Hasta La Gadget!

Looking backwards, the automobile of today looks almost superintelligent. While some of us may have expected (read: hoped for) the flying car by 2013 and, sure, the internal combustion engine still reigns, the majority of vehicles today are basically computers on wheels. The average car today has around 50 microprocessors, give or take. But, given how quickly automotive technology is advancing, it’s clear that we’re just beginning to scratch the surface. Hell, California recently legalized road-testing of autonomous cars, and Sergey Brin thinks self-driving cars will be on public roads in the next five years.

Today, Cisco and NXP Semiconductors announced their intention to join the smart car bandwagon and help push automotive technology forward. The companies this morning announced a dual investment in Cohda Wireless, an Australian developer of hardware and software solutions for connected vehicles that allow cars to wirelessly communicate with one another (and with infrastructure) to prevent collisions — among other things.

The investment and strategic partnership essentially aims to bring the “Internet of Everything” to the automotive industry in the hopes of building a safer driving experience, reducing traffic congestion, collisions, runaway Priuses, curbing bad drivers and so on. By making car communication systems faster and more responsive — in a word, smarter — Cohda believes it can potentially prevent over 80 percent of crash scenarios, reducing injuries and fatalities on the road along the way.

In turn, Cohda is also enabling so-called “car-to-infrastructure” communication, which, in conjunction with in-car apps, attempt lower greenhouse gas emissions by changing traffic patterns, alerting drivers of hazards, like oncoming collisions, nearby out-of-control vehicles and by re-routing them to avoid traffic congestion. Via radio technology and smart sensors, car-to-infrastructure comms can enable cars to communicate with smart devices, allowing traffic signals to alert cars that the upcoming light is about to change, for example. Saving you from embarrassment and from causing a 10-car pileup because you were scanning your playlist and didn’t notice the change.

Of course, to work at scale these types of connected-car communications require sophisticated and secure data exchange between moving vehicles, whether in the city or in Podunk — in other words, in a variety of conditions. Yet, while the technology has an array of potential applications and implications, these inter-communications systems are naturally more effective the more vehicles (and anything else for that matter) integrate the technology.

So, to help get the tech on the roads, Cohda has enlisted a dozen European carmakers which have agreed to install its solutions into various lines beginning in 2015 and is currently testing integration in Detroit with eight U.S. carmakers.

While the companies remained silent on the size of their investment in Cohda, it likely isn’t chump change and was enough to bring three mature companies (and two giants) together in a strategic partnership with plans to collaborate in an effort to bring the solutions to market.

While NXP brings its semiconductor and chip tech that’s used in smart automotive, industrial, mobile and wireless applications (it’s also the co-inventor of NFC, along with Sony) and Cohda brings the software and hardware that make advanced radio communication possible, Cisco is leveraging its networking prowess to help supply the Internet. Over the last few years, Cisco has become increasingly interested in enabling the wired car, even creating a separate division dedicated to investing in and developing connected vehicle technologies.

In conversation with the WSJ, NXP’s general manager of car entertainment Torsten Lehmann said that NXP and Cisco put in a lot of due diligence and both concluded that “Cohda’s technology is by far the best.” Throwing their weight behind Cohda, the networking and semiconductor giants are on a mission to help the startup bring its technology to market. And for drivers, that should be great news — even if they have to wait.

More in the announcement here.

Top image source: U.S. Department of Transportation

Leap Motion is announcing today that it has raised $30 million in Series B funding. Co-founder and CEO Michael Buckwald told me that the company is still planning to ship its gesture-based controller sometime during the first quarter of this year, and he’s also announcing a partnership with Asus that should help get Leap Motion into the hands of consumers.

This is just one of the first in a number of deals that the company has in the works with manufacturers and retailers, Buckwald said. In this case, Asus is supposed to bundle the Leap Motion controller with its All-In-One PCs and high-end notebooks. Buckwald said he’ll have other bundling partnerships to announce, as well as deals with other manufacturers to integrate or embed the company’s products: “That’s a huge part of our distribution strategy.”

Why is this appealing to a manufacturer like Asus? Buckwald argued that it’s because Leap Motion can help turn PCs into exciting platforms again. (Though to be clear, he also plans to expand beyond PCs.) Unless they’re serious gamers, most people aren’t taking advantage of the computing power at their command, he said: “They use a tiny fraction of a very powerful processor — they browse the Internet or they use a word processor.” But by allowing users to interact directly with applications by just moving their fingers or hands, Buckwald said that Leap Motion makes a number of “computationally intensive” tasks more accessible — for example, there are apps that allow users to edit music with their hands.

In fact, the company says that that more than 40,000 developers have signed up to develop Leap Motion applications, with 12,000 developer units of the controller already shipped.

Right now, President and COO Andy Miller (a former VP in Apple’s iAd program, as well as co-founder at mobile ad network Quattro) said he’s seeing a mix between existing apps that are adding gesture-based controls and others that are built specifically for Leap Motion.

“As [the Leap Motion] app store matures, we’ll start to see the ratio shift towards apps that are built from the ground up, that are created and designed with this in mind,” Miller said.

You can see the controller in action in the (old-ish) demo video below. It’s supposed to be “iPod-sized,” while creating a 3D interaction space of 8 cubic feet around the user. The company says that the controller tracks individual hands and fingers at a rate of 290 frames per second and can register movements of 1/100th of a millimeter “with no visible lag time.”

This kind of interface sounds exciting, but also like something that might be challenging for consumers to get used to. Buckwald acknowledged that some education might be required, but he said that will happen through “consumers seeing the amazing apps that people have built on top of the platform.” Miller added that in the company’s tests, “it takes a user literally seconds to figure out where to place their hands.”

The combined interest from consumers, retailers, and manufacturers is the reason for the new funding, Buckwald said. Almost all of money will go towards creating new inventory, so that Leap Motion can ship “hundreds of thousands to millions of units.”

The funding comes from existing backers. Buckwald said that selecting the investors for the round was a competitive process, but ultimately the firms who had invested previously won out. One difference this time around — where Highland Capital Partners led the $12.75 million Series A (and participated in the current round), the Series B was led by Founders Fund.

Flipboard has just launched its social magazine app to support Android tablets, including the Nexus 10, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10.1 and Galaxy Tab line.

Flipboard is an app that aggregates your RSS info, social networks, etc. to create a beautiful, flippable magazine. In fact, the app won Best Touch Interface at the 2011 Crunchies. But making sure that interface creates the same experience across all platforms has proven tough, as Flipboard didn’t migrate over to Android at all until June of this year.

Since then, the app’s been available across the entire iOS ecosystem and Android smartphones, and the Kindle Fire and Nook tablets. But today marks a complete expansion into Android.

This is as big as Flipboard’s ever had to go in terms of optimization. But according to the release, Flipboard worked directly with Samsung to optimize page layouts for the wider screen of some Android devices. Users of these larger Android tablets will see larger story excerpts.

It’s unclear whether or not Flipboard will head to Windows Phone next. That seems the logical next step in terms of platform expansion, though there’s no indication that the company has any such plans. Then again, anything can happen. Flipboard may even throw a curve ball and hit BB10 when it finally launches.

A few years ago in Prague I met a guy named Jeffrey Martin who is one of the world’s best panoramic photographers. At that time he had a bunch of weird hardware that took mostly panoramic photos but he’s since branched out to video, building his own methods for capturing 360-degree scenes. The Sphericam is his invention and it looks pretty amazing.

The project is now on Kickstarter and for $599 you can get the entry-level model which includes:

More expensive units include more features topping out at $2,000 for a unit with WiFi streaming and a huge battery for field reporting. Obviously this isn’t for the the dabbler, but it’s still cool that you can get a device that essentially videos an entire environment for less than a price of an entry-level DSLR.

The device takes 1280×1024 video using four 640×512 cameras with 170-degree fisheye lenses. It records directly onto an SD card (or via the network) and includes a small monitor. Jeffrey is doing the engineering in Prague and hopes to commercialize the technology after completing the Kickstarter. He’s off to a very good start.

Why would you want this? Well, you can grab some odd and clever effects like this fisheye video of, well, fish.

You can also take wild video like the bike ride above, which is perfect if you’re making something to show at your next rave or LSD-ingesting party. He’s looking for $10,000, which shouldn’t be hard considering the pricing.

You can check out the Sphericam project here and look at more video.

With the recent resurrection of Jawbone’s Up, as well as news of Nintendo’s planned Wii U FitMeter, it’s become clear that competition in wearables is just now heating up. And now Nike, one of the forerunners of the category, is reaching outside of the box with two new initiatives to propel adoption and expand usability of its activity-tracking devices. Announced as a teaser via its Youtube channel today, NikeFuel Missions — a virtual game — appears designed to motivate users by translating their collected movement data (read: NikeFuel points) into currency for escape from a gaming world “conquered by cold.” Not much else has been made known about the title, but according to the company’s Facebook page, further details will be revealed tomorrow, December 11th. Curious parties can head to that destination site now to sign-up for updates and register to be one of the first in line to play — but be warned, you’ll need a Nike+ device to participate.

Further building upon its work in the wearables space, Nike+’s also announced the creation of a three-month long startup program, dubbed Accelerator. Set to take place in Portland, Oregon this coming March, the initiative will bring together 10 startups for an “immersive, mentor-driven” experience that aims to foster innovation and integration with its Nike+ tech. The deadline for consideration is this February 3rd, so if you think your small company could benefit from a swoosh of support, there’s still plenty of time to apply at the source below. And while you’re at it, be sure to click past the break for a preview of the virtual gaming goods Nike has in store.

Continue reading Nike+ aims to innovate wearable tech with virtual game and startup Accelerator program

Filed under: Wearables

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Source: Facebook (Nike+), Nike