The death of Windows XP will impact 95 percent of the world’s ATMs

By Tom Warren | The Verge

 

Microsoft’s 12-year-old Windows XP operating system powers 95 percent of the world’s automated teller machines, according to NCR, the largest ATM supplier in the US. While the idea of Windows powering ATMs may surprise consumers, XP runs in the background powering the software that bank customers interact with to withdraw money. An upcoming Windows XP support change from Microsoft means ATMs will need to be upgraded and modified throughout 2014. Bloomberg Businessweek reports that the US has 420,000 ATMs, and the majority of them run XP and face a support cutoff from Microsoft soon. On April 8th, Microsoft plans to end support for Windows XP, leaving businesses still using XP, and 95 percent of ATMs, open to security and compliance risks.

Around the World, Net Neutrality Is Not a Reality

In much of the world, the concept of “net neutrality” generates less public debate, given there’s no affordable Net in the first place.

• By David Talbot on January 20, 2014

Why It Matters

The next billion Internet users will be arriving mostly in the developing world, on low-end smartphones.

Not neutral: The offices of Bharti Airtel, India’s mobile market leader, in New Delhi.

Net neutrality—the idea that all Internet traffic should generally be treated equally—suffered a setback last week when a federal court struck down the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s latest regulatory effort (see “Net Neutrality Quashed: New Pricing Schemes, Throttling, and Business Models to Follow”).

Pro-neutrality types have worried that a few giant companies will end up controlling, or at least mediating, the Internet experience for much of the population because of special deals they’ve struck with Internet providers for prioritized or subsidized data delivery.

Sync Your Files without Trusting the Cloud

The company behind the Bittorrent protocol is working on software that can replicate most features of file-synching services without handing your data to cloud servers.

• By Tom Simonite on January 17, 2014

Why It Matters

Recent headlines about security breaches and government surveillance have made alternatives to conventional cloud services more attractive.

Data dump: New software from Bittorrent can synchronize files between computers and mobile devices without ever storing them in a data center like this one.

The debate over how much we should trust cloud companies with our data (see “NSA Spying Is Making Us Less Safe”) was reawakened last year after revelations that the National Security Agency routinely harvests data from Internet companies including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook.

Bittorrent, the company behind the sometimes controversial file-sharing protocol of the same name, is hoping that this debate will drive adoption of its new file-syncing technology this year. Called Bittorrent Sync, it synchronizes folders and files on different computers and mobile devices in a way that’s similar to what services like Dropbox offer, but without ever copying data to a central cloud server.

Google Isn’t the Only One Putting Electronics into Contact Lenses

Google is working on electronics-laden contact lenses to monitor glucose levels for diabetics. Welcome to the club. 

Tom Simonite

January 16, 2014

 

 

Eye electronics: This contact lens made in the secretive Google X labs is designed to help diabetics by transmitting a feed of the glucose levels in their tears to a nearby receiver.

Google is developing contact lenses with embedded electronics that can track the levels of glucose in a person’s tears and transmit that data wirelessly to a nearby receiver, an official blog post by Babak Parviz, a leader of the Google Glass wearable computing project revealed Thursday. The device is intended to help diabetics track their glucose levels without drawing blood.

Google Brings Its Smart Assistant to the Desktop

Google looks set to bring its smart, personal data-fueled assistant, Google Now, to the Chrome browser. 

Tom Simonite

January 16, 2014

 
Helpmeet: The Google Now service uses data from a person’s email inbox, search activity and mobile device location to try to summarize important information.

Google’s smart but personality-free assistant Google Now (see “Google’s Answer to Siri”) is embedded in the latest preview, or “Canary”, version of the company’s Chrome browser. That means that people who use Google Now on their smartphone and, via Chrome, on a Windows or Mac computer, will be informed via a desktop notification about things such as flight delays and sports scores. Google Now chooses those “cards” based on what Google knows from a person’s Gmail account, Web search history and the location of their mobile device.

How Information Flows During Emergencies

Mining the mobile phone data from 10 million people over 4 years reveals the subtle changes that occur in the flow of information when disaster strikes, say network scientists. 

Emerging Technology From the arXiv

January 15, 2014

 

Mobile phones have changed the way scientists study humanity. The electronic records of these calls provide an unprecedented insight into the nature of human behaviour revealing patterns of travel, human reproductive strategies and even the distribution of wealth in sub-Saharan Africa.

All of this involves humans acting in ordinary situations that they have experienced many times before. But what of the way humans behave in extraordinary conditions, such as during earthquakes, armed conflicts or terrorist incidents?

Nest Acquisition Is Like Apple and Google Teamed Up

Google’s Nest acquisition will see a team that builds and polishes technology like Apple given access to the AI power of the search giant.

Tom Simonite

January 15, 2014

 

Nest co-founders Matt Rogers and Tony Fadell flank Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page.

Google’s newest employee, Nest CEO Tony Fadell, has a big personality and a loud laugh. He likes to talk about Apple. In fact, when I met Fadell and his co-founder Matt Rogers for a profile of their company published last February (see “Control Freaks”), the way he emoted, enthused, and vented about the design, function, and frustrations of consumer technology reminded me of Steve Jobs’s public persona.

Fadell worked with Jobs for years at Apple, leading the creation of the iPod, and along with Rogers he played a major role in birthing the iPhone. Both Nest founders repeatedly told me that their new company was run much like their old iPhone team back in Cupertino and featured many of the same engineers. Fadell told me that Nest came about because working on the iPhone permanently changed his expectations of personal technology. Everything suddenly looked stupid and too complicated, particularly when it came to high-end technology for the home. “These things are brain dead,” he said. “Nest is about making it so simple that it’s empowering for everyone, just like the iPhone did or the iPod did.”

A Telepresence Machine to Watch the Kids or Visit Grandma

Startup offers $995 remotely steered video-chat device for people to check up on kids and elderly relatives.

• By Tom Simonite on January 15, 2014

Why It Matters

The number of elderly people is growing, and it’s unclear how they will be looked after and monitored.

Homebound: The Beam+ telepresence machine is being marketed as a way to stay in close contact with family from a remote location.

When Scott Hassan went to Las Vegas for the International Consumer Electronics Show last week, he was still able to get the kids up in the morning and help them make breakfast at his California home. Hassan used a remote-controlled screen on wheels to spend time with his family, and today his company, Suitable Technologies, started taking orders for Beam+, a version of the same telepresence technology aimed at home users. This summer, it will also be available via Amazon and other retailers.

Hassan thinks the Beam+, essentially a 10-inch screen and camera mounted on wheels, will be popular with other businesspeople who want to spend more time with their kids, or those with aging parents they’d like to check up on more often.

Chasing the Dream of Half-Price Gasoline from Natural Gas

A startup called Siluria thinks it’s solved a mystery that has stymied huge oil companies for decades.

• By Kevin Bullis on January 15, 2014

Why It Matters

The world depends almost exclusively on oil for chemicals and liquid fuels.

Quick screen: A technician at Siluria operates some of the company’s equipment for quickly making and testing new catalysts.

At a pilot plant in Menlo Park, California, a technician pours white pellets into a steel tube and then taps it with a wrench to make sure they settle together. He closes the tube, and oxygen and methane—the main ingredient of natural gas—flow in. Seconds later, water and ethylene, the world’s largest commodity chemical, flow out. Another simple step converts the ethylene into gasoline.

The white pellets are a catalyst developed by the Silicon Valley startup Siluria, which has raised $63.5 million in venture capital. If the catalysts work as well in a large, commercial scale plant as they do in tests, Siluria says, the company could produce gasoline from natural gas at about half the cost of making it from crude oil—at least at today’s cheap natural-gas prices.

Google Paying $3.2B to Take Home Nest

Google’s purchase of smart-thermostat maker Nest makes a lot of sense, and could help it compete against Apple. 

Rachel Metz

January 13, 2014

 
The Nest Protect alarm.

 
Google made a giant bet on the so-called Internet of things Monday by announcing that it plans to pay $3.2 billion in cash for smart thermostat and smoke alarm maker Nest Labs–a move that may be as much a talent grab as an effort to position itself as a leader in the market for Internet-connected gadgets.

Given the price tag, Google clearly sees enormous value in the company: this is the company’s second-largest acquisition thus far, after the $12.5 billion it paid for phone maker Motorola Mobility in 2011. Nest launched in 2011 and quickly rose to prominence as a leader in the growing market for Internet-connected consumer devices with its first product, the Nest Learning Thermostat, which lets users control their home’s temperature via smartphone and gradually figures out appropriate temperature settings for different times.

Printed Eye Cells Could Help Treat Blindness

The ability to print retinal cells could lead to new therapies for retinal disorders such as macular degeneration.

• By Mike Orcutt on January 13, 2014

Why It Matters

Retinal degeneration is a leading cause of blindness.

Eyeball ink: A close-up image from a high-speed camera shows a single droplet being expelled from an ink-jet printer. 

Ink-jet printing technology could be a way to build new tissue meant to restore vision to people suffering from common forms of blindness due to retinal degeneration.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge used a standard ink-jet printer to form layers of two types of cells taken from the retinas of rats, and showed that the process did not compromise the cells’ health or ability to survive and grow in culture. Ink-jet printing has been used to deposit cells before, but this is the first time cells from an adult animal’s central nervous system have been printed.

What’s the Jelly App For? Shopping May Be One Answer

A new smartphone app from a Twitter cofounder makes it easy and fun to get your friends’ advice on everything from shopping to Chopin.

• By Rachel Metz on January 10, 2014

Why It Matters

A mobile, social question-and-answer service could have a big impact on shopping.

Ready for Jelly: Jelly, a Q&A smartphone app from Twitter cofounder Biz Stone, lets you share photo-laden questions with your extended social network.

There are plenty of places to seek answers to questions, including search engines like Google and Q&A sites like Quora. Most recently, Jelly, a new startup created by Twitter cofounder Biz Stone, is squishing its way into the fray with a free smartphone app that lets you ask questions appended with images, and give answers to people in your extended social network.

Like Twitter, which faced much skepticism early on, plenty of folks are raising an eyebrow in Jelly’s direction while trying to figure out what it’s good for. The answer, at least partly, could be shopping. Imagine getting your closest friends’ opinions on a new pair of shoes before actually buying them. Or getting second opinions on whether the gadget in front of you is as good as the salesperson claims.

CES 2014: Smart Homes Open Their Doors

Smart home appliances could become more common thanks to efforts by major companies including Lowe’s and Staples to make gadgets compatible.

• By Tom Simonite on January 10, 2014

Why It Matters

Home automation will likely prove too complicated if connected devices can’t work together.

Door stopper: The Goji smart lock is just one of many Internet-connected home appliances that launched at CES.

When I interviewed Tony Fadell, the inventor of the iPod and now CEO of Nest, two years ago, he told me that he started the company, which sells smart thermostats and alarms, because existing products for taking control of your home over the Internet were clunky and appealed only to the technically minded (see “Nest’s Control Freaks”). “Home automation is for single geeky guys. It’s not for families,” he said.

The devices on show at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas suggest that Fadell’s assessment no longer holds true. A deluge of Internet-ready home devices and appliances launched at the event. Many appear to be easy to use, and can be combined into larger systems that let someone take command of his home using a single phone app.

Coming Soon: Smart Glasses That Look Like Regular Spectacles

Sunglasses made with nanoscale optical technology hint at a near future of inconspicuous head-mounted displays.

• By Mike Orcutt on January 9, 2014

Why It Matters

Head-mounted displays could transform computing applications such as navigation, translation, gaming, and assisting people with disabilities.

New spectacles: This conceptual image demonstrates how people wearing Vuzix’s augmented-reality glasses might see virtual things projected over real-world objects.

For all the hype around smart glasses, none of them actually look like normal glasses. But Vuzix, which develops wearable display technology for military and industrial applications, plans to change that this summer by releasing a pair of sleek wraparound shades that will let users see colorful images projected over objects in the real world.

Vuzix CEO Paul Travers says his company’s sunglasses will not only be less bulky and obtrusive than Google Glass, they’ll also provide an augmented reality experience that actually resembles the one portrayed in Google’s first promotional video for Glass, in which useful bits of information like navigational cues are displayed in the middle of the wearer’s field of vision. This isn’t possible today with Glass, whose display sits off to the side, above the right eye, and is the visual equivalent of a 25-inch high-definition television seen from eight feet away.

CES 2014: Less Is More for Smart Watches and Other Wearable Gadgets

Companies have figured out that a smart watch can’t just be functional; it has to look good, too.

• By Tom Simonite on January 8, 2014

Hybrid watch: The Cogito smart watch has a circular display inside the dial of an analog watch. Its designers say that’s just enough space to deliver useful notifications from a person’s phone without compromising on the style and compactness of conventional watches.

Why It Matters

Wearable devices promises to transform how we live and communicate—but the perfect design has yet to emerge.

When Intel CEO Brian Krzanich unveiled a smart watch during his keynote speech at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Monday, he brought his company level with Samsung and Qualcomm, both of which sell watches with sizeable color touch screens that are capable of running apps (see “Samsung’s Galaxy Gear” and “Review: Qualcomm’s Toq”).

Yet Krzanich was running against the trend at CES, where companies large and small have shown smart watches intentionally less packed with features and less reminiscent of wrist-mounted smartphones than those developed by Intel and its competitors. Like MIT Technology Review, many in the electronics industry seem to have concluded that for this new species of gadget to earn mass appeal it must be significantly simpler and more thoughtfully designed (see “Smart Watches Are Dumb”).

CES 2014: A Technological Assault on the Password

Typing in passwords on tablets and PCs could become a thing of the past.

• By Tom Simonite on January 8, 2014

Digital key: The YubiKey Neo can log you in to online services if you plug it into a computer’s USB port or tap it against a contactless-capable mobile device.

Typing in passwords—and worrying about data breaches at online services—could soon occupy less of your time. This week at the International Consumer Electronics Show, several companies launched technologies that get around passwords with authentication technologies that rely on fingerprints, eyes, or other tricks. Some of these technologies will be available this year on existing gadgets, while others are set to be integrated into future PCs, tablets, and phones. One has the backing of Google, which has said it hopes passwords will eventually be used only rarely (see “Google Experiments with Ring as Password”).

Security experts have long said passwords are a poor way of keeping devices and online accounts private. But with few alternatives, they have come to dominate digital life. The primary drawbacks to relying on passwords are that people struggle to remember them and often reuse them, and companies must store them in central databases that are targeted by criminals. Some 150 million usernames and passwords were taken from Adobe servers in October 2013. Evernote, LinkedIn, and other companies have suffered similar breaches.

App Turns Smartphone Into Virtual Cane for the Blind

A smartphone app inspired by Greek mythology has the potential to help the blind navigate indoors where GPS is unavailable. 

Emerging Technology From the arXiv

January 8, 2014

 

It’s easy to imagine that being blind or visually impaired more or less excludes people from using smartphones or tablets. But nothing could be further from the truth. App stores have a dizzying variety of products that help the visually impaired access all kinds of information much more easily than would otherwise be possible.

These apps offer audio books, match clothes by colour and even offer games played by hearing and touch alone. But the apps designed to give directions all suffer from the same drawbacks—audio directions are helpful but also screen out other audio such as conversations or the sound of traffic nearby. What’s more, GPS does not work indoors so these kinds of systems are of little use in homes and other buildings
Now Pierluigi Gallo and buddies at the University of Palermo in Italy have come up with an alternative which offers the blind navigational help without any form of audio distraction or the need for GPS.

The Hottest Technology Not on Display at CES: Smart Radio Chips

Smartphone battle moves from software to hardware with a crucial component to cut power consumption and allow faster data transmission.

• By David Talbot on January 7, 2014

Why It Matters

Data-hungry smartphones are hamstrung by short battery life, and base stations consume 1 percent of global electricity.

Battery saver: The radio transmitter chip shown in this mock-up adjusts voltage on the fly, slashing demand for electricity.

Beyond the glitz of the International Consumer Electronics Show, the wireless industry faces a fundamental problem: more features and faster data transmission are draining phones’ batteries faster than ever.

Fortunately, there’s room for improvement inside the devices, in parts known as power amplifiers that turn electricity into radio energy. In phones, they typically consume more power than any other component but waste half of it along the way, as lots of people can attest if they’ve watched their battery die (and their phone get warm) after an hour of streaming video. The same problem bedevils wireless networks’ base stations, which send and receive signals to and from individual phones.

CES 2014: Audi Shows Off a Compact Brain for Self-Driving Cars

A book-sized computer capable of driving a car could help the technology reach the mass market.

• By Tom Simonite on January 7, 2014

Why It Matters

Automated cars are more likely to catch on if the technology doesn’t compromise sleek automotive designs.

Hands free: The Audi Sport Quattro Laserlight concept car features compact sensor and computing technology that lets the car pilot itself.

Carmaker Audi showed off a book-sized circuit board capable of driving a car on Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Audi claims the computer, called zFAS, represents a significant advance in automation technology because it is compact enough to fit into existing vehicles without compromising design.

Several different Audi vehicles equipped with zFAS drove themselves onto the stage during the presentation, and a new concept car designed to showcase it was also introduced.