Today, on the first day of CES, the world's definitive gadget trade show, the product announcements are flowing thick. What the commenters are ignoring, however, is the basic question of who's stuff looks the best. That's a glaring omission, given how most people shop. But to judge by what we've seen from the big makers like Panasonic, Sony, and LG, Samsung gets the award for best overall design.
Let's be clear: Superlative industrial design still manages to elude the big consumer electronics manufacturers (with the obvious exception of Apple). Getting product design and technology right at the same time often seem like mutually exclusive goals; Bang & Olufsen gear often looks great, but the price points don't justify the performance, while Panasonic and LG, though they make excellent products, always err on the side of blandness. Samsung stands out. This year, their signature line of LCD TV's looks much improved—with clean lines and a mix of textures, rather than the the cheap-o, glossy all-black look and the tendency towards pointlessly rounded edges. Their Blu-Ray players are slick—including a wall-mounted number (seen above) that would look right as the rearview mirror in the next Batmobile. Their new home theater system continues the ominous, monolithic theme (in a good way).
Obviously, all this stuff hews to the familiar 2001-obelisk School of Design. That's still a general shortcoming of almost all Asian electronics makers (and it was what made presented Apple with such an easy point of differentiation). Why doesn't anyone break from the pack, like Apple did? One guess: The risk involved in looking like an oddball. Witness the first-generation brown Zune, which the brand will never shake off. Meanwhile, Sony still seems lost. Take this MP3-player docking sound system. At the drawing board, it would be hard to out-ugly, even if you'd just drunk 15 Redbull-vodkas and had taken advice from a pack of teens reeking of Axe bodyspray:
A new Indian startup says their platform will allow developers to easily write voice-enabled applications using a Web language they already know. It begs the question: do we really want to do everything by speaking?
Voice-activation -- perhaps like the mobile phone watch introduced by LG this week -- seems to be a part of our collective technological conscience, a thing we all just assumed would be a feature of future life. Now that these technologies are possible, we may have to reevaluate whether or not we actually want them (ahem, LG).
Most mobile phones can do voice activated dialing these days, and RIM's [RIMM] BlackBerrys can even do dictated emailing. RCA [VOXX] makes a voice-powered universal remote for your entertainment system. Car-maker Ford's [F] in-dash Sync system can take play songs, and place Bluetooth calls via voice.
Lots of devices are voice-powered, even if most people don't use them that way. After all, not all of us need a new universal remote, or drive a late-model Ford. But would we use it to surf the Web if we could?
The company is called TringMe, and their platform is called VoicePHP. Regular ol' PHP is an existing Web language used to write the front end of dynamic application-rich websites like Facebook and Digg. TringMe says their VoicePHP isn't an extension or add-on that requires any new knowledge; the inputs and outputs simply use speech instead of text on a screen. To see how it works, click here.
Since so many developers already write in PHP, it means they can easily create voice applications for their websites that can both take speech commands and spit out speech of their own. It should make telephony applications easier, too, democratizing some of the functions that took sites like GrandCentral took a long time to pioneer.
In the past, developers who wanted to make Web voice apps needed to use something called VoiceXML, a voice-tailored version of XML, or extensible markup language. But XML was meant to store and present data, not create applications, so it requires lots of new learning, workarounds, and hacks. PHP, by contrast, is a real programming language with real power.
TringMe's APIs will allow developers to build voice apps with front ends in Adobe [ADBE] Air, Flash, AJAX, PHP, HTML and other popular languages, meaning they can be used on smartphone platforms like Windows Mobile and the iPhone OS. TringMe claims that means less time experimenting, lower cost, and less time to market -- with much more breadth of use.
TringMe's founder, Yusuf Motiwala, did stints at Lucent and Texas Instruments before starting up TringMe in Bangalore. His blog can be found here.
But voice-over-IP is, to date, an underachieving technology. While it should have rightfully made telephone communication obsolete, it's never really caught on in mainstream America (though Skype is popular overseas, it is less so in the US). Are we uncomfortable talking at our PCs instead of into our phones?
Perhaps we just prefer to type and read than to hear ourselves jabber. After all -- if speaking was really preferable to typing, then why are text messaging rates going through the roof, despite carriers' price increases? Why hasn't speech-to-text word processing software like Dragon's excellent NaturallySpeaking overtaken typing?
In February, Bill Gates told an audience at Carnegie Mellon that natural language search is "one of the big bets we're making" at Microsoft [MSFT]. ChaCha and Google allow you to do voice searches by phone, but speaking at your PC is an entirely different experience. Whether or not voice-powered technologies go truly mainstream might just depend on the their ubiquity; that, in turn, may depend on the proliferation of voice widgets online, like those created with TringMe.
The intrepid Paul Hochman, author of our wireless electricity feature, was on TODAY this morning cracking geek jokes with Ann Curry. He also demonstrated a few of the wireless electricity gadgets mentioned in his story. Worth watching, if only to hear Curry's candid admission about her sex life.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Last year, 41 Oma premium bluefin tuna were on the block for the New Year's auction at Tokyo's famous Tsukiji Market, the biggest fish market in the world. This year, there were only four--and one of them sold for a seven-year high of $104,000, to be split between Hong Kong and Tokyo sushi bar owners.
Next year, there may be none, say scientists.
The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) is in charge of bluefin stocks around the world. Their own scientists had recommended slashing the international quota to 7500 tons to bring back the enormous, long-lived predator fish from the brink of extinction. Under pressure from the European Union, the Commission instead decided in November to lower the catch only slightly, to 22,500 tons. Greenpeace has determined that because of extensive pirate fishing, the real catch was more like 60,000 tons in 2007. But even the most unscrupulous trawlers can't find as many fish as in the past due to population crashes.
All of this puts innocent wasabi-loving diners in the same position as the Komodo-dragon dining plutocrats in that Matthew Broderick movie The Freshman.
Want to know what to order for lunch? Check out the book Sustainable Sushi or the Environmental Defense Fund's online Sushi Selector.
Image: Flickr
If you find yourself in London anytime in the next month, it's worth trotting over to the V&A museum for a mesmerizing installation. In the museum's gardens, the design studio Universal Everything has set up a screen that displays a sinuous, ever-changing animation alongside a willowy soundtrack that's one half Broken Social Scene, one half New Agey. But what's interesting is that the animation never repeats itself, and neither does the soundtrack. Rather, the form is generated on the fly by a computer program, in response to the music. The music itself is automatically and randomly generated, so that everyday and every minute of the exhibition will be different. As Matt Pyke, Universal Everything's founder, describes it, "We put all of our energy in at the beginning and then just pressed play and let it run."
If you can't make to London, the results are viewable on a podcast. Univesal Everything's website for the project also gives you a close up of the animations, about halfway down.
[Via Creative Review]
The Global Innovation Index, a ranking of 130 countries released yesterday, calls the US the world's number one innovator. The index was created by Soumitra Dutta, a professor at French business school INSEAD, along with New Delhi based non-profit organization The Confederation of Indian Industry.
The global index ranks Germany second, Sweden third, the UK fourth and Singapore fifth. Contrary to what some might expect, China comes in relatively low at number 37, while India stands at number 41.
The ranking is based on indices such as the number of internet users in a nation, the ease of doing business and the stability of banks (that score alone makes surprising that the U.S. tops the list). Every factor is then categorized as either an input or an output, with inputs indicating how conducive countries are to stimulating innovation (these include institutions and policies, human capacity, infrastructure, technological sophistication, business markets and capital). The outputs indicate how effectively countries translate innovation into benefits - like knowledge, competitiveness and wealth.
Everyone agrees that innovation is crucial for the US to dig itself out of the current economic hole. However, innovation is a largely subjective concept. And lately the US is coming under internal criticism for its lack of emphasis on innovation. Last year, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former CTO of Cisco, Judy Estrin, stated that the US is suffering from "a national innovation deficit." And Vinton Cerf, the chief Internet evangelist at Google said, "There is a remarkable telescoping in of vision and an unwillingness to make long-term bets." In 2005, the National Academies published a report showing that the US government's financing of research in the physical sciences was 45 percent less in 2004 than in 1976.
Do rankings such as the Global Innovation Index influence corporate investment decisions? Not much, says Jacob Koshy of Livemint. In India for instance, over the last few years, several large multinationals have made significant investments in research centers.
[via LiveMint.]The Tribot may look a little like something you'd find barring traffic at a construction site, but actually it's a sophisticated robot designed to gather data for climate and environmental research from difficult-to-reach places.
Designed by Jonathan Herrle, Josef Niedermeier and Ralf Kittmann, Tribot disposes with the wheels and treads found on conventional robots and instead uses a very weird locomotion tech. Basically it's an adaptive tetrahedron, with actuators in each "leg" capable of adjusting the overall geometry.
To move in a particular direction it changes shape until its new center of gravity tips it over--a way of moving that's particularly effective in the mountainous and glaciated locations it's intended for. At its core sits its webcam-equipped control unit that will also house sensors. Clever stuff, which is probably why it's up for a 2009 iF design award.
All-terrain robotics isn't new. Late last year a robot designed by a British PhD student hit the news. Dubbed the Jollbot, it too uses an alternative drive mechanism: It's a collection of springy metal bars in a spherical shape that also has adaptive geometry. In this case it's powerful enough to let the robot leap over potential obstacles--exactly the sort of all-terrain roving ability well suited to robotic exploration of other planets.
And then there's the continued research into swarm robotics. These are machines with multiple smaller component robots that combine Transformers-like into a larger machine with the ability to traverse terrain that an individual bot couldn't: exactly like this technology demonstrator built by University of Pennsylvania scientists.
And, of course, groups like NASA are seriously into this: the administration's ATHLETE program is designed to investigate all-terrain roving robots that could one day explore planetary surfaces either manned or unmanned.
Though it's got pretty conventional electric motor-driver wheels, it too adapts its geometry to tackle difficult terrain: looks like adaptive structures is one certain future direction for robotics.
Remember the "Bird's Nest" stadium from the Beijing Olympics? It's creators were the starchitects Herzog & deMueron and the Chinese artist AiWeiWei. Happily, the two are still collaborating: This time, they're trying to bring avant-garde housing to the prime locale of...inner Mongolia. Seriously.
Ordos 100, first announced last spring, would comprise 100 houses, designed by 100 architects chosen by Herzon & DeMueron. From the outset, the whole thing felt like a publicity/ponzi scheme--the budget was a laughably scant $5 million, even though the each house was to be 1,000 square meters (over 10,000 square feet). And nevermind the matter of convincing design afficandoes to live in inner Mongolia, which is dominated by the sometimes scalding, frequently freezing Gobi desert.
So it's been utterly surprising that the design schemes are still trickling out—several have been unveiled in the last month. Say what you will about the project's baseline ridiculousness, some of the housing designs have been remarkable. In fact, it's almost become an index of what's on the minds of the world's youngest, cleverest architects.
The Ordos 100 website is useless. But here are three of the most interesting projects gleaned from various design blogs: The design by MOS (pictured above) is a cluster of rooms topped by "solar chimineys" to deal with the seasonal temperature fluxuations. Below, Estudio Barozzi Veiga create a house with a tent-like roof, to echo traditional yurts:
nArchitect's scheme (below) involves a well-insulated "inner" house, and a more seasonal "outer" house punctuated by gardens and terraces:
It's official: Living in a city is bad for your brain--or so says some new research by University of Michigan scientists. Specifically, the team of psychologists found that being in an urban environment depresses memory performance and attention spans.
It's a fascinating discovery, to say the least. Our modern society has progressed in leaps and bounds as people converse, exchange ideas and develop new technologies in urban environments. The city is an intellectual meeting place, center of commerce and transportation. But it seems from this new research that even ten minutes spent walking in a busy city street affects our core mental functions.
The researchers collected data by equipping volunteers with GPS tracking units, and having them walk different routes through Ann Arbor--some down main city streets, some through Nichols Arboretum and the University's Matthaei Botanical Gardens. The volunteers then underwent psychological tests that profiled their attention span and memory performance. Those who walked through natural environments scored significantly higher on both aspects. Fascinatingly, similar results were achieved when the subjects were subjected to a sequence of photos of urban or natural environments: 20% higher scores for those who had a glimpse of nature.
"Interacting with nature can have similar effects as meditating," according to team-member Marc Berman, also noting that "People don't have to enjoy the walk to get the benefits." It seems that it's just the presence of a natural environment that makes the difference--the team found similar results in balmy weather or when it was freezing outside.
Natural settings, it seems, apply less of a load on our cognitive processes, compared to the flurry of inputs and choices an urban environment--with all its people, traffic, technology and artificial shapes and sounds--makes. Somehow this has knock-on effects deep in our brains. Of course this study simply exposes the results, and an understanding of the mental mechanisms that drive this behavior is much more complex. But it's clear that our brains developed as we evolved in a natural environment.
And at least the study found that the beneficial effects of a natural environment counteract the negative effects of an urban one--to sharpen up your brain, you simply need to go outside and find a park to stroll in.
The team's work is likely to have an impact on helping people suffering mental fatigue, and is sure to pique the interests of urban planners. As Berman puts it "It's not an accident that Central Park is in the middle of Manhattan. They needed to put a park there."
I don't know about you, but I'm instantly switching my screensaver to a bunch of photos of forests and lakes and waterfalls--as long as I can concentrate long enough to remember that's what I want to do.
Apple's MacBook Air is about as far as Apple will go towards a netbook currently--touting its super-thin sized ultraportability. But MSI knows a good idea when it sees it, and the company has stepped up with its own super-slim x320...which looks almost identical to the Air.
Right down to the aluminum finish, curved edges to the screen and keyboard, 13.4-inch screen, large trackpad with a single button, curved back and positioning of some of the machine's ports. It's not quite so skinny, at 1.9cm deep across its whole width, but it's close. It's also got a glossy black screen bezel more akin to the standard MacBooks, but the overall similarity is so shocking that it's a wonder Apple's lawyers aren't in action right at this moment.
Inside the machine it's a different story of course. Apple's ultraportable is sold on its merits as a full-power machine. But MSI's offering has an Atom CPU ticking away inside (suspected to be a Z530 at 1.6MHz) which means it simply can't offer the raw processing power of the Mac. The pre-production model does however have 2GB of RAM installed and runs Windows Vista basic.
But in terms of ports the X320 out-does the Air: it's got 3 USB sockets versus the Air's single, Ethernet and VGA-out without requiring a connector/adapter, and a microphone and headphone port. It's also got a card reader.
The Atom processor helps it trump the Air's battery life too: MSI is claiming 10 hours (though that's most likely under pretty tightly-controlled conditions.)
All in all, the MSI seems a pretty amazing machine, and it's competing in a slightly different market to the Air. When it debuts in April for between $700 and $900, expect it to fly off the shelves--after all, it's sleek borrowed-from-Apple looks are way better than most netbooks. And at that price, it won't be long until someone hacks OS X onto it to make an even closer Air clone.
[via MSI, Softpedia, Mobilemagazine]
