#Edible batteries could power smart medicine pills A flexible biodegradable battery just may be what the doctor ordered.
Smartphone apps can be built for less than $10k, so who needs an investor? Startup incubators and accelerators are popping up everywhere.
Social media is a boon for entrepreneurs and startups. With the key social media platforms today, an entrepreneur can tune a product
build a brand, and grow the business with very low cost and a high interactivity never before possible.
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#Scientists create robotic muscle that is 1, 000 times more powerful than human muscles A robotic muscle 1,
as researchers at the US Department of energy s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found, the Lab s website#reported.
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#3d printed eye cells could one day cure blindness Researchers have printed actually viable retina cells using an inkjet printer.
The ability to print up new, living versions of the damaged parts of your body is becoming more viable as a medical procedure,
using an inkjet printer, of all things. The printer was able to first print a layer of retinal ganglion cells and then a layer of glial cells on top of them,
all while keeping the tiny structures vital. In doing so, the Cambridge research team was able to prove that eyes
#The cyborg future of telemarketing While a human is picking up the phone, and a human is dialing the phone,
it may not be a conversation between two humans. In the future humans will interact with each other, and machines,
His phone rings. It s a telemarketer for a home security service.####This is Richard, how are you today?##
My company, the Home security Company, is giving away a free wireless home security system and in-home installation.##
#Because while a human is picking up the phone, and a human is dialing the phone,
this is not,#strictly speaking, a conversation between two humans. Instead, a call-center worker in Utah or the Philippines is pressing buttons on a computer, playing through a marketing pitch without actually speaking.
Some people who market these services sometimes call this##voice conversion##technology. Another company says it s##agent-assisted automation technology.##
##At its best, computer system and operator merge like a character from the movie#Avatar#and his or her steed.
Let s look at one company that provides this product, Avatar Technologies, which advertises itself as##Outsourcing Without the Accent.##
The Avatar interface looks like this: While the man on the couch might was just sitting there talking,
the Avatar agent would have been sitting in the Filipino city of#Jaro Iloilo, staring at an interface.
The keyboard has hotkeys that can play different sound clips that were recorded by a perfect English speaker.
Here are two samples Avatar provides on its website,##Dale Harris##from the US and##Samantha##from Australia:
Avatar is not alone in selling these services, though they are the newest company in the field,
I found three other companies that sell cyborg call-center software or services like this, all of which are based in Utah.#
On the Internet, no one may know you re a dog, but on the phone? It just#seems#wrong.
What good could spring from a bunch of conversations in which one member is ventriloquizing through a machine?
they expressed skepticism that the system found in the#Time#recordings could be a computer.
I strongly suspect that Avatar created West, but I can t prove it. Multiple attempts to contact people at different levels within the company have gone unheeded.
For example, the data that they can capture with these systems is far less noisy than
Then I checked my Twitter account and favorited several tweets. I retweeted a couple, too.
In an email, Ugarte ticked off the reasons for using voice technology. 1. Accent##some of our agents though can speak English really well have problems with their accents
and maintains several other prominent social media presences. He likes to post photos from his childhood on Facebook,
along with portraits of himself in drag. I asked him, over email, to tell me what the experience of working at a soundboard call center is like.
How do people feel about it?####Based on feedbacks and observations, working on a Non-Voice company such as Perfect pitch is fun not to mention that there is less stress on the part of the reps,
Avatar recruits people by having#resume parties#at clubs(##Applicants get to party at Flow Super club after submitting their resume onsite with our Human Resource department.##
###and#supporting a#local beauty queen contest linked to an indigenous ritual#(#Avatar Technologies, a proud sponsor of Miss Iloilo Dinagyang 2014##.
##Their Youtube channel shows them#holding an#American Idol-style competition to celebrate their one-year anniversary.
It opens with these words flashing on the screen:####Level Up. Step up. Stand out. Work with the pros
We sold software to manage the paperwork about chemicals used at factories, which are known as#material-safety data sheets.
Our script ran on a series of linked Word documents, and we were told to stick to reading
what was on the screen. My manager, whose name was asked Jim that we call him Jimbo,
and the southern paper-mill plant managers that I managed to get on the phone were swayed not by my lispy, northwestern English.#
when they hear a voice on the phone, it matches up exactly with a person in the world,
##The software can improve the experience people are already having.####Often, when we look around our world at the technologies we have,
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#Hawaii s solar boom is so successful it s been blocked from further expansion Rooftop solar on a house in Hawaii.
The couple looked forward to joining neighbors who had added panels, to cutting their $250 monthly power bills
##Their plans shifted the day after the PV panels went up in early October. The Walkers learned from a neighbor about a major change in the local utility s solar policy.
It led to those 18 panels sitting dormant nearly three months later. Hawaiian Electric Co,
whether grid upgrades are necessary. If they are residents adding solar must foot the bill.
The new HECO policy was included deep in the text of emails the Walkers solar contractor had sent,
They re now paying $300 per month on a loan for the panels, plus the $250 electric bill.##
#The NSA s $10 million secret deal to get RSA to use backdoored encryption algorithm RSA had been paid by the NSA to set the backdoored algorithm as the default method of random number generation.
A secret $10 million deal between the NSA and the security firm RSA has resulted in RSA incorporating a flawed algorithm for generating random numbers into its products,
In the spotlight was flawed a algorithm known as Dual ec drbg, or the Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator.
The deliberately crippled Dual ec drbg algorithm was being used as the default pseudo-random number generator a crucial component in RSA s BSAFE toolkit.
##What wasn known t until#Reuters#reported it was that RSA had been paid by the NSA to set the backdoored algorithm as the default method of random number generation.
or default, method for number generation in the BSAFE software, according to two sources familiar with the contract.
We, the searchable In Mid-january,#Facebook introduced Graph Search, a way for the average user to tap into the social network s web of interconnected human intelligence.
Instead, Facebook automated the process of querying its users relationships with one another, their tastes and everything else with a##public##setting.
In April Facebook#introduced##partner categories, ###letting advertisers target users not only on the basis of their##likes##on the site,
but also by correlating that with data about what they buy through other web services.####OK, now I m convinced Facebook is#trying#to be creepy,
##my colleague Derrick Harris#wrote. Limited glimpses Publicly posted information is one thing, but what about private posts and communications?
Most people were aware that law enforcement agencies and governments ordered web companies to give up data on individuals of interest,
but the scale of this trend has always been difficult to nail down. On this front, Google has led always the way,
and the January 2013 edition of its semiannual Transparency Report showed the numbers of such requests had increased 70 percent between 2009 and 2012.
Twitter, too, gave users#an indication of how often the feds knocked on its door. Facebook said at the time that it had#no plans#to release such information to the public
and Microsoft initially#hummed its way through calls for a Skype transparency report before#giving in#to pressure from privacy groups.
However, while Google covered itself with more glory than most on this aspect of transparency,
it found itself increasingly under fire in Europe over other privacy-related issues. The company was fined by a German privacy regulator#for the 2010 siphoning of people s passwords and communications by Google s Street view cars.
And it continued to get into#all sorts#of#trouble#over its#unified privacy policy. In the eyes of Europe s data protection authorities
the unification of Google s disparate services represented an attempt to do new and serious things with people s information without true permission,
connecting previously unconnected pockets of data without making this obvious to users or giving them a meaningful way to say no.
A lot of people were unhappy about Google search and Maps##and Google+##knowing about their Youtube commenting habits.
However, although European privacy laws are significantly stronger than those in the U s a February survey showed that#Americans are nearly as keen as Europeans on protecting their online privacy.
The Ovum study also demonstrated an overwhelming lack of trust in internet companies honesty about data protection;
which is interesting, because those companies clearly assumed the public had a very high tolerance for privacy invasion.
In May, Microsoft said its Xbox One console would have an#always-on microphone, constantly listening to whatever people say near it.
Google said Glass would gain the same functionality, which also became a feature of the#Moto X#smartphone.
Apps#got in on the act. All listening, all the time. Glass wasn t the only wearable computer with eavesdropping potential.
At our 2013 Structure Data conference, the CIA s tech chief, Gus Hunt, said the new breed offitness trackers#were both light on security
and heavy enough on sensor data to betray the user s gender, rough height and weight, and more.##
Britain s#Guardian newspaper#ran a story alleging that the U s. carrier Verizon was handing over call records to the National security agency, America s signals intelligence operation.
Many don t recognize that our digital data##from cell phones, connected devices and our social media profiles##combined with powerful computing
and analytics can create detailed histories of our lives, our habits and our actions.####The next story was even more explosive.
It alleged that the NSA had#direct access to the servers#of the big U s. tech firms, such as Google, Microsoft and Apple.
This didn t just affect Americans##now all these companies users and customers, anywhere in the world, were clearly at risk of being spied upon by the U s. authorities.
Within days, European data protection regulators and activists were#demanding to know#what was happening with EU citizens data held on
and transmitted through American web services. As well they might. While Snowden had ignited a#debate in the U s.#about the constitutional protections that U s. citizens were supposed to be enjoying in their home country,
that, for us as citizens who use digital communications, #everything was not as it had seemed. Since the end of WORLD WAR II, mass communications have been subject to surveillance by a network of friendly, English-speaking intelligence agencies.
With the advent of the web, that data-gathering activity took on new dimensions. And now we knew about it.#
Slow clarity Early surveys#showed most Americans#weren bothered t that#about the NSA recording their cellphone metadata.
involving malware and hacking into desktop and#mobile devices. It can also involve knocking on the door of Google or Facebook.
Even without the firepower that can be brought to a targeted investigation mass surveillance results in a searchable map of millions of people s links, who they know,
but many would argue that indiscriminately recording all this data and making it easily searchable constitutes a severe and widespread invasion of privacy.
A U s. federal judge has taken this view#in relation to the Verizon metadata. There are at least a few recorded cases of NSA employees using their power tostalk crushes
and other users who value their privacy. It s fair to assume any unencrypted communications are open to monitoring.
but the trust system that governs web security has#integral flaws that need addressing. As the closures of#Lavabit and the Silent Mail service#showed,
firms that make encryption easier by managing the user s keys also make the user less secure by becoming a target for the authorities.#
Google, Microsoft, Apple and others appeared utterly complicit with the NSA, as though they were happily inviting them into their data centers for a look around,
Knowing that, many of the big web companies were scarcely encrypting the data they held in storage, let alone the connections between their data centers.
the likes of Facebook and#Apple#are now a whole lot more keen about#transparency when it comes to government data requests, perhaps in order torescue their public image.
The big U s. tech firms have banded also finally together##seven months after the Snowden revelations##to#demand a change in U s. intelligence tactics.
Fallout The post-Snowden months have seen a rash of interest in privacy-protecting#plug-ins,#search engines#and#anonymous surfing appliances,
Early warnings from IBM and Cisco indicate that some big U s. tech firms are already seeing a#significant drop-off#in orders
and Germany s big telcos to consider the merits of keeping local-to-local internet traffic#within their borders.
This has led to fears of a##balkanization##of the web, with unpleasant censorship potential. However, the web s globally interconnected nature makes this a tall order at best.
What does look set to happen is a legal and technical reinforcement of online privacy. The United nations is#working on a resolution#affirming that human rights apply online as well as offline,
and on the technical side the web may soon beencrypted by default. But what of the tech firms
whose services have been hijacked so successfully by the NSA and its partners? Facebook is still quietly doing
what it can to#stop users from protecting their privacy. And Google, which delighted privacy advocates in July by releasing an Android feature called#App Ops#that made it possible to turn off specific tracking functionalities in individual apps,
pulled that feature in a later Android update, claiming it had been included by accident. The online ad industry is also doing its best to ensure everyone remains trackable.
At the end of September, Stanford privacy advocate Jonathan Mayer#quit the working group#that has been steering the abortive#Do Not Track standard
a browser feature that s supposed to dissuade websites from tracking internet use with cookies.
Rather than doing what it says on the tin, Do Not Track now mostly comes turned off by default.
The ad industry, which lives off tracking people, won the day. Of course, we now know those same cookies can be hijacked by the NSA. And all over the world,
whereby#smart trashcans scoop up identifying information#from passing smartphone users, and retail chain Tesco started#scanning customers faces#as they stand in line to pay.
but they are colored all now by the knowledge that collected data may at some point be targeted by intelligence agencies and other authorities.
Sure, many suspected and some knew that the internet is a giant monitoring system, but anyone paying the slightest bit of attention must now realize that everything they do online
##and increasingly offline too##is enabled open to tech surveillance. Anyone carrying a mobile device should now understand that they are being tracked constantly.
Now we must address the fundamental questions of our time. Is it possible as#some suggest, to accept technological trends such as##big data##while also giving people the option of privacy?
Can we create popular internet business models that don t make the user a well-described product?
Are we heading into a world of data-driven authoritarianism? These are questions we are only now asking with seriousness and urgency.
However, experts suggest it may make use of ultrasound to create tiny vibrations on the screen
#IBM unveils top 5 technology predictions for the next 5 years This year s ideas are based on the fact that everything will learn.
IBM reveals its five big innovation predictions that will change our lives within five years.
now that IBM has made predictions about technology, and this year s prognostications are sure to get people talking.#
#We discussed them with Bernie Meyerson, the vice president of innovation at IBM, and he told us that the goal of the predictions is to better marshal the company s resources
##In a nutshell, IBM says: The classroom will learn you. Buying local will beat online. Doctors will use your DNA to keep you well.
IBM can already#figure out your personality by deciphering 200 of your tweets, and its capability to read your wishes will only get better.
IBM believes the technologies will be developed with the appropriate safeguards for privacy and security, but each of these predictions raises additional privacy and security issues.
As computers get smarter and more compact, they will be built into more devices that help us do things
IBM believes that these breakthroughs in computing will amplify our human abilities. The company came up with the predictions by querying its 220,000 technical people in a bottoms-up fashion
But IBM believes the classrooms of the future will give educators the tools to learn about every student,
##In the next five years, IBM believes teachers will use##longitudinal data##such as test scores, attendance,
IBM is working on a research project with the#Gwinnett County Public schools in Georgia, the 14th largest school district in the U s. with 170,000 students.
IBM believes it can harness big data to help students out.####You ll be able to pick up problems like dyslexia instantly,
The innovations will bring the power of the Web right to where the shopper can touch it.
Retailers could rely on artificial intelligence akin to IBM s Watson which played#Jeopardy#better than many human competitors.
The Web can make sales associates smarter, and augmented reality can deliver more information to the store shelves.
IBM wants computers to help doctors understand how a tumor affects a patient down to their DNA.
IBM recently made a#breakthrough with a nanomedicine#that it can engineer to latch on to fungal cells in the body
IBM envisions a#digital guardian that will become trained to focus on the people and items it s entrusted with.
and historical data to verify a person s identity on different devices. The guardian can learn about a user
and make an inference about behavior that is out of the norm and may be the result of someone stealing that person s identity.
With 360 degrees of data about someone, it will be much harder to steal an identity.##
##The city will help you live in it IBM says that, by 2030, the towns and cities of the developing world will make up 80 percent of urban humanity and by 2050,
where smarter cities can understand in real-time how billions of events occur as computers learn to understand what people need,
IBM predicts that cities will digest#information freely provided by citizens to place resources where they are needed.
Mobile devices and social engagement will help citizens strike up a conversation with their city leaders. Such a concept is already in motion in Brazil,
where IBM researchers are working with#a crowdsourcing toolthat people can use to report accessibility problems, via their mobile phones,
Of course, as in the upcoming video game Watch Dogs from Ubisoft, a bad guy could hack into the city and use its monitoring systems in nefarious ways.
#What happens when we put computers in our brains? This may seem like a wild idea,
This is the first step in creating computers more powerful than human brains, says futurist Ray Kurzweil, in#The Singularity is Near.##
##Today, computers capable of crunching this amount of data do not exist, but IBM experts believe that supercomputers with increased computational
and memory capacity that can process this data will be available within three years. Nano engineer John Burch, commenting on this molecular nanotechnology#video,
predicts in his#blogthat expected advances in molecular nanotechnology will one day enable us to replace brain cells with damage-resistant nanomaterials that process thoughts faster than today s biological brains.##
Our artificial brain will allow wireless interface with computers and other digital technologies. We could access the Internet
control electronics, and make phone calls, with just our thoughts. In addition, we would understand complicated subjects;
#Will the Internet of Thing replace the web? Apple stores can already pinpoint your location with unprecedented accuracy. 2014 will be the year that the##internet of things###that effort to remotely control every object on earth##becomes visible in our everyday lives.
In this way, the internet of things will become more central to society than the internet#as we know it today.#
#The web will#survive, just as email survived the arrival of the web. But its role will be reduced to that of a language for displaying content on screens,
which are likely to be more ubiquitous but less necessary. Here s a closer look at the internet of things that s already here,
and where it s headed. NOTE:##It s never too late to become an invisible button pusher
and learn programming skills. More at Davinci Coders. The internet of things will create a world of##invisible buttons##The#pioneer species#of the internet of things is the smartphone.
For example,#every time we take a smartphone with us in a car, it beams information on our location and speed to Google.
The result is real-time traffic information that can be used by everyone. That smartphones gather traffic data without their users ever being aware that they re doing
so shows how the internet of things replaces the internet-related actions we already know##click a button,
navigate a webpage##with context. This awareness, especially as it relates to where we are in the physical world,
and whatever other data Google and other companies have about us, leads to what#Amber Case, a researcher for mapping company Esri,#calls##invisible buttons.##
a smartphone##moves into that physical space. It could be as small as a two-inch square on top of a conventional credit card reader,
such as the time of day, our previous actions, the actions of others or what Google knows about our calendar,
That we currently need a cell phone to act as a proximity sensor is just an artifact of where the technology is at present.
The same can be accomplished with any number of other internet-connected sensors. GE and Quirky s motion, sound, light, temperature and humidity sensor#
internet-connected smart energy systems can figure out you re home the moment you switch on a light.
which allows any newer iphone or Android phone to#know its position in space with centimeter precision.
You can think of ibeacon as a version of GPS that works indoors and which is also more precise.
Right now#companies like Estimote#are#pitching to retailers#the hardware##beacons##that broadcast the signal required to make ibeacon work.
That Apple has made ibeacon open enough to work with third-party hardware providers like Estimote shows that Apple wants the standard to spread.
Notably, the signals broadcast by any ibeacon-compatible radio (which broadcast signals known as Bluetooth Low energy) can also be picked up by Android and Windows phones,
which shows that Apple is trying to dominate a technology that could become ubiquitous across phones.
This means invisible spatial buttons that could be so small that touching your smartphone smartwatch or other equipped device to a surface will allow you to press that##button.##
Anticipatory computing and the end of interfaces Objects on our bodies (health monitors, smart glasses) and in our homes and businesses (smart thermostats, lights, appliances and security systems) can all be programmed to interact in complicated and unexpected ways
once the internet knows that we re present and what our intentions might be. For example, a smart home might know
These pro-active actions are all part of what some call##anticipatory computing.####Invisible buttons and other contextual information about you will allow the internet to do more than facilitate your needs.
It would actually anticipate them.##Google Now#is a good example of the potential of this technology.
As long as you opt in, Google has access to every meaningful store of explicit data about yourself you create##email, contacts, calendars,
social media##and plenty of implicit ones as well, like your web-browsing history.##Adding location and other physical inputs#to that data allows Google Now to do everything from sending youhyperlocal news items targeted to the precise neighborhood in
which you live#to offering information about the television show#you re watching at that exact moment.
So what s required for more companies to tap into anticipatory computing? There are companies that specialize in reality mining,
###which refers to using data to track the#remarkable predictability of our daily lives. This is a potential#bonanza for marketers#who want to target ads to particular times and places.
Marketers are already starting to use this technology#to target both online and real-world advertising (like billboards).
Wearable computers will connected keep us at all times The next layer of the internet of things will require combining disparate streams of data##mined##from reality##everything from your location to the members of your social network.
but add in data about who else is present and a computer algorithm can tell you#how likely you are to get the flu.
Finding the connections##in other words, meaning##in all this data is key to making it useful.##
##We have frictionless data gathering but we don t have frictionless correlation, ##Esri s#Case said at last year s Le Web conference.##
##If you have to be a data scientist to do it, then it s totally wrong.##
##Mike Bell, head of the new devices group at Intel, says that the future of smart devices,
##whether it s a wearable computer or a next-generation tablet replacement, will have a real user interface,
but it s not necessarily visual.####Bell, whose primary interest is wearable computing, can t talk about what Intel is currently working on,
but I d guess from our conversations that it s more likely to look like a wristband fitness monitor than another cell Phone in other words,
the internet of things will replace the internet, but not by giving us another way to explicitly tell computers what we want.
Instead, by sensing our actions, the internet-connected devices around us will react automatically, and their representations in the cloud will be updated accordingly.
In some ways, interacting with computers in the future could be more about telling them what not to do##at least until they re smart enough to realize that we are modifying our daily routine.
Sensing and responding to your needs, wants and emotions If this all sounds like mind reading,
that s because in a way it is.##Munjal Shah, entrepreneur in residence at Charles river Ventures,#surveyed a thousand peopleabout
what super powers they would acquire if they could. The most popular answer was##speak all languages,
And maybe we ve recently posted on social media about a tragedy that befell us. Text alerts are sent out to friends,
and are directed for the most part by computers, the world becomes#something like a living creature.####We believe the digital world
and body with the internet, this is good news . But if you were hoping that in the future,
getting away from it all would be as simple as#switching off your mobile phone, you re in for a rude surprise.
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