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NTT Updates Bracelet To Monitor The Well-Being Of Elderly Relatives

Posted: 25 Feb 2011 05:22 AM PST

You might remember NTT‘s electronic bracelet that identifies and tracks the wearer's actions and that we showed you back in September last year. It now turns out the Japanese tech powerhouse has further developed the concept in the meantime: earlier this week in Tokyo, NTT showcased [JP] the latest version (there is now an English site, too).

NTT’s pitch is still the same: Japan already has the world’s oldest society and things won’t get better anytime soon, meaning there will be demand for technology that helps people to keep track of the well-being of their older relatives remotely.

The bracelet is equipped with a mini camera, a microphone, and sensors for acceleration, light and direction.

If you brush your teeth with the gadget on, the system detects the movement and an avatar on the screen starts brushing his teeth, too. Data of every action can be processed, visualized and sent over the web (or stored for future reference): people keep track of what an older person is doing from morning to evening.

NTT is thinking about implementing this concept in tele-healthcare applications for the elderly in the future, but the bracelet is still in prototype mode.

Review: Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0

Posted: 25 Feb 2011 05:15 AM PST

Short version: Superior Drummer will save you a lot of money if you’re into music production. The steep learning curve is compensated with the depth of settings and options offered.

Features:

  • 20GB drum sound library
  • MSRP: $299

Pros:

  • 229€ list price
  • superb sounds
  • huge amount of options

Cons:

  • expansion packs are expensive
  • sometimes using it feels like rocket science

Full review

CD sales are on the decline, people don’t buy them any more. They’re useless since the audio junkies are slowly going back to vinyl and the content freaks are buying digital. How much money would it cost to produce an album in 2011? Let me rephrase, how much money would it be sensible to spend on producing an album in 2011?

Software plug-ins like Toontrack’s Superior Drummer can help to answer the question. It costs $299 and that’s not a lot if you can save days of expensive studio time you would need to record acoustic drums. The package features 20 GB of ultra realistic drum sounds on 5 DVDs. The sounds were recorded at Avatar Studios in NY.

Using it

The GUI is nice, however I had to spend some time to understand specific functions. For example I needed two hours to map an Alesis DM 10 e-drum kit to Superior Drummer and it really wasn’t easy. Once the mapping was done everything was working perfectly. The best way was to use the “learn” function that will map the proper midi notes to a sound.


The mixer window has a lot of great built-in presets that can come handy. Superior takes on the concept of mixing using microphones. You don’t just have snare, hi-hat and kick channels, rather snare top, snare bottom, overhead and so on. Sometimes this is frustrating, like when you want to make just one crash cymbal louder. To do this you have to go to another pane which is luckily present all the time. Using the AMB mic channels is particularly useful for setting up the sound in a room. These channels control different ambient levels of your drum set in your mix.

The construct window let’s you customize your drumset. You can mix sounds from different kits and them save the whole thing as a user preset. In terms of resources, a kit can use up from 600 MB up to 1.7GB from your RAM. It runs gig-proof on my 2008 MacBook with 4GB ram. So far I haven’t encountered any reliability issues. Using Logic 9 as the host Superior Drummer never crashed or failed on me, not even during 3-4 hour long sessions. Additional drum sound libraries and presets are available at the Toontrack website.

Grooves are a way of working with midi inside Superior Drummer. I did not try this at all for I had no need to do so. I just use the host as a midi sequencer. This function might come handy if you’d like to bounce your midi sequences from inside Superior Drummer.

With the X-drum feature you can map multiple sounds to one midi note. This allows you to stack drum sounds for a fatter sound. Then you can assign a microphone to control the volumes of the stacked sounds.

Conclusion

Superior Drummer is one of the best drum samplers our there. Deep in options and great with sounds it’s a steal for $299. That’s cheaper than 3 hours in a normal studio recording drums and trust me, the results are comparable.

Product page Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0

Sony Develops Next-Generation CMOS Sensor

Posted: 25 Feb 2011 01:42 AM PST

Japan’s biggest business daily The Nikkei, usually a very reliable source, reported yesterday in its evening edition that Sony succeeded in developing what appears to be a pretty powerful CMOS sensor. According to the report, Sony’s device can “convert multiple pixels into signals simultaneously”, which results in a reduction of the conversion time by up to 75% when compared to existing sensors.

The new sensor boasts a processing speed of 34.8Gbps (that’s up to five times faster than previous Sony sensors) and shoots video with 17.7MP at 120fps. Apparently, big S also managed to keep power consumption in check by revamping the circuit design in the sensor.

The Nikkei also says that Sony plans to use the new technology in digital cameras and cell phones in the future, without providing information on when exactly this will be the case.

In December, we reported that Sony is ready to invest $1.2 billion in the production of sensors, a market in which the company commands a 70% share.

We’ll keep you posted (the picture above shows an older Sony Exmor CMOS).

World’s First Robot Marathon Has Started (Livestream)

Posted: 25 Feb 2011 12:01 AM PST

Last week, we reported about Japanese robot maker Vstone’s plan to start the world’s first full marathon [JP] for humanoids, and that race started today at 10am Japanese time. It will take the 5 participants until Sunday to complete the full marathon (42.195km) in Osaka, and thanks to Ustream, you can see them running live until the very end.

Vstone says the main target of the event (apart from the obvious PR effect) is to prove how high quality his company’s robots are. All participants must run the whole marathon non-stop.

Vstone also said it wants to bring the idea to other markets at some point in the future.

Here’s the Ustream live video (broadcast from the perspective of one of the participating robots, other options can be found here):

Video clips at Ustream

Daily Crunch: New Temple Edition

Posted: 25 Feb 2011 12:00 AM PST

Startup Company QuakeGuard Develops Early Warning System For Earthquakes

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 07:45 PM PST

Silicon Valley startup company, QuakeGuard, is expanding its state-of-the-art earthquake detection system first piloted in Palm Springs, CA. Now, there are twelve locations, and 120 more on the way and they can provide early warnings to people who use the system.

The system is currently in use by schools and emergency support (fire and police stations). The system works with sensors placed around strategic places to detect initial P waves given off from quakes and comparing with S waves to determine quake strength and likelihood. QuakeGuard can provide as much as a few minutes warning to those using the system.

Not only can alerts be provided, but also special macro jobs can initiate: fire stations can open garage doors, city utilities (gas and water) can be shut off. During the pilot program in the Coachella, Tom Kirk from the Coachella Valley Association of Governments, said that, "For [the city's] fire station, doors roll up; for [the] school, an alarm might sound, teachers tell the kids to duck and cover; for a hospital, maybe backup generators go on."

Hooray: Alan Turing’s Papers Successfully Acquired For Public Display

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 07:25 PM PST


You may not remember, but back in November I wrote about a brave guy who was trying to raise half a million pounds to buy a large lot of notes and papers by the hugely influential logician and computing pioneer Alan Turing. As it turns out he didn’t get near that huge amount, but he did raise quite a bit, which, added to a generous £100,000 from Google and a sum from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, proved to be enough to purchase the papers after they failed to sell at Christie’s.

They’ll be on display at the Bletchley Park Museum (Turing’s workplace) after they’ve completed restoration work. Congratulations to all involved.

NFC Plus Powermat: A Match Made In Heaven, Or Just A Match?

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 06:58 PM PST


Powermat is looking at making an improvement to their tech that would combine the wireless charging capability with near-field communication, allowing for low-bandwidth communications while you charge. Sounds kind of weak at first, but really it’s a good match. They both emphasize that wires are, like, so 2010.

Yes, it’s not that you want to charge where you pay, or you want to buy things while you charge, but that Powermat wants to make its chips and the halo of services related to NFC and the like as robust as possible. Wires are the enemy to Powermat, and anything that makes wires less necessary is good news to them.

Right now Powermat stuff is still pretty bulky and expensive. But a smaller, flatter version with integrated NFC is on the way — something that could see inclusion in far more phones for far less money. I’m looking forward to it.

WTF Ubisoft, A Wii Game Where You Have To Make Out In Real Life?

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 06:31 PM PST


WTF WTF WTF. Watch this video. This is a real game. German, yes — but nevertheless, real.

“We Dare is a sexy, quirky, party game that offers a large variety of hilarious, innovative and physical, sometimes kinky, challenges. The more friends you invite to party, the spicier the play!”

I don’t understand! If you’re going to have an orgy, why would you play Wii first?! That would just make things awkward!

Besides, orgy games would be way better with a Kinect

Xoom Shows Its Mod-Friendliness With ClockworkMod Install

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 06:08 PM PST


It was only just released, but the Motorola Xoom has already been made moddable by Seattle hacker @koush, who installed his ClockworkMod Recovery ROM manager on the device with no problems. Kind of a 180 after all that hullaballoo about the Droid series having highly protected bootloaders.

Root access hasn’t yet been reached, but give these guys a break, it’s only been a day. Once root goes through, however, people will be able to install Windows 95 on these things for all the device cares. Chances are it’ll just be mods allowing deeper file access, non-Market software, and so on, like every other piece of rooted Android hardware.

It’s kind of backwards to say this, but I’m looking forward to seeing how Android 3.0 is limited. I mean, it’s not that I want it to be, it’s just another way of saying I wonder where Google decided to set the limits this time.

[via Electronista]

Sony Going All In With Translucent Camera Mirrors

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 05:37 PM PST


Sony made a surprising announcement today in Spain, saying that all future models of its Alpha line of DSLRs will feature beam-splitting translucent mirrors. This is an alternative to the standard fully-reflective reflex mirror in most DSLRs that swings out of the way to expose the sensor. Instead, the light mostly passes through the mirror and can be captured without waiting for the reflex module to get out of the way.

The a55 and a33 used the technology, and because of bright EVFs instead of optical prism viewfinders, they avoided the problem that prevented translucent mirrors from catching on before. Sony splits off just enough light to use for a phase-detection autofocus system, rather than enough to actually see through the viewfinder. It was a gutsy move and seems to have paid off. The a33 and a55 were pretty decently reviewed, but the fact that such a bold endeavor didn’t totally fail is the important bit.

The next camera to sport the “SLT” format (single lens translucent) will the be the a77, a competitor with the Canon 60D and Nikon D7000. It would have 1080p video, 24 megapixels, high ISO capability, and so on. I wish it luck.

[via PhotoRumors and PetaPixel]

Rumor: Nikon D4 To Support Thunderbolt?

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 04:29 PM PST

We just got word that the Nikon D4 will be the first DSLR to support Thunderbolt. The rumor became known a few weeks ago, but it wasn’t until the other part of the rumor (the new Macbooks) came out that the Nikon rumor appeared more valid.

You see, the rumor was that the Nikon D4 will be getting “Lightpeak” (now Thunderbolt) and that new “Lightpeak” computers were on the way (early 2011 Macbooks). This won’t mean too much for most people; but for those looking to shoot lots of HD DSLR video, especially in movie productions, this will be a nice feature.

WITN: Is It Racist To Say That Chinese Manufacturing Leads To Low Quality Goods — And Fraud? [TCTV]

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 04:02 PM PST

Earlier this week, CrunchGear’s John Biggs sparked controversy (within TechCrunch ranks at least) with a post entitled “Alibaba And The Curse Of Chinese Manufacturing“. In the post Biggs wrote (amongst other things) that…

“Many decry the sad state of American manufacturing but these [Chinese] companies still sell billions in janky garbage that washes up here in huge containers and is sold throughout our 50 great states and, more important, the rest of the developed and developing world.”

Gosh.

Read more…


Apple Has Significant “Head Start” With Thunderbolt, But Not Exclusive

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 03:31 PM PST

Intel’s new Thunderbolt interface, which made its debut this morning in an upgrade to Apple’s MacBook Pro line, may be effectively an Apple exclusive for quite some time, according to Intel. At their press release, held shortly after Apple’s update when live, Intel noted that the developer kit for the interface would be provided to other computer manufacturers this spring, and that they didn’t expect OEMs to ship with Thunderbolt until 2012.

It’s not exactly an exclusive, but it’s close. That’s a pretty big coup for Apple — assuming Thunderbolt catches on faster than USB 3.0 has, there are no roll-out problems, and plenty of applications. It’s actually a lot to assume, and although Apple is definitely a winner here, there are also some risks involved.

First, it’s likely that Apple’s “collaboration” with Intel consists of being the consumer test ground for the technology while it’s too expensive for most people and not significantly better than other options for casual users. Early rumors had Apple being “integral” to the development of Light Peak (the internal project name for Thunderbolt), but I suspect that was mainly just standardizing and dealmaking. Apple’s burned itself with Firewire, which, while still used by many professionals, is more or less a niche interface compared with USB. Apple likely wanted in on the next thing and volunteered to be the test subject, while contributing very little to the technology itself (apart from designing their boards around it, of course). It’s not like Macs get some kind of special powers out of the interface.

Second, the inclusion of this new tech isn’t really beneficial to users the way Apple tends to think of “beneficial to users.” Apple these days has a philosophy of “it just works,” and if it could, would make every port its own proprietary interface just so it would be totally under their control and in consequence totally reliable to all Apple-approved software and hardware. It’s what Steve Jobs’ dreams are made of. But Thunderbolt isn’t a technology that simplifies things — yet. Take a look at the left side of the new MacBooks:

Yeah, it’s kind of a jungle when you consider Apple’s keep-it-simple approach to I/O. It’s a transitional period for the hardware, in which Apple can’t leave USB behind because everyone uses it (though why they don’t upgrade to 3.0 is beyond me), can’t leave Firewire behind because it would alienate their hardcore buyers, can’t really include more than one Thunderbolt slot, and can’t use that one for anything but high-speed data (due, ironically, to their early adoption). It’ll be nice for some people to have, but really, the benefit to the average Mac user is minimal; they’ll appreciate the snappy and economical Sandy Bridge processors more.

Third, the advantage of exclusivity is pretty minimal, since the tech will be moving on over the next year and the move from copper to fiber will not only increase speed, but time and volume will reduce the cost of the hardware. For the moment, Thunderbolt is unproven, unbranded, and almost unsupported. And what happens if, say, the first batch has troubles? Or if USB 3.0 takes off in the meantime, and people can’t really tell the difference between 5Gb/s and 10Gb/s when they’re transferring a few dozen photos from their camera, or a movie from their external hard drive?

If Thunderbolt were a game-changing technology today, Apple would have themselves a genuine victory on their hands. As it is, I think they’re taking a risk being the first to support this young (but promising) tech — not that there’s anything wrong with that. How much of a win this de facto exclusive is will only be clear in hindsight. Now, if the iPad 2 were to have a Thunderbolt port (say, in that mystery spot, otherwise rumored to be a SIM), that might help push things in the right direction.


Acme Made’s New Clutch And Skinny MacBook Sleeves Now Available At Apple Stores

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 02:53 PM PST


If you’re in need of a sexy sleeve for your new Sandy Bridge/Thunderbolt MacBook Pro, you might consider picking up one of these from Acme Made. I reviewed a couple of their bags a while back and I know them to be pretty solid, with nice materials. These two new entries are available only in Apple Stores, though, so you’ll have to move your feet around to get ‘em.

The Skinny Sleeve is a lightweight sleeve designed for the MacBook Air 11″. It’s waterproof (at least the parts that cover the laptop are) and has a little padding so your poor little lappy doesn’t get dinged. It’ll set you back $40.

The Clutch (top) is designed for a 13″ Air or MacBook Pro, and is made of coated canvas, with leather trim. I like the material, and the metal buckles.


Nice waffle print! Note that this one also has space for a few pens and such, and sports a strap. In person it’s probably something of a man-purse, despite the masculine construction. It’ll set you back $100, which is enough to make a grown man cry.

Remember! Only available at Apple stores. They should be there now.

Devolo’s dLan 200 AV USB Extender Is World’s First Powerline USB Extender

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 02:17 PM PST

Powerline may be one of the most underrated wireless technologies available for the home. Basically, it’s a home networking setup that uses the electrical wiring in your house to connect different devices. And now, Devolo is expanding its line of Powerline AV to include a USB extender, a world’s first.

The dLan 200 AV USB extender allows you to connect a USB device to any home network supporting Powerline. So, in one room you could connect your computer to it and in another have the USB cable go to a printer for wireless printing, without all the network setup. Great for the not so tech-savvy. Also, the extenders work up to 300 m, saving a big wiring hassel.

Price is about $160 for the entire kit, and for those who already have other Powerline AV products, a standalone USB unit can be had for about $110.

[via pocketlint]

Thunderbolt Plus RAID Equals The New Pegasus Drive Towers

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 01:48 PM PST


Thunderbolt is out, and the Thunderbolt-equipped peripherals are coming fast. LaCie has their Little Big Drive coming this summer, but if you need more than 500GB of space, you’ll probably want to look elsewhere. Pegasus has you covered with their new R6 and R4 direct-attached storage units. Need to have 8TB of storage streaming at 800MB per second? Probably not! But this sucker can do it anyway.

There’s no pricing yet, but the units should be available in Q2, so I’d say “springish.” The R6 has six hot-swap bays and the R4 has four. They can take up to 2TB drives (formatting in HFS+ reduces capacity by about 30%), making for a max capacity of… let me get my calculator out… looks like 12TB of raw space, less once you format and so on. You can, of course, daisy chain multiple units for extra capacity.

The R4 supports RAID 0, 1, 6, 5, 10, and the R6 with its extra bays gets 50 and 60. Sounds like some serious storage for the speed-conscious user. We’ll let you know when we get pricing on these bad boys.

I love that picture up top. The Pegasus is blasting through the lightning!

Internet Explorer 9′s Privacy Features Gain W3C Acceptance

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 01:00 PM PST

Besides the radical new interface, one of the bigger features of Internet Explorer 9 is its "do not track" feature. At the name suggests, it lets you decide, either manually or by subscribing to a pre-compiled list, which sites you exclude from tracking your Web browsing. So if you visit a site that employs a third-party ad service that tracks your every move—why is that necessary?—you can enable the anti-tracking feature. Try to track me now, jerks! The point is, it’s a handy feature, and it’s one that’s poised to gain greater acceptance.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) says that it has approved Microsoft’s set of privacy features for broader adoption. What, exactly, did Microsoft submit?

The filter list contains parts of third-party URIs that a browser may access automatically when referenced within a web page that a user deliberately visits. Rules in a filter list may change the way the user agent handles third-party content. By limiting the calls to these websites and blocking resources from other web pages, the filter list limits the information other sites can collect about a user.

The Do Not Track user preference is a setting maintained by the user agent. It can be read by a webserver or client JavaScript. A webserver that respects theDo Not Track user preference will read this value and will not track the user when this setting is enabled.

The W3C will host a fun and exciting workshop on April 28 and 29 where employees will be on hand to further detail the new privacy details.

NBA Finals En Route To ESPN 3D

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 12:30 PM PST

ESPN 3D will show this year’s NBA Finals in, yes, 3D. This is the first time the NBA Finals will be in 3D.

The Finals, which will take place in June, will probably be between the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Knicks. (That’s a safe bet, right?) And that’s just as well: the very first NBA game broadcast in 3D, which took place last December, was between the Knicks and the Lakers.

This is the same ESPN, mind you, that admitted to having problems trying to figure out this whole 3D thing, though basketball, being played on a smaller surface, probably lends itself to easier 3D production than, say, football or soccer.


LaCie Is The First With A Thunderbolt-Equipped External Drive

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 12:00 PM PST

Following the Thunderbolt-centered Intel and Apple announcements, we fully expect that the accessory makers will be coming in droves to support the new protocol. LaCie was among the early adopters of USB 3.0 when that was new, and so it’s no surprise that they’re in the front line with supporting Thunderbolt. Their first entry is this Little Big Disk, featuring the new connector and SSDs on the inside.

It’s actually not a traditional HDD, since those would have trouble keeping up with the 10Gb/s (up to 700MB/s in LaCie’s tests) throughput provided by the interface. Instead, inside it are two 250GB Intel SSDs in RAID 0, with a combined bandwidth of… well, a lot.

The whole thing weighs about 1.5 pounds, and is encased in the ripply-aluminum material of which LaCie is so fond.

One handy feature that will likely be common to most TB devices: you can daisy chain drives, and even attach a monitor on the end. Handy! But not really the most likely setup.

Of course, having two discrete SSD units of such large capacity is going to make the Little Big Drive ridiculously expensive. A single 250GB Intel 510 drive will run you over $500, so this little LaCie guy is going to break the bank for sure. It should be available in the summer.
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