WiLAN has made a solid business out of suing the wireless industry over alleged patent violations, coaxing settlements out of HTC, Novatel and four other heavyweights. It won’t get any money from Apple, though, as an Eastern District of Texas court has ruled that the iPhone maker didn’t infringe on …
This article was written on July 21, 2008 by CyberNet.
We like to think of a service called Qik as “live YouTube.” It’s a video service that allows users to stream live video feed from their mobile phones to the web. Qik launched a private alpha release not too long ago and people like Kevin Rose and Robert Scoble have really helped to create some buzz about it. The Qik team has just taken another big step by launching into public beta, and now the masses will be able to test it out and take advantage of all that it offers.
Before we get into some of the features and improvements that come with the public beta of Qik, one of our initial concerns with this public beta is whether they can handle the increase in traffic. There’s going to be a lot of people wanting to try out this service, so hopefully they are prepared. Already this morning we were having trouble simply getting their site to load. The next several days and upcoming weeks will really put Qik and their infrastructure to the test.
Now on to Qik and what it’s all about. Qik is primarily for those who want to stream video from their mobile phones. Those who don’t have this capability on their phones do still have the option of signing up for an account if they want to make comments of videos that others post. Broadcasting using Qik works with mobile services like AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint which means just about everybody in the United States should be able to take advantage of it, assuming their phone has the video capability.
VentureBeat sat down with Qik co-founder Bhaskar Roy and talked about the service. Roy pointed out how Qik is the quickest online video streaming service because their latency is down to a half-second to 3 seconds, something other competitors aren’t able to claim (latency is the time it takes from when someone starts capturing video to when it appears live on the Internet).
Here you’ll find a list of all the mobile phones that Qik supports. You’ll notice that there are A LOT of supported Nokia phones, a couple of Motorola’s and two Samsung phones. Not on the list currently is the iPhone, although there is a working alpha version of Qik available for a first generation iPhone that is jailbroken. Their goal is to eventually get a working version available for the iPhone 3G.
We’ll be keeping our eye on Qik to see how well it does now that it has launched into public beta. It looks and sounds like a promising new service, and it’ll really be interesting to see if it turns into the YouTube of live video streaming.
Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com
What would Bach say? The Cello 2.0 is designed to be interactive.
(Credit: Bayer MaterialScience)
The mellifluous sounds of the cello have been delighting ears since the 18th century, but the instrument’s form has changed little over the centuries. Adhesives giant Bayer MaterialScience has a suggestion or two about that.
The manufacturer recently unveiled a futuristic redesign of the venerable stringed instrument, and has been showing it off at K 2013, a plastics and rubber trade show in Germany.
The Cello 2.0 is made of transparent, lightweight cast resin fashioned in a swirling cutaway shape that’s designed to make it much more portable. But it also plays videos.
The concept instrument has some features of a regular electric cello, yet it was tweaked by design firm TEAMS Design, which describes it as “the first musical instrument with the ability to express the user’s performance not only through sound, but also through visual effects on its own body. This allows the instrument and its user to interact and communicate with their audience in a completely new manner.”
Last week, we asked you to clue us in on any Indiana Jones/Star Wars links we may have missed. You had free range to go nuts—and you succeeded with flying colors.
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LinkedIn has revamped its iPad app just in time for the new iPad Air. The updated app includes changes to its overall look, UX design, and available features. The changes are pretty major for the professional social networking company, and the iPad app update is timed for a simultaneous release with two other LinkedIn software […]
The Planck deep space telescope is off to a warm retirement. After a four year mission that revealed the universe is 80 million years older than scientists estimated
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Japan’s largest IT and electronics trade show has always been anticipated as an event that showcases some of the best that the country has to offer in consumer electronics. Compared to 2012, there were about 40% fewer exhibitors in attendance, as well as a couple of absences (noticeably KDDI, who was rumored to attend this year’s event), which may have contributed to the slightly subdued atmosphere this year.
The theme for this year’s show encouraged submissions of technologies, products and services aimed at making people’s lives both richer and more comfortable. Titled ‘Smart Innovation: Technology for Future Society and Lifestyles’, CEATEC 2013 was all about what was “Smart”. There were presentations on “smart community”, “smart networking”, and “smart devices”, and a lot of exhibitors displayed innovations that built on this idea of more seamless, enriched living facilitated by technology.
“Smart Devices” was a theme heavily repeated in the “digital display” category. Ultra HD, big screen displays boasting 4K or 8K resolution were presented alongside new display concepts, like Sharp’s IGZO “frameless” screen.
On the content side of things, exhibitors took advantage of these new developments and presented content management systems and services aimed at creating a user experience specifically designed for digital/”smart” TV. NHK showcased Hybridcast, a system that enables users to access interactive, information-rich content across multiple devices via a broadband network and HTML5 interface. Similarly, Toshiba’s REGZA TimeOn is a suite of services that uses the cloud to make the television experience more interactive. For example, viewers can enable a Twitter feed tied to a particular channel’s hashtag, which will then display what other viewers are saying about a particular program in real-time.
Mobility was also a big theme in this year’s conference, with mobility device demonstrations taking up a large area in Halls 7 and 8. Following an announcement that it would bring autonomous cars to the market by 2020, Nissan demonstrated its Autonomous Drive Vehicle (‘Leaf’). A three-lap course for the car to self-navigate through was set up, and required the vehicle to pass by parked cars as well perceive stop signs and handle crossing intersections. Although demonstrated in a restricted space, the car can drive up to speeds of about 70 km/h, and utilises a radar system to anticipate obstacles within a 80m perimeter.
In the same space, Toyota and Honda both demonstrated smaller-scale personal mobility vehicles: the Winglet , and the Uni-Cub respectively.
A number of the bigger exhibitors, including Mitsubishi, Toyota and Toshiba used the Lifestyle and Society Stage to showcase displays promoting smart grid systems for the home, or HEMS (Home Energy Management System). HEMS collects real-time data on power usage and presents it visually, enabling consumers to easily track, monitor and ultimately adjust their energy consumption levels accordingly.
In a similar vein, “Smart Homes” were concepts presented as part of next-generation living. “Smart Appliances” such as washing machines which could send consumers status-updates, and air-conditioners which could be controlled outside the home through smartphones, were often presented as part of a networked web of devices that functioned with HEMS to not only ensure a more pleasant living environment, but a more energy efficient lifestyle as well.
Healthcare was also a category that garnered a lot of attention. Building on the increasing popularity of using quantified data to self-monitor aspects of daily life, Omron showcased a series of inter-connectable devices that helps an individual keep track of their body weight, temperature, sleep patterns, heart rate and blood pressure. A majority of the products were designed with the ability to wirelessly send collected data to a central location, which also makes it easier for third parties, such as doctors, to monitor an individual and intervene if necessary.
While several other companies, including Nordic Semiconductor, Goo Karadalog, as well as Korean exhibitor Dae Kyoung Ind.Co. (above) also offered their own personal health monitoring devices, the most noticeable of these was Sharp’s Healthcare Support Chair. A rather futuristic-looking take on the traditional doctor’s examination chair, Sharp’s spherical contraption can measure a person’s weight, blood pressure, heart rate and temperature all in one sitting. In addition, it can also determine how healthy a patient’s blood vessels are and assess their body balance. All of this information is displayed on a shield of multi-paneled screens, and the information can also be sent straight to your doctor.
Other products and services which made use of wireless data transmission and cloud storage were SFK Medical Company’s “suisui Nurse”, an application that allows nurses conducting home visits to directly send vital information as well as pictures to a doctor, and Fujitsu’s “Petcloud” which collects health-related data about your pet throughout its lifetime. There were also a number of “babysitter” robots that provide companionship and in extreme cases monitor an individual in need of care such as the elderly or young children such as NEC’s PaPeRo or Fujisoft’s “Palro”.
And like any type of fairs CEATEC makes no exception to the award giving practice with twenty-four awards being given out during the five days event. The CEATEC organizers selected eleven grand-Prix winners and semi grand-Prix winners in Products, Network & services, key technology and core technology categories as well as a Review panel special award that went to Keio University’s Katsura laboratory part of the department of system design engineering. Two special awards were given out by the Ministry of Internal Affars and communication and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to in the same order, NTT docomo for its Next-generation mobile communication system (5G) and Kyocera corporation for Piezo film speaker “smart sonic (R) sound”. Finally an independent panel of journalist versed in either I.T. or consumer electronics gave out awards to companies for innovative product or concepts that would have the most influence on the U.S. market the grand-Prix of that award was given to Nissan motors co.,ldt for its Autonomous drive vehicle.
An artist's rendition of the newly discovered galaxy z8_GND_5296, which despite its name is actually not a Windows registry entry.
(Credit: V. Tilvi, C. Papovich, S.L. Finkelstein and the Hubble Heritage Team)
Good news, road trip fans! Astronomers say they’ve spotted the most distant potential destination: a galaxy far, far away (road not included).
Led by University of Texas at Austin astronomer Steven Finkelstein, a team using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the Keck I telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory on the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, has spotted and measured the stretch to what they claim is the most distant galaxy ever found by humans. The view astronomers got of galaxy z8_GND_5296 is as it was just 700 million years after the Big Bang.
“We get a glimpse of conditions when the universe was only about 5 percent of its current age of 13.8 billion years,” team member Casey Papovich of Texas A&M University said in a statement.
It would appear that one of the most advanced Bluetooth controllers on the market this year has hit some stores early: this is the PS4 DualShock 4, and it’s been spotted at more than one store Up North. According to reports from DualShockers‘ varied collection of Tweets, at least seven individual customers have been allowed […]
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