Drone for the future

Drone Test site

Drones are coming to America – the Federal Aviation Administration announced on Monday the six states chosen to develop test sites for unmanned aerial vehicles.

Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas and Virginia were chosen by the FAA as the agency moves towards integrating commercial drones into American skies.

The goal is to have drones operated by businesses, farmers and government agencies sharing the same space as commercial airplanes by the year 2015, though it’s possible it may take longer to draft the proper rules and regulations.

Apple’s China Mobile Pact Opens Massive New iPhone Market

Apple Stroke of Genius

Analysts estimate that Apple could sell between 20 million and 30 million iPhones on China 

Mobile’s network next year. That would effectively double the number of iPhones it sold in the 

country in 2013. Colin W. Gillis, a technology analyst at BGC Financial, said in a recent 

research note to clients that the China Mobile iPhone launch is one of the last remaining short-

term catalysts that could propel Apple shares substantially higher. As 2013 draws to a close, 

Apple’s stock price is essentially flat for the year, although the shares have soared 33% in the 

past six months, reversing steep losses in the first half of the year.

This deal analysis has Apple has suffered a steady drop starting from about early February  2012

With the having sold 125 million iPhones in fiscal 2012, Apple could sell another 17 million 

through China Mobile alone in 2014, according to estimates from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene 

Munster, adding 5% to the Wall Street’s revenue estimates for Apple next year. Analysts at 

Robert W. Baird & Company believe Apple could sell an even bigger 30 million iPhones 

through China Mobile in 2014. And the bold release of the Iphone 5C did not help this downfall 

at all while the 5s expected sales was met the 5c kept on struggling.

 

In China, where one-third of the world’s smartphones are currently being sold, $549 translates 

to 3359.88 yuan. That’s about an average month’s salary in China, according to this data from 

2012, or three months of a bus driver’s monthly salary, according to another source. In other 

words, buying an iPhone for your average Chinese citizen would be much like buying a 

cheapish second-hand car for $5,000 to $10,000 in the U.S.

Iphone comparison

5s vs 5c

If you're shopping for a new iPhone this holiday season, Apple has two new handsets to 

choose from. The iPhone 5s is the higher-end model, but are its upgrades worth the extra 

US$100? Or do you thumb your nose at its "forward-thinking" features and go with some fun 

new colors instead? Let Gizmag try to help, as we go hands-on to help you decide whether 

you're better off with the iPhone 5s or iPhone 5c.

When we took a closer look at the iPad Air and Retina iPad mini, we were basically dealing 

with the same tablet in two different sizes. That isn't the case with the iPhone 5s and 5c. 

• The 5s has a faster processor, an extra motion-tracking processor, a better camera with some new features, and a fingerprint sensor. It's the more advanced iPhone

• The iPhone 5c, meanwhile, is basically an iPhone 5 (Apple's 2012 flagship) in a colorful plastic shell. In fact, the 5c replaced the iPhone 5 in Apple's lineup, sending it to an early grave after just one year. So if you take appearances out of the equation, we're pretty much comparing "this year's iPhone"  to "last year's iPhone."

Spec Chart

Comparison Video

Blackberry still losing

BlackBerry Ltd Gets into Partnership Deal with Foxconn to Develop New Devices for Emerging Markets

BlackBerry Ltd recently posted disappointing quarterly results that translated to a whopping $4.4 billion of losses. However, the Canadian smartphone manufacturer still strives harder to attempt to obtain a much needed turnaround.

The company has entered into an agreement to a manufacturing partnership with Taiwan’s Foxconn. Together, the two smartphone makers would develop and manufacture a main consumer handset, which would primarily target Indonesia, one of the few countries where demand for BlackBerry devices remains strong. This partnership would also eventually cover several other fast-growing mobile market

Google Buys Another Robotics Firm

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Google has bought another robotics firm – the eighth robotics firm it has purchased recently – making it a leader in the robotics industry. 

The latest acquisition is Boston Dynamics, maker of robots for the U.S. military, including Cheetah, the world's fastest-running robot as well as other animal-like machines.

Google has been coy about the type of robots it’s looking to develop, but the company has put Andy Rubin in charge of the effort. He was in charge of Google’s popular Android operating system.

In a statement on his Google+ page, Google co-founder Larry Page wrote of the Boston Dynamics purchase, “I am excited about Andy Rubin's next project.  His last big bet, Android, started off as a crazy idea that ended up putting a supercomputer in hundreds of millions of pockets.  It is still very early days for this, but I can't wait to see the progress.”

The price of the purchase has yet to be made public.

Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992 and largely develops robots for the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. Many of those robots such as BigDog and WildCat, are well-known because of YouTube videos showing them in action.

Some analysts say Google’s foray into robotics means it’s trying to develop a robot that could potentially deliver goods to people at home and at work.   Amazon recently proposed developing robotic drones that could do that, but analysts say Google’s robots would likely make the deliveries in self-driving vehicles – a technology that Google is actively developing at its headquarters in California. 

Google has already begun to experimenting with a grocery delivery service in the San Francisco Bay area called Google Shopping Express. 

Google’s robotics team will be headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with an office in Japan, a leader in the robotics industry.

"I feel with robotics it's a green field," Rubin told the New York Times. "We're building hardware, we're building software. We're building systems, so one team will be able to understand the whole stack."

Video Game Development

Video game development

 is the process of creating a video game. Development is undertaken by a game developer, which may range from a single person to a large business. Traditional commercial PC and console games are normally funded by a publisher and take several years to develop. Indie gamescan take less time and can be produced cheaply by individuals and small developers. The indie game industry has seen a rise in recent years with the growth of new online distribution systems and the mobile game market.

Best investmet that Amazon made

KIVA

Kiva Robot

Kiva's technology is another way to improve productivity by bringing the products directly to employees to pick, pack and stow," said Dave Clark, Amazon's vice president of global customer fulfillment.
Kiva's robots bring the product shelves to a warehouse worker, rather than a worker walking to the shelves. The robots locate the items in a customer's order, move the products around warehouses and help get packed boxes to a final loading dock.

Employee using Kiva system

The robots—squat, orange cubes—zip around shipping centers loaded with inventory shelves stacked several feet into the air above them. The robots can be tailored to each particular client, with customized software

Kiva was founded in 2003 by its chief executive, Mick Mountz, who served as an executive at Apple Inc and Webvan, a grocery-shipping firm that was one of the highest-profile failures of the dot-com boom over a decade ago. Webvan raised over $400 million in funding before collapsing in 2001.

Having witnessed the need for rapid order fulfillment, Mr. Mountz started Kiva along with Peter Wurman, who had been an associate professor of computer science at North Carolina State, and Raffaello D'Andrea, a professor of engineering at ETH Zurich. 

With Kiva, Amazon is now looking at a more automated approach. The robots are already used by two websites that Amazon has acquired: shoe-retailer Zappos.com and baby-products site Diapers.com.

Check the video for more info

Chat on Virtual Reality

Virtual is the future

Virtual Reality

Last night i was talking to a friend about new ideas about social networking . We were talking 

and decided that wouldn't it be cool if a social network user could chat with another user in the 

virtual world, almost like video chat but instead user will use their Avatars.This allow person to 

meet each other without revealing their identities.



Users will be able to choose their environment, which would be perfect for couples and even 

family members that haven't seen each other in a while. In think this idea if  implemented will 

give users a greater level of intimates and sense of privacy.

Really think about it what better way to communicate and participate in online than in the virtual 

world the sky is the limit with this idea..


   

The problem is now is the equipment

Virtual reality equipment are relative expensive and may not be affordable to many user of a 

social network 

Face Recognition

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just granted Apple a patent for a facial recognition feature that could unlock a mobile device as well as control how it works. That's right, Apple just got a patent so our iPhones and iPads can look at us all the time.

I just got used to the idea of using my fingerprint to unlock an iPhone 5s, but now my face? Will it recognize me after a hard night of drinking when I've got a throbbing hangover? Will I have to smile and patiently train it -- and then lock myself out of my iPhone after I start yelling at it for being stupid and not recognizing my delightful expression the first time, in poor light?

Those were my knee-jerk reactions as I read the news and rolled my eyes. The forward march of technology. The Xbox One wants to pay attention to the humans around it all the time. Android has had facial recognition unlocking capabilities for a couple years or so. Heck, every time I import new photos into iPhoto on my Mac, iPhoto starts analyzing the photos to identify new faces to catalog for me.

Yet I'm vaguely uneasy about all this. It's not that I fear a rising horde of machines will take over the world. I'm uneasy about the potential for dark uses this sort of technology opens up -- and you don't have to be an Edward Snowden working deep inside the NSA to know it.

To me, it represents another step toward ubiquitous surveillance, and that, my friends, is an evil thing for creativity. Who does their best work while someone is peering over their shoulder? Thoughts and ideas are moderated before they can escape, lest someone see something stupid, nasty or simply silly. Surveillance impinges on freedom -- the sense of freedom -- and to me, that stifles the human spirit, sucks human energy, and modulates joy.

The Internet has a greater reach than television

Citizens in developed nations now rely on the Internet more than any other medium for news coverage. This trend* first became apparent in the early 2000s, when radio was overtaken by Internet usage. The rapid shift towards web-based information then began to affect print media, with newspaper sales being heavily impacted.
By 2014, the trend has continued, with even television now having less reach when it comes to news reporting. Television and the Internet are in fact converging together as one. Social media, mobile technologies and exponential bandwidth improvements have driven much of this change.
 

Amazing Amazon

AMAZON SHOWS US HOW THEY’LL SOON DELIVER YOUR PACKAGES VIA DRONES! 

No joke: Amazon has been working on delivery drones and CEO Jeff Bezos believes they could be zipping goods through the air to customers less than 5 years from now as part of its “Prime Air” service. The “Octocopter” unmanned aerial vehicles in development are capable of flying packages from Amazon warehouses to customers’ doorsteps in as little as 30 minutes from the time the customer hits the “Buy” button, Bezos told CBS’ 60 Minutes.

Before the big surprise, Bezos told producers, “If you can guess what it is, then … I will give you half my fortune and send you to Vegas with it.”

He says the drones can carry packages up to 5 pounds, which accounts for around 86% of the items Amazon sells, notes TechCrunch. In its FAQ, Amazon predicts that one day seeing Prime Air vehicles in the sky “will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road today”—and it will be ready to go whenever the FAA introduces regulations for private drones, which could be as soon as 2015.