Nvidia Launches a New Mobile Device Age

Nvidia Launches a New Mobile Device Age

I can see a time in our short-term future when we will need to carry only one connected device, and that device will do everything better than the three devices we are now used to carrying can do. Better battery life, lower cost, less aggravation, and improved convenience will be features of the coming age -- and with Nvidia's announcement, that age starts now.

There was an announcement last week that I think is far bigger than folks realize: Nvidia announced a free Netflix-like streaming gaming service for its Shield products. I think this is a precursor to an event that is similar to what cable did to TVs years ago, and that it will change not only how we use these devices, but also what we use them for.

In a way, this may be the biggest step to something we used to call "thin client" computing, and eventually, it will expand vastly what we can do with products we currently use more for consumption than creation.

I'll close with my product of the week: the new limited red edition of the BlackBerry Passport, one of the devices that eventually could benefit from the new mobile world Nvidia is jumpstarting.

Nvidia's Announcement

Nvidia Announced its Grid online gaming service, which will use a Netflix-like model to supply PC-level games for free to all buyers of its Shield tablets. This means every Shield tablet (and Shied game system) owner will have a subscription to a variety of PC games they can play on their tablets streamed from Amazon's Web Services.

These are full games, and they are running at PC performance levels in the cloud and then rendered on the tablets, which in turn can be connected to monitors or TVs for a larger-screen experience.

With the same level of bandwidth needed for a good HD stream, you will get an experience that will rival and often exceed what you typically would get out of a game system or PC.

Thin Clients Are Back

If you can meet the performance needs of a PC gamer, where latency and resolution are big factors, you can even more easily meet the needs of productivity workers. While this announcement doesn't include productivity software, it showcases what services like this could provide. You could get a full Office, Photoshop, or even engineering workstation experience with a tablet connected to a service like this.

This is like a concept called "thin client computing." Created in the late 1990s, it didn't fly because the clients often cost more than PCs, and lousy network speeds, high latency, and a lack of commonalty among vendors kept the market from stepping to this new model. Thin Clients mostly went where terminals had been hard to replace, and general users found them so annoying that broad adoption never took off.

A lot has changed over the last decade and a half, though. Latency has dropped, and bandwidth has increased dramatically, largely driven by HDTV streaming needs. You now can do relatively cheaply what you couldn't even do well at massive cost in the 1990s, and Nvidia's offering showcases how far we have come. However, I think there is far more coming.

The Future

One of the coolest parts of the Sun Ray One -- the thin client computing system that Sun Microelectronics brought to market -- was the ability to save state. The demonstration showed how you could log in with your ID card, and then wherever you plugged in the card, your stuff would come up instantly in the same state you left it.

The dream was that you'd only need to travel with the credit card-sized card, and everything else you needed would be where you were going.

That didn't work, because folks didn't want to fund Sun thin clients for everyplace you'd want to go. However, you are carrying your tablet or phone anyway, and if you could get that same experience simply by plugging in your tablet to a 4K TV or monitor, you'd be there without the massive cost of having to put thin clients in every location where you might need one. The same ability to remember state is possible with any cloud solution like this.

Granted, given network limitations, doing this on a plane will remain problematic for some time to come, but you wouldn't need to carry much performance with you anyplace else. You'd just need a smartphone or tablet and a good network connection, and you'd have the potential for a full PC experience.

Granted, some of us may shift to larger-screen tablets or decide to carry a portable flat screen display, projectors, or virtual reality headsets (if we ever get comfortable with them) in order to ensure a large- screen experience, but the limitations we generally have attributed to small wireless devices will be a thing of the past.

Wrapping Up: The Future Is Here

Back in the 1990s, we expected the future to be defined by computers that were more like TVs than the computers of the time. Actually, what we envisioned was a lot more like terminals that were largely solid state, and far easier to carry and keep running than the complex things we had at the time.

Nvidia has just taken a big step to giving us that future with this new service, and I think it is the first truly big step into getting us to think differently about what we can do with a connected device and tablets aren't that much different than phones.

Rather than carrying three devices as we move to bigger phones and smaller tablets that can be used as phones, I can see a time in our short-term future when we will need to carry only one device, and that device will do everything better than the three devices we are now used to carrying did.

Better battery life, lower cost, less aggravation, and improved convenience will be features of the coming age -- and with this announcement, that age starts now.

One final thought: Given this service is being provided by Amazon, how long before Amazon takes something similar to all mobile devices?

Product of the Week: BlackBerry Passport Red Edition

Product of the Week

The BlackBerry Passport is so popular, it currently is sold out most places worldwide. For folks who have to type a lot on their phones and want a big screen, it is the only game on the planet -- and it doesn't hurt that the BlackBerry platform is also the most secure in market.

In time for Christmas, BlackBerry is creating a special edition red version that likely will be even harder to get because it is a limited run.

BlackBerry Passport

BlackBerry phones always have been more about work than play, and the Passport is no exception. This was demonstrated last week, when BlackBerry announced its new conferencing service, which treats mobile devices the same as PCs rather than penalizing them with limitations like most competing services do.

In a world where it seems most everyone is trying to copy Apple -- a practice that nearly killed BlackBerry and still hurts most of the other phone makers -- it is great to see a company find its roots and build a unique product.

The fact BlackBerry's Passports are selling out is testament to its strategy, and its red version is an even more exclusive product you can show off.

Years ago, I had a pair of red shoes that I wore just to be different, until I was called into my boss's office at IBM and asked if I was looking to get promoted out of the company. I had to admit that red shoes on an auditor likely wasn't a good judgment call.

Still, I've never been a "one size fits all" guy, and thus the red BlackBerry Passport -- partly because it reminded me of those old red shoes -- is my product of the week. Sometimes it is fun to relish the differences and recognize we really aren't all the same.

When Microsoft Went A-Courting

When Microsoft Went A-Courting

Open-sourcing .Net "doesn't have a thing to do with Linux -- it has to do with SaaS and having a CEO that isn't a whackadoo living in the 90s," said SoylentNews blogger hairyfeet. "Nadella is smart and realizes the value of a programming language is not patents or OS exclusivity but in services and support for the language. ... The more platforms the language can be used on, the better."

Fans of free and open source software perhaps may be excused if they've felt a bit confused over the past few days. Dizziness, headaches and vertigo also have been common.

What strange new ailment is this, you might ask?

Well, it's no ailment, Linux Girl is glad to report. That, however, doesn't mean it's any simpler to remedy.

The cause, it turns out, is none other than the news that Microsoft is open sourcing .Net and also expanding it to run on Linux and Mac OS.

Yes, you heard that right: Steve Ballmer once may have called Linux a "cancer," but today Redmond has a newfound "love" for Linux that can't be contained!

It's making Microsoft behave in strange new ways -- and it's also driving FOSS fans to the blogosphere's seedy Broken Windows Lounge in greater numbers than ever.

Can tequila help make sense of it all? That's one of many questions now being investigated.

'A Chance to Thrive'

"This is big news, and somewhat overdue," Chris Travers, a blogger who works on the LedgerSMB project, told Linux Girl.

Linux Girl

"We live in a world where new programming languages which are open sourced thrive even without being backed by big businesses, and closed source programming languages only survive with help from big businesses," Travers said. "Bing closed source killed REBOL 2.x," for example.

"This move has clearly been in the works for some time -- a large company like Microsoft does not open source something of this complexity overnight -- and I think to some extent Microsoft must have seen the writing on the wall when Sun open sourced the OpenJDK," he suggested.

Meanwhile, "this gives languages like C# and F# a chance to thrive well beyond their current markets," Travers said.

'I Still Don't Trust You'

"I want to be the first to say, 'Thank you Microsoft!'" Linux Rants blogger Mike Stone began. "We really appreciate you open sourcing .Net and taking it cross platform. It's a step in the right direction!

"I still don't trust you, though," he added.

"I love that Microsoft is considering open source, but I have seen no movement towards the GPL," Stone told Linux Girl. "This strikes me as an opportunity to get their software on multiple platforms but tie the developers down to Microsoft."

Moreover, there are no guarantees that Microsoft will keep .Net open source over the years, he pointed out.

"That means that Microsoft could withdraw and leave all applications developed with the intention of being cross platform legally Windows-only," he warned. "I won't put any faith in Microsoft's commitment, and I'll always be looking for their sudden but inevitable betrayal."

'Watch for Greeks Bearing Gifts'

The move reeks of desperation, Google+ blogger Alessandro Ebersol suggested.

"They arrived too late," Ebersol said. "Java already ate the best dishes, and while .Net was a Windows/Microsoft-only thing, Java was everywhere. Good luck trying to be adopted."

Besides, "I would only believe it if it was GPL'ed to protect the creators of the code," he added. "A fragile MIT license can be overturned at anytime."

In any case, "with all the hatred the company generated towards the FLOSS community, they burned the bridge beyond repair," Ebersol concluded. "The bottom line: Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes -- Watch carefully for Greeks bearing gifts..."

'Like a Cat Loves Mice'

Microsoft loves Linux "like a cat loves mice," blogger Robert Pogson quipped. "Sure, they will play with */Linux, but they are not our friends."

What's happened is that the FOSS and Linux communities have defeated "all the barriers to entry that M$ placed in the way of competition since M$ first made a deal with IBM to supply an OS," Pogson said. "You bet M$ is trying desperately to 'make friends' with 'the enemy' now that their position is overrun.

"It's all good," he added. "M$ can still cause a lot of trouble by spending $billions foolishly or they can become a normal business and compete on price/performance. That's not 'love' -- that's accepting reality."

Adapt or Die

The problem for Microsoft is that "open source development packages are starting to get good enough for developers," offered consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack.

"At my last job, most of the programmers wanted Eclipse rather than Visual Studio, even though the client software was Windows-only, and I had a slowly increasing number move their development to Linux while using Windows for testing," Mack recalled.

"Very few people want to be locked into just one platform, so more of the mindshare is moving away from single-platform languages," he added. "Microsoft must now choose between adapting or dying."

No Warm Fuzzies Here

Part of what's driving the move is also that "the various cloud implementations are very heavily Linux, and even on Microsoft's own Azure cloud, Linux is a strong presence," Google+ blogger Kevin O'Brien suggested.

"Nadella has made it clear he is taking Microsoft in a cloud direction, so he almost has to do this to even stay in the game," O'Brien asserted.

That said, however, "I don't expect Microsoft to be cuddly and nice -- they will do whatever they think is in their best corporate interest," he said.

In fact, "it doesn't have a thing to do with Linux -- it has to do with SaaS and having a CEO that isn't a whackadoo living in the 90s," SoylentNews blogger hairyfeet told Linux Girl.

"Nadella is smart and realizes the value of a programming language is not patents or OS exclusivity but in services and support for the language," hairyfeet explained. "With that in mind, the more platforms the language can be used on, the better, as that adds value to the language and will give you that many more you can sell services to."

The Fall of an Empire

All in all, if anything is clear, it's that "Micro$oft's empire is tumbling down," said Google+ blogger Gonzalo Velasco C.

"I don't know or care about why they are lying and saying they love Linux," he added. "I just hope the GNU/Linux community is smarter than recently (cough, Systemd, cough) and refuses Micro$oft .Net and other infections. GNU/Linux must use only FLOSS tools."

Who Knew Tim Cook Would Fight for the American Way?

Who Knew Tim Cook Would Fight for the American Way?

Ninety-one percent of Americans believe they have lost control of their personal information -- and many also don't trust companies that buy, sell, barter, and combine their habits and activities to better "serve" -- aka "manipulate" -- them, a recent Pew Research survey found.

Along similar lines, they don't particularly trust governments either, as they monitor communications and movement.

This distrust is becoming a big deal.

Edward Snowden shone a spotlight on how the war on terror has been undermining the foundation of a free America through NSA and other government activities -- how, even as the NSA protects America, it erodes what makes America great in the first place. This is the fundamental challenge of our time -- how to protect freedom, opportunity and our country without destroying America's strength, ingenuity, passion, and work ethic through the creation of an all-knowing surveillance state.

It turns out that Apple, under Tim Cook's leadership, is doing a great service for American values, both at home and abroad. Apple is holding up its products as a better way to do business, as well as working to ensure that its iPhones are secure and private -- from criminals and hackers, certainly, but maybe even from the good-intentioned law enforcement world as well.

Enforcement vs. Education

The goal of law enforcement is to enforce the law and deter crime -- usually through punishment or the threat of such punishment. The problem is that although overzealous surveillance can achieve a desired outcome -- reduce or eliminate crime -- it comes with an extraordinarily high cost to humanity: a reduction in creativity, productivity and maybe even joy. Worse, I believe too much oversight results in a dangerous drop in human empathy.

Parents know this intuitively. Parents could wire up their entire home with surveillance cameras, for example, and keep a running feed of their kids' activities. Every time a sister bashed her brother over the head with a doll, there could be instant and just punishment.

The correlation would become clear, but the outcome would be to stifle impulses and decision making. The young girl would learn that if she hits her brother, then she will get punished. She would not learn, for example, that hitting hurts her brother -- and that's not a good thing.

Ultimately, the kid would learn not to hit to avoid punishment, instead of learning not to hit because it's bad for her relationship with her brother and causes him pain, which only matters if the child develops some sort of human sense of empathy in the first place.

It gets worse. If a kid takes a cookie and gets punished, the option of taking a cookie gets removed. If the thought of taking a cookie is removed, the kid isn't gong to think about taking a cookie or what the consequences might be. The choice to ask, to choose a healthier food, to simply reason through a cause-and-effect situation -- all that's gone.

Even though parents sometimes reach their wits' end trying to figure out which child took a toy from the other first and who escalated the conflict by biting, they also know that video monitoring their children is a bad thing.

Meanwhile, the world's population is constantly getting bigger, but Earth is not. Empathy and human understanding will, in the long run, do more for the world than creating a series of impenetrable countries where people's thoughts and actions are directed down increasingly narrow tunnels. Freedom is connected to opportunity and both are connected to creativity -- as well as to the American drive to build, invent and excel.

A sense of privacy is important, because it's connected to a sense of freedom, which is connected to the American spirit. If you mess with privacy, you start messing with a fundamental element of American spirit. I don't think most Americans know how to articulate why they're worried about their privacy -- because most are law-abiding citizens.

The argument, "If you have nothing to hide, why do you care if anyone looks and watches?" doesn't hold up, but it's not because Americans are planning to become criminals. No, it doesn't hold up because most of us sort of know that an erosion of privacy also eats away at the Americans we are inside.

Enter Tim Cook and Apple

Apple is not participating in the vast information-gathering machine that takes data points from consumers and combines them with data from other companies and other agencies, and creates incredibly detailed profiles about who you are and how you likely will act when presented with certain options.

And Apple could do this. Apple could collect and aggregate its customer data and immediately create a multibillion-dollar information-based business to sell to advertisers, to insurance companies, to service providers, to casinos, to banks.

But Apple is not doing this, and I respect that.

In fact, Apple is bucking trends and pressure in order to deliver the best possible product. Apple could have created Apple Pay in such a way that Apple Pay would reward merchants with data and "loyalty" programs. Instead, Apple is not going to get in the middle of how merchants push customers into loyalty programs or try to influence buying behavior.

Apple Pay doesn't fix this -- for example, even if you pay with cash, at many stores you can't get the lower price unless you swipe your store loyalty card to help build a store's customer profile database -- but Apple isn't making it any easier on merchants.

Cook spoke about Apple Pay during a Q&A interview at the WSJD Live global technology conference in October.


"I think it's the first and only mobile payment system that is both easy, private and secure -- so I think we hit on all three key points that the customer cares about," he said.
"I think merchants have different objectives sometimes, but in the long arc of time you are only relevant as a retailer or a merchant if your customers love you," Cook added. "We've said up front, we're going to be very different on this. We don't want to know what you buy, when you buy it. We don't want to know anything -- and so we're not collecting your data. We're not Big Brother."

This is fantastic. Then later, privacy and security came up once again (around the 24-minute mark).

"What our value system is... we believe that your data is yours, and that we're not about collecting every detail about you and knowing what time you go to bed and where you spend your money and what the temperature is in your house and what things you searched on. None of that. We don't read your email, we don't read your iMessages, we don't do any of this. And so we've designed -- we did this years ago -- we designed iMessage such that we don't keep any of it. And so if somebody comes to get it -- a bad guy or government -- we can't provide it," Cook explained.

"If somebody tries to get your FaceTime records, we can't supply it. With iOS 8, we added some things to that to further encrypt it that puts the user in charge. And there's been some comments from some law enforcement types that said, 'Hey, this is not good, we don't have the flexibility we did before.'

"I look at that and say, 'Look, if law enforcement wants something they should go to the user and get it. It's not for me to do that.' Also, by the way, I wouldn't ever do this, but if you design something where the key is under the mat, the bad guy can get that, too. It's just not the good guy," he said.

Cook believes Apple's customers want more private devices and that they don't even want Apple harvesting their data -- so Apple isn't doing that.

"What you do should be clear," he said. "People should understand what you're doing and what the implications are."

Cook as Privacy Hero?

What this means to me is that at the very top of Apple, Cook places a premium on customer trust -- and he's willing to talk about it. He's willing to go on record with The Wall Street Journal and say that Apple is not using your iPhone to harvest data and built a vast treasure trove of information that can be used surreptitiously to manipulate your choices and actions.

Apple's business is creating a fantastic product that you'll buy because it's a great product. As a business tactic, this is critical -- Apple can't expect to sell Apple Watches with health apps and deliver a HomeKit-based home automation hub if consumers think everything is logged for future manipulation.

So Cook is making the right business move -- but I also believe that he believes it's the right thing to do, too. And I respect that more than the smart business move.

There's more, though.

What I find incredibly important is that China eventually will deliver Apple's largest revenue stream -- and China's system of government and business models care little for privacy, freedom, and what an inventive human can bring to the world.

By creating an encrypted iPhone that Apple and governments can't easily break open, Cook is at once making a savvy business decision -- Apple can't sell iPhones abroad if countries believe they're just backdoor keys for the NSA -- but also pushing forward an even more important agenda that illustrates how you can run a business by building a product (and not by creating a user base as a product to sell to other sorts of customers).

In fact, after learning last month that China allegedly was using hacking tactics to get Apple ID data from its own Chinese users, Cook flew to China to meet with a top Chinese government official.

If Cook can use his position at Apple, as well as his own personal beliefs, to influence China to better tolerate freedom in a positive way, I like that -- even if the most callous watcher simply believes that Cook is just trying to protect Apple so it can continue to sell iPhones in China without users worrying about security.

As for privacy, one attendee at the WSJ event asked Cook what might change things -- what might be the tipping point that causes most people to recognize what some companies are doing with our data?

"I think it will take some kind of event -- because people aren't shaken until something major happens, and when that happens, everybody wakes up and says, 'Oh my God,' and they make a change. And so what that event is, I don't know," Cook said. "But I'm pretty convinced that it's going to happen -- it's just a matter of what, and when it occurs.

Nexus 6, the Star Destroyer of Phablets, Goes on Sale

Nexus 6, the Star Destroyer of Phablets, Goes on Sale

Google's Nexus 6 phablet on Friday became available for sale at Sprint stores, as well as on its website and through other Sprint sales channels. Priced at US$696 with a service plan, qualified buyers can purchase the Nexus 6 with no down payment (however, tax will be charged), and 24 monthly payments of $29.

The other three major U.S. carriers have announced plans to carry the Nexus 6 as well, but Sprint is first out of the gate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wk-PY2dBKaA


The Nexus 6, which was unveiled in October, has a display that measures nearly 6 inches diagonally. The AMOLED screen's resolution is 2560 x 1440 pixels, and it is protected with Gorilla Glass 2. That compares to 1920 x 1080 pixels for Apple's super-sized smartphone, the iPhone 6 Plus

As is typical with Nexus phones, this model runs the latest version of Android out of the box -- 5.0 Lollipop -- and promises to have peppy performance with its 2.7 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor and 3 gigabytes of RAM.

It supports all popular channel access methods -- GSM, CDMA and LTE.

The Nexus 6 will be offered in midnight blue and white.

Other features include hearty built-in stereo speakers, a DSP chip that allows Google's voice-activated assistant to be summoned even when the phone is turned off, a 13-megapixel, f /2.0 Sony camera, and support for Qualcomm Quick Charge. Quick Charge can provide enough juice in 15 minutes to run the unit's 3220 mAh battery for 6 hours. Fully charged, Google rates the run time for the battery at 24 hours.

Great Phone, but...

While the Nexus 6 has garnered some good reviews, almost all come with an emphatic "but."

"The new Nexus 6, which Google produced with Motorola, is in nearly every way a better device than its predecessors," wrote Nathan Olivarez-Giles in The Wall Street Journal.

"The build, display, battery life and camera have all improved. But its most notable feature will be a dealbreaker for some: It is one massive phablet," he declared.

"The Nexus 6 is something entirely new to the Nexus line-up," wrote Greg Kumparak in a review for TechCrunch.

"It's big to the point that it's almost laughable, stretching the definition of what you could reasonably define as a smartphone to its very limits," he observed.

"If that's what you want, however, the Nexus 6 is a very solid phone," Kumparak continued.

"It's fast, it'll get its software updates before pretty much every other gigantor phone on the market, and the battery life is thus far solid. Just know that you'll have to keep a death grip on it, or the device's size combined with its slick texture will almost certainly lead to a very sudden introduction to Mr. Sidewalk," he added.

As ungainly as some reviewers found the Nexus 6, they may change their minds over time, suggested Dieter Bohn, reviewing it for The Verge.

"Using the Nexus 6 is absolutely awkward until, strangely, it's not," he wrote.

"When I show this phablet to people, I get the same glassy-eyed 'I don't need this' look that I used to get when I showed them my big, honking pre-iPhone smartphone all those years ago," Bohn continued. "They all converted. You just might do the same."

Gaining Market Share

With the Nexus 6, Google may be aiming at new markets, noted Carolina Milanesi, chief of research and head of U.S. business for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

"I think that with the Nexus 6, Google may be looking at a device that might appeal to enterprises as well as those users who cannot afford to buy a smartphone and a tablet," she told TechNewsWorld.

In the quarter ending on June 30, 7 percent of phones sales in the United States were phablets, according to Milanesi, although they've gained a double digit market share in China.

"Despite this segment's growth, I do not expect it to be mass market," Milanesi noted. "That said, buyers of these devices might offer a higher return on investment for Google as they tend to be more engaged with their devices."

Others see supersized phones growing beyond the niche stage.

"Three years ago, I would have said this is a fad," Wayne Lam, a telecom electronics analyst for IHS, told TechNewsWorld. "It's not an ergonomically ideal design, but it's a sustainable segment of the market now, and it will become upwards of a quarter of the market in two or three years time."

Small Tablets Doomed?

As phablets become more popular, they may need to be redefined, observed Michael Morgan, an independent mobile devices analyst.

"Right now, whether something is a phablet or not is purely dependent on screen size," he told TechNewsWorld.

"In the future, we'll want to know what's done with that additional screen real estate that makes it more than just a big cellphone," he said. "You see that with Samsung with its screen approach and app switching. You don't see it with the iPhone 6 Plus."

Growing phablet sales could squeeze some segments of the tablet market.

"Between the greater adoption of larger phones and aggressive pricing of larger tablets, it will be tough to compete with a 7-inch tablet in the market," Ross Rubin, principal analyst with Reticle Research, told TechNewsWorld.

"Will the big phone obliterate the small tablet market?" asked IHS' Lam. "Not completely -- but it's going to have a significant impact on it."

Gadget Ogling: A Creepy Echo, Clever Home Connections, Bizarre Smartphones and Flexible 3D Printing

Gadget Ogling: A Creepy Echo, Clever Home Connections, Bizarre Smartphones and Flexible 3D Printing

In a world of connected homes, only one column sifts the gold from the dirt before consumer tech ever makes it to shelves. Welcome to Gadget Dreams and Nightmares.


This week's entries include Amazon's latest play for your living room, a bevy of integrated sensors, a connected coffeemaker, and much more.

As always, each item does have a rating -- but it indicates only how much I care about trying it out. These are not reviews.

Amazon Echoes in the Abyss

Echo, Amazon's newest attempt at a smart personal assistant, is set to take pride of place in your home. The black tower is voice-activated and can play music, as well as provide information and news updates. Also, because it's from Amazon, it can update your shopping list.

It's always on, which means it's continually listening to you, no matter where you are in a room. That's just more than a little unsettling.

Amazon promises that Echo activates only when you say a wake word ("Alexa," which surely will complicate matters for parents with a child of that name), but who's to say Echo can't hear everything? It needs to hear what's going on to understand when it's being called upon.

It's disconcerting to think there'd be a piece of machinery in my home that's connected to the cloud and listening to everything.

It's a novelty, and I don't see it replacing a smartphone or tablet as the go-to provider of information and entertainment. Yet I fear it's a harbinger of near-term lifestyle changes as people simply open their doors and invite the NSA even deeper into their homes.

Quirky Connects Everything

Quirky's smarter home collection is based on a much smarter concept of what a true connected home should look like. Quirky's range of sensors monitor energy usage, track when doors and windows open and close, control heating, and oversee garage doors.

Lightbulb Garage

The connected home is much more likely to align with Quirky's vision than Amazon's. Quirky offers a range of inexpensive sensors connected to the same platform, feeding information into one virtual command center.

The relatively low prices are important too, since it could entice those on smaller budgets to take greater control over their home when they're elsewhere

Cat Tracker Tailio

https://d2pq0u4uni88oo.cloudfront.net/projects/1014954/video-455208-h264_high.mp4

I'll admit, at first I found the idea of a health monitor for cats absurd, but as I learned more, I soon warmed to Tailio. It's essentially a scale placed under the litter box, and it tracks data such as a cat's weight, waste, and frequency of visits.


I wanted to hate it. I wanted to hurl barbs aplenty. And yet, it's entirely useful.

Tracking a cat's weight, which might not be noticeable to one's eye, can throw up all sorts of flags about the cat's health. If such changes are spotted quickly, Tailio can prompt owners to quickly take their potentially poorly kitty to the veterinarian. How can I get mad about that?

I don't have a cat, though, so maybe Tailio can make a version for humans.

Belkin Welcomes Mr. Coffee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uGODQUtxQD4

My mornings are inevitably rushed, because I rise as late as possible before I need to leave. That means there's time for a rushed breakfast, but not for a hot drink in these winter months. I would love a coffee (or tea!) at a drinkable temperature ready for me when I get up.

Better yet, I'd love to have a warm cup almost ready for me when I'm on my way home. So you better believe I'm all in for Mr. Coffee.

Forget the kid-friendly, Easy-Bake Oven-style name, and there's a nifty gizmo here. It's part of the WeMo range too, so it builds into an existing ecosystem.

I'm so eager to try this that I don't even think I'd need the resulting caffeine jolt to perk me up.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Pour-Over Coffees

AKA a Bad Idea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XJuqdaB-kXg


All right, LG, I get it. You need to try something new to differentiate your smartphones in an overloaded market. Anthropomorphizing a group of AKA handsets is not the way to do that.

The phones are even perpetuating outdated gender norms (there's only one "female" phone and it's pink, of course). More than that, these little guys and gals have a mission to save the world from aliens. Why is this necessary, LG?


It's a shame, because these otherwise seem like decent phones, with good specs.

I adore storytelling and rich fictional universes and made-up worlds, but as we've seen with the glut of superhero movies in recent years, not everything needs a backstory. Certainly not smartphones.

Rating: 1 out of 5 YoYos

All-Weather 3D Printing

https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/1370107/photo-main.jpg?1416215484


Flux is a 3D printer that recognizes people might want to use their machine for a variety of purposes. To wit, it's a flexible piece of kit that's customizable.

It comes with a 3D scanner, which is perfect if you're into counterfeit plastic replicas of small items (just kidding, that's pretty neat), and a laser engraving option. Most excitingly, there's a pastry attachment for chocolate, jam, and all manner of other delights. I'm sold.


On the surface, it's a truly a great execution of the 3D-printing concept -- one that hasn't quite cracked the mainstream. Help people fill their donuts on demand, and you've got a winner.

Microsoft Widens Skype World

Microsoft Widens Skype World

Skype on Friday announced Skype for Web, a new version of its VoIP service that can be used in a browser rather than through the dedicated application.

"Perhaps you're sitting at a computer that doesn't already have Skype downloaded," explained Jonathan Watson, a senior product marketing manager with Skype. "Or maybe you're on the go and using an Internet cafe or hotel computer where you can't download Skype at all. Using Skype for Web makes it more convenient to get to your conversations."

To use Skype for Web, users simply sign in on Skype.com. From there, they can connect and start instant messaging directly from their browser. Voice or video calls will require a small plug-in.

Now in beta, the service works with Internet Explorer, Chrome on Windows, Firefox and Safari, but it initially will be available only to a small number of users. It will be rolled out worldwide in the coming months, Watson said.

A Boon for Employees

The new service promises to be "quite useful, because it opens up the number of computers that can use Skype significantly," Roger Entner, principal analyst at Recon Analytics, told TechNewsWorld.

In particular, it will make Skype available for the first time to employees at companies "where the IT department locks down the computer and doesn't let you install software," Entner explained. "I've worked in quite a few companies like that."

In addition to its Voice over Internet Protocol functionality, Skype is also a useful messaging service, he added.

"That's one thing a lot of people don't realize," Entner said. "I have Skype chat channels with 40 or 50 people in them."

Thanks to the Web feature, that's now possible on "all the computers being held hostage by IT departments," he pointed out.

'A Long Time Coming'

Though a plug-in currently is required for voice and video calls, Skype is working with Microsoft's Internet Explorer team to implement the technology necessary for real-time communications on the Web, Watson pointed out.

"With WebRTC, there won't be any downloads or installs -- you can just get straight to your conversation," he said.

"Skype for Web has been a long time in coming," Andy Abramson, CEO of Comunicano, told TechNewsWorld.

"Microsoft is late to the party when it comes to WebRTC," he said. "The optics are not in their favor, so they are trying to do something to correct that."

Firefox and Google Chrome both support WebRTC, while Apple's Safari and Internet Explorer require a plug-in, Abramson pointed out.

In many ways, "this is nothing more than a catch-up play for Skype vs. Google Hangouts," he said.

The Benefit of WebRTC

It could take some time for WebRTC to become commonplace.

"While I think WebRTC services will become more pervasive over time as mobile carriers move all voice, text and data to IP-based LTE networks, mainstream use is years away," said Ritch Blasi, Comunicano's senior vice president for mobile and wireless.

"There will always be early adopters and Skype enthusiasts who will find the browser-based service easier to use -- that's the fundamental benefit of WebRTC," he told TechNewsWorld.

However, "it will take some time for it to reach the scale of use seen by mobile services," Blasi added.

Efforts Better Spent Elsewhere?

In any case, while Skype's availability through the browser "may be of interest to people not already using Skype or other messaging/communications apps," it doesn't really offer any advantage to mobile users or to anyone who has already downloaded Skype on their PC, Jim McGregor, founder and principal analyst with Tirias Research, told TechNewsWorld.

"The company would be better off work working on more distinct features, especially for mobile users," he added, "because the other mobile apps are often preferred over Skype." 

Toyota's Mirai Aims to Kick Fuel-Cell Tech Into High Gear

Toyota's Mirai Aims to Kick Fuel-Cell Tech Into High Gear

Toyota on Monday officially unveiled its fuel cell sedan in an Internet video featuring Toyota Motor Corporation's president and CEO Akio Toyoda. The announcement comes in advance of the Los Angeles Auto Show Nov. 21-30.

The new sedan, dubbed "Mirai" -- which means "future" in Japanese -- can travel up to 300 miles on a single tank of hydrogen, refuel in less than five minutes, and emit only water vapor.

To ensure that its drivers actually can fuel up, Toyota announced that it will collaborate with Air Liquide to develop and supply a phased network of 12 new hydrogen fueling stations in five states in the northeast corridor.

"Toyota's vision of a hydrogen society is not just about building a great car, but ensuring accessible, reliable and convenient refueling for our customers," said Toyota North America Chief Executive Officer Jim Lentz. "I am happy to announce that this vision will expand beyond the borders of California and give customers the opportunity to join the fuel cell movement."

Through this partnership, the 12 fueling stations will be placed strategically throughout the greater New York and Boston areas, in an effort to blanket New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

The Next Prius?

Toyota has been in the driver's seat of the alternative fuel movement in the past, notably with the Prius, which it first introduced in 1997. Just as that car helped pave the way for early gas-electric hybrid automobiles, the Mirai could influence development of fuel-cell vehicles.

"It is another attempt by Toyota to weave a blanket to cover alternatives to fossil fuels," said Justin Cupler, editor in chief of TopSpeed.com.

"Along with the hybrid and electric-powered vehicles, this is another option," he told TechNewsWorld.

"There are many benefits that are both tangible and intangible," noted Phil Gott, senior director of long range planning at IHS Automotive.

"For Toyota, they get credits to offset the emissions from other vehicles," he pointed out.

"They also get kudos and bragging rights, and in people's minds they are affirming their leadership that they got with the Prius," Gott told TechNewsWorld. "Of course, they also get the marketing buzz of being among the first to bring a fuel cell vehicle to market."

The Cost of Driving

While Toyota did not announce the American sticker price of the Mirai, its price in Japan is the equivalent of nearly US$70,000.

However, the target price for the American market could be closer to $50,000, based on some reports. That still could be viewed as a lot of money for a car that is just past the prototype stage.

"The initial cost is going to be an issue, so that could be a big deterrent," said Cupler. "It isn't entirely clear if the car or even its technology will ever take off."

However, Toyota does "intend to produce a large number of these vehicles for the American market," added Gott. "The challenge is [not only] the cost, but also the availability of the refueling stations.

"For this car to be reliable, the customer needs to be close to the hydrogen refueling station," he pointed out. "Right now, those are far and few between."

Clean Energy or Not?

Toyota has been addressing the issue by helping to build out the fuel cell refueling station infrastructure. At present, its new "car of the future" can't make a cross-country trek, but earlier this year the company announced a $7.3 million loan to FirstElement Fuels to support operations and maintenance of 18 stations in California.

With the announcement of the stations in the northeast corridor, the infrastructure is beginning to come together, but another issue still may need to be addressed for fuel cell vehicles to be truly successful in reducing carbon emissions.

"Where does the energy that produces the hydrogen come from?" pondered Gott. "While we can produce electricity -- which is used to make the hydrogen -- from sun and wind, most electricity still comes from coal.

"That electricity from the sun could be used to power a home or an office," he added.

"Instead of supporting clean energy, this technology is now adding a load on that sector and reduces the ability to use the solar energy to offset the demand from a coal plant," Gott argued.

"In other words, the newest sources that require electricity should be attributed to the dirtiest sources of power -- so that means that the hydrogen footprint of these cars is actually dirtier than a car running on gasoline," he maintained.

"We need to be realistic when we call these 'clean energy vehicles' and really need to look at this from well to wheel," Gott said, and understand "where the energy for the hydrogen is coming from.