burglar alarms upgraded for the smartphone age As history has it, the young Isaac newton found inspiration for the theory of gravity by watching apples fall to the ground.
the home alarm seemed ripe for an overhaul for the internet age. e were surprised...that the technology had moved not really on since the 80s,
he said. assumed that there would be loads of easy smartphone connected alarm systems and there were not. e found that a lot of people who own an alarm don bother to set it either
Using smartphones to identify the various residents of the house or flat, the device learns their movements
The five cofounders of Cocoon have used smartphones and machine learning to filter out this noise and isolate the waves
which may signal a threat. The device learns over three days how residents come in and out and live.
Through an app on the phones of the residents, the device understands their movements and then builds up a model or rainaccording to the company of what happens
It knows when people are outside of the home as the phones will not be present.
The alert of an intruder can be sent to the smartphone of the residents and a camera on the device
There are potential problems. f you have no smartphone, the product is not for you. We think that the vast majority of the population do,
What if someone forgets their phone? f that happens then the system will not be armed. It will think that they are at home in the same way
The company argues that many children who do not have smartphones may be with their parents anyway. ou can really buy a phone that is not a smartphone any more.
It is only if you have not had a new phone for five years that it is not Android or ios,
The problem is that a key metric in the data used to calculate these temperatures is wrong
The all-optical bit means that the data stream and the control of the switching is optical;
previous optical transistors have used electrical control and optics for data. This has inhibited the switching speed.
It is aimed very much at optical switching rather than building processors, and according to the researchers, the optical transistors have a tunable dielectric permittivity compatible with all telecoms infrared (IR) standards. e are pretty far away from building anything resembling an processor.
In fact our transistor is only simulation at the current time, "said doctoral candidate Nate Kinsey, in conversation with El Reg."
say in like a data centre"."Even the stages of developing something simpler, such as an adder, multiplier,
Kinsey cautions that something as advanced as a processor is at least two decades away, so while a 1, 000-fold increase in processor power sounds a lot,
it not when considered over the kind of timescales we are talking e
#Brit boffins build'tractor beam'out of sound Researchers from Spain and The british city of Bristol have found a way to move objects using sound.
#HTC One Max stored fingerprints where any app could see them HTC failed to lock down fingerprints captured by one of its phones,
a nearly two-year-old phone with a fingerprint reader, kept the fingerprints that it scanned in an unencrypted, world-readable file;
The One Max had been storing fingerprint data in a specialized bitmap file, which Fireeye was able to reconstruct into a proper scan of the print (shown right,
Fireeye's report suggests that other phones with fingerprint readers may have similar problems, though it only names the One Max.
The report also notes that certain phones failed to fully secure their fingerprint sensor, potentially allowing apps to step in
"and failed to review software for security flaws. This was back in February of 2013
The One Max was never a particularly popular or successful phone, and it isn't known
#Google is reorganizing and Sundar Pichai will become new CEO In a blog post today,
Google cofounder Larry page announced a massive restructuring of the company, instituting Sundar Pichai as CEO and shifting himself and cofounder Sergey Brin to a larger holding company called Alphabet.
As CEO and President of Alphabet, Page and Brin will oversee Google as well as affiliated companies like the life extension project Calico and a drone delivery venture called Wing.
Alphabet will also direct Google's early-stage funding operations, dubbed Capital and Ventures. Under the new organization, each of those operations will have its own CEO and leadership
while Pichai and Google retain control of search, ads, maps, the Google Play Store, Youtube, and Android.
The reorganization also involves significant financial restructuring, as detailed in an associated SEC filing. All Google shares will now be traded as shares of the larger Alphabet holding company, news that drove the company's share price up more than four percentage points in the wake of the announcement."
"Wee long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing,
the former CHROME OS and Android chief who has played an increasingly central role in Google's day-to-day operations."
and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google, "Page said in the post."
"I feel very fortunate to have talented someone as as he is to run the slightly slimmed down Google
it's an extension of a shift that's been ongoing within Google for some time, with Brin and Page increasingly interested in ambitious projects launched through Google X or outside funding.
Alphabet formalizes that division, separating Google's traditional products from the more ambitious ventures that critics have accused of distracting from the company's core strengths.
It remains to be seen how the new divisions will play out in practice, but the intention seems to be renewed a focus on both Google's current products
and the moonshots that aim to replace those products as Alphabet's focus in the decades to come."
In addition to the streams, Apple says the album also sold half a million downloads through itunes a solid performance that was not quite enough to push it to number one in the US charts.
and it premiered a day early on Apple's streaming service, before full release on itunes on July 7th.
only available for stream on Apple Music and digitally through itunes. Beats cofounder Jimmy Iovine was positive about the results,
hip-hop's current kings are already old hands at disseminating their music to a huge and internet-literate fanbase.
Both artists used Twitter, Instagram, and other social networks to build suspense for their newest records,
and released them on multiple streaming services, securing more listeners than Compton could with its Apple-first approach a
#Google has a new logo Google is introducing a new logo today. Just a month after unveiling a major restructuring of the company,
Google is updating its image, too. The new Google logo is still a wordmark, but it's now using a sans-serif typeface,
making it look a lot more modern and playful. The colors are also softer than they used to be.
The logo bears a bit more resemblance to the logo of Google's new parent company, Alphabet, as well.
As Google's video introducing the new logo notes the wordmark has been evolving ever since it was created in 1998.
when Google first cleaned up the lettering and settled on its four colors. Since then, the logo has just been flattened out more and more,
Google is also changing the tiny"g"logo that you see on browser tabs. It's now going to be an uppercase"G"that's striped in all four of Google's colors.
Google says that the new design will be rolling out across all of its products soon in fact
it's already on Google's homepage, with a cute animation that wipes away the old logo and draws in the new one.
So why did Google decide to make the change? In a blog post, Google discusses how much technology has changed how we interact with its products and with the internet at large.
It doesn't really settle on a specific reason that a redesign was needed, but it says that this logo should better reflect the reality that Google is no longer a site you visit on a desktop computer it's a huge collection of sites, apps,
and services that you visit on PCS, Chromebooks, smartphones, and anywhere you can find a web browser.
Google writes that its new logo is meant to reflect"this reality and show you when the Google magic is working for you,
even on the tiniest screens.""Making the logo look good on small screens seems to have been a major consideration.
The new, simpler lettering is supposed to scale better to smaller sizes, making the wordmark more distinct and easier to read.
It's also supposed to be easier for Google to display on low-bandwidth connections:
Google says that it's made a version of its logo that's"only 305 bytes,
compared to our existing logo at 14,000 bytes.""Given that one of new Google CEO Sundar Pichai's big goals is to bring the internet and Google,
of course to areas of the globe that don't already have it, that small difference is definitely going to be an important one r
#Qualcomm's new Quick Charge will take batteries from 0 to 80 percent in 35 minutes Fast charging is an increasingly widespread and popular addition to modern smartphones.
Almost every new Android handset features some sort of solution for giving it a rapid injection of energy,
and one of the most popular varieties among them is Qualcomm's Quick Charge. It's an option built into the company's current line of Snapdragon processors,
and it's getting an upgrade to version 3. 0 with the 2016 family, headlined by the Snapdragon 820.
A new Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage (INOV) algorithm will allow portable devices to"determine what power level to request at any point in time for optimum power transfer
while maximizing efficiency.""Together with a series of other advancements, this will result in 38 percent more efficient charging than the second-generation Quick Charge,
and a doubling of charging speed from the original Quick Charge 1. In practical terms,
says Qualcomm, this will mean that the typical smartphone can be recharged from a flat battery all the way to 80 percent in 35 minutes.
Qualcomm also notes that it's implemented"additional steps to help protect battery cycle life,
"so its new solution should be both more efficient and more forgiving on the battery.
They are available to Qualcomm's hardware partners today and will be making their debut in devices coming in 2016 6
who chose the occasion to launch a new web destination called Makerbase. Dash described it as cross between Wikipedia and Internet Movie Database,
but for the app economy. Innovators can add themselves to Makerbase or others can add them to the current database of projects.
Beta testers have been using the service since January. Those seeking work can search the offerings for likely matches
#How do you laugh on Facebook? LOS ANGELES-How do you express laughter in a Facebook post?
By saying LOL, Haha or Hehe? The folks at Facebook recently crunched the numbers of the billions of daily posts to see how its members expressed their humor,
and they found that 15%use laughter of some kind in a post. At one point, the acronym surely would have been LOL,
Facebook looked at posts in May to come up with these conclusions and also researched specific cities,
A quick note that the desktop version of Facebook doesn offer many opportunities to attach digital laughs,
you need to go to the Facebook Messenger mobile app, where not only are there tons of way more emoji syymbols available for your posts,
Google shares jump off Alphabet announcement Here's a surprise that shareholders seemed to like: Google shocked Wall street Monday afternoon after suddenly announcing the creation of Alphabet, its new publicly traded parent company.
Shares of Google were up more than 6%during Tuesday morning trading. Let's take a look at the tech stocks to watch Tuesday:
Google (GOOG: Google's new overlord will contain its zany experimental ventures, such as its driverless cars,
and 3g-beaming balloons, while Google (now a subsidiary of Alphabet) will"slim down "and exclude companies that are not a part of its core internet business.
Sundar Pichai will be the new CEO of Google, while Google cofounders Larry page and Sergey Brin will head Alphabet.
Twitter (TWTR: Twitter's stock was back down to red Tuesday morning after bouncing back Monday.
Interim CEO Jack Dorsey showed a bid of confidence in the lagging company Monday, buying more than 31,000 shares of Twitter for about $875, 000.
Following Dorsey's purchase, shares jumped 9%to close at $29. 50 on Monday. The company also pleased investors after announcing an expanded deal with the NFL,
which will streamline more of the leagues content on the platform. Company shares were down more than 1%Tuesday morning.
Symantec (SYMC: Symantec announced plans to sell its data storage business, Veritas, for $8 billion cash.
According to Reuters, the company will sell Veritas to a group including Carlyle Group and Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC.
Company shares were down more than 1%during Tuesday morning trading. Apple (AAPL: Apple shares have been quite volatile lately.
Shares were down more than 2%Tuesday morning after climbing up to more than 2%during Monday trading.
The company's stock is down 12 %since July 21 nd have found itself in correction territory,
falling 14%from their all-time high of $134. 54 that it clocked in April. Alibaba (BABA:
#Tinder goes on Twitter rant over'Vanity fair'article Popular dating app Tinder erupted into a storm of angry,
we were saddened to see that the article didn't touch upon the positive experiences that the majority of our users encounter daily,
#Twitter drops character limit for direct messages witter users will no longer be confined to 140 characters
The social network says it has removed limits on the length of a direct message, allowing users to send tweets at whatever length they choose.
However, Twitter says the standard public tweet will remain 140 characters.""Today change is another big step towards making the private side of Twitter even more powerful and fun,
says Twitter product manager Sachin Agarwal in a blog post detailing the changes. The change rolls out starting today across Twitter's mobile apps, desktop and web clients and Tweetdeck,
and continue rolling out globally over the next few weeks s
#Virtual reality comes into the store VENICE BEACH, Calif. elcome to this reality-a store where you can buy shoes, eyewear and coffee,
and also take a 360 degree immersive video trip to Peru. Shoppers at Toms flagship store here can don Samsung's Gear VR virtual reality goggles,
which are tapped into a Samsung phone in what believed to be one of the first consumer retail VR experiences.
Facebook bought tech start-up Oculus, which works with Samsung on the Gear VR system, for $2 billion in 2014.
and when they take the headset off, your whole world is now upside down. he cost for the project wasn cheap.
and cites a comment from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that VR will potentially be as disruptive as the smartphone.
Facebook bought tech start-up Oculus which works with Samsung on the Gear VR system, for $2 billion in 2014.
and when they take the headset off, your whole world is now upside down. he cost for the project wasn cheap.
and cites a comment from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that VR will potentially be as disruptive as the smartphone.
The test shown live on NASA TV was the third of four preparing upgraded shuttle engines to lift NASA Space Launch System exploration rocket,
#Europe's top court rejects'Safe harbor'ruling Europe's top court on Tuesday ruled that a 15-year-old agreement allowing American companies to handle Europeans'data was invalid,
Facebook and Google operate overseas. The European Court of Justice examined the case of an Austrian citizen who claimed that his data,
in light of revelations by Edward Snowden that U s. agencies spied upon people in other nations,
wasn't being protected adequately by Facebook. No appeal is possible as the European Court of Justice is the equivalent of the U s. Supreme court. The ruling comes as European leaders
and Washington are negotiating a new agreement on data transfers across the Atlantic It also raises questions about how major U s. tech firms can continue to operate in Europe without breaking the law.
Under so-called Safe harbor rules, U s. firms are allowed to transfer personal data of European citizens back to the U s..They only have to follow one set of rules on how data they store
when users post on social media, search the web, buy items online and other activities. Companies use this information to direct ads
and promote products. Without the Safe harbor rules, in place since 2000, each country in the European union could potentially set is own privacy rules
and data protection landscape to make the EU the global center of gravity, "said Jim Koenig of Paul Hastings, a Washington, D c.-based law firm.
and build European data centers to process data previously transferred to the U s.,said Fox Rothschild's Vernick.
Larger U s. tech companies have set up procedures to transfer data beyond the Safe harbor framework. Microsoft told its enterprise cloud customers on Tuesday that it believes they can continue to transfer data by relying on additional steps
and legal safeguards it put in place when it realized the court ruling was a possibility.
Laws in the European union view personal data privacy as a fundamental right. U s. laws consider it more an issue of consumer protection.
Today, more than 3, 000 businesses in the U s. and the EU depend on the agreement to avoid running afoul of European privacy laws, according to the Information technology and Innovation Foundation.
That could change because of the lawsuit brought last year against Facebook by Austrian law student and privacy advocate Max Schrems.
meant his data privacy rights were not being protected adequately. Schrems filed the case in Ireland, Facebook European headquarters.
The irish court rejected the suit and Schrems appealed to the European high court.""This decision is a major blow for U s. global surveillance that heavily relies on private partners.
"Schrems said in a statement posted on his Twitter account after Tuesday's ruling. In a statement, Facebook said Europe's Advocate General had been very clear the issue was not Facebook per se,
but the mechanisms that European law provides to enable essential transatlantic data flows. The company said it was imperative that the EU
and U s. governments ensure that reliable methods for lawful data transfers are provided to companies. In an opinion on Sept. 23
the European Court's Advocate General for the case, Yves Bot, had declared already the Safe harbor agreement invalid.
"once personal data is transferred to the United states, the National security agency and other United states security agencies such as the Federal bureau of investigation are able to access it in the course of a mass and indiscriminate surveillance and interception of such data."
"The U s. Mission to the European union issued a statement saying that"the United states does not
driven by an increasingly powerful mobile technology that is making portable VR a near-term possibility.
I donned an Oculus headset and grabbed two joysticks that, when held, became my hands.
Clicking a button on each flexed my virtual fingers and, in this computer-generated virtual clothes showroom,
I could choose from an in-the-air menu whether to peruse clothing, shoes, gift cards,
In the Oculus setup, a small black box from Sixense was attached to the top of the headset.
A custom, high-end computer drove the experience, which was also visible in left eye/right eye views on a high-def monitor.
Sixense, which has been providing a VR development platform for training and gaming since 2009, also offers a software development kit with creation tools that require little or no programming.
Sapientnitro brings experience design and software development to the party, plus interactive experience working with major retailers.
The companies also have a mobile Samsung Gear VR setup running, which uses the Galaxy Note 4 as the display in a set of goggles.
In that environment I encountered a different experience light sabers in a large hall doing battle with a ray-firing orb that was driven only by the Note 4. The companies join others,
including Oculusparent Facebook, in envisioning VR for shopping. That vision is still fluid for vretail,
Venturebeat is studying email marketing tools. Chime in, and wel share the data with you. Physical stores have become the most exciting new dimension for digital marketing.
Some retailers now wrap the Net around you with screens showing live streams of social posts
geofencing that offers just-what-I-need coupons, and data collection that optimizes customer flow in the store in a way similar to how Google analytics helps optimize visitor flow on a website.
On just a technology level, in store VR would seem to be the next step. But, I asked Sapientnitro VP of innovation Adrian Slobin,
ou could don a VR headset and youe in the Andes setting up camp. Cooking a meal/dining with Jefferson While such experiences would create new meanings for rying it on it remains to be seen
if VR even a system with much greater verisimilitude than the exceptional computer-generated shopping experience
Sixense Rubin told me. very high-end smartphone sold from now on is a VR smartphone, he said, because of their very high resolution and processing power.
especially since Rubin expects that wireless companies like AT&T could start offering free or inexpensive goggles as incentives for longer contracts.
In fact, Rubin said he expects there could be tens of millions of smartphone-equipped VR headsets out there in the U s. within the next few years.
#Why Google Project Fi could be the beginning of the end for Verizon and AT&T Google made an exciting announcement Wednesday,
confirming plans to launch its own wireless service, Project Fi. The service will leverage existing Wi-fi networks
and switch to carrier networks (T-Mobile and Sprint) only when Wi-fi isn available. This approach to mobile communications is
what some are calling Wi-fi First. It an approach several companies are already pursuing, including Republic and Freedompop,
and my own company, Scratch Wireless. And Cablevision recently launched Freewheel provides a Wi-fi only service.
Google announcement is a great thing for the wireless industry the Wi-fi First industry and ultimately, a great thing for consumers.
Right now, with a cost of $10-20/GB for data in the U s.,traditional cell service is expensive (upwards of $140 per month, per subscriber),
and according to a 2013 study by Validas, smartphone users typically waste $28 each month on unused data.
But smartphone service doesn have to be so costly. According to Cisco, about half (46 percent) of total mobile data traffic was offloaded through Wi-fi in 2014,
and with the Wi-fi rollouts that are happening now that number could reach 90 percent. At $10/GB
if 90 percent of traffic went over Wi-fi instead of cellular, it could save consumers $700 billion each year.
Here where that hurts the AT&T and Verizons of the world: When implemented properly, a Wi-fi First model can relegate cellular networks to simply filling the gaps between hotspots.
A Wi-fi First model could save consumers literally trillions of dollars over the next decade if adopted in mass,
and Google is the company to pave the way (and do so quickly). Given its size and influence in the device space,
Google Project Fi could help accelerate the adoption of Wi-fi First through a couple of key moves.
The first is by requiring all Android devices to have Wi-fi First intelligence built in at the outset.
This would ensure that all phones use Wi-fi as the main communication method and only rely on cell service when absolutely necessary.
The second is Wi-fi connectivity. Wi-fi is nearly everywhere, but consumers don always take advantage of it in the capacity they could.
Google has the opportunity to speed up this adoption by creating standards and device requirements that would make Wi-fi connections more mainstream,
and a seamless, easy experience. So what does this mean for the big carriers? At the same time Google ushers in Wi-fi First to the masses, its wireless vision could fundamentally transform the role major carriers play in the market.
Let use Verizon as an example of a carrier that will be impacted. When you buy a phone through Google,
Google will manage the relationship with Verizon instead of you. When Wi-fi isn available, your device will automatically select which network it should connect to based on availability,
but similar to making calls while roaming, the device decides for you based on the network with the most availability that the least expensive.
Youe not tasked with deciding what network to connect to and there is little (if any) interaction between you and that cell brand.
Youe buying the phone from Google, youe paying Google, and youe calling Google support if you experience any issues.
If Google move means consumers now have billing relationships with only Google, Verizon brand (which the company spends more than a billion dollars promoting each year) is diminished.
This model commoditizes the wireless carriers while simultaneously putting downward pressure on their margins. As such, the Wi-fi First business model eliminates erizonfrom consumersvernacular,
the company influence over the subscriber is removed all but, and the $77 billion in gross profit it made in 2014 will also be a thing of the past.
It clear Wi-fi plays an integral role in the future of the industry. Based on Google track record,
if there is any player that can take down Verizon and AT&T, who have been upselling consumers on wireless service that isn efficient
or cost-effective for decades, it Google. And it only a matter of time before carriersrelevance to smartphone subscribers everywhere is diminished.
The end is near d
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