The mystery of the Nexus One continues to grow ever deeper, but we can pretty much confirm Google’s planning to sell something under that name: the search giant filed an intent-to-use trademark application for “Nexus One” on December 10th, and in order to be granted the trademark registration it’ll have to use the mark in commerce at some point in the future. Now, don’t get too carried away — sure, that could mean free unlocked GSM Android sets for all, but it could also just mean Google’s planning to sell the Nexus One as its next-gen Android Developer Phone. Considering everything we’ve heard points to the device being limited to T-Mobile 3G, we’d say the developer phone theory is still the most likely, but it’s all up in the air until Google provides a sample of the Nexus One mark being used in commerce to the USPTO — or, better yet, announces something official. Update: Ruh roh. As we’re sure you’re aware, the “Nexus” name is a riff on Philip K. Dick’s Nexus-6 replicants in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and ultimately in Blade Runner — and his estate is none too pleased that Google’s using it without permission. According to the New York Times, Dick’s daughter — who is in charge of licensing his work — was never told of Google’s plans, and she’s contacted the lawyers now that she’s found out. We’re guessing Google can still make nice though: she says she would have been open to an agreement had contact been made earlier. So… let’s get on that, guys.
If you didn’t make it to eBay in time to put down $1,200 or so for your very own pre-release Gulftown chip, cheer up! The countdown to the six core wonder continues apace, with more news each passing day. According to a purportedly leaked slide that popped up on China’s PC Online, the 32nm chip will be known as the Core i7-980X and not the Core i9, as previously rumored. Part of the i7 “Extreme Edition” series (so extreme!). If everything goes as leaked, the 3.33GHz processor could be included in new Mac Pro systems come early 2010 — which more or less jibes with rumors that the processor will be available sometime in March. See the new product name appear on the roadmap after the break.
Popular character Lupin is a thief with outrageous sideburns (amazingly, even longer than mine). The Lupin Steal Japan started in November where people logging on to a very stripped-down website could type in things they wanted stolen. Submissions have now closed and apparently Lupin is beginning the task of getting his hands on all the goods! Already favorite mascot Kuidaore Taro from Osaka’s Dotonbori has gone. What’s next? Santa Claus, eat your heart out!
And now an amazing widget from the website commands him to “steal” your blog. Click below to see what I mean!
With collaborations with Brutus and online coverage going supernova, Lupin Steal Japan might just run away with all the web swag this month…
Apparently, making a sleek, tiny and reasonably affordable hard drive isn’t enough for LaCie. No, it has to stoop to using an impossibly adorable monkey to attract attention for its new Rikiki drive (available now in 250GB, 500GB, and 640GB capacities, priced between $75 and $150). Well, that’s just not going to cut it this time…. awww, look at the tiny monkey.
A survey by the Pew Research Center shows that up to 17 percent of older teenagers have sent nude or near-nude images of themselves via cell text message. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10415784-93.html” class=”origPostedBlog”News – Digital Media/a/p
Some smart students at MIT have figured out how to turn a typical LCD into a low-cost, 3-D gestural computing system.
Users can touch the screen to activate controls on the display but as soon as they lift their finger off the screen, the system can interpret their gestures in the third dimension, too. In effect, it turns the whole display into a giant sensor capable of telling where your hands are and how far away from the screen they are.
“The goal with this is to be able to incorporate the gestural display into a thin LCD device like a cell phone and to be able to do it without wearing gloves or anything like that,” says Matthew Hirsch, a doctoral candidate at the Media Lab who helped develop the system. MIT, which will present the idea at the Siggraph conference on Dec. 19.
The latest gestural interface system is interesting because it has the potential to be produced commercially, says Daniel Wigdor, a user experience architect for Microsoft.
“Research systems in the past put thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment around the room to detect gestures and show it to users,” he says. “What’s exciting about MIT’s latest system is that it is starting to move towards a form factor where you can actually imagine a deployment.”
Gesture recognition is the area of user interface research that tries to translate movement of the hand into on-screen commands. The idea is to simplify the way we interact with computers and make the process more natural. That means you could wave your hand to scroll pages, or just point a finger at the screen to drag windows around.
MIT has become a hotbed for researchers working in the area of gestural computing. Last year, an MIT researcher showed a wearable gesture interface called the ‘SixthSense’ that recognizes basic hand movements.
But most existing systems involve expensive cameras or require you to wear different-colored tracking tags on your fingers. Some systems use small cameras that can be embedded into the display to capture gestural information. But even with embedded cameras, the drawback is that the cameras are offset from the center of the screen and won’t work well at short distances. They also can’t switch effortlessly between gestural commands (waving your hands in the air) and touchscreen commands (actually touching the screen).
The latest MIT system uses an array of optical sensors that are arranged right behind a grid of liquid crystals, similar to those used in LCD displays. The sensors can capture the image of a finger when it is pressed against the screen. But as the finger moves away the image gets blurred.
By displacing the layer of optical sensors slightly relative to the liquid crystals array, the researchers can modulate the light reaching the sensors and use it capture depth information, among other things.
In this case, the liquid crystals serve as a lens and help generate a black-and-white pattern that lets light through to the sensors. That pattern alternates rapidly with whatever the image that the LCD is displaying, so the viewer doesn’t notice the pattern.
The pattern also allows the system to decode the images better, capturing the same depth information that a pinhole array would, but doing it much more quickly, say the MIT researchers.
The idea is so novel that MIT researchers haven’t been able to get LCDs with built-in optical sensors to test, though they say companies such as Sharp and Planar have plans to produce them soon.
For now, Hirsch and his colleagues at MIT have mocked up a display in the lab to run their experiments. The mockup uses a camera that is placed some distance from the screen to record the images that pass through the blocks of black-and-white squares.
The bi-directional screens from MIT can be manufactured in a thin, portable package that requires few additional components compared with LCD screens already in production, says MIT. (See video below for an explanation of how it works.)
Despite the ease of production, it will be five to ten years before such a system could make it into the hands of consumers, cautions Microsoft’s Wigdor. Even with the hardware in hand, it’ll take at least that long before companies like Microsoft make software that can make use of gestures.
“The software experience for gestural interface systems is unexplored in the commercial space,” says Wigdor.
There’s no denying that the two newest multicard readers from Addonics can connect to one’s PC via eSATA as well as the conventional USB 2.0 method, but frankly, we’ve our doubts about the honest-to-goodness speed benefits of linking through the former. The outfit claims that when its (external) Pocket eSATA / USB DigiDrive is hooked up with an eSATA cable, any flash media you insert can be used as a bootable device with read / write speeds of up to 150MB/sec, but of course you’ll want to slap the quickest SDHC or CompactFlash card you can find in there to fully take advantage of the extra bandwidth. There’s also an internal version for those tired of looking at the gaping hole where your floppy drive used to be, and considering that both retail for $59.99, you’ll probably spend the next four or five hours just choosing which you really need.
Windows only: Previously mentioned VirusTotal Uploader automatically uploads any file to online virus scanner VirusTotal, scanning it for viruses with 41 different popular antivirus applications—and now it’s even better and faster, with instant hash checking, letting you skip uploads altogether.
Once you’ve installed the tiny VirusTotal Uploader application, you can simply right-click on a file and use the Send To -> VirusTotal option, which will take a hash of the file (a unique fingerprint that identifies the file) and submit it to the VirusTotal service. If the file has already been scanned by VirusTotal, you will see a message saying that the hash was found, and your default browser will be opened to the scan results instantaneously. If the file hasn’t already been scanned by VirusTotal, it’ll continue uploading the file; you can also choose to re-upload an already-scanned file if you wish.
You can also now open the VirusTotal Uploader window directly, choose from running processes, upload multiple files, or even download a file from a URL and automatically upload it to VirusTotal (without storing the file on your PC). It’s a great update to an already excellent way to find out if a file really has a virus. VirusTotal Uploader is a free download for Windows only.
CES 2009 was a biggie for Palm, what with webOS and the Pre and all. Will they top it in 2010? And if so, how? A Verizon partnership seems plausible, if not likely — but otherwise, your guess is as good as ours. Anyhow, keep it locked right here next month and you’ll be finding out just as we do!
Although it’s technically possible to use the gorgeous IPS display in the 27-inch iMac as a standalone monitor, the feature’s been pretty limited in practice, since it only works with other DisplayPort devices like the unibody MacBooks. That’s about to change thanks to Apogee, which just posted up a video demo of an as-yet-unnamed HDMI-to-DisplayPort adapter being used to play Xbox 360, PS3, and — yes, it’s true — Blu-ray movies on Apple’s latest all-in-one. Never thought you’d see the day, did you? Apogee hasn’t disclosed pricing or availability yet, but we’re told more info is coming soon –we’d guess sometime around CES. Video after the break.
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Windows only: 
