insidethebox » Technology

You requested, Technology

November 26, 2007 Technology

Astonishing

It’s been called “astonishing” but there are lots of other adjectives that might apply.

What you’re looking at is Toshiba’s experimental 6-pound virtual-reality helmet. This baby sports infrared sensors that detect the movement of the wearer’s head, and synch with a projector in the back of the helmet to produce the illusion that the wearer is somewhere else. The 16-inch dome-shaped screen enables a full 360-degree view. Eventually, Toshiba thinks this might enhance computer games or even movies. They’re going to have to make wider seats.

Kindle

Today Amazon.com launched Kindle, an eBook reader that allows customers to download titles directly to the hand-held device.

While eBook readers are nothing new, Kindle is a killer app. Why? Because it solves the problem of adding content quickly and easily. In the past, eBook readers required repeated syncing with a PC. With Kindle, content is delivered via WIFI and EV-DO. That means you can get your content–like books and newspapers–at home, at work, in your car or on a bus.

The Kindle device is priced at $399 and books are $10, so we’ll need to see a price drop before this really takes off.

Created: November 19, 2007 at 12:41 pm

Tag(s)

Author(s): clander

November 16, 2007 Technology

A first look at Android

By Franklin Garcia, Software Developer, Java Group

OpenAlliance recently released an “early look” edition of its Android platform. Android is a set of software for mobile devices: an operating system, middleware and mobile applications. Built on the open Linux kernel, it utilizes a custom virtual machine called Dalvik. OpenAlliance hasn’t yet released the SDK code, but promises to “open it” in the future. The SDK provides a phone emulator, debugging tools and sample code.

Looking at the official Google Group page, there is a lot of documentation available– everything you need to get started. However, when I began to code my application I found incomplete or wrong information on some pages; for example, if you look at the List of Views in Reference Information, the list is not exhaustive. This is understandable as we’re dealing with a recent release.

To see for myself if all the good things that OpenAlliance and Google are saying about Android are true, I took a couple of days to build an Android application (which I named “Twitt3r”). The first good thing I found: the SDK is based on Java and other libraries from Apache (or at least it’s good for me, a Java developer). The application to code from scratch uses Twitter.com REST API to retrieve and send data. Twitter.com is a micro blog site, where users “post” simple messages responding to the question: What are you doing? As an anonymous guest, you can see others’ micro blogs, and see the public timeline (all posts ordered by post date and time). As a registered user, you receive your own blog (http://twitter.com/<yourusername>) and can “follow” your friends from post to post.

While developing this simple application I was able to test networking access (accessing the REST API) and authentication (needed for user-only features), parse XML (Twitter REST API has three flavors, XML, JSON and RSS) and code a normal application with multiple screens.

In general, I really like Android. It is as easy to develop as Java Micro Edition, but with the full power of the core of Java Standard Edition (you won’t need to use Swing here). You only need to take care of your code and what you want to display on the screen. How to display it and how to handle events are managed by the system. Actually, you need few code lines to get a good looking application running. This is because you can define your entire UI using just XML. But if you like the old school programming style, you can code the whole UI.

The Android Developer community is growing quickly and is very active (the official group is hosted by Google at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers). With such notable companies as NTT DoCoMo, Samsung and Motorola being part of OpenAlliance, I think Android has a lot of potential and it will give us great surprises in the coming months.

Created: November 16, 2007 at 10:04 am

Tag(s)

Author(s): fgarcia

November 15, 2007 Technology

4D human atlas

Researchers at the University of Calgary (in association with Sun Microsystems) have created the world’s first complete object-oriented computer model of a human body. The hologram system (called CAVEman) combines as much data as possible—from sources such as CT scans, X-rays and biopsies—to create a gigantic model of a patient’s body. They’re now at work figuring out how to let doctors reach inside the holograms to actually feel and compare tissue densities. Gamers wait with bated breath. Read more.

Created: November 15, 2007 at 9:19 am

Tag(s)

Author(s): lvalestuk

November 12, 2007 Technology

OLPC BOGO

Until November 26, buy an XO laptop for yourself for $399 ($200 of which is tax deductible), and One Laptop Per Child will send another one to a child in a developing nation. Buyers in the US also receive a free year of T-Mobile hotspot access. Read more about the OLPC educational initiative here.

Created: November 12, 2007 at 8:56 pm

Tag(s)

Author(s): lvalestuk

November 12, 2007 Technology

Intelligence gets less rational

Honeywell and DARPA are working together to try and break down intelligence data more quickly—by monitoring electrical activity in analysts’ brains. Using head-mounted sensors, the project attempts to zero in on potentially interesting or useful images before the owner of that brain has had time to make the call rationally.

Anyone else scared?
Read more at engadget.

Created: November 12, 2007 at 3:20 pm

Tag(s)

Author(s): lvalestuk

November 7, 2007 0 Technology

Haptikos at last

By: Christian Lander, Associate Manager, Corporate Communications

It means “to touch,” and it’s finally coming: the long-awaited Nokia technology that pairs touchscreen text input with true tactile response. It allows users to type at reasonable speeds on a touchscreen, using two small sub-screen piezo sensor pads. Folks say this could revolutionize the entire handheld industry.

Next up: tactile replicas for scrolling and draw/paint programs.

Look for the Haptikos technology on the upcoming Nokia S60 Touch phone.

RFID Press Badges

By Christian Lander, Associate Manager, Corporate Communications

Always the innovator, CES will be experimenting with opt-in RFID (radio frequency identification) tags on press passes beginning with the January 2008 gathering in Las Vegas. Officially, the tag helps authenticate passes and improve security for the event; it also poses some interesting questions about the future of trade shows.

With RFID tags, organizers will be able to track which booths, seminars and events members of the press are attending. Everything from booth position to the most popular site on the floor can be tracked and then analyzed into pricing structures for the next year. It could be interesting to see how much of a factor location plays when it comes to press coverage.

The right to jam

By: Christian Lander, Associate Manager, Corporate Communications

The Sunday New York Times had an interesting article about the use of cell phone jammers — small devices (pictured) that let people block all cell phone signals around them. The power of these devices ranges from a few feet to a few hundred, and have been used by individuals, restaurants, and even churches.

The Times story opens with a man riding on a commuter train who gets fed up with an overly loud young woman whose every second word is “like.” He pushes a button on his jammer and her phone is cut off.

Reading this, you can almost feel the relief and satisfaction of instantly stopping an annoying conversation. But the story raises interesting questions about the rights of the individual as opposed to the rights of the crowd. Every responsible cell phone user would most likely applaud the man’s actions, but anyone with a respect for civil liberties has to cringe a little at the idea of another person being able to control your lines of communication.

It’s a debate that has no clear end in sight, but talking on a cell phone is passe anyways. Aren’t we the text message generation?

Full Story at The New York Times

Created: November 5, 2007 at 6:15 pm

Tag(s)

Author(s): clander

November 1, 2007 Technology

Folding@home sets new record

By Christian Lander, Associate Manager, Corporate Communications

Last night, 670,000 PlayStation 3s were humming across the globe. But instead of being used for games, they were helping researchers at Stanford University find a cure for some of the deadliest diseases on the planet.

The folding@home project is a distributed computer program that links multiple PS3s to help them with the enormous amount of calculations they need to do for their disease research. (”Folding” here refers to protein folding.)

All you need to do is download the program to your PS3 and let it run–and you can consider yourself part of the fight against Alzheimer’s, mad cow disease (BSE), Parkinson’s, and even cancer.

Hopefully this project will encourage other worthy causes to tap into the immense amount of money, research, and power that we put into our entertainment devices.

Folding@Home Page