Author: admin

• Why Tesla Survived and Fisker Won’t

  Tesla’s innovations in batteries give it an edge that Fisker, focused on design, lacks.

  Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors, two startups founded to make battery-powered cars, are both in the news, but for very different reasons. Tesla Motors recently announced that it is selling cars faster than it expected, which the automaker says will make the first quarter of 2013 its first profitable quarter ever. Fisker Automotive, in contrast, has furloughed workers to cut costs and is reportedly close to bankruptcy.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Disappearing Messages Are Everywhere

  Smartphone apps that send disappearing messages are gaining in popularity.

  You’ve heard it an eye-rolling number of times: anything you post online, or any message you send—be it a seemingly benign text or a photo taken when you were drunk—can come back to haunt you.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Internet is Growing More Dangerous. But Does Anyone Care?

  Bruce Schneier says “we as a society are heading down a dangerous path”

  Whenever I start pursuing a story about a technology that purports to make the Internet more secure, or about a privacy-protecting measure that an Internet company is promoting, I try to check in with the cryptologist and security expect Bruce Schneier. It’s always a good day when Schneier gets back to you–but what he says is usually sobering.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Facebook Phone Cometh? We'll Find Out Tomorrow

  Facebook will announce its ‘New Home on Android’ tomorrow, and we’ll be updating live from Menlo Park.

  Facebook is slated to make an Android-related announcement tomorrow at its Menlo Park, California headquarters, which is expected to include a partnership with a phone manufacturer to deeply integrate the social network on a smartphone. Whatever the news, we’ll bring you all the details here as they unfold live.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Device Finds Stray Cancer Cells in Patients’ Blood

  A microfluidic device that captures circulating tumor cells could give doctors a noninvasive way to diagnose and track cancers.

  Doctors typically diagnose cancer via a biopsy, which can be invasive and expensive. A better way to diagnose the disease would be to detect telltale tumor cells floating in the bloodstream, but such a test has proved difficult to develop because stray cancer cells are rare, and it’s difficult to separate them from the mélange of cells in circulation.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Bill Gates Spreads his Battery Bets on Aquion

  Aquion Energy lands $35 million to commercialize its novel grid-storage battery, bringing in Bill Gates as investor.

  When it comes to disruptive battery startups, one of the best endorsements you can get comes from software tycoon Bill Gates.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Paper-and-Pencil Cosmological Calculator

  Ever struggled with the problem of converting redshift into parsecs, your worries are over thanks to a new cosmological distance chart based on the very latest data

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Data-Crunching Prize to Cut Flight Delays

  A contest to improve flight arrival estimates is the first step in a plan to automate in-flight decisions.

  A team from Singapore is taking home a $100,000 prize for developing an algorithm that could help airlines better predict flight arrival times and reduce passenger delays. The contest was sponsored by General Electric and Alaska Airlines.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Can Barnes & Noble Save the Book?

  It’s looking grim.

  I can be something of a Luddite, for a technology blogger. I recently jilted my iPhone. It took me ages to buy a Kindle, and I was a holdout on the iPad until I received a hand-me-down copy. And while I’ve come to love my iPad for short-form reading and TV streaming, and even for the occasional mid-length magazine piece, I simply can’t stand reading books digitally. I find my Kindle (and Kindle app) useful for downloading free books, or books I merely want to scan for research. But when I want to be drawn into the world of a story, when I want the full aesthetic experience a book can give me, I still want paper in my hands. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Obama Announces First Funding for Brain Mapping Project

  A plan to map the activity of entire brain regions down to the level of indvidual neurons got its official nod from the White House on Tuesday when President Obama announced his budget will request $100 million in funding for the project in 2014.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• What Makes Citizen Scientists Tick?

  A new survey reveals why citizen scientists take part in crowdsourced science projects

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Software Makes Multiple Screens Less Distracting

  Diff Displays reduces distraction by visually highlighting what’s changed on your screen since you last looked.

  Most computer interfaces are designed to capture your attention—whether you like it or not. A new system for computers with multiple screens, called Diff Displays, responds to inattention by making the information on the screen a user isn’t focused on less distracting.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Designer Carbon Provides Longer Battery Life

  Energ2’s nanostructured carbon anodes can boost lithium-ion battery capacity by 30 percent.

  A Seattle-based startup, EnerG2, has developed a carbon anode that significantly improves the storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries without requiring a new battery design or a different manufacturing process.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Messenger RNAs Could Create a New Class of Drugs

  New partnerships could help bring a novel class of biopharmaceutical to patients.

  Messenger RNAs—molecules that carry information between the genome and the protein-building machinery of cells—could become the next big class of biopharmaceutical drug.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Solar Downturn Casts a Shadow Over Innovation

  With no one buying new equipment, solar companies are looking to make the best of existing technology.

  Suntech Power, the large Chinese solar panel maker that filed for bankruptcy last month, isn’t the only solar company teetering on the edge. Almost all of the world’s largest solar panel makers are in danger of going bankrupt within a year, and the downturn is having an impact on innovation.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Roller Coaster Day for Copyright Law

  A federal appeals court rules for Aereo, the service that could encourage more people to cut the cord on their TV packages.

  Two controversial startups I’ve covered, Aereo and ReDigi, had cleverly designed their technology to challenge digital copyright laws. Promptly sued by TV networks and the record industry respectively, both had a day in court this week. One has survived to fight another day. The other may not.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Kinect-Powered Depression Detector is Amazing and Creepy

  By analyzing a surprisingly simple set of facial tics, a depth camera can see right into your soul.

  [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejczMs6b1Q4]

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Can Tesla Shift to Higher Volume?

  Tesla says stronger sales will increase profits for the quarter, while it cuts the lowest-range Model S electric sedan.

  Tesla Motors had an Easter present for its investors: due to better-than-expected sales of its Model S, it raised profit forecasts for the first quarter this year. It also dropped the low-end version of the Model S, hinting at challenges the company may face as it seeks to make a lower-priced electric car.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Nuance Thinks Voice Ads Could Be a Mobile Hit

  Nuance hopes its voice-recognition tech can produce mobile ads that you actually want to have a conversation with.

  In online advertising lingo, the acronym CPC refers to “cost per click”—the amount an advertiser pays whenever someone clicks on an ad. If voice-recognition technology company Nuance gets its way, though, it could soon have an additional meaning: “cost per conversation.”

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Network Theory Approach Reveals Altitude Sickness to be Two Different Diseases

  When the symptoms of altitude sickness are treated as a network, two distinct clinical syndromes emerge, say physicians.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• In a Bid to Get Its Devices Into the Workplace, Samsung Courts Businesses

  The leading smartphone manufacturer hopes to one-up Apple and nudge out struggling Blackberry.

  Sanjay Bhatia comes into his office each morning and plugs his tablet into a docking station. On his desk sits a headset, display, and keyboard. What’s conspicuously absent is a desk phone.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Carbon-Dioxide Storage with Less Earthquake Risk

  Underground rocks that react with carbon dioxide to form minerals could offer a safe way to keep the greenhouse gas from reaching the atmosphere.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Other Interesting arXiv Papers This Week

  The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server

  Eliminating Cracking During Drying

  
  
  
  
  
  

• "Massive" Cyberattack Wasn't Really So Massive

  A decade-old fix could have easily stopped this weekend’s attack on an anti-spam company, but the truth is many Web companies simply ignore such fixes.

  An attack that disrupted Internet service over the past week would have been stopped by a simple Web server configuration fix that’s been understood for a decade but is widely ignored by Web companies, experts say.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Neat Little Primer on the History of Mobile Viruses

  A three-part blog series from antivirus software maker Norton details the surprisingly long history of mobile malware.

  Mobile Security, a mobile seucrity news site maintained by Symantec’s Norton antivirus business, has published an interesting three-part blog series on the origins and rise of mobile malware–an issue that’s increasingly important as more and more of us snatch up smartphones and tablets.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• We Need Nuclear-Powered Airplanes, Not Solar-Powered Ones

  Making liquid fuels from low-carbon sources is better than mounting solar panels on planes.

  It’s being billed as a triumph for solar power, but the Solar Impulse solar-powered airplane could also be seen as an illustration of just how amazing liquid fuels like jet fuel are, and how far solar power and battery technology would need to go to challenge them. A far better idea than solar-powered flight is nuclear-powered flight, although I don’t mean putting nuclear reactors on airplanes as the U.S. government once proposed (see these two pdfs). Let’s use fission to make low-carbon fuel.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• I'm Boycotting "Intuitive" Interfaces

  My pledge to never use the “i”-word about technology again. (I’ll need help keeping it.)

  I have a problem with “intuitive interfaces,” and if you care about how technology connects with people and with itself, you might have a problem too. My problem is that I keep talking about “intuitive interfaces” as if they exist. They don’t. No such animal. Never has been, never will be. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Akamai’s Plan for a Wireless Data Fast Lane

  Clogged wireless networks spur a plan to speed data to smartphones, for a price.

  No matter how quickly you dispatch data over the Internet, the last link is increasingly a wireless link to a customer’s smartphone or tablet. Those links are slower and sometimes congested. These days, while the average desktop Web page loads in two to three seconds, the average mobile Web page takes about eight seconds—sometimes causing shoppers to abandon transactions.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Google Keep vs. Evernote: No Clear Winner

  Google’s Keep app copies key Evernote functions, but there’s plenty of room for both note-taking apps.

  We’ve all heard that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But when a tech heavyweight like Google imitates a popular tool like the note-taking app Evernote, it can feel more like a land grab.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How to Make a Computer from a Living Cell

  Genetic logic gates will enable biologists to program cells for chemical production and disease detection.

  If biologists could put computational controls inside living cells, they could program them to sense and report on the presence of cancer, create drugs on site as they’re needed, or dynamically adjust their activities in fermentation tanks used to make drugs and other chemicals. Now researchers at Stanford University have developed a way to make genetic parts that can perform the logic calculations that might someday control such activities.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• This Modular Tablet Could Be the Future of Gaming — and Computing

  Lessons from the Razer Edge, the promising new gaming tablet.

  The Razer Edge, a new gaming tablet running Windows 8, sure looks like the future of computing. The key is its modularity–its ability to switch-hit, and switch-hit again, reinventing itself as a handheld gaming device, a tablet, a console, a computer, right before your eyes. CNET calls it, aptly, the “Swiss Army gaming tablet.”

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Voice-Analysis App to Diganose Concussions

  A voice-analysis program could help coaches recognize concussions ringside or on the side lines, say researchers at the University of Notre Dame.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Cheaper Way to Make Hydrogen from Water

  University of Calgary researchers create new method for making water-splitting catalysts using abundant metals.

  One of the main barriers blocking wide-scale use of fuel cells is the expensive catalysts used to produce hydrogen fuel from water. Researchers at the University of Calgary say they have developed a novel method for making catalysts using inexpensive metals.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• BlackBerry’s Fate is Intertwined with Its Keyboard

  The ailing smartphone maker announced better-than-expected results, but still faces its most important moments ahead.

  BlackBerry impressed Wall Street this morning with its first earnings report to include some sales of smartphones running BlackBerry 10, the operating system that the ailing manufacturer is counting on to save it. “Impress” is a relative term. It sold a million of these devices (6 million overall) while revenues dropped 40 percent since the previous year. Still, the Canadian company, formerly known as Research in Motion, did manage to turn a profit. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Los Angeles Maps Electricity Use at the Block Level

  Interactive Data Visualization App Sheds Light on Energy Use and Inefficient Buildings.

  Most buildings waste energy but how inefficient one building is compared to others is difficult to know. At a city level, choosing which buildings are ripe for efficiency upgrades is even harder.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How Strong Social Ties Hinder the Spread of Rumours

  Mobile phone data reveal the counterintuitive effect that strong social ties can hinder rather than promote the spread of rumours, say social network theorists

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Can Small Reactors Ignite a Nuclear Renaissance?

  Small reactors have some benefits, but they won’t make nuclear as cheap as natural gas.

  Small, modular nuclear reactor designs could be relatively cheap to build and safe to operate, and there’s plenty of corporate and government momentum behind a push to develop and license them. But will they be able to offer power cheap enough to compete with natural gas? And will they really help revive the moribund nuclear industry in the United States?

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Gut Microbes Could Help Us Lose Weight

  Two studies suggest that microbes play a role in weight loss.

  Microbes in the gut may be a key to helping people lose weight, according to two tantalizing new studies.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Volvo Demos a Nifty Cyclist Detection System

  By tracking moving objects, Volvo’s system could help prevent accidents.

  Cyclists and drivers have been sworn enemies for as long as anyone can remember. Biking around Boston means dodging opening car doors, swerving around potholes, and enduring incomprehensible abuse from permanently enraged taxi drivers. Driving the same streets in a car, meanwhile, involves keeping one eye peeled for cyclists who run red lights, weave through traffic, and generally seem hell-bent on injuring themselves. A clever new system from Volvo could perhaps help thaw relations between these natural roadway foes.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Dawn of Genome Trolling

  Putting genome data into the public domain advances science, but nearly all of it can be linked to someone.

  Last week European scientists were shamed into cutting off public access to a genome sequence. As far as I know, it’s the first instance of a genome pulled from the public record.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Astrophysicists Test Cosmological Defect Detector

  Astrophysicists have built and tested the building blocks of a global detector capable of spotting topological defects in the cosmos as the Earth passes through them

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Qualcomm Wants to Be Famous

  Qualcomm is already worth more than Intel. Now the chip maker wants everyone to know it.

  Qualcomm sells chips that go inside TVs, BMW dashboards, game consoles, and, most important, one-third of smartphones sold. It did $19 billion in business last year, and its stock market value has surpassed that of rival Intel.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Perfect Parking Garage: No Drivers Required

  With security, reliability, and legal issues yet to be resolved, the first self-driving vehicles will perform only specific tasks.

  Drivers who use a parking garage in Ingolstadt, Germany, could be forgiven for thinking they’ve died and gone to commuter heaven. They can pull up outside, step out of their car, and let it drive into the garage to find a parking spot for itself. Later, they simply press a button on a smartphone app and their car will obediently return to the garage entrance.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Why IBM Made a Liquid Transistor

  IBM materials advance shows another promising path to replace the foundation of today’s computing technologies.

  Researchers at IBM last week unveiled an experimental new way to store information or control the switching of an electronic circuit.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How Access to Location Data Could Trample Your Privacy

  The smartphone revolution will include unprecedented surveillance by companies hoping to make money from user data.

  In addition to making it easier to stay connected, the smartphone boom seems likely to bring with it another, less welcome, result: unprecedented surveillance by companies hoping to make money off of your whereabouts and behavior.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Amazon’s Remote Processing Vision

  An Amazonian future of many screens and few processors.

  A patent application envisioning a new future for computing has recently come to light, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is one of the applicants. The patent envisions “a remote display system including a portable display that wirelessly receives data and power from a primary station.” Basically, the idea would be for computing systems wherein most of the processing is done on a base station, and the environment around the base station is populated with numerous “dumb” terminals. This could lead to tablets that are very lightweight, according to the patent application (which is just that–a patent application–and should be taken with a grain of salt).

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• The Markets that Startup Founders are Missing

  A common piece of advice given to entrepreneurs may lead them to overlook or dismiss good ideas.

  I read a headline on TechCrunch this week about how the startup, Proven, is helping people apply build resumes and apply for jobs from their smartphones. My immediate reaction was to think this is a ridiculous idea. Really, if a job opening is so great that I want to drop everything to apply, wouldn’t I at least take a few minutes to get to a PC?

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Ingenious: A Mini Mobile Browser That Lives in Your Desktop Browser

  Ever wanted to scan another website without switching browser tabs? Glimpse is for you.

  Thanks to responsive design, most modern websites (including this one) serve up different versions of themselves depending on what device you’re using to visit them – usually a “full” site designed for browsing on a laptop or desktop, plus a streamlined “mobile” version optimized for small screens. If you’ve ever preferred the latter version of your favorite site to the “real” one, even when you’re not using your phone (hello, Techmeme), you’ll appreciate Glimpse: an experimental add-on for the Chrome web browser that pops up a little smartphone-sized “mini mobile browser” right inside your desktop browser window. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Future of TV–Terrestrial Broadcasting Or Video-On-Demand Over Cellular Networks?

  Replacing terrestrial broadcasts with a cellular network capable of video-on-demand won’t make sense unless viewing habits change dramatically, concludes a new study on the future of television

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Nanowires Suck Up Light from Around Them

  The optical properties of nanowires suggest a new way to make more efficient solar panels.

   

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Former Walmart Exec Wants to Help You Buy Less

  An unlikely team comes together with a startup that aims to change retail by becoming the marketplace for the “sharing economy.”

  A decade ago, Andy Ruben was in charge of global strategy at a company that environmentalists love to hate: Walmart. Adam Werbach was a firebrand activist who had served as the youngest-ever president of the venerable green group, the Sierra Club, at age 23. It’d be hard to imagine a more unlikely pair sitting together in a San Francisco office in 2013. But today Ruben and Werbach are founders of a six-person startup with a grand plan: to reduce waste and change the retail economy by getting people to stop buying $200 billion worth of stuff every year.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Data-Driven Artist

  When viewers decide what’s on TV, who wins?

  In a salvo against Netflix, which has gained attention for its original series “House of Cards,” Amazon announced today that it would be producing a pilot for a TV series derived from “Zombieland,” the hit 2009 horror-comedy. What’s most interesting about Amazon’s announcement, though, is the revelation that it will only be ordering a full season of the series depending on customer feedback.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Predictive Smartphone Assistant Gives You a Heads-Up

  Startup Sherpa’s predictive intelligence offers valuable insights when and where you need them.

  Google Now, an app for Android smartphones that serves up useful information such as flight details when it thinks you need it, is getting some competition from a former Googler.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Shrinking Blob Computes Traveling Salesman Solutions

  A blob of “intelligent” goo can compute solutions to one of the most famous problems in mathematics and produces a route map as well, say computer scientists.

  The traveling salesman problem is one of the more famous challenges in mathematics. This is the problem of finding the shortest route for visiting a number of cities once and then returning to the place of origin.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Amazon’s Head of Mobile Interfaces

  The man responsible for Amazon’s mobile shopping strategy talks about app design, shopping habits, and how to make it easier to act on your impulses.

  Sam Hall doesn’t just eat his own dog food, as the Silicon Valley saying goes. He also orders it on his mobile phone.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Microchip Adapts to Severe Damage

  An integrated circuit that adjusts to damage shows a way to make ordinary chips more efficient and reliable.

   

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Are Your Doctor’s Hands Clean? This Wristband Knows

  An RFID-reading, motion-sensing wristband buzzes to tell health-care workers if they are washing their hands properly.

  A startup called IntelligentM wants to make hospitals healthier by encouraging workers to clean their hands properly. Its solution is a bracelet that vibrates when the wearer has scrubbed sufficiently, giving employees a way to check their habits and letting employers know who is and isn’t doing things right.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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