The Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Computational Intelligence has begun research intended to develop technology that will not only mimic the human brain, but will be able to use information to learn about its user.
“Machine learning is such a huge opportunity,” says Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer. “Despite their name, smartphones are rather dumb devices. My smartphone doesn’t know anything more about me than when I got it.”
Rattner leads the Intel research in conjunction with the Technion in Haifa and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, “aimed at enabling new applications, such as small, wearable computers that can enhance daily life,” reports Reuters.
“All of these devices will come to know us as individuals, will very much tailor themselves to us,” says Rattner, who suggests that the devices, which continually record actions of the user, are expected to be available by 2014 or 2015.
“Within five years all of the human senses will be in computers and in 10 years we will have more transistors in one chip than neurons in the human brain,” adds Moody Eden, president of Intel Israel.
Lenovo claims that its upcoming ThinkPad models are thinner, lighter and moving toward the ultrabook category with features such as 3G wireless and Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors.
The China-based PC maker says its X1 Carbon Ultrabook, for example, will be among the world’s lightest 14-inch laptops (at three pounds).
The company is also highlighting its X230 ThinkPad that will hit shelves next month for $1,179. Weighing less than three pounds, the 12.5-inch X230 touts 24 hours of battery life and 4G/LTE mobile broadband access.
“If you’d rather have your X230 in tablet form, Lenovo has thought of that, too: The ThinkPad X230t has a rotating display that can be folded over to create an instant tablet. It is touchscreen enabled, comes with a stylus pen and also works with a ThinkPad laser mouse,” reports AllThingsD.
Lenovo’s new ThinkPad X, T, W, and L Series laptops include Intel processors, Dolby audio, and HD displays.
“The T430s is the ThinkPad line’s lightest 14-inch (non-ultrabook) laptop, while the T530 has a 15-inch full-HD display. But the most notable feature of these laptops is probably the addition of 4G/LTE broadband availability through Lenovo’s upcoming contract-free broadband service,” notes the article.
The laptops will be available in June, priced from $879 to $1,399.
Microsoft’s experimental social network site So.cl is now available to anyone. Previously, only “students studying information and design at the University of Washington, Syracuse University, and New York University” could access the network, reports VentureBeat.
“So.cl (pronounced ‘social’) is an experimental research project, developed by Microsoft’s FUSE Labs, focused on exploring the possibilities of social search for the purpose of learning,” according to the FAQ page.
Users can sign up using either their Facebook account or Windows Live ID. When using the Facebook option, users can choose to deny automatic posts and comments to their Facebook pages.
The social networking site “closely resembles Google+’s layout, but it also takes ideas from Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest,” explains the post. “You can follow other So.cl users or follow interests like food, art, or movies.”
The “Everyone” feed provides a simple way for users to see what most So.cl users are searching.
“So.cl can be used by the general public, but it is our goal to focus on learning communities,” indicates the FAQ page.
Dolby has developed a way to improve the playback performance of soundtracks on Blu-ray discs. Using its TrueHD lossless audio technology, Dolby hopes to provide more of a surround-sound experience in home theaters.
“The company is incorporating Meridian-developed 96kHz upsampling technology into Dolby Media Producer, a post-production product that encodes Dolby TrueHD bitstreams for use on Blu-ray discs,” reports TWICE.
“The technology creates 96kHz Dolby TrueHD soundtracks from the 48kHz-PCM mixes that the movie industry creates for movie theaters, which use 48kHz playback equipment,” adds the article.
Dolby says authoring houses and sound-mixing facilities worldwide have upgraded to its Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling in version 2 of the Dolby Media Producer Encoder.
Sony and Panasonic are reportedly in early talks to jointly develop and/or produce OLED TV sets, according to people familiar with the matter.
“The talks are still in the preliminary stages, and there is a chance that discussions might not reach a conclusion or that other potential partners might join the alliance,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
“OLED is considered a promising technology for next-generation television sets because it doesn’t require a backlight, making it thinner than existing liquid-crystal or plasma displays,” explains WSJ. “In the future, the technology is expected to enable curved or flexible screens.”
While OLED technology is making its way into the smaller screens of smartphones and tablets, it remains an expensive proposition for TV manufacturing.
“An alliance between Sony and Panasonic, the first of its kind between the two companies, would mark a watershed moment in the Japanese consumer-electronics industry as companies face difficult market conditions and shifting industry dynamics,” suggests the article.
Both Samsung and LG are planning to launch 55-inch OLED models this year, expected to be priced in the $8,000 range.
Wi-Fi technology is about to experience several significant upgrades.
“Technology upgrades we’ll see within the next year or so will make Wi-Fi much smarter and more efficient in how it distributes signals,” reports Ars Technica. “It’ll be so fast, and integrated into so many devices, that you may finally get to dump a lot of those cables cluttering your living room.”
The 802.11ac standard, which may be certified as early as December, will use the 5MHz band to enable 1.3 gigabits per second bandwidth. Moreover, it will include beamforming technology that focuses the signal to increase the range while also reducing the interference problem.
Coming later in 2013, the 802.11ad standard will operate at 5-7 gigabits per second over 60GHz. At this speed, one will be able to stream uncompressed movies.
Finally, the Wi-Fi Alliance industry group is also adding a Passpoint program to make it easier to connect to hotspots; Voice-Enterprise certification for enhanced voice quality; better power management features; and a standard that allows Wi-Fi to network with appliances, CE devices and automobiles.
Wired reports that we’ll finally see some flexible displays produced this year, but warns we should curb our enthusiasm since production will be limited, early displays will not be as “bendy” as the technology aspires to be, and “they won’t appear in Apple hardware as some news outlets have recently speculated.”
Samsung, for example, has announced it will mass produce flexible OLED displays and has already been receiving orders. Samsung’s display is thin but rugged, and is basically unbreakable since it uses a plastic called polyamide rather than glass.
The article suggests we should expect to see gently curved screens in the future and bendable phones or tablets enabled by the technology. “But that’s probably not on the horizon — especially Apple’s horizon — anytime soon,” comments Wired.
“It’s completely impossible to see any Apple product with flexible AMOLED this year,” suggests Jennifer Colegrove, NPD DisplaySearch’s vice president of emerging display technology. “However, I do believe Apple display engineers are constantly looking into new technology to put into their products, and OLED is one of the technologies they are looking at.”
Apple is more concerned about functionality than making something curvy for the sake of being interesting. Colgrove doesn’t anticipate a flexible display in Apple products until at least the 2013-2014 time frame, “with truly bendy iDevices appearing in 2015 at the earliest,” indicates the article.
David Carr of The New York Times observes how his own family uses TV, noting a dramatic downturn in the amount of time spent with live broadcasting.
He cites TV-related apps (especially for sports), Netflix, Hulu Plus and Apple TV as resources his family uses regularly.
“My 15-year-old has a television in her room, but it’s not even on the cable-broadcast grid; it is wired instead to a Web-enabled Wii,” explains Carr. “Like the laptop and smartphone that she never seems to be without, the television is just one more Web-enabled portal for content she controls.”
Live TV “seems very last century,” he writes. In fact, live ratings for network programs have declined for 14 consecutive quarters. In contrast, DVRs and video on demand each exist in nearly half of American homes. And online viewing with Netflix, Hulu and others has increased more than 46 percent over the last year.
“Outside of the professional football season or some breaking national news event, the television at our house has become uncoupled from the commercial-driven environment that drives the broadcast and cable business,” writes Carr. “We haven’t cut the cord so much as kinked it in a way that commercials rarely sneak through.”
Still, the big four broadcast networks and the CW will book some $9 billion in advertising revenue while the cable networks take in more than $9.6 billion during the upfronts. In spite of losing viewers, TV remains the mass medium of choice for advertisers.
Lenovo broke ground this week on a new facility in China that will focus on smartphone and tablet PC research and development. The company plans to spend $800 million on the effort.
The company also introduced an Internet-enabled television to the China market. “The TV is the first to run Google’s Android 4.0 and is powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm CPU,” reports eWeek.
Independent software developers have already produced more than 1,000 apps for the smart TV, now available in Lenovo’s Le Store online storefront.
“Lenovo has also teamed with SMG’s BesTV to a create an ISmartv joint venture that already provides viewers with more than 300,000 hours of high-definition video resources, and the Smart TV will come with a ‘Sandwich’ user interface said to integrate ‘touch, voice, air mouse, gravity sensor, smart keyboard and [a] traditional television remote control in a ‘Six in One’ Smart Remote Controller,'” explains the article.
Researchers at Google have developed a technique called auto-directed video stabilization designed for recording video via smartphones and mobile devices with greater stability and improved image quality.
The technique mimics how motion is smoothly recorded in professional productions with dollies and tripods.
“The technology supports an algorithm that automatically determines the best camera path and recasts the video as if it were filmed using stabilization equipment,” reports MediaPost. “The research is being integrated into YouTube to support videographers.”
Microsoft Research, meanwhile, is developing motion technology that will enable a mobile device to function as a weapon in a game, such as a sword used to go on the offensive or to block the attacks of other players.
“Phone-to-phone mobile motion games must have the ability to calculate accurate distance and range from each other. Then range, speed, and accuracy are calculated,” explains the post. “The process works similar to Kinect, a fixed infrastructure motion capture system that supports game motion in real-time.”
Google launched Hangouts On Air this week, which is essentially an extension to Google+ group video chat that allows users to stream live to large audiences around the world.
The company has already used this for special broadcasts by David Beckham, the Muppets and President Obama. Moreover, it is training media companies like The New York Times and Wired to run their own broadcasts.
“This is a much more efficient and pervasive way to organize a conversation,” Hangouts product manager Nikhyl Singhal told AllThingsD. “Maybe I needed satellite trucks and switchboards for something like this in the past.”
To initiate, users simply flip the “enable Hangouts On Air” switch, and the video chat converts from private to public view — and not only for an audience of Google+ users. Hangouts On Air can be embedded into Web pages and even a YouTube channel.
Google will be leveraging YouTube’s methods for addressing copyrighted content, hate speech, illegal activity and pornography.
At the end of 2011, Amazon sold 4.8 million Kindle Fires, showing it was the “right product at the right price at the right time,” ReadWriteWeb suggests. But the online retailer’s luck stopped there.
“According to IDC, Amazon’s share dropped from nearly 17 percent of the tablet market to 4 percent, with fewer than 700,000 units sold compared to Apple’s 11.8 million,” explains ReadWriteWeb.
While Amazon still beats out Barnes & Noble’s Nook by a fair margin, it now sits in third place, lagging behind Samsung Android tablets and Apple’s iPads.
The first quarter of 2012 was good to Apple, which increased its market share to 68 percent (up from 54.7 percent in Q4) with the sale of its new iPad and continued success with cheaper versions of older models.
Overall however, the tablet market has slowed quite a bit. “IDC had predicted overall tablet sales to be 1.2 million units higher than they were this quarter, with the shortfall mostly attributed to Amazon’s slip,” the article states. “Tablet sales have grown 120 percent from last year, but were still lower than IDC’s predictions. Whether tablet sales continue to slow in Q4 will be interesting to see.”
IDC predicts Amazon will try to come back with a larger-screened model. Android continues to stagnate at about one-third of the market, unable to reproduce the same adoption it has secured in the smartphone sphere.
Researchers from Disney Research, Pittsburgh University and Carnegie Mellon have collaborated to develop Touche, a touch-sensitive technology that has the potential to turn anything from doorknobs to kitchen appliances into touchscreens.
“The technology uses Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing, or SFSC, which lets objects interpret the body position and how it is being touched and reacts accordingly,” reports Mobiledia. “Users can coat the surfaces of ordinary objects with transparent conductors programmed to respond to the body’s electronic frequencies, making them touchscreen-enabled.”
“This might enable us to one day do away with keyboards, mice and perhaps even conventional touchscreens for many applications,” suggests Munehiko Sato, one of the researchers.
Touche has the ability to revolutionize smart home technology with the ability to convert regular devices into smart devices. It may also shake up the gaming industry, turning practically anything into a controller.
ESPN has incorporated Twitter’s Web Intents into their website offerings. Web Intents provide pop-ups for users to access Tweet, Reply, Retweet, Follow and Favorite functions.
“For each article ESPN shows a visitor, they have implemented a scrolling/following sidebar that contains its Twitter sharing widget,” reports the Twitter Developers site. “As a user scrolls through an article, the container follows the position on the page.”
“At any point, a user can click the Twitter bird logo to invoke a Tweet Intent to enable a customized sharing experience,” adds the site. “A Tweet box with text pre-loaded by the ESPN editorial staff pops up, enabling a user to quickly share the news with their followers.”
ESPN readers are generating some 1,250 Tweets per day amounting to 10 percent of all Tweets containing ESPN links. These Tweets resulted in an average of 15 clicks back to the website.
The sports site has also developed customized MLB and NFL widgets that highlight Twitter conversations from top writers and allow fans to interact with the writers directly on the page.
In response to consumers who have been quick to embrace the tablet PC, there is a push to make the television experience more like the tablet experience. We’re seeing rapid development of apps from video providers, cable channels and broadcast networks.
“While still in its early stages, the idea has taken off among tech-loving consumers, and companies are trying to satisfy them,” reports The New York Times.
“Already, apps for Hulu Plus, Netflix and Wal-Mart’s Vudu streaming service, among others, are built into Internet-enabled televisions,” explains the article. “Devices like Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and the streaming video player Roku let viewers watch apps that mimic channels. New sets by Samsung and others come with built-in apps loaded with television shows, movies and sports.”
However, how these apps will impact the TV experience is not yet known.
“The question that hasn’t yet been answered is whether television viewing will consist of a single app that mimics the pay TV bundle or a series of different apps that together form a content experience,” suggests Jon Miller, chief digital officer at News Corp.
“A model built around TV apps, however, could let viewers use favorite apps on the screen on an á la carte basis, thus bypassing cable subscriptions and all the extraneous channels they don’t watch,” adds the article. “And therein lies the tension that has the television industry delicately assessing how to balance the current system with an Internet-based future that some feel is inevitable.”
Regardless, development of TV apps is expected to increase. “I’ve told my bosses, ‘This is beachfront real estate. Buy in now,’” says Lisa Hsia, executive VP of digital media at NBCUniversal’s Bravo channel.
The Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Computational Intelligence has begun research intended to develop technology that will not only mimic the human brain, but will be able to use information to learn about its user.
