Nokia Tablet To Use Wimax Network
LAS VEGAS -- Sprint Nextel Corp.'s new ultrafast cellular data network is getting some support from Nokia Corp., which said Tuesday it is going to launch a Web-browsing "tablet" for the WiMax network as it goes live this summer.
The Web tablet, which features a 4.1-inch touch screen and a slide-out keyboard, is likely to join a tiny laptop from Taiwan's ASUSTek Computer as the first gadgets that can use the network, in addition to laptop cards and desktop modems.
Finland-based Nokia previously announced its intention to make a WiMax tablet, but provided specifics for the first time Tuesday. The tablet will be a modified version of Nokia's N810 model, with a slight bulge on the back for the WiMax antenna. Nokia President Mark Louison said the price would be similar to the N810, which sells for US$439 on Nokia's Web site.
Contrary to usual practices in the U.S. wireless industry, Nokia will be selling the devices, rather than the carrier. Activation for Sprint's network will happen in much the same way people buy access to commercial Wi-Fi hotspots. If WiMax becomes available in the area, the tablet will notify the owner that it has picked up a signal.
Connecting to the network will take the user to a Sprint Web page where a credit card number can be entered. Access prices have not been announced for the network, which Sprint will be marketing under the Xohm brand.
Nokia is involved in Xohm in another way: Its joint venture with Siemens AG is one of the suppliers of network hardware.
WiMax will enable downloads of 2 to 4 megabits per second, peaking at speeds of up to 10 mbps, according to Nokia. By comparison, current third-generation broadband networks peak out at 1.4 mbps, though speeds are increasing.
In January, Asus announced that a model of its small portable computer, the eeePC, will come with a built-in WiMax chip. It also plans to make regular laptops with the chips later in the year. Intel Corp. is a major backer of the technology, making it likely that chips will show up in laptops from other manufacturers as well.
Sprint is in talks with Intel, Google Inc. and cable operators Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks for an infusion of capital to help build the network. Clearwire Corp., which already operates a pre-WiMax network in smaller cities across the country, would collaborate in building the network.
Source:chinapost.com.tw
Multimedia Goes Mobile At Wireless Convention
 LG Mobile Phones Among the products on display at the CTIA Wireless show was the Vu cell phone, which offers mobile TV. |
While today's typical phone can sluggishly transmit a camera phone image, or download a Web page, the WiMax signal can do much more. It enabled a dashboard computer to stream CD-quality music until Hammond switched to a broadcast of the local Fox TV station, which also displayed on a bigger screen in the back.
If that wasn't enough, he then logged on to Google on another computer and then made a Wi-Fi phone call to Oregon on a Skype phone.
Making voice calls on cell phones is so yesterday, so last generation. The glimpse of the future from the CTIA Wireless trade show here is all about mobile multimedia and the fast data connections that make it possible.
The show, which takes its name from the former Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, is one of the largest showcases for emerging wireless technologies and new products. The sponsoring group is now named the International Association for the Wireless Communications Industry.
The rolling WiMax demonstration produced download speeds of up to 4 megabits per second, which pales in comparison to the 42 megabits per second that Ericsson demonstrated inside the convention center.
The typical residential cable Internet service provides speeds of less than 10 megabits per second.
Buoyed by strong growth in consumer consumption of mobile data, the industry is looking forward to wireless technology's fourth generation, or 4G.
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Hydrogen-Powered Plane Takes Off
The first manned, hydrogen-powered plane has been successfully tested in the skies above Spain, its makers say.
The small, propeller-driven craft, developed by aviation giant Boeing, made three short flights at an airfield south of Madrid, the company said.
It was powered by hydrogen fuel cells, which produce only heat and water as exhaust products.
The tests could pave the way for a new generation of greener aircraft, the company said.
Boeing's chief technology officer John Tracy said the flights were "a historical technological success" and "full of promises for a greener future".
Small future
Three test flights of the two-seater aircraft took place in February and March at an airfield at Ocana, south of Madrid. The plane was modified to include a hybrid battery and fuel cell system used to power an electric motor coupled to a conventional propeller.
 other organisations have demonstrated solar-powered planes |
During take-off the planes batteries were used to provide an additional boost, but whilst in the air, the plane relied entirely on the hydrogen fuel cell.
Boeing said the plane has a flying time of 45 minutes but tests were limited to around half that time.
Although the test had been successful, the firm said it did not believe fuel cells could be the primary power source for large passenger aircraft.
However, it could be used as a secondary source of energy for large planes, according to Nieves Lapena, the engineer responsible for the test flights, but this may take some time to develop.
"In my opinion, we are talking about a delay of about twenty years," she said.
Green skies
Hydrogen-powered planes have been flown before, but never with a human pilot onboard.
In 2005, California-based AeroVironment successfully completed test flights of its Global Observer craft which was powered by liquid hydrogen.
Other companies are also seeking to develop more environmentally-friendly planes, amid concerns over their contribution to climate change.
Earlier this year, the airline Virgin Atlantic conducted the first commercial flight powered partly by biofuel.
And last year, defence firm Qinetiq flew a solar-powered plane for 54 hours, smashing the official world record for the longest-duration unmanned flight.
Zephyr, as the craft was known, could be used for military applications, as well as for Earth-observation and communications.
Other unmanned prototypes have been shown off by the American space agency Nasa.
However, in 2010, Swiss balloonist Bertrand Piccard plans to launch Solar Impulse, a manned plane in which he will attempt to circumnavigate the globe.
To carry the precious payload, the craft will have a huge wingspan of 80m (262ft), wider than the wings of the Airbus A380.
As the plane is piloted by only one person at a time, it will have to make frequent stopovers. The current plan is for the journey to be broken into five legs each lasting between four or five days.
Projectors to magnify cell-phone cinema
Microvision Inc., a small Redmond, Wash., company, was at the CTIA Wireless industry show this week to demonstrate a prototype of its projector. It's about the size of two full-size iPods, but by the time it goes on sale later this year, it should be about 30 percent smaller, said Russell Hannigan, the company's director of projector product management.
In a darkened room, the prototype beamed out surprisingly bright, crisp and large video from a connected iPod Nano: With the projector held 6 feet away from the wall, the image measured 6 feet diagonally and was as sharp as a DVD.
On the brightly lit showroom floor, the image was less impressive, but projected on a piece of paper held a foot away, it still made for a nice alternative to the iPod Nano's screen, which is slightly larger than a stamp.
The technology differs substantially from standard projectors: Microvision's unit shines red, green and blue lasers on a rapidly moving, 1-millimeter square mirror, which "paints" the picture line by line, so fast that it blends into one image.
Hannigan said it's highly energy-efficient and allows the company to dispense with the fans and vents that standard projectors have. The goal for the first projector is a 2.5-hour battery life.
Microvision Chief Executive Alexander Tokman expects the projector to sell for $300 to $400 through its partners, of which Motorola Inc. is the only one he was allowed to identify.
The company is also working on a projector so small that it can be built into cell phones, at least the more bulky models. That could be available in the second half of 2009. Because a cell phone already contains a battery and some of the other electronics that are necessary, this unit can be simpler and cheaper — Tokman estimates it would increase the price of a cell phone by $100.
"The two things people are buying now are cell phones and big-screen TVs," Hannigan said. "This brings those two together."
3M Co. and Texas Instruments Inc. also have prototypes of pico projectors, and may be bringing them to market soon.
Another competitor is Alcatel-Lucent. Randy Giles, director of optical subsystems at the company's Bell Labs research arm, was at CTIA demonstrating a small projector that showed Disney's "Fantasia" from a Nokia N95 phone. The image was smaller and appeared dimmer than Microvision's, but Giles said a prototype that's 14 times brighter is in the lab. He too expects projectors to be built into handsets next year.
Alcatel-Lucent's projector uses lasers, like Microvision, but is otherwise more conventional, using a technology that's similar to liquid-crystal displays to block or let the light through to the screen.
So who would buy a pico projector? Microvision's Tokman said its research indicated that teenagers would be the big market.
"They would rather shut themselves in a dark room and project movies on the walls," he said. "They prefer this to spending time with their parents."
source:keralanext.com
Interactive Sleeve Boosts Top Athletes
The Australian netball team and elite basketballers are trialling the interactive textile technologies which provide a groundbreaking training tool.
The technology, developed at the Textile and Fibre Technology Division in Belmont, uses electronic sensors, sewn into clothing fibre, that respond to movement to provide feedback on sporting actions.
Dr Richard Helmer is leading the research, which aims to help athletes edge closer the high-performance zone, where they can do no wrong.
Dr Helmer has been collaborating with coaches at the Australian Institute of Sport for 18 months following the development of a prototype dubbed the ``air guitar''.
It's a wired-up clothing sleeve where sensors that monitor movement are fed into a computer and the movements are matched with music.
The research with elite athletes is about far more than wires, computers and music the musical feedback is designed to give them a feeling about their action, rather than a thought.
They already know how to throw,'' Dr Helmer said. ``We're not trying to mess with their action.
The work with the netballers is almost a psychological exercise.
At the moment we're allowing them to see or hear a rhythm that's related to their motion. We're trying to give them a new way of thinking about what they're doing without disrupting the subconscious processes that get the ball in (the net).
If that keeps them in the zone for four quarters, we've done our job.''
Later this year, the project will also begin working with amateur athletes with the idea of developing a training aid using data collected from elite athletes.
Dr Helmer sees many more applications for the technology in fields ranging from entertainment to education, physiotherapy, medicine and even military operations.
Next Generation Revolution - Google Weblogs
Google Weblogs, or “GWeblogs,” or “Gblogs,” which will launch later this year in a public beta, is the next revolution in personal publishing. Here’s what you can expect:
- Don’t limit yourself to “reverse chronological” publishing. Our advanced Google algorithms put your best content at the top of your blog. Even if your later work goes downhill your previous posts will still shine.
- No more template languages to mess with or sidebars to get right. Our advanced Google algorithms automatically populate your blog’s sidebar with the most relevant possible content.
- Stop worrying about your PageRank or your search engine optimization. Post directly into Google search results for maximum visibility.
- Save your readers time and effort. We’ll automatically extract the most relevant sentence from your post for the index page, along with any necessary ellipsis. We'll also put some words in bold!
- Your blog’s header will stay fresh with new images from our team of artists, each and every anniversary of a scientific achievement.
- Unsure of what to post about? Just click “I’m Feeling Lucky” and we’ll “take care” of the rest!
G'Day tomorrow! Google launches forward thinking technology
Google's new gDay search engine, developed in Google's Sydney engineering centre, can accurately predict future events and internet content.
According to Google, the accuracy of the artificial intelligence Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation (MATE) system is anywhere between 75 per cent and 95 per cent.
"It depends on the Web site in question and the day of the week, for example, our spiders don't work Sundays" a Google spokesperson said.
gDay creates a sophisticated model of what the Internet will look like 24 hours from now - including share price movements, sports results and news events, from Australian Web sites only. Google's testing of gDay has found that results beyond a 24 hour period are statistically unreliable.
"Google's Australian engineers have a history of major technological innovations, from Google Maps to Mapplets to Traffic for Google Maps. Giving humankind the ability to see 24 hours into the future is just a natural progression - of sorts," said Alan Noble, Head of Engineering for Google Australia & New Zealand.
"Maybe you want to see tomorrow's rugby scores. Maybe you want to see tomorrow's lotto numbers. Maybe this is the greatest freakin' product ever."
Users who like a casual flutter and share traders are said to benefit most from gDay. "All past lotto results are publicly available on the web so gDay can extrapolate tomorrow's results, but supplementary numbers and Super66 are still a bit dicey," a Google spokesperson said.
Early trials of gDay, searching 365 days into the future, predicted Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page as joint winners of the 2008 Brownlow Medal.
source:linuxworld.com.auWomen’s Attractiveness Judged By Software
According to Haaretz, an Israeli team of computer scientists has developed a software that ranks facial attractiveness of women. Instead of identifying basic facial characteristics, this software has been designed to make aesthetic judgments — after training. The lead researcher said this program ‘constitutes a substantial advance in the development of artificial intelligence.’ It is interesting to note that the researchers focused on women only. Apparently, men’ faces are more difficult to grade. But read more…
The picture on the left shows how the system is initially calibrated: “Facial coordinates with hair and skin sample regions as represented by the facial feature extractor. Coordinates are used for calculating geometric features and asymmetry. Sample regions are used for extracting color values and smoothness.” (Credit: Amit Kagian, Tel Aviv University, Israel).
This software has been developed by Amit Kagian, a Tel Aviv University (TAU) student, for his master’s thesis in computer science. He has been supervised by Gideon Dror, an associate professor in computer science at the Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo and Eytan Ruppin, a TAU professor who manages the Complex Network Systems Lab.
Here are some details about how the software was tested. “In the first stage, 30 human participants were asked to rate from 1-7 the beauty of several dozen pictures. Participants did not say why they ranked certain faces as more beautiful than others. The pictures were then processed and mathematically mapped. ‘We came up with 98 numbers that represent the geometric shape of the face, as well as characteristics like hair color, smoothness of skin and facial symmetry,’ Kagian explains. Participants’ rankings of the pictures were also input in the computer.”
But what was the second stage? “‘We input new pictures of faces into the computer and it graded them based on the information it had.’ Human subjects were then asked to rank the new pictures too. ‘The computer produced impressive results: the rankings were very similar to the rankings people gave.’ According to Kagian, the key achievement is that the computer operated according to certain perceptions of beauty that were not input into it, but learned by processing the data it received.”
For more information, the researchers published their latest results in Vision Research, an Elsevier journal, under the name “A machine learning predictor of facial attractiveness revealing human-like psychophysical biases” (Volume 48, Issue 2, January 2008, Pages 235-243).
Here is a link to the abstract. “Recent psychological studies have strongly suggested that humans share common visual preferences for facial attractiveness. Here, we present a learning model that automatically extracts measurements of facial features from raw images and obtains human-level performance in predicting facial attractiveness ratings. The machine’s ratings are highly correlated with mean human ratings, markedly improving on recent machine learning studies of this task. Simulated psychophysical experiments with virtually manipulated images reveal preferences in the machine’s judgments that are remarkably similar to those of humans.” And here is a link to the full paper (PDF format, 10 pages, 625 KB).
And here is a paragraph excerpted from the conclusions. “Our analysis has revealed that symmetry is strongly related to the attractiveness of averaged faces, but is definitely not the only factor in the equation since about half of the image-features relate to the ratings of averaged composites in a similar manner as the symmetry measure. This suggests that a general movement of features toward attractiveness, rather than a simple increase in symmetry, is responsible for the attractiveness of averaged faces.”
The same researchers presented their previous results at the Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference held in Vancouver, Canada, on December 4-9, 2006. Here is a link to
this presentation called “A Humanlike Predictor of Facial Attractiveness” (PDF format, 8 pages, 78 KB). Here is the first paragraph. “This work presents a method for estimating human facial attractiveness, based on supervised learning techniques. Numerous facial features that describe facial geometry, color and texture, combined with an average human attractiveness score for each facial image, are used to train various predictors. Facial attractiveness ratings produced by the final predictor are found to be highly correlated with human ratings, markedly improving previous machine learning achievements. Simulated psychophysical experiments with virtually manipulated images reveal preferences in the machine’s judgments which are remarkably similar to those of humans.”
As you can see, there some shared words between these two works. The figure above is featured in both papers.
Finally, why did the researchers limit themselves to women? Haaretz says men’s faces are more difficult to rank.
source:.zdnet.com
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Coming Soon, to Any Flat Surface Near You
TIRED of hearing other people’s cellphone conversations? It may become worse. Soon you may have to watch their favorite television shows and YouTube videos, too, as they project them onto nearby walls or commuter-train seatbacks.
Pint-size digital projectors are in the works. These devices, when plugged into cellphones and portable media players, will let consumers beam video content from their hand-held devices to the closest smooth surface — entertaining themselves, annoying their neighbors and possibly contributing to a new warning sign: No Projectors in This Area. The microprojectors, still in prototype, use light-emitting diodes, lasers or a combination of the two to cast a display of up to 50 or 60 inches, or perhaps even wider, in darkened spaces and 7 to 20 inches or so when there is ambient light.
Digital projectors were once bulky. These new models, though, are small enough to fit into the pocket of consumers who want a big-screen experience from a small-screen device. Some of the models are expected to be on the market by year-end, or sooner.
Prices have yet to be announced. Matthew S. Brennesholtz, an analyst at Insight Media, a marketing research firm in Norwalk, Conn., says he thinks the projectors will initially cost about $350, then quickly drop to less than $300.
The projectors may be particularly useful for business presentations — for example, when road warriors need to show a product video to small groups. No coordination would be needed to arrange for a screen. Instead, a patch of wall within a cubicle or restaurant could serve for an impromptu presentation. In a pinch, a manila folder — or even a napkin — would work, too.
Carolina Milanesi, a research director in London for Gartner, the research firm, says she thinks the microprojectors are most likely to appeal to business travelers who, for example, could use them to beam PowerPoint shows from their smartphones.
But Ms. Milanesi is dubious about consumers using them in public, for instance, to project documents on a train seatback because they could so easily be read by others. “I hate it even when I am on the subway and the guy next to me is reading my paper,” she said.
The projectors will first appear in free-standing, companion units to cellphones and other devices, Mr. Brennesholtz said, connected to them by standard cables. Later, the projector modules will be directly embedded in phones, as cameras are today. About 16 manufacturers are working on mini-projectors, he said.
Insight Media forecasts a substantial and fast-growing market. “We anticipate total sales of more than $2.5 billion by 2012 for the companion models,” Mr. Brennesholtz said, and $1 billion in revenue for projector modules that are integrated into cellphones and other devices.
Cellphone service providers have been a driving force behind mini-projector development, said Jinwoo Bae, business team leader for Iljin DSP, a company in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, south of Seoul, that is working on a prototype. “Revenue growth from voice service is becoming saturated,” Dr. Bae said, “so telecom service providers are looking for new revenue from video content.”
Iljin DSP’s microprojector, which will be marketed and distributed by SK Telecom, a large wireless operator in South Korea, projects images of 7 to 60 inches, depending on a room’s lighting; the device’s light source is a combination of lasers and L.E.D.’s. The lithium ion battery lasts about two hours, Dr. Bae said.
The company is also building a projector engine to be placed inside cellphones. “We need to reduce the power consumption” of the module, he said. “A stand-alone projector can have its own battery, but modules integrated into a mobile phone use the phone’s battery,” limiting the amount of power than can be drawn, he said.
A miniprojector engine is now being manufactured by 3M. It will be sold within a stand-alone projector offered by Samsung this year, said Mike O’Keefe, marketing manager for 3M’s mobile projection technology. The projector, called the Samsung MBP-100, connects to consumer devices like MP3 players that have video output.
Mr. Brennesholtz of Insight Media was shown a model of the Iljin DSP projector in a restaurant in New York when he met with executives from the company. “I’m not sure what the other diners thought about seeing a Korean sit-com projected on the ceiling of the restaurant,” Mr. Brennesholtz said.
As it turned out, there was too much ambient light for the image to look good on the ceiling.
“But on a napkin, or on the cover of a box,” he said, “it looked fine.”
Source:nytimes.com
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Apple Iphone Handwriting Recognition Software: Do You Want The Job?
If the rumors are correct and what our source Phones Review is saying is correct then we may see something on the Apple iPhone that will be a massive hit. A rumor has it that the Apple iPhone is to get handwriting recognition software, the same software technology that the OS X uses.
The Handwriting Recognition team is seeking an engineer who will be responsible for advancing Apple’s handwriting recognition technology for Mac OS X. The ideal candidate will be an expert in the area of pattern recognition, with an excellent understanding of handwriting recognition issues. The person will also assume
Source:product-reviews.net
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PLM technology helps apparels achieve sales growth
Centric Software, a leading provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) for the apparel and private label industries, announced key findings from a report entitled “PLM for the Fashion, Apparel and Footwear Industries: Enabling Speed and Responsiveness, Delivering Higher Profitability,” written by leading analyst firm Aberdeen Group.
The report reveals that Best-in-Class apparel and footwear companies are 54 percent more likely than Industry Average to have an integrated Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) implementation in place. Of those with PLM implementations for over a year, 65 percent report year-on-year revenue growth – emphasizing the growing value of PLM to the apparel industry.
“Best-in-Class fashion, apparel, and footwear companies are using PLM to improve their ability to respond to rapid demand changes and complex global supply chains, resulting in an increased ability to get products to market on-time and at target cost,” said Jim Brown, vice president of product innovation and engineering research at Aberdeen Group.
“Our research shows that apparel and footwear manufacturers with mature PLM implementations are seeing improvements in key performance metrics, including higher sell-through on products, and they are reacting more quickly to customer preference changes. There is little doubt that enabling PLM technologies such as those provided by Centric are helping fashion, apparel, and footwear companies become more agile and meetthe challenges of their markets.”