Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007.
Some posts he’d like you to read:
The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin
His personal website is coldewey.cc.
With real-time translation of text common on the web and instantaneous speech-to-text gaining popularity, it seems that transliteration is cool again. But less obvious, and more difficult, methods of input are yet to be implemented. Case in point: sign language. The complicated and often contextual gestures form a vast visual vocabulary that isn’t easily captured or interpreted.
A team of British researchers, however, is making the attempt, creating a tool that translates a set of standard signs into readable text, in real time. It’s called the Portable Sign language Translator, and it should be out next year. → Read More
Today brings some rather high-profile recruiting from Google: the director of DARPA, the Department of Defense’s research arm, is leaving after three years of heading the agency to join Google at a “senior executive position.”
The news comes from a DARPA spokesman, who reports that Dugan felt she couldn’t refuse an offer from such an “innovative company.” She has worked at the agency on and off since 1996, and most recently has brought its budget and resources to bear on more practical problems like securing military networks. What role she will play at Google is unknown, but it is probably at least partially security-related. → Read More
To publish a “review” of the Lytro as it is today is, in a way, very premature. But it’s also only fair. The product is shipping and, to an extent, complete. But given the number of features and planned improvements in the pipes, a review today will be obsolete in a few months. Nevertheless, an initial judgment on the device must be made.
So here is what can be said of the Lytro in a form that can only really be called a public beta.
We also recently got to talk with Lytro founder Ren Ng and their director of photography, Eric Cheng, at an event in San Francisco. I cornered them for a few minutes to talk about the product and their plans for the future. Watch the video inside. → Read More
Part of the long-running (and far from over) SOPA/PIPA battle was the drawing of lines in the sand by Internet companies. While most recognized the danger of that irresponsible and short-sighted bill and took action against it, some companies supported it strongly and even testified to that effect in Congress.
GoDaddy was one of those companies, and while it later tried to undo the damage its position had done (the new CEO seems a little more in touch), the Internet isn’t so good at forgetting or forgiving. Among the many, many sites that pledged to leave GoDaddy’s DNS service was Wikipedia, and after three months of work, they’ve finally done so. → Read More
I have a confession to make: despite having reviewed a few e-readers, and having written dozens of articles about them, I’ve never really used one. I mean, I’ve used them enough to know a good one from a bad one, to understand the features, and to do a proper evaluation — but I’ve never made one part of my life, the way one makes a mobile phone or laptop part of one’s life. In that way I haven’t really used an e-reader. Until just recently.
As a book lover, I view e-readers as interlopers; as a practical person, I acknowledge them as inevitable. But in both cases, I have come to view them as a deeply unsatisfying reading experience. They fall short of paper in meaningful ways, and objecting to them should not be considered technophobic.
The future of e-books is bright, but as far as I’m concerned, right now we’re still in the dark age — though that isn’t to say the stone age. → Read More
While for an ordinary civilian the automatic geotagging of your photos or check-ins might be convenient, in the military it can be a lethal mistake. In 2007, geotagged photos of a new fleet of helicopters allowed enemy forces to mortar the base and destroy several of them; it could just as easily have been a field hospital or barracks.
The Army has therefore published an article calling attention to this fact, though its casual tone suggests that they aren’t ready to take serious action on the issue. A warning is all it is, and perhaps also an acknowledgement that sometimes it’s better to bend with the breeze than fight it. → Read More
Most of the news around Austin this week is centered around SXSW, naturally, but Texas Governor (and erstwhile presidential candidate) Rick Perry broke some news today that’s unrelated, but still Austin-relevant. Apple, it seems, which has been slowly growing its presence in the state’s tech oasis, chose SXSW weekend as an auspicious time to announce a major new campus in Austin. → Read More
I’ve just gotten out of a quick hands-on session with the new iPad (and yes, it’s just called the iPad), and have come away with exactly the feeling I expected to have: that I need to buy one.
The first thing you should know, and also the reason there aren’t many pictures, is that as far as weight and shape, it’s almost exactly the same as the iPad 2. They wouldn’t allow comparison shots — probably because the new iPad is a little thicker — but the dimensional differences are minor and the overall feel is near-identical.
Let me tell you why I’m going to buy the new iPad. Or rather, let me show you. → Read More
As 100% of our readers know, there is a major Apple event tomorrow morning here in San Francisco. We presume it will be the debut of a brand new high-res iPad (3, HD, 2X, or other), but signs have pointed to some secondary announcements as well. Apple TV (not the Apple TV) is tipped to be getting a refresh, and chances are that iOS 5.1 will be shown off in detail, if not its successor.
We’ll be at the event with our 4G dongles hot, reporting the new products and features the second they’re announced. So tune in tomorrow morning (the event starts at 10AM Pacific time) for our live coverage.
And, of course, stay for the dozen or so Apple-related posts and editorials that will follow in its wake. → Read More
One of the more interesting PC accessories of the last few years was the now-infamous Optimus keyboard, which replaced every key with a tiny display that could be customized for games and software. At $1500, it was kind of a stretch. More recently, Razer’s Blade laptop and an unreleased keyboard have integrated a touchscreen and LCD keys, though also at a premium. But why haven’t we employed the high-resolution touchscreens we all carry around with us – our smartphones?
Roccat, a PC gaming brand that has been expanding into the states, has put together a free app that acts as a sort of window into your PC, letting you monitor your components, create custom key layouts for games, and more. It’s a geek dream. → Read More
Valve, creators of (among other things) the Half-Life franchise and Steam, the gold standard for digital game distribution, are said to be getting into the hardware game. If The Verge’s tip is to be believed, the company is working with partners to establish a base PC gaming standard to sell as a packaged deal, a sort of set-top box PC that would run Steam or other download services and run most PC games.
If true, it would be a major step for Valve, which has always been a software company. They haven’t ruled out moving into hardware, but their expertise is in software, so they’re more likely to be collaborating with an established gaming PC brand like Alienware. In fact, Alienware’s compact X51 system is said to have been designed with a spec like this “Steam Box” in mind. → Read More
Random House, the world’s largest publisher of the kinds of books you and I read, has made some adjustments to the way it sells e-books to libraries. Notably, they have tripled the price of many titles. Librarians across the country are expressing their discontent.
The changes were telegraphed by an announcement a month ago that suggested prices would be going up soon, and most expected significant increases — but across the board popular genres and titles have gone up as much as 300%. Nothing is offered below $25, and some common titles are going for above $100.
As Kathy Petlewski, a librarian in Plymouth, puts it: “The first thing that popped into my mind was that Random House must really hate libraries.” → Read More
Paul Martin, NASA’s Inspector General, gave written testimony in a House committee earlier this week detailing the security threats faced by their IT infrastructure. The thrust of the document is that NASA needs to double down on cybersecurity but, naturally, needs more money to do so.
Their IT budget is $1.5 billion, but of that only $58 million was spent on security. Considering the enormous network of datacenters, laptops, operations centers, and research labs scattered around the world, this may not be nearly enough. As it is, in the last two years NASA has been hacked thousands of times. In one instance, the hackers gained full access to some NASA systems and credentials for 150 employees. → Read More
Say the Mayans are right, and a meteor or some other catastrophe strikes the Earth sometime later this year. Assuming we’re not all wiped out by the impact, emergency services worldwide are going to need to do some serious canvassing to assess damage, resources, and form a picture of the disaster.
DARPA is running a little game, called CLIQRQuest, to look into how such a network of people might do such a task. But instead of asking people to snap pictures of reservoirs and hospitals, they’re giving cash prizes for finding QR codes. → Read More
Vocre was one of the more popular battlefield companies at Disrupt SF 2011; the automagical quality of the app and their excellent on-stage presentation made them one of the frontrunners. They haven’t been idle since then, though, and they’ve taken the advice of some critics who suggested their pay-per-use model was going to turn off users.
They’re releasing a new version of the app today with a few significant improvements, most notably that the app is now free. → Read More
The new iPad, if rumors are to be believed, has an extremely high-resolution screen — better than most monitors and packed into a quarter of the display space. The result? iPhone 4-like Retina goodness. But it’s actually kind of hard to visualize this, since most pixel-dense displays are small, and we’re used to a certain level of aliasing on our bigger displays.
Game developer Pixels on Toast has done the work of preparing their upcoming game Food Run to the expected 2048×1536 resolution. The results may help you get into your head just how many pixels we’re talking about here. → Read More
A research team with members from University of Michigan and University of Pennsylvania has been investigating the feasibility of what they call “computational sprinting,” a technique by which existing chips could be made to operate at hugely increased speeds for short periods of time. They have concluded that “it is indeed possible to engineer such a system.”
Not the best of news to readers who were hoping for these sprinting chips to hit the market next year, but the news shouldn’t be set aside just because at the moment the implementation is theoretical. It could change the way you use your devices. → Read More
Samsung, or rather Samsung’s Advanced Institute of Technology, has created what they claim is the first CMOS sensor that can collect both visible light data (which you’d use for a normal digital image) and depth data (like a Kinect). It’s accomplished by mixing in depth-sensing pixels with the RGB photosites normally found on such sensors. It was presented at ISSCC 2012 and reported by Tech-On.
The technology could be extremely influential: a small sensor that is able, with one lens, to determine the distance and size of objects it sees — the applications are extremely diverse. It could power autofocus, track gestures or individuals, or help determine the device’s position. → Read More
Unless Apple is conning the world, the iPad 3 should be announced next week. It, like its forbears, is the subject of many a rumor, some more likely than others. We’ve collected most of them here in this post with arguments for and against, for your convenience and flaming pleasure.
Of course, we’ll be there to cover the event live, and will (if past events are any indication) get a nice hands-on as well. → Read More
My first reaction upon hearing about Nokia’s 41-megapixel 808 Pureview was that it was an absurdity, a perfect example of the very worst of consumer electronics, and a total miss. But the more I read, the better I understood that this phone isn’t just some freak of nature with a ridiculously high number attached to it. It’s just the slightly awkward first steps of a serious move by Nokia to differentiate itself.
If you’ve only skimmed the news, there are some things you should probably know about this strange beast of a camera.
First, the 41 megapixel figure is really misrepresentative, not to say untrue. It doesn’t take 41-megapixel photos in any way, shape, or form. Even in the special high-res creative mode, it “only” produces 38 megapixels. Mostly it will be taking normal-size shots, between 3 and 8 megapixels. So what the hell does this 41 megapixel figure even mean? → Read More
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