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Warid Introduces Shared LTE Plans and MiFi Devices with 105GBs of Free Data

2015-02-12T22:03:00.002+05:00

Warid Telecom has announced the launch of the industry’s first shared plans with its LTE MiFi today.

MiFi Devices

The MiFi device functions as a portable wireless router that can connect up to 10 smartphones, tablets or laptops, whereby users will have access to LTE speed internet on the go in all major cities around Pakistan.

Warid has said that MiFi devices are secure as no other device can access the network without authentication by the MiFi owner.

Not just that, the battery life of MiFi devices goes up to six hours adding to the customer’s convenience.

Mifi Plans

An initial cost of Rs. 9,999 acquires the MiFi device with an LTE enabled SIM as well as an entitlement to 35GB worth of free internet every month for three months consecutively.

A further option of three plans is given in the range of 15-35GB priced between Rs. 1,500 and 3,000.

Mifi Smart: Rs. 1,500 — 15GB Monthly Limit

Mifi Extra: Rs. 2,000 — 20GB Monthly Limit

Mifi Smart: Rs. 3,000 — 35GB Monthly Limit

This offer available is for all Warid customers and can be opted for by using Warid’s online portal and logging in with your mobile number.

Shared LTE Plans

Warid has become the first operator in Pakistan to introduce shared LTE plans, with which customers — both prepaid and postpaid — can choose up to two additional Warid numbers to share an internet plan and a common bill whenever and wherever they are.

Shared plans are applicable to both LTE device as well as MiFi device users.

As an example, if there’s is a customer and he has 35GB of monthly data limit then he can go to Warid’s online portal to add up to two additional numbers to share this quota of 35GBs and those two shared numbers won’t be charged anything for the internet.

Mr. Asim Ali, Director Pricing, Segments & VAS at Warid Telecom, while commenting on this industry-first said,

“We are committed to delivering the state-of-the-art technology that empowers our customers and makes their lives easier.Warid MiFi is designed to connect users to the mobile Internet with their own portable hotspot, so they can stay connected to the people and information important to them.”

Here are some images at the TVC shoot of Fowad Khan, the new brand ambassador of Warid LTE, following Shahid Afradi in their first TV commercial.

Mifi Terms And Conditions:

As per Fair Usage Policy, only 35GB/month can be used.

MiFi operates on Warid’s LTE network only.

Internet usage can be monitored through the web self-service portal

Mifi device broadcasts WiFi connectivity for a distance of up to 30 ft.

You will continue to access GPRS/EDGE services in areas where LTE coverage is not available.

For Prepaid Customers: Package change option is available on web self-service portal

For Postpaid Customers: Please call 321 or nearest Franchise/Business Center for further assistance.

Shared internet plans will be available on MiFi by default. Secondary connections can be managed through the web self-service portal

There can be a maximum of two secondary connections with a MiFi shared internet plan.

Shared devices can be added/modified/deleted from the web self-service portal

If you do not have a LTE compatible handset you can still share the data on a 2G secondary device as well as long as primary device is MiFi or a mobile with an activated LTE shared internet plan.

If your Primary internet data allowance is consumed, overage charging will apply to the MiFi device. A Secondary device will be switched to individual plan selected or default charging.

MiFi comes with built-in security features that ensure optimum security for your device. There is a unique Wifi key affixed to each device; used as the network connectivity key, compulsory for network authentication. No devices/users can access the device without proper network authentication.

SSID and Network/Wifi key can be found at the back of the device and can be read by removing the back cover of the Mifi device

The high-tech secret hiding in New York City pay phones

2015-01-29T16:29:00.002+05:00

NEW YORK — Few New Yorkers, if any, would admit to liking pay phones. They're largely invisible, a ubiquitous background image on a street filled with distractions. Like any public resource in a city of 8.4 million, the phones carry connotations of filth, unreliability and inconvenience.

"Most people don’t even notice these phones," Pete Izzo, Jr., one of the city's last pay-phone technicians tellsMashable as he repairs a phone at 13th Street and 4th Avenue late one Thursday evening. But what most New Yorkers don't know is that these low-tech phones have something useful hidden inside: free Wi-Fi. The city fitted 10 phones with free Wi-Fi in 2012 as part of a pilot program. Since then, the number of Wi-Fi-enabled phones has grown modestly. New Yorkers can now find free hotspots in 35 phones operated by Izzo's employer, CBS Outdoor. However, the company says it's poised to deploy as many as 5,000 hotspots. CBS Outdoor is one of only a handful of private entities still operating pay phones in the city, and the industry is in dire straits with plummeting revenues. There were 25,000 phones a decade ago. Today, there are less than 12,000. Operators have plastered the remaining phones with advertising, which produced the hoped-for financial results. But it left the larger question of what to do with the phones unanswered. Enter the Internet, or at least some part of it. "We see this primarily as a Wi-Fi franchise," says Peter Izzo Sr., a service operations executive at CBS Outdoor. "Every new structure will have Wi-Fi capability," he added, side-stepping the term "phone." Through sponsorship, advertising and co-location with other Wi-Fi providers, Izzo hopes to monetize wireless Internet and rescue his industry. It's a fresh take on the antiquated pay phone, filled with obvious possibilities — and less-apparent perils. Last month, BuzzFeed revealed that phones operated by Titan were potentially tracking users through the use of Bluetooth devices called "beacons." Following the report, Titan agreed to pull its beacons at the request of City Hall, even though some feel that the threat to privacy may have been overblown. But even if these companies operate under better security practices, they may be unlikely to solve one major issue of free public Wi-Fi. It’s notoriously attractive to identity thieves, which could become more of a threat as the number of free Wi-Fi networks increases. Despite the obstacles, both Izzo and his son Pete Izzo, Jr. say they are optimistic about the future of their field, whether it includes phones or not. Izzo Jr.'s repair duties now include installing and maintaing Wi-Fi modems and routers hidden in the housing of old pay phone units. "I don't see any other infrastructure in the world that could accommodate such a connective atmosphere," Izzo says, looking at a pile of discarded phones in his company's shop. "To bring free Wi-Fi to millions of people is gonna really change the city."

Source: Mashable

TAITRA Throws the Spotlight on Taiwan's ICT Products at CES 2015

2015-01-11T01:38:00.002+05:00

The prestigious Computex d&i awards, executed by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) in cooperation with the International Forum Design (iF), revisited Las Vegas, the United States for International CES. Las Vegas is the third stop on the d&i awards world tour following their unveiling at Computex Taipei. The award-winning products on display include designs from Qualcomm, Philips, HTC, and others.

Another TAITRA event at CES is the “Taiwan in Focus” press conference, promoting Taiwan’s ICT industry and the upcoming 2015 Computex. Held on the first day of the show, the press conference featured addresses from Director Moses Yen of the Taiwan Trade Center in Los Angeles and Director Jaime Chen from the Economic Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles.

Also present were 11 Computex exhibitors and d&i award winners. The press conference drew scores of members of the media from Russia, Germany, Italy, Thailand, the United States, Japan, India, China, and Taiwan.

International CES opened this year on January 6th and ran until the 9th. With wearables, smart homes and cars, the Internet of Things, and display technology as the focus, the show is expected to draw over 160,000 visitors. Gary Shapiro, President and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, has called this year’s CES a “record-breaking event”.

The Consumer Electronics Association is the organizer of CES. Dr. Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the Board, Daimler AG and head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, and Boo-Keun Yoon, president of Samsung both gave preshow keynote speeches on Sunday. Dr. Zetsche discussed the development of autonomous driving. Yoon explored using the Internet of Things to create a fully connected world.

Taiwanese ICT companies generated a lot of buzz with the market release of new products. HTC released the HTC Desire 826, the newest in its HTC Desire flagship line. The HTC Desire 826 features its exclusive UltraPixel technology with both the front- and rear-facing camera, allowing users to up their selfie game even in dim lighting.

ASUS also launched three new products in one swoop, the ASUS Transformer Book Chi, the ZenFone 2, and the ZenFone Zoom. The ZenFone 2 is the first smartphone equipped with a 4GB RAM and will be available in March for $199. An ultrathin tablet with a detachable keyboard, the ASUS Transformer Book Chi challenges the established Macbook Air as the ultrabook of choice among consumers.

Following CES, the Computex d&i awards will advance to its next destination at Barcelona, Spain for Mobile World Congress. The world tour of major ICT trade shows is part of TAITRA’s efforts to offer maximum international exposure of the winners of the award, in turn generating greater global business opportunities.

Facebook Is Taking Steps To Becoming a Video Empire

2015-01-10T10:41:00.001+05:00

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

As online video heats up, Facebook is doubling down on its effort to capture a bigger share of viewers’ attention.

On Thursday, the company announced it had acquired QuickFire Networks, a video startup that uses proprietary technology to support high-quality videos without eating up users’ bandwidth. Some of the team from the San Diego-based company will join Facebook as part of the terms of the acquisition, and QuickFire will eventually shutter its operations.

The news comes just a day after Facebook published new data on its explosive growth in video. According to its press release, the number of video posts per person are up 75 percent globally. In the U.S. more than half of daily Facebook users are watching at least one video per day. Since June 2014, the company says, Facebook has delivered more than 1 billion video views to users every day.

So why bother with QuickFire? It’s just another piece of the puzzle that fits in with Facebook’s grander video strategy. As the social network’s video ambitions continue to swell, it is getting serious about building out the necessary infrastructure that will allow video to scale.

Battling for Your Hours

According to a cached version of QuickFire’s website, the company is a video transcoding service—in other words, a way to quickly encode videos for posting on the Web without compromising quality. For Facebook, this sort of technology appeals because it allows content creators to throw more things up on the site by shrinking upload times. When creators are happy, they tend to create a lot more for the platform, which is precisely what Facebook wants.

People are already sharing tons of videos on Facebook. But that may not be enough for the social network. According to a recent New York Times report, the company is constantly looking for ways to coax publishers into having their content live inside Facebook, instead of linking to it. The company likely wants to do the same thing for video, where the competition for people’s attention in that space is fierce.

YouTube delivers more than 6 billion hours’ worth of content every month to viewers worldwide and is working to promote its talent pool even more. A host of other players—from IAC’s Vimeo to former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar’s Vessel—are gearing up to launch subscription video services. Add in all the hours users are spending on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Instant Video, and that’s a lot of online time not spent on Facebook. The more Facebook can make itself a native video platform, the more of those hours it can get for itself.

What Does The Future Hold For Cloud Computing?

2015-01-08T13:20:00.000+05:00

Cloud computing has been called the future of not only hosting, but also the way we compute. It has transformed the way many businesses operate since it makes applications and technology more accessible. Most importantly, cloud computing helped many businesses with all the great tools and technology that were only available to enterprises that had a ton of money. Even if you don't know what cloud computing is, chances are that you could be using it without your knowledge on a day-to-day basis. Do you use Gmail, or Dropbox, or Google Drive, or iCloud, or any of the millions of websites that run on a cloud server? You are just enjoying all the benefits of cloud computing without your conscience. There had been a lot of advances in cloud computing in the past several years that, one needs to think about the capabilities of this technology. Here we speculate how cloud computing is going to evolve and how it is going to affect the future.

Hosting

Businesses and individuals are moving their websites and online applications and services to the cloud for a number of reasons. Cloud hosting is extremely cost effective, reduces capital cost for startups, is easily scalable, improves accessibility, quickly deployed, etc. Traditional shared hosting is still the reigning champion of websites for individuals and small businesses. However, things are changing really fast. 81% of the 60% of the enterprises that are already utilizing cloud have reportedly saved money by migrating to the cloud. It is estimated that end-users will spend more than 180 billion U.S. dollars on cloud services before the end of 2015. Cloud hosting is not only attracting large businesses, casual bloggers and small business owners are turning to cloud. Traditional shared hosting providers are also providing cloud hosting services nowadays. Quite recently, the popular Australian web hosting,EZI hosting started providing cloud hosting service. Some of the top players in the U.S. like, HostGator and JustHost also jumped on the bandwagon only recently. There is a stiff competition among, U.S., European and Australian website hosting companies and we can expect the prices to go down. If the trend continues, cloud hosting will soon completely replace traditional shared hosting.

Public Cloud

Private cloud is preferred for enterprise applications and to run apps like, CRMs, and ERPs. HCRM, etc., but public cloud is going to grow really fast compared to private cloud. Private cloud although has a lot of advantages and perks of cloud technology, they are still more like using traditional services. With public cloud, people and companies don't have to sign contracts, use shared hardware to reduce cost (utility model), yet don't have to trade-off reliability. Large corporates and enterprises will use private cloud for compliance requirements and security, but as more and more individuals and small businesses migrate to the cloud, we speculate public cloud to grow leaps and bounds compared to private.

Hard Drive

If you are using some of the top e-mail providers, or social networking services, you could already have a lot of your data on the cloud. You probably have more data on the cloud compared to the hard drive on your computer. This raises an interesting question. Can the cloud actually replace the hard drive? The answer is yes and no. To start with, you can't run a computer with a storage device – one needs an hard disk to store the operating system and other supporting files to run a computer. However, since most of the tasks one performs on the computer is accomplished using a web browser, most of the data could be easily moved to cloud and accessed with the Internet since our mobile devices and computers are tethered to the world wide web 24x7. Furthermore, keeping all you data on the cloud makes it easy for you to access it from different devices, and keep it safe. Or at least one needs to have a copy of all the most important files on the cloud since data loss is just a hard disk crash away. The closest thing we can get to using a computer without relying a lot on a hard drive for storage is the Chromebook. It is a personal computer by Google In., that runs on the Chrome OS. Most of the applications run on the browser with the power of the Internet and all the data is stored safely in the cloud. Most of the models not only come with a physical hard drive, but also a cloud storage of 100 GB to 1 TB of Google Drive.

Hardware revolution

With the advancement in cloud computing, the cost of hardware will fall. Low power and low cost processors are expected to be used in data centers to cut cost without affecting the quality of service. Low power ARM chips can be quite economical and also be eco-friendly. Some experts also predict that these low cost hardware for servers might look like sleds that could be swapped out and swapped in with ease.

Air umbrella produces a "force field" of air to keep you dry

2015-01-08T13:04:00.000+05:00

A team of Chinese designers has developed the Air umbrella with the aim of making tangles of metal poles and fabric a thing of the past

People certainly haven't been afraid to try and reinvent the umbrella over the years. There was the solar-powered Booster Brolly, the windproofRainshader and the lopsided Rain Shield, just to name a few. But now a team of Chinese designers is looking to do away with the awkward metal poles and canopy entirely, relying instead on a "force field" of air to keep you nice and dry.

The Air umbrella uses a lithium battery to power a motor and fan, which creates a cycle of air flowing through its tip

The idea of using air flow to shield users from pelting rain has been explored before. A pair of designers developed a similar concept back in 2010, though this version seemingly never made it to market.

The latest take on the Air umbrella uses a lithium battery to power a motor and fan, which creates a cycle of air flowing through its tip to deflect the drops and form the protective layer. So how much protection are we talking about exactly? Well, the designers say at the current stage of development the umbrella will provide enough shelter for two people, though if the rain isn't too heavy more people can be squeezed underneath.

The Air umbrella uses a lithium battery to power a motor and fan, which creates a cycle of air flowing through its tip

The team is working on three models, all resembling something of a detached shower head. The first claims to be designed for females and is 30 cm (1 ft) in length and 500 g (1.1 lb) with a battery life of 15 minutes. The second is 50 cm (1.64 ft) long, weighs 800 g (1.76 lb) and has a 30 minute battery life. The third is extendable, ranging from 50 cm (1.64 ft) to 80 cm (2.62 ft), weighing 850 g (1.87 lb), also with a 30 minute battery life.

A team of Chinese designers has developed the Air umbrella with the aim of making tangles of metal poles and fabric a thing of the past

With these battery times you wouldn't want to be stranded in a rainstorm, but they might just be enough to get you home from the bus stop without becoming a cold, shivering mess.

The team is developing three models, all resembling a detached shower head

The team is looking to raise US$10,000 on Kickstarter for the production of its Air umbrella and looks to be having reasonable success to date. At the time of writing it has attracted almost $12,000 in pledges with 10 days to run on the campaign. Most of the early bird pledges are already gone, with $108 the minimum pledge to reserve the shorter "female" version of the umbrella. Deliveries are slated to commence from December 2015 if all goes to plan.

You can see a demonstration of the Air umbrella in the following pitch video.

Outsource your empathy with life prediction tool

2014-03-10T17:22:00.000+05:00

An Israeli designer wants to squash your digital fingerprint into one algorithm that can predict when your friends are about to be sad or the best time to propose to your girlfriend.
Predictables is a design concept by Dor Tal, crafted to provoke debate over the potential consequences -- good and bad -- of our reliance on big data.
He imagines the front end will be a kind of pico projector, which maps your life onto any surface. It's a predicative calendar that makes handy suggestions to make your life run smoother. In a video depicting the technology, for example, your life is portrayed as a series of coloured blobs in a kind of floating calendar of potential future happenings. A green blob activates and catches your attention, so you point to it and flick your wrist (the future is entirely gesture-enabled as well, of course). A warning appears that says it's three days till an important meeting, before asking if you'd like to reschedule because your team is probably ill-prepared.
How does it know this? It's using data gathered by an app you've downloaded onto your phone that scrapes your social media, email, Google searches, GPS data, photos, credit card transactions -- anything with a digital trail. Maybe it spotted a few ropey looking photos of your friends on a night out earlier that week, or recognised that their Facebook posts were actually coming from a beachside bar, not an office.
So far, so intrusive. But the system wouldn't make any decisions for you. In the video, the subject's response is to text his team to see if its ready for the meeting. Later the same man's watch projects the same calendar onto the palm of his hand, warning him his girlfriend's probably about to be sad, so he buys her some flowers.
"It is clear that today we are leaving our digitals fingerprints everywhere," Tal tells Wired.co.uk. "We can also see how these fingerprints are being used in order to create a precise profile of us for commercial uses. I suggest to return that data to the user."
The technology does not exist yet, but we're not a million miles away. Summly scrapes the news so you don't have to, and Google Now scrapes your life in much the same way Predictables is now proposing -- though for the more mundane things in life that feature in your calendar.
"The biggest challenge in this project is to create the forecasting algorithms," says Tal. "However, the further I advance in my research and the more I meet with specialists, the more I believe it will happen sooner than expected. For just one example, I have been in contact recently with Kira Radinsky who has made a lot of advancement in this field and recently even founded a start-up company that uses this kind of forecasting-algorithm application."
Radinsky, last year named one of MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators Under 35, has been working on predicting real world events using algorithms that take in data from millions of news items and web searches, billions of tweets and much more. With it, she predicted riots in Sudan, Turkey, Syria and Egypt, a cholera outbreak in Cuba and the outcome of a drug dealer's trial. Although these kinds of systems take in billions of data points, it's argued many of these predictions could easily be done by humans. In an interview, Radinsky explains, "You can see a recurrent pattern in the riots: The price of a staple begins to climb -- in Egypt it was bread, in Sudan it was cooking gas -- and this sparks riots."
But the point is not always to come up with novel predictions a human could not have otherwise. But to have a machine always working in the background as a backup, as a reminder of where your attention should be focused and as an early warning system.
The individual in Tal's video could surely have put two and two together and realised his girlfriend was probably having a bad day -- she texts him about how much she hates her boss and starts job hunting. He could have decided to do something about it, but of course the majority of people might not take immediate action. The proposed service is simply cutting corners and prompting you to do something you should probably do anyway.
Suggesting you propose to your other half soon -- as the system does in the video -- is quite another matter, though. And allowing the app access to every corner of your digital world just to encourage you to take the time in your busy life to do the things you should be doing anyway (be nice to your girlfriend, not necessarily propose to her) sounds like quite a stretch for even the least privacy conscious among us.
"I think that the world that we live in today, and even more so the world of tomorrow, doesn't leave any room for privacy," Tal says. "And I am saying it with a lot of sorrow. I believe that if we won't stop and ask ourselves some serious questions about the role of technology in our personal lives, we will find ourselves in a world in which Facebook or Netflix suggest us when and who to marry."
So he has not necessarily developed what is a rather Silicon Valley-like promo for his concept to say this is what we should be doing. He tells us he's more interested in the user interface and user experience side of technology, and "presenting the cultural consequences deriving from an up-coming technology". He calls Predictables his "answer to the new emerging issues of big data".
Tal wants us to question where this kind of all-encompassing data sharing could lead us. And it sounds like it will lead us to become some pretty lame, lazy humans that need prompting to be nice.

Hardcore hybrids: the green bikes to envy

2014-03-10T17:10:00.002+05:00

Two-wheeled classic: the Caterham Carbon E-Bike -- due for launch later this year, the first bikes from sports-car specialist Caterham include an SUV-style petrol beast and two electric models. The Carbon E-Bike is part speedway dragster, part bionic arm, and packs a Panasonic 36V 12AH lithium battery, 250W brushless motor and an eight-speed Shimano Nexus gear hub.

Reevu MSX1 Rear View Mirror Helmet

2014-01-29T19:09:00.004+05:00

The Reevu's MSX1 Helmet (£249 about $380) has a rear view mirror which uses a entirely mechanical mechanism rather than rear-view cameras. It looks similar to the car's rear view mirror, with the small mirror in front resting just outside the rider's line of sight. The Reevu MSX1 is the world’s first patented rear-view helmet range that gives the wearer that all round vision. Reevu say the added functionality no way affects the safety performance of the helmet.

Honda 3R-C Concept

2014-01-29T19:08:00.001+05:00

Honda 3R-C is a fully single-seat three-wheeler powered by a lithium ion battery, created by Honda's Milan studio. It will debut at Geneva International Motor Show 2010.
The 3R-C has a clear canopy that covers the driver's seat while it is parked and not in use. When 3R-C vehicle is in motion, the canopy becomes an enveloping wind-shield that provides the pilot, who sits low in the vehicle, with significant protection from the bodywork and doors.
The high sides of the safety shell seat give greater safety to the occupant, reducing the threat from side impacts and improving weather protection. In front of the driver is a lockable boot area, which gives significant secure storage for luggage or other items. The 3R-C's designers created a flexible cover that surrounds the upper torso to reduce exposure to bad weather and improving comfort.

Wired test drives -- or rather doesn't -- Audi's latest driverless concept car

2014-01-23T11:55:00.001+05:00

Audi unveiled its latest driverless -- or as the German manufacturer prefers to call it, "piloted" -- concept car at CES last week, and Wired.co.uk was lucky enough to join the police-escorted demonstration of this possible vision of the automotive future.

Cue a surreal experience of sitting in the back seat of a tricked out autonomous A7 while Las Vegas's finest top and tail the Audi Autopilot Car for a jaunt on the freeway to demonstrate the car's unnerving ability to stay in lane at speed and take over control of the vehicle.
Now, as Audi's chief technical officer Prof. Dr Ulrich Hackenberg pointed out from behind the untouched steering wheel, this new iteration of piloted driving will sadly not result in your very own Knight Industries Two Thousand. However, it will take a lot of the donkeywork out of your motorway drudgery. It is also a serious update on the previous model as the electronics have been actually fitted into the body of the car rather than taking up the entire boot, making the previous attempt look like something W Heath Robinson might have crafted.

Bristling with 12 ultrasound sensors, two radar sensors, one camera and one laser scanner, the concept car, which is expected to come to market in some form in three to five years, can "see" up to 500m in front of it in perfect weather -- and up to half that in normal to poor conditions. The radar has a narrow beam that reaches this long distance, while the laser scanner offers a broader field of view and stretches at least as far as 80m ahead in very poor conditions, such as fog and rain.

These sixteen sensors can read the road around the car to such a degree that the car is capable of navigating turns, keeping in lane and maintaining a safe distance from the car in front -- all with the driver free to take their hands off the wheel and feet of the pedals. They could, in effect, be reading Wired while on the motorway.
One unnerving incident in the demonstration was when Hackenberg showed off the system's ability to assess whether the driver has fallen asleep at the wheel. An infrared camera pointing at the driver's face can tell if their eyes remain closed too long (even if wearing sunglasses) and take action. After a series of audible warnings to retake control, if no response is forthcoming the car performs and emergency stop.

This ability was then put into action surrounded by all-too-real and completely unsuspecting daytime traffic on the Las Vegas freeway -- and this is where the police escort came in very handy to clear lane room -- and sure enough after a very short period of attempting to "wake" our driver, the car slammed on the anchors for a controlled halt as cars blurred by in the adjacent lanes at 60mph.

Even though this is a few years from being commercially available, the next generations of this technology will see Audi plan to integrate lane-changing ability, then on and off ramps. Looking further still Audi wants to see this working in urban driving -- though, as Hackenberg insists, the days where you will be able to call your car to come pick you up from the office are a long, long way off.

Candy Crush dev prepares to fight The Banner Saga over trademark

2014-01-23T11:48:00.003+05:00

King, developers of the phenomenally successful game Candy Crush Saga, is attempting to oppose The Banner Saga's use of the word "saga' claiming it is "confusingly and deceptively similar" to game titles previously used by King.

Looking at King's gaming portfolio you will find (deep breath and prepare for sagas):

Candy Crush Saga, Pepper Panic Saga, Pet Rescue Saga, Papa Pear Saga, Pyramid Solitaire Saga, Bubble Witch Saga, Farm Heroes Saga, Bubble Saga, Hoop de Loop Saga, Mahjong Saga, and Puzzle Saga.
Candy Crush Saga is the big hitter here and a recent report suggested it was bringing in £2.1 million per day for King.
Where Candy Crush is a match three microtransaction-a-thon, The Banner Saga is a tactical RPG set in a Viking-esque fantasy world -- so far, so different. But this is a dispute over trademark rather than type of content.
The Banner Saga seeks to register its name and thus guarantee a certain level of legal protection for its business against anyone seeking to capitalise on its success by using similarly named games to piggyback off developer Stoic's success.
For King, the fact that its repeated use of the word "saga" in game titles predates the first use of The Banner Saga as detailed in the registration request, along with the fact that both King and Stoic's products are within the gaming industry, is enough to warrant opposing The Banner Saga's mark.
Business-wise, it makes sense. There is, however, the issue of goodwill. King recently had its filing to trademark the word "Candy" approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office in relation to things like gaming and clothing and began issuing developers with challenges where the company felt an app or game name infringed on its property. All Candy Casino Slots -- Jewel Craze Connect: Big Blast Mania Land was one such title.
Enforcement of King's rights as they relate to the word Candy will depend on the individual cases, but since Candy is a generic term the reaction to King claiming ownership of it (regardless of the limitations) has been hugely critical.
Looking at the Saga scenario, King's biggest game is a casual gaming microtransaction-focused behemoth. The Banner Saga is a beautiful fantasy world steeped in choice and buoyed up by goodwill evidenced through crowdfunding. Win or lose, it will be hard for King to escape this trademark challenge looking like the good guys.

Kobo Arc 10HD review

2014-01-23T11:47:00.000+05:00

E-reader maker Kobo's biggest, baddest model delivers a stonkingly sharp screen and powerful quad-core processor. Who needs a camera?

Design
The Kobo has quite a distinctive style with its matte black rubberised rear characterised by sharply tapering edges. It's a bit on the heavy side at 627g, certainly weighty enough to make it feel very different to Kobo's ebook reader line-up. Another distinctive feature is the red power slider on top and it's nice to see a micro HDMI output on the side so you can hook it up to your TV for those times when you just need a bigger screen.

Not that there's anything wrong with the Arc's 10.1 inch display which delivers a terrifically sharp resolution of 2,560x1,600 pixels, which boils down to 300ppi -- just a little less than the latest iPad mini's Retina display. Movies look great as do busy web pages and they sound good too thanks to a decent pair of stereo speakers on the back -- they're a little bass-lite compared to the drivers on the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 (which is also considerably lighter) but pretty good nonetheless.

Processor, Android and features
The quad-core processor is clocked at 1.8GHz and backed by a full 2GB Ram, which gives it plenty of poke. In our AnTuTu benchmark test it delivered a score of 29,300 making it one of the highest ranking tablets we've seen, losing out to Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1 but ahead of the Google Nexus 10.
It's running a heavily customised version of Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, only a little behind the very latest 4.4 KitKat. The customisation mostly affects display of Kobo's own content, of which there is much to choose from, including books (3.5 million apparently -- count 'em!), games, music, movies and magazines. There are a few samples already on board but you'll need to open an account and pay for most of what's available. Where the Arc scores over the Kindle HDX however is that you can access full Google Play and download whichever apps you fancy.
There's no main camera but there is a 1.3-megapixel shooter on the front. The colour balance seemed alarmingly off on our test model however, which could lead to some unusual video calls.
Unfortunately, there's only 16GB storage on board, which you'll soon dig into if you're downloading a lot of the HD content the display craves. It really is a shame that there's no option to expand the memory via microSD card.
Battery life proved to be capable rather than exceptional and we easily got a full day's use out of it, but not much more.

Conclusion
The Kobo Arc 10HD offers a wonderful screen and a searingly fast processor as well as easy access to a huge range of Barnes & Noble books, mags, music, films and games. But it's nearly twice as heavy as the slightly more expensive Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 which also has an 8 megapixel camera, though at least the Arc offers full Google Play. Otherwise this is a mid-price tablet (cheaper than the Nexus 10 and iPad Air) that ticks all the boxes.

Turkey skin-inspired sensor can detect TNT

2014-01-23T11:44:00.001+05:00

A team of bioengineers has developed a sensor for detecting nearby undetonated explosives based on the same biological principles that cause turkey skin to change colour. An accompanying app in development lets users know whether they've just encountered explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT), or just a spot of methanol.

Seung-Wuk Lee of UC Berkeley led a team in the development of the system, which relies on engineering the virus M13 filamentous bacteriophage to resemble and behave like the collagen fibres found under turkey skin. You might not think a turkey would inspire anything more than an annual attempt at making its whole-roasted-self tasty, but its wattle was the source of inspiration since it changes colour when the bird gets hot and bothered. This is down to a series of blood vessels altering the dispersion of the collagen fibres as they inflate or contract, depending on the turkey's temperament or activity. This, in turn, causes lightwaves to scatter differently and the result is a colour-changing jowl.

Rather than visualising when rage or impatience is present, Lee and his team wanted the biomimicry sensor to seek out substances including hexane, isopropyl alcohol, methanol and TNT vapours. By engineering the M13 virus to develop nanofibres interspersed in a similar fashion to those in turkey collagen, the team was able to generate a substance sensitive to environmental changes. This included humidity -- the sensor became bluer the drier the air was, and more red if the air was moist as the nanostructures expanded and contracted like blood vessels -- but the main objective was to test the aforementioned series of chemicals.

"Both natural materials and their synthetic analogues lack selectivity towards specific chemicals, and introducing such selectivity remains a challenge," write the authors in the journal Nature Communications, where the experiment results have been published. "Here we report the self-assembly of genetically engineered viruses (M13 phage) into target-specific, colourimetric biosensors."

They found the biosensor became swollen or shrunk down depending on which chemical was present, generating different colours that could be attached to a particular chemical. It could then be photographed using the accompanying iColour Analyser smartphone app, which automatically identifies the substance. It's like a turkey-themed pH test for dangerous substances.

The system was also tweaked to become a sensor solely for detecting TNT, by engineering the virus to bind with particular sites within the molecule. When the sensor was exposed to two molecules the team says are similar to TNT -- DNT and MNT -- it was able to clearly spot the difference between them and the real McCoy.

In a statement, Lee said: "Our system is convenient, and it is cheap to make. We also showed that this technology can be adapted so that smartphones can help analyse the colour fingerprint of the target chemical. In the future, we could potentially use this same technology to create a breath test to detect cancer and other diseases."

"Our tuneable, colourimetric sensors can be useful for the detection of a variety of harmful toxicants and pathogens to protect human health and national security," conclude the authors. Right now though, one stumbling block will surely be the fact that by their own admission, the authors do not comprehend the mechanisms behind the sensitivity of the blood vessel stand-ins. They suggest it might down to water content within the virus. The success will also depend on the system's sensitivity.

Current proposals for new TNT detectors superior to a sniffer dog often have to increase levels of the substance present in the air significantly in order to confirm detection. A team from India might provide some competition as well, where a gel has been engineered that turns fluorescent when exposed to TNT.

Lamborghini Huracán LP 610-4

2014-01-18T15:34:00.002+05:00

Lamborghini announces the all-new Huracán LP610-4, powered by a new 5.2L V10 engine with 610 hp, 413 lb-ft of torque, the top speed of over 201 mph(325 km/h) and the acceleration from 0 to 60(100 km/h) in 3.2 seconds and to 200 km/h in 9.9 seconds. Other features include full LED headlights, 7-speed dual clutch transmission, all wheel drive, a stop-start system, allowing its V10 engine to net 18.5 miles per gallon on the US cycle.
"Systematic lightweight design and Automobili Lamborghini's extensive expertise in carbon fibre come together in the Huracán's new hybrid chassis -- an integrated structure of carbon and aluminium elements. With a dry weight of 1,422 kg it enables not only the excellent power-to-weight ratio of just 2.33 kilograms per horse power, but also guarantees race-car precision with outstanding stiffness."

BMW i8 Key Looks like a Mini Smartphone

2014-01-18T15:31:00.001+05:00

BMW’s new electric supercar, the BMW i8 will go on sale next year, today we caught our eyes on new BMW i8 key fob. The BMW i8's key looks like a mini Smartphone, it will provide information on the charging status of your BMW i8, which will include the time on charge and the distance the vehicle can travel before it needs to be recharged or refuelled. The key looks cool.

2014 CHEVROLET CAMARO Z28

2014-01-18T15:28:00.003+05:00

Chevrolet has announced that it will charge a whopping $75,000 for its upcoming 2014 Camaro Z/28 when it goes on sale this spring. Powered by a 7.0-liter LS7 V8 engine, with 500 horsepower and 470 lb-ft. The car features a full body kit that includes a front splitter that works with an underbody panel to reduce drag, fender flares, side skirts, a large trunk-mounted spoiler and a functional air diffuser integrated into the rear bumper.

Rimac Greyp G12 Electric Bike

2014-01-18T15:26:00.001+05:00

The Rimac Greyp G12 Electric Bike is half electric bike, half motorcycle. It is a bicycle when you want it or a motorcycle when you need it. The bike features downhill-inspired dual-suspension frame, hydraulic brakes, and beefy midsection. The Rimac Greyp G12 Electric Bike hits a claimed a top speed of 40 mph and a range of about 90 miles on a single charge without the need to peddle. Recharging from nothing takes just 80 minutes with a standard 220V outlet, after which you’ll be able to unlock the bike with its built-in fingerprint scanner. There's no official word on price or availability, but if you want to become a "dealer," you could expect to take delivery of one as soon as October for 6,000 Euros (about $7,900). Watch a video of the greyp doing its thing.

2014 Polaris RZR XP1000

2014-01-18T15:25:00.000+05:00

The Polaris RZR XP 1000 powered by a 1000cc engine that delivers 107 hp. It comes with dual-piston callipers and 248mm ventilated disc brakes on each of its wheels. It sells for $19,999(USD). Check out the video, cool.

BMW i8 Hybrid

2014-01-18T15:23:00.000+05:00

BMW has officially unveiled the BMW i8, a two-plus-two, swan-wing-door hybrid coupe that features a BMW Twin Power Turbo 1.5-litre three-cylinder petrol engine with 170 kW (231 hp) of peak performance on the rear wheels, and an electric motor sends 131 hp and 184 lb-ft of torque through a two-speed automatic to the front wheels. With all-wheel drive at its disposal, the total system power sits at 362 hp and 320 lb-ft of torque, and allows the i8 to scamper to 62 miles per hour in just 4.4 seconds, and a top speed of 250km/h (155mph). That excellent performance is offset by an estimated fuel economy figure of 94 miles per gallon. Prices start at $135,972, the second most expensive member of the BMW range, behind the luxury rocket known as the 760Li.
"Driving Experience Control switch and eDrive button allow driver to choose from five driving modes, range of up to 35 kilometres (22 miles) on electric power alone and a top speed of 120 km/h (75 mph). COMFORT mode offers optimum balance between dynamics and efficiency, combined range in everyday conditions: over 500 kilometres (310 miles). SPORTS mode with ultra-intense boost function provided by the electric motor. ECO PRO mode can be used in both all-electric mode and hybrid mode."

Triple-star system could reveal 'true nature' of gravity

2014-01-07T17:05:00.001+05:00

A triple-star system discovered by astronomers could help resolve problems with Einstein's theory of General Relativity and shed light on the true nature of gravity.
The unique system is comprised of two white dwarf stars and a superdense neutron star (pulsar) packed into a space smaller than the Earth's orbit around the Sun. The constellation allows scientists to measure the complex gravitational interactions between the stars in a way that hasn't been possible before to help reveal the true nature of gravity.
The pulsar -- a neutron star that emits lighthouse-like beams of radio waves through space as the object spins -- was first discovered by a graduate at West Virginia University called Jason Boyles using the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope (GBT). It is 4,200 light-years away from Earth and spins 366 times every second. These sorts of rapidly-spinning pulsars (known as millisecond pulsars) are very useful to astronomers, who can use them to study gravitation.
After spotting the pulsar, astronomers noticed two white dwarf stars -- one in close orbit with the pulsar and another more distant one. It is the first time a millisecond pulsar has been found in such a system, which provides, in the words of Scott Ransom, "tremendous opportunity to study the effects and nature of gravity".
Ransom is an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. He says: "This triple system gives us a natural cosmic laboratory far better than anything found before for learning exactly how such three-body systems work and potentially for detecting problems with General Relativity that physicists expect to see under extreme conditions".
Having identified the system, scientists observed it intensively with the GBT, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico and the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands, incorporating additional data from other satellites and telescopes.
"The gravitational perturbations imposed on each member of this system by the others are incredibly pure and strong. The millisecond pulsar serves as an extremely powerful tool for measuring those perturbations incredibly well," says Ransom.
By recording the lighthouse-like beams of radio waves with accuracy, the team was able to calculate the geometry of the system and the masses of the stars with 'unparalleled precision' -- some of them are accurate to hundreds of metres, according to Anne Archibald from the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. Archibald used the measurements gleaned from the system to build up a simulation.
The research combines techniques pioneered by Isaac Newton to study Earth's gravity with the alternate theory of gravitation proposed by Albert Einstein. It is hoped that it could pave the way for the next theory of gravity.
The team is particularly interested in looking for a deviation from the Equivalence Principle, which states that the effect of gravity on a body doesn't depend on the size of material of that body. It explains why on the Moon, where there is no air resistance, a feather and a hammer will fall at the same speed. It also explains why balls of different materials will roll down a slope at the same time -- as first shown by Galileo.
Ransom explains: "While Einstein's Theory of General Relativity has so far been confirmed by every experiment, it is not compatible with quantum theory. Because of that, physicists expect that it will break down under extreme conditions. This triple system of compact stars gives us a great opportunity to look for a violation of a specific form of the equivalence principle called the Strong Equivalence Principle."
When a star explodes and then collapses into a superdense neutron star, some of its mass is converted into gravitational binding energy that holds the star together. According to the Strong Equivalence Principle, the binding energy will still react gravitationally as if it were mass. Most of the alternative theories to General Relativity suggest that it will not.
The triple star system should allow astronomers to know which is the case through high-precision observation of the pulsar's "lighthouse" flashes. If the Strong Equivalence Principle holds, then the gravitational effect of the outer white dwarf would be identical for both the inner white dwarf and the pulsar. If it doesn't hold, then the outer star's gravitational effect on the inner white dwarf and pulsar will be slightly different.
"Finding a deviation from the Strong Equivalence Principle would indicate a breakdown of General Relativity and would point us toward a new, correct theory of gravity," said Ingrid Stairs of the University of British Columbia

Lego is launching a Curiosity rover set

2014-01-07T17:03:00.004+05:00

Danish blocksmith Lego will be releasing a Curiosity rover set on 1 January 2014, following a campaign by fans.
The 1:20 scale Lego set will have an articulated robotic arm, multiple cameras, six-wheel rocket suspension and little Lego mars rocks for you to roll over.
In fact, it's remarkably similar in many ways to the real-life Curiosity rover rolling around Mars, and that's no coincidence -- it was designed by mechanical engineer Stephen Pakbaz, who worked on the real-life Curiosity.
He submitted the design in 2011 to Lego's Cuusoo platform, which allows members of the public to suggest new sets they'd like to see. After more than 10,000 people voted for it, Lego reviewed the project and accepted it.
"For me, the building experience was similar to what I felt when the real Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars," Pakbaz said.
"It can be used to explore the unknown regions of your house or office. After climbing the outer walls of Carpet Crater and descending into Couch Canyon you will finally be able to determine if your living room was ever capable of supporting microbial life."

How to become a World Memory Champion in ten steps

2014-01-07T17:02:00.001+05:00

As you throw back another egg nog, mulled wine or other variety of sickly Christmas cheer, save a thought for the brain cells that take a hit with each swig. Your memory might not fare so well the morning after, but thanks to these tips from England's eight-time World Memory Champion and author of How to Develop a Brilliant Memory Week by Week Dominic O'Brien, there are a few things you can do to improve it in the future -- or at least, give the impression you remember the night's events. This man can recall a binary list of 2,385 digits, so pay close attention.

1. The Link Method

To remember a list of words or shopping items make a link between each of the objects. For instance, with Torch, Grapes, Ring, Sherry, imagine shining a Torch on a bunch of Grapes. Inside one of the Grapes you see a Ring sparkling with diamonds. As you squeeze the grape, the ring falls into a glass of Sherry.

2. Acronyms

Use extended acronyms to remember a series of data by creating a fun sentence. For example "My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets" gives you the order of the planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

3. Mental Pictures

Turn data such as facts and figures into pictures. Arctic or Antarctic? If you think of looking up at an arch and down at an ant you'll never confuse the two again.

4. The Journey Method

To remember a list of information, choose a familiar route or journey, maybe around your house, to picture each item on the list.
To remember a sequence of numbers -- say, 1024337864 -- you could also choose a route around your house, to picture each number pair. By picturing David Cameron at my front door, an alarm clock in the hall and two blackbirds flying up the staircase, I can remember these three pairs of numbers easily: 10, 24, 33.
To add more pairs of numbers, just extend the journey: in my bedroom I hear an old 78 record and in the bathroom Paul McCartney is in the shower singing "when I'm 64".

5. Remembering to spell correctly

Accidentally or Accidently? Turn tricky words into scenes to help you remember correct spellings. Picture an accident in an alley… accidentally.

6. The Rule Of Five

To avoid information gradually fading from your memory banks it's important to know when to review information. Apply the "Rule of Five":
First review : Immediately
Second review: 24 hours later
Third review: One week later
Fourth review: One month later
Fifth review: Three months later

7. PIN Numbers

If you can remember your name, you'll never forget your PIN number. Just make up a memorable sentence and count the number of letters in each word. For instance: "My name is Dominic": 2 4 2 7; or "This number is secret": 4 6 2 6.

8. The Story Method

To remember a group of information, create a story which links them all together. In chemistry the Noble gases are: Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon and Radon. Imagine taking off in a Helium balloon lit up with a Neon light. An Argon welder turns into superman who takes you to the planet Krypton, and so on.

9. The Body System

This works by associating parts of the body with key images of whatever it is you want to remember, like a to-do list of things. Let's say you have to buy cheese, eggs and a bottle of milk. Picture cheese on your head, an egg balanced on your nose and a bottle of milk on your shoulder.

10. Healthy Body, Healthy Memory

Exercise and diet can help to maximise the effects of memory. Gently raise your heart rate with daily physical exercise and include foods rich in antioxidants as well as vitamins A, C and E. Oily fish such as salmon contains folic acid and omega-3 oils are ideal for maintaining a healthy brain and nervous system.

Quick Test

By using the memory tips outlined, see how many of the items in the festive list below you can remember. First, choose a location that is familiar to you such as your home, your place of work, your hometown or a nearby park. The idea is to use this location as a backdrop for a short journey consisting of a series of places or stops along the way. The places are then used to mentally store items of the list you wish to memorise. The route you take will preserve the natural order of the list, assuming, that is, that you don't forget the journey or the stops along the way.
Try positioning them along a familiar route around you house and garden or down the street:
Mistletoe
Smoked Salmon
Santa Claus
Holly
Brandy Butter
Snowman
Turkey
Stocking
Xmas Tree
Chestnuts
How many of those items can you now recall in the correct order?

Glitter nail polish can protect your laptop's data

2014-01-07T17:00:00.002+05:00

If you're traveling overseas, across borders or anywhere you're afraid your laptop or other equipment might be tampered with or examined, you've got a new secret weapon to improve security. Glitter nail polish.
Don't laugh. It works.
Security researchers Eric Michaud and Ryan Lackey, making a presentation at the Chaos Communication Congress on Monday, highlighted the power of nail polish -- along with metallic paints and even crappy stickers -- to help people know when their machines have been physically tampered with and potentially compromised.
"Government agencies have so much money, they can build their own custom procedures," said Ryan Lackey, founder of the CryptoSeal VPN service. "But if you're a private person who travels to a country to do work, you have to take your stuff."
Physical tampering with machines, whether by governments, corporate competitors or data thieves looking for bounty, is a growing problem. Business people traveling to China in particular have reported problems with data theft and hardware tampering. While drive encryption, strong passwords and software-based measures might keep causal thieves out, traveling offers many ways for prying eyes to physically compromise a laptop, Lackey and Michaud noted. Border areas can be especially dangerous, as authorities can confiscate a laptop or cell phone to "examine" it, then return it with the drives imaged or malware installed. Once at a destination, many travelers lack the option to carry their laptop at all times. This raises the risk of attackers breaking into a hotel room to steal data or compromise machines.
Short of keeping a machine with you 24/7, there is little you can do to be absolutely sure these things don't happen, the researchers said. If there is a serious question, they advise against traveling with sensitive data and wiping or simply discarding potentially compromised devices upon returning home. But those extreme measures don't help you while you're actually on the road, making it critical to know if your machine has been compromised.
Some travelers affix tamper-proof seals over ports or chassis screws. But these seals can in fact be replicated or opened cleanly in minutes by anyone with even minimal training, Michaud and Lackey said. They instead advise borrowing a technique from astronomers called blink comparison. Here's where the glitter comes in.
The idea is to create a seal that is impossible to copy. Glitter nail polish, once applied, has what effectively is a random pattern. Once painted over screws or onto stickers placed over ports, it is difficult to replicate once broken. However, reapplication of a similar-looking blob (or paint stripe, or crappy sticker) might be enough to fool the human eye. To be sure, the experts recommend taking a picture of the laptop with the seals applied before leaving it alone, taking another photo upon returning and using a software program to shift rapidly between the two images to compare them. Even very small differences -- a screw that is in a very slightly different position, or glitter nail polish that has a very slightly different pattern of sparkle -- will be evident. Astronomers use this technique to detect small changes in the night sky.
By taking the picture with a cellphone that is kept with you at all times, you can be reasonably sure the original picture hasn't been tampered with or replaced. In order to guard against typical user forgetfulness, the experts recommend using a two-stage remote verification system. Such a tool would require that two pictures match exactly, for example, before allowing the user to log in to a potentially vulnerable system such as a VPN.
"This makes it non-skippable by users," said Michaud, CEO of Rift Recon. "If the user doesn't do the check, it doesn't work."
The pair said they will within a few months release an inexpensive tool that will support this two-step verification system. Such machine-assisted verification was necessary to help travelers overcome their own mistakes, they argued.
"Users are lazy," Michaud said. "It's really unlikely that we're going to build a system based on users making the correct security decisions all the time."

Android becomes the new Linux

2014-01-07T16:59:00.001+05:00

Each year, Wired publishes a 132-page standalone magazine (and app) in which our expert writers forecast the year ahead. Here's a sneak preview of the Wired World in 2014 -- from bitcoin fraud to the men's lib movement. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Google's open-source OS has come from nowhere to global mobile dominance. Gaming and the internet of things are next in its sights for 2014.
lan Cohen, former director of systems engineering at Logic PD, which makes miniature medical devices, has decades of experience working with operating systems such as Windows Embedded or Linux. But these days he prefers a different blend of software: Android.
"It's a great choice for sophisticated purpose-built devices with rich human interfaces," says Cohen. "[It's] a platform that nicely handles many of the issues developers encounter when building sophisticated embedded systems."
He's not alone in his point of view. Normally associated with phones and tablets -- Android powers 80 per cent of the world's smartphones and features in about 900 million devices worldwide -- Google's mobile operating system is powering an ever-widening array of devices. It's now being used in connected watches such as the Sony SmartWatch, fitness devices such as Motorola's MOTOACTV, Samsung's Wi-Fi-enabled fridges, Saab's iQon in car entertainment system and the Polaroid SC1630 smart camera. And the ease in which it can be customised means that in 2014 it will become the developers' open-source platform of choice.
In June 2013, Julie Uhrman, former vice president, digital at GameFly, based in Los Angeles, launched a potentially groundbreaking games console on Kickstarter. The diminutive OUYA games box raised more than $8.5 million (£5.4 million) on the site, making it one of the most successful crowdsourcing campaigns ever. The hardware was styled by celebrity designer Yves Behar, but -- thanks to Android -- it was made from cheap, off-the-shelf parts, which allowed Uhrman to keep the price below £65 per unit.
According to Uhrman, her Android console is democratising the world of gaming, opening it up to indies and not just the big publishers on the Xbox and PlayStation. Dubbed the "people's console", OUYA already claims that more than 12,000 developers, including Final Fantasy creator Square Enix, have signed up to work with them.
As more and more devices get connected to the internet of things, Android will become the operating system that powers everything. And it might be Google's most important leg-up in its fight with Apple.
Android was first conceived as a system for building networked cameras, but it rapidly diversified. It's now backed by the Open Handset Alliance, a powerful consortium of 84 hardware and software vendors that includes giants such as Samsung Electronics and HTC. Android has become the foundation for some of the most popular devices in the consumer electronics world, including smash-hit bestsellers such as Samsung's Galaxy S4, which sold a record ten million units in the first month, and Amazon's Kindle range.
The open and customisable nature of Android allows it to be used on a wide range of electronics. It's as easy to use as Windows CE, but, because it is free and open source, developers don't have to pay any licensing fees, which can add up with high-volume devices. And they're able to adapt and modify the code base as they see fit -- something Microsoft would never allow.
It's also well suited to today's advanced devices, which are smarter and better connected than previous models. Off the shelf, Android handles a range of complex functions, such as graphics, communications and database support. "There's tremendous built-in functionality out of the box that must be cobbled together -- usually with significant pain -- when using other platforms and operating systems," says Cohen.
Android is not always ideal, however. It is overkill for dumber devices such as sensors or actuators that don't need a rich human interface. It is a good fit for a hospital monitor, say, that responds to touchscreen commands from hospital staff, but is overpowered for a wearable heart sensor that just beams information to a smartphone.