Robo-mate exoskeleton under development in Europe

Efforts to develop an exoskeleton for the workplace are under way, backed by EU funds.

Twelve research institutions from seven European countries are involved in the Robo-mate project, which hopes to test a robotic suit that can be worn by factory employees within three years.
They say the machine could reduce the number of work-related injuries.

One expert warned employers would need to be convinced the equipment would not pose safety issues of its own.

Manufacturers including Italian carmaker Fiat and the French vehicle recycler Indra are working with the teams.

The companies will suggest situations in which the tech could prove useful and have also said they would help test it.

The EU has committed 4.5m euros (£6m; £3.8m) to the scheme.

Heavy weights

The project aims to address the fact that many manufacturing tasks are difficult to automate.

For example Indra has to deconstruct many different types of car, and at present humans, rather than robots, are the only ones capable of handling the complexity of the choices involved.

Because of the weights involved, this can put staff at risk of developing medical problems.

"People have to manipulate parts or components that weigh more than 10kg [22lb]," said Dr Carmen Constantinescu, from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute, one of the organisations involved.

"These activities are not carried out just once per day, but are repetitive.

"An exoskeleton with a human inside represents a new type of research for the manufacturing industry.

"It offers a hybrid approach in which the robotic parts support the human who can provide the decisions and cognition needed."

The partners have highlighted a study by the UK's Work Foundation think tank that suggested as many as 44 million people in the EU have suffered work-related musculoskeletal disorders.

Not all would be preventable by such an exoskeleton, and one of the other researchers involved said part of the challenge would be indentifying where the tech could prove useful.

"One area would be, is it useful to lift heavy loads?" Prof Darwin Caldwell, from King's College London, told the BBC.

"The other is situations when people are working above their head.

"If you hold a paint brush or a screwdriver above your head for more than two to three minutes your arms become very fatigued and it can be very bad for your heart."

However, he said the engineering teams were mindful of the risks involved.

"At the minute the motors or hydraulic systems required tend to be rather large and clumsy," Prof Caldwell said. "What we have to do is find ways to miniaturise those.

"What we also have to remember is that an exoskeleton is essentially a robot in physical contact with a human.

"That raises safety issues so we will be looking at making the interaction between the two softer and more organic - it won't be like having a large industrial robot which is dangerous."

The researchers have already suggested some of the technologies they plan to include

One roboticist who is not involved in the project said he expected such technology to become commonplace within the next two to three decades.

"A number of exoskeletons have been developed for military use in the US, and for helping the disabled and frail older people to walk again in Japan - industrial use is an obvious next step," said Prof Noel Sharkey, from the University of Sheffield.

"But one hard problem is how the human user interfaces with the device. It is vital that the operator can perform dextrously with natural movements without having to think about it.

"Another problem is how to work in environments with other humans without hurting them. This will require new natural collision avoidance methods."

How iPhone 5S makes your finger into a password

The most impressive feature of the new iPhone 5S may be its ability to turn your finger into a password.

Touch ID is Apple's name for a new fingerprint scanner that would act as a security tool for log-ins and for making purchases from iTunes and other Apple stores.

"Your fingerprint is one of the best passwords in the world," said Dan Riccio, a senior vice president for hardware design at Apple, in a promotional video. "It's always with you and no two are exactly alike."

Apple unveiled the iPhone 5S, along with a cheaper, simpler iPhone 5C, at an event Tuesday at the company's California headquarters.

On the new 5S, the Home button will be made of sapphire crystal and act as a reader. According to Apple a fingerprint -- up to five prints from different users, depending on who else shares your phone -- can be read by the sensor from any angle to give access the same way a password does currently.

The fingerprint data is encrypted, Riccio said, and stored internally on the phone.

"It's never available to other software and it's never stored on Apple's servers or backed up to iCloud," he said.

The iPhone isn't the first phone to have a fingerprint sensor. In 2011, the Motorola ATRIX 4G included one, though adoption among users wasn't particularly high and the company eventually discontinued the feature. And at least one Android phone to be released this year also will have the technology, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Some laptops and PCs have had fingerprint readers for several years now. But the technology has never really caught on, with users often complaining about them being balky and unreliable.

Maybe Apple can change that.

"Fingerprint sensors have come a long way," said Michael Barrett, president of the Fast Identity Online Alliance, an industry group advocating for universal security authentication tools. "They are by and large much better quality now and very readily able to detect 'Is this just an image of a finger or a real-life finger?'"

But while he called Touch ID "an exciting announcement," Barrett still sees some problems.

First, he said, fingerprint scanning still isn't perfect. He mentioned his wife, an artist, who has trouble accessing her PC with a fingerprint scanner when she's been working with plaster, which dries out her hands.

"Like many biometrics, it falls slightly into 'your mileage may vary,'" he said. "If it works for you, great. But it may not work for you all the time."

The former chief information security officer at PayPal, Barrett also sees limitations to using the system for online purchases. While it may work fine on iTunes or in the App Store, it's not likely other Web retailers are going to spend millions of dollars to make their systems accommodate an Apple feature used on fewer than 17 percent of the world's smartphones.

That means iPhone 5S owners who used Touch ID for purchases inside Apple's "walled garden" would still need to use other security tools to shop elsewhere with the same phone.

David Rogers, director of the Columbia Business School's Digital Marketing program and executive director of its Center for Global Brand Leadership, called Touch ID one of several "nice," but ultimately underwhelming, features on the iPhone 5S.

"Touch ID ... could have been that killer app. But so far, it's just a feature that saves you a couple seconds logging in," he said.

"If they can manage to link it to multiple profiles on a device, like the new Google Nexus tablets, or make it a password to controlling smart devices in the home -- your stereo, thermostat, etc. -- that could make for a truly killer feature. But they just didn't get there today."

Paco Hope, principal consultant at software security firm Cigital, said that, if nothing else, Apple will widely expand the public's understanding of the use of biometrics in the digital world.

"People's ideas about biometrics were as informed by Hollywood as they were by real products and experiences," he said. "Now, when someone asks the value of a fingerprint scanner, we can point to the iPhone and use it as a reference, for better or worse.

"Esoteric and academic theories of usability, reliability, false positives, false negatives, and so on will suddenly be tested by millions of real users in real situations."

Why you can't vote online yet

Online voting companies like Everyone Counts, whose system is shown here, face a slew of obstacles in the U.S. - even as other countries take the digital plunge.

Online voting is taking off in local elections, particularly overseas. But Americans shouldn't expect to vote for the president on their laptop or iPad anytime soon.

The battle over whether to digitize the voting process has become a full-blown war in the United States, even as countries like Canada, Norway and Australia have increasingly adopted online systems. Proponents say going digital will boost voter turnout, while naysayers cite hacking and other security threats as risks too great to overcome in the near future. 

"It's such a different world than it was 20 years ago, and yet very little has changed in our voting process," says Rob Weber, a former IT professional at IBM (IBM, Fortune 500), who started the blog Cyber the Vote in 2010. 

Like many supporters of online voting, Weber points out that many young Americans don't vote. Bringing the voting process to a format they're familiar with -- a website on a PC, tablet, or even a mobile phone -- would overcome the "enthusiasm gap," he believes.

But that argument hasn't been enough to bring online voting into the mainstream. For that, Weber places the blame squarely on election officials whom he says aren't interested in changing the status quo.

"They find online voting culturally distasteful," Weber says. "They bring up theoretical hacking situations in order to make people afraid of the concept of change. And unfortunately it works."

Security researchers don't think those concerns are merely theoretical. Michael Coates, chair of the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) and director of security assurance at Firefox maker Mozilla, says hackers will attack anything worth hacking. 

"It's guaranteed that such a system [online voting] would be attacked, for sure," Coates says. "All important systems, from financial to government, face skilled hackers. There are security flaws in every system; it's a matter of how you detect and respond to them." 

Home PCs, in particular, are susceptible to a myriad of cyberattacks that could be used to alter a user's vote.

"Until we can reliably foil malware and viruses -- and who knows when that will be -- it's hard to consider a system in which we vote from our home computers," Coates says.

Such issues have felled some past attempts at online voting in the United States.

In 2004, the military began testing the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE), which would have let service members stationed overseas vote online in the general election. But Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz scrapped the plan after government-commissioned studies warned of extensive security flaws. 

Another oft-cited failure came in 2010, when Washington, D.C., conducted a pilot project to allow overseas or military voters to download and return absentee ballots over the Internet. Before opening the system to real voters, D.C. invited the public to evaluate whether the system could be hacked.

It was. Within 36 hours of going live. 

A University of Michigan team "found and exploited a vulnerability that gave us almost total control of the server software, including the ability to change votes and reveal voters' secret ballots," professor J. Alex Halderman later wrote in a blog post about the hack.

Halderman termed the system "brittle" and proclaimed online voting too dangerous to implement anytime soon. 

"It may someday be possible to build a secure method for submitting ballots over the Internet, but in the meantime, such systems should be presumed to be vulnerable based on the limitations of today's security technology," he wrote.

Such high-profile debacles are a difficult obstacle for online voting companies like Everyone Counts, says CEO Lori Steele.

"The problem with the D.C. hacking is that it was a less-than-mediocre system run by people who had no experience," Steele says. "When people use it as an example, it's like, c'mon -- those issues were all security 101." 

Bad PR for any online voting attempt undermines the entire cause, Steele says. Still, California-based Everyone Counts has run online elections for local and municipal contests in U.S. locations including West Virginia, Honolulu, El Paso, Chicago and Washington state, in addition to the United Kingdom and Australia.

Everyone Counts uses "military-grade encryption" for its ballots, and can also provide a paper trail for clients who want it, Steele says. A "transparent code" policy allows any client to inspect the company's source code. 

While Steele admits that online voting, like any system, is susceptible to attacks, she thinks the sheer number of devices in the wild would make it difficult for would-be hackers to hit their targets.

"They don't know which PCs or tablets or phones will be used for voting," Steele says. "Plus, people talk about paper being the Holy Grail of security, but that is so far from reality."

The biggest limitation of paper ballots was on display last week, when Hurricane Sandy decimated parts of the northeastern United States. The storm's destruction cut many voters off from their scheduled polling station. 

On Saturday, New Jersey announced that displaced storm victims will qualify as "overseas voters," meaning they are eligible to vote via e-mail or fax.

"The storm was awful, but it could serve as a wider reminder that we need to reform the system," says Michelle Shafer, director of communications at Scytl USA. 

Scytl's Spanish parent company has conducted online voting in over 30 countries worldwide. In the U.S., it's slowly gaining steam. The company has completed online "ballot delivery" -- digitally delivering a paper-ballot-like form that voters can fill out and submit -- in six U.S. states. Those digital ballots are typically used by military members and overseas residents. It has also run direct online voting for local elections in West Virginia, Florida and Alaska. 

"I don't think we'll be voting online by [2016's general election], but my hope is that we'll continue to take slow and measured steps toward that eventuality," she adds.

While the United States takes it slow, countries like Canada and Norway continue to expand online voting.

Dean Smith, president and founder of Canada's leading online-voting firm, Intelivote, says the divide between his home country and the United States is vast. Popular Canadian labor unions have used online voting for years -- which means users have grown accustomed to the process -- and the country's ballots tend to be far less complex than those in the United States.

"In general, people here see the benefits of online voting and there's an acceptance," Smith says of Canada. "The U.S. would be a great coup, but there are so many academics who made their name by being naysayers. There's so much fighting about it. Right now, we don't need the additional problems."

 

Google Introduces New Desktop Apps

A screen shot of the new Chrome app launcher for Windows desktops.

Even if Google is ready to live entirely online, everyone else might not be. 

To celebrate the Google Chrome browser’s fifth birthday on Thursday, the company expanded its ambitions in computing by introducing a new kind of Chrome app that runs offline and on other operating systems besides Google’s.

If trying to figure out what that means makes your head spin, you’re not alone.

Until now, Google’s Chrome Web apps worked only online. The new apps combine the best of online and offline apps, the company says, similar to the apps on a smartphone. For instance, they allow people to work without an Internet connection and plug in hardware like digital cameras. But since they are written in Web programming languages, they can sync across devices, back up to the cloud and receive automatic security updates.

So far, there are only a few such apps, like Pixlr Touch Up for photo editing and Wunderlist for to-do lists. But the development has important implications for the way we use computers and the way Google competes with rivals like Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft made a  similar move with Windows 8.

The surprising part is that Google’s Web apps now work not just on the company’s own Chromebooks, but also on Microsoft Windows machines and, soon, on Macs, as long as they have the Chrome browser.

For Google, it is a way to promote its own services even for people who use computers made by other companies or who have been turned off by the need for an Internet connection to use Google Web apps.

“It’s really increasing the competitiveness or the appeal of Google Apps for people who don’t want to pay for Microsoft Office,” said Frank E. Gillett, an analyst studying computing platforms at Forrester.

It is also an acknowledgment that Google’s dream of a world in which  everyone lives on the Web — always with an Internet connection and without desktop software, which Chromebooks do not have — is not a reality, at least not yet.

“It’s an admission that their original vision was over-simplistic,” Mr. Gillett said. “I agree with the notion that online cloud services are becoming an important part of the experience of using software. But where the Google guys got mixed up was the notion that it’ll all be inside this thing called the Web browser.”

Though Erik Kay, a Chrome engineering director at Google, said in a blog post that the company still believes in the Web, he said it also acknowledged that people need some of the functionality provided by software installed on devices.

Though low-end Chromebooks, which Google has shifted to marketing as a second computer just for Web access, have sold well, the Chromebook Pixel,  Google’s $1,300 laptop and MacBook competitor, is a hard sell because it has no hard drive or desktop software. The new Chrome apps could change that.

“Even though the P.C. market is in decline, the form factor isn’t going to disappear,” said Brian Blau, a research director at Gartner who studies consumer technology. “Google has a lot of goals in trying to get businesses and education and markets like that, and having the laptop form factor could be important for them.”

Google’s move seems mostly aimed at courting software developers, Mr. Blau said. Instead of being forced to choose among operating systems, they can just write apps for the Web that run on a variety of systems.

Google’s message to developers is, “This is one more reason that app developers should come and use Google products over their competitors,” he said. “That’s the bottom line.”

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo completes 2nd powered flight

Ride aboard Virgin Galactic spacecraft

Billionaire Richard Branson's planned commercial spacecraft had a successful test flight Thursday, rocketing into the skies over California after being dropped from its carrier plane, his company announced.

Branson's Virgin Galactic said SpaceShipTwo broke the sound barrier, climbed from 42,000 feet to 69,000 feet over the Mojave Desert under rocket power and descended using its tilt-wing "feathering" maneuver. It's the second powered flight for SpaceShipTwo, which is designed to carry up to six passengers on what will be suborbital flights at first.

"In addition to achieving the highest altitude and greatest speed to date, the test flight demonstrated the vehicle's full technical mission profile in a single flight for the first time ... All of the test objectives were successfully completed," the company said.

In a video showing highlights of Thursday's test flight, Branson said Virgin Galactic plans to start taking passengers aloft in 2014 -- a slight delay from the December 2013 marker he set down at Britain's Farnborough International Airshow in June.

"Virgin Galactic is now gearing up for the commercial service, finalizing cabin interiors, flight suits, training programs and the multiple other details required to offer hundreds of aspiring astronauts a safe and awe-inspiring journey," he said.

More than 500 would-be astronauts, including actor Ashton Kutcher, have so far signed up for the two-hour, $200,000-a-seat flights. Virgin executives have said they expect to have 600 bookings in the first two years of service.

Xbox One to launch in major markets on 22 November

Microsoft positions the arrival of its next-gen console between the US and European launch dates for Sony's PS4

Xbox One: Microsoft's next-gen console will launch in major markets on 22 November. Photograph: Nick Adams/Reuters

This is it: the battle for the next generation console market is on. Microsoft has finally revealed the launch date for its Xbox One machine – it will hit retail in 13 major territories including North America and the UK on 22 November. 

It is an interesting and provocative timing. With Sony's rival PlayStation 4 console arriving in North America on 15 November and Europe on 29 November, Microsoft has chosen a more ambitious rollout right in the middle of its competitor's launch period. Neither manufacturer has provided a firm date for a Japanese release, reversing the traditions of previous console cycles where new devices tended to premiere in Japan.

In a statement on the Xbox Wire website, Yusuf Mehdi, the vice-president of marketing, strategy and business for Xbox wrote: "The culmination of many years of listening to you, our fans, developing innovative technology, and partnering with the best game and entertainment partners in the industry has brought us to this point. There is still a lot more work to do, but the teams are making excellent progress and are focused on launch."

Officially announced in May, the Xbox One console has had a rough journey toward its launch. Microsoft's intitial focus on the video-on-demand and live television capabilities of its machine alienated gamers, as did early indications that the console would restrict the sale of pre-owned games and that the Kinect camera device would need to be permanently switched on for games to work. Microsoft later controversially reversed these policies and since then has worked to improve the image of its device. The company enjoyed a comparatively successful showing at the recent Gamescom festival in Cologne, revealing a Call of Duty console bundle deal, as well as free copies of Fifa 14 for pre-orders of the special Day one edition of the machine.

With both "next-generation" consoles arriving on shop shelves within weeks of each other, this is one of the closest console wars the industry has seen. There was almost a year between the debut of the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, for example.

It is expected that the arrival of new hardware will provide a major boost to the $60bn a year games industry, which has seen software and hardware sales falling over the last two years. Interest in the new consoles has been huge, despite competition from devices such as smartphones and tablets. Sony has announced that 1m pre-orders have been received for the PlayStation 4, and while Microsoft hasn't provided figures, many stores have closed pre-orders for the machine, or have stopped guaranteeing that reserved machines will be available on day one. According to gaming news site Videogamer, UK chain GAME is now informing customers that the only way to now secure an Xbox One on day one is to pre-order the Call of Duty: Prestige Edition bundle – at £615. With shipments of the Xbox One allegedly reduced due to poor yield rates of camera and disc drive components – the launch date may well prove to be rather meaningless to ill-prepared shoppers who turn up on the day.

The big question now is, how will gamers, and mainstream consumers, decide between such closely placed competitors. Both machines feature eight-core CPUs and powerful AMD graphics processors, and both have built-in Blu-ray drives as well as advanced online functionality. While on paper, the PlayStation 4's specs seem more powerful, it's likely that developers will quickly work out ways to exploit the hardware so that technical differences become negligible.

If it's down to price, the PlayStation 4 comes in at $399 (£349) while the Xbox One will cost $499 (£429), although the latter comes with the Kinect motion controller, while the PS4's motion control and camera peripheral is sold separately.

It's just as likely, however, that games will be the deciding factor. While both will boast major third-party titles such as Fifa 14, Call of Duty Ghosts and Watchdogs, Sony has the platform exclusive racing game DriveClub, sci-fi shooter Killzone and cute adventure platformer Knack, while Microsoft can call on the hugely popular Forza Motorsport 5, zombie romp Dead Rising 3 and classic reboot Killer Instinct.

However the competition is decided, we at least now know when it starts.

US Open Tennis App Is a Smash

The US Open app is heavily influenced by Twitter, and throughout the app you'll find current tweets on the players and the matches. The Dashboard gives you an overview of tweets, letting you get perspectives from other fans as well as connect and engage. The Trendcast feature monitors Twitter activity, alerting you to matches that look like they're becoming awesome slugfests.

 

Second-screen or only screen, the official USTA US Open Tennis Championships for iPad app brings some of the greatest hardcourt tennis in the world into your hands, wherever you happen to be. Right there, the app starts off on a great footing for tennis fans. Fortunately, through nimble footwork and a lot of great serving, the app does a decent job of keeping you updated on all the action at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, N.Y.

Oh, and you often get to watch matches live, too.

The app is actually produced by IBM in partnership with the US Open, and because the core foundation behind the digital experience and analytics is provided by IBM -- which also provides similar services for all four of the hot Grand Slam tennis tournaments each year -- the app is similar to those for Wimbledon, the French Open, and the Australian Open.

You can expect to find not only the current scores, draws, photos and news, but also a wealth of smart analytics that crunches more than 41 million data points to deliver insight into how well a player is performing against historical match data.

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Analytics Aplenty

Keys to the Match lets regular fans drill down to look at IBM's analysis while a match is a being played and learn, for example, that a player has three key performance metrics that, if fulfilled, will likely lead to a win -- according to the numbers, of course.

Interestingly, keys for each player are usually not the same. One player may need to win 78 percent of points on first serves, so winning just 75 percent wouldn't bode well overall. Another metric might be a need to win more than 53 percent of 4 to 9 shot rallies. In one match I was following, the underdog needed to serve astoundingly well in order to pull off a likely win, blasting more than 18 percent of first serve points with an ace.

This sounds wild, but serious tennis fans can see where this sort of measuring actual performance during game play matters. Although it's information fans might know intuitively -- the underdog better deliver some blistering serves -- seeing it turned into graphs through the app is undeniably cool.

Yet true fans know something else, too: Tennis is a sport, and at any moment the advantage can turn. If players are still playing, it's always possible for either to win.

What's in the App

The US Open app is heavily influenced by social media, primarily Twitter activity, and throughout the app you'll find current tweets on the players and the matches. The Dashboard gives you an overview of tweets, letting you hear perspectives from other fans as well as connect and engage.

The Trendcast feature monitors Twitter activity, alerting you to which matches might be turning into awesome slugfests. You can also slide through each current match in the Dashboard and see the score, who's serving, and what the latest tweets are. If the match is available to watch live, there's a red Watch Live button that will take you to the match.

From the Scores section, you can tap on a match and launch into an analytics dashboard that shows first serve percentages, double faults, winners, unforced errors and the like, connected to the aforementioned Keys to the Match.

Unfortunately, the app doesn't provide you a quick link from this area to the live match -- and vice versa. On my iPad, for example, if I tap on the SlamTracker button while watching a live match, it doesn't seem to do anything; however, if I click on the SlamTracker button on the usopen.org website, it launches a Web browser pop-up window that loads the SlamTracker data points. Similarly, if I click on a Watch Live button on the website, it will launch a popup window that delivers the live action.

In this situation, my Mac-based experience is better than my iPad experience.

One of my favorite features of the app is actually old-school: the photos. The US Open team has total access to everything, of course, and the photographers deliver fantastic action shots. They give you a sense of being on the court and you can see your favorite players in stunning detail -- and occasionally sporting some contorted faces as they attempt to crush the ball.

All-in-all, for tennis fans, there's no downside to getting this free app. You can quickly check up on the draw and scores, and even catch a bit of the action live, if not feel a little more connected to the world of tennis via Twitter.

HomeMonitor security camera review

The HomeMonitor from Y-Cam makes a web-based CCTV system easy for anybody. But it comes at a price, says Matt Warman 

Where once a domestic CCTV system was the preserve of the paroanoid or the oligarch, today the web makes it easy and fairly affordable.

The trouble is that what can be done by a geek for about £50 is also quite tricky to pull off for the mainstream consumer, and hence the rise of a host of various solutions to make the process rather easier. Some of these attempt to utilise existing, redundant mobile phones, whose cameras may be able to become webcams that act as anything from a baby monitor to a security solution, while others use fuller service solutions. Some record to hard discs, while other, more sophisticated, use the cloud. 

HomeMonitor is one of the latter. Made by Y-Cam it offers indoor cameras from £166, outdoor versions from £291 and free online storage for the last seven days, with more available if you want it for a one-off charge. An app or a web viewer lets you see what’s going on and notifications tell you if movement has been detected, in zones you can specify. Night vision makes these useful when it’s dark, which is more than your recycled smartphone could likely offer. 

All of this makes for a superb system that is easily set up – plug in the camera, enter its unique code, and away you go. Wireless or wired options are supplied, and screwing the robust yet lightweight cameras to the wall is straightforward. 

Critics will suggest that this is much more money than anyone needs to spend – Y-Cam is not the cheapest way of setting yourself up with an external camera. But the app is straightforward, the website decent enough and the various controls make it easy to define specific areas that are the ones where movement between certain times might make you suspicious.

All of this adds up to a powerful if pricey system, adding the web to an existing idea, and removing the need for tapes.

Rival systems do exist – electronics giant Maplin sells huge amounts of the UK’s CCTV cameras – but where HomeMonitor excels is in a single, simple set-up that is expensive but neat. If you’re not a geek, it offers the power of the cloud and the security of CCTV for a similar price to other, less sophisticated systems that require hard discs.

World’s first anti-trolling software' launched in UK

A British software company has launched a new app to help footballers, reality TV stars, pop stars, politicians and anyone in the public eye block abusive messages on their Twitter feeds. 

Lee Westwood recently lashed out at Twitter trolls who criticised his performance in the USPGA Championship

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The app, called SMC4 Lite, claims to be the “world’s first anti-trolling software”. It reads all inbound and outgoing social media messages from the user’s Twitter account and automatically blocks any profanity, sexism, racism and other inappropriate language.

Michael Veenswyk, chief executive of SMC4, which developed the app, said that implementing automated social media controls stops abuse and eliminates reaction, enabling celebrities and fans to enjoy social messaging protected from unwanted abuse.

“The proliferation of social media has enabled people to get closer than ever to public figures, but the flipside is that it has also opened up an unwanted avenue of antisocial abusive communication towards celebrities," said Veenswyk.

"It's unfortunately an epidemic that has found its way into day-to-day social communication and needs to be stamped out as no person should be subject to vile and abusive social media attacks."

SMC4 was originally a corporate tool designed to stop rogue or mistaken tweets by employees, but it has since been adapted to work for celebrities.

The SMC4 free version enables up to 10 ‘transactions’ per day. This means it will monitor the social media account it is attached to every six minutes and delete any incoming abuse for free up to ten times a day. Users also have the option to upgrade to a paid, premium version, if they are worried about needing more than ten transactions.

SMC4 claims that the app could help bring an end to online celebrity metdowns, such as Lee Westwood’s recent outburst following the PGA Championship, and Alec Baldwin’s infamous response to Daily Mail journalist George Stark earlier this year, allowing people in the public eye to have civilised conversations with those that want to interact with them.
Veenswyk claims it could also be used to protect children from being bullied online by blocking abusive tweets from other children.
As well as Twitter, the SMC4 app can block abuse on corporate Facebook accounts. However, Facebook does not enable third parties to control private accounts, so the SMC4 app does not work on private accounts.
Veenswyk said: “Mark Zucerkburg and Facebook have a duty of care to protect young people and could easily stop social media abuse by unlocking the Private Facebook user API, enabling authorised 3rd parties like SMC4 to end profanity attacks and trolling."

Android KitKat unveiled By Google And Nestlé

Google has announced that the next version of its Android mobile operating system will be called ‘Android KitKat’, after Nestlé’s popular chocolate bar. 

The new Android KitKat mascot outside Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Android has been developed by the company’s engineers under sweet-themed names ever since the release of Android Cupcake in 2009 and continuing in alphabetical order until the most recent version, Android Jelly Bean.

However, this is the first time that Google has used a brand name to describe a version of its operating system, having previously opted for more generic names like 'Gingerbread', 'Honeycomb' and 'Ice Cream Sandwich'.

The news that the letter ‘K’ will be dedicated to Nestlé’s KitKat will come as a surprise to technology commentators, who had widely thought the latest version would be ‘Android Key Lime Pie’.

“We couldn’t imagine a better name for our Android K release than the tasty chocolate that’s been a favorite among the team since the early days of Android,” said Marc Vanlerberghe, Director of Android Marketing.

Nestlé will mark the release of Android KitKat in the UK by offering prizes through more than 50 million specially branded KitKat bars. Consumers in the UK can participate via special packs of KitKat Four-Finger and KitKat Chunky multipacks available in Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, ASDA and Tesco.

The packs will lead consumers to the website android.com/kitkat where they will have the opportunity to win prizes including 1,000 Google Nexus 7 tablets or one of 50,000 £5 credits for Google Play, Google’s online store for apps, games, music, movies, books and more.
“We’re excited to announce this partnership with Android, the world's most popular mobile platform, which will help us to enable even more KitKat fans to enjoy their break,” said Patrice Bula, Nestlé’s Head of Marketing.
Head of Android, Sundar Pichai, posted a picture of the new KitKat mascot at the Google headquarters on his Google+ page, although no details on what the KitKat 4.4 operating system update will contain have yet been announced.
“On my return from Asia, I was thrilled to find this guy waiting to greet me on the front lawn -- love the new #AndroidKitKat statue and can’t wait to release the next version of the platform that is as sweet as the candy bar that’s one of our team’s favourites,” he wrote.
KitKat also released a tongue-in-cheek video of its "Chief Break's Officer" discussing the new features of the KitKat 4.4 chocolate bar:

 

 

Are computer chips on the verge of a quantum leap?

3D transistor could transform computing

We swipe, we tap, we scroll and click, but rarely do we pause to think about what goes on in the maze of electronics beneath our fingertips.

But next time you are marveling at the computer hardware in your hands spare a thought for the tiny transistors in our computer chips. Without them all our modern gizmos wouldn't work.

"I think transistors really are the unsung heroes of the information age," says Kaizad Mistry, vice president at the world's leading chip maker, Intel. "These tiny little switches ... these are the things that our computers, our servers, our smartphones and laptops (depend on)."

Since Intel introduced the first commercial microprocessor in 1971, all chip manufacturers have been striving to increase processor speeds by cramming more and more transistors -- the tiny switches that control electrical signals -- onto surfaces no bigger than the size of a fingernail.

Intel's landmark 4004 chip contained 2,300 transistors, each measuring a few micrometers (a millionth of a meter) across. Today, the most advanced silicon chips contain billions of nano-sized switches controlling the flow of electrical currents.

Measuring one billionth of a meter across, objects at the nanoscale are almost impossible to imagine.

Imagine that a marble measured one nanometer across, says the U.S. government's National Nanotechnology Initiative by way of comparison. If it did, then a meter would be equal to the diameter of the Earth.

"Nanoscale devices are important because our societies have gone crazy about information," says professor Peter J. Bentley from University College London and author of "Digitized: The science of computers and how it shapes our world.

"The amount of data produced and consumed every day is reaching unthinkable levels, and it increases every day. But that data has to be stored somewhere, and processed by something," Bentley told CNN via email.

"So basically, we either keep getting smaller so that we can store and process more information in the same small size for about the same power cost ... or we will have to start rationing data usage per person because the computing power needed will eventually use more energy than the planet can support," he added.

In a bid to keep pace with Moore's Law -- Intel founder Gordon E. Moore's assertion that the number of transistors on a chip should double roughly every two years -- Intel have developed new "3-D" or "Tri-Gate" transistors, each one measuring 22 namometers across.

"For the last 40-50 years, the transistors we've made have conducted electricity along a planar surface of a silicon wafer. A 3-D transistor is a new concept, a new architecture for making tiny transistors ... it's just a fundamentally better switch," Mistry says.

"What we've done is create these pillars or fins on the surface of the wafer and now the current can flow on all three sides of that fin so in any given footprint you can have more of a current conduction."

Intel's Ivy Bridge chip contains an astonishing 1.4 billion transistors that switch on and off more than 100 billion times a second and run 4,000 times faster and use 5,000 times less energy than the 4004 microchip.

"The Tri-Gate transistors are a very nice redesign of the traditional planar transistor that sits inside the chips," says Bentley.

"One of the key problems with keeping up with (Moore's Law) is heat dissipation. Traditional chips are getting way too hot. The Tri-Gate transistor will almost certainly help in that respect as it can operate at lower voltages."

Smaller 14 nanometer transistors are currently being developed, with Intel planning a release date in 2014. But it won't be long before computer chip manufacturers will be having to think even smaller.

"We have just about hit the limits now," Bentley says. "Already we are so small that quantum tunneling -- where electrons magically zip through solid objects because of quantum effects -- can cause real problems in chip design. Go smaller and quantum effects will stop the transistors working at all."

Our only choice is to learn how to perfect the science of quantum computing, he says.

Quantum computers work in a different way from conventional computers, manipulating objects like electrons and photons to perform processing tasks.

Rather than using transistors which switch on and off the zeros and ones or binary digits (bits) of information, quantum computers work with quantum bits (qubits) which can represent all combinations of zeros and ones simultaneously.

"In theory, (quantum computers) would be able to solve difficult problems by finding one elusive solution out of gazillions because they kind of look at all the solutions at the same time," Bentley says.

In May, Google and NASA announced they were teaming up to share one of the world's first commercial quantum computers.

The machine made by Canada's D-Wave Systems will be installed at the new Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.

Crunching enormous amounts of data is expected to spur advances in climate and economic modeling as well as improving understanding of human genetics. But that's all still quite a long way off, says Bentley.

"In practice, there are bound to be many practical limitations, so we've got to spend the next few decades perfecting this radical new technology before we'll really know how far we can push it."

Meet the robot chef who 'prints' cookies

Your cooking partner is a robot, your fridge can talk, and your plate is your own personal dietician. Oh, and for a laugh you occasionally have a cook-off with a famous holographic chef.

This may sound like a scene from 1960s sci-fi cartoon The Jetsons, but the kitchens in coming decades may not be so far off those envisioned by futurologists.

Today, a number of significant developments in culinary tech are happening in the field of robotics. CNN's Blueprint team caught up with a group of design students in Poland who recently programmed an industrial robot -- usually tasked with building cars -- to cook.

"Our project is called 'Let's cook the future' and we try to cook with robots -- we had a robot that initially was made just to be in factories and make cars and we tried to treat it as a human and put it in the kitchen." Says Barbara Dzaman, one of the students involved in the project.

The 'Let's cook the future' robot "prints" cookies three-dimensionally, building them up layer by layer in almost any shape you could imagine.

Dorota Kabala, an industrial designer working alongside the students says that the project looks towards a future where people can make dishes that are only limited by their imagination. "The problem we are addressing in this project is the need for personalization of production ... at the moment we can observe that people need more personalization, more customization of products than before and now it's possible."

Marek Cecula, a respected Polish designer, ceramicist and visiting professor at the Royal College of Art, London, says that he was "amazed" by the students' robot chef but felt that "we simply don't know where this is going ... How will we relate to objects made completely by a machine? How will these objects relate to our emotions? Where will the relationship between person and object be when the object is made by a machine?"

The introduction of robots into the home is not new, of course. Many of us already live with electronics that have robotic components, such as self-cleaning ovens, single-touch microwaves that automatically adjust to the food you have put in them, and fridges that scan used-by dates.

The trend for robots to perform unskilled restaurant jobs has also led to robotic noodle slicers and mechanical waiters, though so far many are mere gimmicks rather than genuine technological solutions.

Thomas Johansson, Design Director at Electrolux, says that he thinks there is a place for robots in the kitchen: "I think kitchen robots could potentially take over some of the common jobs that are repetitive or difficult to do ... I think you could take away some of the boring chores and spend your time doing something more interesting."

Away from robotics, Electrolux has been exploring the creative fringe of kitchen design with its annual Design Lab competition. The company recently announced the semi-finalists for 2013, which include a 3-D food printer and an appliance that calculates the nutritional values, possible toxins and freshness of your food before you start cooking.

Johansson says the range of issues being tackled by students in the competition is fascinating in itself: "A lot of the students are addressing issues like wellbeing, robotics, bio-mimicry, wearable devices, air purification, and also using smart phones and tablets as remote controls.

And then there are the issues about food diagnostics, which are especially interesting in light of the horse meat scandal. People are no longer that concerned about what frying pan they use, but what is in the frying pan. Knowing what it is that you are eating is very important."

With work being done in almost every field of home design, it is likely that the kitchen of the future will look significantly different to how it does today. As the old saying goes, the kitchen will always be the heart of the home -- but increasingly that heart is coming to resemble a pacemaker.

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Why our galaxy's black hole is a picky eater

This image shows the X-Ray close-up of Sagittarius A, the Milky Way's central black hole.

You might think of black holes as indiscriminate eaters, hungrily gobbling up everything in their vicinity.

But the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A, is not exactly like this, new research suggests. Instead, this black hole -- and likely other black holes in the centers of galaxies -- must spit out a lot in order to swallow a little.

It's been a mystery why black holes at the centers of galaxies in the present universe appear so much dimmer than quasars, extremely bright objects from the early universe that have black holes at their centers, too.

As Albert Einstein noted in his famous formula E=mc², energy is equivalent to mass times the speed of light squared. In a black hole, crushed mass gets converted into energy. Black holes in quasars eat a lot, creating the spectacular brightness associated with them. But we don't find as much radiation emanating from Sagittarius A, or other black holes in the centers of galaxies in the present universe.

So what's going on? Is the hot gas that Sagittarius A is eating just not radiating as much as the colder gas that quasars capture?

To find out, researchers used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to take X-ray images and capture other signature of energy. The study is published in the journal Science, and led by Q. Daniel Wang, astrophysicist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Sagittarius A has about 4 million times the mass of the sun. It is located 26,000 light years from Earth. That's still super far, as one light year is about 5.9 trillion miles, but it's close enough that human technology can help us see what's happening to the matter around it.

The gas swirling around this black hole has a temperature of millions of degrees.

Based on these new observations, researchers suggest less than 1% of the material that the black hole's gravity pulls near actually gets sucked in to the "point of no return," which is called the event horizon. Instead, a lot of it gets spat back out. That's why the X-ray emission from the black hole is faint; in theory, the radiation output would be stronger if the black hole were swallowing more.

"Less than 1% of matter will be actually sacrificed for the freedom of 99% of gas," Wang said. "So, 99% of gas can escape from the capture of the black hole."

Why is that the case?

It appears that in order to be gobbled for good by the black hole, material must lose heat and angular momentum, which is a measurement of how an object or system rotates around a particular axis.

The temperature is important because hotter material is harder to pin down, even for a black hole. Wang uses the analogy of a sink: You can pour cold water in and watch it spiral down a drain, but if it's steam, far less will actually go in; the water particles are more diffuse and energetic.

According to Wang and colleagues, the black hole needs to throw out more than 99% of the material in order to accomplish this. That ejected 99%, in turn, heats up the environment around it, which affects the evolution of the galaxy as a whole.

Cold and dense gas goes down easier into the black hole, though, and a black hole may sometimes capture a lot of it. This is the gas that tends to form a disk, called an accretion disk, around the black hole. In the accretion disk, the gas's energy and angular momentum dissipate, so more of it is swallowed up by the black hole.

There was more cold and dense gas in the early universe, so black holes at that time were better at accumulating material this way. That's why we find quasars in the early universe that are so much brighter than Sagittarius A.

Quasar -- galactic beauty, deadly beast -- discovered 50 years ago

The research is important because a galaxy such as ours is intimately linked with the black hole at its center. The more massive the black hole, the more massive the surrounding galaxy is, scientists have found.

"Understanding how the black hole grows with time and how the black hole ejects matter and energy back into the galaxy has strong implications for understanding how galaxies form and evolve," Wang said. "That, of course, directly affects how stars form and evolve."

Dieters, take note: Our galaxy may have gotten to be the way it is by consuming small portions.

Skype Works On Developing 3D Video Calls

Skype's owner Microsoft says the idea may be some years off but work on the designs is already under way.

The company has revolutionised the way people communicate

Skype is aiming to develop 3D video calls which could eventually allow workers to send "body doubles" to meetings.

But it may be several years before the service is ready for homes and offices.

Teams have been working with state-of-the-art tools that capture 3D footage, said Skype's Mark Gillett.

"We have it in the lab, we know how to make it work and we're looking at the ecosystem of devices and their capability to support it in order to make a decision when we might think about bringing something like that to market," he told the BBC.

Skype, which is owned by Microsoft and is marking its 10th anniversary, hinted at its plans in April when it released an advertisement telling viewers it was searching for a way to create "body doubles" for workers unable to travel to meetings.

Its forays into 3D technology were confirmed as the format appeared to founder in other areas.

The BBC's head of 3D announced last month that there were no further plans to use the technology following a two-year trial.

It ran a pilot scheme in which it televised a number of programmes in 3D including Strictly Come Dancing and the ceremonies for the Olympics last year.

But, while an estimated 1.5 million homes have TV sets that can run the technology, only around half of those able to watch London 2012 in 3D did so.