Futurist Ray Kurzweil has some ambitious plans for search at Google. Kurzweil joined Google at the end of last year as director of engineering and he became famous for creating the first text-to-speech software. He’s also been called “the ultimate thinking machine.”
Private drones have the potential to invade privacy.
Google’s Eric Schmidt went on record saying last week that cheap, miniature “everyman” drones should be banned by international treaties. Schmidt wants to keep such devices from falling into the hands of terrorists, but he also worries about their potential to invade privacy. Let’s say, for example, you were having a dispute with a neighbor. “How would you feel if your neighbor went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their back yard. It just flies over your house all day,” Schmidt asked. “How would you feel about it?”
iTunes has a long and successful history of commercial transactions, so people feel comfortable clicking and shopping and buying on iOS.
The mobel advertising market is booming and it has grown from $1.4 billion in 2011 to $4.1 billion in 2012, and it’s projected to hit a massive $7.3 billion in 2013.
And almost all of it is spent on Apple’s ecosystem.
7659.com is a Chinese “app store” that is using Apple’s own bulk enterprise licensing technology to distributed pirated apps to Chinese iPhone and iPad users, completely free.
Futurist Thomas Frey: Hearing aids are for old people. At least that’s what I thought when I was young and invincible attending rock concerts far louder than they should have been.
The DEV-50V lets you record what you’re looking at while you’re still looking at it through the lenses.
A new pair of binoculars with digital technology has been unveiled by Sony. The binoculars will allow you to record whatever you view. This is a kind of digital device that may actually be an improvement on its analog counterpart.
Research efforts have shown how to effectively mobilize many people on social media for a common task.
Online crowds like the online community Reddit and some Twitter users were criticized for pillorying an innocent student as a possible terrorist suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. But some emerging technologies might be able to help knock down false reports and wring the truth from the fog of social media during crises.
Urban architecture could take on a much different form as scientists make huge strides in robotics, natural building materials, and new construction methods.
Cities are complex ecosystems and they are confronting tremendous pressures to seek optimum efficiency with minimal impact in a resource-constrained world. While architecture, urban planning, and sustainability attempt to address the massive resource requirements and outflow of cities, there are signs that a deeper current of biology is working its way into the urban framework.
Early adopters of the “learn to code” movement are using different education programs at different stages of their development.
People learning to code can actually do it efficiently part-time. Adults with full-time jobs can learn to code part-time. This means people whose schedules are full and who can’t afford to quit and pay college tuition at a traditional University.
With the coming of the Internet of Things chips need to be more efficient, powerful—and even smaller than they are now. In all categories, Freescale Semiconductor is making waves. And their most recent contribution, the Kinetis KL02, is one of the smallest microcontrollers in the world.
Bulky devices are an obvious flaw for those interested in Harry Potter-style applications.
Invisibility cloaks put forward by scientists have been fairly bulky devices, until now. University of Texas at Austin researchers have now developed a cloak that is just micrometers thick and can hide three-dimensional objects from microwaves in their natural environment, in all directions and from all of the observers’ positions.