Microsoft has announced the new Xbox, it is called the Xbox One. It has some interesting features and great processing power, but some say It’s not much of an improvement.
The Xbox One focuses a lot on voice control, and is controlled by a kinect like device.
You can also use Windows 8′s snap mode (with one app “snapped” to the side of the screen” to run another app on the side of the screen while your movie, or TV or game is playing.
Other than that it has a slot in blu ray player and it comes in a matt black finish with glossy details. It will come with a 500 gb harddrive. And it will have full skype support.
And this is really all they told us. No word on the rumored illumiroom, and you could say that other than great processing power this is nothing new. However here is a picture of what the controller will look like.
Here you can try google streetview under the sea. Pretty fantastic.
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This is without doubt the biggest music box i have ever seen.
Commissioned by the Cleveland Institute of Art and developed in partnership with Ohio CAT, ['The Music Box'] sees the american artist dismantling a 22, 000 lb steamroller in which he refabricates more than 80% of the machine–though still maintaining its identifiable physical qualities–transforming it into a fully functioning musical box, and at a fraction of its original weight. Built onto the front of the compactor is an acoustical cabinet made from cherry wood.
In the below video you can hear what it sounds like, and what it looks like in operation. It doesnt sound that nice actually, but just the fact that somebody made this is pretty amazing.
So we already have devices that can harness electricity from microorganisms, now what if the self powered bacteria could transfer information. A new technology from MIT uses bacteria as analog circuits, previously the same team have been able to use DNA in tiny organisms such as bacteria to store and read data. Combine all of these technologies and you have a self powering biological supercomputer. While we are still far away from this vision It’s awesome to imagine.
By combining genes that produce similar molecules in response to different inputs, the school’s scientists have created bacterial cells that perform basic math — the exact quantity or ratio of a given molecule is the answer. The approach offers a much wider range of results than a binary circuit (10,000 versus 2), and it exploits the cell enzymes’ inherent ratio awareness to do some of the hard work. MIT wants more variety in genetic ingredients before it can produce a truly universal system, but its work could lead to organic sensors that are much simpler and more precise than their digital peers.
That’s really not bad considering how early these experiments are. So what other advantages could this technology potentially have? Well, lets say your computer is damaged, if the computer itself is made from bacteria storing active data in the DNA, it could very well be able to repair itself.
“Almost all of the previous work in synthetic biology that we’re aware of has either focused on logic components or on memory modules that just encode memory. We think complex computation will involve combining both logic and memory, and that’s why we built this particular framework to do so,” says Timothy Lu, an MIT assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science and biological engineering and senior author of the Nature Biotechnology paper.
Combined with flexible OLED screens I’m failry certain these technolgies in mobile devices would be revolutionary. A phone which is virtually indestructible and powers itself.
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Telemedicine is a concept that has been discussed too many times in the past. The idea is several years old; however it is seeing the light of day only now. The excitement is because of the iRobot Corp’s creation that cleared the toughest obstacle, which is the FDA. The robot christened RP-VITA has the capability to almost do the rounds like any doctor, or at least be on its own while going around the hospital. With a 15-inch display screen that serves as its face, the robot is set to create history in medical annals. However, these artificial doctors (if you could call them that) don’t come cheap and the hospitals could be $4,000 to $6,000 poorer by hiring one of these electronic wonders.
What these robots actually do is certainly not really holding your wrist and feeling the pulse. They are the mediums through which the doctors can “talk” to their patients and even monitor their health from a distant location. However, even this has created immense interest and curiosity in the medical field – with doctors and patients alike. Though they seem to be expensive when one hears the cost, you need to realize that these robots can work nonstop without feeling tired. Nor are they going to ask for extra wages or complain about lack of benefits. Hence, they will ultimately contribute in a big way to bring down the mounting healthcare costs and make them more affordable and reachable to most people. People living in remote areas will stand to benefit the most.
Estimates from the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) forecast that close to 10 million Americans have already benefited from this kind of service, the core areas being services required in emergency rooms, and radiology. With this advancement the growth in the tele-health field is expected to grow rapidly and clock not less than 50% before the end of the year. It is expected to grow in leaps and bounds in the next 5 years. Doctors have already been diagnosing patients through satellite, broadband, mobile devices and the likes for quite some time now. Patients too have become tech savvy and do not hesitate to go online to seek professional consultations. The trend is towards preventive care rather than wait for the disease to attack and seek a cure, which is painful and expensive.
The robots of the future would let the doctor monitor a patient as if he were right beside him, while he is miles away in reality. Using the robot, the doctor would be able to check the patient’s pulse, other vitals, including temperature, oxygen levels in the blood, and even sense a murmur in the heart. The information is transferred to a hand held device (smartphone) and forwarded to the family doctor. Video conferencing which is also part of telemedicine, has already been used successfully, and has been helping patients living in remote areas with no access to professional consultation or treatment. Prescriptions are drawn up remotely and sent to patients who cannot make painful trips to the doctor’s every now and then. On the whole, telemedicine robotics has benefits that far outweigh the cost factor and other employment displacement issues, if any.
Author’s Bio:
Patrick Hudson currently works at CableTVPrices.com, a site that enables everyone to learn about how to save on broadband and internet cable. Please visit site.
World’s Leading Annual Innovation Event Welcomes More Than 150,000 Industry Professionals
Arlington, Va., May 7, 2013 – The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)®, owner and producer of the International CES®, today announced the results of an independent audit that confirmed a record number of international industry professionals – 36,206 – from 150 countries attended the 2013 International CES®. Serving as the launchpad for technology innovation and the world’s best venue to witness the entire consumer technology ecosystem, the 2013 CES featured 3,282 exhibitors from around the globe and a record number of startup companies, including the 150 exhibitors in Eureka Park. The independent audit, performed by Veris Consulting, LLC, confirms CES’ status as the world’s leading innovation event as showcased in this CES video.
The 2013 CES, held January 8-11, 2013, in Las Vegas, spanned more than 1.92 million net square feet of exhibit space and welcomed 152,759 industry professionals.
“The 2013 International CES was the must-attend business event of the year and featured product debuts from all facets of tech, from automotive and wireless to up-and-coming categories like sensor technology and telehealth,” said Karen Chupka, senior vice president, International CES and corporate business strategy. “This audit reaffirms the International CES’ position as the top event that draws the global technology industry and enables them to make deals, do business, and connect with the Fortune 500 executives, retail buyers, content producers, entertainment executives, venture capitalists, engineers, government officials and media from every corner of the globe.”
Additional highlights of the 2013 CES Veris audit included: record attendance at the 2013 CES conference program, increases in several major attendee categories, including advertising executives, CMOs and retail buyers, a record number of automotive and digital health/fitness exhibitors.
The International CES provides an unparalleled networking and business experience for senior-level executives and top decision markers. The Veris audit confirms that 43 percent of 2013 CES attendees are senior-level executives. Presidents, CEOs and/or business owners made up 15 percent of attendees at the 2013 CES. Nearly one-third of all attendees are the final decision makers when it comes to new product purchases or partnerships with other companies, with 84 percent identified as having buying decision influence. More than 11,000 attendees represented companies with more than $500 million in total annual sales.
The Veris audit also confirms that CES is where global leaders from diverse business areas go to do business. More than 13,000 retail buying organizations, 8,000 manufacturers and nearly 6,000 engineering/research & development companies came to the 2013 CES. Additionally, more than 32,000 professionals from the content development and entertainment industry were in attendance, as part of the Entertainment Matters program, providing entertainment executives the chance to experience the latest devices, technologies and platforms that will broadcast content to the consumer.
“The number of exhibitors showcasing wireless & wireless devices also skyrocketed at the 2013 CES,” said Chupka, “reaffirming CES’ position as the world’s largest wireless event, with more than 630 exhibitors in this space.”
Top government officials attended the 2013 CES to learn how the latest technologies will impact the future. The show brought together more than 140 government officials from the U.S., including 12 members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, six state elected officials and five members of the Federal Communications Commission. Representatives from the Federal Trade Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Energy were also in attendance.
Veris is certified by the Exhibition and Event Industry Audit Commission (EEIAC) to perform audits. As part of the Veris audit, each CES attendee is counted only once, and show size is calculated using only exhibit space sold, not hallways or bartered space.
The CES audit provides absolute verification of exhibition records, including direct on-site observation, examination of registration systems and testing of attendee records. Post-show analysis included direct confirmation sampling, reconciliation of attendance lists, elimination of duplicate names, and verification of demographic data with the source of documentation.
Final audit numbers may differ from preliminary estimates given onsite due to additional badge pick-ups and badge reader reports. This audit complies with the industry standards for audits adopted by both the EEIAC and the International Association of Exhibition and Events (IAEE).
Full audit results can be found here. The 2014 International CES is scheduled for January 7-10, 2014, in Las Vegas.
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Even if it is easy to get bad reception on earth, once a signal exists the atmosphere it travels without resistance. The probe that NASA landed on Saturn’s moon Titan wasn’t any stronger than a modern day cellphone.
And so NASA thought, why not make satellites out of cheaper components. Like a mobile phone for example.
The smartphone components were placed in cube shaped micro-satellites.
The three satellites, called Alexander, Graham and Bell, flew in space between April 21 and 27 as part of a mission to show how satellites could be built cheaper using off-the-shelf components.
The three cube-shaped satellites were launched on Sunday, April 21, 2013 atop Orbital Science Corporation’s Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia. The three satellites were all built around a standard cubesat frame about four inches (10 cm) square, with a larger, external lithium-ion battery and a radio powerful enough to reach Earth. The smartphone components not only provided cameras for snapping pictures of the Earth, but also acted as the spacecrafts’ avionics for maintaining attitude control.
On April 27, the PhoneSat mission came to an end when the orbits of all three satellites decayed and they burned up in the atmosphere.
This tiny camera is inspired by the way insects eyes work.
The tiny camera has 180 microlenses which gives it a 180° viewing angle. This however is just the prototype, they plan to improve it. And if they are successful they will be more effective than the real thing.
“Researchers hope their design will eventually lead to insect-eye cameras that exceed even nature’s blueprints, according to a report in the 2 May issue of the journal Nature.”
“We think of the insect world as an inspiration for design, but we’re not constrained by it,” says John Rogers, a physical chemist and materials engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “It’s not biomimicry; it’s bioinspiration.”
]]>But the wide-angle field of view Isn’t everything that great about this. It also provides an almost infinite depth of field, which keeps objects in focus regardless of their distance from the camera.
The researchers say the most tricky thing about developing this technology was bending the camera sensor into a dome without getting distortions.
The tiny lenses are put on top of a flexible base membrane made from elastomeric polydimethylsiloxane material, which is also used in contact lenses. This protects The lenses from any bending or stretching.
The design they used to build it allows it to inflate and deflate to alter the cameras viewing angle. Which is something completely new.
The insect-eye camera depends on each individual unit to contribute 1 pixel of resolution. A 180-pixel-resolution camera may not do much right now, but the camera design can scale up its resolution by adding more units to the overall array. Rogers anticipates making camera designs with better resolution than the eyes of praying mantises (15 000 eye units) and dragonflies (28 000 eye units).
So what is this good for? UAV’s, no doubt will use this technology. And it might be good for other exploration missions as well. Also it may be used for endoscopy and other medical purposes.
Lasers can be used for many things, measurement, drilling, surgery, projectors and more. But they can also be a lot of fun, in this video you get to see a powerful blue laser pop 100 balloons in a row. ]]>
These days we can generate electricity from just about anything. All energy can be converted to electricity, and now, even the tiny bit of energy that is generated when viruses crawl. Quite amazing, and technologies like these will definitely be a big part of our future.
Imagine your phone charging itself just from the friction in your pocket. We can easily make this, so why don’t we?
(Hint: If you didn’t need a charger you wouldn’t have to pay for electricity.)
The researchers were able to create enough electrical current to power a small liquid-crystal display, just by tapping a finger on a small electrode coated with the engineered viruses. The viruses then convert the mechanical energy into an electric charge.
It’s the first generator to create electricity using the piezoelectric properties of microbiology.
“The M13 bacteriophage has a length of 880 nanometers and a diameter of 6.6 nanometers. It’s coated with approximately 2700 charged proteins that enable scientists to use the virus as a piezoelectric nanofiber.”
After first confirming that the chosen bacteria M13 is piezoelectric, they genetically engineered it to raise the voltage higher than it naturally was. And then stacked the thin self-organized films on top of each other to a height of 20 layers.
After creating a film of the viruses measuring one square centimeter, they placed it between two gold-plated electrodes connected to a liquid-crystal display.
When pressure is applied, it produces about a fourth the voltage of a triple A battery.
“The bottom 3-D atomic force microscopy image shows how the viruses align themselves side-by-side in a film. The top image maps the film’s structure-dependent piezoelectric properties, with higher voltages a lighter color.”
]]>“We’re now working on ways to improve on this proof-of-principle demonstration,” says Lee. “Because the tools of biotechnology enable large-scale production of genetically modified viruses, piezoelectric materials based on viruses could offer a simple route to novel microelectronics in the future.”