Hasta La Gadget!

Is it Wednesday already? It must be, because we’ve got yet another edition of the TechCrunch Droidcast to carry you through the rest of your day (or least the next half hour). This week it’s just Darrell Etherington and I shooting the breeze about the goings-on in the Android world, but there’s plenty for us to dig into.

Samsung has a new tablet for kiddies and confirmed it’ll show off the Galaxy Gear smartwatch next week for starters, and Google has just priced its 8 and 16GB Nexus 4s to move. Meanwhile, poor old HTC may be trying to put together a mobile operating system of its own so it can make some inroads into the Chinese market (and hopefully secure itself a future).

Throw in a bit of Kobo talk (at Darrell’s insistence, being Canadian and all) and a few off-topic moments at the end of the show to tear apart Nintendo’s downright ridiculous 2DS handheld, and you’ve got this installment of Droidcast in a nutshell. Interest piqued? Take a listen below and subscribe to the podcast in iTunes if you’re picking up what we’re putting down.

We invite you to enjoy weekly Android podcasts every Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. Eastern and 2:30 p.m. Pacific, in addition to our weekly Gadgets podcast at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific on Fridays. Subscribe to the TechCrunch Droidcast in iTunes, too, if that’s your fancy.

Intro music by Kris Keyser.

RoboCoin, a kiosk that allows you to trade Bitcoin for other currencies, is now available for pre-order and should be shipping for “Fall 2013.” Lest you decide to become the Bitcoin bank for your neighborhood, remember that the machine costs $20,000 ($18,500 for early birds) and can currently trade BTC for USD.

The device is essentially a hardened, ATM-like machine with biometric time locks and privacy-shielded touchscreen. It can accept and dispense cash (and is “International denomination-ready”) and is Wi-Fi and 3G-enabled.

According to a blog posting the team is ready to change the way Bitcoin is bought and sold.

“RoboCoin represents a compelling investment for business owners,” they write. “They’ll earn a percentage of transactions and attract Bitcoin’s loyal user-base, while also offering unprecedented access and ease-of-adoption to Bitcoin newcomers. Furthermore every Robocoin on the market increases Bitcoin liquidity and usage, putting upward pressure on the digital currency’s valuation, awareness, and legitimacy.”

Robocoin first surfaced in in San Jose at a Bitcoin conference and is directly competing with Lamassu Bitcoin Ventures Bitcoin ATM. This model connects directly to Mt. Gox or Bitstamp, two BTC exchanges, for instant funding.

Having a real, working ATM will add a considerably energy to the Bitcoin market. While these units are arguably expensive (a cheap ATM tops out at about $3,000) it’s clear that the back end is what matters here and not the box. Wheeling one of these into, say, a hacker conference or other con would get you plenty of traffic and improve the standing of Bitcoin in general. Once BTC to other currency transactions are commonplace, it’s clear that cryptocurrencies may have even more of a fighting chance.

Researchers at the University of Washington, Rajesh Rao and Andrea Stocco, have created a remote, non-invasive brain-to-brain interface that allowed Rao to move Stocco’s finger remotely on a keyboard using his thoughts.

“The Internet was a way to connect computers, and now it can be a way to connect brains,” Stocco said in a release. “We want to take the knowledge of a brain and transmit it directly from brain to brain.”

Rao has been working on these interfaces for a decade and brain-to-brain control has been achieved in mice using invasive techniques. This is the first time the process has been used on humans and requires a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil to be placed on the head of the subject. The user in control can then send a signal by reacting to something on a screen or in the room. A electroencephalography machine picks up the brain waves and transmits them to the subject who, in turn, mimics the motion of the controller.

Thus far the team has been able to demonstrate how to play a simple video game remotely. The controller plays in the game in one room in the lab and the sensors pick up his hand motions. The signal to initiate these motions is sent to the subject and, in turn, the subject begins mimicking the actions of the controller using the same game interface, essentially playing the game remotely without seeing the screen.

This is not mind control. The subject cannot be controlled against his or her will and neither party can “read” each other’s thoughts. Think of this as sending a small shock controlled via the Internet to trigger a fairly involuntary motion.

The researchers are planning to expand this to more complex motions and try it on other subjects in the next round of testing.

Iceland-based startup Kúla has devised a hardware extension for digital SLR cameras that lets you create 3D photos and videos. The 3D images are viewable (after converting them with its dedicated software) on a 3D TV or other stereoviewer. They can also be converted to anaglyphs and viewed using a retro pair of 3D viewer glasses if you want to pretend you’re living in the 1970s.

The hardware camera add-on, which is called Deeper, fixes over the SLR’s lens and adds a pair of mirrors either side that are used to capture the dual images required to create the 3D effect. Kúla says it’s generating a “hyper stereoscopic” 3D effect because the distance between the mirrors is greater than the distance between the human eye, which apparently results in a deeper 3D perspective.  They’ve put sample images online if you want to test out their claims (and have some 3D glasses to hand and/or advanced eye-crossing skills).

3D remains a relatively niche technology vs the glorious 2D screen technologies we continually ogle on our phones, tablets, smartwatches, TVs, etc.  3D TV adoption continues to be slow, meanwhile the 3D phones that came along in 2011 went away again in the blink of an eye, after it became apparent no one wanted to buy them. (It’s a slightly happier story for consoles, with Nintendo managing to carve out a market for its 3DS handheld console in Japan, forecasting sales of more than five million units this year.)

Part of the problem with 3D is it typically requires people to replace a perfectly good existing gadget before the end of its useful life. And while viewing 3D content might be of interest once in a while, it’s not necessarily enough of an urge to push an early upgrade. So Kúla’s take — of adding a 3D function to an existing 2D device — makes a lot of sense.  However, it still remains to be seen whether there is enough of a 3D-content generation appetite to raise the €55,000 it’s asking for on Nordic crowdfunding site Karolinafund.com to bring Deeper to market.

If it gets funded, the Deeper add-on will apparently fit lenses of Ø77mm diameter by default. They are also offering Ø52, Ø62, Ø67 and Ø72 mm adapters. The cheapest pledge price to get the Deeper add-on is currently €59. Kúla says it’s hoping to be able to ship to backers in September, assuming its funding flies.

Apple has acquired AlgoTrim, a Swedish startup that builds codecs and designs solutions that maximize performance of data, mobile imaging, video and computer graphics while minimizing memory requirements, according to a new report by Swedish emerging industry news service Rapidus, confirmed separately by TechCrunch. The helps Apple in terms of allowing it to build more efficient media deliver for mobile devices, that use less bandwidth while preserving quality.

The last major news from AlgoTrim came out back in March 2012, when it announced that it would be powering a Photo Album app for Japanese carrier KDDI, via a JPEG processor it created that could improve JPEG processing up to six times vs. traditional LibJPEG standard processing tech used in Android devices. AlgoTrim has been around since 2005, and its flagship product, the Code Compression Library (designed to reduce the size of mobile device firmware) has been in use on mobile devices since 2006.

AlgoTrim deals in all kinds of data compression, and promised to deliver imaging solutions that would deliver “modern computational photography” to mobile devices. Computational photography essentially uses sensors, computing, actuators, intelligent lights and other components to go beyond the current limitations of digital photography, which is based primarily on its analog, film-based precedent. The basic idea is to provide much more accurate images, with sophisticated lighting and vastly improved rendering by straying away from a strictly 2D, pixel-based model of image representation.

The work that AlgoTrim is doing in digital imaging could be very useful to Apple as a means to help the camera powers of its mobile devices jump to the next level. Not to mention that the rest of the company’s tech is generally useful, if extremely technical, in terms of helping to improve the overall operating efficiency of mobile devices. In essence, AlgoTrim focuses on getting more out of mobile processors while also chasing ever-lower power demands.

Rapidus reports that AlgoTrim co-founder, CEO and head of software development Anders Holtsberg recently moved to Silicon Valley and is reachable via Apple’s own central telephone switchboard. Calls to AlgoTrim, as well as AlgoTrim incubator Minc, were met with the response that no one was allowed to discuss anything about an Apple acquisition at this time, a standard response for smaller companies snapped up by Apple. Apple itself hadn’t responded to request for comment as of this writing.

An AlgoTrim acquisition is very much in keeping with Apple’s acquisition strategy; the company has already acquired six companies this year according to reports, including a number of startups dealing with maps, transit and location, along with one semiconductor firm. Typically, Apple has pursued lower profile targets in deals that are seldom formally announced, opting to pick up smaller startups that have the expertise needed to accomplish one of its own goals, rather than purchasing larger companies that are extremely successful in their own right and trying to continue to run that product, as Facebook has done with Instagram, for instance.

Update: Apple has come as close to confirming the acquisition to TechCrunch as it ever does with the following statement:

Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.