Drivers of Volkswagens could soon forget about fender benders or lane drifting on the Autobahn — their cars will take care of those little problems.
The German automaker debuted a new “Temporary Autopilot” (TAP) program that can control the car semi-automatically at speeds up to 80 mph. It combines existing driver-assist functions found in many cars nowadays, like adaptive cruise control and side monitoring for safer lane-changing, with a radar system, laser scanner and ultrasonic sensors.
When in TAP mode, the car maintains a safe distance from the vehicle ahead, checks the lane markers to keep the car in the center, and automatically slows down when approaching a bend in the road. The goal is to prevent accidents caused by inattentive drivers, according to Volkswagen. The driver still maintains control and can override the car’s actions at any point, however.
“What we have achieved today is an important milestone on the path towards accident-free car driving,” said Jürgen Leohold, head of Volkswagen Group Research, in a statement.
The system was designed as part of a European Union research project called HAVEit (Highly Automated Vehicles for Intelligent Transport), a $40 million (€28 million) project partially funded by European automakers.
This is just the latest step in a growing trend of cars that can park themselves, drive themselves across continents and even climb mountains. Looks like the state of Nevada, the first to pass regulations governing driverless cars, is on the right track.
Microsoft Looks to Business Tools for Health Care Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, demonstrated some applications on Thursday that apply current technologies to problems facing the health care industry. Technology developments aimed at businesses can help the medical field more than many people in Health Care may think, he said. For example, health care organizations often say that they have so much data, including patients' medical, billing and insurance information, that it will be a challenge for technology companies to build applications around the data, Mundie said. But Mundie discovered that, in fact, the data collected by some businesses far surpasses that of health care groups. Similarly, every day, consumers upload a volume of data in Facebook photos that equals all of the hospital's data, he said.
Beth Israel was the largest single health care system in terms of data that Microsoft could find in the U.S. in order to make this comparison, he said. The volume of medical data is set to grow, though, as an increasingly tech-savvy population begins to use devices that collect health information and transmit it to back-end databases. By combining such user-generated data with information produced in the clinical care environment, "we'll be enlightened," Mundie said. His researchers are working on ways to analyze that data and apply machine learning to improve care and reduce costs in Health Care. Microsoft did one experiment in which it used machine learning to look at 10 years of data from a hospital to try to predict whether a patient was likely to be readmitted to the hospital.
It used all the data from the hospital, including clinical data and billing information. Microsoft's tool looked at data for people who had congestive heart failure and found many of the same correlations that doctors look for to determine if the person was likely to require readmittance. He also showed off ways that health workers could use Microsoft's Kinect sensor, currently used in conjunction with the Xbox 360 game console. Mundie showed an example where a health care worker could use voice commands to sift through patients to identify those who might be eligible to be entered into a new program. That could allow a health care worker to review a recorded video of the session to look for clues that individuals may not be engaged by the sessions, Mundie said.
Tech Turns Junk Plastics into Diesel. But improvements on an existing technology could divert billions of tons of "end-of-life" plastics from landfills and turn them into gas to run cars and trucks. Called pyrolysis, the technique is being advanced by more than a dozen U.S. and foreign firms, some of which are producing synthetic crude oil or ready-to-drive diesel. If these plants are successful, junk plastic could replace imported oil as a source of cheap, sustainable fuel for the future. The EPA says Americans dispose of 48 billion tons of plastics yearly, and only recycle 7 percent of that total.
Engineers at Cynar, a tech firm outside Dublin, Ireland, says they can turn each ton of mixed plastic waste into 175 gallons of Diesel, 50 gallons of gasoline and 25 gallons of kerosene all ready to burn. "We are after the stuff that would go into a landfill," said Cynar managing director Michael Murray about his source of so-called end-of-life plastics. The pyrolysis technology varies slightly from company to company, but is essentially this: big heaps of junky, non-recyclable plastics are sorted out from the garbage stream, baled into giant cubes, shredded into tiny bits, and then fed into an enormous furnace. The process transforms the plastics into a gas, then condenses them into a liquid, which is then filtered and cleaned of contaminants, including inks and acids. In Portland, Ore., Agilyx is running a demonstration plant that turns mixed waste plastic brought in from local suppliers into crude oil, which it sells to a Seattle-based refinery.
"We've shipped 21 truckloads of crude oil derived entirely from garbage plastic," said Agilyx CEO Chris Ulum. That's 170,000 gallons of crude oil that didn't have to come out of the ground or be imported from outside the country.Agilyx also had to make sure the synthetic crude oil it was producing was chemically clean enough for the refinery. Kim Holmes, a Portland-based environmental consultant and author of the report, said the pyrolysis technology to convert plastic to fuel is now getting past the gee-whiz stage. Her survey of the field showed that crude oil made from waste plastics costs around 75 cents per gallon to produce, while ready-to-go diesel is about $1.25.
J.K. Rowling isn’t giving Harry Potter devotees what they really want – an eighth book – but she’s coming close.
Her new Harry Potter online universe, Pottermore, which launches in beta version in July, will reveal hitherto-unpublished passages from Ms. Rowling’s notebooks and pepper devotees with inside scoops about characters, plots and places.
So, amid the 18,000 or so extra words that Ms. Rowling has already handed over to the Pottermore programmers, what can the avid Harry Potter reader learn?
For one, Ms. Rowling has included the full back-story of Professor Minerva McGonagall, the Hogwarts teacher and later headmistress, who also happens to rank as one of Ms. Rowling’s personal-favorite characters. The biography traces Professor McGonagall’s childhood, details her schooling and delves into her early heartbreak and ministry career. Ms. Rowling says she had wanted to include the professor’s bio in one of the seven books, but could never find a right place for it.
Apart from that, Pottermore users who matriculate into a Hogwarts house other than Gryffindor (Harry’s house) will get to read an extra quarter-chapter about the “true nature” of their house, its history and prefect. Ms. Rowling insists being selected into Slytherin, the notoriously sinister Hogwarts house, is not a bad thing.
There’s also a mass of information about magic wands, the key instruments of power in the Harry Potter series, which have an array of wooden casings and hair-string cores. “I go into ridiculous detail about wand woods,” Ms. Rowling says. Wizards and witches never choose wands; wands choose them – and that’s also how it works for users who sign up to the Pottermore site.
But what about quidditch, the flying-broomstick sport that replaces football in the Harry Potter world?
“Men always ask me about quidditch,” Ms. Rowling says. “They just think it’s illogical — and it’s not illogical.”
A full explanation isn’t up there yet. But it may be forthcoming. Game on.
Magnetic Field Sensed by Gene, Study Shows A researcher studying how monarch butterflies navigate has picked up a strong hint that people may be able to sense the earth's Magnetic Field and use it for orienting themselves. Many animals rely on the Magnetic Field for navigation, and researchers have often wondered if people, too, might be able to detect the field; that might explain how Polynesian navigators can make 3,000-mile journeys under starless skies. Since physical chemists had speculated the cryptochromes might be sensitive to magnetism, Dr. Reppert wondered if the monarch butterfly was using its cryptochromes to sense the earth's Magnetic Field. He first studied the laboratory fruit fly, whose genes are much easier to manipulate and showed three years ago that the fly could detect magnetic fields but only when its cryptochrome gene was in good working order. He then showed that the monarch butterfly's two cryptochrome genes could each substitute for the fly's Gene in letting it sense magnetic fields, indicating that the butterfly uses the proteins for the same purpose.
One of the monarch's two cryptochrome genes is similar in its DNA sequence to the human cryptochrome gene. That prompted the idea of seeing whether the human Gene, too, could restore magnetic sensing to fruit flies whose own Gene had been knocked out. The human cryptochrome gene is highly active in the eye, raising the possibility that the Magnetic Field might in some sense be seen, if the cryptochromes interact with the retina. Dr. Reppert said the focus on human use of the Magnetic Field for navigation might be misplaced. Dr. Phillips said that Dr. Reppert's work was of interest but that he had been surprised by an experiment in which Dr. Reppert disrupted the part of the cryptochrome thought to interact with the Magnetic Field, yet the flies had still detected the magnetism.
It's 50-50 whether he's really studying what he thinks he is, Dr. Phillips said. Dr. Reppert replied that he had already ruled out the alternative explanation suggested by Dr. Phillips. Depending on how the proteins are aligned in the eye, insects may perceive objects as being lighter or darker as they orient themselves in relation to the Magnetic Field, Dr. Phillips said. This is the fun stage where we are not constrained by many facts, Dr. Phillips said. As for Dr. Reppert, he is now planning his next step, that of understanding how the cryptochrome proteins sense the Magnetic Field and how they convey that information to the fruit fly's and monarch's brain.
FDA urges caution for silicone breast implant recipients Women with silicone breast implants need to know that they probably will not last forever and might need to be removed or replaced within a decade of implantation, according to a report released yesterday by the US Food and Drug Administration. About 20 percent of women who have silicone implants for breast augmentation will have problems that warrant removal, as well as one-half of breast cancer patients who have them for reconstruction. We want women to fully understand the risks and complications prior to undergoing implants,Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said during a press conference. Potential problems include a hardening of the breast tissue around the implant known as capsular contracture implant rupture, asymmetry, wrinkling, scarring, pain, and infections. Women who have silicone implants need to follow up with their surgeons if they have any symptoms like pain, asymmetry, or hardness, Shuren said.
Also troubling is the possibility which Shuren called profoundly small of developing a rare type of lymphoma in the breast that has been associated with silicone implants. The FDA has identified 60 cases of cancer out of 5 million to 10 million women who have the breast implants worldwide. But Shuren emphasized that silicone implants remain safe and effective.The agency's new data comes from manufacturer followup studies involving 40,000 women that were required by the FDA after it approved two new silicone implants five years ago. The implants, manufactured by Allergan and Mentor Worldwide, were approved for augmentation in women over age 22 and for breast cancer patients of all ages.
Prior to that, silicone implants which have a softer and more natural feel than saline had been banned for augmentation use after concerns were raised about their safety risks, which turned out to be overblown. Consumer health activist Dr. Sidney Wolfe, head of the Public Citizen Health Research Group, said in a statement that silicone implants should never have been allowed back on the market for cosmetic augmentation, adding that the FDA's assurance of safety while at the same time acknowledging that the longer a woman has the implants, the more likely she is to experience complications, is unquestionably shortsighted as well as contradictory. We concur with [the] FDA that women should fully understand there are potential risks associated with breast implants and they should discuss risks and benefits with their plastic surgeon prior to breast augmentation or reconstruction,said Mentor spokesperson Christopher Allman. �We are continually reviewing our metrics and processes in all aspects of our Breast Implant Follow Up Study to increase patient compliance, said Allergan spokeswoman Caroline Van Hove. The FDA recommends that women who experience serious side effects with breast implants report them to the agency at www.FDA.gov/safety/MedWatch or by calling 800-332-1088.
Probing colons has never been this much fun. Japanese researchers have developed the world’s first self-propelled endoscopy device, a remote controlled tadpole-like camera that can “swim” through the digestive tack gathering imagery along the way.
This kind of endoscopy isn’t wholly new, of course, but previous iterations of ingestible cameras relied on natural muscle contractions to move them through the body. The “Mermaid,” as it is known, simplifies the process by moving quickly through the digestive tract to its destination, whatever that point may be. To speed the process, it can be inserted into the digestive system at either end, entering the body orally or--well, you know.
The device is just 0.4 inches in diameter and just shy of two inches long, and uses magnetic machinery to control its movement and location. Doctors pilot the endoscope with a joystick, watching its progress on a monitor. All said, it takes only a few hours to traverse the whole system from esophagus to colon. It could help ease the strain on patients and detect hard-to-see cancers earlier than was previously possible.
Today Microsoft promised to transform TV advertising into an interactive experience, unveiling the highly anticipated ad platform for the Kinect called NUads. The platform uses the voice and gesture controls of Kinect for the Xbox 360, and will allow people to interact with television commercials as early as Spring 2012.
“I try to avoid hyperbole,” said Microsoft’s Mark Kroese, who oversees advertising for entertainment and devices. “But in this case of NUads and Kinect, I’m here to say that it will change television as we know it—forever.”
Kroese, blogging today from the Microsoft Advertising Business Conference at the Cannes International Advertising Festival, said advertisements placed across the Xbox LIVE experience will respond to various voice commands and motions. For example, viewers can vote in real time for a product or service by waving their hand, schedule a calendar reminder for an upcoming TV show, or say “Xbox Near Me” to see a map with directions to a nearby car dealership (shown in the picture to the left).
He explained that while television ads reach a broad audience, it has remained “stubbornly passive and one-way” for advertisers desiring an interactive experience, unlike PC and mobile interactive ads.
“People are inherently interactive all on their own,” wrote Kroese. “We just needed the technology to get out of their way.”
Launched in the winter of 2010, Kinect holds the Guinness World Record of being the “fastest selling consumer electronics device”. Microsoft announced in March 2011 that 10 million sensors had been sold worldwide.
Remember cameras that would have to focus themselves before taking a snapshot? And how that could lose vital seconds, making a mockery of the term “point and shoot”?
Oh, right — that would describe every digital camera currently on the market. But if one Silicon Valley startup has its way, the very idea of focusing, or adjusting light levels, or having to wait before you click the shutter, will be a relic of the early 21st century — along, perhaps, with photos that only exist in two dimensions.
Lytro is the brainchild of Dr. Ren Ng, a Stanford Ph.D whose dissertation on light-field technology five years ago was showered with awards. Now, with the help of $50 million in funding, most of it from Andreesen Horowitz, Ng has built a company that’s preparing to launch a focus-free digital camera later this year.
The basic premise of Lytro’s technology is pretty simple: the camera captures all the information it possibly can about the field of light in front of it. You then get a digital photo that is adjustable in an almost infinite number of ways. You can focus anywhere in the picture, change the light levels — and presuming you’re using a device with a 3-D ready screen — even create a picture you can tilt and shift in three dimensions.
You might think that this would produce unfeasibly large digital files, but Ng insists that the files will be roughly comparable to the average size of a digital photo today. The heavy lifting is being done by the camera’s on-board processors, he says. And because its light sensor is incredibly sensitive, you can capture low-light situations like restaurants a lot more easily — even without the flash.
Although the camera itself isn’t due out until late 2011, Lytro today unveiled a carousel of demonstration snapshots — all of them embeddable, available in Flash for the web and HTML5 for your smartphone. Here’s an example. Click anywhere on the picture to change the focus, double-click to zoom.
Remind you of Instagram‘s tilt-shift feature, perhaps? Sure — except when you realize that Instagram can only focus on one area of the screen at a time. See how the chain link fence snaps in and out of focus? That’s how you know it’s a picture with a whole lot of light field information in it.
And the cost of this camera? Ng says it will be comparable to other consumer-priced digital cameras on the market. If the end result is anything like these demonstration photos, the $40 billion camera market is about to meet a whole lot of disruption.
Here are the reasons why the FCP X video editing software, which was launched on Tuesday, was a failure:
Firstly, to use the Final Cut Pro X you will need Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or Lion (when it is released), which is as good as useless in your existing Apple OS.
Final Cut Pro X is unaffordable and it costs $1,000. The previous $1,000 Final Cut Studio bundle had four other apps -- Soundtrack Pro, Motion, Color and Compressor.
Motion and Compressor will now have to be bought separately for $50 each. Color and Soundtrack Pro have been folded into FCP X itself.
Apple will separately sell iLife and iWork suites in the Mac App Store making the process more complicated and excruciating.
The app, when installed, will notify you to import iMovie Events, which is quite unimpressive for a professional who is working in a broadcast television and never went beyond the FCP. iMovie is used by small-time rookies to edit videos of weddings and birthday parties.
You can import iMovie, but there is no option for importing a newer version of FCP. Moreover, FCP X is not backwards compatible with the previous version of FCP. So, in case you start with a project in FCP 7, stick to it and complete it because FCP X will not recognize what you started previously.
Editing something as simple as multiclip is a confusing affair. You will keep searching for the right moves. Moreover, FCP X does not create audio markers in real time like FCP 7. Waste of $300, indeed.
A study using rats suggests synthetic fat substitutes used in low-calorie foods could lead to weight gain instead of weight loss, U.S. researchers say.
Study leader Susan E. Swithers, a Purdue University psychology professor, and colleagues used laboratory rats, giving half of the rats high-fat chow and the other half low-fat chow. Half of the rats in each group also were fed Pringles potato chips that are high in fat and calories and the other half in each group were fed high-calorie Pringles chips on some days and low-calorie Pringles Light chips -- made with olestra, a fat substitute with zero calories that passes through the body undigested -- on other days.
The study, published in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience, found the rats on the high-fat diet that ate both types of potato chips consumed more food, gained more weight and developed more fatty tissue than the rats that ate only the high-calorie chips.
In addition, the rats on the high-fat diet didn't lose the extra weight even after the potato chips were removed from their diet.
"Based on this data, a diet that is low in fat and calories might be a better strategy for weight loss than using fat substitutes," Swithers said.
Want to use Facebook at work without your employer thinking you're a slacker?
You need Excellbook -- a new application from the socially-minded people at clothing company Diesel -- that transforms Facebook into a clever and undetectable spreadsheet.
You can download the application for both Mac and PC at Be Stupid At Work, which is part of Diesel's "Be Stupid" ad campaign.
Once it launches you'll be asked to log in with your Facebook account. Excellbook will then transfer all your friends and their statuses into a covert spreadsheet. You can't look at photos but that would be make things a little too obvious.
Download the app along with Adobe Air in order for it to launch and just hope your boss doesn't hear about it.
Here's a video of Excellbook via Diesel:
you’re one of the four gamers out there who hasn’t yet played Team Fortress 2, now is the time to do so. Game developer Valve is letting gamers play the game for free for a week ahead of a massive content patch.
The new “Uber” update features extra pieces of equipment for some of the character classes. The company is also teasing a “meet the” short video, which is a funny series that introduces the characters that players take control of in Team Fortress 2. As usual, the update features ridiculous weapons and the video promises to be another hilarious take on the first person shooter (FPS) genre. The game’s style, which regularly mocks a lot of tropes common in the FPS genre, is part of the reasons it’s so successful.
The game will be free to download and play through Sunday. Team Fortress 2 is a multiplayer FPS game that lets players team up in huge capture-the-flag and king-of-the-hill style matches. Players can choose from one of several classes that all fulfill certain roles, like the speedy scout who is good for carrying intel (the game’s version of a flag) or the medic, who can heal and supercharge friendly players. It’s one of Valve’s unusual stunts to try to pick up additional gamers, even though the game is already incredibly popular.
The game is one of only a few on the market right now that thrives on team-based gameplay rather than single-person heroics. Most multiplayer FPS games include team-based deathmatch games — where the team with the largest number of kills wins — but don’t encourage a lot of teamwork in pick-up and casual matches. In Team Fortress 2, teamwork is essential — even for casual gamers who just want to play a quick match during a lunch hour.
It’s also an unusual FPS game because of the artistic direction. Instead of ultra-realistic graphics like those seen in the Battlefield and Call of Duty franchises, the game looks like a cartoon brought to life. Characters have exaggerated features, such as the heavy and his massive minigun and huge muscles. They all have personality quirks too — for example, the sniper is built off a Crocodile Dundee-style Australian hunter.
But despite its quirks, Team Fortress 2 is critically acclaimed and was a large factor in the success of the Orange Box, a collection of five games that Valve released in 2007. The collection included Half Life 2, along with sequels Episode 1 and Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and the smash hit Portal. It’s currently the highest rated PC game of all time on review aggregating site Metacritic.
"Bad Teacher" has attracted Hollywood stars to its New York premiere on Monday, June 20. During the special screening at the Ziegfeld Theater, Cameron Diaz heated up the event by sharing a kiss with ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake. Diaz wore a black see-through top and a mini skirt, while Timberlake donned a matching black suit.
After posing with the former member of NSYNC, Diaz posed with young co-stars Kathryn Newton and Kaitlyn Dever. While Newton slipped into a black-and-beige dress, Dever wore an asymmetric black-and-gray dress. Lucy Punch joined the aforementioned actors in her white gown. Meanwhile, director Jake Kasdan chose a brown tux.
Also hitting the black carpet were the likes of Weird Al Yankovic, LuAnn de Lesseps, Kirstie Alley and Maksim Chmerkovskiy. The eccentric singer looked neat in his suit, and the TV personality was graceful in her pink dress. Alley attended the event in her black dress covered by light pink bolero, while Chmerkovskiy donned stripped gray shirt.
"Bad Teacher" centers its story on Diaz's Elizabeth Halsey, a foul-mouthed, ruthless, and inappropriate teacher. When she's dumped by her fiance, she sets her plan in motion to win over a rich, handsome substitute Scott. This comedy movie will open in U.S. cinemas on June 24.
Fury of Ryan Dunn's grieving co-star as Roger Ebert accuses Jackass stuntman of drink-driving... hours after fatal horror Porsche crash
Jackass star Bam Margera is outraged after film critic Roger Ebert tweeted a message, blaming his co-star Ryan Dunn's fatal car smash on drink-driving.
Dunn, 34, died when his sports car flew off the road at around 2.30am on Monday while he was driving to his home in West Goshen, Pennsylvania, following a night out in a bar with friends.
Now his fellow Jackass co-star Margera, 31, has broken his silence after Ebert criticised Dunn hours after the smash, which also claimed the life of another-as-yet unidentified male passenger.
Taking to Twitter soon after the news broke, 69-year-old Ebert, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, tweeted: 'Friends don't let jackasses drink and drive.' A link to a news story about the incident accompanied his comment.
Bam finally went to his Twitter to blast Ebert late last night, saying: 'I just lost my best friend, I have been crying hysterical for a full day and piece of s**t roger ebert has the gall to put in his 2 cents about a jackass drunk driving and [he is] one, f*** you!"
He added: 'Millions of people are crying right now, shut your fat f*****g mouth!'
And sources told TMZ that Dunn drank at least three light beers and three shots between 10.30pm and 2.10am at Barnaby's of America bar before the accident.
Fellow Twitter users were also angered by Ebert's remarks. One tweeter, @ebertchicago, responded: 'That was in disgustingly poor taste,' while another added: 'Why is this a joke? He is still a person. Have some respect.'
Celebrity gossip blogger waded in to the row too, branding Ebert's comments in poor taste.
An article on Perez's blog read: 'We certainly agree that driving after drinking is wrong, we think there's no reason - especially RIGHT NOW - that anyone should be pointing fingers or poking fun at a truly tragic situation.
'Everyone makes mistake, and this is somebody's son. Too soon, Roger.'
But Ebert stuck to his guns, merely retweeting Hilton's article with the comment: 'Perez Hilton's readers agree with me and not with Perez about my tweet on Ryan Dunn.
'He drank, he drove, 2 people died.'
Police said they found the burning wreckage of Dunn's 2007 Porsche 911 GT3, which was capable of reaching 190mph, in the woods off the road fully engulfed in flames.
The competition between iOS 5 and Android is getting more intensed day by day. With each update and head-to-head comparison between the biggies, striking similarities as well as dissimilarities have forced millions of gadget lovers to think twice over their smartphone of choice.
Check out the top five useful features of Android that will make it a better choice over Apple's latest build of iOS.
Flexible home screen and widgets
The beauty of Android home screen and widgets is that they are flexible and can be customized according to users' needs. You can easily customize your home screen, place widgets anywhere you want, and they will give you updates on features that matter. You can use widgets for weather updates, breaking news, emails, clocks, WiFi or even media playback controls. When it comes to iOS, users can only launch apps and create folders.
Customizability
You are free to customize almost anything on your Android. You can extend or replace almost every core Android feature by third-party apps. If you want more, the Android source code is there at your service. You can take the code and customize your ROM, by installing CyanogenMod or Gingerbreak. With Android you can change your default browser to Firefox or any other browser. But in case of iOS, Safari is your only option. If you want to customize your iOS, you need to jailbreak your iOS device.
Better voice control functionality
You just speak and Android brings you what you want. Yes, Android carries voice commands. You can easily search and find with voice search through Google. While listening to music, you just have to speak the title or the artist's name and Android lets you enjoy the music. You can also load third-party music apps like Pandora with the "listen to" command. But in iOS, the voice command options are limited. The music-by-voice feature of the iPhone is only linked to the iPod app.
Android can play Flash games and video, and iOS can't (and never will). It supports only HTML5 web apps. With iOS embracing HTML5 web apps, questions are raised on whether Flash offers what the industry really needs. According to numerous reports, most of the performance related issues have been rectified with Flash for Android Honeycomb.
Google Account Integration
iCloud is interesting. But it's just a cloud storage service. It stores your docs, pictures and apps. With Android, you'll have the benefit of Google Account Integration. You can edit your Google Docs no matter which device you are using, it can be your smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop. You can upload music to Google Music, and stream from the cloud to your phone. You even can do a VoIP call via Google voice. But with iOS, you neither get streaming music nor VoIP.
GPS Navigation
Voice-guided GPS is a service which has been there in Android phones as a standard component since October 2009. Although iPhone has some third-party apps that offer turn-by-turn voice guidance, with Android's built-in functionality, you can easily jump in to navigate from other apps. In case of iOS, users have to manually copy and paste the address into the app they want to use.
How would you like it if your TV could fart? It sounds absurd, but that's what's on the table with Samsung's latest revival of the Smell-O-Vision concept. And this time the tech looks real enough that it might actually happen.
Researchers at UCSD are partnering with Samsung to create a compact device for your TV or phone that can generate thousands of smells. The technology works by using a 100x100 matrix of thin metal wires that heats any one of 10,000 smell-forming aqueus solutions, allowing for 10,000 different smells. The researchers tested two different perfumes, and found that the smells were perceptible up to 30cm away.
While there are absolutely times when the olfactory feedback would be awesome (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory immediately comes to mind) and times when it would be horrible (the Jackass movies; all porn ever), I kind of get the feeling advertisers would get the most mileage out of it. Sure we'd know the smells are synthetic—on several ascending levels—but damn if it isn't already hard enough to resist those delicious Popeye's shrimp ads.
With a number of news stories lately about kids under 13 on Facebook ( on the site against the social network's terms of service), you'd think there weren't any other social networking sites that were geared for kids or where kids wanted to be. That's hardly the case, as there are many social networks, gaming sites, and virtual worlds aimed at the under 13 set. In fact, a study last year suggested that of the billion some-odd users of virtual worlds, over half are under age 15.
One of the newest kid-friendly sites is MiniMonos, a New Zealand-based company that, just six months after its launch, already has over 250,000 users. That's dwarfed, of course, by the popular Disney-owned Club Penguin, with over 6 million monthly active users. And while MiniMonos is similar to Club Penguin and other virtual sites with its emphasis on fun avatars, games, and virtual goods, MiniMonos, which means "little monkeys" in Spanish, is unique in a couple of ways.
Although MiniMonos isn't an educational site per se, smart content is integrated throughout the virtual world, much of it focused on caring about the planet. WIth their monkey avatars, kids engage in a number of sustainability games and lessons. For example, kids play recycling games that keep their treehouses tidy and cloud collection games that help generate wind power. Moreoever, they learn the environmental consequences when they don't keep up on these tasks (Messy house, no power). Kids can also play TicTacPoo... because, well, they're monkeys, and poo is hilarious (and compost helpful).
It isn't simply linking gaming with a social cause - that's pretty common for kids' and adults' sites. MiniMonos also has launched an "EcoMonkey" program that provides kids with in-world rewards for their real-world eco-actions, such as setting up recycling programs at their schools.
Although there are plenty of other sites that have environmental science education components or that encourage kids to get involved socially, MIniMonos integrates this eco-sensibility throughout the gameplay and it ties kids' actions offline to their online presence. That commitment to offline activism is crucial to the startup's founders, many of whom, including CEO Melissa Clark-Reynolds, have been trained as Ambassador for Al Gore's Climate Project.
MiniMonos recently announced that it has been accepted into the Springboard accelerator program in Cambridge, England.
Its Erin Hatley, a gorgeous lady with a beautiful voice, dedicated to promoting volunteerism who will be representing Tennessee at the Miss America 2012 pageant, next January in Las Vegas.
Saturday night saw the crowning of Erin Hatley as Miss Tennessee 2011 by outgoing Miss Tennessee 2010, Nicole Jordan.
Erin and Nicole had been friendly rivals at the Miss Tennessee 2010 pageant, when Nicole ran as Miss Lexington and Erin reigned as Miss Walking Tall, Examiner reported.
Erin is hopeful of winning the Miss America crown after Miss America 1947 Barbara Jo Walker and Miss America 1986 Kellye Cash, both from Tennessee.
Erin studied Hospitality and Resort Management at the University of Memphis.
Madison Snipes 15, who is a hopeful entertainer, according to her Facebook page, was crowned Miss Tennessee Outstanding Teen, the report said.
Kim Kardashian's perfume reminds her of her fiance.
The socialite was wearing her own self-titled fragrance when she first met Kris Humphries and now sprays the scent on her pillows so the sportsman will always think about her when she isn't at home.
She said: "I was wearing it when we first met, so now I have the memory of meeting him and falling in love all tied up with my scent.
"And every time I leave after I have been wearing it, he says to me, 'Oh the room still smells of you, it's like having you here.' So I sprayed it on his pillow so he could smell it every time he is in bed."
While Kim is a huge perfume lover, she prefers Kris to go without fragrance as she likes his natural "manly" smell.
She said: "I actually like a man to smell like a real man, the exact opposite of a feminine floral perfume.
"I like Kris to smell manly and not to wear too much scent so that I can still smell his skin."
OK, so it's the big day – Dad's big day. And you still haven't gotten him something. We have the answer for you. Check out these ideas we've been sending your way all week:
The Manly Man: From cigar shops to barbecue businesses, there are options right around the corner.
The Athlete: Dad doesn’t have to be pumping iron to enjoy a game of beanbag toss or Frisbee. How about tennis racquets, fishing gear, basketball and baseball equipment?
The Nostalgic: If you already have hundreds of precious prints lying around your room, find one that Dad will really appreciate and have it professionally framed.
The Traveler: Whether Dad is hitting the trails this summer for a camping excursion, going for a weekend trip up north or headed on a luxurious overseas vacation, there's something new you can put in his car trunk.
The Family Man: Sometimes, it's just about spending quality time together.
Whatever you decide, we hope it's a wonderful day for fathers
