It's Friday, rush hour. I plunge down a ramp into frothing traffic at the mouth of a four-lane state highway heading north of downtown and
invoke Siri to call the person I am driving to meet. It's already dark, raining heavily, and I'm surrounded by aggressive drivers in low visibility. I'm thinking I might be late for the movie.
My prompt to call fails. I try again, and Siri asks 'Just to confirm, you'd like to
call...', and exasperated, I respond, "Explitive! Yes!"
Siri responds, "After all I've done for you..." and no call is placed.
I
never expected that Apple's ambition for personalization would constitute the blind
spot of my driving experience. At least the blue tooth ensured that I was
hands-free while I operated my manual transmission, but when I had to
reach for my device again to get around the distraction of the smart ass
remark, under said circumstances, I felt less safe, far less patient, and I was certainly not
amused.
Technically, of course, my voice command was apparently unclear such that the call did not go through. But rather than the system compensating for situational awareness and also acknowledging the 'yes' command, it apparently focused on my expletive relative to the the contextual awareness of a yes/no question, and prioritized a contextually clever response. Siri cannot see my situation or hear the real concern in my voice. I can only imagine what other more dire scenarios might incite Siri to add insult to injury. 'Siri, @#!!, call 911!'
When going up an elevator in a parking garage,
and Siri gives me a gratuitous response that begins 'I'm really sorry
about this, but..." to inform me that the signal is not available, once
again, I am having to withstand not only a long delay and a distraction but also an
annoyance - one I've heard several times before.
It's a lot like the days of DVDs, where a short-sighted menu
design requires the consumer to wait for a long animation sequence to
build before offering navigation to start the feature. The novelty
immediately represents a kind of sentence, that the consumer
must forever wait on something about as compelling as watching a toilet flush in order to enjoy something deemed spectacular. Don't they know that we buy to watch again and again? The movie, not the blasted interface. No, they likely target renters, not owners - how apropo for today's SAS model. I doubt Terry Gilliam was consulted about constructing the animated menu for the sixteen-disc collection of Flying Circus, and even if he was, well, then dammit, he shouldn't have been.
Don't get me wrong. I love voice commands and voice texting is mostly helpful - particularly when the time comes to blame the dog for my own poor choice of words. But, I need straight-talk responses. 'Siri not available', when in airplane mode, is just the facts ma'am-style verbiage I like, but, a reminder to 'disable airplane mode to access Siri' might be more helpful. Directions, including timing on anticipating turns, are so far, so good. By comparison, Waze could work on their timing and clarity.
Repeated experience with a
persona like Siri can be a lot like having forced company, or an annoying roommate. There's a reason
people use self-check out. And volume switches or other knobs. A
friendly experience might be pleasant for some, but it can also be an
obstacle, an irritant, or even a distraction to the point of liability.
While Siri has the potential to be amusing in designated contexts, the primary user assumption is utility. When a user depends on such a utility to speak with a live human and encounters an obstacle delivered under the pretense of a personality - perhaps one fabricated upon a trampoline of 'if-then' statements likely woven together through conjecture between bong hits by snarky, tattooed millennial ironic mullet-sporting Jedi doppleganger copywriters in skinny jeans who gleefully banter with Siri, 'Like, I know, right?' - the contrast between the living and the contrivance is so stark - there remains no suspension of disbelief, only the gap in utility, the bad judgement and arrogance of the designers, and whatever the user experiences as a result - surprise, disappointment, frustration, anger, fear, regret, dismemberment.
Yes, the engineers handle the AI, but, likely a bunch of
copywriters concoct the scenarios. Bong hits. And if they are Jobs
disciples, blotter paper.
I
suppose one could argue that the day will come when we will need to interact as
purposefully and conscientiously with our machines as we would have them interact with us, and perhaps Apple assumes that we should begin minding our protocol
immediately. I would cite Steve Krug's 'don't make me think' mantra, and recall
the scene in Star Wars when Luke asks C-3PO to shut down all garbage
mashers on the detention level.
I cannot take credit
for the particular edit I found on YouTube, but it pretty well
illustrates what it feels like when Apple decides that Siri should
delight the customer and exceed expectations. Let it loop a few times:
Most people in the U.S. who have learned a little Spanish have likely picked up at least a few profanity gems. Most of us start with 'ca ca' and eventually work our way to 'puta', 'puto' or the beloved 'hijo de puta'. But, let's not get confused when we go a bit further south of the border.
My Colombian
friend and I were discussing the phrase 'hijo de puta' and I was
encouraged to use the abbreviated expression 'jueputa'. I wanted to text
the phrase to show some appreciation, and I wasn't quite sure how to
spell it, so I began my journey online and uncovered a treasure trove.
The phrase 'jueputa' is a blend of words from different origins. Spanish 'hijo' (son) crosses over with variations on roots of the English word we know as 'hag' which became 'higue' when Europeans arrived in the Caribbean, then later took on the Latin twist, 'hijue', before contracting to 'jue'. So, just add 'puta' as a chaser and you are ready to serve up a round of 'jueputa'. Here's the wiktionary entry for 'jueputa' to confirm conclusions about abbreviation. (hijo de puta = higueputa = hijueputa = jueputa = jue). Although we recognize the word 'puta' to be the Spanish equivalent to the English word 'bitch', we lose some meaning in translation, that it doesn't in fact mean 'female dog', but according to Urban Dictionary, 'puta' is short for spanish "prostituta" which means prostitute.
The implication and agreement of both 'hag' and 'bitch' in this phrase is actually 'whore / prostitute'; 'hag-whore', or 'son of a hag-whore'. The phrase is employed like any good
expletive.
...interesting
that the derivation of 'hag' leads the root of the word 'hex' and
carries the association with the occult. Also, that this same root
relates to 'hedge' which represents an enclosure, barrier or form of
protection. Notably,The Hague means 'hedge'.
According to wiki, the word 'hag' is used interchangeably with 'crone', is associated with misogyny, and refers to a woman who is 'marginalized by her exclusion from the reproductive cycle, and her proximity to death places her in contact with occult wisdom'. ...when I looked up the word 'higue', I encountered many references to the legends in Guyana including this one: http://www.gotoguyana.org/myths-and-legends/old-higue/
The soucouyant or soucriant in Dominica, Trinidadian and Guadeloupean folklore (also known as Ole-Higue or Loogaroo elsewhere in the Caribbean), is a kind of blood-sucking hag.
Legend
The soucouyant is a shape-shifting Caribbean folklore
character who appears as a reclusive old woman by day. By night, she
strips off her wrinkled skin and puts it in a mortar. In her true form,
as a fireball
she flies across the dark sky in search of a victim. The soucouyant can
enters the home of her victim through any sized hole like cracks,
crevices and keyholes. Soucouyants suck people's blood from their arms, legs and soft parts
while they sleep leaving blue-black marks on the body in the morning.[3]
If the soucouyant draws too much blood, it is believed that the victim
will either die and become a soucouyant or perish entirely, leaving her
killer to assume her skin. The soucouyant practices witchcraft, voodoo,
and black magic. Soucouyants trade their victims' blood for evil powers
with Bazil, the demon who resides in the silk cotton tree.[3] To expose a soucouyant, one should heap rice around the house or at
the village cross roads as the creature will be obligated to gather
every grain, grain by grain (a herculean task to do before dawn) so that
she can be caught in the act.[3]
To destroy her, coarse salt must be placed in the mortar containing her
skin so she perishes, unable to put the skin back on. Belief in
soucouyants is still preserved to an extent in some Caribbean islands,
including Dominica, St. Lucia, Haiti, Suriname and Trinidad.[4] The skin of the soucouyant is considered valuable, and is used when practicing black magic.
Origin
Soucouyants belong to a class of spirits called jumbies.
Some believe that soucouyants were brought to the Caribbean from
European countries in the form of French vampire-myths. These beliefs
intermingled with those of enslaved Africans. In the French West Indies, specifically the island of Guadeloupe, and
also in Suriname, the Soukougnan or Soukounian is a person able to shed
his or her skin to turn into a vampiric fireball. In general these
figures can be anyone, not only old women, although some affirm that
only women could become Soukounian, because only female breasts could
disguise the creature's wings. The term "Loogaroo" also used to describe the soucouyant, possibly comes from the French mythological creature called the Loup-garou, a type of werewolf, and is common in the Culture of Mauritius. In Suriname this creature is called "Asema". (end wiki entry)
Oculus VR, the Virtual Reality (VR) technology company acquired by Facebook earlier this year, announced recently that they are acquiring two small start-up companies,
Nimble VR and 13th Lab, to fill gaps in their virtual reality
capabilities. The acquisitions may indicate that, besides VR games and
social worlds, Facebook may target Augmented Reality (AR) applications,
like Google is doing with Google Glass.
My comments:
This is exactly the idea I wrote about a few years ago, only I my hope is to see unlimited motion, which I get the impression may be possible through the technologies at Nimble VR.
I had proposed the idea of professional sports being experienced by a live crowd wearing headsets, and I also read about a recent suggestion that video games be a part of the Olympics (see excerpt below). Possibly, things are moving in that direction with VR/AR development.
Here is an example of work by 13th Lab:
posted on slashdot.org
The BBC is running a story about e-sports and competitive video game.
It's based on comments from Rob Pardo, formerly of Blizzard
Entertainment, who says there's a good argument for having e-sports in the Olympics. He says video games are well positioned to be a spectator sport — an opinion supported by Amazon's purchase of Twitch.tv
for almost a billion dollars. The main obstacle, says Pardo, is getting
people to accept video games as a legitimate sport. "If you want to
define sport as something that takes a lot of physical exertion, then
it's hard to argue that videogames should be a sport, but at the same
time, when I'm looking at things that are already in the Olympics, I
start questioning the definition." The article notes, "Take chess, for
instance. Supporters of the game have long called for its inclusion the
Games, but the IOC has been reluctant, considering it a 'mind sport' and
therefore not welcome in the Games." So, should the Games expand to
include "mind sports" and video games?
Transcranial magnetic stimulation has been used for years to diagnose
and treat neural disorders such as stroke, Alzheimer's, and depression.
Soon the medical technique could be applied to virtual reality and
entertainment. Neuroscientist Jeffrey Zacks writes, "it's quite likely
that some kind of electromagnetic brain stimulation for entertainment will become practical
in the not-too-distant future." Imagine an interactive movie where
special effects are enhanced by zapping parts of the brain from outside
to make the action more vivid. Before brain stimulation makes it to the
masses, however, it has plenty of technical and safety hurdles to
overcome.
Microsoft, after demoing the technology back in May, is giving some real-world exposure to its Skype-based translation. The Skype preview program will kick-off with two spoken languages,
Spanish and English, and 40+ instant messaging languages will be
available to Skype customers who have signed-up via the Skype Translator
sign-up page and are using Windows 8.1 on the desktop or device. Skype
asked two schools to try Skype Translator – Peterson School in Mexico
City, and Stafford Elementary School in Tacoma, USA – playing a game of
'Mystery Skype' in which the children ask questions to determine the
location of the other school. One classroom of children speaking Spanish
and the other speaking English, Skype Translator removed this language
barrier and enabled them to communicate.
Even as a massive firestorm burns uncontrollably threatening to scorch
the very foundations of the internet with AT&T indefinitely halting
future GigaPower FTTH
rollouts
due to uncertainty
over the future of net neutrality and the Obama
administration proposing to regulate
the internet under Title 2, highly suggestive jobs were recently
added
to Google Careers.
One is
inclined to speculate as to what these job postings mean despite
Google's disclaimer: "Not
all cities where we're exploring hiring a team will necessarily become
Google Fiber cities."
Would Google post jobs as an act of posturing much like AT&T's
supposed "Gigabit
smoke screen" bluff? Or, should we
expect to see these so called Fiber
Huts springing up like so many mushrooms after a heavy rain in an
additional 9 metro areas?
At the rate
Google is
going, is it too soon to speculate over Fiber
Dojos popping up in Japan?
Fabrice Bellard (creator of FFMPEG, QEMU, JSLinux...) proposes a new image format that could replace JPEG : BPG.
For the same quality, files are about half the size of their JPEG
equivalents. He released libbpg (with source) as well as a JS
decompressor, and set up a demo including the famous Lena image.
Technology has changed rapidly over the last few years with touch feedback, known as haptics, being used in entertainment, rehabilitation and even surgical training. New research, using ultrasound, has developed a virtual 3D haptic shape that can be seen and felt.
The research paper, published in the current issue of ACM Transactions on Graphics and which will be presented at this week’s SIGGRAPH Asia 2014 conference [3-6 December], demonstrates how a method has been created to produce 3D shapes that can be felt in mid-air.
The research, led by Dr Ben Long and colleagues Professor Sriram Subramanian, Sue Ann Seah and Tom Carter from the University of Bristol’s Department of Computer Science, could change the way 3D shapes are used. The new technology could enable surgeons to explore a CT scan by enabling them to feel a disease, such as a tumour, using haptic feedback.
The method uses ultrasound, which is focussed onto hands above the device and that can be felt. By focussing complex patterns of ultrasound, the air disturbances can be seen as floating 3D shapes. Visually, the researchers have demonstrated the ultrasound patterns by directing the device at a thin layer of oil so that the depressions in the surface can be seen as spots when lit by a lamp.
The system generates a virtual 3D shape that can be added to 3D displays to create something that can be seen and felt.
The research team have also shown that users can match a picture of a 3D shape to the shape created by the system.
Dr Ben Long, Research Assistant from the Bristol Interaction and Graphics (BIG) group in the Department of Computer Science, said: “Touchable holograms, immersive virtual reality that you can feel and complex touchable controls in free space, are all possible ways of using this system.
“In the future, people could feel holograms of objects that would not otherwise be touchable, such as feeling the differences between materials in a CT scan or understanding the shapes of artefacts in a museum.”
Paper
Rendering Volumetic Haptic Shapes in Mid-Air using Ultrasound by Benjamin Long, Sue Ann Seah, Tom Carter, Sriram Subramanian in ACM Transactions on Graphics.
Further information
A longer video of the technology is available on YouTube.
A
bout the Bristol Interaction and Graphics
The Bristol Interaction and Graphics (BIG), based in the University of Bristol’s Department of Computer Science, is united by a common interest in creative interdisciplinarity. BIG acts as a hub for collaboration between social scientists, artists, scientists and engineers to combine efficient and aesthetic design. The group is particularly interested in areas which couple the design of devices with deployment and evaluation in public settings. Members of the group have expertise in research areas spanning human-computer interaction, visual and tactile perception, imaging, visualisation and computer-supported collaboration.
About the ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2014
Asia’s largest computer graphics (CG) event, SIGGRAPH Asia 2014, will take place in Shenzhen, China at the Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center from 3 to 6 December 2014.
Over 7,700 attendees from over 60 countries are expected, making the conference and exhibition the largest and most respected computer graphics conference in Asia. Through a conference (3 to 6 December) and trade exhibition (4 to 6 December), a multitude of exciting SIGGRAPH Asia activities will showcase the industry’s latest digitally-enabled means of expression.
This year, the line-up of conference programs will include the Computer Animation Festival, Courses, Workshops, Emerging Technologies, Posters, Symposium on Mobile Graphics and Interactive Applications, Technical Briefs, and Technical Papers.
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3039036/internet-of-things/with-cardless-atms-and-vr-banks-are-vying-to-out-nerd-each-other-for-yourWith Cardless ATMs And VR, Banks Are Vying To Out-Nerd Each Other For Your Attention
Heartbeat passwords, computer goggles, and nagging fridges. But what of the banks' future visions will actually stick?
By Jennifer Elias
This article contains comments from Bank of America e-commerce technology executive Hari Gopalkrishnan; Brad Nolan, head of Chase's branch and ATM innovation; Jim Smith, head of Wells Fargo’s Virtual Channels Group; MasterCard's chief innovation officer Garry Lyons; and Chase’s digital director Avin Arumugam.
Imagine, if you will, the big bank as an incubator.
In the year that bitcoin began to grow up and Apple Pay was born, this is precisely what the country’s largest financial institutions want you to imagine. Three of them opened up innovation labs to think of what’s next in mobile banking; some are starting their own accelerators. The latest research estimates that U.S. mobile payments, currently at $52 billion, will grow to $142 billion within five years.
Now an industry not exactly known for speed is approaching 2015 with an ethos that sounds more Silicon Valley than Wall Street, touting visions of semi-automation, wearables, and the kind of futuristic security they hope will inspire consumers to trust them and their technology in the first place.
Cache Rules Everything Around Me
Some banks have pledged that 2015 will be the year that they address long-standing customer requests, like the ability to withdraw more cash at ATMs, spend less time waiting in line at branches, and even leave their wallets at home.
At Chase, the robots are coming, but they're not completely taking over. The bank intends to roll out a half-automated ATM in 2015, says Brad Nolan, head of the bank's branch and ATM innovation. Though he couldn't specify locations, the machines will likely be first adopted at select California and Ohio branches before spreading across the country in the coming years.
"We're going to be equipping our tellers with tablets inside of the branches," he says. "Customers can withdraw more cash and our risk systems can alert a teller if a secondary form of ID is needed. We're really trying to not just focus on self-service. It's this whole concept of assisted service."
The bank began rolling out its first form of eATMs earlier this year in a few locations, including Silicon Valley branches. "If you put that experience out there and enable customers to do what they want to do, they'll use it hands down, day in and day out," he says.
"There’s still a lot of customers who don’t have debit cards," Chase's Nolan says. "Now customers will be able to come in, and if they don't have a card, no problem."
This also means getting rid of cards altogether. Starting in 2015, tellers equipped with tablets—they didn't say which kind—will be able to access account information with just a customer's fingerprint. "There’s still a lot of customers who don’t have debit cards," Nolan says. "Now customers will be able to come in, and if they don't have a card, no problem."
Bank of America’s new Teller Assist ATMs combines on-screen tellers with an ATM that dispenses many more denominations of cash than normal. Starting in 2015, the bank also plans to convert all of its credit cards to chip-embedded EMV cards, which offer greater security features.
VR Banking And Tracking Beacons
Banks close earlier than most other businesses, which is why Wells Fargo, Chase, and Bank of America are all planning ways to use video as a focal point for customer interaction in 2015.
Bank of America e-commerce technology executive Hari Gopalkrishnan says that kind of convenience is the biggest demand he gets from customers. Nolan, Chase’s ATM innovation head, says banks need video more than any other industry. "We're interested in how you can make this [video] enable devices that we manage, like ATMs, bank kiosks, all the way to a live chat session from a customer's computer at home or on their mobile device."
With 13 million mobile users, Wells Fargo will be continuing pilot research on videoconferencing with tellers between users’ tablets and TVs.
"When making important financial decisions, video is going to be key to connect bankers with our customers where and when they want," says Jim Smith, head of Wells Fargo’s Virtual Channels Group. He says the bank plans to integrate apps for Google Glass as well. In a demo, the bank showed clients using Glass to scan checks and credit cards in order to pay bills in order to authenticate themselves to a teller on the other side of a videoconference.
The bank also created an Oculus Rift prototype that allows customers to walk into a virtual branch, and Capital One has been experimenting with the VR headset too, but neither look terribly impressive. Fidelity has announced an Oculus vision that would enable users to view their stocks in the form of a three-dimensional city.
"The fridge will notify you when you need milk, eggs, or whatever you need. The technology is already there so we don’t need to invent anything new..."
Closer to production is Wells Fargo’s connected car concept, which addresses the 30% of Wells Fargo’s customers who prefer drive-through banking. In 2015, a second round of testing will include making payments at bridge tolls, drive-throughs, and eateries. MasterCard—which is also working on connected car payments—presumes "you’ll be able to order ahead from a gas station without taking hands off the steering wheel," says chief innovation officer Garry Lyons.
MasterCard recently demonstrated mobile payments between smartwatches and laundromats, and will be piloting payment-enabled refrigerators in 2015. Though the details are still under wraps, this will likely include a screen like the kind seen on modern soda machines, only it would give users the option to buy groceries for pickup or delivery.
"If I’m running out of eggs or milk, depending on the intelligence in the device, the fridge will notify you when you need milk, eggs, or whatever you need," Lyons says. "The technology is already there so we don’t need to invent anything new, we just need to deploy our scale."
Chase and Wells Fargo are both planning to include services that allow customers to "check in" to a branch. Chase’s, called "You Know Me," will enable tellers to expect who’s coming in, and to bypass basic questions. Wells Fargo intends to launch a pilot with Bluetooth beacon technology in 2015, allowing customers to opt in to be recognized when they enter a branch. Services like this—already being tested at some Apple Stores—are meant to target the customer who spends more time in the bank.
Wells Fargo has developed a separate beacon system for use in several retailers and mall operators like Macerich to analyze in-store shoppers in real time, suggest targeted discounts, and allow them to make on-the-go payments from their phones. Such concepts were used in the bank's recent smartwatch interface prototype, which also offers users budget milestones: "Do you want to make a payment now," or "Congratulations—you’ve reached your savings goal!" Think Fitbit for banking.
The Next Phase Of Palm Reading
With all of the plans to rev up banks’ technology, there’s more of a need for security than ever. And even the most formidable firewalls haven't proved safe: In June, JPMorgan Chase suffered a massive hack that affected over a million customer accounts.
Enter biometrics, say the banks—fingerprints, handprints, voiceprints, and more. "You authenticate yourself before you make a payment; why can't you authenticate yourself before you walk into a bank?" says Chase’s digital director Avin Arumugam, who worked on the tokenization of Apple Pay and who is developing palm-scanning ATMs.
Starting next year, big banks will be using biometrics not just for authentication but also so that users can perform hands-free mobile banking on their phones or in their cars.
Jim Smith, of Wells Fargo, says users will be able to ask things like, "How much did I spend in September? "How much money was deposited into my account yesterday?" and "How much did I spend at Starbucks last week?" Users will be able to use their voice to do things like sort through transaction history, move money, and make payments.
"One of the biggest findings from the pilot was how voice made everything so much more convenient," Smith says.
The bank expects demand for services that make mobile banking easier, in keeping with a rise in mobile customers. Chase has 23% more mobile users from a year ago and saw a 61% user jump in its QuickPay feature. And wearables like Apple’s smartwatch are set to bring in more users who want to be able to conveniently bank without the use of many buttons.
"Lyons describes the heartbeat password as part of a new phenomenon called "Persistent Authentication"—enabling him to do things like "make a payment with my mobile device without a password and the potential to unlock anything that requires a key.""
Chase’s Brad Nolan says all these biometrics won't just improve customer experience but that of bankers as well, "from a holistic 'How do we manage the branch?' perspective."
"We have all kinds of keys within the branch for locks, codes, and sign-on passwords, and biometrics can provide a very easy way for our employees to access a branch, navigate within the branch, open a vault and those types of things," he says.
Among the stranger authentications in the works for 2015 is MasterCard’s collaboration with heart rate biometrics company Bionym, whose wearable device connects to an ECG sensor that reads the electrical impulses of a user's heart.
Lyons describes the idea as part of a new phenomenon called "Persistent Authentication," enabling him to do things like "make a payment with my mobile device without a password and the potential to unlock anything that requires a key," he says. "When I leave my house, it locks the door. I walk to my car, it unlocks the car, and it sets my seat settings. I walk to the office, it automatically lets me in. I walk to my laptop and it automatically logs me on."
Wells Fargo has also begun experimenting with Google Glass, which would be worn by tellers to scan guest’s faces to authenticate and bypass questions. Arumugam, Chase’s digital director, says he’s not sanguine about the whole face-scanning idea, preferring instead to use his phone as his banking device.
"I'm not going to sit here and talk about using people's faces for our tellers to scan," he says. "The technology is interesting but I think we are really protective of our customers' privacy and understanding how we want to interact with them. How we blend that [technology-advanced authentication] in with the consumer, with the real world—that's the challenge."
Correction: an earlier version of this story said that current U.S. mobile payments were valued at $3.7 billion; the actual number for 2014 is $52 billion. We regret the error.
[Oculus rift: Flickr user Sergey Galyonkin, ATM: Flickr user megawatts86]
Skynet is coming. But not like in the movie: The future of communications is high-altitude solar-powered drones,
flying 13 miles above the ground, running microwave wireless equipment,
delivering broadband to the whole planet. The articles predicts this
technology will replace satellites, fiber, and copper, and fundamentally
change the broadband industry. The author predicts a timescale of
roughly 20 years — the same amount of time between Arthur C. Clarke
predicting geosynchronous satellites and their reality as a commercial
business. "Several important technology milestones need to be reached
along the way. The drones that will make up Skynet have a lot more in
common with satellites than the flippy-flappy helicopter drone thingies
that the popular press is fixated on right now. They're really effing
BIG, for one thing. And, like satellites, they go up, and stay up,
pretty much indefinitely. For that to happen, we need two things:
lighter, higher-capacity wireless gear; and reliable, hyper-efficient
solar tech."
According to a press release revealed today, Magic Leap has closed a
$524 million Series B funding round led by Google; the deal had been
rumored as of last week. Magic Leap, which has been in stealth since its
inception, is being a bit more wordy now that the deal has closed (but
hardly less vague). The company is now soliciting developers on its
website and says that “under the appropriate non-disclosures, we’d love
to talk possibilities.”
Magic Leap
appears to be working on an augmented reality wearable which uses a
lightfield display that can apparently generate very realistic looking
imagery, not only from a graphical standpoint, but also from
physiologically accurate standpoint—possibly utilizing a lightfield’s
unique ability to render imagery that has perfect stereoscopy, including
accurate accommodation and vergence. See Also:Reportedly on the Verge of a $500m Investment, Here’s What We Know About Magic Leap
Magic Leap’s Series B was led by Google and also included Qualcomm
Ventures, Legendary Entertainment, KKR, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers, Obvious Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz (which
invested in Oculus), and others, according to a press release issued by
Magic Leap. Some have speculated that Google’s interest in Magic Leap’s
technology comes from the desire to integrate it with Google Glass, the company’s wearable display.
“Sundar Pichai, SVP of Android, Chrome and Apps at Google Inc., will
join Magic Leap’s board of directors. Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, Executive
Chairman of Qualcomm Incorporated and Don Harrison, Vice-President,
Corporate Development at Google Inc. will join the board of directors of
Magic Leap as observers,” reads the release. “The company will use the
proceeds to accelerate product development, release software development
tools, expand its content ecosystem, and commercialize its proprietary
mobile wearable system.”
The company’s massive Series B comes after a $50 million Series A
which closed earlier this year in February and interestingly involved Weta Workshop, installing co-founder Richard Taylor onto Magic Leap’s board of directors.
Now that the deal is done, Magic Leap has made some updates to its
website, revealing a touch more info, but still not sufficiently
spilling the secret that led Google and others to drop more than half a
billion dollars on the company.
Magic
Leap leads us to believe that this photo is representative of what
their technology can do, though it may just be a concept rendering.
“Using our Dynamic Digitized Lightfield Signal™, imagine being able
to generate images indistinguishable from real objects and then being
able to place those images seamlessly into the real world,” teases the
company’s ‘Developers’ page,
which is now open for developers to submit their interest. “For the
time being, we’re being a little tight-lipped in what we’re
communicating publicly, but under the appropriate non-disclosures, we’d
love to talk possibilities,” it continues. In the digging we did recently, we found that the company may be releasing development kits at some point over the course of the next year.
The company has also launched a beefy hiring page with 68 available positions covering hardware engineering, core software engineering, perception/machine vision, gaming, and administration.
Assuming that the company has perfected the miniaturized lightfield
display and is capable of generating high fidelity AR imagery, questions
still remain: What’s the field of view? Can they nail the all-important
head tracking? What are the limitations of the display’s transparency
and color reproduction? Hopefully we’ll have these answered in time.
"Machine
learning algorithms use a training dataset to learn how to recognize
features in images and use this 'knowledge' to spot the same features in
new images. The computational complexity of this task is such that the
time required to solve it increases in polynomial time with the number
of images in the training set and the complexity of the "learned"
feature. So it's no surprise that quantum computers ought to be able to
rapidly speed up this process. Indeed, a group of theoretical physicists
last year designed a quantum algorithm that solves this problem in
logarithmic time rather than polynomial, a significant improvement."
Now, a Chinese team has successfully implemented this artificial intelligence algorithm on a working quantum computer, for the first time.
The information processor is a standard nuclear magnetic resonance
quantum computer capable of handling 4 qubits. The team trained it to
recognize the difference between the characters '6' and '9' and then
asked it to classify a set of handwritten 6s and 9s accordingly, which
it did successfully. The team says this is the first time
that this kind of artificial intelligence has ever been demonstrated on
a quantum computer and opens the way to the more rapid processing of
other big data sets — provided, of course, that physicists can build
more powerful quantum computers.
(Wired) -- Military work is physically demanding—and
we're not just talking about soldiers on the battlefield. Travel down
the chain, and you'll find plenty of positions where strength and
stamina are highly valued skills.
Take the Navy for
example. The Navy needs ships and those ships need to be built and
maintained—a rough, physically draining job. Sandblasting, riveting, and
grinding excess metal off the ships can take a toll on the human body.
You're often carrying tools that can weigh upwards of 30 pounds.
"There's a lot of wear
and tear on you," says Adam Miller, director of new initiatives for
Lockheed Martin. "Skilled workers can maybe do that for three to four
minutes then they need to put the tool down and they need to rest."
For the past couple of
years, Miller has been leading a team of engineers and designers to
create one of the first industrial-use exoskeletons. Called the FORTIS,
the exoskeleton is able to support tools of up to 36 pounds and
transfer that load from a worker's hands and arms to the ground. The
goal is to lighten workers' loads, ultimately making them more
productive and skilled at their jobs.
The U.S. Navy recently
bought two of the exoskeletons and plans to test them over the next six
months to see how they might be used in an industrial situation.
Compared to something
like the TALOS (Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit), a computerized
exoskeleton that essentially wants to turn mere mortals into Iron Man,
the FORTIS is fairly simple.
"I would call it
elegant," says Miller. The anodized aluminum and carbon fiber skeleton
weighs 30 pounds, and follows along the outside of a human's body. It
has joints in the parts of the body that would regularly have joints
(ankle, knee, hip) and flexes from side to side at the waist. Miller
says the skeleton was designed for complex environments—whoever is
wearing it can climb stairs or a ladder, squat and generally move
business as usual in the exoskeleton.
Tools mount to the front
of the FORTIS and that weight is directed through the joints in the hip
and down to the floor, relieving stress on the entire body, including
the feet and ankles.
The design team began by
watching how humans walk. "You have to look at biomechanics of the
person because it's not just a stand; it's really something they can
move around in," says Miller. The FORTIS was designed so it could slip
over a worker's boot—this is important since feet often communicate the
first signs of weariness. It's like running in a pair of crappy shoes;
it impacts your entire body. Many exoskeletons transfer that weight to
the sole of the foot, but this is a problem, says Miller.
"When the weight of the
tools and exoskeleton itself is transferred to the ground, it comes to
rest on the sole," he says. "However, a sole can also contribute to user
discomfort, increased metabolic cost to the user and introduces
instability." Instead, the FORTIS uses a stirrup that attaches to the
ankle, allowing the foot to rest on the ground as usual.
Early tests show that
the exoskeleton has increased productivity anywhere from two to 27
times, depending on the task. The team measured the amount of time a
worker could hold a 16-pound grinder overhead without having to rest his
arms. "The longest operators could work continuously without a break
was three minutes sustained without augmentation," says Miller. "Using
the FORTIS, operators could work 30 minutes or longer without requiring
rest breaks."
Lockheed Martin has been
developing exoskeleton technology for the past five years. Its other
exoskeleton, the HULC, is hydraulic-powered and can support up to 200
pounds. The HULC was designed to be used on the field, during battle.
The FORTIS' capabilities
are scaled down, but with its focus on mobility, you can imagine that
it could be useful for other industries like construction or
mining—"anywhere there's a complex and irregular environment," says
Miller. "We're expecting other industries to see it and say, 'We want
something similar.'"
HughPickens.com writes Randy Olson, a Computer Science grad student who works with data visualizations, writes about seven of the biggest factors that predict what makes for a long term stable marriage in America. Olson took the results of a study that polled thousands of recently married and divorced Americans and and asked them dozens of questions about their marriage (PDF):
How long they were dating, how long they were engaged, etc. After
running this data through a multivariate model, the authors were able to
calculate the factors that best predicted whether a marriage would end
in divorce. "What struck me about this study is that it basically laid
out what makes for a stable marriage in the US," writes Olson. Here are
some of the biggest factors:
How long you were dating(Couples who dated 1-2 years before their
engagement were 20% less likely to end up divorced than couples who
dated less than a year before getting engaged.
Couples who dated 3 years
or more are 39% less likely to get divorced.);
How much money you make(The
more money you and your partner make, the less likely you are to
ultimately file for divorce. Couples who earn $125K per year are 51%
less likely to divorce than couples making 0 — 25k);
How often you go to church(Couples who never go to church are 2x more likely to divorce than regular churchgoers.);
Your attitude toward your partner (Men
are 1.5x more likely to end up divorced when they care more about their
partner's looks, and women are 1.6x more likely to end up divorced when
they care more about their partner's wealth.);
How many people attended the wedding("Crazy
enough, your wedding ceremony has a huge impact on the long-term
stability of your marriage.
Perhaps the biggest factor is how many
people attend your wedding: Couples who elope are 12.5x more likely to
end up divorced than couples who get married at a wedding with 200+
people.");
How much you spent on the wedding(The more you spend on your wedding, the more likely you'll end up divorced.);
Whether you had a honeymoon(Couples who had a honeymoon are 41% less likely to divorce than those who had no honeymoon).
Of course correlation is not causation. For example, expensive weddings may simply attract the kind of immature and narcissistic people who are less likely to sustain a successful marriage
and such people might end up getting divorced even if they married
cheaply. But "the particularly scary part here is that the average cost
of a wedding in the U.S. is well over $30,000," says Olson, "which
doesn't bode well for the future of American marriages."
An anonymous reader writes Buried toward the end of the must-watch keynote by Oculus VR's Chief Scientist, Michael Abrash, was the announcement of a new research division within Oculus
which Abrash says is the "first complete, well funded VR research team
in close to 20 years." He says that their mission is to advance VR and
that the research division will publish its findings and also work with
university researchers. The company is now hiring "first-rate
programmers, hardware engineers, and researchers of many sorts,
including optics, displays, computer vision and tracking, user
experience, audio, haptics, and perceptual psychology," to be part of
Oculus Research.
Washington (AFP) - Superfast
Internet connections are likely to open up new kinds of communication
such as "telepresence" and improve services such as remote health care, a
survey of experts showed Thursday.
The ultrafast connections, expected to be widely
deployed in the coming years, can open up a range of possibilities by
delivering "immersive" experiences and virtual reality, according to the
experts polled by the Pew Research Center and Elon University.
"People's
basic interactions and their ability to 'be together' and collaborate
will change in the age of vivid telepresence -- enabling people to
instantly 'meet face-to-face' in cyberspace with no travel necessary,"
the report said.
Additionally, the report said that "augmented
reality will extend people's sense and understanding of their real-life
surroundings and virtual reality will make some spaces, such as gaming
worlds and other simulated environments, even more compelling places to
hang out."
The report is not
based on a random poll, but instead an opt-in survey of people deemed
experts or affiliated with certain organizations, taken between November
2013 and January 2014.
Pew invited more than 12,000 experts and
others who follow technology trends to share their opinions on the
likely future of the Internet and 2,551 responded to at least one of the
questions.
The report
focused on possibilities of "gigabit connectivity" or speeds of 1,000
megabits per second -- around 50 to 100 times faster than the average
fixed high-speed connection.
As
some systems with these speeds are being deployed by Google and others,
a number of Internet users have been questioning how useful these
connections will be, the report noted.
The experts said they believe a "killer app" is likely to emerge, but it is not yet clear what that will be.
"As
gigabit bandwidth becomes widespread later this decade, applications
will emerge which exploit the combination of big data, GPS location,
weather, personal-health monitoring devices, industrial production, and
much more," said William Schrader, co-founder of PSINet Inc.
"Gigabit
bandwidth is one of the few real 'build it and they will come' moments
for new killer apps. The fact that no one had imagined the other killer
apps prior to seeing them grow rapidly implies that no one can imagine
these new ones -- including me."
David
Weinberger, a researcher at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet &
Society, said that with these connections, "There will be full,
always-on, 360-degree environmental awareness, a semantic overlay on the
real world, and full-presence massive open online courses. Plus Skype
won't break up nearly as much."
Marti
Hearst, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, said the
new connections means people will "play sports and music virtually,
distributed, across the globe" and that some can have "virtual
Thanksgiving dinner with the other side of the family."
Higher
speeds will also lead to "higher adoption of telesurgery and remote
medical support" and more sensor data from medical devices being
collected and stored, according to Jason Hong of Carnegie Mellon
University, who predicted "far better telepresence, in terms of video
quality, audio quality (and) robotic control."
A team of Harvard scientists said Thursday that they had finally
found a way to turn human embryonic stem cells into cells that produce
insulin. The long-sought advance could eventually lead to new ways to
help millions of people with diabetes.
Right now, many people
with diabetes have to regularly check the level of sugar in their blood
and inject themselves with insulin to keep the sugar in their blood in
check. It's an imperfect treatment.
"This is kind of a life-support for diabetics," says Doug Melton,
a stem-cell researcher at Harvard Medical School. "It doesn't cure the
disease and leads to devastating complications of the disease."
People with poorly controlled diabetes can suffer complications such as blindness, amputations and heart attacks.
Researchers
have had some success transplanting insulin-producing cells from
cadavers into people with diabetes. But it's been difficult to procure
enough cells to treat large numbers of patients. So scientists have been
trying to figure out how they could get more cells more easily.
For
Melton, who led the work at Harvard, this has been a personal quest.
His son, Sam, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when he was 6 months
old, and his daughter, Emma, was diagnosed with the disease when she was
14.
"I do what any parent would do, which is to say, 'I'm not
going to put up with this, and I want to find a better way,' " he says.
And now Melton and his colleagues are reporting in a paper being published in this week's issue of the journal Cell that they think they have finally found that better way.
"We
are reporting the ability to make hundreds of millions of cells — the
cell that can read the amount of sugar in the blood which appears
following a meal and then squirts out or secretes just the right amount
of insulin," Melton says.
The advance came after laboring for more than 15 years to find a way to turn human embryonic stem cells into so-called beta cells in the pancreas that make insulin.
Dozens
of scientists spent years analyzing the cells' genes and experimenting
with different combinations of chemical signals to try to coax the cells
into becoming beta cells. Finally, they came up with a recipe that
appears to work, Melton says.
"A short way of saying this might
be like if you were going to make a very fancy kind of new cake — like a
raspberry chocolate cake with vanilla frosting or something," Melton
says. "You pretty much know all the components you have to add. But it's
the way you add them and the order and the timing, how long you cook
it, etc. The solution to that just took a very long time."
And when Melton and his colleagues transplanted the cells into mice with diabetes, the results were clear — and fast.
"We
can cure their diabetes right away — in less than 10 days," he says.
"This finding provides a kind of unprecedented cell source that could be
used for cell transplantation therapy in diabetes."
Other scientists hailed the research as a major step forward.
"It's a huge landmark paper. I would say it's bigger than the discovery of insulin," says Jose Olberholzer,
a professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois. "The
discovery of insulin was important and certainly saved millions of
people, but it just allowed patients to survive but not really to have a
normal life. The finding of Doug Melton would really allow to offer
them really something what I would call a functional cure. You know,
they really wouldn't feel anymore being diabetic if they got a
transplant with those kind of cells."
Melton and others caution
that there's still a lot more work to do. For one thing, they need to
come up with a way to hide the cells from the immune system, especially
for people with Type 1 diabetes. But they're working on that and have
developed a shell to protect the cells.
"We're thinking about
it as sort of like a teabag, where the tea stays inside, and the water
goes in and then the dissolved tea comes out," Melton says. "And so, if
you think about a teabag analogy, we would put our cells inside this
teabag."
But that's not the only problem. Some people have
moral objections to anything that involves human embryonic stem cell
research because it destroys human embryos.
"If, like me,
someone considers the human embryo to be imbued with the same sorts of
dignity that the rest of us have, then in fact this is morally
problematic," says Daniel Sulmasy,
a doctor and bioethicist at the University of Chicago. "It's the
destruction of an individual unique human life for the sole purpose of
helping other persons."
Melton thinks he can also make insulin cells using another kind of stem cell known as an induced pluripotent stem
cell, which doesn't destroy any embryos. He's trying to figure out if
it works as well, and hopes to start testing his insulin cells in people
with diabetes within three years.
Bionic Hands Mimic Human Control With Sensation of Touch
By Michelle Fay CortezOct 8, 2014 6:13 PM ET
New advances in prosthetic devices
are allowing people with artificial hands to tell when they’re
holding something without even looking, and pluck a stem from a
cherry without bursting it, two studies have shown.
Different groups in the U.S. and Europe today reported key
breakthroughs in connecting healthy nerves to a prosthesis,
giving patients whose hands or arms have been amputated better
control of the devices and, for the first time, returning at
least some of the sensation of touch.
In one study, U.S. surgeons connected electrodes to nerves
in a man’s forearm that were stimulated when someone placed
something in his bionic hand. The procedure allowed the patient
to tell when he was touching something without having to see it.
In the other report, Swedish scientists surgically connected a
titanium rod to existing bone, nerves and muscles in an
undamaged part of the arm, then ran wires through the prosthesis
helping the patient control its use more precisely.
“What is fascinating about this is the perception of touch
actually occurs in the brain, not in the hand itself,” said
Dustin Tyler, an associate professor of biomedical engineering
at Case Western Research University in Cleveland, who led the
U.S. effort. “Losing the limb is just losing the switch that
turns that sensation on or off.”
Patient wearing a prosthetic limb directly attached to the skeleton and neuromuscular... Read More
Both results were reported today in the journal Science
Translational Medicine.
Igor Spetic, 48, said he vividly remembers the first time
he felt his right hand again, two years after it was amputated
following an industrial accident. Researchers working to craft
his prosthetic pulled a curtain to limit his view and then
placed a large, hard block into his palm.
‘Amazing’ Feeling
“I hadn’t felt anything other than pain for two years,”
he said by telephone. The new sense of feeling “was amazing. It
felt like my hand was actually working, that I didn’t have a
prosthetic. That’s how close to reality it was for me.”
The new hand allows Spetic to perform routine tasks in a
laboratory without serious thought or concentration, he said,
including picking up and drinking from a flimsy water bottle
without squirting it all over or plucking stems from a cherry
without bursting it.
There are currently 19 spots on the prosthetic that Spetic
can feel. That’s likely to double or triple within a year, Tyler
said in a telephone interview.
‘Refined’ Sensation
“The thing we like is that we can get that refined of
sensation,” Tyler said. “There was skepticism before we did
this work that we could get that kind of control. Now we know
this has the potential for a true restoration of sensation for
people when they are missing their hand.”
Source: Tyler Lab, Cleveland VA Medical Center via EurekAlert
An illustration of the nerve interface.
Spetic said the most unexpected benefit was the end of his
phantom pain, which he often felt as if he was fiercely
clenching his fist. “That was a bonus they didn’t anticipate,”
he said.
When researchers vary the intensity, frequency and location
of the stimulation, it allows Spetic to pick up the signals for
different fabrics such as burlap and cotton, textures like
sandpaper, and motion such as a pulse or water running across
his hand. There remain several steps ahead.
For now, the sensors on his prosthetic arm are taped to the
outside of the device, making it impossible to use at home. The
researchers are working on an integrated system that would be
sturdy enough for routine use. The sensors also can’t yet
distinguish between textures, so Spetic only feels unique
sensations beyond a tingling or pressure when the researchers
deliver the stimulation.
Swedish Study
The Swedish scientists, meanwhile, developed a fully
integrated robotic arm. Their patient, identified only as
Magnus, has used the device at home and work for the past year,
even sleeping with it attached.
The tight connections allow Magnus, a truck driver, to have
more precise, natural control over the arm. He can tie his
children’s shoes, catch a ball out of the air and even crack an
egg on command, according to their report in the journal. Using
his old electric prosthesis, an egg or ball would fly out of his
hand if he moved too quickly or extended his arm too far.
“The major contribution of our work is we have this
interface that allows implanted electrodes to become clinically
viable,” said Max Ortiz Catalan, a research scientist at
Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.
“Patients can take them home and use their prosthesis for their
activities of daily living. We know it’s reliable and long-term,” he said in a telephone interview.
Ortiz Catalan is planning a larger study of the devices,
currently used only for Magnus, next year. The Cleveland
researchers already are working with another amputee and
companies to try to devise a prosthetic that incorporates the
sensors into the device itself.
(An earlier version of this story misspelled Spetic’s last
name.)
To contact the reporter on this story:
Michelle Fay Cortez in Minneapolis at
mcortez@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Reg Gale at
rgale5@bloomberg.net
Andrew Pollack
Biofeedback
is well-known as a relaxation technique, but the HCI Lab of the
University of Udine has tried to use it for the opposite purpose: making
people anxious. The technique, described by a paper in the November 2014 issue of the Interacting with Computers journal,
exploits heartbeat detection. While users navigated a 3D world, the
computer detected and played their actual heartbeat (users were not told
it was theirs) in the audio background of the virtual world. At a
couple of times during the experience, the application artificially
increased the frequency of the played heartbeat and then reverted it to
the actual one after some seconds. The study described in the paper
contrasts the technique with aversive stimuli frequently used in video
games when the character gets hurt such as decreasing health bars or
increasing the frequency of an heartbeat sound that is not related to
the user's actual heartbeat. The biofeedback-based technique produced
much larger (subjective as well as physiological) levels of user anxiety
than those classic aversive stimuli.
Microsoft has unveiled a new augmented reality experience called "RoomAlive".
Using projectors and Kinect, RoomAlive allows for fully interactive
gaming experiences that take up an entire 3D space. From the article:
"RoomAlive builds on the familiar concepts of IllumiRoom, but pushes
things a lot further by extending an Xbox gaming environment to an
entire living room. It's a proof-of-concept demo, just like IllumiRoom,
and it combines Kinect and projectors to create an augmented reality
experience that is interactive inside a room. You can reach out and hit
objects from a game, or interact with games through any surfaces of a
room. RoomAlive tracks the position of a gamers head across all six
Kinect sensors, to render content appropriately."
After long remaining mostly mum on Bitcoin, Microsoft's legendary
co-founder Bill Gates has spoken. At the Sibos 2014 financial-services
industry conference in Boston, America's richest man just threw his weight behind the controversial cryptocash.
Well, at least as a low-cost payments solution. ... "Bitcoin is
exciting because it shows how cheap it can be," he told Erik Schatzker
during a Bloomberg TV's Smart Street show interview yesterday (video).
"Bitcoin is better than currency in that you don't have to be
physically in the same place and, of course, for large transactions,
currency can get pretty inconvenient." ... While he seems relatively
bullish on how inexpensive transacting in Bitcoin can be, Gates isn't
singing the praises of its anonymity. The billionaire alluded in an
oblique, somewhat rambling fashion to some of the more nefarious
anonymous uses associated with Bitcoin.
This week, the payment processing company PayPal took its first venture into the world of all-digital money.
Merchants that work with eBay's(EBAY, Tech30) PayPal can now easily start accepting payments from customers that use Bitcoin(XBT), an independent, government-less currency.
PayPal struck a deal with three Bitcoin payment-processing companies: BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin.
Bitcoin is an Internet-based system of money specifically designed to
cut out middlemen, like banks and governments. So, it sounds odd to have
Bitcoin processors. But they make it easier for everyday,
non-tech-savvy businesses to accept bitcoins -- and immediately convert
them to cash.
But why take bitcoins -- which have fluctuated in
price from $1,100 and $400 in the last year -- instead of proven
government money?
The system offers much lower transaction
fees, which cost businesses a huge amount of money. The 2%-3% that shops
pay in credit card swiping fees can obliterate their profits.
Consider this PayPal's first -- but not last -- foray into the world of
Bitcoin. The company has made clear that its interest in Bitcoin runs
more than skin deep.
In the last year, eBay's two top
executives -- CEO John Donahoe and former president David Marcus -- have
expressed interest in Bitcoin's technology.
PayPal's senior director of corporate strategy, Scott Ellison, told
CNNMoney the company is most intrigued by the potential to harness the
technology that lies at the heart of the Bitcoin system, a public ledger
called a blockchain. It's a totally new way of thinking about
transactions. It keeps records that are decentralized and keeps users
semi-anonymous while making their transactions public.
"We
think Bitcoin has tremendous opportunities going forward," Ellison said.
"If you really want to understand how a technology works, you need to
actually be in that technological space yourself."
Ellison said
the move integrating Bitcoin into PayPal is a continuation of the
company's view of itself as "the original payment disruptors."
There are very few products that have genuinely made me go "wow", but I can safely add the Nixie drone
camera to that modest list. Over the past couple of years, drones have
become popular enough to the point where a new release doesn't excite
most people. But Nixie is different. It's a drone that you wear, like a bracelet. Whenever you want to let it soar, you give it a command to unwrap, power-up, and let it go...
From the consumer standpoint, the most popular use for drones is to capture some amazing footage. But what if you want to be in
that footage? That's where Nixie comes in. After "setting your camera
free", the drone soars around you, keeping you in its frame.
Unfortunately, my Nixie would capture me most often writing on the
computer, but you can probably understand the appeal to those who are
doing anything worth capturing on video. Examples given include mountain
climbing, hanging out with a friend at the park, biking through a
trail, and jumping off of a boat.
This is one of those products that's really hard to do justice through text, so I highly encourage you check out this video:Nixie is powered by Intel'sEdison kit, which is both small enough and affordable enough to fit inside such a small device. Admittedly, Nixie isn't that small, and it'll be very noticeable on your wrist, but with what it can do, I don't think many people would mind.
Here's another video to help whet your appetite. Absolutely no information about availabilty seems to be listed anywhere,
but if you head on over to the official website (linked to below), you
can add your email to the company's mailing list to keep up-to-date.
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