Category: Tech News

• 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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• The Little Secrets Behind Apple’s Green Data Centers

  Apple is using a combination of solar, fuel cells, and renewable energy purchases to meet its clean-energy targets.

  Apple this week said that all of its data centers are powered by renewable energy. How Apple achieved that impressive goal reflects the complexity of transitioning to renewable energy. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Other Interesting arXiv Papers This Week

  The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server

  RadioAstron – a Telescope with a Size of 300 000 km: Main Parameters and First Observational Results

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Tale of Two Genachowskis

  FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will leave a legacy of progress on spectrum policy and broadband expansion– in a nation of monopolies charging high prices

  In Hong Kong, I’m told you can get 500 megabits-per-second Internet service for $25 a month.  In my Massachusetts neighborhood–which happens to be served by Verizon FIOS fiber service–getting one-tenth that speed will set you back $80 (plus taxes and fees).  And whereas in Hong Kong uploads are as fast as downloads, the Verizon service gives me half-speed on the uploads.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• HBO GO-It-Alone?

  HBO mulls breaking apart from the bundle. Will its broadband partners acquiesce?

  Earlier this week, I mentioned what Aereo’s CEO had told me would be a metric for progress in TV innovation: à la carte pricing for individual networks, rather than a compulsory bundle of countless channels we don’t watch. Many people had their eyes on HBO, the strongest brand in cable right now, as the maverick that might make a move towards separating its content from cable subscriptions. After all, it was making just this happen in Scandinavia, going directly head-to-head with the likes of Netflix there.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Doctors Should Tell Patients About Some, But Not All, Unexpected Genetic Findings

  A professional medical geneticists group recommends that certain genetic risk factors be examined in all medical DNA sequence tests.

  On Thursday, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics recommended that doctors tell patients about certain genetic disease risks if they accidentally find them when exploring a patient’s genome for another reason. However, the group does not recommend that doctors tell patients about all incidental findings.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Warning: When Selling Domestic Drones, Mileage May Vary

  As the debate continues over drones in U.S. skies, other countries could show the way.

  When I visited Australia a couple of years back, I picked up the phrase “no worries” which I still use in my speech today. And when it comes to domestic drones, it appears Aussies really are less worried than Americans. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Startup EnerVault Rethinks Flow Battery Chemistry

  EnerVault later this year will test its first grid-scale flow battery that uses low-cost materials and proprietary pumping system.

  Flow batteries have emerged as one of most promising ways to store many hours of energy on the electricity grid. To make costs more competitive, startup EnerVault is pursuing a novel chemistry and unique mechanical design. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Five Opportunities for Mobile Computing

  Thousands of startup companies see mobile computing as their chance to strike it big. We picked five.

  About three dozen mobile-computing startup companies get funded by investors each month in the United States, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Around the world, tens of thousands more entrepreneurs are dreaming and coding and trying to invent something big.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Skipping the Water in Fracking

  The push to extend fracking to arid regions is drawing attention to water-free techniques.

  Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, uses large amounts of water injected into wells under high pressure to help free natural gas and oil from shale deposits (see “Drilling for Shale Gas”). Yet some of the world’s largest sources of shale gas are found in deserts, making the technique seem impractical.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• No Map? No GPS? No Problem

  Startup Navisens says it can find people indoors using motion sensors and math.

  Now that it’s easy to find your way in the real world with just a smartphone in hand, the next logical navigation frontier is indoors, where GPS doesn’t work and maps are often nonexistent. Australian startup Navisens says it has a plan to track everyone from firefighters searching through burning buildings to consumers wandering through shopping malls, without requiring any special wireless signals.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Is Google Keep Better Than a Post-It?

  Keep’s paper-like qualities might just beat its computery ones.

  In January, I did something heretical for a productivity-app-obsessed tech writer: I threw away the “list” apps on my phone and went back to paper. As a queryable, bottomless, always-accessible database of my every passing thought, a Post-It stuck to my iPhone certainly falls short compared to Evernote or Clear. But here’s what I realized: for me, most of the time, I don’t need a database, nor do I want to spend time querying and managing one. I’m with Bret Victor: interacting with software mostly sucks on principle. For the job of “jotting” random stuff, paper’s form (physical, flexible, direct) just plain beat software’s function. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Why the Bankruptcy of Suntech Matters

  The Chinese government is allowing major solar companies to fail, and that’s a good thing.

  The Chinese government helped finance a massive expansion of the solar industry, helping to create a glut of solar panels—and leading to rapidly reducing prices for solar. But now it has let the main subsidiary of its most prominent solar panel manufacturer, Suntech Power, go bankrupt.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Doomsday Recalculation Gives Humanity Greater Chance of Long-Term Survival

  And the odds would improve further, say physicists, were we to make serious efforts to counter existential threats such as asteroid strikes

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• BrightSource Pushes Ahead on Another Massive Solar Thermal Plant

  With BrightSource’s Ivanpah solar plant about to come online, the company looks to its next projects for the economics to improve.

  BrightSource Energy is planning to complete construction of one of world’s largest solar thermal power plants this year, and is now betting on an even more massive project that it hopes will come online by 2016. The Oakland, California, company’s first utility-scale plant, its 370-megawatt Ivanpah facility in the Mojave Desert, uses thousands of software-controlled mirrors to direct sunlight at three central towers that produce steam and power a turbine (see “In Pictures: The World’s Largest Solar Thermal Power Plant”). PG&E and Southern California Edison have entered long-term contracts to buy power from the three units of the project, a sprawling 3,500-acre installation that cost $2.2 billion and is slated to start firing up this summer.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Facebook and Google Create Walled Gardens for Web Newcomers Overseas

  In some countries, “the Internet” is confined to certain sites as part of a strategy to help wireless carriers offer starter packages.

  With more than half the people in the world still not online, Facebook and Google are waging a battle to make sure that Internet newcomers get their first tastes of the Web from them.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Nanoparticles Show Which Way the Stem Cells Went

  By monitoring the path of stem cells in the body, scientists can better explore experimental therapies, and doctors can better tune treatments in patients.

  Giving patients stem cells packaged with silica nanoparticles could help doctors determine the effectiveness of the treatments by revealing where the cells go after they’ve left the injection needle.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Elusive Power of Tweets

  Study shows mixed answers to the question of whether Tweets drive ratings–revealing limits to what we know about social media’s real-world effects

  Can Tweets drive television ratings?  Meaning, when people are gushing about a show, does it change other people’s choices and behavior?  If it does, it means we know something new about how social media activity affects events in the real world.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Apparently Samsung is Prepping a Smart Watch. Meh.

  Smart watches sound neat, but I doubt I’ll be wearing one soon.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Don’t Count Out Thin-Film Solar

  As startup Solexant resurfaces for funds, consider the possibility that thin-film will still have its day.

  Thin-film solar is back in the news as Solexant, a company that’s been hiding out for the past two years, recently resurfaced, likely with the goal of raising more funds (see “Thin-Film Solar with High Efficiency”). A few years ago, thin-film solar was all the rage in Silicon Valley. It was supposed to be a cheaper alternative to conventional silicon solar panels, promising costs as low as a jaw-dropping $1 per watt. It fell out of fashion as conventional silicon solar panels first approached, and then dropped below that cost. Thin-film solar companies started failing, or being acquired for pennies on the dollar, or dropping off the radar, lurking at a low burn rate in the hope that the solar market will surge, creating demand for their product.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• New 3-D Display Could Let Phones and Tablets Produce Holograms

  Optical trickery lets a modified LCD produce hologram-like still images and videos.

  A new kind of three-dimensional display developed at HP Labs plays hologram-like videos without the need for any moving parts or glasses. Videos displayed on the HP system hover above the screen, and viewers can walk around them and experience an image or video from as many 200 different viewpoints—like walking around a real object.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Ocean-faring Robot Cashes in on Offshore Oil and Gas

  Liquid Robotics raised $45 million to build out its fleet of self-propelled marine robots.

  Liquid Robotics is betting that autonomous vehicles will emerge as the best way to troll the oceans to gather data. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Computer Simulations Reveal Benefits of Random Investment Strategies Over Traditional Ones

  Central Banks could use random investment strategies to make markets more stable, say econophysicists

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Video Chat That’s a Little Closer to Hanging Out in Real Life

  A startup called Rabbit believes consumers will jump for always-on video chatting that lets you watch movies with an infinite number of friends.

  With so many video-chat applications already on the market, it sounds like a silly idea: build a new one while pretending the others never existed.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Your Next Smartphone Screen May Be Made of Sapphire

  Manufactured sapphire is incredibly strong and scratch resistant. Now falling costs and technology improvements could make it competitive with glass.

  Manufactured sapphire—a material that’s used as transparent armor on military vehicles—could become cheap enough to replace the glass display covers on mobile phones. That could mean smartphone screens that don’t crack when you drop them and can’t be scratched with keys, or even by a concrete sidewalk.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Lack of Ways to Measure Success Holds Back Mobile Ads

  No one really knows if ads on smartphones work.

  Where consumer attention goes, ad dollars are supposed to follow. That hasn’t quite happened on mobile devices.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Nanofabrication Technique Doubles Hard Drive Capacity

  Laboratory advance shows that nano-imprinting could help the hard drive industry meet its long-term goals for data storage capacity.

  Researchers at HGST, a major manufacturer of hard disk drives, have shown that an emerging fabrication technology called nano-imprinting could be used to double the data storage capacity of today’s hard disks. They say the patent-pending work, done in collaboration with a company called Molecular Imprints, could lead to a cost-effective manufacturing process by the end of the decade.

  Hard disk drives store data in magnetic material on the surface of a spinning disk. During production, this material is deposited as a thin film. Information is then written to the disk by changing the magnetic orientation of distinct individual units of the material, known as “grains.” A group of grains together make up a region that can store a single bit. Since the 1950s, when the technology was invented, hard disk manufacturers have continually found ways to keep increasing data storage capacity by reducing the area required to store a bit, most recently by using fewer and fewer clustered grains for each.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Television Will Not Be Revolutionized

  An ABC app is only a half-step forward.

  The New York Times is reporting that The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, is developing an app that would live stream ABC content to phones and tablets. Reportedly, the app would likely be available to users as soon as this year, and it stands to reason that the app would be similar to the apps WatchESPN and WatchDisney (the Disney Company owns all three networks). The app would make ABC the first American broadcaster to provide a live Internet stream of programming to users.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Stealthy De-Extinction Startup

  By reviving lost species, a new company could put a warm and fuzzy face on advanced reproductive engineering.

  Two of biotechnology’s most prolific and far-sighted researchers say they’re teaming up to start a company that intends to rewrite the rules of animal reproduction.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Abu Dhabi Plugs in Giant Concentrating Solar Plant

  Abu Dhabi diversifies its energy with $600 million solar project.

  The oil-rich sheikhdom of Abu Dhabi plugged in what it says is the large concentrating solar power plant in the world, a sign that Middle Eastern countries are serious about developing their solar resources.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Social Networks Reveal Structure (And Weaknesses) of Businesses

  Computer scientists have recreated the international and organisational structure of large corporations using publicly available data on social networks

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• An Unlikely Plan to Revive the Passenger Pigeon

  Advances in genetic engineering have some biologists convinced they’ll re-create extinct species.

  Passenger pigeons once darkened the skies over the eastern United States. Huge flocks would roost on chestnut trees, their weight snapping off branches. By 1914, though, humans had hunted the bird to extinction.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Near-Whole Brain Activity Map in Fish

  Neuron-level whole-brain activity maps could one day help explain brain function and disfunction.

  Image: Neurons glow red as they fire in this whole zebrafish larva brain. Credit: Misha Ahrens and Philipp Keller

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Religion of Innovation

  Enough with innovation for innovation’s sake.

  BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins took a shot at Apple today, speaking to a reporter for The Australian Financial Review. While couching his statement in respectful terms–“Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market”–Heins nonetheless suggested that Apple was lagging behind. “The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old,” he told the Review. Meanwhile, a series of analysts have suggested that Apple is taking too long to release its hardware updates. Charles Golvin of Forrester said that Apple’s current rate of releases is “not an adequate cadence for Apple to remain at the forefront of smartphone innovation today.”

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How Smart Watches and Phablets Fulfill a 20-Year-Old Prophecy about Ubiquitous Computing

  Mark Weiser, who coined the term “ubiquitous computing,” foresaw current device trends decades ago.

  “Tabs, pads, and boards.” The phrase may sound like a piece of techno-buzzy cud coughed up at a TEDx or SXSW talk, but it’s actually a precise description of current hardware trends made 22 years ago by a chief scientist at Xerox PARC. That scientist, the late Mark Weiser, was talking about his then-new concept of “ubiquitous computing”: the idea that cheap connectivity and networked devices would liberate “computing” from mainframes and desktop boxes and integrate it into people’s everyday lives. But how? What would that actually look like? Weiser sketched out three basic tiers of ubiquitous computing devices based on interactive display technology: tabs (small, wearable); pads (handheld, mobile); boards (large, fixed). 

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• How to Create Thermal Images for Millions of Homes

  Two startups combine Google Street View method with infrared imaging to show homeowners where energy is being wasted.

  One of the well-worn tools of home energy auditors is thermal imaging cameras that show where buildings are poorly insulated. But how do you bring thermal images to thousands or even millions of homes? Two Boston-area startups think they have the answer. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Rare Disease Search Engine That Outperforms Google

  A powerful new search engine designed to help diagnose rare diseases could prove a boon for both medics and the public

   

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Where Siri Has Trouble Hearing, a Crowd of Humans Could Help

  A program called Scribe harnesses humans on the Internet to generate speech captions in under five seconds.

  Computer scientist Jeffrey Bigham has created a speech-recognition program that combines the best talents of machines and people.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Why We Need More Solar Companies to Fail

  Solar manufacturers like Suntech are struggling. Hundreds need to die for the industry to recover.

  Suntech, a Chinese company that as recently as 2011 was the world’s largest producer of solar panels, is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. It’s running low on cash, owes bond investors half a billion dollars (which it failed to pay Friday), and is saddled with payments on billions of dollars in loans as it struggles to make money in a market flooded with its product.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Cancer Gene Therapy Activated by a Pill

  Patients can turn off an experimental treatment if side effects get too bad.

  A unique new cancer treatment uses gene therapy to induce a cancer-fighting immune response whose intensity can then be controlled with a pill. The combination could help tailor treatment to a patient’s individual response.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• For Investors, Mobile Startup Boom Gives Way to Caution

  Some venture capitalists are avoiding consumer apps and putting their money behind the “picks and shovels” of mobile computing.

  Viddy, a mobile video-sharing service that bathed in media attention and more than $36 million in investor funds last year (see “What’s the Next Instagram?”), is facing hard times. Users have abandoned its app by the millions, and last month it had to fire its cofounder and CEO and a third of its staff.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Photovoltaic Polymer Lets Damaged Retinas See the Light

  A light-sensitive polymer could offer a new way to develop artificial retinas.

  A team of neuroscientists and materials scientists has shown that a photovoltaic polymer can restore light-sensing capabilities to damaged retinas, offering hope of a simple way to restore vision to many people with degenerative eye disease.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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