Google Glass Today, Smart Contact Lenses Tomorrow?

It might take a decade or more, but projects from Imec and others could eventually bring augmented-reality contact lenses to life.

Rachel Metz

July 25, 2013

Though it may be hard to imagine now, we may eventually be able to ditch head-worn devices like Google Glass and simply see images projected floating in front of us using contact lenses.

Researchers at Belgian nonelectronics reseach and development center Imec and Belgium’s Ghent University are in the very early stages of developing such a device, which would bring augmented reality–the insertion of digital imagery such as virtual signs and historical markers with the real world–right to your eyeballs. It’s just one of several such projects (see “Contact Lens Computer: It’s Like Google Glass Without The Glasses”), and while the idea is nowhere near the point where you could ask your eye doctor for a pair, it could become more realistic as the cost and size of electronic components continue to fall and wearable gadgets gain popularity.

Soon, Buying an EV Will Get You No Green Cred

It’s getting harder to get noticed in a battery-powered car. Some tips. 

Kevin Bullis

July 25, 2013

The iconic Aptera.

The days when you can go out and buy an electric car to demonstrate your steadfast devotion to the environment are coming to an end. Pretty soon, people might suspect you bought the car because you actually like it.

Already, we’re well past the good old days, when electric car buyers could boast about sacrificing back seats to make room for the battery. People are getting word that some electric cars out there can out-accelerate a golf cart. Although you can still find one if you look, it’s getting harder to find really weird-looking electric vehicles that scream—“There’s no way I would have bought this if I didn’t love the environment so much.”

Small Tablets Are Eclipsing Large Ones

Steve Jobs dismissed smaller tablets as “tweeners,” but they are proving more popular than full size tablets.

Tom Simonite

July 24, 2013

This morning in San Francisco, Google announced an upgraded version of its Nexus 7 tablet, increasing its resolution and power and reducing its weight and size. But the company’s larger tablet, the Nexus 10, was passed over.

Google may have chosen to update the Nexus 7 (which has a screen seven inches across, corner to corner) alone due to the growing pile of evidence that tablets the size of Apple’s original iPad design are, to the surprise of Apple, much less popular with consumers than their newer, smaller competitors.

Google Launches a Dongle to Bring Online Video to TV

Phones, tablets, and PCs can play online video on a TV set using Google’s cheap Chromecast device.

• By Tom Simonite on July 24, 2013

Why It Matters

Connecting more TVs to online content could shake up how people get their entertainment.

Pocket sized: Google vice president Mario Queiroz shows off the Chromecast, a small device that allows phones, tablets, and laptops to push online video to a TV set.

Google launched a two-inch-long device costing $35 at an event in San Francisco today. The device is meant to bring the 200 billion videos watched online each month to regular TV sets. Called the Chromecast, the device resembles a regular USB thumb drive, but plugs into a television’s HDMI port and connects to a home Wi-Fi connection.

The Paradox of Wearable Technologies

Can wearable devices augment our activities without distracting us from the real world?

• By Don Norman on July 24, 2013

Why It Matters

Wearable computing could be the next big consumer technology trend.

Ever talk to someone at a party or conference reception only to discover that the person you are talking to is constantly scanning the room, looking this way and that, perhaps finding you boring, perhaps looking for someone more important? Doesn’t the person realize that you notice?
 

Welcome to the brave new world of wearable computers, which will tread within the uneasy space bounded by continual distraction, continual diversion of attention, and continual blank stares along one border; and focused attention, continual enhancement, and better interaction, understanding, and retention along the other. Google’s latest hardware toy, Glass, which has received a lot of attention, is only the beginning of this challenge.

A 41-Megapixel Camera Makes Nokia’s Latest Smartphone Snap-Happy

The Nokia Lumia 1020 is pricey, but its whopping 41-megapixel camera takes impressive photos.

• By Rachel Metz on July 24, 2013

Why It Matters

High-resolution image sensors are becoming increasingly inexpensive, meaning they could appear in devices such as phones and tablets.

Big picture: The Nokia Lumia 1020.

It’s amazing how much cell-phone cameras have changed over the years. A decade ago, I excitedly purchased my first phone with a built-in camera, the Sony Ericsson T610, whose 0.1-megapixel camera took tiny, grainy color photos that seemed awesome at the time. A day ago, I started playing around with the Nokia Lumia 1020, which includes a staggering 41-megapixel sensor capable of snapping sharp, bright, intensely detailed images.

Gmail’s Inbox Filters Dent Marketing Email Exposure

Google’s filters, which automatically hide promotional messages, are hurting email marketers. 

Tom Simonite

July 23, 2013

When Google introduced a new filtering system for its email service Gmail last month, I suggested that it might cut people’s exposure to promotional emails (see “Marketers Must Hate Google’s New People-Focused Inbox”). Figures released today by email marketing company MailChimp today show that is already happening, depsite the feature likely being used by only a fraction of Gmail users (here’s how to activate it).

TV Airwaves Fill the Broadband Gaps

Companies are working to provide long-distance Internet services to rural areas via unused TV spectrum.

• By David Talbot on July 23, 2013

Why It Matters

About five billion people lack access to high-speed Internet, with few options from traditional infrastructure.

Three years after the U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved using spare TV frequencies for long-range wireless Internet, the technology is finally poised for commercialization—filling broadband gaps in rural U.S. areas and in developing nations.

Facebook Is Being Redefined by Its Developing World Users

Facebook is gaining many developing-world users, who use the site very differently from those who came before them.

 

Tom Simonite

July 22, 2013

 

Ubiquitous, essential, perhaps a little tired—all ways people that use Facebook in its home market of the U.S. can be heard to describe the social network.

Yet as Facebook’s user base continues to expand, a growing proportion of its users think of it quite differently, as a luxury brand, badge of status, and or even a place to make a little extra money. That’s due to the rapid growth in the number of Facebook users signing on from developing countries, a trend underscored by news from the company today that more than 100 million people use a mobile app the company makes for feature phones.

Look Before You Leap Motion

Leap Motion’s low-cost gesture-control device is not as easy to use as you might think.

• By Rachel Metz on July 22, 2013

Why It Matters

Gesture-control technology could make interacting with a computer easier and improve applications like gaming and drawing.

Hands up: The $80 Leap Motion controller enables gesture recognition on a Mac or PC. 

For the past couple days, I’ve been gesticulating even more than normal—at times, subtly, at other times, wildly—while getting to know the latest in gesture-control technology: the Leap Motion controller.

Long anticipated due to its low cost ($80), unobtrusive sardine-can size, and purported accuracy and ease of use as demonstrated in some impressive videos, I was pretty excited to try out the device, which was released today. Gestural interfaces like the Leap Motion controller and Microsoft’s Kinect have generated a lot of buzz over the past few years, and hopes are high that they’ll eventually become as common as the mouse and keyboard, if not supplanting them.

The Bell Labs of Quantum Computing

Mike Lazaridis invented the BlackBerry. Now he wants to create an industry around quantum computing.

• By Michael Fitzgerald on July 22, 2013

Why It Matters

Investment in fundamental research can lead to new industries.

Part of our Business Report:

The Next Silicon Valley

Every region dreams of becoming the next center for technology and the cradle of tomorrow’s startups.

Super cool: A close-up of a superconducting circuit that operates at -269 °C.

Raymond Laflamme can’t yet sell you a quantum computer. But he’ll sell you a $13,000 logic board for measuring entangled photons.
It’s a start.

Laflamme is head of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, a research center that’s part of a quixotic, grandiose effort by Mike ­Lazaridis, cofounder of the smartphone maker BlackBerry, to invent a quantum computer and turn this city 70 miles from Toronto into a “Quantum Valley.”
Since 1999, Lazaridis has put $270 million behind his vision, paying to recruit some of the world’s best theoretical physicists. While he thinks a true quantum computer is still 10 years away, he believes initial discoveries can be commercialized now, turning Waterloo into a thriving industrial cluster built around quantum information science.

Electronic “Skin” Emits Light When Pressed

Researchers unveil one of the most complex electronic systems ever built on plastic.

• By Mike Orcutt on July 21, 2013

Why It Matters

Flexible electronic devices could enable new types of applications in a wide range of contexts, from medicine to general purpose computing.

Pressure pixels: A fully fabricated piece of “electronic skin.” Each pixel emits light in response to applied pressure.

A sheet of thin plastic that emits light with an intensity that precisely reflects the amount of pressure applied to its surface hints at a new breed of flexible computer interface. Its creators say future iterations of the interface could be used for robotics, car dashboards, mobile displays, or even “interactive wallpaper.”