NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Thin, Flexible PaperTab to Redefine the Tablet

One of the many things I love about old media such as magazines and newspapers is their flexibility. You can roll 'em up, stick em' in your back pocket, bang 'em around and even use 'em to swat house flies.

New media tablets, on the other hand, require almost a custodial reverence when it comes to ownership. Cases and sleeves are a must for transport and safe keeping, lest it get scratched or shattered. And you can forget about rolling one up in your back pocket or swatting house flies. Unless you want gashes in your drywall.

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Potentially bridging this gap is a team from Canada's Queen's University. They're collaborating with Intel Labs and Plastic Logic to redefine the tablet's form as a flexible, paper-like touchscreen computer called PaperTab.

But PaperTab's flexible form isn't its only innovation. Unlike tablets, which switch between apps on a single display, multiple PaperTabs are designed to be used together. Each tab acts as a window for separate applications, but they still interact with each other. 

For example, when a PaperTab is placed beyond reaching distance, it reverts to a thumbnail overview of the document, like icons on a desktop computer. When the tab is picked back up or touched, it switches back to a full screen view, like opening a new window.

Additionally, PaperTab's interface allows functions simply by tapping tabs together. For example, a photo can be sent via email simply by tapping a tab of a draft email together with a tab of a photo. Even cooler, when that email is ready to go, it can be sent by bending the top corner of the display. Also, placing tabs side by side can create a larger display surface.

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Designers say these functions emulate the natural handling of multiple sheets of paper. This may sound like a cluttered step back, but think how long it takes to back track through a tablet to close out or switch apps as opposed to picking up a piece of paper that's right in front of you.

"Using several PaperTabs makes it much easier to work with multiple documents," Roel Vertegaal, Director of Queen's University's Human Media Lab said on the university's website. "Within five to ten years, most computers, from ultra-notebooks to tablets, will look and feel just like these sheets of printed color paper."

via Gizmag

Credit: Queen's University

Indianapolis Colts Trot Out the Tech

The Indianapolis Colts already have Luck on their side, but now they're getting a leg up on other NFL teams by making some rather tech-forward strides.

Chief among them is the franchise's decision to do away with bulky playbooks in favor of iPads. A traditional NFL playbook is a hulking binder of on-field hieroglyphics that can swell to upwards of 800 pages. Considering the average NFL team has around 50 players and 20 coaches, that's a lot of extra baggage to be carrying around.

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So the Colts decided to trim some fat. They bought 120 iPads and started using a digital playbook made by Global Apptitude. The new tablet features the ability to draw and write on the playbook. Those marks can then be shared with teammates and coaches.

Players aren't the only ones on the receiving end of these tech blitzes. Fans are too. Spectators in the stands of Wi-Fi-equipped Lucas Oil Stadium can access instant replays on their smartphones five seconds after plays take place. That's largely due to the stadiums bandwidth, which can accommodate 23,000 fans at a time.

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You arm-chair quarterbacks may "scream your necks off" yelling "Go Horse," so if you do, at least the stadium's techie traits are a game-winning back up.

via dvice

Credit: Tom Croke/Icon SMI/Corbis

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Cassettes Coming Back In a New Way

Cassette tapes are dead. Long live cassette tapes! The music staple of the late 20th century is making a comeback in the form of big data storage. That's right, kids, the same thing that made the mix tape possible in the 80s could hold tomorrow's pictures and mp3 files.

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Fuji Film and IBM have created a prototype cassette measuring 4x4x1 inches that can hold up to 35 terabytes of information, or about 8,750,000 songs. The data is stored on a strip of magnetic tape made from particles of barium ferrite. But don't bust out your "Saved By the Bell" torrents to save them on tape just yet. As of right now, the cassettes are being developed for big data storage use only, i.e. server farms.

The cassettes are actually the opening act for the new computer from IBM called the Square Kilometer Array telescope. When it's finished in 2024, this radio telescope will be the world's largest, able to push out one petabyte of data per day, or about 1 million gigabytes. When news came out earlier this year about IBM developing this super-data pusher, they mentioned "next-generation tape systems" as a storage method. Who knew the next generation would have such a familiar face?

via New Scientist

Credit: Lawrence Manning/Corbis

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3-D Printing Pirates Paused: DNews Nugget

3-D Printers to Have Digital Rights Management: Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the music and film industry's way of keeping you from illegally sharing their content, and now it may be coming to 3-D printing, reports TorrentFreak.

3-D printers, with the right printer cartridges, could ostensibly be made to print anything from a complete shoe to parts for a battleship. Their versatility allows 3-D printers to create any shape, including copyrighted works. This has some worried about printing piracy.

In response to an announcement from the popular piracy forum, PirateBay, a patent has surfaced outlining the methods to secure three-dimensional printed designs.

Essentially the patent says, "a digital fingerprint of 'restricted items' will be held externally and printers will be required to compare the plans of the item they’re being asked to print against those in a database. If there’s a match, printing will be disallowed or restricted," explains TorrentFreak.

Whether this new DRM for printing will stop piracy is unknown, but as 3-D printing becomes more mainstream, the lawyers and rights-holders are already preparing for battle. via TorrentFreak

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Two Ways to Get 360-Degree Panoramic Video

Dot, $79; GoPano micro, $79.95

Although both products offer a way for iPhone users to capture 360-degree panoramic video, Kogeto's Dot and EyeSee360's GoPano micro physcially have about as much in common as a Scion and a school bus. Clearly, while both products have similar intentions, their diametrically opposed designs reflect their differing respective philosophies.

The GoPano micro has an optic about two-thirds the size of the iPhone. It uses a protective two-part rubberized plastic case, which slides together on the phone. Although it's theoretically nice to have just a case sometimes, the added lens attachment is bulky and doesn't stay well-connected to it. Dot's version isn't a case, but rather a more minimalist all-in-one hard plastic unit that quickly snaps right on and stays on tight, whether shooting with it or slipping it into your pocket.

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One upshot (pun intended) is that GoPano micro's verticality allows for live viewing, whereas Dot is most effective when your phone's horizontal (and the screen's likely out of view). It comes down to the difference between enjoying the event of shooting and the event that you're at. As Kogeto's Founder and CEO, Jeff Glasse, told Discovery News, Dot allows you to "put down the camera and just enjoy the party."

In our testing, both were competent yet awkward -- GoPano for the lens popping off and Dot for having to finagle hitting the on-screen record button while horizontal. The GoPano had a taller field of view and captured a slightly better quality of video when we moved around. It tended to be in focus a little more and have less glare, a side effect of Dot's plastic shield.

Naturally, the neccesary GoPano and (Dot) Looker companion apps are free to download. If friends have Looker -- the 1.2 iOS version of which is scheduled for release this month -- they can view your 360-videos without having a Dot. And Glasse shared with us that an Android version is in the works, planned for a first quarter release.

Speaking of which, you can share GoPano videos and "dotspots" with their respective online communities. But -- once registered with Kogeto -- Looker makes it an easier process to share via email, Twitter and Facebook. That's just one small reflection of how Glasse, a video content evangelist, and his team are passionate about the process of empowering users to change the way we capture and consume video.

In the end, they're comparably priced and both offer cool functionality. EyeSee360 seems focused on the technical abilities and Kogeto seems focused on the user experience/ecosystem. So once again, we have a battle between good engineering and strong design. The commercials practically write themselves: "Hi, I'm a Dot. And I'm a GoPano..."

Credit: Kogeto, EyeSee360

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YouTube Gets a New Look

Today YouTube showed off their long overdue new look today that, according to their blog, is “a fresh coat of digital paint.” The site hasn’t had a major upgrade since it was acquired by Google in 2006. The new face brings it into the Google+ aesthetic family, with more social networking options and personalization features.

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The top navigation bar shows a user's subscribed channels and an option to show uploads only. The left bar brings the social networks into the party with tabs allowing users to view videos their friends have shared. You can also pan through trending, popular and other videos via the left bar, much like the old YouTube had on the homepage. The randomly scattered videos of the previous layout have been replaced with personalized channels or, if you haven’t logged in or subscribed to any videos, with new music videos from pop artists. Check out the video below for a step-by-step guide on how the site has changed. 

Via: PCWorld

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Flash Drive Acts Like a Personal Cloud

iTwin: $99

Today's tiny USB devices do more than just store files. In fact, iTwin -- the double-ended light saber of thumb drives -- doesn't actually store your files per se. Instead, it uses a secure one-to-one AES 256-bit encrypted connection to enable remote access, editing, back-up and transfering of your files on another computer. Think of it as your own private network, a 'personal cloud' if you will. The device just has a one-time cost, with no service fees or storage limits. And best of all, you don't need to remember a login, mess with tokens, annoyingly email yourself or confusingly have multiple versions of files.

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When you first plug either end of the full iTwin (both halves) into a USB port, it installs its software on your PC -- you can also download the new Mac OS X-compatible version -- and creates a unique set of crypto keys linking the pair together. You nickname the device and enter your email address. (More on that later.) Drag and drop some files, folders or even your entire drive into the green "Local" iTwin folder. Then detach the outer twin. When you plug that half into another online computer, it installs its software there. Then, assuming the first computer is still powered on and connected to the Internet, you'll have direct access to all those files you dragged. On this second computer, they'll appear in the orange "Remote" iTwin folder. You can open them, edit them, move them, whatever. And since the twins are equals, so to speak, you can also share in the other direction. By dragging and dropping files into Computer 2's Local iTwin folder, they'll be seen as Remote back on Computer 1.

One interesting use case: Your team is working on a presentation. As you travel, they finish it and drag it into their Local folder. When you arrive at your meeting, you open the corresponding Remote folder, make a couple of quick tweaks to the original and launch the highly polished presentation. Another use case: You're taking lots of pictures while on vacation. So you move a bunch of image files onto your laptop and transfer them back home, freeing up memory on your camera. If you should ever lose either half, they're replaceable for $50 each. But more importantly, you can remotely disable the missing half using a special code emailed to you when you first registered. To pair (or re-link) the halves, just plug them back together and into an online computer. Despite the drawback of having to leave on the first computer while you're away, the overall benefits make iTwin a collectively strong alternative to cloud services, ordinary flash drives and remote access software.

Credit: iTwin

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Lockets Store USB Drives, Keep Data Handy

USB Lockets: Full Size and Medical Lockets: $250 / Mini Version: $170

Data may hold a certain beauty for statisticians and their ilk, but for the rest of us its appeal is purely practical. Until now. New York designer Emily Rothschild has created three necklaces featuring lockets that hold a 2GB flash drive.

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Inspired by a style from the early 1900s, Rothschild's full-size USB locket is available plated with either 24K satin gold or black rhodium. Either way, a detachable 2GB USB flash drive hidden within can be used to store and share personal photographs and files. After that piece won a Blogger's Choice Award at the New York International Gift Fair earlier this year, Rothschild went on to create a smaller, rectangular version. A medical version, meanwhile, is designed for storing personal medical records and critical contact information; on that one, the flash drive itself can be engraved to make the most pertinent information immediately visible to medical professionals.

Credit: Emily Rothschild

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Lifeloggers Use Tech to Record Every Moment

Forget growth marks scratched in pencil on the kitchen wall. Why bother with such a quaint way to watch your child develop when you could do what this girl's parents did and make a time-lapse video out of daily photos from “Birth to 10 years old in 1 minute 25 sec?"

Photos on Facebook, chat histories and endless email repositories all hold on to personal histories in an automated way, for better or for worse. If you sign up, log in and start using any kind of online service, the cyber-trail you accidentally leave on the world as you click and type away, seems to be a matter of course.

But there are those who use technology to intentionally capture their daily lives. Lifeloggers, as they're called, record their faces, text, audio, even biological data from sensors on their bodies over a period of time and then share them with the public. The term was coined by Microsoft computer scientist Gordon Bell, who as part of a 10-year research project used a SenseCam to recorded pictures of every person or place he encountered.

These people capture every moment of life, like the trendsetting photographer Noah Kalina, who posted a 2006 YouTube video made of photos he took of himself every day for six years. Or the NYU professor who installed a camera in the back of his head, perpetually watching the world around him, which Discovery News reported on here. Or the MIT researcher, Steven Mann (photo), who calls camera-wearing Lifeloggers, Gloggers. Even DARPA tried to institute a “LifeLog” program in the early 2000's, but it was canned in '04 over privacy concerns.

The benefits, summarized by Kevin Kelly, cofounder of Wired and author of What Technology Wants, are thusly: 

• A 24/7/365 monitoring of vital measurements such as body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and presence or absence of bio-chemicals. This data could serve as a warning system and also as a personal base upon which to diagnosis illness and to prescribe medicines.
• A digital memory of people you met, conversations you had, places you visited, and events you participated in. This memory would be searchable, retrievable, and shareable.
• A complete archive of your work and play, and your work habits. Deep comparative analysis of your activities could assist your productivity, creativity, and consumptivity.
• A way of organizing, shaping, and “reading” your own life.

 

Clearly, this is not new; people have long been experimenting with attaching recording devices to themselves in some capacity, trying to take in everything that makes up their lives with an urgency that can be infectious or off-putting. If you're thinking about doing the same, here's a great bunch of gadgets you might want to pick up.

The idea may at first appear a totally conscious decision born of curiosity or obsession but, when you think about the digital world most of us have begun to inhabit daily, who is really exempt from the “lifelogger” label?

Photo: Neckworn wearable wireless webcam with infinite depth-of-focus projector built into a wearable surveillance camera dome

 

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U.K. Begins Spying on File-Sharing Traffic

An Internet Service Provider in the United Kingdom has begun using a new software that can track every piece of copied music, movies, e-books, games or software. The results will shed light on file-sharing traffic that may be infringing on copyright laws. So far, the software cannot determine the IP address that identifies a computer's connection, but it could be used to

• identify people accessing certain data, for example
• block certain content, ala China

Watch your backs.