| TRENDING STORIES IN TECH & GADGETS | | | | | | | ALL STORIES IN TECH & GADGETS | | |
| Ford to Open Research Lab in Silicon Valley in 2012 | |  Ford has announced plans to open a Research and Development lab in Silicon Valley in early 2012, the first such facility the company has ever opened on the west coast. It's hardly a surprising move, though, since car tech increasingly merges with information and communication technologies. In recent years, Ford has been investing in technologies such as SYNC, which offers in-car connectivity with smartphones and music players, and MyFord Mobile, a smartphone app which displays battery info for electric vehicles such as Ford Focus Electric. With the new lab Ford plans to "prepare for the next 100 years" and develop partnerships with tech firms, startups and universities in the area. The new Ford lab will be located in the San Francisco Bay area, but the exact location hasn't been revealed yet. We'll find out more about Ford's future plans at this year's CES, including the first live demo of the MyFord Mobile app. |
| Digital Detox Vacations: Dream Trip or Personal Nightmare? | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 11:59 PM | Samantha Murphy |
|  Caribbean nation St. Vincent and the Grenadines is challenging travelers to leave smartphones, tablets and other gadgets behind as a part of their new digital-detox vacation package, complete with a guidebook explaining how to function on a trip without tech, and a life coach. St. Vincent and the Grenadines -- which is made up of 32 islands and cays, nine of which are inhabited - has launched a vacation package designed to wean people off their technology. Before arriving to the islands, visitors will receive tips on how to prep and de-tech for the stay, and an on-site life coach will provide advice on how to not let tech control your life. "This means actually experiencing a real vacation with human interaction, social skills and quality time with family and friends," St. Vincent and the Grenadines said in a statement. The seven-night getaway on the luxury island costs $3,799 for each person, including flights and hotel accommodations. Some establishments on St. Vincent and the Grenadines such as Petit St. Vincent Resort have embraced this concept by offering no TV, Internet or telephones in hotel rooms. In fact, at Petit St. Vincent Resort, guests who want room service need to get in touch with staffers by hoisting a small yellow flag on a bamboo pole outside the front door. The country said it embraced the idea of a digital detox package after a recent study found that 77% of consumers believe that time spent without gadgets and technology would help liberate them, improve their relationships and make them a better person. In addition, about 17% said their New Year's resolutions include going away on vacation and becoming less dependent on technology. St. Vincent and the Grenadines isn't the only vacation spot that has embraced the concept of unplugging. Other so-called "Black Hole Resorts" include Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, Calif., and The Hotel Hana-Maui in Maui, Hawaii. In fact, there aren't even clocks located in the rooms at The Hotel Hana-Maui. Would you consider a digital-free vacation stay or would leaving tech behind be your worst nightmare? Let us know in the comments. |
| eBay Instant Sale Pays You in Seconds for Old Electronics and Unwanted Gifts | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 11:26 PM | Joann Pan |
|  Out with the old and in with shiny new gadgets. If you're among those gadget-owners getting rid of the "old," plenty of retailers offer ways to sell back your unwanted electronic holiday presents and old gadgets. Here's another: eBay Instant Sale. The eBay Instant Sale service lets you skip the lengthy eBay bidding process and sell your electronics directly for cash online or through an iPhone application, receiving a PayPal payment in seconds. Get $30 to $42 for an Apple iPhone 2G and about $72 to $130 for 3G and 3GS iPhones. Offers are up to $194 for newer iPhone 4 models. Sellers eager to make quick cash can get up to $407 for a 64 GB iPhone 4S, $328 for 16GB and $347 for 32GB. Newer MacBook Pros and MacBook Air sales will put around $400 to $800 in your pocket. The instant offers service is enabled by an eBay team working with AllTechWholeSale, a top-rated eBay seller. eBay does not receive a cut in these sales. The eBay Instant Sale service launched in October 2010 in a testing phase and re-launched as a full version in February 2011. Since then, more than 4 million offers have been generated. The top five sales have been Apple iPhones, Samsung, HTC, Blackberry and Motorola products, according to the AllTechWholeSale team. To find out how much your electronic product is worth, input a brand or product name, then complete a short survey about the storage capacity, functionality, power adapter availability, and its physical condition in terms of display, missing components, scratches and more. Broken gadgets can be traded up for cash too. There is also an updated version of the Instant Sales app, eBay's 10th iPhone-capable app, available. The current version is compatible with iPod touch and iPad. As a seller, after after you accept the eBay Instant Sales immediate offer, you'll get a prompt to print a free shipping label, so you can pack and ship your unwanted items. Other trade-in services include Gazelle, which also offers free shipping (not applicable to items worth less than $1). Payment is available via check, Amazon gift card or PayPal. Best Buy similarly offers an electronics buy-back program. Customers can drop off items at certain Best Buy locations in exchange for a gift card. There are guaranteed rates for purchases that fluctuate in value depending on when you sell the items after you buy them. Are you willing to trade in your gadgets using eBay Instant Sale? Have you used any of these options to get money for your old gadgets? Here are 10 tech retailers that will pay for your old electronics. Image courtesy of Flickr, Jean-Baptiste Maurice |
| 5 Predictions for Online Data in 2012 | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 9:55 PM | Josh Jones-Dilworth |
|  Josh Jones-Dilworth is the founder and CEO of Jones-Dilworth, Inc., a public relations consultancy focused on bringing early-stage technologies to market. In the spirit of the new year, I've determined my online data predictions for 2012. And because I'm attempting to make this an annual experiment, let's begin my looking back at how my 2011 predictions shook out. 1. Personal data management matures into an industry. I'll admit the prediction was largely a fail. Ambitious startups like Singly + The Locker Project got off the ground, but did not pick up steam. Many new, related startups are in the works, but none have even come close to the goal of managing one's data the way he manages his health or wealth, for instance. An end-to-end platform may emerge, but it will take time. 2. The flood gates of corporate data open widely. This prediction has come close to being true. It certainly has become important to mine, parse and manifest corporate data for internal and external uses alike. The predominant question has indeed shifted from "Should I make my data open and available?" to "How can I do it best?" But at the same time, a lot of people are still sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see how things develop. 3. Big data gets regulated. Facebook agreed to submit to independent privacy audits as part of its long-gestating FTC settlement. I'd argue that we'll see more regulation in 2012. Congress has taken an active role, and the big Internet companies have only further increased their lobbying spend. Controversies surrounding Carrier IQ, Apple and SOPA have accelerated public interest. Of course there's good regulation and bad regulation. Anyone doing business in or with data is going to have to understand how government works, and play an active role. 4. The trend itself gets old and tired. Another outright fail. It is certainly true that everything is becoming, or has already become, data-driven, but we haven't yet had the hangover I predicted. If anything, we're full-steam ahead, and as ebullient and ambitious as ever. This is good and bad -- escalating investment of both human and real capital will spur innovation and speed up the inevitable. But the pace also makes us more vulnerable. Data for data's sake, or data for self-justification is an ongoing risk. 5. Data scientists become the new community managers. I think it's fair to say that this happened, by a large margin. Check out this chart from Indeed that chronicles the explosion of data scientist jobs. CMSWire explores the particulars in more detail. Last year aside, what's going to matter in 2012? 1. Future Tense Analytics -- Hello, McFly? For a long time, were analytics defined by the past -- what happened a day ago? A week ago? A year ago? The arrival of real-time technologies sped things up quite a bit. It's now commonplace to ask, what's happening? What's trending? What's changing? Today's best data-driven technologies and strategies orchestrate insights in the present tense. Naturally, predictive analytics tackle the future tense. This isn't a new notion, but the underlying technologies are finally mature enough for predictive use. Keep an eye on places like Decide.com. In 2012, future-tense capabilities will become widespread, and in high demand. 2. Mixing and Matching Data Sets One of the things that comes right after wider availability of data is the desire to put that data in context. For instance, this type of mashup culture is what put Mashable itself on the map back in 2006 and 2007. For other brands and enterprises, 2012 will be all about crashing diverse data sets together, and seeing what clicks. I'm actually a dissenter when it comes to companies like Factual or SimpleGeo's heavy emphasis on location as a single data vertical. Umbel's focus on audience definition and BlueKai's ad targeting are other examples of early leaders in a particular domain. It's not at all that these companies aren't cool or useful, but the most interesting things happen when you mash up data sources. For example, Umbel can provide incredible insight into your audience and its habits, but it's even more interesting when merged with usage logs, comment streams and share counts. The year 2012 will be about putting corporate data alongside open public sources -- internal data meets external data. This is why I continue to be a big fan of data marketplaces like Infochimps, a company I advise, which has bundled data sets and API surrounding key themes, instead of verticals. The most actionable insights come from a diversity of data. 3. The Data Scientist Talent Grab A few years ago, I remember reading job descriptions for Ruby on Rails programmers who should have "5+ years of experience." This was funny, as Rails was only three years old at the time. That is what happens when a certain skill set spikes in demand. Employers assume market maturity when there is none, hiring gets very competitive, salaries rise, the very best practitioners give their employers an unfair advantage, and the market is flooded with wannabes (some of whom prove their mettle, some who do not). Training and professional development initiatives have taken center stage, and the land grab is on. McKinsey predicts that by 2018, the U.S. alone will face a 140,000 to 190,000-person shortage of professionals who have deep analytical skills, as well as a shortfall of 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to analyze big data to make effective decisions. We're even seeing venture firms like Greylock hire top 5% data scientists to work across the entire portfolio, as one solution to the problem. And companies are employing new means of data science outsourcing (see: Kaggle, Mu Sigma). Since it's all still a relatively nascent field, I urge you to reinvest in the talent you already house. Knowledge of your own business is just as important as knowledge of data science. There are requisite skills of course, and it takes a certain kind of person, but in my own experience, there are bound to be many qualified individuals who are hungry and game. Soon there will be a much wider gap between the novices and the experts. However, don't think of data science chops as just something you can hire for, and be done with. It's a transformative trend, something that will eventually cut horizontally across your entire organization. In 2012, data science will appear in job descriptions left and right, and will become the most in-demand skill set in the technology sector. 4. Data-Driven Everywhere We generally think of data as the domain of large B2B companies that sell enterprise software, or of advertising networks and targeting systems that have an easy way of assigning a dollar value to their work. But the legal, pharma and law enforcement sectors have also been natural fits. In 2012, we'll see data-driven innovation and data-centric design emerge from the unlikeliest of places -- think data-driven fashion, crop insurance, Hollywood box office and even humanities education. Essentially, don't rule out the possibility of data-driven strategies anywhere. Even if a business doesn't run on data, it absolutely produces very interesting exhaust that can be used advantageously. 5. Data-Driven Non-profits Data has a higher purpose too --- it's not just a pageview multiplier, or a CPM lift. Data can help us understand how we are doing as a society and as a culture. Here I'm not talking about non-profits that use data to grow. I'm talking about non-profit initiatives that are built around data in and of themselves. Two great examples are CommonCrawl and the Earth Dashboard Project. Common Crawl builds and maintains a free and open crawl of the web and all its data, with the purpose of forwarding important research that requires large-scale analysis. The Earth Dashboard Project is an effort to build a living report card of sorts for the entire globe. It will be installed at the UN Headquarters in New York City as a way of reminding delegates and visitors of the bigger picture, our interconnectedness, and what we're really working toward every day. There is a lot to be done with data, not nearly all of it profitable. In 2012, we'll see five to seven new data-driven non-profits start to bite off important chunks of value that sit outside of corporate and governmental concerns. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, nadla |
| LG to Roll Out Its Own Google TV at CES 2012 [PICS] | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 9:32 PM | Charlie White |
|  LG announced it will introduce its own Google TV-equipped HDTV at CES 2010. The company says its "LG Smart TV with Google TV" will be an all-in-one unit , although it didn't reveal the screen size yet. The 3D HDTV will use LG's Cinema 3D technology that uses lightweight glasses that don't require batteries. Along with that, LG touts its "magic remote QWERTY," incorporating a small keyboard and controls to operate Google TV's updated Android-based user interface. With LG announcing its version of Google TV, it joins Sony, Visio and Samsung with hardware supporting the format. After Logitech announced that it's bowing out of the Google TV fold, it appears that a few more manufacturers are stepping up to take its place in short order. We'll have a chance to see LG's new Google TV-equipped HDTV when we go to CES 2012 next week, and we'll give you a full report as soon as we take a closer look. Keep in mind that the main challenge with any Google TV announced in the next few days will have to do with content, not hardware. Google's biggest stumbling block is getting production studios and content creators to allow their movies and TV shows to be accessible from Google TV. We've tested the early pre-Android version of Google TV, and found its main weakness was the lack of quality programming. Now that the user interface is based on Android, it's more pleasant to use. But the fact remains: The strength of the platform is its ability to sort through all the TV programs available at the moment, and offer them up to the viewer. If studios won't let their programs be accessible from Google TV, its power won't be evident to anyone. In this situation, it's more important to watch what the studios will do than what LG, Sony, Visio and Samsung will do. Here's a new video from Google showing off its new Google TV interface, along with another pic of LG's Google TV: |
| Mashable's Digital Predictions for 2012 | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 8:47 PM | Christine Erickson |
|  auto-share their browsing histories to social networks. Most people my age and older find this idea a bit startling -- we like to control what and with whom we share online. But in reading about these companies way back in February, it occurred to me that this might be the root of a new generational divide. I see my teenage cousins on Facebook liking thousands of pages indiscriminately and sharing daily minutiae by the truckload. Some are living what seems like 100% of their lives out loud and online. The idea of automatically streaming your reading, listening and location habits will definitely appeal to them, and never appeal to me. Just as my parents will never "get" Twitter and Reddit, I will never "get" clickstreaming. Lo and behold, late 2011 brought these concepts directly to the mainstream: Facebook. Frictionless sharing" like this will surely propagate widely in 2012 and beyond." - Matt Silverman Television The coming year will also see much more focus on redefining the TV experience as Apple releases a TV set, which will seamlessly integrate the Internet. Despite the absence of Steve Jobs, the release will garner substantial hype and will be an immediate hit, prompting an upgrade cycle. - Todd Wasserman Smart TVs and TV apps, for example Hulu or Netflix, will start to become more popular. - Keith Kaplan This will be the first year most people become aware of what OLED HDTVs are, and will want one, especially after they've seen OLED's sharp picture, super-flat screen and beautiful color saturation. However, it will be several years before OLED HDTVs in large sizes (over 55") become affordable. - Charlie White Gaming Motion gaming is sort of the ire of all hardcore gamers but in 2012 game companies will continue to push the limits of their gesture-based peripherals. Sales of the Kinect and PS3 Move may not be as stratospherically high as the Nintendo Wii once was but we're just starting to scratch the surface of what these things can do. The companies are throwing their hats into motion gaming and 2012 will be the year it sinks or swims (until, of course, the WiiU comes out). That, and there will be a new emphasis on motion-capping and life-like animation. The current crop of consoles can already get pretty close to photo-realism but animating those graphics has proved the toughest challenge. Games like L.A. Noire have shown what motion-capture can do in a video game setting. Be ready for more. Of course, mobile/social gaming and gamification will continue their steady plot to conquer the gaming world but expect big moves in motion gaming and motion-capture. - Zachary Sniderman Social Media Social media powerhouses like Facebook and Twitter will grow less in user acquisition and more in user engagement by implementing new features to keep users on the site longer. Pinboard site Pinterest will be a huge player in the space as it continues to organically grow its large, yet niche audience. As Google+ continues to add more features, better integrate with other Google products and become more business-friendly, it will be a contender for best social network. Mobile design will become a focus for social sites (if it hasn't already) as average users become more inclined to not only consume content but also engage on tablets and smartphones. - Meghan Peters Facebook and Twitter will continue their rapid growth, especially outside of the U.S. Inside the U.S., Google+ will break 100 million users and look significantly different than it does right now. - Lance Ulanoff Business Acquisitions In 2012, Amazon will secure its place as the digital hub in a good portion of U.S. households by buying Netflix. This will not only add a lot more content to Amazon's streaming choices and make buying Prime a no-brainer, but will also become a valuable branding tool as Amazon drops the Netflix name and that company's red envelopes are replaced by Amazon's yellow and white. - Todd Wasserman Netflix CEO Reed Hastings will step down, and someone will acquire Netflix. RIM will also announce a significant leadership change. It may also get acquired before the end of 2013. - Lance Ulanoff Image courtesy of iStockphoto, GreenPimp, gmutlu, LPETTET, robas |
| Google Chrome Beta Released, Now Even Faster and More Secure | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 7:41 PM | Charlie White |
|  Google Chrome has announced a new beta that speeds up the world's second-favorite browser even more, as well as enhances its security. According to the official Google Chrome blog, the new beta release of the Chrome browser, version 17.0 .963.26 beta-m, gains some of its additional speed by "loading some Web pages in the background, even before you finish typing the URL in the omnibox." Google announced at the same time the Chrome beta will offer additional protection against malicious websites and their malevolent downloads. Software engineer Dominic Hamon wrote in the Google Chrome blog post that this beta version includes "expanded functionality to analyze executable files (such as ".exe" and ".msi" files) that you download." Chrome will notify users with a warning that they should discard such files. Hamon added that the company will be making Chrome smarter in the coming months, allowing it to detect even more malicious files. I downloaded the latest Chrome beta and tested it, and it certainly feels faster. It downloaded and installed without a hitch, and it seems stable so far. As I typed a web address I often visit into Chrome's address window (called the "omnibox," where all the searching and URLs appear in Chrome), it did feel like it popped up faster. I'll keep testing this beta browser to see if I run into any bugs. You can try the new test release by downloading the Chrome beta here. By the way, while Chrome is the world's second favorite browser, Google Chrome 15 beat out Internet Explorer 8 as the world's most popular browser version. |
| Sprint Throttles Users with Its 'Truly Unlimited' Data Plans | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 7:06 PM | Christina Warren |
|  Sprint might claim it offers "truly unlimited" data for its smartphone plans, but the telecom admitted it still penalizes its heaviest users. At the Citigroup Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications Conference on Thursday, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse admitted to throttling -- or restricting data speeds of -- its biggest data hogs. Dow Jones quotes Hesse as saying, "For those that want to abuse it, we can knock them off." Sprint reportedly throttles about 1% of its users. Of course, this practice is not unique to Sprint. AT&T throttles its heaviest users -- including those with grandfathered-in "unlimited" plans. T-Mobile also throttles users who exceed a certain amount of data usage. The difference? Sprint runs television ads like this one, claiming its unlimited data plans really are unlimited. Sprint has long-touted its "truly unlimited" data plans as the key feature differentiating it from competing networks. Of course, the definition of "unlimited" is frequently changing. Back in October, Sprint stopped offering unlimited data plans for tablets, laptops, notebooks and mobile hotspots. Sprint reportedly made that move to keep the network clear for smartphone users. While we're sure Sprint allows for some amount of traffic shaping and throttling in its contract with customers, we still think the company should change its advertising ASAP. Our question: What level of data constitutes throttling? 5GB? 10GB? 3.2GB? We've contacted Sprint for an answer. What do you think of Sprint's definition of "truly unlimited?" |
| Smartphone Screens Get Ready: Gorilla Glass 2 is Coming | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 6:42 PM | Chris Taylor |
|  It's in the iPhone and iPad -- though Apple doesn't officially acknowledge its existence. Indeed, it's in an increasing number of smartphone screens and tablets; at last count, more than 500 million devices carried it worldwide. You likely look at it all the time without noticing it. What is it? Gorilla Glass, a super-strong, lightweight 21st-century glass made by Pyrex manufacturer Corning. Now the company is preparing to unveil a brand new version of the material, Gorilla Glass 2, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. "Handset and tablet device manufacturers are clearly driving toward higher functionality from thinner designs," says Corning Specialty Materials General Manager James Steiner in a statement. "Corning's latest innovation in Gorilla Glass technology is very well positioned to meet these challenges and enable broader touch technology penetration." The company is staying tight-lipped about exactly how much lighter or stronger the new glass is; we'll find out more at CES 2012 starting on Monday. But chances are you'll have to work a lot harder to shatter a smartphone screen made with Gorilla Glass 2. SEE ALSO: How Super-Strong Glass Keeps Your Smartphone Screen From Breaking Gorilla Glass 2 isn't just for small devices. The company is bringing an impressive 82-inch touchscreen to the show, along with a Gorilla Glass-covered video wall, flanked by Gorilla Glass-fabricated speakers. The lightweight glass technology was long-rumored to be used in the iPhone. This was confirmed last year in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, which features the Apple CEO paying a visit to Corning's factory -- and brokering a deal to get the as-yet-untested glass into the first iPhone within six months. Have you ever shattered a Gorilla Glass smartphone? Would a lighter, thinner screen make you look twice at a new model? Let us know in the comments. |
| Meet Tailbot: A Robotics Breakthrough Inspired by Dinosaurs [VIDEO] | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 4:33 PM | Sam Laird |
|  Could the future of robotics actually lie somewhere in the ancient age of tyrannosaurus and velociraptors? That's what the findings of an interdisciplinary group of UC Berkeley researchers appears to indicate. After studying the ways in which lizards -- and probably dinosaurs before them -- use their tails to maintain balance when leaping, the team of biologists and engineers has applied that prehistoric technology to a robotic car dubbed Tailbot. Researchers point to a famous scene from the film Jurassic Park, in which a velociraptor leaps from a balcony to a tyrannosaurus skeleton, as an example of their idea. The cutting-edge work could lead to practical advances in the field of robotics that enable more durable, nimble machines to function in hectic and uncertain situations, including disaster relief missions. In radioactive environments, for example, robots could one day successfully carry out operations too dangerous for human operatives. "Engineers quickly understood the value of a tail," Thomas Libby, a team member and Berkeley graduate student in mechanical engineering, told the campus news center. "Robots are not nearly as agile as animals, so anything that can make a robot more stable is an advancement, which is why this work is so exciting." Tailbot is equipped with a small gyroscope that detects its angle and sends feedback to the robot's tail. The tail then adjusts accordingly to rebalance the machine. When dropped nose-down, Tailbot can right itself before dropping a foot, researchers say. UC Berkeley integrative biology professor Robert Full leads the team of researchers and has studied geckos for the past two decades, analyzing how the lizards' toe hairs help them climb smooth surfaces such as glass and how their tails help them avoid dangerous falls and slips. More recently, Full and six students used motion capture technologies to record how the red-headed African Agama lizard uses its tail. When the lizard ran down a low-traction ramp to leap to a nearby surface, the lack of friction before take-off caused it to slip and spin haphazardly. But the lizard used its tail to counteract the imbalance. Full and his team took note, creating a mathematical model to help understand the lizard's adjustments and apply similar functionality to Tailbot. Tailbot's design created a stir at at a recent international conference on intelligent robotics, where the UC Berkeley team's work was one of five projects highlighted from a field of more than two thousand robot studies. Their findings will also appear in the Jan. 12 issue of the journal Nature. Full said that the work "shows the competitive advantage of interdisciplinary approaches" in leading to innovation, but he and his team aren't done yet. They are now researching how lizards use their tails to help control pitch, roll and yaw while running, another potential breakthrough that could also help create more capable robots in the future. And, as with their more recent findings, the team's collaboration of the natural and mechanical sciences will continue to be an advantage in pushing robotic technology forward. "We showed for the first time that lizards swing their tail up or down to counteract the rotation to their body, keeping them stable," Full said. "Inspiration from lizard tails will likely lead to far more agile search-and-rescue robots, as well as ones having greater capability to to more rapidly detect chemical, biological or nuclear hazards." What do you think the future holds for robotics? What else can robots learn from the natural world? Let us know in the comments. Image courtesy of Robert Full Lab, UC Berkeley |
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