NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Coming Soon: Free Wi-Fi for Facebook Check-In?

Laptop coffee-shop squatters, rejoice! Your days of repeatedly asking the barista for Wi-Fi passwords may soon be over. No need to awkwardly avoid eye contact as you shamble up to the counter to buy the cheapest refill possible just so you can re-up your time limit. Your next Wi-Fi refill could come compliments of Facebook.

BLOG: Top 10 Social Networking Sites

That's right, the social network Goliath is testing a new Wi-Fi hot spot service for local businesses that grants users free Internet access if they do a Facebook check-in. Businesses would provide the access via a Facebook router that directs customers to the business' Facebook page once users check in.

DNEWS VIDEO: COOL JOBS: HACKER

"We are currently running a small test with a few local businesses of a Wi-Fi router that is designed to offer a quick and easy way to access free Wi-Fi after checking in on Facebook," the company confirmed to Inside Facebook. "When you access Facebook Wi-Fi by checking in, you are directed to your local business’s Facebook Page".

Developer Tom Waddington is credited with discovering the test when he found a new entry called "social wifi" in the "Like sources" section of the Insights API.

While businesses would still provide the Internet access, Facebook would provide a router. Page owners would be able to monitor how many new 'Likes' the page received from those who used the Wi-Fi service. Visitors who don't want to jump through the Facebook hoop could still access the network via a password from the business.

BLOG: Facebook More Tantilizing Than Sex

Rumored to be the product of a hackathon project, Facebook Wi-Fi only exists as a limited test run and likely won't be popping up at your local coffee shop anytime soon. Until then, laptop squatters, you'll just have to dig deeper in your couch for all that loose change for refills.

via CNET

Credit: Turba/Corbis

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Microsoft's Surface, A Tablet With Many Faces

It feels like Microsoft has already shipped two Surface tablets.

There's the device it unveiled in June; despite the lack of such relevant information as a price, a ship date or battery life, the design shown off at an event in Los Angeles drew instant, giddy praise from reviewers I trust, up to "I love the Surface."

And then we have the $599 bundle of a $499, 32-gigabyte Surface tablet with a "Touch Cover" keyboard that I picked up one of Microsoft's retail stores on Saturday. It is not quite as lovely as those early raves might suggest.

ANALYSIS: Windows 8: Twice the Interface, a Third the Price

What the Surface does best, not that it's alone in that respect, is bring Windows 8's touch-driven interface to life. It's far easier to tap, flick and slide your way from one app or task to another on its beautifully sharp 10.6-in. screen than to mouse around my laptop's larger display with its touchpad or pointing stick.

So do I compare it to an iPad? At 1.5 lbs., Microsoft's Wi-Fi-only tablet weighs barely more than Apple's. But Apple's also offers an exponentially larger selection of applications: 275,000 versus 9,000 and change.

Surface battery life also falls short of the iPad's; with two Web pages reloading in the background as it played through a loop of music files, this device expired after six hours and 33 minutes.

But wait, a Surface can be a laptop too! This tablet includes a standard USB port (yes, you can charge a phone off that) and micro-HDMI audio and video output, with a microSD Card slot hiding underneath the kickstand that flips open from its back. And with the Touch Cover, you sort of have a keyboard.

But that accessory ($119.99 sold separately) lacks the usual tactile feedback; its keys and touchpad, covered in a sort of rubbery felt, don't depress when you tap them. I think I'm typing faster on it than I could on the Surface's screen, but not as fast a regular keyboard like Microsoft's heavier, thicker, $129.99 Type Cover.

Surface's Windows RT software -- a cut-down version of Windows 8 optimized for mobile devices -- also makes this less than a laptop. Those older Windows apps you own? Forget about running them on this Surface unless their developers rewrite them.

NEWS: Microsoft Unveils Windows 8, Targets Apple's iPad

You might not guess that from the way Windows RT looks and works like the standard flavor of Windows 8. The traditional Windows desktop, minus the Start menu, presents the same array of cursor-optimized menus and toolbars as ever. It takes some dainty finger work on the Surface's touchscreen to use them, as well as the preinstalled preview version of Microsoft Office 2013.

Windows RT did, however, eat up enough storage space to cut the advertised 32 GB of solid-state memory down to a bit more than 18 gigs of usable capacity after installing a round of system updates.

(You'll be able to buy a thicker, heavier Surface tablet running the full Win 8 later this year, but Microsoft hasn't named a price for that yet.)

I have to agree with those early assessments of the Surface: This is one well-crafted piece of hardware. The Touch Cover's magnetic latch couples with a satisfying click and stays clamped in place. The "VaporMg" magnesium-alloy coating looks terrific and doesn't seem to attract scuff marks like the aluminum exterior of an iPad.

But when I sit down to use this thing, I don't see most of those details. I see what's on its screen.

Credit: Rob Pegoraro/Discovery

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Windows 8: Twice The Interface, Third The Price

It's barely been three years since Windows 7 ended Windows Vista's reign of error, but in those three years, computing has been upended by social media, touchscreen devices and app stores. Windows 8 is Microsoft's response to those changes, and much of it may annoy you if you don't understand that.

Windows 8 boots into a radically simplified Start screen (on the left in the composite image above) that displays apps and information as interactive tiles. That concept works well on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system and even on a laptop with only a keyboard and touchpad, it's still pleasant to navigate.

The Start screen's new apps -- 9,000-plus of these one-click installs await in Microsoft's Windows Store -- don't look like Windows programs either. Apps like Microsoft's Facebook-, LinkedIn- and Twitter-linked People don't have menus, and their toolbars are invisible unless you right-click on a blank area or swipe down from the top of a touchscreen.

To search or edit an app's settings, you have to tap or swipe in a right-hand corner to reveal an array of icons Microsoft calls "charms." You also need to invoke the charms list to get the time, check a laptop's battery or see the WiFi signal (which in my copy of Win 8, sometimes loses all Internet connectivity even as my desktop stays online).

With a mouse or touchpad, these gestures have you skating the cursor around the screen a lot. Even with a touchscreen, the new interface -- the only one on the cut-down Windows RT edition intended for tablets like Microsoft's Surface -- will take some learning.

That's not bad by itself. Having one app fill the screen, without distracting "chrome" above or below, brings the calming focus of a Kindle e-reader (though you can also "snap" an app into a left- or right-hand column to accompany another). The simplicity of navigation here also reminds me of Microsoft's Media Center and Apple's Front Row, alternate media-playback interfaces built for use without a mouse or keyboard.

But the traditional desktop, at right above, remains a click or a Windows-logo keystroke away. That preserves traditional Windows applications (except in Win 8 RT, which I'll cover in a separate post) and file folders (their windows now group commands in the "ribbon" toolbar Microsoft pioneered in Office 2007).

But there's no Start menu. So if you're on the desktop and want to launch a traditional Windows program, you'll often have to flip back to the Start screen, right-click and click an "All apps" button.

The cluttered Start menu desperately needed renovation years ago, but scrapping it instead of replacing it with a simpler apps menu (perhaps like OS X's Launchpad) seems crazy.

When I installed a preview release of Windows 8 alongside Win 7 on my 2011-vintage ThinkPad this spring, I was impressed by its speed and reduced memory consumption. But when I replaced 7 with 8 Friday morning -- a tedious process that ground along over four hours -- the never-too-fast laptop had become unusably slow.

I resorted to Win 8's new "Refresh" option, which keeps your files and settings, installs a clean copy of Windows and wipes out all third-party software that might have gummed up the system. Windows has needed this for years. And this time it worked, yielding a snappier machine.

So I don't feel bad about the $39.99 this cost me (a third of the $119.99 price of most Win 7 upgrades). But if your job doesn't require knowing new software, your computer lacks a touchscreen and you're content with Windows 7 -- which should describe many readers -- I can't think of why you'd want to pay even that low price right away.

Credit: Rob Pegoraro/Discovery

8,000 Devices Lost at Airports: DNews Nuggets

8,000 Devices Lost at Airports: Lost your phone while traveling? Check the airport bathroom. A new study conducted at just seven airports in the United States showed that people lost more than 8,000 mobile devices there. The gizmos -- 3,444 smartphones and tablets, 3,576 laptops and 996 USB drives -- were forgotten by travelers at airports in Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Charlotte, Miami, Orlando and Minneapolis. Most of these devices were found in restrooms, according to the Transportation Security Administration. via Business News Daily

GET MORE MUST-READ NUGGETS HERE!

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Microsoft's Tablet: No Depth Below The Surface

At a press event in Los Angeles Monday afternoon, Microsoft announced an eye-catching new tablet computer but didn't specify what it would cost, when it would go on sale or how long it would run on a charge. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Surface, a duo of Wi-Fi tablet computers with 10.6-in. touchscreens, one running a limited version of the upcoming Windows 8 on mobile-optimized ARM processors and the other the full Win 8 on Intel chips, amounts to Microsoft shredding its Windows playbook. Instead of writing an operating system and hoping that other companies build tasteful computers to run it, Microsoft designed these tablets itself.

DNEWS VIDEO: Gadgets and Gizmos

ANALYSIS: Are Tablets Going to Kill the Laptop?

Competing against Windows licensees like Acer, Dell and HP represents a heretical move for Microsoft, far more than such earlier ventures into consumer gadgets as its successful Xbox video-game consoles and its abandoned Zune media players. If Microsoft's own stores didn't convince you that the Redmond, Wash., firm isn't content with how its work is presented by partners, Surface closes that case.

The name Surface is one Microsoft formerly used for a touchscreen-kiosk technology it introduced in 2007. The tablet aims somewhere between the iPad and traditional laptops.

Its "Windows RT" version (Microsoft's moniker for the ARM-based version of Windows it announced at CES in 2011) and Windows 8 Pro Surface models will both run apps written for Win 8's Metro interface. And Metro, a windows-less front-end to Windows that owes most of its streamlined looks to Microsoft's elegant Windows Phone 7 software, should suit a tablet's touchscreen well.

HOWSTUFFWORKS: How Tablet Computers Work

The Win 8 Surface tablet will run regular Windows apps too, but they may fit as awkwardly on its small screen as Metro has on a conventional laptop. That tablet will also be heavier and thicker than the RT model: 1.99 lbs. and .53 in. thick, compared to 1.49 lbs. and .37 in. thick for its more svelte sibling.

Surface tablets will also bring some design refinements that haven't shown up on Apple's iPad, such as a built-in kickstand, a full-size USB port that can recharge other devices and a microSD Card slot for easy file transfer. The Win 8 version will add a dual-mode touchscreen that ignores swipes of a finger if you use an included stylus for finer control.

Microsoft also showed off Touch and Type Covers that double as keyboards and could make Surface more of a laptop replacement, but iPad users can already buy that sort of thing.

After all of Microsoft's sometimes-forgotten history with tablet computers (some of Bill Gates's early predictions for the concept sound like the iPad), this company should have a decent shot at getting Surface off the ground. But first it must escape the trap of such doomed tablet ventures as HP's TouchPad by hitting the market at a compelling price.

ANALYSIS: Apple's WWDC News: iOS Hits the Road

Microsoft predicts that Surface RT and Win 8 tablet prices will be "competitive" with those for ARM-based tablets and Intel-standard "Ultrabook" laptops. The former aren't on sale yet, while the cheapest Ultrabooks in Microsoft's stores (the only physical outlets that will sell Surfaces) start at $799.

As for delivery dates, expect the RT version to ship "with the general availability of Windows 8" sometime this fall, while the Win 8 Pro model will take another 90 days.

But what about battery life, the most important factor in many mobile devices? We can only guess. The failure of Microsoft to offer even vague promises about that -- and its unwillingness to let reporters at its Surface event do much more than paw at the demo hardware -- should be early warnings not to get too excited about this concept.

Images via Microsoft PR

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Leap Brings Motion Control To PCs

Leap: $69.99

Creators of Leap were inspired by Microsoft Kinect to put motion-sensing technology into one teeny tiny peripheral. The USB-drive sized device creates a 3-D interactive space that is meant to replace a mouse by enabling people to use finger, arm or other hand movements to control what’s going on their PC.

BLOG: Kinect-Powered Amusement Park Will Blow Your Mind

The goal in creating Leap, according to co-creator Michael Buckwald, was to bring real world interaction experience to the virtual world of everyday computing. For example, in the demo video, a user is shown holding a pencil and illustrating in front of the screen, without interacting with anything else. One can also zoom in and out of maps, play touch-based games and show off a Powerpoint presentation sans clicking. Just beware of any erratic hand movements. Pre-orders are available, and shipping should begin winter 2012. If you’re a developer, software kits are available on Leap’s site to create programs controlled by the device. 

 

via Venture Beat

Credit: Leap Motion

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Future Eye-tracking Systems Will Read Your Mind

The eyes are the window to the soul, so says the old adage. And for companies developing eye-tracking technology, they're becoming the ultimate Peeping Toms.

BLOG: Things Unsaid in Apple's New iPad News

Front-facing cameras are certain to become standard on all devices, and they'll be equipped to not only monitor what we read online, but how we read it. They'll watch how long you linger on a word or image, how your pupils dilate, how fast you blink. Why? Because those details provide a wealth of important information about their favorite customer: you. And that means big bucks for them in terms of advertising revenue.

DNEWS VIDEO: IPHONE IN SPACE EXPLAINED

Slate's John Villasenor recently ruminated on this very subject:

"Did our eyes linger for a few seconds on an advertisement that, in the end, we decided not to click on? How do our eyes move as they take in the contents of a page? Are there certain words, phrases, or topics that we appear to prefer or avoid? In the future, will we be served online ads based not only on what we’ve shopped for, but also on the thoughts reflected in our eye movements?"

Of course, the bodhisattva pacesetters of modern technology at Apple have already filed a patent application for a 3-D eye-tracking graphical user interface for personal electronic devices like the iPhone and iPad. And European company Senseye is slated to have eye-tracking software built into its smartphones next year.

BLOG: Eye-tracking Method Detects Lies

While most contemporary computers and personal electronic devices aren't powerful enough to accommodate the complex computations that are required for eye-tracking software, it's only a matter of time before they are.

Villasenor put a nicely placed "cherry on top" at the end of his post when he wrote the following:

"Today, when we read something online, our thoughts are still our own. We should enjoy it while it lasts."

via Slate

Credit: George Doyle / Getty Images

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Keyboard Jeans Are True 'Laptop'

We recently told you about ear bud-equipped hoodies and a pair of scratch-and-sniff jeans that have been turning a few heads and noses in the normally slipshod world of techie fashion. Well, now there's a new kid sashaying down that catwalk.

BLOG: Naked and Famous Introduce Scratch-And-Sniff Jeans

New to the boutique world of concept clothing for techies comes Beauty and the Geek. (No, not the canceled reality show.) They're a pair of jeans with a set of speakers, a wireless mouse and a keyboard embedded into the upper thigh regions. Imagine typing -- literally -- on your lap and you get the picture.

DNEWS VIDEO: CYBORGS, WIRELESS INTERNET, EXOSKELETONS, SYNTHETIC LIFE AND MORE …

The dungarees of the dot com age are the brainchild of Dutch twenty-somethings, Erik de Nijs and Tim Smit, of design company Nieuwe Heren, which translates to "new gents."

The jeans were designed to "combine fashion and technology," de Nijs told WebProNews. "The idea was that you could log in to your computer and control it without sitting in a closed environment behind your desk."

Aesthetically, the jeans have two things going for them -- what looks to be quality denim and, arguably the best feature, their orange stitching embroidered to resemble a circuit board.

After those two positive marks, the jeans veer into the is-this-really-necessary category. However, the keyboard's ergonomic, left-thigh placement of the alphabet could be Beauty and the Geek's saving grace. But with the return key unfortunately located in the jeans' crotch, I'm envisioning some very strange stares, perhaps even a call to the decency police, should you choose to peck away in public.

But they are functional, so let's take a look at their specs.

The right back pocket has been specially designed so the mouse fits snugly inside. The mouse is connected to the jeans via a strip of elastic and the pants come with a USB device that plugs into users' computers so a wireless connection can be maintained.

BLOG: Spray-On Wi-Fi Boosts Your Signal

Don't plan on plucking these off the rack just yet. "The whole project is too complex and we don’t have enough money right now to to get it ready for the market," de Nijs said. Even if they did, he said the estimated cost would be almost $400.

For that kind of money, you could buy a laptop. While you won't find me dashing to the nearest retailer, should Beauty and the Geek come to market, I would take a pair for a test drive. Just not in public.

[Via GizMag]

Credit: Nieuwe Heren

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Displays Get Bigger, Thinner and More Costly

The best way to predict the future is to invent it -- but then you have to persuade somebody to buy your invention. That's a good thing to keep in mind when attending Consumer Electronics Show.

CES draws about 150,000 attendees, give or take a few dozen buses' worth, to Las Vegas every January to see what most of the computing and electronics industry has in store for the rest of the year. It's a gadget hypefest beyond compare, but it inevitably winds up being a gadget graveyard too. Not every shiny new device will earn a spot in buyers' budgets.

PHOTOS: Top 10 Disruptive Techs of the Last Century

The most obvious item at this year's CES -- just like at every other show since I began attending in 1998 -- was the TV. Now that the flat-panel TV has become a commodity, the next step is apparently to make them still flatter: The OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screens showed off by companies including LG and Samsung are barely thicker than an eighth of an inch.

But they're also painfully expensive, with prices estimated at $8,000 for 55-inch screens. The same problem applies to the "4K" sets -- as in, four times HD resolution -- and glasses-free 3D sets on display here.

The more practical TV advances on display here related to what you can watch on your flat-panel screen; this year, the collection of apps on the average "connected TV" looks to go beyond software to watch videos from Netflix, Amazon and other online services to include plain old web browsing. And since the button-infested remote control hasn't gotten any less awful, some vendors are showing off voice and gesture-driven interfaces modeled after Microsoft's Kinect.

Moving along to the next-biggest screen in most homes, the PC looked a little more exciting at CES. Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 scraps the windows-plus-Start-menu look the company has offered since 1995 for an interface more akin to its Windows Phone 7 operating system (which itself marked a merciful departure from its clumsy Windows Mobile software). And "Ultrabook" laptops built to Intel's guidelines aim to offer some of the style and light weight of Apple's MacBook Air.

BLOG: Paper Makes Touch Screen Display

Tablet computers represented a colossal bust at last year's CES, but manufacturers haven't given up on competing with the iPad yet. The odds look best for Android-based tablets that, like Amazon's Kindle Fire, offer paperback-sized screens instead of the iPad's hardcover dimensions.

(Disclosure: I write a weekly blog post for the Consumer Electronics Association, the Arlington, Va., trade association that runs CES.)

Phones occupied a large fraction of CES's 1.86 million square feet of exhibit space, and they too showed signs of screen-size inflation. An iPhone's 3.5-in. LCD looks tiny next to the 4.5-in. screens on many phones, let alone the 4.7-in. display of HTC's Windows Phone 7-based Titan 2 or the 5.3-in. screen of Samsung's Galaxy Note.

Perhaps because a phone with display almost as big as the screens on some 1990s-vintage laptops can be tricky to fish out of a pocket, vendors like Motorola and startups WIMM Labs and I'm Watch were showing off watches that act as external monitors for phones, using Bluetooth wireless to present messages and other relevant info. Like, you know, the time.

All of these portable devices need constant charging. So the last screen I'll note here is the battery display: To judge from all of the external power packs, solar-cell chargers and even one portable fuel cell that I saw on the show floor, the most desperately needed innovation at next year's CES must be longer-running batteries.

Credit: Rob Pegoraro/Discovery

This article is part of our ongoing coverage of this year's Consumer Electronics Show. Find more CES articles here.

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Soft Exoskeleton Shields iPad from Bowling Balls

G-Form iPad Extreme Sleeve 2: $69.95

UPDATE (Jan. 6, 2011) -- The folks from G-Form have been working hard to prove that their iPad Sleeve can withstand some powerful impacts. Recently, the used a weather balloon to send an sleeve-encased iPad 100,000 feet into the air. At that height, the balloon burst sending the iPad plummeting toward the Earth. After impact, the iPad was still intact. You read more and see the video here.

After watching a movie on your iPad, you slip it back into its protective sleeve, trustingly zip it up and leave it resting on a cinder block in your backyard. Then, out of nowhere, a random woman approaches with a bowling ball and drops it on your encased iPad! (See a video here.) Before asking why she's walking around with a bowling ball -- or why she targeted your particular tablet -- you open the sleeve to find your iPad still functioning, without a scratch on it.

NEWS: Super Rubber Could Cushion Sneaks, Spaceships

Luckily, your case (the 4th one in the above video) is G-Form's iPad Extreme Sleeve 2, which utilizes Poron XRD, a high-impact absorbing material developed by Rogers Corporation. The material contains urethane molecules -- commonly found in coatings and plastics -- that give the sleeve a soft, cushiony feel. But upon impact, the molecular bonds instantly lock up, causing the material to become rigid.

The sleeve absorbs up to 90 percent of the energy in a high-speed impact. In fact, the same material that protects your iPad in contrived situations like the one above, also protects skaters, skiers, bikers, hockey players and other real-world athletes from bearing the brunt in their respective sports.

Credit: G-Force

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