Category: Tech News

• A Google Fiber Showdown in Lone Star State

  Google fiber promises competition for AT&T and Time Warner Cable in Austin

  New glimmers of competition are coming to the Internet fiber-to-the-home business in the United States: Google is branching out from its Kansas City experiment and staking a claim in Austin, Texas.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Brinicles and the Origin of Life

  Extraordinary tubes of ice that grow down into the ocean from ice sheets could be as significant for the origin of life as hydrothermal vents, say chemists

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Flexible Keyboard with Buttons That Feel Clickable

  Transparent, shape-changing plastics could make touch screens and keyboards that stimulate users’ sense of touch.

  A very thin keyboard that uses shape-changing polymers to replicate the feel and sound of chunky, clicking buttons could be in laptops and ultrabooks next year. Strategic Polymers Sciences, the San Francisco-based company that developed the keyboard, is working on transparent coatings that would enable this feature in touch screens.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Facebook’s Real “Home” May be the Developing World

  The new Facebook-centric Android app for smartphones builds on other efforts to court mobile users internationally.

  Facebook Home, a new collection of apps that makes the social network dominate Android phones, might have limited appeal to users already besieged with smartphone options—but it could fit nicely into Facebook’s efforts overseas, where the focus is on capturing first-time users.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Taser’s On-Body Cameras Could Make Cops Self-Policing

  While raising privacy concerns, Taser’s cop-cam should help enforce ethical police work.

  The Verge has a great report about an emerging trend in policing–cameras that cops wear on the their bodies while interacting with suspects. (The piece is worth reading in full, particularly for the little documentary in the middle, which gives a better sense of how this technology works, as well as an eerie and innovative design element that causes images to elude the viewer scrolling through the article.)

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Why a Botched IT Project Will Destroy a Major Corporation in the Near Future

  The risks associated with major IT projects are being vastly underestimated, according to the largest study of global IT projects ever undertaken.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Will Vertical Turbines Make More of the Wind?

  A Caltech researcher thinks arrays of tiny wind turbines could produce cheaper power than big ones.

  The remote Alaskan village of Igiugig—home to about 50 people—will be the first to demonstrate a new approach to wind power that could boost power output and, its inventors say, just might make it more affordable.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Why Obama's Brain-Mapping Project Matters

  Obama calls for $100 million to develop new technologies to understand the brain.

  Last week, President Obama officially announced $100 million in funding for arguably the most ambitious neuroscience initiative ever proposed.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Other Interesting arXiv Papers This Week

  The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server

  Felinic Principle And Measurement Of The Hubble Parameter

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Three Technologies Could Solve the Methane Leak Issue

  A World Resources Institute report recommends regulations to stop leaks, as we wait for data.

  No one really knows how much better natural gas is compared to coal, greenhouse-gas wise. That’s because no one knows how much natural gas leaks into the atmosphere during production and distribution. Although burning natural gas releases something like half the amount of carbon dioxide as burning coal, leaks of natural gas can offset that advantage since natural gas contains methane, itself a powerful greenhouse gas.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Cost of Dementia: Worse Than We Thought

  A new study shows that dementia will have a crippling impact on the U.S. economy.

  Dementia’s financial impact on the U.S. economy in 2010 was around $109 billion, reported researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday. That figure largely consists of the costs of nursing-home care and home-based care, and it will likely double by 2040 as the population ages, according to the study.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Sesame Street for Makers?

  Adafruit’s educational series is a brilliant, necessary corrective to our “magic box” tech culture.

  This week, Adafruit Industries launches an educational series aimed at kids, report Hackaday and others. And it’s about time.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Turning off the Power to Run the Grid

  Demand response—essentially dialing back power at key times—is quietly becoming a key technology for the electricity grid of the future.

  The off switch is a fast-growing source of power in some parts of the electricity grid.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Brazil Nut Effect Measured in Lunar and Martian Gravity Conditions

  Brazil nuts would rise to the top of a container of mixed nuts on Mars and the Moon, but more slowly than on Earth, say physicists

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Facebook Phone Is Finally Here, but Who Wants It?

  The appeal of Facebook’s new phone software may be limited to hardcore users.

  On Thursday morning, Mark Zuckerberg stood smiling in front of a crowd of journalists and employees at Facebook’s headquarters and put months of rumors to an end. “Today we’re finally going to talk about that Facebook phone,” he said, referring to long-swirling speculation that the social network was secretly developing a device to rival the iPhone. He immediately clarified, adding, “More accurately, we’re going to talk about how you can turn your Android phone into a great, simple, social device.”

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Do We Need Specialized Hardware for the Deaf?

  Companies that once made specialized hardware may soon be relegated to software and services.

  A company called Purple Communications this week unveiled a product called SmartVP. It’s a videophone with applications and features to help deaf people communicate. Purple says it’s the first videophone to feature “true HD quality.”

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Scientists Use MRI to Glimpse the Dreaming Mind

  Scientists use a computer model to predict dream imagery from MRI scans.

  MRI scans of a sleeping person’s brain can help predict what’s seen in the land of Nod.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Facebook Home: A Social Smartphone Makeover

  A modified version of Android puts social networking, and Facebook, at the heart of a device.

  MIT Technology Review editor Rachel Metz live-blogged Facebook’s announcement from its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Read her blow-by-blow account of the event below.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• 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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