Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers have created a way of letting next-gen wearables and implants communicate with the outside world using 10,000x less power than regular Wi-Fi.

I do wish Tim a lot of luck.

Going by the data from all quarters, the iPhone maker isn’t in the best of shapes when it comes to the China market. It’s the slow down in the China market that seemingly compelled Tim Cook to look at India with hopes. After all, never before has India got mentioned in Apple’s earnings call, and this was also the first time that Tim Cook visited India to make a slew of announcements. Today, we have the first (in Asia) R&D centre for Maps and an incubator in Bengaluru, along other announcements.

If you were thinking that India is finally becoming the ‘apple’ of Tim Cook’s eyes, then the latest announcements will tell you otherwise. Tim Cook has announced that Apple will have an R&D centre in China by the end of the year. And why not, Apple believes that we are where China was 6–7 years ago. But that’s not all, the company may have also miffed officials with its R&D in India announcements.

Continue reading “Is Apple’s China R&D centre an attempt to show that China is more important than India?” »

This is why tech must never leave their eye off their companies, innovation, and future; unlike China many in big tech have become bogged down in US Politics, etc. instead of their own competitive landscape something that many industry leaders learned many decades ago. Granted, you must always be concern over regulations, etc.; however, some in tech went further than that by acting in some cases like they’re running for office meanwhile their competitors flourish and don’t bother themselves with background noise.

As the old saying goes “never mix politics and religion in the work place” and this is why. Now, both China and Russia are challenging US tech like never before because of tech’s own distractions outside their companies. And, yes some may say it is tied to the S. China Sea; however, that is just one of many excuses which is not the real reason behind the drop of Apple, Uber, etc. Frankly China is showing the world they are serious in their own commitment to dominate tech taking the title from the US. I suggest companies wake up and focus on what they do best which is tech not government politics. Want to be a politician then please resign and run for government office ad let others who are passionate about tech run tech.

Farhad Manjoo, New York Times Tech Reporter, weighs in on Apple’s latest investments in China, his outlook for the iPhone and Berkshire Hathaway increasing their stake in the tech giant.

Continue reading “Apple China sales slump” »

Engenheiros da Universidade de Washington introduziram uma nova forma de comunicação que permite que dispositivos como implantes cerebrais, lentes de contato, cartões de crédito e pequenos eletrônicos vestíveis falar com aparelhos de uso diário, como smartphones e relógios.

Este novo” Comunicação interscatter” funciona convertendo sinais Bluetooth em transmissões Wi-Fi através do ar. Usando apenas reflexões, um dispositivo interscatter como uma inteligente de lentes de contato converte sinais Bluetooth a partir de um SmartWatch, por exemplo, em transmissões Wi-Fi que podem ser apanhados por um smartphone.

A group of PhD students from the MIT Media Lab and researchers from Microsoft Research have come up with the ultimate wearable: a temporary tattoo that can turn into a touchpad, remotely control your smartphone, or share data using NFC.

The technology, which is described on MIT’s website and will be presented in full at a wearables symposium next month, is called DuoSkin. The researchers say you can design a circuit using any graphic software, stamp out the tattoo in gold leaf (which is conductive to electricity), and then apply other commodity materials and components that would make the tattoo interactive.

The paper presents three key use cases for the tattoo: you could use it to turn your skin into a trackpad, design it to change color based on temperature, or pull data from the tattoo. In one photo shared by MIT the tattoo even includes LED lights, creating a kind of glowing display on the skin.

Continue reading “MIT and Microsoft Research made a ‘smart’ tattoo that remotely controls your phone” »

Every single operating system developed by Google to date has one thing in common: they’re based on the Linux kernel. Chrome OS, Android, Chromecasts, you name it. Linux has powered Google hardware for years.

However, the Linux kernel is not ideal for every situation. Especially in the case of embedded devices like car dashboards or GPS units, full-blown desktop kernels like Linux impact performance and cause other issues. There’s a massive ecosystem of operating systems designed for embedded hardware, and Google may be working on their own.

Enter “Fuchsia.” Google’s own description for it on the project’s GitHub page is simply, “Pink + Purple == Fuchsia (a new Operating System)”. Not very revealing, is it? When you begin to dig deeper into Fuchsia’s documentation, everything starts to make a little more sense.

Continue reading “Google is developing an OS called ‘Fuchsia,’ runs on All the Things” »

IBM’s TrueNorth, a so-called “cognitive chip,” remarkably resembles the human brain: its 4,096 cores combine to create about a million digital neurons and 256 million synapse connections. In short, like everyone’s favorite complex organ, it operates extremely quickly and consumes far less energy than typical processors. Samsung has taken the chip and plugged it into its Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS) to process digital imagery at a blindingly fast rate.

Typical digital cameras max out 120 frames per second, but a DVS-equipped gadget can capture an incredible 2,000 fps. Unlike a conventional sensor, each pixel on Samsung’s only reacts if it needs to report a change in what it’s seeing, according to CNET. That high speed could be useful for creating 3D maps or gesture controls. At a press event on Thursday in San Jose, the company demonstrated its ability to control a TV as it recognized hand waves and finger pinches from ten feet away.

DVS is efficient like its TrueNorth chip base, and only consumes about 300 milliwatts of power. That’s about a hundredth the drain of a laptop’s processor and a tenth of a phone’s, a Samsung VP said at the event. But we still have a ways to go before we approach the minimal power requirements of the human brain, he said, which can process some tasks at 100 million times less power than a computer.

Continue reading “Samsung plugs IBM’s brain-imitating chip into an advanced sensor” »

Science fiction is inching closer to reality with the development of revolutionary self-propelling liquid metals—a critical step towards future elastic electronics.

While building a shape-shifting liquid metal T-1000 Terminator may still be far on the horizon, the pioneering work by researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, is setting the foundation for moving beyond solid state electronics towards flexible and dynamically reconfigurable soft circuit systems.

Continue reading “Towards the T-1000: Liquid metals propel future electronics” »

This is interesting. Russia has gone already after Google over an anti-trust situation over Android. Now Apple. Wonder who is next? Meantime, China is refusing US tech and companies in many areas of its industry over US involvement of the S. China Sea decisions handed down by a tribunal at The Hague. And, everyone knows about the new partnership in the recent months between China and Russia. Looks like US largest GDP producer is battling on many fronts.

Russian antitrust authorities charged U.S. tech giant Apple on August 8 with fixing the retail prices for iPhones in the country.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service said its investigation “showed that from the start of official sales of iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus in Russia, the majority of resellers set identical prices for them and held them for a certain period.”

Continue reading “Russia Charges U.S. Tech Giant Apple With Fixing Prices For iPhones” »