
The 7-week program pairs girls interested in computer science education with field trips to top tech companies such as Twitter and Square.
Adobe, AIG, Akamai, AOL, Appnexus, AT&T, BSA, ebay, Electronic arts, Expedia, Facebook, GE, Goldman sachs, Google, Groupon, IAC, IBM, Lockheed martin, Massmutual, Microsoft
, Moody, Pixar Animation Studios, Square, The Honest Company, Twitter, Viacom, Intel, Intuit and Verizon in order to reach its goal.
Each company will host and provide mentorship to 20 young women at each of those locations during the 7 week sessions.
Wikipedia is an obvious example, but also consider Waze, which was acquired by Google in 2013. Waze uses user-submitted traffic data to recommend the fastest driving route,
which adjusts in real time as the user drives. Imagine the efficiencies that would be lost if Waze tried to generate this data by itself instead of tapping into the free, unlimited power of collaboration.
it will have to do on its own what the united front of Samsung (in other words, Google android OS), Oculus Rift (in other words, Facebook),
The commercial real estate industry lost sight of one important fact the Internet has made kings of us All in a Google world,
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