Hasta La Gadget!

The very mention of the word “drone” often conjures up images of autonomous machines cruising over battlefields, but that’s far from the future 3D Robotics has in store for its own aerial machines. And thanks a recent infusion of capital, that future may be closer than you think.

3D Robotics announced earlier today that it locked up a $30 million Series B round, with a list of participants that includes Foundry Group, True Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and SK Ventures.

The company previously closed a $5 million round last December that featured many of those same names, and at the time CEO (and former Wired EiC) Chris Anderson said the infusion of funds would be used to open and staff a then-new San Francisco office. Another crucial component of the 3DR growth story was to launch a new website, flesh out the community experience, and developer and a new slew of products meant to make “drones and other aerial robotics technology easier, more powerful and cheaper”.

There’s been plenty of progress made on that final front too as the 3D Robotics portfolio is now comprised of a single plane-style drone and four copter drones. The newest of addition to the lineup? The Iris, a $720 drone that can be controlled with ease from a PC or an Android device (as long as you have the corresponding app) that can also follow paths “drawn” on an on-screen map thanks its built-in GPS. While Anderson and the rest of the team have spent the past year trying to more effectively court hobbyists and DIY drone buffs, the company’s ambitions hinge on proving that drone’s have plenty of commercial value as well.

Anderson gave the Financial Times a clearer view of the wildly varying fields that he thinks 3D Robotics’ drones can disrupt, and all of the usual suspects are accounted for. Remotely controlled drones can make for cheaper, more effective search and rescue operations, as well as hyperlocal deliveries (I personally can’t wait for someone to put together a fleet of tacocopters.

Perhaps the most curious application is in agriculture, in which farmers and ranchers could remotely keep tabs on the all their land and livestock without having to trudge into the fields themselves.

Skitch made a couple of big announcements today, one of which is a spanking-new logo. Gone is that pink heart we know and love, and in its place are the feathers of an arrow that signify stabilized flight and direction. As if to emphasize that point, the company also unveiled a version 3 update for its iOS app that promises even faster image capture and annotation than before. As soon as you launch it, you’ll be presented with Quick Shot mode, which should let you snap a photo, annotate it with an arrow and send it off to the cloud in seconds. You may add further captions to an image, share Skitched pics to all attendees in a calendar meeting, sync them via AirDrop or simply save them to Evernote. It’s also updated the overall interface with new tools and style bars for better use of real estate and to match the stylings of iOS 7. It looks like the new logo hasn’t rolled out to the App Store just yet, but the updated app certainly has. So go on and hit the appropriate link in the source to have a peek at the all-new Skitch.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Apple

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Source: Evernote Blog, Skitch (App Store)

The Finder unit during a test.

(Credit: DHS/John Price)

When a disaster strikes, there’s a very short window of time in which to locate and free survivors trapped under rubble. The Finder portable radar system, developed through a collaboration between NASA and the US Department of Homeland Security, could make it much easier for emergency responders to find victims.

“Finder” is short for “Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response.” The device works by sending a low-power microwave radar signal through the rubble. The signals that bounce back are analyzed for patterns that indicate a person’s breathing or heartbeat.

The technology is related to radar systems NASA uses to locate spacecraft on their missions. “Detecting small motions from the victim’s heartbeat and breathing from a distance uses the same kind of signal processing as detecting the small changes in motion of spacecraft like Cassini as it orbits Saturn,” says James Lux, the Finder task manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.

The heavy lifting for this technology is done on the data processing side. It takes advanced algorithms to differentiate between a human’s chest moving versus a rat scurrying, or a plant’s leaves waving.

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Google will add Glassware support to its Glass wearable with the XE10 update expected in October, developer sources claim, opening the door to local software rather than forcing coders to run their functionality in the cloud. The much-anticipated support for local apps has been clandestinely confirmed by multiple developers under NDA with Google about the […]

Nokia’s smartphone camera division will move to Microsoft, along with the Finnish manufacturer’s entire core phone business, if Microsoft’s acquisition is approved by shareholders. Microsoft had announced recently it has agreed to acquire Nokia’s phone business for more than $7 billion, pending shareholder approval. If it goes through, the deal will be closed by the first quarter of 2014. The PureView brand has been selectively used with several Nokia Lumia devices, but a VP from the company hints that after the acquisition, the PureView brand might cease to exist.

Vice President of software program management at Nokia, Samuli Hänninen, was asked today during a Q&A session on Nokia’s blog about the future of PureView. He said that PureView stands for “the best imaging experiences in our devices,” and that the team will continue to work in the area. He says that “the most important thing is what we do, not what it is called, although we like PureView a lot.” This is believed to be a subtle hint towards the possibility of Microsoft ditching the brand name once it has total control over it. Sure, the possibility exists, one can’t predict what Microsoft might do or might not do once it has control of Nokia’s phone business. The company has already said that it would like to see shorter names for Lumia devices. One can expect Redmond to shake things up a little bit, but how exactly it intends to do that, that remains to be seen.

Nokia Hints PureView Brand Might Disappear After Acquisition original content from Ubergizmo.