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(Phys.org)—Tobii Technology is introducing the REX, a USB-connected peripheral that works with Tobii's software Gaze. The Stockholm-based company will show its REX device for Windows 8 at the CES show in Las Vegas, from January 8. Visitors will see how REX offers an eye-tracking difference in the way that desktop and laptop users can manage their screen images, pages and content. One example is a computer user looking at an app for its launch and then just tapping once on the touchpad. The eye-tracking technology from Tobii is designed to use eye positioning to help control the computer, but working in combination with, rather than replacing, other controls such as touch, mouse and keyboard. The user will still find the mouse useful for interacting, but the eyes will handle movements across the screen.
Why not open an app by blinking instead of having to tap the touchpad.
A gesture-filled Windows 8 experience is headed your way before we ring in 2014. Asus, seeking an advantage for its high-end laptops and desktops, has inked a deal with Leap Motion. The Taiwanese giant and the Californian start-up have already begun integrating Leap's gesture-based sensor system into PCs.
Leap told The Verge that the company is working at full capacity to meet orders for Asus, developers and consumers who pre-ordered the device. Leap also hinted that deals with other manufacturers were in the works. That's great news for Leap, but it potentially erodes the advantage Asus is seeking to add to its line of Zenbooks and ET series of computers.
Read more: Germanium transistor could increase speed of computers | News | The EngineerAn experimental design for electronics components made from conventional materials could provide a new way to increase the speed of computers.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT’s) Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) have developed a type of transistor that is twice as fast as previous experimental models and almost four times as fast as the best commercial equivalent.
The new p-type transistor is made from germanium, alloys of which are already found in commercial microchips, so germanium transistors could be easier to integrate into existing chip-manufacturing processes than those made from more exotic materials.
Ever pop in that old Hanson cassette tape only to find it doesn't play quite as well as it once did? Perhaps the "mmm's" in "MMMBop" are a bit scratchy, or the thing won't play well at all. That's because magnetic tape degrades over time, but it's what most research labs use to store data. Quartz might prove to be the end of that, however.
Hitachi got together with Kyoto University's Kiyotaka Miura and created "semiperpetual" slivers of quartz glass, which might not sound interesting until you consider this: the stuff can hold data for hundreds of millions of years without degrading one bit. "MMMBop" would never lose its luster.
Google’s Project Glass may have made the augmented reality headlines in 2012, but Vuzix’s Smart Glasses M100 is set to be the first wearable on sale in 2013. Packing a full Android-based computer in a headpiece, with an eye-mounted 800 x 480 display and both Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, the M100 is at CES 2013 in prototype form, ahead of a launch at “under $500″ later in the year. Read on for our hands-on first impressions.
Remember when controlling a character in a video game by moving your body seemed amazing? Now get ready to use gestures to interact with more digital devices.
PrimeSense, the company whose technology powers Microsoft's motion-reading Xbox Kinect device, has released a new, smaller version of its 3D sensor, which promises to bring gesture control to TVs, tablets, even smartphones. The new sensor is small enough to be embedded into the devices, eliminating the need for a separate unit as with Kinect.
The newest sensor, called Capri, is one-tenth the size of the current-generation technology. And because the sensor will be less expensive, it could appear in more situations. PrimeSense will first demonstrate it to the public at the Consumer Electronics Show, which begins next week in Las Vegas.
Samsung unveils gesture-control TVs at gadget showNew TVs from Samsung will recognize an expanded range of gestures so people can swipe through on-screen menus in a way that revolutionizes the old remote control.
Samsung Electronics Co., the Korean electronics maker that is successfully challenging Apple in smartphones, touts the new user interface as faster and more intuitive than before.
Samsung said Monday that the new interface will be a feature of upcoming smart TVs. In addition, certain high-end Samsung smart TVs sold since last year can be upgraded with an add-on kit—complete with the required quad-core processor—that will be sold separately for a few hundred dollars
Kingston: Behold the 1-terabyte flash drive | Internet & Media - CNET NewsAvailable sometime this quarter, the DataTraveler HyperX Predator will offer a whopping terabyte of storage with USB 3.0.
Want to back up your entire computer and more on a single flash drive? You'll be able to do that courtesy of the latest gadget from Kingston.
The DataTraveler HyperX Predator 3.0 USB flash drive is currently shipping with 512 gigabytes of storage. But the next generation due out this quarter will ramp up the capacity to a full terabyte, making it the largest USB drive available on the market.
Kingston is also touting the drive as fast. With SuperSpeed USB 3.0 support, the HyperX Predator offers transfer speeds of up to 240MB per second when reading data and up to 160MB per second when writing data. And with a zinc alloy metal casing, the drive is made to be durable as well. It also comes with a five-year warranty.
With cars as with televisions, the main drawback manufacturers face when introducing the latest high-tech features is that consumers don't upgrade these big-ticket items frequently. Instead, people opt for cheaper DIY options that prolong the lifespan of otherwise dated technology. When it comes to television, that alternative was a set-top box. Meet the Roku of the car world.
Hot off the heels of a partnership with Verizon, Delphi at CES showed off its Vehicle Diagnostics, a plug-and-play device that transforms "dumb" cars into smart ones. Connecting to the vehicle's OBD II diagnostic port, which exists on all vehicles manufactured since 1996 — making this sort of like the USB drive of cars — the CMDA-enabled auto accessory can:
Locate your car (like Find My iPhone, except for your auto) Set up alerts when entering or leaving a preset geo-fenced area Send alerts about your vehicle's status, from fuel levels to engine health Diagnose issues based on your car's trouble codes Allow you to control your car remotely That last one in particular is most intriguing, replicating your car's key fob on the app. Based on how advanced your vehicle is, this means you could lock and unlock the doors, pop open the trunk, sound the alarm and start the engine from anywhere in the world so long as you have a data connection. "Your key fob went from a range of 100 feet to unlimited range," said Craig Tieman, advanced concepts and market develop manager at Delphi. Say goodbye to keys accidentally locked in the car.
In the event you want to communicate with your car but are in a reception dead zone, you can also connect via a modified Bluetooth technology that allows for faster response time of about six seconds. In contrast, standard Bluetooth typically takes a minute, Tieman said.
With a system that can be updated over the air, Delphi intends to add more capabilities, such as route tracking or alerts when the car alarm goes off, to Vehicle Diagnostics and the accompanying app.
Specifics on pricing weren't available, but Tieman said each unit sold will include two years of service. Overall though, we're excited about the promise this simple gadget holds. Maybe this can stave off plans to replace that clunker by a few years. At the very least, the device will tell you what's wrong with it.
Delphi upgrades your 'dumb' car to a smart one
Delphi upgrades your 'dumb' car to a smart one | DVICE
With cars as with televisions, the main drawback manufacturers face when introducing the latest high-tech features is that consumers don't upgrade these big-ticket items frequently. Instead, people opt for cheaper DIY options that prolong the lifespan of otherwise dated technology. When it comes to television, that alternative was a set-top box. Meet the Roku of the car world.
Hot off the heels of a partnership with Verizon, Delphi at CES showed off its Vehicle Diagnostics, a plug-and-play device that transforms "dumb" cars into smart ones. Connecting to the vehicle's OBD II diagnostic port, which exists on all vehicles manufactured since 1996 making this sort of like the USB drive of cars the CMDA-enabled auto accessory can:
Locate your car (like Find My iPhone, except for your auto) Set up alerts when entering or leaving a preset geo-fenced area Send alerts about your vehicle's status, from fuel levels to engine health Diagnose issues based on your car's trouble codes Allow you to control your car remotely That last one in particular is most intriguing, replicating your car's key fob on the app. Based on how advanced your vehicle is, this means you could lock and unlock the doors, pop open the trunk, sound the alarm and start the engine from anywhere in the world so long as you have a data connection. "Your key fob went from a range of 100 feet to unlimited range," said Craig Tieman, advanced concepts and market develop manager at Delphi. Say goodbye to keys accidentally locked in the car.
In the event you want to communicate with your car but are in a reception dead zone, you can also connect via a modified Bluetooth technology that allows for faster response time of about six seconds. In contrast, standard Bluetooth typically takes a minute, Tieman said.
With a system that can be updated over the air, Delphi intends to add more capabilities, such as route tracking or alerts when the car alarm goes off, to Vehicle Diagnostics and the accompanying app.
Specifics on pricing weren't available, but Tieman said each unit sold will include two years of service. Overall though, we're excited about the promise this simple gadget holds. Maybe this can stave off plans to replace that clunker by a few years. At the very least, the device will tell you what's wrong with it.
Elliptic Labs uses ultrasound for touchless gesture control | Cutting Edge - CNET NewsThe Silicon Valley startup shows off its new technology at CES and discusses its plans to partner with computer makers, as well as its software development kit.
LAS VEGAS--Touch screens are so last year.
These days, touchless gesture control is the hot thing. Just last week, San Francisco startup Leap Motion, which developed a motion-control technology with sub-millimeter accuracy, announced a $30 million B round of funding. And at CES here, there are multiple companies showing off technology that lets users control their computers with little or no physical contact with a screen or a mouse.
One of them is Palo Alto, Calif.-based Elliptic Labs, which has pioneered an ultrasound-based touchless gesture control system. In a demo for CNET, Elliptic showed off its Windows 8 Gesture suite, technology designed to make it possible to control Microsoft's new operating system without touching the screen.
The technology works by detecting echoes of signals put out by a series of ultrasonic transmitters as they reflect off a user's hands. That means that a user can control activity on the computer -- in this case, a prototype laptop -- from in front of the screen, or even off to its side. Elliptic Labs said that is one advantage of its approach over touchless gesture control systems that rely on cameras to capture users' movements. Another advantage over camera-based systems is that it is far more energy efficient, the company said.
According to Elliptic Labs product manager Morgan Kjolerbakken, the Windows 8 Gesture suite allows users to do all the basic Windows 8 gestures -- such as swiping, scrolling, or making selections, without touching the screen. A slight delay is built into the system, he said, so that it doesn't mistake typing for a touchless gesture.
Intel Senior Vice President Mooly Eden tells CNET that other forms of "perceptual computing" will change computing as we know it. And they may not be as far away as they seem.
LAS VEGAS -- Watch out, touch screens. You may be hot now, but one Intel executive predicts voice recognition will eventually make you obsolete.
Mooly Eden, the Intel senior vice president who oversees the company's "perceptual computing" operations, told CNET today that voice recognition will do to touch what touch has done to physical keyboards -- making many things unnecessary.
"Voice is the best means of communication between humans," Eden said. "We finally have enough compute power to do what we want from science fiction."
Intel is working with partners on complete systems for such devices, including the hardware (run by an Intel processor, of course), software, cameras, and other features. It's still early days, Eden said, but voice, for example, could overtake touch in as little as three to five years.
Eden demoed features like an eye-tracking "Where's Waldo" game (the camera knows exactly where the eyes are focused) and other games that follow hands and let them do things like pick up and drop virtual objects.
Other possibilities in the future include computers that can perform real-time translation when two people are speaking, as well as movies that change plot based on where the eyes are moving. For example, if someone looks away every time there's blood, the movie may adjust to include less gore.
"Everything is going to be immersive," Eden said. "I'd like you to work with the computer the same way you work with me.... I want you to say 'I'm not ashamed that I love my computer.'"
"Imagine how many people who are afraid of computers will be able to use them," he added.
Revolutionary paper tablet computer revealed: Thin and flexible as sheets of paper (w/ video)School of Computing professor Roel Vertegaal is working with Intel and Plastic Logic to develop a paper-thin, flexible computer tablet.
(Phys.org)Watch out tablet lovers a flexible paper computer developed at Queen's University in collaboration with Plastic Logic and Intel Labs will revolutionize the way people work with tablets and computers.
The PaperTab tablet looks and feels just like a sheet of paper. However, it is fully interactive with a flexible, high-resolution 10.7-inch plastic display developed by Plastic Logic and a flexible touchscreen. It is powered by the second generation I5 Core processor developed by Intel.
Instead of using several apps or windows on a single display, users have ten or more interactive displays or "PaperTabs": one per app in use.
Eyes-on with Innovega's augmented reality eyewear from the future | DVICEYou remember that magical "One Day" video that Google created to show off its Google Glass concept? Yeah, too bad it was all fake, because it's not physically possible for your eye to focus on so much detail that close. Unless, of course, you hack your eye.
This is what Innovega has done, and at CES, the company is showing a functional prototype that looks to be quite a bit further along than what we've seen from Google Glass.
The reason that we'll never have eyeglasses that can project video is that you just can't focus on something at the distance of the lens of a conventional pair of glasses. Go on, try it. You'll just give yourself a headache. There are two ways to sort of fake it: giant lenses and high resolution screens like you'll find on the Oculus Rift, or chunky optics and a low resolution projected display, like Google Glass has.
The way Innovega gets around this problem is by modifying your eyeballs to focus much, much closer. Innovega has developed a special contact lens called iOptik that is completely transparent, except that it can refocus polarized light (like the light from a display) so that you have no problems seeing it. And it's not an either-or thing: with the contact lenses in, the world looks completely normal, except that you can suddenly see a high resolution display that's projected on a pair of glasses, superimposed transparently across up to 120 degrees of your field of view.
A year ago, Innovega just had the contact lens and a proof of concept system, but the company made a lot of progress since then. This year, it's showing off an actual prototype of the glasses as well. It's almost fully functional: the last piece of the puzzle is to develop optics that will allow the projectors on the sides of the glasses to bounce the image sideways off the lenses without distortion. Relative to what Innovega has pulled off so far, this seems like a pretty minor thing, and they'll have a completed prototype up and running later this year.
As a demonstration, Innovega set up a mannequin head with the glasses and a contact lens, plus a camera where the eye would be. This image shows the view through the camera, looking through the lens at the image projected on the glasses:
We just want to emphasize that while Innovega's concept video is very similar to Google's concept video for glass, the key difference is that this thing is achievable in less than a year using Innovega's current hardware, while Google is (as far as we know) nowhere near that close with the current incarnation of Glass. You can see it in the sample footage: it's not as elegant as what Google's fantasizing about, but that's largely fantasy, and Innovega's iOptik display is real, right now.
Sharp provides a glimpse of the futureThe Consumer Electronics Show (CES) – the biggest technology exhibition of the year – is currently underway in Las Vegas. Among the companies present is Sharp, which has just released a video exploring the future possibilities of "IGZO", a new semiconducting material that has already begun to appear in its products.
IGZO stands for "Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide" and is used as the channel for a transparent thin-film transistor. It replaces amorphous silicon for the active layer of an LCD screen, and, with 40 times higher electron mobility than amorphous silicon, allows either smaller pixels (for screen resolutions higher than HDTV), or much higher reaction speeds for a screen. It is ultra-responsive to touch, drastically minimising the noise caused during touch input. This allows for quick, easy and more natural-feeling writing and smooth lines. It is also far more energy efficient, maintaining onscreen data for a period of time without refreshing the data, even when the current is off.
Sharp is the first company to successfully mass produce IGZO. In April 2012, it was announced that they would be producing bulk volumes of 32-inch 3840×2160, 10-inch 2560×1600 and 7-inch 1280x800 panels. In addition to IGZO, Sharp is showcasing a range of other next-generation TVs and devices – including its 2013 AQUOS® LED TV lineup, featuring the world's biggest LED TV (90" diagonal).
Toshi Osawa, the CEO and Chairman of Sharp: "Whether in your home or in your hand, display technology is everywhere. From game changing IGZO, to stunning Ultra HD products, and large screen televisions, the introductions we are making at CES 2013 will advance people's lives at home, work and everywhere in between."
LAS VEGASYou can build more than you might expect with just a little bit of air flow and two microns of water. Like a virtual touchscreen display that appears out of nowhere. That's what Displair can boast anyway, with one of the more eye-catching demos I saw at CES 2013.
Air flows out of the device, interacting with water drops to form a screen where you can beam images from a computer or tablet. But this is no mere projection screen, it's a fully interactive display, as I found it when I was able to play a game of Fruit Ninja just by waving my hand across the Displair's virtual screen.
Displair's Alexander Chachava touted the device's energy efficiency and eco-friendly features when we talked. And it's certainly cleaner than a regular display. It's kind of hard to leave smudges on a screen made up of air, after all.
An innovation by Yale University physicists offers scientists greater control in the volatile realm of quantum mechanics and greatly improves the prospects of quantum computing. Quantum computers would be exponentially faster than the most powerful computers of today. Credit: Yale UniversityYale University scientists have found a way to observe quantum information while preserving its integrity, an achievement that offers researchers greater control in the volatile realm of quantum mechanics and greatly improves the prospects of quantum computing.
Quantum computers would be exponentially faster than the most powerful computers of today.
“Our experiment is a dress rehearsal for a type of process essential for quantum computing,” said Michel Devoret, the Frederick William Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics & Physics at Yale and principal investigator of research published Jan. 11 in the journal Science. “What this experiment really allows is an active understanding of quantum mechanics. It’s one thing to stare at a theoretical formula and it’s another thing to be able to control a real quantum object.”
In quantum systems, microscopic units called qubits represent information. Qubits can assume either of two states—“0” or “1”—or both simultaneously. Correctly recognizing, interpreting, and tracking their state is necessary for quantum computing. However, the act of monitoring them usually damages their information content.
The Yale physicists successfully devised a new, non-destructive measurement system for observing, tracking and documenting all changes in a qubit’s state, thus preserving the qubit’s informational value. In principle, the scientists said, this should allow them to monitor the qubit’s state in order to correct for random errors
Tweet Laser-projected keyboards have been around forever. But laser keyboards projected onto the palm of your hand from Google's Project Glass? That's new.
In most cases, blinks, nods and voice control will be sufficient for taking photos and sharing them to Google+ and such. However, Google might have a solution for more advanced forms of input.
A new Google patent filed on June 26, 2012, but only recently made public suggests the $1,500 glasses may use a camera and projector to project a virtual keyboard on your hand.
According to the patent abstract:
"The present application discloses systems and methods for a virtual input device. In one example, the virtual input device includes a projector and a camera. The projector projects a pattern onto a surface. The camera captures images that can be interpreted by a processor to determine actions. The projector may be mounted on an arm of a pair of eyeglasses and the camera may be mounted on an opposite arm of the eyeglasses. A pattern for a virtual input device can be projected onto a "display hand" of a user, and the camera may be able to detect when the user uses an opposite hand to select items of the virtual input device. In another example, the camera may detect when the display hand is moving and interpret display hand movements as inputs to the virtual input device, and/or realign the projection onto the moving display hand."
DNA data storage would be appropriate for data that would be stored for between 500 and 5,000 years, such as a doomsday encyclopaedia of knowledge and culture(Source: alengo/iStockphoto)
Scientists have announced a breakthrough in the quest to turn DNA into a revolutionary form of data storage.
A speck of synthesized DNA can hold mountains of data that can be freeze-dried, shipped and stored, potentially for thousands of years, they say.
The contents are "read" by sequencing the DNA - as is routinely done today, in genetic fingerprinting - and turning it back into computer code.
The new molecules are known as 'graphene fragments,' because they largely consist of flat sheets of carbon (which are attached to zinc atoms). That makes them easier to align during deposition, which could simplify the manufacture of molecular memories. Credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT
Moore's law—the well-known doubling of computer chips' computational power every 18 months or so—has been paced by a similarly steady increase in the storage capacity of disk drives. In 1980, a hard drive could store about a half-megabyte of data in a square inch of disk space; now, manufacturers are closing in on a million megabytes of data per square inch.
