Hasta La Gadget!

Google’s Glass wearable could soon be able to recognize faces of those around the wearer, thanks to a dedicated service for human and object recognition that could be built into third-party apps. The handiwork of Lambda Labs, the special Glass facial recognition API will integrate into software and services using Google’s Mirror API for Glass, crunching shots from the camera and spitting out the identity of people and objects it recognizes. Lambda Labs expects the system to be used for real-world social networking and person-location services, though also warns that it could eventually fall foul of impending privacy regulation.

Lambda’s service has been in operation – though not in Glass-specific form – for some time, and is already used by around 1,000 developers, according to the company. It works by using a pre-existing “album” of known faces or objects, for instance your work colleagues, against which new captures from the camera are compared.

What the system can’t do, right now at least, is compare those around you to images not in its own album. So, you couldn’t walk into a room and have Glass flag up those you might be friends with on Google+ based on the publicly-uploaded photos they’ve shared. It’s also not a real-time process: images have to be passed over to Lambda’s engine via the Mirror API, and the results then fed back in the opposite way.

That’s going to involve a delay of around a few seconds, the company told TechCrunch. It’s a similar system to what we saw MedRef for Glass, an app intending to make calling up patient records more straightforward for doctors and hospital staff, use, and indeed Lambda Labs’ API could be integrated server-side for future versions of MedRef or apps like it.

Despite the fact that, even with functionality like this, Glass wearers won’t be able to roam the streets having names and personal details of those around them hovering in the air like SIMS icons, the facial identification system leads Google’s headset into even murkier privacy issues. Earlier this month, a concerned US Congressional committee fired off a list of privacy-related questions to Google CEO Larry Page, demanding reassurance by June 14 that the wearable wouldn’t collect personal data without the consent of non-users, wouldn’t be unduly intrusive in ways smartphones are not currently, and how it might be updated and its functionality extended in future.

Currently, Glass lacks native face-recognition, hence the opening for third-party services like Lambda Labs’ to step in. Google’s own stance has been that it would require “strong privacy protections” be in place before it would consider adding the functionality itself; exactly what protections would be considered sufficiently “safe” for the public is unclear.

Members of Google’s Glass team touched on the potential for privacy infringement during the fireside chat about the wearable at Google I/O earlier this month. Among the factors built in to avoid any misuse of the camera is an SDK-level requirement that the camera be active if the headset is recording, Glass engineer Charles Mendis revealed; there’s also, product director Steve Lee pointed out, “a clear social gesture” involved in triggering that recording, whether it be physically pressing the button on the upper side of the eyepiece, or giving the “OK Glass, take a photo” spoken command.

Nonetheless, it’s a young segment of the industry and the rules are likely to be fluid as the “what we could do” urge for progress bumps up against “what we should do” restraint. Parallel developments in Google+ are leading Glass down the life-logging path, giving room – and the organizational tools – to store every moment that goes on around you, even if the hardware and software aren’t quite set up that way today.

Google Glass facial-recognition service likely to stoke privacy fears is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Used game sales on the Xbox One will use a digital authorization system requiring the console to validate titles against Microsoft’s servers every 24 hours, retailer leaks have suggested, also building in a cut for both Microsoft and publishers with each transaction. Microsoft had confirmed that pre-owned games sales would be permitted on the new console, but declined to detail exactly how the system would operate. Now, according to retailers speaking to MCV, details of the proposed system have been leaked.

The retailers claim that Microsoft has begun briefings this week on how the trade-in situation will be run, since it will be more complex than the existing process for Xbox 360 discs. According to the store chatter, Microsoft will require each retailer wanting to deal in pre-owned games to integrate its systems with an Azure-based cloud database, which will keep track of which titles Xbox One gamers have registered.

When a gamer wishes to trade in a game, it will be logged on the Microsoft database and removed from their account. The Xbox One will be required to check into Microsoft’s servers at least once every 24hrs, with sold titles automatically deauthorized from where they’ve been installed on the console’s hard drive.

By running all transactions through the cloud system, Microsoft and the publisher of the game will automatically get a percentage of the resale figure. Exactly what that cut will be – and what price the retailers will be selling the games for – is unclear; MCV’s sources indicate that stores will be able to set their own figures, but Console Deals‘ sources suggest that Microsoft will permit at most a 10-percent discount from the game’s recommended retail price (RRP).

Microsoft has declined to comment specifically on any of the possible systems for used games sales. “While there have been many potential scenarios discussed, we have only confirmed that we designed Xbox One to enable our customers to trade in and resell games at retail” the company told MCV. “Beyond that, we have not confirmed any specific scenarios.”

Nonetheless, if the leaks are true, the policies are unlikely to meet with a positive reaction from gamers and – as Don Reisinger wrote earlier this week – could give some cause to rethink upgrading to the new console. Microsoft has said that there won’t be a cost involved if you take a game to play on a friend’s Xbox One, as long as you are logged in with your own Xbox LIVE profile; however, you will not be able to loan them the game (to play registered to their own profile), as there will be a fee involved to unlock it.

Tackling the pre-owned games market – and, more importantly perhaps, monetizing it – has been one of the key goals with next-gen consoles. Sony has also confirmed that the PlayStation 4 will support used games, but is also yet to detail the process around that, and whether it will follow a similar approach to that which Microsoft is rumored to be following.

Xbox One used games policy leak claims limited discounts and publisher cut is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience isn’t a baby anymore – several months in and 2.5 million downloads since this system’s introduction and eventual public beta release, this game optimizing control center will replace the company’s “NVIDIA Update” system as the standard. In each driver package included with a GeForce graphics card, the GeForce Experience will be packaged, starting this week with the R320 GeForce GTX 780 launch driver.

The NVIDIA GeForce Experience will be released in version 1.5 this week as well, bumping the number of games supported to 70 and ushering in support for the newest graphics hardware on the market with the GTX 780. This release will be the first in which the GeForce Experience is packaged with a driver, but will be retro-fit to all systems supported being released in the future – where applicable.

The GeForce Experience is now well out of beta, acting as both a user interface through which a gamer’s check and update to the newest GeForce drivers is made simple and providing a place where games can be optimized instantly.

The big deal with the GeForce Experience is the gamer’s ability to one-step optimize their game settings to the best they can be given their computer’s abilities. This system is made for two kinds of people playing games:

1. Users who know what some of the setting available to them are, but not the whole lot, and want to optimize their gaming experience.

2. Users who want to optimize their gaming experience and have no idea what the vast majority of the settings are – or mean – in each game.

For each of the 70 games optimized uniquely by NVIDIA graphics and performance specialists, maximizing image quality “while maintaining great performance” is literally as easy as clicking the button “optimize.”

NVIDIA has also let it be known that they’ll be releasing new features for the GeForce Experience later this summer, one of them being Optimal Playable Settings (OPS) Customization – this means you’ll be able to bump up a setting here, knock another down here, and the system will compensate and act accordingly. More than just “this is best” will be available to you once this customization feature is released.

This summer users will also see support for NVIDIA SHIELD. This little mobile device will have its own connection on your PC, rather than having its own Android application, this allowing you to optimize the full-powered network-streamed games it’s capable of playing straight from the source – but optimized for SHIELD. Further details surrounding unique SHIELD options will be coming soon.

Finally there’s ShadowPlay, another “later this summer” update. This release is essentially “TIVO for games”, as one NVIDIA representative puts it, allowing you to record video of your system constantly and select segments you’d like to save. ShadowPlay will use Kepler graphics driver technology to record 20 minute segments at a time, allowing you to keep what you want and toss the rest – all through the GeForce Experience.

GeForce Experience replaces “NVIDIA Update” as graphics driver standard is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

AMD wants to knock Intel and ARM off their mobility perch in 2013, and the new Temash APU is how it expects to do it. Targeting media and performance tablets, as well as keyboard-dockable hybrids and 10- to 13-inch touchscreen ultraportable notebooks, the new A-series of Temash APUs feature Jaguar cores – boasting a 20-percent performance jump over Bobcat – for consumer Windows machines with the perky performance usually associated with an iPad.

As AMD sees it, Temash and Windows is a combination that means the flexibility of a desktop with the performance of a multimedia-centric chipset. The first true AMD SoC, with a choice of dual and quadcore options, Temash offers up to a 212-percent graphics boost-per-watt compared to 2012′ AMD C-70 and up to a 172-percent jump in x86 performance per watt.

However, that doesn’t come with a battery hit, AMD claims, despite offering between 2x and 5x the performance of Intel’s Atom Z2760 in AMD’s testing. A Temash-based system can manage up to 12hrs of idle battery life, or up to 45-percent longer than a Core i3-based Windows tablet.

AMD sprinkles some of its extra feature magic on the new A-series. The A400 gets GPU acceleration for apps, along with native video stabilization; the A600 adds AMD Screen Mirror, which wirelessly squirts the contents of the display to a supported TV, together with gesture controls using the webcam, and AMD Face Login, for biometric security. Both have Radeon HD 8000 series graphics.

Connectivity support includes up to two USB 3.0 ports, up to ten USB 2.0 ports, eSATA, HDMI, PCI Express, VGA, and more. There’s also support for up to 8GB of system memory and AMD’s Turbo Dock system, which boosts performance when a tablet is slotted into a keyboard base station, while prolonging battery life when it’s removed.

Perhaps most impressive, AMD says the sub-5W versions of Temash can be used in fanless systems. We had a chance to play with a Temash-based Windows 8 tablet, and the experience was impressively good: it was a Quanta reference design, the BZ1T, but the Radeon HD 8180 GPU and A4-1200 1GHz CPU were certainly strong enough to keep Full HD video playing smoothly on the 11.6-inch 1920 x 1080 touchscreen.

Inside, there was 2GB of DDR3U-1066 RAM and a 128GB mSATA SSD drive, loaded up with HD content that we could then push over wirelessly to a nearby HDTV with a Screen Mirror-compatible adapter. The whole thing was lag-free.

AMD’s second Temash demo machine was a compact Acer ultraportable, the Angel. That ran Windows 8 on a lightweight touchscreen notebook with a Temash A6-1450 processor and Radeon HD 8280 graphics. Unlike the tablet, the Angel had a traditional 500GB hard-drive inside, but doubled up RAM to 4GB. It was certainly a fast-moving machine, multitasking between office apps and multimedia quickly, though we’d need to spend more time with it to see whether it really does offer a significant step up from the Intel equivalent.

AMD expects the Temash series of APUs to begin showing up in tablets, notebooks, and other form-factors over the coming months.

AMD Temash official: iPad smoothness and x86 grunt for tablets and hybrids is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google’s new “conversational search” feature for Chrome has quietly been enabled, with the new feature appearing in the latest version of Google’s browser. Announced at I/O, the new Voice Search feature builds on the existing ability for Chrome to accept spoken search terms, now listing out your query on screen as you say it, and then able to show the results in Google Now-style cards as well as reading out the answer.

That’s not the only improvement, however. The system also supports semantics across repeated searches; so, for instance, if you ask a follow-up question, Google will automatically understand that the two queries are related.

If you ask “When was Ford founded?” for instance, Google will now read out the answer. You can then ask a follow-up like “Where is its headquarters?” and, even though you did not specify you were still asking about Ford, Google will still understand that it’s the topic of inquiry.

At the heart of this contextual awareness is Google’s Knowledge Graph technology, revealed last year, and integrated with natural language processing. That way, search knows that some queries will be about people – perhaps referred to as “he” or “she” in follow-up questions – while others will be about objects or companies.

More impressive are the compound assumptions that search can now make. Ask Chrome if it will rain tomorrow, and it will tell you the forecast (as well as display it on-screen): automatically figuring out where you are, and that you may want a full forecast.

Still absent is so-called “hotword search” as on Google Glass, which allows you to wake the system with a spoken command – “OK Glass” in the case of the wearable – and then begin asking queries. That seems likely to arrive sometime soon, though, especially given Microsoft has built something similar into Xbox One.

Overall, the technology is further evidence of Google’s greater confidence in its own results, and in showing users what it believes they’re looking for rather than just a list of possibilities. That’s something Matias Duarte, director of Android user experience, described to us as a key part of Google Now back at MWC, an endeavor which has applications across Google’s range: desktop, Chromebook, Android, and Glass.

You’ll need to be running the latest version of Chrome in order to get access to the new voice search functionality, and you may have to be patient, too. Google appears to be suffering some teething problems scaling out the system, and we’re getting a lot of “No internet connection” error messages right now.

VIA Engadget; Search Engine Land

Google Conversational Search turned on in Chrome update is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.