Category: Tech News

• Unlocking Human Potential – Answer

  In five years, what new models of work and collaboration will we see?

  This Conversation on the Future of Business is brought to you by SAP & MIT Technology Review Custom. 

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• With Firefox OS, an $80 Smartphone Tries to Prove Its Worth

  Despite limitations, the Firefox OS-running ZTE Open shows promise for low-cost smartphones.

  While the word “smartphone” usually evokes images of pricey iPhones and Android handsets, plenty of inexpensive smartphones are also hitting the market—ripe for the millions of cell phone owners who want a smartphone, but can’t (or don’t want to) pay hundreds of dollars for one.

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• The Clever Circuit That Doubles Bandwidth

  A Stanford startup’s new radio can send and receive information on the same frequency—an advance that could double the speed of wireless networks.

  A startup spun out of Stanford says it has solved an age-old problem in radio communications with a new circuit and algorithm that allow data to be sent and received on the same radio frequency—thus doubling wireless capacity, at least in theory.

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• Startup Gets Computers to Read Faces, Seeks Purpose Beyond Ads

  A technology for reading emotions on faces can help companies sell candy. Now its creators hope it also can take on bigger problems.

  Last year more than 1,000 people in four countries sat down and watched 115 television ads, such as one featuring anthropomorphized M&M candies boogying in a bar. All the while, webcams pointed at their faces and streamed images of their expressions to a server in Waltham, Massachusetts.

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• Customer Centricity

  In five years, what will fundamentally change the customer experience as we know it today?

  This Conversation on the Future of Business is brought to you by SAP & MIT Technology Review Custom. 

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• The Real Privacy Problem

  As Web companies and government agencies analyze ever more information about our lives, it’s tempting to respond by passing new privacy laws or creating mechanisms that pay us for our data. Instead, we need a civic solution, because democracy is at risk.

  In 1967, The Public Interest, then a leading venue for highbrow policy debate, published a provocative essay by Paul Baran, one of the fathers of the data transmission method known as packet switching. Titled “The Future Computer Utility,” the essay speculated that someday a few big, centralized computers would provide “information processing … the same way one now buys electricity.”

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• A Tale of Two Drugs

  Today’s medicines can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The story of how two companies set prices for their costly new drugs suggests that the way we determine the value of such treatments will help decide the future of our health-care system.

  In January 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Kalydeco, the first drug to treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis, after just three months of review. It was one of the fastest approvals of a new medicine in the agency’s history. Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which discovered and developed the drug, priced Kalydeco at $294,000 a year, which made it one of the world’s most expensive medicines. The company also pledged to provide it free to any patient in the United States who is uninsured or whose insurance won’t cover it. Doctors and patients enthusiastically welcomed the drug because it offers life-saving health benefits and there is no other treatment. Insurers and governments readily paid the cost.

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• Why This Might Be the Model T of Workplace Robots

  A mobile, one-armed robot that costs $35,000 is headed for research labs and maybe even some workplaces.

  According to Melonee Wise, the manual laborer of the future has only one arm and stands just three feet, two inches tall. Such are the vital statistics of UBR1, a $35,000 mobile robot unveiled today by Wise’s startup company Unbounded Robotics.

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• Graphics Chips Help Process Big Data Sets in Milliseconds

  A new database tool dramatically improves processing speeds using technology that’s already in your computer.

  New software can use the graphics processors found on everyday computers to process torrents of data more quickly than is normally possible, opening up new ways to visually explore everything from Twitter posts to political donations.

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• How Hollywood Can 
Capitalize on Piracy

  After spending millions of dollars on legal fees, film studios should stop suing downloaders and take better advantage of what they do.

  Jack Valenti, the late president of the Motion Picture Association of America, once warned that a new form of distribution might kill his industry. It would empty theaters and drain studio coffers. Why would anyone venture out to multiplexes when films could be disseminated virtually free and viewed in the convenience of your own home?

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