Touch-sensitive video-screen floor is in step with you

 
 
A prototype floor that senses your every step and displays interactive video could one day bring strange sights and new possibilities into your home

GLANCE down at the interactive floor in Patrick Baudisch's lab and you will not see your reflection in the glass. Instead, you will find your computer-generated doppelgänger, wearing a facsimile of your clothes, which walks and moves just like you do. It seems to be stuck to your feet (see picture).

This mirror world is one of the applications Baudisch and his colleagues at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, developed after building an 8-square-metre pressure-sensing floor that can recognise people by their weight, track their movements and display video for them to interact with. The idea is that the pressure-sensing technology could lead to a raft of ways to control objects in your home, play games, or assist older or disabled people.

For instance, to play a version of indoor soccer, the floor generates a CGI football that can be kicked about by the people in the room. Or if someone sits on the floor, the system recognises who they are by their precise weight and flips a TV on to their favourite channel. Similarly, an elderly person's activity levels could be monitored.

Developed with funding from Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, Baudisch envisions the device as a forerunner to pressure-sensing floors in people's homes. His team will present the invention, dubbed GravitySpace, at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris, France, in April.

The team's prototype consists of a slab of 6.4-centimetre-thick glass installed in a hole cut into a standard floor, and an infrared camera and high-resolution video projector in the room below that tracks footprints and beams video up onto the glass.

Infrared LEDs surround the flooring, which is also coated with a rubbery, pressure-sensitive film. A footstep on the surface makes the film interfere with the infrared light, creating an image of the footprint that is captured by the camera below. "This pressure sensor is of such high resolution that the floor can recognise anything from shoe prints to fabric textures to someone's knees," says Baudisch.

Software running on a linked computer recognises what those objects are doing and generates relevant video in response. In the football app, for example, the floor measures the rate of change of pressure on the non-kicking foot to determine when you are kicking - the floor cannot "see" the foot that is in the air - and the ball is moved in response.

"It's an extremely exciting research result," says Ken Perlin, at New York University. "The future of computer interfaces is to become more sensitive to people's needs. A floor that understands where you are and what you are doing is a logical step in that direction."

Digital information can be stored in DNA - study

It can store the information from a million CDs in a space no bigger than your little finger, and could keep it safe for centuries.Is this some new electronic gadget? Nope. It's DNA.
The genetic material has long held all the information needed to make plants and animals, and now some scientists are saying it could help handle the growing storage needs of today's information society.
Researchers reported Wednesday that they had stored all 154 Shakespeare sonnets, a photo, a scientific paper, and a 26-second sound clip from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. That all fit in a barely visible bit of DNA in a test tube.
The process involved converting the ones and zeroes of digital information into the four-letter alphabet of DNA code. That code was used to create strands of synthetic DNA. Then machines "read" the DNA molecules and recovered the encoded information. That reading process took two weeks, but technological advances are driving that time down, said Ewan Birney of the European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, England. He's an author of a report published online by the journal Nature.
DNA could be useful for keeping huge amounts of information that must be kept for a long time but not retrieved very often, the researchers said. Storing the DNA would be relatively simple, they said: Just put it in a cold, dry and dark place and leave it alone.
The technology might work in the near term for large archives that have to be kept safe for centuries, like national historical records or huge library holdings, said study co-author Nick Goldman of the institute. Maybe in a decade it could become feasible for consumers to store information they want to have around in 50 years, like wedding photos or videos for future grandchildren, Goldman said in an email.
The researchers said they have no intention of putting storage DNA into a living thing, and that it couldn't accidentally become part of the genetic machinery of a living thing because of its coding scheme.
Sriram Kosuri, a Harvard researcher who co-authored a similar report last September, said both papers show advantages of DNA for long-term storage. But because of its technical limitations, "it's not going to replace your hard drive," he said.
Kosuri's co-author, Harvard DNA expert George Church, said the technology could let a person store all of Wikipedia on a fingertip, and all the world's information now stored on disk drives could fit in the palm of the hand.

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Battle of the bulge - Micromax A100 vs Spice Mi-500 vs iBall Andi 5c

Kunal Dua, November 01, 2012

A world where mobile phones are getting bigger and tablets are getting smaller has seen the rise of a new category of devices. At first considered Frankensteins of the mobile computing world, phablets became cool with Samsung Galaxy Note's success.

Recently, we've seen a bunch of new devices trying to make a mark by appealing to those looking for large screen devices, minus the stylus. We look at three such devices that attempt to woo the budget-conscious - the iBall Andi 5c, Micromax Superfone Canvas A100 and Spice Stellar Horizon Mi-500.

Build/ Design
The Micromax A100 is a clear winner in this department. The curves of the A100 fit well in hand, thanks, no doubt, to the slightly smaller profile compared to the other two devices. While none of the three devices scream "cheap plastic" (the Spice comes the closest), the overall finish of the Micromax ensures it stands out from the rest.

The Micromax A 100, like the iBall Andi, has the power button on the right, which makes it rather convenient to use for a large handset. We didn't find the top placement of the power button on the Spice particularly handy, given the length of the device. The Spice handset has the volume rocker on the right, another odd choice, compared to the Micromax and the iBall Andi, which have it on the left. All three devices come with a Micro-USB port - the Micromax has it at the bottom, while the other two at the top, next to the audio jack.

The iBall Andi is the only device that comes with a physical home button, flanked on either side by capacitive touch Menu and Back buttons. The Spice goes all capacitive touch with same button options, whereas the Micromax A100 goes the all-virtual route, with Back, Home and Recent Apps button appearing at the bottom of the screen at all times (except when you play full-screen video). Picking any one of the three based on style of buttons is down to personal preference.

At 168 grams the Micromax A100 is no featherweight, but comfortably lighter than its two competitors. Overall, it's our pick in this section.

Winner: Micromax A100

Hardware/ Performance
The Spice Mi-500 packs a dual-core 1GHz processor that gives it a clear advantage over the other two phones that are powered by single-core processors. The benchmarks as well as day-to-day usage observations were in line with this fact.

While none of the phones suffer from any lag during typical operations, the Spice does a great job of handling everything thrown at it. Though all three phones ship with 512MB RAM, the Spice Mi-500 required fewer reloads of the page when going back to a tab while having multiple tabs open. The Spice is also faster at loading heavy web pages. The touch performance of all three phones is at par.

All three phones are dual-SIM standby, which of course means while you are making a call on one number, the other will appear unreachable.

Winner: Spice Stellar Horizon Mi-500

Display
The Spice and the iBall handsets feature identical 12.7-cms displays with WVGA resolution (480x800). Micromax chose to cram in a few more vertical pixels, going with a FWVGA 480x854 12.5-cm display, a resolution seen in some of the recent Xperia smartphones, amongst others.

The extra pixels ensure that the A100 can boast of a 16:9 display (great for watching videos), compared to 4:3 resolutions that the other two offer. Further, since the A100 comes with virtual buttons, the extra vertical pixels ensure that the effective available pixels (480x782) aren't reduced considerably.

As far as display quality and colour reproduction are concerned, the Micromax A100 fares the best. Images appear sharp and crisp (but not artificially so), and the viewing angles are pretty good. The iBall Andi display is next in line by doing an average job on all fronts. The Spice Mi-500 is let down badly by a poor display - the colours appear washed-up and viewing angles are extremely limited.

Winner: Micromax A100

Software
All three handsets come with pretty much stock Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, though Spice has applied a few tweaks of its own. Each handset comes with a few bundled apps as well, but nothing's that likely to influence your buying decision one-way or the other.

Camera
All three phones come with identical 5-megapixel rear shooters with autofocus and LED flash but the performance is visibly different. While the Spice and the Micromax cameras do a pretty decent job, the iBall Andi camera is a disappointment.

The Spice beats the Micromax in colour reproduction and image quality outdoors, while the Micromax just about edges the Spice under low-light conditions (both with, and without flash).

However, there's a flaw with the Micromax A100 camera. All images clicked with the phone in landscape mode appear upside down. Of course that's easily fixable by rotating the images, but it's a big annoyance no doubt - not everyone's familiar with batch-editing tools for photographs, and we can imagine poor souls having to rotate each image manually. Thankfully, the bug is limited to images only, since videos appeared upright, no matter how the phone is held.

Strangely, Micromax refused to acknowledge the problem- even though there are multiple reports of this problem out there - and tried to pass it off as a "bug with ICS"!

Winner: Spice Stellar Horizon Mi-500

Battery
Big screen need big batteries, and all three phones deliver, with the smallest battery in the lot being the Micromax, that has a 2,000mAh one. However, it does a good job of keeping up with the Spice that has a 2,400mAh battery, and both the phones had pretty similar battery usage patterns in day-to-day tasks. The iBall Andi guzzled up its 2,300mAh battery faster than the other two.

Tie: Spice Stellar Horizon Mi-500 and Micromax A100

Verdict
If you've made it this far, it would be pretty clear that it's between the Spice Stellar Horizon Mi-500 and the Micromax A100 for the overall winner. While the Spice performs better and has a slightly better camera, the Micromax is better looking; a more natural fit in the hand and has a better display. There's nothing to choose between the two as far as the software and the battery life are concerned.

Let's throw the prices into the mix. The Spice Stellar Horizon Mi-500 retails for Rs. 12,499 while the Micromax A100 is available for Rs. 9,799. So is it worth spending 2700 rupees extra to get a phone that offers a better multi-tasking experience but an average display? If you can afford it and find that the Spice handset snuggles into your hand, go for it.

If you prefer something that's lighter on the pocket, as well as your hand, has a better display and don't mind a little bit of a performance hit, pick up the Micromax A100. If you do, also get IrfanView for Windows or an Automator action on Mac to flip those inverted camera photographs in a batch - until Micromax wakes up and fixes the problem.


For more pics click here

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MacBook Pro with Retina display: First look

When I was 13, I was sent to the optician for the first time, and came home with glasses. Suddenly, the world was sharp all around me. I was surprised by the crisp lines of the tree branches against the sky. It was news to me that I was near-sighted, because I had been used to seeing the world in a blur.Apple Inc. sells a similar epiphany, starting this week, in the shape of a notebook computer. One of its new MacBook Pro models has a "Retina" display, a screen that packs four times as many pixels as a standard display.
Why is this a big deal? It's not easy to describe in print, but a look at the screen tells the whole story. It's like putting on glasses and realizing you're nearsighted. Much like the screen on the latest iPad, the new display makes all other screens look dull and fuzzy.
Even the icons on the Mac screen look so much more detailed. On the calendar icon, you can make out the dots for the individual dates. On the Address book, you suddenly see that the "at" sign on the cover is embossed.
High-resolution photos look really, really sharp. Low-resolution photos, like those on Facebook, are revealed as mushy and indistinct.
With a resolution of 2,880 by 1,800 pixels, the Retina screen can show every pixel in a five-megapixel shot, all at once. It has more pixels than a high-definition TV set - 2.5 times as many.
As you might expect, this epiphany doesn't come cheap. The MacBook Pro with Retina display starts at $2,199.
That's nearly three times more than the average consumer spends on a laptop, but it isn't a bad price for the video editors, photographers and graphic designers who are the intended buyers.
In fact, the new MacBook looks like a steal compared to a regular, non-high-resolution MacBook with a screen of the same size, at 15.4 inches diagonally. When a regular MacBook is upgraded with the 8 gigabytes of RAM and 256-gigabyte flash-based "hard drive" that come standard on the Retina model, it costs $2,399. So you're basically saving $200 by getting the better screen.
There are a few other differences between the Retina MacBook and the regular one. It's thinner, lighter and lacks a DVD drive. It even lacks an Ethernet port for Internet connections. This was a problem as soon as I unpacked the unit, because getting on the office Wi-Fi can be troublesome. Apple sells a $29 Ethernet adapter that plugs into one of the two high-speed, multi-purpose "Thunderbolt" ports. It would have been a nice gesture for them to include one in the box.
If the stripped-down features of the MacBook Pro remind you of something, it's probably the MacBook Air, that ultra-slim laptop Apple first released in 2008. Many who saw it then recognized it as the future of laptops, and the new MacBook Pro is the proof of that prophecy - in many ways, it's a super-sized MacBook Air.
The MacBook Pro is just 0.7 inches thick. That's the same as the Air at its thickest point, but unlike the Air, the Pro doesn't taper into a wedge shape. It's the same thickness all the way through, making it feel a lot more substantial than the Air.
The screen is partly to blame for this. That's because the sharper screen is also darker. To get it looking as bright as other laptops, Apple has to pump more light through it. More light takes more power. To get the Pro to last for about seven hours of work (a claim I did not have time to test), Apple had to increase the size of the battery. It takes up nearly half of the internal space of the laptop.
I suspect the Retina screen is coming first to a relatively big MacBook because its chassis provided Apple with the space to expand the battery. In a MacBook Air, there's no space for a bigger battery, so a Retina screen would have meant shorter battery life. That would have been a tough sell.
I hope Apple or another manufacturer figures out a way around the battery issue, because I want to see this type of display in every device. Of course, desktop displays aren't limited by power consumption in the same way, so we can hope to see super-resolution monitors soon. It's time for our computers to give us glasses.

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Samsung Chromebook and Chromebox review

Two new computers running Google's Chrome operating system are looking to lure people to a browser-based environment. Both target light-duty computer users who don't need the full range of capabilities that traditional Windows and Mac computers provide.The first thing to know about these machines is they lack regular hard drives for storage. There's a small amount of flash memory available, the kind you'd find on a camera memory card, but Chrome OS machines are designed for the cloud. That means documents are stored over the Internet, and programs are run over the Internet through a Web browser.
However securely and discretely the Internet services you use claim to keep your data, your content is one step removed from your tight-fisted control. Cloud computing also limits what you can do during those times you may not have an Internet connection.
In addition, because the machines emphasize not just cloud storage but cloud services as well, you won't be able to install full-blown programs such as Microsoft's Office. You're limited to the selection of apps written for Chrome.
What you get instead is speed. The Chrome OS machines boot up quickly because they don't have to load a lot of software - all that is run over the Internet. The machines also don't need the most expensive and fastest parts because they aren't doing a whole lot.
If you're OK with that approach to personal computing, the Chromebook laptop and the Chromebox desktop computer hit the mark. Both are made by Samsung Electronics Co. and represent the second-generation of Chrome OS machines, following the models out last summer.
Here's a closer look at the two:
Chromebook
Officially called the Samsung Series 5 550, the $449 Chromebook laptop is an updated version of last year's debut Chromebook model.
As notebooks go, the Chromebook is sleek and simple by appearance. It sports a 12.1-inch display, weighs a tidy 3.3 lbs and has built-in Wi-Fi. The model I tested also came with a 3G cellular modem and two years of free online connection to Verizon's network. That model costs $549.
Under the hood is an Intel Celeron processor and four gigabytes of RAM, which is plenty for most Web-based activities. There's a paltry 16 gigabytes of flash storage, which can quickly get eaten up if you store a lot of songs or photos - forget about lengthy video. Again, the idea is for you to keep all that on the Internet instead.
Google's Chrome Web store has plenty of useful, free applications to run on the machine. These are the same apps that you can add to Chrome Web browsers running on Windows or Mac computers. The selection includes accounting software, Amazon.com wish list management and "Angry Birds" (Yes, they're still angry).
But if all of that can also be installed for Chrome on a Mac or Windows machine, why have a whole computer with the entire functionality dedicated to one browser? Isn't that severely limiting?
Some will find it is, but others will soon determine that the vast majority of their activities in front of a computer screen are Web-based anyway. There are Chrome apps for Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other services that represent the bulk of the casual user's computer time.
The frustrations I had with Chromebook were related to its hardware. First, there is no caps lock key. I had to simultaneously press the shift key and a key with a magnifying glass right above it. That may seem like a small inconvenience, but Chrome just made it more cumbersome for me to yell at someone in ALL CAPS on Facebook.
Also, the touchpad's right-click sensitivity was poorly calibrated and dominated a good two-thirds of the surface. Hence, a right-click dropdown window of options kept popping up when I merely meant to left click on text fields and other objects. These are small things, of course, but they were annoying.
Chromebox
The $329 Chromebox Series 3 desktop computer, by comparison, a real gem.
The diminutive unit sports lots of crucial connections, including six USB 2.0 ports, a DVI output and two DisplayPort outputs for the transmission of high-resolution video to an external display. Like the Chromebook, it comes with 16 gigabytes of storage.
The first thing I noticed when powering up the Chromebox was, well, nothing. It was the quietest electrical device in my home office, thanks to a flash drive that doesn't need to spin, unlike magnetic hard drives found in most traditional computers. The unit generates very little heat and therefore doesn't need a roar of fans to move that heat away from the 1.9 GHz Intel processor.
The desktop experience is identical to the Chromebook, of course. They run the same OS and operate in the same fashion.
I was able to use the quietness to my advantage. The Chromebook is quiet, too, but the Chromebox is more inviting because you're more likely to leave it in one place. That makes it easier to use the device for entertainment, as I wouldn't need to reconnect wires to the TV each time.
It's much nicer to stream high-definition Netflix movies to the TV from the mouse-quiet Chrome device than from my PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or a regular desktop PC, all of which get warm and loud.
And I'd get a proper browser and online apps on the television, instead of apps repurposed for the game console experience. For instance, the Twitter app for Xbox is cartoonish, whereas reading a few tweets from TweetDeck via Chrome (with a Bluetooth keyboard attached) is pretty nice.
That said, I see neither Chromebook nor the Chromebox as replacements for traditional computers, as cloud computing isn't fully robust yet. Instead, Chrome OS machines are likely to be additions, the way you might buy an iPad to supplement your main desktop or laptop.
If you're comfortable with cloud computing, the Chromebook and the Chromebox deliver a clean networked experience and give you a full keyboard than touch-screen tablets lack.
But the new Chrome OS machines, while improved over previous models, don't offer many advantages over traditional computers that can do much more. So if you're not comfortable yet with cloud storage, there's no reason to force yourself to embrace Chrome OS. You can get by with the Chrome browser on a regular machine.

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Liquipel 2.0 nanocoating debuts

with improved water protection.

We were rather stoked when Liquipel brought its "watersafe" nanocoating service from California to South East Asia in fall 2012, but it turns out that the Santa Ana-based company had another surprise lined up for us later on. At Startup Debut 2013 in Las Vegas today we saw the announcement of Liquipel 2.0, which claims to have "significant advancements in durability, corrosion resistance and water protection" than its predecessor. Specifically, the new version is "up to 100 times more effective... while maintaining component integrity and RF sensitivity." Obviously we had to see it to believe it, and to our surprise, this time Liquipel had a demo that let us submerge a 2.0-coated iPhone 5 under two feet of water -- you can see us going bonkers with it in the video after the break.

According to Managing Director Sam Winkler, a device thoroughly treated with Liquipel 2.0 can actually achieve a liquid protection rating of at least IPX7: immersion at a depth of 1m for 30 minutes. While the iPhone 5 we tortured did eventually take in too much water and thus disabled the touch panel, it quickly came back to life after we shook off some of the water. Winkler added that his company's now offering its 4ft x 4ft "Liquipods" for shops that want to provide the Liquipel treatment themselves, but it'll be a while before all existing partners -- mostly outside the US -- can be upgraded to 2.0. That said, interested customers can already get the 2.0 treatment for the same price via the online service in the US.

One final note: it turns out that Jaybird also uses Liquipel during the assembly of its sports headphones. Hopefully we'll see more products treated with the same goodness in the near future.

Sony rumoured to be working on 6.44-inch full-HD device

2013 is being called the Year of the phablet and for good reason. A niche category that came into existence with the launch of Samsung's Galaxy Note, is now being populated with devices from companies like Huawei, HTC, ZTE and even Indian manufacturers like Micromax, Karbonn and Byond.

Sony that had already entered the category with its 5-inch full-HD Xperia Z, which it unveiled  at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). It now seems to be working on a much bigger phablet this time round.

Engadget reports that a leaked image posted on the Chinese-language Digi-wo forum shows a 6.44-inch display screen along with a claim that the screen for this component has 1080p HD resolution. Apart from this, there is no other detail regarding the device. For all we know, it could just be a prototype of an upcoming device or even a fake image. With Mobile World Congress (MWC) being round the corner, one should not be surprised if the device does make an appearance there.

Huawei launched two new devices this year at CES. The company's new flagship Ascend D2 comes with a 5-inch display and the Ascend Mate sports a big 6.1-inch IPS+ LCD capacitive touchscreen.

HTC came into the phablet arena with the J Butterfly, which was the first full-HD device and has a 5-inch display. A more recent entrant is the ZTE Nubia Z5 featuring a 5-inch full-HD display. The company is already rumoured to be working on the Nubia Z7 that will have a 6.3-inch display with a screen resolution of 2560x1440 pixels. The Chinese company also took the wraps off of its Grand S, which is being flaunted as the world's thinnest 5-inch full-HD smartphone.

Indian device manufacturer Byond Tech recently introduced the Phablet PIII sporting a massive 6.3-inch display. Karbonn, on the other hand launched the dual-SIM A30 Android device with a 5.9-inch display. Micromax jumoed into the bandwagon with the A116 Canvas HD with a 5-inch 720p IPS display.

Coming back to Samsung, the company that started it all, post the success of its Galaxy Note, the company went ahead and launched the Galaxy Note II that came with a bigger 5.5-inch Super AMOLED HD display.

The company is now gearing up for a third generation Galaxy Note III, which is rumoured to sport a 6.3-inch screen and will perhaps come with recently announced Exynos 5 Octa processor as well. Samsung also recently launched the 5-inch Galaxy Grand earlier this week. 

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