NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Hi-Tech Bird Feed Snaps Photos: DNews Nugget

Hi-Tech Bird Feeder Snaps Photos: This is a cool idea for bird lovers. The Bird Photo Booth is a gadget that accommodates and iPhone 3,4 or 5 or an iPod Touch (4th, 5th generation) or any GoPro camera and allows the user to take images that get sent via Wi-Fi to another device, like an iPad. Just slip the phone or iPod Touch into the foam pocket. Turn on your phone and enable the app. Shut the enclosure on the foam pocket. Place some bird food in the dish. Step far enough away so that the birds will come to feed. And then snap away remotely. The Bird Photo Booth’s design keeps the bowl of bird feed out of the frame and the case protects equipment from curious wildlife. via Gajitz

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Detector Alerts Asthmatics to Nasty Air

Asthmatics often feel like we're gambling, discovering triggers a breath too late. AT&T Labs recently developed a prototype for a device that can detect nasty air and alert us before things get bad.

Some asthma are blatant and obvious, and yet every once in a while I've been blindsided by an attack that seemingly comes out of nowhere. Volatile organic compounds or VOCs are a common asthma trigger found all over the place but they can be tricky to spot. AT&T Labs might have a solution.

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A prototype for a trigger detection device, led by head of communications technology research Bob Miller, can pick up on the presence of cleaning products, fragrances, smoke, and even troublesome carpet. Then the portable device can wirelessly transmit data to an online health network so my doctor could potentially spot patterns over time.

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Although the device hasn't been publicly named yet and there are no images available, AT&T Labs did indicate that it will contain a VOC sensor, a microcomputer, a battery and a Zigbee wireless modem. The VOC sensor contains a chip that is heated by a small current.

Talking to Technology Review's Susan Young, Miller said the device could prevent asthmatics from staying in a place where the trigger level is too high. Miller added that one day it might even be connected to a home network and automatically start up the furnace blower to clear the air.

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Asthma is so prevalent in the U.S. that one in every 12 Americans has it. Better prevention means fewer ER visits, fewer absences from school, fewer sick days from work. A device to prevent that first ominous wheeze could help us all breathe easier.

Credit: Jonathan Kos-Read

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New iPad Mini Eats Steve Jobs' Words

Apple has a smaller iPad coming, and no, it won't come with a sheet of sandpaper.

Just over two years ago, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs held forth on an earnings conference call about the impossibility of making a good tablet with a screen smaller than the iPad's roughly 10-inch display.

"There are clear limits of how close you can physically place elements on a touchscreen before users cannot reliably tap, flick or pinch them," Jobs said, citing Apple's research. And no, a higher screen resolution wouldn't help upcoming Android-based tablets: "It is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one-quarter of their present size."

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Well, never mind. The new iPad mini sports a 7.9-inch display -- and a 1024 by 768-pixel resolution, short of the ultra-fine Retina displays on the iPhone 5 and this spring's new iPad (itself just replaced by a fourth-gen model with a processor Apple calls twice as fast).

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Apple will start taking pre-orders for the iPad mini this Friday, with the tablet arriving in stores a week later. It starts at $329 for a model with 16 gigabytes of storage and Wi-Fi Internet access; a 32 GB edition goes for $429 and a 64 GB unit for $529. Support for LTE mobile broadband from AT&T, Sprint or Verizon Wireless will add another $130; those versions should come about two weeks later.

Those prices also break with Apple's past practices. The iPad beat the price of any name-brand Android tablet by a large margin for many months, and even today there's little daylight between most 10-inch Android models and the $499 price of an iPad, or the $399 cost of the iPad 2 Apple still sells.

But you can now buy a quality, 7-inch Android tablet -- in the form of Google's pleasant Nexus 7 or Amazon's new Kindle Fire HD, each with a slightly higher resolution than the mini--for $199.

The quality of these smaller Android tablets, especially in terms of battery life, has also advanced greatly from the first, inadequate attempts.

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Apple has had no trouble charging a premium for superior engineering in its laptop and desktop computers. (Executives didn't reveal the iPad mini at Apple's event in San Jose -- webcast online, a rarity for the company -- until after introducing a new MacBook Pro laptop with a 13-inch Retina display, an updated Mac mini and a radically thinner iMac without an optical drive.)

In this case, the Cupertino, Calif., company can point to the iPad mini's extra screen real estate (about 35 percent more space, between its slightly larger size and less-rectangular proportions), high-definition front webcam and 5-megapixel back camera. The iPad mini also lighter and thinner than competitors, at .68 pounds and just over .28 inches thick; note that it, like the iPhone 5, drops the old 30-pin dock connector for Apple's smaller Lightning cable.

The diversity and quality of iPad applications also put Apple's tablets well ahead of those running Google's operating system, on which too many apps do nothing with tablet screens' extra pixels.

If the browser on a tablet is only one app among many, those are important and maybe overwhelming considerations. But if you spend most of your time on such a device on the Web, with occasional detours to watch a movie or read an e-book, how much are a little more screen and a little less weight worth to you?

Credit: Apple PR

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Mind-Controlled Drone Takes Off

Mind-controlled applications and drones have been quite in vogue as of late, wouldn't you say? We've told you about scads of brain-computer interfaces and our list of drone-related projects stretches as far as the finger can click.

So, naturally, it came as no surprise when this landed in our lap: a brain-controlled quadcopter drone.

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Researchers at Zhejian University in Hangzhou, China, developed the quadcopter with the intent to give those with impaired motor skills a new way to interact.

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By wearing an emotiv electroencephalography (EEG) headset, the researchers showed how they can pilot the drone simply by thinking "left hard" to have quadcopter take off and land, "left lightly" to rotate, "right" to move it forward and "push" to have it fly up. If users clench their teeth, the drone descends. Blinking the eyes causes the on-board camera to snap a photo.

The EEG headset first relays commands from Bluetooth to a laptop, then via Wi-Fi to the drone. The quadcopter, named Flying Buddy 2, also live streams video footage of the flight back to the laptop to give users better control.

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Researchers will present their mind-controlled drone this week at the 14th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2012) in Pittsburgh, Pa. Check out the team's demo video below. Make sure to stick around until the end, where there's some pretty wicked drone-on-drone combat, a fight almost as fierce as the time Daniel LaRusso battled Johnny Lawrence for the All Valley Karate Tournament.

via Wired

Credit: Zhejiang University via YouTube

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FAA to Reassess Device Rules: DNews Nugget

FAA Assessing Future Cell Phone Use for Passengers: The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set the rules for what devices can be used when and where in United States (and above it). According to CNN, the FAA is set to reassess their current restrictions on mobile usage.

Likely, the only changes will come with non-broadcasting mobile devices -- hopefully including devices set to "airplane mode."

As of now, the FCC will not allow cell phone usage on airplanes, because the wireless capabilities can interfere with other networks running on the ground. Not to mention, a recent study claimed "75 instances in which consumer electronics were suspected of interfering with plane systems," said CNN.

High-speed internet has come to airplanes in place of the back-of-seat phones that are now as difficult to find as a pay phone.

It will be a long while before we can make cell phone calls on airplanes, and currently the FCC and FAA agree this is the best plan for now. However, a new government group, set to assemble this fall, will begin the process of studying, "current policies and procedures governing portable electronic devices." via CNN

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Sheep Collar Sends Distress Texts: DNews Nugget

Sheep Collar Sends Distress Texts: As wolf populations around the world rebound, livestock are nervous -- as are livestock farmers. In Switzerland, a biologist has developed a collar that can monitor a sheep's heart rate, know when the animals is distressed and then tweet the farmer that something may be wrong.

Prototypes of the collar, which were conceived by Wolf expert Jean-Marc Landry from the Swiss carnivore research group Kora, employ technology similar to heart rate monitors runners use.

The collars were tested on 12 sheep who were scared out of the wool by two muzzled Czechoslovakian Wolfdogs. Final versions of the collars should be available in the Fall, and could either have a computer chip that sends a text message alert to the farmer or plays a loud noise or sprays a chemical repellent to frighten off the wolf. via BBC

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Wi-Fi Sees Movement Through Walls

Your Wi-Fi router helps out in a lot of situations, mostly pertaining to surfing the Web for info or connecting with other people. However, researchers from the University College in London have created a detector that uses Wi-Fi to detect movement through a brick wall that’s one-foot thick.

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As Popular Science explains, Wi-Fi radio signals are found in 61 percent of households nationwide. Researchers Karl Woodbridge and Kevin Chetty developed a suitcase-size device that can use these signals along with the Doppler effect to detect movement. The Doppler effect happens when a radio wave reflects off a moving object. When it does, the wave’s frequency changes.

The device reads these frequency changes and calculates not only when an object is moving, but also its speed, location and the direction it’s going. For example, if a person is moving toward the Wi-Fi source, the frequency of waves increases; if a person is moving away from the source, the frequency of the waves decreases.

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Despite all of this wave reading and frequency changing, the device itself gives off zero waves, making it impossible to detect. The most interesting potential use of the device would be for security purposes like scanning buildings during hostage situations or war torn cities where insurgents might be hiding.

Woodbridge and Chetty hope to fine tune the device to include the ability to pick up subtle movements like the rise and fall of one’s chest when breathing, in order to sense someone even if they are standing still.

via Popular Science

Credit: Kevin Chetty / University College London

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App Helps Confused Students in Class

Embarrassment or pride can sometimes trump the questions that students want to ask in class, and that can end up being a big problem come test time. A new Web-based app called Understoodit from Toronto-based developer Liam Kaufman allows students to tell the teacher anonymously when they don’t understand a lesson.

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When a teacher sets up an Understoodit account, students can log in with any device and select the options “understood” or “confused” during a lecture. Depending on how many students respond, the teacher can re-explain the topic, or class members can discuss which issues they might be finding difficult to comprehend. The program is geared more toward college students, which makes sense given that it’s a device-based system and most secondary schools don’t allow cellphones in class. If there were a way to use this app without the worry of smartphone distraction, it could be a good tool for both middle and high school students, as well.

 

 

via GOOD

 

Credit: Understoodit 

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Nokia Uses Retro Radio Signals from Analog Days

Forget Wi-Fi and 4G -- in the future your phone may access the Internet via unused TV transmission bands.

Nokia is testing hardware that allows mobile phones to tap into "white space" -- the unused spectrum allotted to TV stations. White space is there because decades ago, broadcast TV stations were given certain frequencies to use, and in the pre-digital era needed space between those stations to prevent interference. Now that television is digital, broadcasters no longer need the analog buffer zone and so that unused spectrum could theoretically be used by someone else.

Why would someone want to tap into the unused spectrum from television days gone by? Because it's hearty and works well indoors. When it was previously used for analog television, it propagated nicely through walls. The idea is to use it like GPS -- which doesn't work well indoors -- for location-based services. One could have a map-like application that helps a person navigate a university, conference, mall or giant office complex, for instance.

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Nokia set up a demonstration in the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, England. As Scott Probasco, a senior engineer at Nokia, walked around, his Nokia N9 displayed information about the various exhibits. There are other uses -- retailers could stream information to shoppers, for example.

The down side (so far) is that phones don't come equipped with chips that decode the signals, so he had to walk around with a box-like contraption attached to the phone. But the proof of principle was a success.

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In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission approved the use of unlicensed "white space" spectrum in 2008, with the rules being set out in September 2010 and adjusted earlier this month. Device makers haven't jumped on it though, largely because standards for broadcast still need to be worked out. So any real devices are not likely to appear before 2015 or thereabouts.

Photo: Nokia engineer Scott Probasco wih the white space hardware in a box

Via Nokia, CNET

Credit: Nokia / Ian Dewsbury

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Exchange Dog Poo For Free Wi-Fi

We've seen some innovative, yet expensive, methods to rid cities of the foul indecency of dog owners who refuse to clean up after Fido craps on the sidewalk.

However, Mexican Internet portal Terra is tapping into the online pulse of the modern era and has come up with a truly contemporary way to inspire dog owners to get out their plastics bags.

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The company has teamed up with ad agency DDB to create a pilot program in 10 parks in Mexico City and it definitely gets my seal of approval. After pet owners pick up their dog's turds, they can place the bag in a special box that calculates its weight in exchange for a few minutes of free Wi-Fi. Ladies and gentle, welcome to 21st Century.

Of course, that didn't stop park habitués from dropping bags of garbage in the box to claim their free Wi-Fi, but DDB said they didn't mind. In their opinion, if people want to pick up trash -- so be it -- that just means a cleaner park.

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To ensure the device is used pooperly properly, during the day, hostesses stand beside the boxes handing out bags to dog owners.

While it's not even in the ballpark exploiting the homeless as Wi-Fi hotspots, this new program is sure to raise, if not wrinkle, a few brows. If anything, it's a sign of the times.

via Mashable

Credit: Terra

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