Motorola Is Next In Line To Launch Smartwatch This Year; Plans Revealed

The smartwatch war is surely going to heat up as Motorola is planning to jump back and take on the likes of Google, Samsung and Apple in the wearables market. Smartwatches and wearables are one of the hottest segments in mobile technology today. With the launch of MotoG and MotoX, Motorola is riding high on success and now it plans to launch a smartwatch later this year.

According to a report in The Verge, the senior vice president of Motorola Rick Osterloh has shared the plans about their smartwatch being customer-centric so that it addresses consumer issues like style and battery life. Osterloh promised that the finished item will be more a like jewellery piece than any ugly tech. As it can be noticed the majority of the smartwatches at the MWC -- the Samsung Gear 2, the Huawei TalkBand, the Sony Smartwatch 2 -- are all high on tech and low on looks. This news was revealed at a panel discussion at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Currently, the wearables market is completely dominated by the Pebble and Samsung’s line of Gear watches with a Google smartwatch, built by LG is expected to be announced next month which will be available in the market later this year. An Apple smartwatch is also round the corner.

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Motorola’s earlier efforts weren’t known for being stylish or having a great battery life. The ill-fated MotoACTV didn’t have a good battery backup. So it looks like the company is taking efforts to overcome these problems. No further details about the product such as probable release date, price was not disclosed but Osterloh did mention that it was an important area for the company. Let us hope that company’s next watch is a marked improvement over company’s last attempt to build a smartwatch. With Moto G and Moto X receiving critical acclaims, expectations are high.

Do you think Motorola can make it three in a row? Share your views in comments.

Source: TheVerge

Gesture Recognition On Smartphones Can Become A Norm With New Technology From Washington University

he time has come to say goodbye to touch screens and sensing technologies. Yes, controlling smartphones via gestures can soon become a reality and we can do away with sensing technologies which consume a lot of battery power. You will be able to mute the song playing on your smartphone in your pocket by flicking your index finger in the air. This kind of gesture control for electronics could soon become an alternative to touchscreens and sensing technologies. The team who developed this gesture technology is led by an Indian-origin researcher with computer scientists from University of Washington. It is a low-cost gesture recognition system that runs without batteries and lets users control the device with hand movements even if it is out of sight.

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Called ‘AllSee’, the prototype uses existing TV signals as a power source and means for detecting a user’s gestures. An assistant professor at University of Washington, Shyam Gollakota claims that this is the first gesture recognition system that can be implemented for less than a dollar and doesn’t require battery. The researchers have built a small sensor that can be placed on a smartphone or a tablet. The sensor uses an ultra-low-power receiver to extract and classify gesture information from wireless transmissions. When the user gestures with his hand, it changes the amplitude of the wireless signals in the air and then the sensors recognize unique amplitude changes created by specific gestures.

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Although, gesture recognition system is already available on some smartphones such as Samsung Galaxy S4 but users have to first manually enable this feature and if left on, it drains out the phone’s battery very fast. On the other hand, AllSee consumes only tens of microwatts of power and can always be left on. The user could gesture at the phone in a pocket or handbag to change the volume or mute the phone without having to touch or see the phone. This technology can further be implemented on other household electronics and make it possible to interact with devices using gestures.

AllSee has already been tested on smartphones and battery-free sensors and the gestures could be identified more than 90 percent of the time. Eight different hand gestures were used from more than two feet away from the device. The response time of the technology was found to be less than 80 microseconds, 1,000 times faster than blinking an eye.

The new technology is set to be showcased at the 'Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation conference' in Seattle between April 2-4, 2014. Can this technology bring a new storm in the tech world? Share your views with us in comments.

Source: Washington University

Google Chrome 34 Beta Gets Hands Free Voice Search Feature

Google has announced the integration of voice-assist feature to its latest Beta version 34. Until now Chrome users had to use Google's Voice Search Hotword extension to enable the same functionality. This new feature is the highlight of the release and packs several other features which include responsive images along with an unprefixed version of Web Audio API. The latest addition of in-built Voice Search for Windows, Mac and Linux will allow users to do voice searches by simply saying "Ok Google". User will have to open a new tab or visit Google.com in chrome, say "Ok Google" and then start speaking the desired search.

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This functionality needs to be enabled. For that, the user will simply have to visit Google.com, click the mic icon at the right of the text input field and finally hit "Ok Google". The Voice functionality isn't limited to performing searches, answering various questions, doing regular searches, measurements and conversions. This feature can be utilized to do other important tasks such as set a timer by saying "Ok Google, Set a timer of 30 minutes" or make a Google Now reminder by saying "Ok Google, remind me to watch movie at 6 pm tonight".

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Google is also introducing 'srcset' to allow developers to display images based on the resolution of the device. This new version of chrome also supports the Web Audio API for processing and synthesizing audio in web apps out of the box. It comes with new feature called "Supervised Users". This feature allows user to add other user to one account and the account holder can add and supervise multiple users on multiple devices.

To use this feature the admin users will have to navigate through 'Chrome menu' located on the toolbar and enter 'settings' page. On this page, under 'users' section, admins will have to click on 'Add new user' followed by 'import an existing supervised user' and finally select the supervised user. This improvement to supervised users is currently supported on Windows, Mac and Linux. However, it will soon be made available on chromebooks.

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This Beta version 34 will be launched in end of March or start of April. This move adopted by Google can be viewed as a big challenge to Siri and other firms working on voice recognition systems. Does anyone already use this feature in chrome using the optionally installed extension? Share your experiences with us in the comments section below.

source:chromblog

Sketch Programming Language Offers 'Auto-Complete' To Your Code

Meet 'Sketch Programming Language' : developed by engineers at MIT that promises to take out the 'tough' part out of writing code; and make life better for the developers. Sketch Programming Language is a brainchild of Prof. Armando Solar-Lezama (MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science) who wanted programming languages to be smarter enough to allow the developer to omit computational details. Sketch auto fills in the gaps in the code written by developers, quite intelligently. The language currently is being shaped; and if made more user-friendly; the applications of Sketch would be quite wide-spread.

MIT students have already built multiple projects using Sketch - including auto-grading of programming assignments, a complex system that directly turns hand-drawn diagrams into code and a system that generates SQL queries based on Java code. Lezama and his students have shown how Sketch can be used to built complex systems and handle synthesis tasks. The latest version of Sketch is much more efficient. For example, the latest version could fix the code for auto-grading system in a few milliseconds while its earlier version timed-out or just gave up. 



The team behind Sketch however believes that they'll have to go a long way before the programming language can start benefitting commercial software developers. Lezama and team wants developers to dump C programming language and switch over to Sketch; but they know that there's a lot to cover. Professor Rajeev Alur of University Of Pennsylvania says that Sketch being used for commercial software development is a very ambitious & distant goal. As of now, the programming language can be used in very specialised tasks. Sketch however can be incredibly useful in saving time spent in fine-tuning & optimising the code. 
source:mit

Kaspersky Launches A 'Safe' Windows Phone Browser

Windows Phones might not be popular phones in the market but this fact does give it an advantage. Yes, I know that’s being too optimistic, but due to low market shares Windows Phones are not the targets of malware writers which give users a sense of security. With a distant third place in market share, that lack of exposure does not make it the most popular place to create mass exploitations of security vulnerabilities. So, for the time being the platform can be considered devoid of any malware.

The main reason why malware is not running rampant on Windows Phones is the fact that Windows Phone limits, what users and apps can do to increase security. This is achieved through features like sandboxing. However, operating system cannot keep users from visiting the dark corners of Internet. To tackle this problem, Russian security company Kaspersky has decided to help users who navigate through unsafe websites by launching Safe Browser.

The app is designed to help the users browse through the web safely and protect their personal information against theft. Safe Browser is meant for daily use as well as in corporate environments where administrators can control app’s settings and adjust according it to company’s policy. There have been no details as to why Safe Browser is good choice for Windows Phone users but it might surely have some neat tricks up its sleeve. For instance, the browser can be used to block specific type of websites like the ones that feed nudity or violence. Kaspersky joins the likes of Nokia Express, Maxthon, UC Browser to be among the few third-party browsers available on Windows Phone Store. Kaspersky’s Safe Browser can be downloaded fromWindows Phone Store.

A Wi-Fi Virus That Spreads Like A Contagious Disease: A University Of Liverpool Research

A team of researchers from the University of Liverpool School of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science have designed a computer virus that was able to infect and spread across Wi-Fi networks like a contagious disease. The virus titled Chameleon worked in the following manner. First, it detected a list of access points that were inadequately secured. Next it tried to bypass any encryption security and the administrative interface on the access point. After storing the system settings it replaced the original firmware of the access point with the virus loaded firmware. Lastly it reloaded the previously stored system settings of the access point. Once it had taken control of the access point it was able to keep a track on the network traffic passing through it and was able to collect sensitive data like user credentials. The troubling fact with the Chameleon virus is that it never detected by any malware detection software since it never interfered with any data travelling through it. 


While the aforementioned characteristics of Chameleon might seem frightening it’s the next part of the virus that makes it a dangerous threat. Once the Chameleon virus had taken control over the victim’s access point it was then able to seek out other vulnerable access points within the vicinity and was able to attack them without any human input. The virus was clever enough to avoid any heavily secured access points and was able to spot out the weaker ones. The team says that in a densely populated area with lots of Wi-Fi networks the virus spreads like a contagious disease like common cold. They tested this theory by simulating two densely networked urban environments like Belfast and London where the virus could propagate through unsecured networks like the ones you find in coffee shops.
source:crazengineers

WhatsApp to add voice calls after Facebook acquisition

Barcelona:

WhatsApp will add free voice-call services for its 450 million customers later this year, laying down a new challenge to telecom network operators just days after Facebook Inc scooped it up for $19 billion.

The text-based messaging service aims to let users make calls by the second quarter, expanding its appeal to help it hit a billion users, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday.

Buying WhatsApp has cemented Facebook's involvement in messaging, which for many people is their earliest experience with the mobile Internet. Adding voice services moves the social network into another core function on a smartphone.

On Monday, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg defended the price paid for a messaging service with negligible revenue. He argued that rival services such as South Korea's KakaoTalk and Naver's LINE are already "monetizing" at a rate of $2 to $3 in revenue per user per year, despite being in the early stages of growth.

Media reports put WhatsApp's revenue at about $20 million in 2013.

"I actually think that by itself it's worth more than 19 billion," Zuckerberg told the Mobile World Congress. "Even just independently, I think it's a good bet."

"By being a part of Facebook, it makes it so they can focus for the next five years or so purely on adding more people."

WhatsApp's move into voice calls is unlikely to sit well with telecoms carriers.

WhatsApp and its rivals, like KakaoTalk, China's WeChat, and Viber, have won over telecom operators' customers in recent years by offering a free option to text messaging.

Telecom providers globally generated revenue of about $120 billion from text messaging last year, according to market researcher Ovum.

Adding free calls threatens another telecom revenue source, which has been declining anyway as carriers' tweak tariffs to focus on mobile data instead of calls.