Google, Apple Nab 345 Patents That May Govern Your Next Car


What will your next car be like? Google, Apple and other giants of the smartphone business have plenty of ideas. In fact, Google alone has 310 U.S. patents relating to areas such as car-based smart...
    






Cursive Handwriting is Going to Die


Sometimes progress leads to regression. This is the case with the disposal of cursive handwriting. Since the past two decades or so, the race is on in educational institutions to do away with cursive...

Firefox OS phones spread into Latin America


Telefónica Inc. is bringing the ZTE Open model and Alcatel One Touch Fire model to Mexico. In Peru, this carrier is launching the ZTE Open one and in Uruguay, the Alcatel One Touch Fire is hitting...

Mobile Smart Wearable Devices will be Worth $19 Billion by 2018


Juniper Research has come up with its latest report which makes some predictions regarding wearable devices. These include consumer wearables, enterprise and industrial wearables, health wearables...

Rumors of Google Smartwatch Leaked

Samsung Galaxy Gear Smartwatch

Samsung Galaxy Gear launched the smartwatch revolution

Google could have a smartwatch just around the corner according to reports from 9to5Google, with an official announcement as soon as the end of October. The device is codenamed Gem and would be announced as a Nexus watch from Google.

The watch would benefit from the features of Google Now, could integrate nicely with Google Glasses and show information such as emails, texts and calendar alerts on the display. This news comes hot on the heals of the announcement of Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch utilizing the Android OS, along with talk of Apple releasing their own smartwatch sometime in 2014.

Google’s recent purchase of smartwatch maker WIMM Labs also adds some validity to this talk. According to the rumor Google is just finishing up on final touches with improving the battery life and Bluetooth connectivity.

Texas Instruments brings sci-fi tech to life with DLP (hands-on video)

Texas Instruments brings scifi tech to life with DLP handson video

We've come across a number of DLP-based pico projectors over the years and while these products are getting smaller, brighter and higher resolution, it's the integration with other devices that's really captured our imagination. Samsung's Galaxy Beam, which we reviewed last year, merges a 15-lumen nHD (640x360) DLP-based pico projector with a Galaxy S Advance. More recently at CES 2013, Texas Instruments announced its new Tilt & Roll Pixel chip architecture and demoed a handful of other DLP-equipped products live on our stage, including 3M's Streaming Projector and Smart Devices' U7 tablet.

The company recently invited us to play with some of these devices and to show us other applications in areas such as 3D printing, 3D scanning, optical research, medical imaging and even automotive. Some of this DLP-equipped tech, like the Interactive Center Console, shows where we're headed in the near future -- other products, like Christie's VeinViewer Flex, exist today but remind us of something right out of science-fiction. Take a look at our galleries below, then join us after the break for our hands-on video and more info on these devices.

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Insert Coin: SmartThings wants to connect your dog, mailbox and kitchen cabinets to the internet

In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line.

Insert Coin SmartThings wants to connect your dog, mailbox and kitchen cabinets to the internet

Sometimes you just can't remember if you turned off the toaster oven before leaving the house. Sitting at work, you might wonder, "is my house burning down?" or "should I go home and check?" You could run home, of course, or you could just link that croissant cooker up to the internet and switch it off from your phone. SmartThings promises to let you do just that, offering a system that connects everyday physical objects to a cloud-based control center. The project aims to provide users with a bevy of end-devices -- automatic door locks, thermostats, humidity sensors, presence sensors, power outlet switches and more -- that connect to a router-like SmartThings hub. From here the user can easily see and control these devices on the SmartThings mobile app.

That alone would be pretty handy -- but the SmartThings team decided to take it a step further by building SmartApps, that is, applications for further customizing how SmartThings devices (and the user) interact with the every day objects they're attached to. The platform is going to remain open, too, allowing owners and developers to build custom applications to fit their needs. Better still, the project is on a tight time line, and aims to put its product in backer hands by December -- of course, it'll have to reach its $250,000 Kickstarter goal first. Check out the team's pitch after the break, or hit up the source link below for more details.

Continue reading Insert Coin: SmartThings wants to connect your dog, mailbox and kitchen cabinets to the internet

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Insert Coin: SmartThings wants to connect your dog, mailbox and kitchen cabinets to the internet originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Aug 2012 12:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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