Google patents ad-powered taxis that offer to transport web shoppers to stores

self driving car

Google to offer free rides in self-driving cars for shoppers.

Self-driving cars have a lot to do with Google’s core business selling ads. Google was just awarded a patent for an ad-powered taxi service. The patent would allow advertisers to offer potential customers a free ride to their place of business.

 

 

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Google developing ‘smart’ contact lenses to monitor diabetes

google smart contact lens

Google’s smart contact lens.

Google announced its next big project last week—smart contact lenses intended to help diabetics manage their condition. The tiny contact lens uses a wireless chip attached to a glucose sensor that measures glucose levels in tears.

 

 

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2013 blew apart our notions of privacy

2013 changed everything by demonstrating the extent and power of state — and commercial — surveillance.

2013 was an extraordinary year for those of us who are interested in privacy and data protection. What was previously seen as the domain of paranoid nitpickers has exploded into the public consciousness, shaking international ties and making many people re-evaluate how they live their lives online.

 

 

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Lumus DK-40 Glass to have full augmented reality

Lumus DK-40

Lumus, a transparent display specialist and military head-up screen supplier, is wading into the wearable computing market, revealing a new developer kit that, unlike Google’s Glass, offers full augmented reality support. Set to debut at CES 2014 next month, the Lumus DK-40 monocular dev kit may look ostensibly like Glass at first glance, but where Google’s headset has a small display-block suspended in the corner, the entire right lens of the Lumus wearable is in fact a 640 x 480 display. That means developers building apps for the Android-powered headset can overlay graphics directly on top of the real-world view, rather than simply sliding in separate notifications as Glass does.

 

 

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Google could one day deliver packages with self-driving cars and robots

A Google self-driving car.

Amazon and UPS are looking into package delivery via automated flying drones. But, according to the New York Times, Google’s recent interest in robotics lays out an interesting hypothetical situation: imagine a self-driving car pulling up in your driveway, and a robot getting out to deliver your package instead of a living, breathing UPS human bedecked in brown.

 

 

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Burkhard Bilger on Google’s self-driving car

Google’s self-driving car.

Human beings make terrible drivers. They talk on the phone and run red lights, signal to the left and turn to the right. They drink too much beer and plow into trees or veer into traffic as they swat at their kids. They have blind spots, leg cramps, seizures, and heart attacks. They rubberneck, hotdog, and take pity on turtles, cause fender benders, pileups, and head-on collisions. They nod off at the wheel, wrestle with maps, fiddle with knobs, have marital spats, take the curve too late, take the curve too hard, spill coffee in their laps, and flip over their cars. Of the ten million accidents that Americans are in every year, nine and a half million are their own damn fault.

 

 

Continue reading… “Burkhard Bilger on Google’s self-driving car”

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