Science and Technology News

First Look At DJI's New, Incredible Drone, The Verge

2014-11-18T18:00:00.003-08:00

First Look At DJI's New, Incredible Drone

The Inspire One drone looks cool flying and offers a ton of new features, including a 360 degree camera that records in 4K. The Verge

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Tony Hawk Rides The Hendo Hoverboard

2014-11-18T18:00:00.002-08:00

Tony Hawk Rides The Hendo Hoverboard

Yes, the Hendo is a real honest-to-goodness hoverboard. There's still some kinks to work out, but if Tony Hawk likes riding it, we as a species owe it to him to get the Hendo up to snuff.

www.mohanvamsi.com

Is This 'Free Data Forever' Device Too Good To Be True?

2014-11-18T18:00:00.001-08:00

Is This 'Free Data Forever' Device Too Good To Be True?

Lantern claims to be an anonymous portable library that constantly receives free data from space. That sounds crazy, but weirder things have come true.

www.mohanvamsi.com

Toyota Built A Hydrogen-Powered Car

2014-11-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

Toyota Built A Hydrogen-Powered Car

Toyota took it upon themselves to build the first mass-market hydrogen-powered car, despite there being no real infrastructure to support it — and public opinion being that it's a pretty ugly vehicle. Either way, we're excited.

www.mohanvamsi.com

Two-thirds of the world’s mobiles are dumb phones. Meet the company getting them online

2014-11-18T13:40:00.000-08:00

Two-thirds of the world’s mobiles are dumb phones. Meet the company getting them online

This might be the worst Facebook experience ever.

And yet U2opia mobile, a Singapore-based company founded by Indian entrepreneurs, has catapulted to 17 million users in 36 countries as a result. To understand why, you have to unlearn Facebook—its blue background, viral videos, photo uploads—as you know it. And put yourself in the position of someone who has never been on the internet before.

U2opia takes dumb phones and uses the so-called Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) protocol to allow such phones to connect to specific internet services such as Twitter and Facebook tailored for the small screen and text-only functionality. This is done through the company’s proprietary platform Fonetwish, which has signed agreements with Facebook and Twitter. An estimated 62% of the phones used in the world are dumb phones, officially called “feature phones” by manufacturers and networks. Their market share is much higher in emerging markers.

Since its launch in 2011, the platform has steadily acquired users on 53 operator networks in 36 countries. They’re in places as far apart as Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan, Chad, Niger, Haiti, Honduras, Columbia, El Salvador, Cambodia, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India and Mauritania, among others. To get online, they dial a short three-digit code and then they use the alphanumeric keypad.

Operators in several markets, such as Dialog Axiata in Sri Lanka, run promotions allowing Facebook on USSD access for free for a limited period. In India, the platform was used before elections by the think tank Association of Democratic Reforms to make candidate info such as declared assets, education, and criminal records available to rural voters.

The service is available currently in seven languages—English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Malay, Swahili and Albanian. Vietnamese is on its way. Now, 1.5 million users are signing up each month to use Facebook and Twitter in this manner.

Those who taste even a barebones Facebook tend to subscribe to data services sooner.Reuters/Feisal Omar

U2opia’s real achievement is not in making Facebook available on feature phones. It is that it used the global lure of Facebook and Twitter to build an emerging markets user base that is of interest and value to all manner of clients. A European football club wants to develop an interactive application for their fans in Africa. A large UK media company wants to reach a far-flung audience. An American health care nonprofit wants to reach parts of the emerging world. A US seed company wants to do a field trial with farmers in Andhra Pradesh. All are in talks with U2opia to build those services on top of U2opia’s technical platform.

Market research firms are in talks to use Fonetwish to reach a demographic that is typically tough and expensive to survey.

“The service works as sort of a springboard to data usage. People who use our service, move to data faster,” says Sumesh Menon, CEO of U2opia. He named the company after his favourite rock band, U2.

USSD is a protocol that is as old as SMS and similarly built into the architecture of mobile phones. This means there is no need to customize the service to suit a handset maker or model. Smartphone users no longer need USSD, but most mobile phone users have used it at some point. It is the same protocol that allows you to dial a code—something like *123#, for instance—to check the credit in your mobile phone.

“So user friction is very little. Most of our customers are familiar with how USSD works,” Menon says.

The experience might be barebones, but the functionality is surprisingly full-fledged. A user can access her newsfeed, update status, post on a friend’s wall, review friend requests, read and send messages, and see notifications. When a user dials the code, a session is created and the user can browse using codes for back and forward, and other functions. Most mobile operators offer bite-sized subscription packages. In India, I tried the service using Airtel and was charged Rs10 (17 cents) for a week.

Menon says that 60% of users who sample the service return to use it. And demographics are favourable for long-term growth—some 90% of users are below the age of 24. Interestingly, 5% of Fonetwish users access the service from smartphones. Many users in emerging markets don’t subscribe to data despite owning smartphones, which they use to watch and record videos.

U2opia now has 180 employees and offices in New Delhi, Singapore, and Dubai. Menon started the company in 2011 with co-founder Ankit Nautiyal. They used to be colleagues at the Singapore startup Bubble Motion. The company raised a round of funding from Matrix Partners India in 2011. Menon declined to discuss numbers, but said revenues were growing 20% quarter-on-quarter. The company makes money through telecom companies sharing revenue from the Fonetwish platform.

The company has been profitable since 2013 and is not looking to raise money immediately. U2opia has its immediate task cut out for it—to capture more of the mass market it is targeting. Through the 50 operators worldwide it works with, its services can be accessed by one billion users in emerging markets. In India alone, out of the 900 million-plus mobile subscribers, 550 million can access Fonetwish services, thanks to a slew of deals with several major telcos, including the state-run BSNL.

In fact its reach has become the main competitive advantage of U2opia. There are others that provide similar services—the French-Swiss company Myriad, for instance. But U2opia’s deals with operators mean it practically has the emerging world covered. It is currently working on launches in Vietnam, the Philippines, Zimbabwe, and Morocco.

While operators typically negotiate hard with companies offering value-added services on their network, they like to work with U2opia because people who use Facebook on USSD tend to soon subscribe to mobile data, a business that typically offers higher margins than voice.

The company is now opening its app-development platform so clients can build and test their applications and select the networks around the world they want to deploy. Because U2opia has bought a USSD code (say *315#)with all these operators, it can easily implement a client’s solution on a sub-code (*315*55#).

India’s banking regulator has also recommended USSD and SMS Toolkit (a secure form of SMS) as the preferred protocols for the development of mobile banking in India.

But while the near term appears attractive for U2opia, there is no wishing away the long-term trend—smartphones and data plans will continue to become cheaper, and users will upgrade to better ways of accessing Facebook. For the first time, smartphones outsold feature phones worldwide in the last quarter of 2013,accounting for 57.6% of total sales.

www.mohanvamsi.com

Natural Progression: E-Cigs Pave the Way for New E-Joints

2014-06-23T18:00:00.000-07:00

Natural Progression: E-Cigs Pave the Way for New E-Joints

There may not be any need to spark it up anymore.

It was only a matter of time before e-cigs begot e-joints. A Dutch company called E-Njoint BV says it now produces 10,000 electronic joints in fruity flavors every day, which are rolled out across Europe. These E-Njoints contain no THC, tobacco or nicotine, and as such they claim the product is 100 percent legal. Users, though, can fill it with their own cannabis liquid or dry herbs.

via E-Njoint

The International Business Times has more on the new product:

The firm’s chief executive Menno Contant, said: “Holland is well known in the world for its tolerant and liberal attitude toward soft drugs and the introduction of this new product clearly makes a statement: As long as you don’t bother or disturb other people and stay within the legal boundaries, all is well.”

“Developed, manufactured and sold at lightning speed. Everyone should feel fine, because what we are doing is no crime,” Contant continued.

E-Njoint BV is currently in negotiations with medical cannabis company Tikun Olam to see if the E-Njoint will work as a health product, which may be particularly appealing to some US states where marijuana has either been decriminalised or made available medicinally.

Don’t get too excited. E-cigs are facing FDA and state/local regulation, and surely E-joints will face the same scrutiny, brah.

www.mohanvamsi.com

Harley-Davidson’s First Electric Motorcycle Surprisingly Doesn’t Suck

2014-06-19T17:30:00.000-07:00

Harley-Davidson’s First Electric Motorcycle Surprisingly Doesn’t Suck

Harley-Davidson is more than a motorcycle, or even a brand. It is an icon, one that brings to mind big, loud bikes ridden by burly men with tattoos and beards. The company has long been known for rumbling V-twin engines and the open road. All of which makes the idea of an electric Harley seem downright absurd.

It’s actually pretty cool.

The LiveWire is the first electric two-wheeler out of Milwaukee. We spent an afternoon riding one amongst the weeds and broken glass of an abandoned Marine Corps runway outside Los Angeles last week and came away impressed. The Hell’s Angels aren’t going to be riding them anytime soon, but the bike offers an entertaining blend of power and comfort. It doesn’t sound anything at all like a proper Harley—or a “fighter jet landing on an aircraft carrier” as Harley brass say—but it’s got a futuristic sound that brings to mind an airliner taking to the air.

The LiveWire may not rumble like the Harleys everyone knows, and it doesn’t perform like them. But it’ll hit 60 mph in under four seconds and it’s got more style than other electrics we’ve ridden. Now Harley has to find out if anyone actually wants the thing.

Cutting weight and potatoes

If Harley-Davidson isn’t the world’s most famous motorcycle, it’s close. The company has been building motorcycles since 1903, and typically subscribes to the bigger-is-better school of engineering. But even Harley-Davidson knows the times are changing, and it recognizes the need to diversify a customer base dominated by middle-aged white guys. Upstarts like Zero Motorcycles and Brammo have proven one way to attract younger, urban riders is selling small, compact bikes powered by batteries. Even major players like Yamaha are giving electrics a go. So Harley is trying it out, too.

“Any business has always got to look ahead to see where customers are interested in going, and see where society might be going,” says Mark-Hans Richer, Harley’s top marketing guy.

That said, this isn’t a production model. Not yet, anyway. Harley is taking a few dozen LiveWires on a tour, dubbed Project LiveWire, of the United States and Europe. It will invite people in each city to check out the bike and provide feedback. The tour starts Monday in New York.

The key challenge in building the LiveWire was the shift from building a bike around an engine to building one around a battery. A battery is heavy—Harley wouldn’t say what the pack weighs, but one EV expert told us something with the range and recharge time Harley claims would be around 250 pounds—so engineers had to cut weight elsewhere. The cast aluminum perimeter frame wrapped around the battery box weighs just 14 pounds, which makes it a full eight pounds lighter than the Zero’s frame. The wheels have hollow spokes, and Harley claims they’re among the lightest aluminum wheels it’s ever produced. There’s no need for an exhaust system, which not only saves weight but gives the bike a sleeker look. The result is a clean, tightly packaged bike without frivolous details.

Harley did most of the chassis work—it’s been building bikes since the dawn of internal combustion, so it’s got that down pat—but brought in experts like Mission Motors for help with things like the motor controller.

Speaking of the motor, the LiveWire marks quite a departure from Harley’s signature sound. You don’t get the syncopated “potato, potato, potato” that is synonymous with a 60-degree V-twin engine. But even though it’s electric, and therefore has no engine, the LiveWire had to live up to Harley’s “look, sound, and feel” mantra. That took a lot of work, but company president and COO Matt Levatich insists the result is “not contrived.”

The high-pitched whir of the longitudinally-mounted, three-phase AC induction motor reverberates through the chassis, amplifying the sound. It starts off quietly, then builds in pitch and volume as the bike gains speed. It’s louder than you’d think, and though it’s not going to set off any car alarms, it’ll definitely make you smile.

Harley-Davidson

What customers want

The LiveWire offers 74 horsepower, 52 foot-pounds of torque and a (governed) top speed of 92 mph. It’s more powerful and quicker off the line than the $13,000 Zero DS, but it’s got less torque and range. That said, it’s got more torque and power than Harley’s Iron 883.

Still, Harley execs and engineers don’t like talking about specs. They don’t want potential customers making judgments based on what the LiveWire offers right now. The LiveWire is a work in progress, based on “what we think our customers are looking for,” Richer says. The company hopes to glean more info during the LiveWire tour, and iterate accordingly to suit consumer tastes. Think of this as LiveWire v1.0.

Harley isn’t saying much about the drivetrain beyond saying the bike uses a lithium-ion battery with a range of 53 miles. It charges in 3.5 hours at 220 volts. Assuming the bike has a 3.3 kw charging system like other electric motorcycles, some back-of-the-envelope math suggests the LiveWire uses a 10 kilowatt-hour pack. Twist the throttle and the bike leaps forward with authority. Roll off the throttle and the regenerative braking kicks in, bringing the bike down from speed with due efficiency.

Harley-Davidson

Harley emphasizes its excitement over the LiveWire, but downplays its importance. An electric bike is just an idea, something that could draw younger, urban buyers to the brand. Companies like Zero have had some success with that strategy, and even convinced a few police departments to add electrics to their fleets. “This is just part of us understanding where the world might want to go,” Richer says. The upside of so cautious an approach, of course, is there’s less fallout if the bike is a flop.

New direction

That’s not out of the question. Harley’s past forays into the potentially lucrative market for smaller, city-focused bikes have ended poorly. That hasn’t kept it from trying again this year with the launch of the Street, a simpler, cheaper, bike made for city riding. The LiveWire is another step in that direction.

“Why can’t Harley do some of these other cool things, too, and see where it takes us?” Levatich says.

www.mohanvamsi.com

The Shadow Internet That’s 100 Times Faster Than Google Fiber

2014-06-17T09:59:00.001-07:00

When Google chief financial officer Patrick Pichette said the tech giant might bring10 gigabits per second internet connections to American homes, it seemed like science fiction. That’s about 1,000 times faster than today’s home connections. But for NASA, it’s downright slow.

While the rest of us send data across the public internet, the space agency uses a shadow network called ESnet, short for Energy Science Network, a set of private pipes that has demonstrated cross-country data transfers of 91 gigabits per second–the fastest of its type ever reported.

NASA isn’t going bring these speeds to homes, but it is using this super-fast networking technology to explore the next wave of computing applications. ESnet is a test bed where scientists can explore new ideas before setting them loose on the commercial internet, and it’s an important tool for researchers who deal in massive amounts of data generated by projects such as the Large Hadron Collider and the Human Genome Project. Rather sending hard disks back and forth through the mail, they can trade data via the ultra-fast NASA network.

In short, ESnet a window into what our computing world will eventually look like. “Our vision for the world is that scientific discovery shouldn’t be constrained by geography,” says ESnet director Gregory Bell.

The Other Net

The first nationwide computer research network was the Defense Department’s ARPAnet, which evolved into the modern internet. But it wasn’t the last network of its kind. In 1976, the Department of Energy sponsored the creation of the Magnetic Fusion Energy NETwork to connect what is today the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center with other research laboratories. Then the agency created a second network in 1980 called the High Energy Physics network to connect particle physics researchers at national labs. As networking became more important, agency chiefs realized it didn’t make sense to maintain multiple networks and merged the two into one: ESnet.

The nature of the network changes with the times. In the early days it ran on land lines and satellite links. Today it is uses fiber optic lines, spanning the DOE’s 17 national laboratories and many other sites, such as university research labs. Since 2010, ESnet and Internet2—a non-profit international network built in 1995 for researchers after the internet was commercialized—have been leasing “dark fiber,” the excess network capacity built-up by commercial internet providers during the late 1990s internet bubble.

An Internet Fast Lane

In November, using this network, NASA’s High End Computer Networking team achieved its 91 gigabit transfer between Denver and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. It was the fastest end-to-end data transfer ever conducted under “real world” conditions.

ESnet has long been capable of 100 gigabit transfers, at least in theory. Network equipment companies have been offering 100 gigabit switches since 2010. But in practice, long-distance transfers were much slower. That’s because data doesn’t travel through the internet in a straight line. It’s less like a super highway and more like an interstate highway system. If you wanted to drive from San Francisco to New York, you’d pass through multiple cities along the way as you transferred between different stretches of highway. Likewise, to send a file from San Francisco to New York on the internet—or over ESnet—the data will flow through hardware housed in cities across the country.

A map of ESnet’s connected sites. Image: Courtesy of ESnet

NASA did a 98 gigabit transfer between Goddard and the University of Utah over ESnet in 2012. And Alcatel-Lucent and BT obliterated that record earlier this year with a 1.4 terabit connection between London and Ipswich. But in both cases, the two locations had a direct connection, something you rarely see in real world connections.

On the internet and ESnet, every stop along the way creates the potential for a bottleneck, and every piece of gear must be ready to handle full 100 gigabit speeds. In November, the team finally made it work. “This demonstration was about using commercial, off-the-shelf technology and being able to sustain the transfer of a large data network,” says Tony Celeste, a sales director at Brocade, the company that manufactured the equipment used in the record-breaking test.

Experiments for the Future

Meanwhile, the network is advancing the state of the art in other ways. Researchers have used it to explore virtual network circuits called “Oscars,” which can be used to create complex networks without complex hardware changes. And they’re working on what are known as network “DMZs,” which can achieve unusually fast speeds by handling security without traditional network firewalls.

These solutions are designed specifically for networks in which a small number of very large transfers take place–as opposed to the commercial internet where lots of small transfers take place. But there’s still plenty for commercial internet companies to learn from ESnet. Telecommunications company XO Communications already has a 100 gigabit backbone, and we can expect more companies to follow suit.

Although we won’t see 10-gigabit connections—let alone 100 gigabit connections—at home any time soon, higher capacity internet backbones will mean less congestion as more and more people stream high-definition video and download ever-larger files. And ESnet isn’t stopping there. Bell says the organization is already working on a 400 gigabit network, and the long-term goal is a terabyte per second network, which about 100,000 times faster than today’s home connections. Now that sounds like science fiction.

www.mohanvamsi.com

'Breaking Bad' star Aaron Paul is controlling your Xbox One

2014-06-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

'Breaking Bad' star Aaron Paul is controlling your Xbox One

An ad showing Paul telling his Xbox One to turn on is reportedly turning on some users' consoles.

Microsoft's Xbox One KinectMicrosoft

Aaron Paul, co-star of the wildly popular "Breaking Bad" television series, is featured in a Microsoft ad that just might take control your Xbox One.

Microsoft released ad earlier this month with Paul showcasing the voice commands available in theXbox One. At the beginning of the commercial, Paul says "Xbox On," the command console owners can use to interact with the Kinect sensor and turn on the console. While everything initially seemed just fine about that commercial, it turns out some gamers have discovered that Paul's command in the ad will get picked up by their Kinect and turn on the Xbox One in their home.

Although it doesn't appear to be a universal hack on Microsoft's part -- some users are seeing their devices turn on and others not -- it calls into question whether the company intended for it to happen or if it's a simple mistake.

Microsoft's Kinect comes with a surprisingly sensitive microphone that allows gamers to speak commands from across the room. "Xbox On" turns the console on, but there are countless others that will launch games, bring up the built-in Xbox store to buy digital goods, and more. Paul uses other voice commands in the video, but according to affected users, those don't appear to have been registered by the Kinect.

Beyond the possibility of having a celebrity control your gaming console, there's one other interesting thing to mention about the ad: it promotes features gamers can only find with Kinect integration with the Xbox One. At the end of the ad, however, Microsoft puts up a screen that mentions its new Kinect-free bundle now available for $400 instead of the $500 bundle that includes the Kinect. That could prove confusing to customers who don't follow the ins and outs of the gaming industry and wonder why, out of the box, their $400 Xbox One won't deliver the Aaron Paul experience.

www.mohanvamsi.com

The 2014 Razer Blade Is the Best Gaming Laptop, Period [REVIEW]

2014-06-08T22:04:00.001-07:00

The 2014 Razer Blade Is the Best Gaming Laptop, Period

The Razer Blade is the thinnest, lightest gaming laptop around, and it’s mind-blowingly fast. Thinner than a MacBook Pro Retina, the all-new graphics processor can play today’s top games and look gorgeous doing it without breaking a sweat. Talk about good looking.

Mark 2014 as a year to remember on your calendar, your Facebook page, your brand newTwitter profile page that you still haven’t quite figured out. Because you won’t remember what made this year great until someone on Reddit writes about it ten or twenty years from now and you think to yourself, “Oh yeah, that’s when laptops became awesome.” Finally.

In my nearly eight years of writing about technology and 20+ revolutions around our little sun playing with tech, this is the first time when mobile computing hasn’t sucked. In fact, it’s a joy! And the new Razer Blade is the epitome of excellence in mobile computing: kickass desktop-level performance, over six hours of battery life, a gorgeous display, all in a thin clamshell design that's lick-worthy. Come and get it.

Refinement, minus the screen

If you think the Blade looks a lot like the MacBook Pro Retina, you're right. Last year's model was a success, and aside from some fine tuning, almost nothing has changed. The keyboard is tighter with excellent low-profile keys; the trackpad is smooth and for some reason still includes two physical buttons and no multi-touch right click; and the speakers produce soft, high-quality audio for movies, music, and of course, games.

The big update is a vastly improved 3K monitor. This Blade has a 3,200 x 1,800 pixel resolution display

The big update is a vastly improved 3K monitor. This Blade has a 3,200 x 1,800 pixel resolution display, the highest I’ve ever seen on any monitor less than double the size. And that’s a problem.

4K (3,840 x 2,160) content may be all the rage nowadays, but unless you're watching House of Cards, there's no content. 3K? It doesn't even exist, and it never will. 1080p video content doesn't fit right, and neither does 4K. The only exception is games, which can almost always fit to the screen's native resolution. Windows doesn't even look good on it; everything's too small.

Yet the display is so gorgeous, so well made, that almost anything looks spectacular on it. 720p video content is fuzzy, but 1080p video looks great, and if you set the screen for other high resolutions like 2,048 x 1,152, the video quality is still excellent. This is one of the best laptop monitors I’ve ever tested, one that produces excellent color and light contrast, is bright enough for outdoor use even with a glossy display, and it’s a touchscreen to boot. It looks so good at other resolutions that even if you never use the native 3K, every other widescreen resolution looks great.

Performance? Let slip the dogs of war

For a 14-inch laptop, the Blade is the fastest, highest-performance machine I’ve ever tested of its size. It boasts some incredible specs: a quad-core 2.2GHz Intel Core i7 4702HQ, 8GB of RAM, and the all new NVIDIA GTX 870M with 3GB of video RAM. The Blade supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi, the fastest wireless technology, and the whole thing ships with 128/256/512GB of memory. The pre-production test unit Razer provided shipped with 128GB and retails for $2,200.

This machine was built for speed, and every part pushes the envelope. It doesn’t matter if you’re just browsing the web or playing Metro: Last Light in its native Russian, the Blade gets the job done fast. And it’ll last over six hours on the battery when word processing or web browsing. Gaming battery life isn't so hot, lasting just about an hour.

IMAGE: MASHABLE, JAMES PIKOVER

The Blade gets hot and while it’ll run many games extremely well when plugged in, it does throttle performance when on the battery. That means what’ll typically run at a steady 30 frames per second when plugged in will be unplayable on the battery, though with the right settings the Blade will run just about any of today’s top games and still look stunning.

Still, this laptop barely lasts over an hour for Batman: Origins and Crysis 3 while maintaining a solid 30 fps. Plug it in, and you’ll get noticeably better performance, and no longer fear losing another game save.

UltraHD gaming is the future... and it’s not ready for mobile

There’s only one place the Blade slips, and that’s at high resolution. Throw any game up at 3K and everything slows down. Adding more pixels on the screen is the most punishing task for the graphics processor, and it shows. The Blade can play every single game I threw at it at 1,600 x 900 with every graphical option set to maximum. At 3K, everything must be cut in half, and even then performance is always noticeably worse.

So yes, 3K gaming is possible on the Blade, but it isn’t worth it. That’s not to say that ultra-high-definition gaming isn’t better, because it absolutely is. Photorealistic games like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag look ridiculously good at higher resolutions, but not if you have to turn off all of the settings that make it look so damn pretty.

While the Razer is a superb gaming laptop, it's still not the machine you want for true 4K gaming.

IMAGE: MASHABLE, JAMES PIKOVER

As powerful as the Blade is, it cannot handle 4K/UltraHD gaming. Not in the way anyone would want to play, and certainly not in a reasonable way for a laptop. And if you thought 3K performance had limitations, 4K is just even harder to stomach. I tested the Blade with the Samsung U28D590D Ultra-HD 4K monitor and every single game ran better than on MSI’s GS60 Ghost, but not enough to warrant using those extra pixels.

Blade running

The Razer Blade isn’t a desktop replacement — it’s a mobile desktop. If I owned one, I’d replace my desktop for it because it’s so damn powerful, and it just so happens to fit very comfortably in practically any bag. Every other computer you can own is secondary.

The Blade is a refined, beautiful laptop that is an absolute joy to use

The Blade is a refined, beautiful laptop that is an absolute joy to use for everything from typing this review to hours of gaming.

As great as the Blade is, it’s a bit too ambitious. The 3K display produces excellent picture quality and is very bright, but it’s more than the laptop can handle. And all that power comes at a high price. $2,200 is expensive, and that’s for just 128GB of memory, barely enough for a few games. It’s not worthwhile without at least 256GB, which costs $2,400; 512GB sells for $2,700. The Blade is a machine that’ll be powerful for years, but that’s still a heavy cost.

When it comes to laptops however, nothing else compares. The Blade is the thinnest, lightest gaming laptop on the market. It’s sleek and badass and you’ll love every second of it. There are more powerful laptops out there, and I would get the Blade over all of them every time.

www.mohanvamsi.com

Android can now wake you up when you're close to your bus stop

2014-06-08T10:51:00.001-07:00

Android can now wake you up when you're close to your bus stop

If you've ever taken the bus or subway home after drinking too much at a party, you know how tough it can be to get off at the right stop -- you may fall asleep well before then. That shouldn't be an issue if you're using a recent Android phone, however. Android Police hasnoticed that the latest version of Google Now on Android lets you set an alarm that wakes you up shortly before a favorite destination comes up; you can safely catch some shut-eye knowing that you'll still be home on time. There are third-party apps that offer similar reminders, but it's good to have a built-in safety net when you're not entirely sober.

The Ingenious Way South Korea Unclogs Toilets

2014-06-04T14:02:00.000-07:00

The Ingenious Way South Korea Unclogs Toilets

www.mohanvamsi.com

How To Hack A Car

2014-06-04T13:55:00.001-07:00

How To Hack A Car

Information security researcher Mathew Solnik, with a little over a grand and about a month of work, found time outside of his full-time job to reverse-engineer a car's computer system to make it ready for a takeover.

www.mohanvamsi.com

Netflix is making sure customers know whom to blame for slow, grainy video

2014-06-04T11:13:00.001-07:00

Netflix is making sure customers know whom to blame for slow, grainy video

When online video stutters, buffers, or won’t play altogether, people get irritated—and Netflix has started encouraging its customers to blame their internet service providers for the substandard performance.

The screenshot above was captured by Yuri Victor, a designer at Vox Media, as he tried to watch Netflix video on an Apple computer. His internet provider is Verizon FiOS, a fiber-optic network that promises exceptionally high speeds. Others have recently seen a similar message while using AT&T’s network.

Responsibility for the quality of streaming video is at the crux of current debates over internet regulation. Netflix, which accounts for more than a third of all traffic heading into American homes at peak hours, would like to put more of the onus on internet providers. “The Verizon network is crowded right now” is a public relations campaign in the form of an error message.

Netflix download speeds in the US had deteriorated at the end of last year as its connections with some internet providers became clogged. The providers said that was Netflix’s fault for sending an ever-increasing amount of data across their networks. Netflix disagreed, but in February, it struck a deal to pay Comcast, the leading US internet provider, for a more direct line to customers. Speeds immediately improved, as HBO’s John Oliver noted in his recent viral rant over net neutrality. Netflix struck a similar deal with Verizon in April.

But Netflix and other streaming video services, like Google’s YouTube, say internet providers shouldn’t be able to cut those kinds of deals. US regulators are currently weighing the issue.

In addition to lobbying the government, internet video companies have made a point of publicizing how their services perform on various networks. Netflixpublishes such data for internet providers in 20 countries. Google recently started doing the same in the US and Canada, labeling some internet providers as “YouTube HD Verified” and others, not-so-much. Netflix has vowed to “encourage our members to demand the open Internet they are paying their ISP to deliver.”

Americans generally dislike their internet providers and are more sympathetic to companies like Netflix. Still, when streaming video doesn’t work like it should, people may be equally frustrated at all parties involved. Tom Wheeler, chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission (and former cable industry lobbyist), recently recalled watching Netflix in bed with his wife, when the feed began to buffer. “You’re chairman of the FCC,” she said to him. “Why is this happening?“

Next time it happens, Netflix has an answer for her.

www.mohanvamsi.com

Can you supercharge your brain?

2014-06-04T08:51:00.003-07:00

Can you supercharge your brain?

Applying mild electrical currents to your head could take away pain, help memory and improve attention – and the US military is very interested. Emma Young reports.

3 June 2014

In the summer of 2010, Ryan Clark twisted his ankle during a gym class. It was painful, but inconvenient more than anything. He was put on crutches for a week and his ankle healed. Then, six weeks later, the pain returned – only this time, it was a lot worse. Ryan ended up in a wheelchair, unable to bear the agony of walking. Drugs and rehab helped and after six weeks or so he recovered. Then he injured himself again, and a third time, each minor accident triggering pain that became horrendous. “They were just normal injuries for a nine-year-old,” says Ryan’s father, Vince, “but for him it was huge. As well as the pain, he got tremors. His muscles locked up. He’d go into full body spasms, and just curl up on the floor.”

Ryan was eventually diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome, a disorder that affects one in a million children his age. Vince Clark, who directs the Psychology Clinical Neuroscience Center at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, threw himself into understanding the syndrome and finding ways to help Ryan. Traditional painkillers had provided no relief, so Clark wondered about what he’d been researching in his lab. It’s called transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) and it involves applying mild electrical currents to the head.

TDCS belongs to a group of techniques known as ‘non-invasive brain stimulation’ because they don’t involve surgery. It is still experimental, but even in 2010, it was showing promise not only for alleviating pain, but for boosting the brain, improving memory and attention in healthy people. The US Department of Defense (DoD) wondered whether it might benefit military personnel. By the time Ryan became sick, Clark had led DoD-funded studies that explored this question, and produced remarkably good results.

The Royal College of Surgeons, London, January 1803. An audience watches in anticipation as the maverick Italian scientist Giovanni Aldini strides into the room. Someone else is on display before them: George Forster, a convicted murderer, who was earlier hanged at Newgate Prison. Using a primitive battery and connecting rods, Aldini applies an electrical current to the corpse. To the spectators’ amazement, it grimaces and jerks. In response to rectal stimulation, one of its fists seems to punch the air.

Aldini was fascinated by the effects of electricity on both the body and the mind, Clark tells me. After claiming to have cured a 27-year-old depressed farmer using electrical stimulation, Aldini tried it on patients with ‘melancholy madness’ at the Sant’Orsola Hospital in Bologna. He had only limited success, in part because the patients were terrified of his apparatus.

Aldini’s experiments with electricity were the beginning of a long and storied episode in the history of psychiatry. Electroconvulsive shock therapy, which requires currents strong enough to trigger seizures, was introduced in the late 1930s. But with the rise of effective new drug treatments as well as public criticism in books like Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, electrical therapies fell out of favour. “At some point, our culture became worried about electricity and its effects,” says Clark. “It was something scary. There was a general anxiety about it, and people weren’t willing to look at it in a rational, calm way.”

Clark is animated as he recounts the rise and fall, and subsequent rise, of electrical stimulation of the brain. While the use of electricity on people became frowned upon, neuroscientists still studied the effects on animals – “A lot of my professors in grad school had played with the effects of electricity in living tissue,” Clark says. In the 1960s, scientists found that tDCS, which involves currents up to a thousand times less powerful than those used in electroconvulsive shock therapy, could affect brain-cell ‘excitability’ and help with severe depression. But drugs still seemed more promising as psychiatric treatments, so tDCS was abandoned.

Then in the 1980s, electroshock therapy enjoyed a resurgence. It became clear that it could treat some patients with severe depression for whom the drugs did nothing. Around the same time, interest was growing in something called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). A patient undergoing TMS sits very still while a wand held above the skull generates a magnetic field that penetrates their brain. This can relieve depression and also help in rehabilitation after a stroke or head injury.

In 2000, Michael Nitsche and Walter Paulus at the University of Göttingen, Germany, reported that tDCS could alter a person’s response to magnetic stimulation. While TMS forces brain cells to fire, tDCS “primes the pump”, as Michael Weisend, a former colleague of Clark, describes it, making it more likely that a brain cell will fire in response to a stimulus.

Neuroscientists’ interest in tDCS was reignited by the Göttingen studies. But what really got people talking were the serendipitous findings that tDCS could change the brain functioning not only of patients but also of healthy people, who had been included in the trials only for comparison. This work was hugely influential, Clark says. Researchers began to investigate the potential of tDCS to boost healthy brains. Results showing that it could enhance learning and memory were some of the first to come in. Other teams looked at using tDCS to treat pain. Like many of his colleagues, Clark found it fascinating.

After a postdoctoral role at the National Institute of Mental Health, working in part on TMS, Clark had moved to Albuquerque in a joint appointment with the University of New Mexico and the Mind Research Network (MRN), a non-profit neuroscience research institute. His work focused on brain imaging and schizophrenia. By 2006, he was promoted to Scientific Director at the MRN. Clark was keen to work on tDCS but also needed to get the MRN out of financial difficulties. The institute had over-spent badly. “We were in a financial black hole,” he says. “We needed a lot of money fast.”

Around this time, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the part of the DoD responsible for developing new technologies for military use, put out a call for proposals for research in an area they dubbed “Accelerated Learning”. A general call like this attracts ideas from scientists from across the nation, each hoping that DoD dollars will flood their way. Clark and the MRN got the go-ahead. “We put a proposal together to use tDCS. And it was funded. And a lot of money came in quickly. A lot of people’s jobs were saved.”

It’s clear that to Clark, the preservation of jobs by this influx of cash – which ultimately totalled $6 million – helped to justify the use of military funds. He talks positively about the way DARPA does business. “I do really like their philosophy. They want to promote research that is very cutting-edge and very risky; a 90 per cent failure rate in their portfolio is okay, because the 10 per cent that works will change the world. We got lucky to be in that 10 per cent.”

Brian Coffman smiles reassuringly as he leads me into a small room. He’s had tDCS done plenty of times, he says, and he’s administered it to around 300 people so far. Some report itching, heat and tingling, but nothing serious. Rarely, someone develops a headache.

Coffman, a PhD student who works with Clark, uses adhesive tape to attach the non-stimulating cathode electrode to my left upper arm and the anode, which delivers the current, to the side of my head, up between my ear and my eye. This positioning is designed to maximise the current that is drawn through the target region of my brain. The electrodes are inside sponges that have been soaked in conductive salt water, so a little of the saline drips down my face. They’re connected by wires to a 9 volt battery. When Coffman switches on the battery, I feel a tiny spark on my arm. Static discharge, he explains, and apologises.tDCS and me

As Coffman turns the current up to 2 milliamps, the maximum level used in most tDCS studies, I feel a scratchy sensation on my arm, but that’s it. Coffman checks that I’m comfortable, then I’m put to work on a computer-based task. The software is called DARWARS, and it was designed to help familiarise US Army recruits with the types of environments they might encounter in the Middle East. Clark and his team modified it, adding hidden targets to half the 1,200 still scenes. Fairly crude computer-generated images flash up briefly, showing derelict apartment blocks, desert roads, or streets filled with grocers’ stands. I have to press buttons on a keyboard to indicate whether there’s a threat in the scene or not. Occasionally, it’s pretty obvious. Mostly, it isn’t. A training period helps the user learn what can be dangerous and what is likely to be benign. When I miss an enemy fighter who’s partially concealed, one of my virtual colleagues drops to the dust and I’m verbally admonished: “Soldier, you missed a threat. You just lost a member of your platoon.”

I didn’t feel that the stimulation helped me, though Coffman tells me later that my performance did improve afterwards. This means nothing scientifically – but I can at least attest that while I didn’t feel any mentally sharper during or after the tDCS, I didn’t experience any negative effects, either.

The MRN team used this software in part of their DARPA-funded research. First, they imaged volunteers’ brains to see which regions were active as they learned to spot threats. Then they applied 2 milliamps of direct current for 30 minutes to that crucial region – the inferior frontal cortex. They found that stimulation halved the time it took volunteers to learn. This was a huge surprise, says Clark. “Most tDCS studies don’t achieve a huge effect. A lot are borderline.”

This is one of the criticisms that has been levelled at tDCS: the results aren’t always that good. Clark is convinced this is because a lot of the studies haven’t involved imaging the brain first, to pinpoint the regions that really need stimulation. “A lot rely on common knowledge about how the brain is meant to be organised. I’ve learned in 33 years of looking at the brain that we still have a lot to learn,” he says. Michael Weisend, who collaborated on the study, agrees – he calls the imaging work “the secret sauce”.

Despite the impressive results, feedback from colleagues was mixed. And by then, Clark was feeling uncomfortable about several things, not least his benefactors.

“It’s big. Oh yeah, it’s big,” agrees Estella Holmes, an Air Force public affairs representative, who has just driven me in through the gates of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in a minivan. Wright-Patt, as it seems to be referred to by anyone who knows the place, is near Dayton, Ohio, and is the largest of all the US Air Force bases, employing some 26,000 people. It is rich in aviation history. In and around this area, Wilbur and Orville Wright conducted pioneering experiments into flight. What they helped to start continues here, at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

The AFRL includes the 711th Human Performance Wing, whose mission is to “advance human performance in air, space and cyberspace”. Wright-Patt is so vast, not even Holmes is quite sure where we’re going. We have to ask a passing airman for help. He’s dressed in fatigues, even though it’s a Monday. On Mondays, Holmes has informed me, it’s protocol to wear the blue uniform, unless a grimy task is scheduled. When we get inside, though, everyone seems to be in fatigues. A group of airmen – the term is used for both men and women – are holding an informal meeting at a café in the atrium, while others are walking to their various tasks. Previous Air Force Surgeons General survey the scene from oil paintings hung along one long wall. The atmosphere is quietly busy.

When a young man approaches us, incongruous not only because he’s in civilian clothing (a grunge-cool three-piece suit) but because of his long, wavy hair and goatee beard, I’m momentarily thrown. “When I first met Andy, he looked like he could be active military, while I had a ponytail down to my belt,” Weisend tells me later. “I like to think I got him on the long-hair path and I’m proud of that!”

Andy McKinley is Weisend’s research partner and the military’s principal in-house tDCS researcher, leading a lab at the Human Performance Wing. His father was a biomedical engineer in the AFRL. “I guess I followed in his footsteps,” McKinley says. “I also liked the fact that my research could lead to the development of technologies that could continue to give us a strategic military advantage and improve national security.” He joined two years after finishing his bachelor’s degree and started out investigating the effects of high G-forces on pilots’ cognitive performance. After a PhD in biomedical engineering, minoring in neuroscience, he began work on non-invasive (not involving surgery) brain stimulation. “We began noticing a lot of the medical literature suggesting that cognitive functioning could be enhanced,” he says. “And particularly in control groups, which were normal, healthy participants. We began thinking: if it could help with those healthy participants, it could potentially be an intervention tool we could use here in the military to help advance cognitive function.”

McKinley has anywhere from six to ten people working on this with him (the number fluctuates according to whether he has summer students or not). And as far as he is aware, his is the only team within the US military, or any other military, investigating non-invasive brain stimulation. Other countries are certainly interested – the UK’s Defence Science and Research Laboratory, part of the Ministry of Defence, is paying for research at the University of Bangor, Wales, on whether tDCS can enhance learning by observation, for example, and for PhD students at the University of Nottingham to conduct studies on enhancing cognition and performance, in part using tDCS.

As a technology, tDCS is unusual in that its effects on healthy people were discovered by accident. So McKinley’s research has two prongs. The first is to better understand the basic neuroscience. The second is to develop practical applications.

The day I visit, a tDCS trial is underway in one of McKinley’s small labs. An airman sits at a monitor, wired up with electrodes, his jacket slung over the back of his chair. Plane-shaped icons keep entering his airspace. He has to decide whether each incoming plane is a friend or a foe. If it’s a foe, he must send a warning. If it flies off, fine. If it doesn’t, he must bring it down. The lab is silent, apart from the bleeps as he hits the buttons, and the smash as a software missile destroys an uncooperative plane.

The task obviously involves decision making, but it also has a physical ‘motor’ component: you must press the buttons in the correct sequence, and you must do this quickly, to get a good score. After a while, this kind of task becomes pretty automatic. “If you imagine learning to ride a bike or a manual vehicle, your process is very conscious at first because you’re thinking about all the steps. But as you do it more often, it becomes more and more unconscious,” McKinley says. “We wanted to see if we could accelerate that transition with tDCS.”

Brain imaging suggested that the best way to do this would be to stimulate the motor cortex while the volunteer was doing the task. But McKinley and his team added a twist: after the stimulation, they use tDCS in reverse to inhibit the volunteers’ prefrontal cortex, which is involved in conscious thinking. The day after the stimulation, the volunteers are brought back for re-testing. “The results we’re getting are fantastic,” McKinley says. People getting a hit of both mid-test and inhibitory stimulation did 250 per cent better in their retests, far outperforming those who had received neither. Used in this way, it seems that tDCS can turbo-boost the time it takes for someone to go from being a novice at a task to being an expert.

In theory, this two-step process might be used to speed all kinds of training, in everything from the piloting of a plane to marksmanship. But for now, image analysis is high on McKinley’s list. This is painstaking work that requires a lot of attention. Image analysts spend their whole working day studying surveillance footage for anything of interest.

In other studies, McKinley’s team have also used tDCS to supercharge attention, which could help the image analysts too. Volunteers were asked to engage in a rudimentary simulation of air traffic monitoring. Performance at this type of task usually declines over time. “It’s a pretty linear decrement,” McKinley says. But when they stimulated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of volunteers’ brains, an area they had found to be crucial for attention, they found absolutely no reduction in performance for the entire 40-minute duration of the test. “That had never been shown before,” he says enthusiastically. “We’ve never been able to find anything else that creates that kind of preservation of performance.”

TDCS is not the only brain stimulation tool that he finds interesting. As well as ongoing work into magnetic stimulation, other teams are looking at ultrasound and even laser light, as well as different forms of electrical stimulation, using alternating current, for example. McKinley is about to start looking at ultrasound too, and he’s interested in how alternating current can influence brainwaves. But while he says he’s agnostic about what type of stimulation might turn out to be best for cognitive enhancement, tDCS has some advantages. For a start, unlike ultrasound or magnetism, electricity is a natural part of brain-cell communication, and it’s cheap and portable. He thinks tDCS is the best bet for a wearable brain-stimulating device.

Ultimately, McKinley envisages a wireless cap incorporating electroencephalography (EEG) sensors as well as tDCS electrodes. This two-in-one cap would monitor brain activity and deliver targeted stimulation when necessary – boosting the wearer’s attention if it seems to be flagging, for example. The basic technology is already available. And McKinley and Weisend are working to improve and refine it. With help from materials specialists at the AFRL, they have developed EEG-based electrodes that use gel, rather than a wet sponge, and which they say are more comfortable to wear. They also now favour an array of five mini-electrodes within each cathode and anode, to spread the current and reduce the risk of any damage to the skin.

Along with improvements in learning and attention in normal situations, McKinley has found that tDCS can combat the kinds of decline in mental performance normally seen with sleep deprivation. Other researchers have found that, depending on where the current is applied, tDCS can make someone more logical, boost their mathematical ability, improve their physical strength and speed, and even affect their ability to make plans, propensity to take risks and capacity to deceive – the production of lies can be improved or impaired by tDCS, it seems. While much of this work is preliminary, all of these effects may potentially be exploited by any military organisation – though McKinley is at pains to point out that ‘soldier mind control’ is not what he’s about. The biggest barriers to rolling out a tDCS cap for routine use by US military personnel – or anybody else, for that matter – are related not so much to the technology or even the effects it can engender, but to unanswered questions about the fundamental technique.

“Let’s talk about skulls!”

I’m sitting with Mike Weisend in Max & Erma’s, an all-American restaurant about a five-minute drive from his new office at the Wright State Research Institute, which itself is only about ten minutes from the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Also at the table are Larry Janning and David McDaniel from Defense Research Associates, a local company that creates technologies “to support the Warfighter”.

In the car on the way over, Weisend told me about his early, gruesome attempts to get a better idea of what happens to electricity when it’s applied to the skull. “First, I allied with a company that does acoustic damage research on cadaver heads. The idea was we’d get the heads afterwards. It was an incredibly messy, unpleasant business. I couldn’t handle it.” But this kind of data is high on his and McKinley’s wish list.

No one yet knows what duration of electrical stimulation or what number of stimulations has the biggest impact on performance, or what level of current is optimal. Nor does anyone know whether stimulation might produce permanent change – which might render the two-in-one cap unnecessary, McKinley says, but which may or may not be desirable, depending on the application. There are hints from various studies that even a single session of tDCS might have long-lasting effects. No one knows how long the impacts on attention persisted after the 40-minute cut-off in the air traffic control study, he says.

Another thing nobody knows for sure is where the electricity actually goes when it’s applied to various parts of the skull. Certainly, it’s a pretty broad, imprecise type of stimulation – a “shotgun” approach, rather than a “scalpel”, as Weisend describes it. But while there are models that indicate where neuroscientists think the electricity goes in the brain, and so exactly which parts it’s affecting, this isn’t good enough, says McKinley. You can’t put electrodes throughout a living person’s head to find out. “So what we want,” McKinley tells me, “is a phantom skull.”

Today, Weisend wants to talk to Janning and McDaniel about building this phantom – a model of a human head. The idea is to use a real skull, but with a gelatinous, conductive, brain-mimicking goo inside.

At first, no one’s quite sure how to fit the skull with sensors in a way that might produce realistic results, particularly as Weisend wants it to be useful for research with a range of stimulation techniques. Over black-bean burgers and soup, there’s talk about multiplex receivers and problems with pulsing signals. Then McDaniel comes up with the idea of inserting a folded fan-type circuit board into the hole at the base of the skull, then opening it up once it’s inside. Weisend jumps on the idea. He holds his fists together, the phalanges of his knuckles in contact. “This is like the brain,” he says. “You’ve got fibres running like my fingers.” A fan shape would be a decent mimic for the fibres, he decides. “I like this idea. I like it a whole lot!”

Both McKinley and Weisend are interested in the basic neuroscience of precisely what tDCS does to the brain, as well as the technology – and the question of safety. This is clearly a big concern when you’re talking about zapping the brain with electricity, even if the current is very small. The positive tDCS findings, and the relative cheapness of the kit, has made do-it-yourself tDCS a popular topic for discussion on the internet. You can buy what you need for under $200, and, judging by the online forums, plenty of people are. But Weisend has some major concerns about this. For a start, the electrodes themselves.

“See this?” He rolls up his right sleeve to reveal a small scar on his inner forearm. “I test all the electrode designs myself before we do it on regular subjects,” he says. “I don’t like to do anything to other people I don’t do to myself.” After trying out one particular new electrode, a research assistant wiped his arm and a plug of skin the size of a dime came out. “It was the consistency of phlegm,” Weisend says. “I could see the muscle underneath.” The problem was the shape: the electrode was a square, and the current had concentrated at the corners. This was one of many, mostly less unpleasant, results that helped lead McKinley and him to develop the current-spreading five-electrode array.

Nicely packaged consumer tDCS kits, aimed at the public rather than scientists, are already on sale. But Weisend and McKinley – and every other tDCS researcher I’ve talked to – think it’s too early for commercial devices. In fact, they all seem worried. If something goes wrong and someone gets hurt, perhaps by an imperfect electrode design or using the kit for ‘too long’ – a duration that has yet to be defined – not only will that be regrettable for the individual but tDCS as a concept will be stigmatised, McKinley says.

So far, there seem to be no harmful effects of tDCS, at least, not at the levels or durations of stimulation that are routinely used. Weisend believes there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and admits there could be side-effects to tDCS that no one knows about yet. Others are more optimistic. Felipe Fregni, Director of the Laboratory of Neuromodulation at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, says there’s no reason to think even long-term use will cause problems, provided that it’s at the low levels and durations that are typically used in the lab studies. “Being a clinician, one thing we are taught at medical school is that treatments that work well have huge side-effects. Then you see something with literally no side-effects, and you think, are we missing something, or not? TDCS is only enhancing what your system is doing. I feel confident that it is pretty safe, based on the mechanisms.”

The absence of side-effects – which most drugs can’t boast – is one of the reasons tDCS is so exciting as a clinical tool, says Vince Clark. In many cases, a drug will be more appropriate. But tDCS can relieve pain without making an addict of the user. It can affect the brain without also damaging the liver. As there seem to be no side-effects, tDCS is at least as safe as many drugs that are currently approved for use on kids. Eleven per cent of children in the USA have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and many are on stimulants such as Ritalin. No one knows for sure that there are no very long-term effects of using tDCS – but the same may be said for Ritalin, Clark says.

While tDCS is not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for any medical use, anecdotal reports lead Clark to believe that its ‘off-label’ use (when doctors recommend something which they think can help their patient but which isn’t officially recognised as a treatment) is growing, particularly for chronic pain and depression. Hospitals are starting to use the technique clinically. In Boston, Fregni and his colleague León Morales-Quezada recently began to use tDCS during rehab on young patients with brain injuries. With one boy, a three-year-old who had suffered severe brain damage after a near-drowning in a swimming pool, they got “fantastic” results, Morales-Quezada says. After the treatment, the boy had much better control over his movements, and he was able to speak.

There’s another ‘risk’: that the device won’t help everyone, and people will say tDCS doesn’t work. In fact, people do not respond equally to stimulation, and no one yet knows exactly why. This is just one of the areas that needs more research – which requires money.

To Clark, his studies aren’t fundamentally about helping to teach a soldier how to spot a threat and deal with it – which, in the real world, might involve identifying and killing an enemy – but about investigating how the brain detects threats. “A lot of people who’ve reviewed my work will say that it’s good work – but does it have to be about the military? That makes them unhappy. A lot of intellectuals are made uncomfortable by war. Which I am.”

There’s something else, which clearly bothers him still. In 2003, Joseph Wilson, a former US diplomat, published a piece in the New York Times arguing that President George W Bush had misled the public about claims of Iraqi purchasing of uranium in Africa, part of the wider furore over the decision to go to war in Iraq. A week later, his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson – a friend of Clark – was outed as a CIA agent. This was retribution, her husband claimed, for his article. “I’d known Valerie for ten years before this, not knowing she was a CIA agent,” Clark says. “She was a wonderful patriot, and I was really unhappy that because people were angry at her husband, she lost her career and her ability to do that work… So here were my friends, going through this. And here was I, being pressured to use this technology for weapons development.”

Weapons development? Around the time of the DARPA grant, the focus of the Mind Research Network had begun to shift more and more towards developing tools the military could use, Clark says. “I’m not allowed to say what was discussed, but I can mention some possibilities,” he says. “A device that makes enemy troops unconscious, or makes them too confused or upset to fight, might make a weapon. Weapons that alter thoughts or beliefs, or directly affect decision-making or ‘reward’ pathways in their brain to alter their behaviour, or that keep someone conscious while they are being tortured, might be achieved.” He’d also heard talk of using tDCS to help improve sniper training, which he didn’t approve of. “I had my principles and goals, and they had theirs, and they were in direct conflict.”

In 2009, an error was found in bonus payments to the research assistants on the DARPA project. Clark says that it wasn’t that serious, but against the background of his disputes with colleagues over the direction of the institute, it became a big problem. Soon after, he lost his position as principal investigator on the DARPA work.

After enthusiastic handshakes and promises of further discussions with the men from Defense Research Associates, Weisend yawns, and apologises. He’s been in Ohio for only six weeks. It’s been a busy period of settling in, getting to know new colleagues and meeting potential collaborators. Also, he and his wife finally got a TV last night, he adds. He couldn’t resist staying up to watch old Star Trekepisodes. Back inside his office, we sit down and talk about tDCS, his current projects, the Mind Research Network, Vince Clark, the Department of Defense, and the “colour of money”.

Weisend’s cousin David was in the US Special Operations Forces. His sister, Joan, was a career corpsman in the US Navy. She completed numerous tours around the world, including to Iraq and Africa. A shipboard fire on one of her tours resulted in multiple operations on her wrist, neck and shoulder. Between 1997 and 2004, Weisend also worked at the New Mexico Veterans Affairs Hospital, running a magnetoencephalography (MEG) centre, which performed highly detailed scans of patients’ brains. He remembers one patient in particular, a woman who’d received a head injury after falling from a moving vehicle during the first Gulf War. As a result, she had epilepsy. MEG scanning of her brain allowed the medical team to perform surgery that stopped the seizures, with the least possible damage to healthy tissue. “I personally saw the health effects [of military action] on soldiers at the hospital, and my sister, and my cousin,” he says. “Anything I can do to help those guys and gals, I’ll do.”

When Clark lost his position, Weisend was asked to take the lead, and it was he who developed and supervised the second phase of the research. DoD funding forms a big part of his lab income at the Wright State Research Institute, says Weisend – it’s for “exciting, fun” projects he can’t talk about. He’s well aware that not everyone is comfortable about military-related grants. “There are people, particularly in university departments, that get worried about the ‘colour of money’ – Defense money, rather than NIH [National Institutes of Health] money for pure science,” he says. His opinion is that you never know how basic research is going to be used, and if it is used for harm, it’s the agency doing the harm that should be open to blame, rather than the researcher who did the original science.

What about the tDCS research on sniper training that Clark had heard about? That belongs to the category of research that has appeared “in the popular press” but not “in the lab”, Weisend says, though adding that he isn’t opposed to it, in theory. “The bottom line is that Vince and I see the world differently, with respect to the DARPA work and the directions it took,” he says. “If Vince had conversations about weaponising our results, I was not privy to those conversations. Could the results be weaponised? Undoubtedly. But then again, so could a ballpoint pen. We have always focused on performance enhancement as measured by reducing errors and uncertainty. We never did any experiments on weapons at MRN.”

For a long time, it was difficult to get military volunteers for the DARPA-funded studies, Weisend tells me. Unlike civilians, they couldn’t be paid for taking part. Then he hit on the idea of ordering a special coin. He passes one over to me. It’s weighty and impressive, the size of a medal. On one side is a raised relief of the exterior of a human brain, on the other the full-colour emblems of both the 711th Human Performance Wing and the Air Force Research Laboratory, with “The Mind Research Network” printed underneath.

Coins like these are really popular within the military, Weisend says. He shows me his collection. There’s one from a friend at the Pentagon, another from his cousin, from his time with the 20th Special Operations Squadron of the Air Force, the Green Hornets. “We couldn’t figure out how to get military people in the door,” he says, “then we came up with these. And they came out of the woodwork to get them.”

While the MRN-led studies involved a mix of military and student volunteers, Andy McKinley recruits his volunteers from the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. At the moment, tDCS is still experimental, McKinley stresses. It is not yet a routine part of US military training. But some researchers are worried.

Bernhard Sehm, a cognitive neurologist at the Max-Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, has a list of concerns about tDCS and the military. For a start, he says he’s far from convinced that lab results would transfer to real-world scenarios, with complex demands – such as combat. Also, “some researchers have argued that the enhancement of one specific ability might result in a deterioration of another,” he says. “To use non-invasive brain stimulation in soldiers poses a risk both to the person receiving and to other persons who might be harmed by his actions.” Sehm is also worried about soldiers’ autonomy. “In general, people in the military cannot really decide voluntarily whether to accept a ‘treatment’ or not,” he says.

As the DoD continues its funding of tDCS research, some researchers in the field have decided to take a firm stand against military-related money. Chris Chambers, a psychologist at Cardiff University, in Wales, conducts research into magnetic brain stimulation. When he was approached by representatives from QinetiQ, a British defence technology firm, who told him that funding might be available for joint collaborations, he says he rejected their overtures, on a point of principle.

This isn’t necessarily an easy decision. Pharmaceutical companies aren’t interested in paying for the research, because not only is tDCS not a drug but in some cases it could be in direct competition with a drug, and may even have big advantages. “It doesn’t circulate through the body, so it won’t affect other organs that most drugs can damage,” Clark says. “It’s not addictive. If there’s any problem, you can turn it off in seconds. It’s also cheap.” These benefits, unfortunately, restrict researchers’ options to public funding bodies (who haven’t exactly thrown money at tDCS), private defence-related companies, or the military.

In the past, DoD funding has produced innovations that have had a huge impact on civilian life – think of the Global Positioning System of satellites or even noise-cancelling headphones. Andy McKinley hopes a safe, effective form of tDCS will join that list. While the DoD doesn’t have enough in-house specialists to do the research, it does have cash.

Clark still acts as a research supervisor at the MRN, but works mostly at the university. He is currently gathering “whatever little pieces of money I can find” to pursue medical-related research: to investigate whether tDCS can cut drinking in alcoholics, reduce hallucinations in people with schizophrenia, and calm impulsive behaviour associated with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. While this research is relatively cheap, funding is still a problem. Given the recent rapid rise in tDCS research published in academic journals, Clark hopes the NIH will soon start taking tDCS research seriously, and pay for large-scale, controlled studies.

Among the promising leads are further findings that tDCS also seems to work well with types of pain that don’t respond well to conventional painkillers, like chronic pain, and pain from damaged nerves. In these cases, the target is usually the motor cortex, and the idea is to reduce pain signals. Which brings me back to Ryan, one of the biggest motivations for Clark’s research. Did Clark eventually try it on his son? When Ryan first got sick, “none of the doctors here had heard of tDCS,” he tells me, “and without medical help, I decided I wasn’t going to do it”. He also came across a low-tech approach: an ‘orthotic’, similar to the mouthguards people used to stop night-time teethgrinding. To Clark’s surprise, this relieves Ryan’s pain and eases his movement. But Clark says he’d be happy for Ryan to try tDCS. If the mouthguard stopped working and he could find a clinician who would work with the technique, “I don’t think it would be any problem”.Orthotics

Clark raves about its potential to aid sick people, like his son, and healthy people alike. But he says he’s clear now about his position on what funds to accept and what research to do. “I want to see tDCS used to help,” he says, “not to harm.”

www.mohanvamsi.com

The Mission to Bring Google’s AI to the Rest of the World

2014-06-03T15:52:00.001-07:00

Adam Gibson (right) teaches deep learning techniques at the Zipfian Academy in San Francisco. Photo: Josh Valcarcel

Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are pioneering a new kind of artificial intelligence.

At Google, it helps drive the voice recognition service that lets you search the web merely by talking into your Android smartphone. At Microsoft, it underpins the new Skype translation tool that lets you instantly communicate with people who speak another language. And at Facebook, a newly assembled team of engineers is exploring how it might be used to recognize faces in online photos. It’s called deep learning, and it seeks to remake computing by more closely mimicking the way the human brain processes information, giving machines more power to “learn” as time goes on.

The technology has so much promise, it has sparked a kind of arms race among the giants of tech. Google and Facebook recently hired the two academics who originally laid out the concepts behind deep learning, and earlier this month, Chinese search giant Baidu followed suit when it snapped up another academic at the heart of the movement. But Adam Gibson, an independent software engineer based in San Francisco, doesn’t want this new technology locked inside the biggest names on the net. He believes deep learning techniques should be available to any website, company, or developer interested in using them. And that’s why he’s launching a new startup called Skymind.

‘We want to give people machine learning without them having to hire a data scientist.’

“We want to give people machine learning without them having to hire a data scientist,” says Gibson, 24, a college dropout who has taught himself the vagaries of deep learning from public academic papers and has served as a kind of machine learning consultant for various companies while teaching courses on the subject through an outfit called the Zipfian Academy.

Alongside another engineer named Josh Patterson, who previously worked for Big Data startup Cloudera, Gibson has built a new library of deep learning software tools that’s freely available to anyone, and Skymind will serve not only as a steward for this open source project but as a consultant that will help others use the code to build their own AI-powered online services. Based on academic papers published by some of the deep learning engineers now working for Google and Facebook, the software could help power everything from voice recognition to language translation to the kind of automatic product recommendations you see when you visit Amazon.com.

“We’re trying to clone what Google does,” says Patterson. And though the project is still in the early stages, Gibson says the code is already capable of bringing deep learning techniques to live web services. “We’re handling production-level systems,” he says, while declining to name which companies are using it. “At the very least, we’re able to reproduce the results that the academic papers are producing.”

Adam Gibson maps out a deep learning equation at Zipfian. Photo: Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

There are other ways of using deep learning. The academic community that founded the movement offers its own open source software tools written in the Python programming language, and these serve as the basis for Ersatz, a service that lets you tap deep learning algorithms via the internet. But with his open source project, known as Deeplearning4j, Gibson has bigger ambitions. Unlike the academic tools that are already available, his software is built with the Java programming language–thus the “4j”–and that means it can run atop Hadoop, the massive number crunching system that has become a staple inside many of the world’s online operations.

Based on software designed at Google, Hadoop is a way of storing and processing enormous amounts of data across hundreds of ordinary computer servers, and this sort of distributed computing power is what deep learning requires. “Hadoop is becoming the system of record for all data,” Patterson says. “We need to move deep learning to the data that already lives in Hadoop.”

An existing open source project, known as Mahout, already provides a way of running artificial intelligence algorithms atop Hadoop. Overstock.com uses Mahout to drive product recommendations on its popular retail site. But deep learning is something very different from this older breed of AI. According to those who have used it, deep learning comes closer to creating “neural networks” that mirror the way the brain operates. Whereas older AI systems must be “taught” to preform tasks by human engineers in many cases, deep learning algorithms are better at learning and adapting on their own.

‘There are more Java programmers out there, but there are probably more machine learning programmers who use Python or other languages.’

David Sullivan, who oversees Ersatz, the online deep-learning service, calls Gibson’s project “interesting,” and he calls Gibson “a very sharp dude.” But he questions whether the move to Java is really that important. “There are more Java programmers out there, but there are probably more machine learning programmers who use Python or other languages,” he says.

Gibson and Patterson also argue that Java can eventually provide deep learning calculations at much faster speeds. But Yoshua Bengio, a University of Montreal professor who sits at the heart of the deep learning academic community, says this isn’t necessarily the case. “There are other languages which seem better suited for statistical and numerical computation, not just because of the language itself but because of the community around and the set of tools that have been developed around it,” he explains.

But Bengio still welcomes Gibson’s project–”I’m a big advocate of diversity,” he says–and if deep learning is to reach a much wider audience, it must certainly find a place in the world of Java. The language has become one of the primary ways of building big-time web services.

To be sure, the algorithms championed by Gibson are still an awfully long way from cloning the human brain–which means even the artificial intelligence moniker is a big of a stretch–and Skymind is still very much in its infancy. But Google and Microsoft have shown that deep learning can advance the state of the art, and with his startup, Gibson has at least identified the next logical step for this fledgling technology. If he doesn’t bring deep learning to the rest of world, someone else will.

www.mohanvamsi.com

Apple's WWDC 2014 keynote: the future of iOS, the Mac, and more

2014-06-02T16:16:00.001-07:00

Event Updates

11:57:58 AM PDT

The WWDC keynote is over. There was no watch. Or phone. Or MBA with Retina Display. Or active weather icon.

11:57:45 AM PDT

11:57:39 AM PDT

And that's it!

11:57:28 AM PDT

"And there's thousands more back in Cupertino, and from all over the world."

11:57:06 AM PDT

Tim is thanking his team — scattered through the audience.

11:56:56 AM PDT

"Would everyone from Apple stand up."

11:56:45 AM PDT

"We do this to create a seamless experience for our users that is unparalleled."

11:56:40 AM PDT

11:56:20 AM PDT

"Apple engineers platforms, services, and devices together."

11:56:17 AM PDT

11:56:09 AM PDT

"You see how developers can create powerful apps faster and more easily than ever before."

iOS 8

OS 10.10, Yosemite

He's wrapping up all the announcements now...

11:55:13 AM PDT

11:55:07 AM PDT

"It's been an incredible morning."

11:55:05 AM PDT

11:54:55 AM PDT

Tim is back

11:54:50 AM PDT

"That's iOS 8 — thank you!" Federighi about to go chug a beer now.

11:54:28 AM PDT

Available to the public in Fall.

11:54:27 AM PDT

11:54:16 AM PDT

Available in beta for devs today.

11:54:11 AM PDT

I'm not seeing any active weather widgets.

11:54:10 AM PDT

11:53:59 AM PDT

And we're wrapping up iOS 8 now.

11:53:52 AM PDT

11:53:38 AM PDT

"That is Swift." The opportunities for puns here are endless.

11:53:09 AM PDT

11:53:04 AM PDT

Good point Dieter.

11:52:45 AM PDT

He's more of a wizard, if you think about it.

11:52:45 AM PDT

Here's the takeaway: Swift is super fast and basically builds and runs your code in realtime, and Objective-C is about to die a horrible horrible death. Maybe.

11:52:35 AM PDT

11:51:52 AM PDT

Magician.

11:51:52 AM PDT

Apple is definitely competing with Microsoft's Build for nerdiest conference keynote.

11:50:57 AM PDT

11:50:27 AM PDT

11:49:33 AM PDT

There's a magician on stage casting spells. That's about all I can tell you.

11:49:31 AM PDT

11:49:17 AM PDT

Okay I'll be honest this demo of someone coding is... hard to follow.

11:48:43 AM PDT

11:48:38 AM PDT

11:48:22 AM PDT

"Let me show you how fun and interactive it is to write in Swift."

Demo time on Swift.

Swift code can live right beside C and Objective-C in the same app.

11:47:26 AM PDT

11:47:07 AM PDT

11:46:56 AM PDT

"You know how many people at home are going 'what the heck are these guys talking about?'"

11:46:37 AM PDT

The crowd is freaking out here. People are really buzzing. They lost their minds over that slide.

11:46:30 AM PDT

11:46:08 AM PDT

11:45:56 AM PDT

"When it comes to speed, Swift is great."

11:45:46 AM PDT

11:45:43 AM PDT

"It's called Swift, and it totally rules."

11:45:40 AM PDT

Swift.

11:45:34 AM PDT

"We've used Objective-C for 20 years, and we love it. But what if we had it without the baggage of C?" "We have a new programming language."

11:45:30 AM PDT

11:45:03 AM PDT

"Central to Xcode is the language we use to develop our apps, Objective-C."

11:45:01 AM PDT

11:44:52 AM PDT

11:44:47 AM PDT

"This is the toolset we use to build all of our applications for the Mac and iOS."

11:44:38 AM PDT

11:44:30 AM PDT

"Next... Xcode."

11:44:22 AM PDT

A 3D scene renderer. Yes, this is definitely the portion of this event for devs.

11:44:19 AM PDT

11:44:07 AM PDT

SceneKit — a new addition.

11:43:55 AM PDT

11:43:37 AM PDT

"Now I want to move from high end 3D gaming to casual gaming with SpriteKit."

11:43:28 AM PDT

11:43:23 AM PDT

"So that's Metal."

11:43:14 AM PDT

Zen Garden, the demo we just saw, will be available for free when iOS 8 launches.

11:43:03 AM PDT

11:42:49 AM PDT

This does not look like something that should be possible on a tablet.

11:42:36 AM PDT

Just wow to that demo. Wait till you see the video.

11:42:21 AM PDT

11:41:58 AM PDT

11:41:52 AM PDT

There are about 5,000 petals here being physically simulated. They made a koi pond where each fish has its own AI.

11:41:36 AM PDT

A tree just had petals dragged onto it like a paintbrush, a cherry blossom with petals blowing in the wind and off the tree. Stunning, really.

11:41:35 AM PDT

11:41:25 AM PDT

11:40:55 AM PDT

"An order of magnitude increase in detail."

This is impressive.

"We've had the opportunity to work with Metal, and we've created a zen garden."

11:40:17 AM PDT

"Thank you."

11:40:09 AM PDT

"To show you live what can be done with Metal, Tim Sweeny from Epic Games."

11:39:57 AM PDT

11:39:55 AM PDT

EA is bringing Frostbite engine to mobile.

11:39:47 AM PDT

1.3 million triangles on the screen at a time on Plants vs Zombies. EA is using its Frostbiteconsole engine to run this thing.

11:39:30 AM PDT

11:39:13 AM PDT

"We've been working with premium developers. What they've done is stunning."

11:39:11 AM PDT

11:38:55 AM PDT

Up to 10x faster draw-call rates. If you're a game developer, that must sound pretty good.

11:38:55 AM PDT

Closer / faster access to the "full power" of the A7.

11:38:54 AM PDT

11:38:43 AM PDT

Big graphics booster here, focused on gaming.

11:38:43 AM PDT

11:38:35 AM PDT

"Metal dramatically reduces OpenGL overhead."

11:38:19 AM PDT

11:38:02 AM PDT

11:37:58 AM PDT

Next up... ha — Metal.

11:37:39 AM PDT

11:37:37 AM PDT

CloudKit just takes care of the iCloud stuff app developers might want to make with their app. CloudKit is "effectively free. ...with limits."

"Next — CloudKit."

Siri integration — you can say "get ready for bed" and your house will respond by locking doors and dimming lights.

"A common network protocol."

11:35:44 AM PDT

"There are great apps and devices on the market, but we thought we could bring some rationality to this."

11:35:26 AM PDT

11:35:18 AM PDT

And APIs.

11:35:14 AM PDT

Home automation certification from Apple.

11:35:12 AM PDT

11:35:05 AM PDT

11:35:03 AM PDT

"We talked about HealthKit — but now we also have HomeKit."

11:34:51 AM PDT

New camera and photo kit APIs — a smattering of applause here.

11:34:48 AM PDT

11:34:39 AM PDT

"Next, Cameras."

11:34:34 AM PDT

Of course the severed finger market is going to go through the roof.

11:34:21 AM PDT

You can use Touch ID to protect apps like Mint, etc. — very smart.

11:34:20 AM PDT

11:34:04 AM PDT

11:33:46 AM PDT

Apple is opening Touch ID access to developers.

11:33:37 AM PDT

11:33:27 AM PDT

"Next up, Touch ID."

11:33:18 AM PDT

"That's extensions in iOS 8."

11:33:18 AM PDT

11:33:11 AM PDT

This keyboard is definitely Swype, by the way. You can see the icon in the lower left.

11:33:01 AM PDT

You can install default keyboards across the OS.

11:32:50 AM PDT

11:32:43 AM PDT

Oh man. Third party keyboards!

11:32:31 AM PDT

"And that's a quick look at extensions in iOS 8."

11:32:18 AM PDT

The new sharing features have been a long time coming. Very welcome.

11:32:15 AM PDT

11:32:06 AM PDT

Widgets inside of Safari will allow inline translation. Think Chrome extensions?

11:31:55 AM PDT

11:31:46 AM PDT

11:31:28 AM PDT

If that Weather icon continues to not show the weather I am officially flipping out.

11:31:18 AM PDT

11:31:06 AM PDT

11:30:58 AM PDT

Widgets seem to be locked inside notification center. Will we see any active icons (Apple already makes an active Calendar and Clock icon)?

Craig showing photo filter integration now.

11:29:53 AM PDT

11:29:38 AM PDT

I asked Steve Jobs about widgets on iOS 2. He said they were just getting started. 6 versions later we have them.

11:29:30 AM PDT

11:29:19 AM PDT

Widgets go into the Notification Center.

11:29:15 AM PDT

11:29:10 AM PDT

Demo time!

11:29:07 AM PDT

"Third party apps can define widgets."

WIDGETS!

Widgets!

Photo filters inside of photos — VSCO inside of the photos app!

11:28:40 AM PDT

Yes. SHARING.

11:28:39 AM PDT

11:28:37 AM PDT

"This enables some great things — in addition to sharing options, an app like Pinterest can offer sharing."

11:28:16 AM PDT

"To handle extensibility in the iOS way, extensions live in app sandboxes, but apps can reach out to those apps."

11:28:09 AM PDT

11:27:38 AM PDT

Apps will be able to extend the system and offer service to other apps. This is huge.

11:27:30 AM PDT

11:27:27 AM PDT

"I want to start with something I think is most profound. Extensibility."

11:27:24 AM PDT

Over 4,000 new developers APIs. Wow, that's a lot of APIs.

11:27:13 AM PDT

11:27:10 AM PDT

"This is some kind of endurance training Tim is doing to me." Craig... is... back.

11:26:53 AM PDT

"To tell you all about the SDK, I want to invite my colleague Superman back to the stage."

11:26:46 AM PDT

11:26:35 AM PDT

11:26:34 AM PDT

"This release is the biggest release since the launch of the App Store."

11:26:22 AM PDT

11:26:15 AM PDT

"Now that brings us to the SDK."

11:26:09 AM PDT

TestFlight, a new beta test service for developers and users, which is free.

11:26:07 AM PDT

Everything available in the fall.

11:26:06 AM PDT

11:25:38 AM PDT

"We're also introducing a new beta test service called TestFlight."

11:25:21 AM PDT

App previews — short videos of apps. Not a trial... a video.

11:25:18 AM PDT

11:25:03 AM PDT

Big cheers for bundles.

11:24:57 AM PDT

App bundles. Multiple apps. "I do read your emails."

11:24:55 AM PDT

11:24:46 AM PDT

11:24:40 AM PDT

New editors choice logo for "the best apps."

11:24:27 AM PDT

"We're making finding your search even better by adding a continuous scrolling list."

11:24:26 AM PDT

11:24:09 AM PDT

"We're adding top trending searches."

11:24:02 AM PDT

"We're adding an explore tab."

11:24:01 AM PDT

11:23:52 AM PDT

"We want to make the App Store even better. So we're rolling out a number of new features."

11:23:51 AM PDT

75 billion apps downloaded.

11:23:47 AM PDT

11:23:38 AM PDT

11:23:35 AM PDT

"And these people aren't just browsing — they are downloading."

11:23:33 AM PDT

11:23:23 AM PDT

"The marketplace around these apps is incredibly vibrant."

11:23:18 AM PDT

11:23:15 AM PDT

"Now all of these apps are delivered via the App Store. It has over 1.2m of your apps on it."

11:23:01 AM PDT

"It's about what iOS 8 provides to devs."

11:23:01 AM PDT

11:22:50 AM PDT

"But there's a lot more."

11:22:45 AM PDT

11:22:42 AM PDT

"If we ended the keynote now, it would be a giant release."

11:22:32 AM PDT

Tim is back.

11:22:30 AM PDT

"So that's a look at the consumer part of iOS 8. To tell the other half, I'm handing it back to Tim."

11:22:23 AM PDT

11:22:08 AM PDT

"Greatly improved Maps in China." That's very specific.

11:22:01 AM PDT

11:21:44 AM PDT

Shazam integration with Siri. That's helpful.

11:21:32 AM PDT

11:21:31 AM PDT

New Siri updates — you can start talking to her without having to touch the phone.

11:21:20 AM PDT

"We have some great features coming to iOS 8, but there's always more."

11:21:19 AM PDT

11:21:02 AM PDT

11:20:50 AM PDT

This uses your iCoud storage... so you pay for it.

11:20:44 AM PDT

11:20:37 AM PDT

All your photos and videos in full resolution.

11:20:36 AM PDT

11:20:17 AM PDT

Are you still going to delete my photos? Tell me.

11:20:04 AM PDT

"And that's a quick preview of Photos."

11:20:00 AM PDT

11:19:49 AM PDT

11:19:43 AM PDT

The smart editing features are powerful.

11:19:29 AM PDT

11:19:24 AM PDT

"I'm going to go ahead and browse through these a little bit."

11:19:08 AM PDT

11:19:05 AM PDT

Extremely simple interface — no clutter.

11:18:58 AM PDT

11:18:57 AM PDT

It does look smooth.

11:18:52 AM PDT

"You can see the buttery scrolling right here..."

11:18:45 AM PDT

11:18:36 AM PDT

Sneak peek now...

11:18:33 AM PDT

"We're working on a new ground up photo solution for the Mac — it's going to ship early next year."

11:18:33 AM PDT

"We're working on a new ground-up photo solution for the Mac — it's going to ship early next year."

11:18:18 AM PDT

"So you may be wondering — what about the Mac?"

11:18:17 AM PDT

11:18:11 AM PDT

Edits sync in realtime as well.

11:18:01 AM PDT

He's showing cross device syncing — favoriting a photo with realtime updates on devices.

11:17:58 AM PDT

11:17:38 AM PDT

Now Craig is switching to iPad.

11:17:10 AM PDT

"Wow." I just said out loud.

11:17:04 AM PDT

11:17:00 AM PDT

This is almost like post-HDR, given the logic it's using. Very smart, for real.

11:16:47 AM PDT

11:16:37 AM PDT

iMovie-style sliders to tweak photo contrast and brightness.

11:16:31 AM PDT

11:16:15 AM PDT

He's about to show off some editing on a dark photo.

11:16:04 AM PDT

Craig is checking out some pics.

11:16:01 AM PDT

11:15:51 AM PDT

"So here I am in my large photo collection."

11:15:33 AM PDT

11:15:30 AM PDT

Demo time on the new Photos app.

11:15:24 AM PDT

Smart Editing controls for tweaking photos across platforms.

11:15:09 AM PDT

11:15:06 AM PDT

Sounds like Apple is killing the iCloud photo limit?

11:14:57 AM PDT

"Now of course if you have this many photos, you have great search."

11:14:46 AM PDT

11:14:40 AM PDT

"We're not only preserving the edits, but your device has access to more photos in the cloud than you can store locally."

11:14:19 AM PDT

"Now we're bringing together photos with iCloud — every photo you take available on all your devices."

11:14:04 AM PDT

Next up, photos.

11:14:02 AM PDT

11:14:00 AM PDT

A new feature in the app store will ask parents for permission via a pop up when their kids try to buy something. Clever.

11:13:50 AM PDT

11:13:40 AM PDT

You have to share a credit card, however.

11:13:34 AM PDT

11:13:25 AM PDT

"In the home we're used to sharing physical media, but increasingly our media is in our devices. Now you can get at not just your purchases, but the purchases of everyone in your family."

"Or find your kids devices, which I do every day."

11:12:41 AM PDT

"Once you've set up your family as a unit, you automatically share photos, calendars, reminders, or find my friends."

11:12:19 AM PDT

"Next up, Family Sharing."

11:12:16 AM PDT

11:12:03 AM PDT

And that's it for HealthKit...

11:11:59 AM PDT

11:11:48 AM PDT

HealthKit will allow healthcare providers to receive and transmit reading data from checkups.

"We're also working with the Mayo Clinic."

11:10:20 AM PDT

"We carefully protect you privacy..." Third party apps will plug into HealthKit.

Enter HealthKit.

Craig is pointing out how the iPhone has been applied to many health apps and devices, but there's no centralized place to see the data.

11:09:46 AM PDT

11:09:31 AM PDT

11:09:20 AM PDT

Next up... "Let's talk about health."

11:09:15 AM PDT

11:09:11 AM PDT

Looks like multiple cloud file systems will be able to plug into iOS at a more basic level.

11:09:04 AM PDT

11:08:46 AM PDT

You can get VIP email threads — you get notified on just that thread. Super useful.

11:08:40 AM PDT

11:08:25 AM PDT

11:08:20 AM PDT

Ooh, per message S/MIME. Talk dirty to me Craig.

11:08:17 AM PDT

11:08:01 AM PDT

Craig is talking about Device Enrollment, which makes it easier to bring devices into the enterprise environment.

"98% of Fortune 500 companies use iOS. And we're going to get those other 2%."

11:07:02 AM PDT

11:06:41 AM PDT

"Next up, enterprise..." Excuse us we're taking a nap.

11:06:36 AM PDT

11:06:25 AM PDT

The iCloud Drive panel is a contextual menu that floats above your apps (and looks to be very integrated systemwide).

11:06:08 AM PDT

11:05:56 AM PDT

Craig is back to talk about iCloud Drive. "Now you have a great way to work across applications."

11:05:51 AM PDT

11:05:36 AM PDT

I like the new Apple.

11:05:28 AM PDT

And Joz is off.

11:05:17 AM PDT

Apple is way more upbeat and playful at this event. It really feels like a very different vibe from the company — more open, happier, more comfortable. And it's a good look on them.

Oh boy — Craig sent a video about a... hair problem he was having backstage. A hedge trimmer was involved.

11:04:43 AM PDT

11:04:11 AM PDT

"So this is super duper easy. You notice it said it would expire in a few minutes... these will auto destruct." Oh people will eat that up.

11:04:08 AM PDT

11:03:50 AM PDT

11:03:38 AM PDT

And... Joz just sent a duckface selfie.

11:03:37 AM PDT

11:03:26 AM PDT

"I can send a message, but what's even cooler is being able to send an audio message." A nice swipe gesture gets you into the recording mode.

Greg is showing off group messaging with location sharing — which you can do for an hour, a whole day, or forever.

11:01:45 AM PDT

11:01:44 AM PDT

Looks like Apple may have seriously reduced animations and increased speed in iOS 8, at least in this demo.

11:01:33 AM PDT

11:01:16 AM PDT

Greg Joswiak out on stage to demo messages.

11:01:04 AM PDT

You can make an audio recording or video recording and send to recipients.

11:00:54 AM PDT

11:00:47 AM PDT

"One feature I love is our new Tap to Talk."

11:00:40 AM PDT

11:00:37 AM PDT

Location sharing with people you're talking to.

11:00:16 AM PDT

Do not disturb by thread, and you can leave the thread.

11:00:10 AM PDT

11:00:05 AM PDT

Group messaging — you can name threads or remove people from conversations.

11:00:00 AM PDT

10:59:55 AM PDT

"Messages is the most frequently used app on iOS."

10:59:51 AM PDT

10:59:32 AM PDT

No Swype-ish thing? Oh well.

10:59:19 AM PDT

10:59:17 AM PDT

"I think we're all going to be typing a lot faster."

10:59:09 AM PDT

10:59:07 AM PDT

"It does all this learning on the device and it protects your privacy."

10:58:54 AM PDT

10:58:39 AM PDT

It will guess the next word you want, and learn from your habits. Very much like Google Keyboard or SwiftKey.

10:58:28 AM PDT

10:58:23 AM PDT

"In iOS 8 QuickType supports predictive suggestions." Not Apple's idea, but a good idea.

10:58:11 AM PDT

10:57:51 AM PDT

Craig is talking about the difficulties of all the new features of keyboards.

10:57:35 AM PDT

10:57:28 AM PDT

"Next is the keyboard, and something we call QuickType."

10:57:18 AM PDT

Google search once again named on stage.

This is basically Siri, but without Siri!

10:56:55 AM PDT

Search for apps, points of interest, news, songs — even on iTunes.

10:56:45 AM PDT

10:56:40 AM PDT

"Now with the same things we showed in Yosemite you can get so much more."

10:56:20 AM PDT

"So let's talk about Spotlight."

10:56:15 AM PDT

"We're all going to love doing mail this way." I'm in love already.

10:55:59 AM PDT

Craig is showing off the swipe feature so you can open another message in your inbox and then get back to the message you're working on.

10:55:53 AM PDT

10:55:27 AM PDT

Oh no, a Jony Ive / Hair Force One photoshop.

10:55:25 AM PDT

10:55:10 AM PDT

10:54:54 AM PDT

You can add events to calendar from within mail with a dropdown contextual menu.

10:54:48 AM PDT

10:54:12 AM PDT

10:54:05 AM PDT

The new quick access to contacts from task switcher is very smart.

10:54:04 AM PDT

10:53:52 AM PDT

Notifications still eat up the top of your screen and navigation, however.

10:53:46 AM PDT

10:53:36 AM PDT

You can like Facebook right from notifications.

10:53:30 AM PDT

10:53:26 AM PDT

Coldplay is going to freak out.

10:53:18 AM PDT

Oh my god they're playing Bastille on stage.

10:53:13 AM PDT

10:53:02 AM PDT

So far not much as changed, but it feels like Apple may be burying the lede here.

10:52:50 AM PDT

Demo time for iOS 8...

10:52:45 AM PDT

New action to swipe down a message you're working on in mail and open your inbox. Interesting tweak.

10:52:43 AM PDT

10:52:28 AM PDT

10:52:17 AM PDT

New mail gestures for flagging and marking for later in Mail.

10:52:05 AM PDT

10:51:59 AM PDT

Tab view in Safari for iPad, and the Yosemite sidebar.

10:51:53 AM PDT

10:51:42 AM PDT

"In iOS 7 we gave quick double tap access to multitask — now you can use it to get at the people you contact the most."

10:51:26 AM PDT

10:51:20 AM PDT

Works on the lockscreen as well.

10:51:12 AM PDT

Reply directly from a notification — a la Android.

10:51:08 AM PDT

10:51:00 AM PDT

"With iOS 8 we've refined notification center — but I love our interactive notifications."

10:50:54 AM PDT

10:50:43 AM PDT

"It builds on the design of iOS 7."

10:50:36 AM PDT

"Let's talk about iOS 8."

"I missed you guys."

Craig is back up!

"We want to start by talking about the user features."

10:50:13 AM PDT

"So you can extend your experience and build apps you couldn't do before."

10:50:09 AM PDT

10:50:02 AM PDT

"iOS 8 is a giant release. And it's really two stories not one. It has great end user features, but it also has dev features."

10:49:51 AM PDT

10:49:42 AM PDT

"Today we're announcing iOS 8."

10:49:36 AM PDT

"We could not be happier with iOS 7."

10:49:15 AM PDT

"They can't get security updates... which is particularly important for these users because Android dominates the mobile malware market."

10:49:07 AM PDT

10:48:41 AM PDT

"Many users are running an OS from 4 years ago. That's like ancient history."

10:48:38 AM PDT

10:48:18 AM PDT

"If you look at their latest release, less than 1 in 10 are on the new software."

10:48:04 AM PDT

"This is in stark contrast to Android."

10:47:52 AM PDT

10:47:50 AM PDT

"And if you look at what's happened with iOS 7, almost 9 out of 10 people are running the latest version."

10:47:34 AM PDT

"One of the reasons why customers say they love iOS is that we make available our software updates for as many customers as possible."

10:47:31 AM PDT

"Changewave recently measured it at 97 percent. These are 'customer sat' ratings that no one gets."

10:47:16 AM PDT

10:47:05 AM PDT

Of course, the iPhone wasn't something you could buy in China until recently.

10:47:00 AM PDT

10:46:48 AM PDT

"Nearly half of our customers in China switched from Android to iPhone."

10:46:37 AM PDT

"They decided to check out iPhone and iOS."

10:46:30 AM PDT

130 million customers in the past year bought their first Apple device. "Now many of these customers were switchers from Android. They had bought an Android phone by mistake... and then had sought a better experience, and a better life."

10:46:18 AM PDT

10:45:55 AM PDT

10:45:50 AM PDT

"This is incredible — but what's even more impressive is how many new customers to Apple these devices have brought to us."

10:45:47 AM PDT

10:45:42 AM PDT

We've now sold over 800 million iOS devices.

iPod touch has passed 100 million units

iPad has passed 200 million units.

iPhone has passed a half a billion units.

10:45:26 AM PDT

10:45:25 AM PDT

"Each device has set its own sales record in the past year."

10:45:13 AM PDT

Tim is out. "Next up is iOS."

10:45:06 AM PDT

10:44:53 AM PDT

"You can sign up on the web and receive access to Yosemite through the summer."

10:44:42 AM PDT

10:44:33 AM PDT

"Now we're doing something a little unusual this summer — we're doing a public beta."

10:44:16 AM PDT

"Everyone else will get it in the fall. And it will be free."

10:44:13 AM PDT

10:44:02 AM PDT

"It's available to devs... today."

10:43:58 AM PDT

10:43:42 AM PDT

"So that's Yosemite." Craig is wrapping it up now.

10:43:39 AM PDT

10:43:28 AM PDT

"Dre it's been great chatting with you, I'll see you around campus!"

10:43:26 AM PDT

Well that was odd.

10:43:23 AM PDT

"Talk soon."

10:43:20 AM PDT

"I can't wait to get working with the team at Apple."

10:43:16 AM PDT

10:43:10 AM PDT

"I'd shoot for nine."

10:43:05 AM PDT

"I'm glad you called. I heard Tim gets in early — what time should I show up for work." Ha.

10:42:53 AM PDT

10:42:47 AM PDT

"You're on speakerphone on my Mac with all our devs." Large cheers.

10:42:34 AM PDT

"Hey how you doing, this is Dre."

"Wow."

"Hello."

Craig is calling Dre. Live.

10:42:15 AM PDT

10:42:10 AM PDT

Oh man.

10:42:07 AM PDT

Oh boy — he's about to call Dr. Dre.

10:42:00 AM PDT

Contextual menus pop up when you've selected a number.

10:41:55 AM PDT

10:41:38 AM PDT

"I would like to show you how you make phone calls."

10:41:30 AM PDT

"She's a wonderful, wonderful woman, but this is my space."

10:41:27 AM PDT

Federighi just denied a call from his mom. The audience AWWWWED hard!

10:41:20 AM PDT

10:41:13 AM PDT

The location awareness and the fact that Apple has a dedicated desktop OS to speak to is notable.

10:41:09 AM PDT

10:40:41 AM PDT

Keep in mind Google has been pioneering this kind of placeshifting with Gmail and its web apps, but this is a much more complete approach in some ways.

A Continuity demo... of course.

10:39:35 AM PDT

10:39:34 AM PDT

Now this is very smart and innovative stuff. Demo time!

10:39:25 AM PDT

"It's also a great way to dial the phone. Even on a webpage. You can call it right from your Mac."

10:39:15 AM PDT

10:39:11 AM PDT

"We're able to do the same thing with phone calls. You can accept the call on your Mac and use it as a speakerphone. And this works even if your phone is across the house." Huge applause.

10:39:02 AM PDT

It also works with phone calls. You can accept the call and use your Mac as a speakerphone.

10:38:53 AM PDT

10:38:36 AM PDT

This is kind of awesome and amazing.

10:38:31 AM PDT

"Your phone acts as a relay."

10:38:30 AM PDT

10:38:26 AM PDT

"But they don't show up on our other devices... until now."

10:38:16 AM PDT

"We love iMessage, but we have these green bubble friends. You know they have inferior devices."

10:38:12 AM PDT

10:38:04 AM PDT

10:37:59 AM PDT

"The next thing we wanted to handle was SMS."

10:37:51 AM PDT

You can start a hotspot on your iPhone from your Mac. It just recognizes your phone is nearby and lets you set it up.

10:37:40 AM PDT

10:37:25 AM PDT

It will pickup mail you're writing on your phone, see that it's near your computer using proximity awareness, and prompt you to finish the mail on your Mac.

10:37:06 AM PDT

10:36:56 AM PDT

10:36:53 AM PDT

You can swipe your work from one device to another to pick up your activity in realtime.

10:36:52 AM PDT

It's a new lock screen icon on the lower left. If you swipe up on it, it lets you continue with your work on the iPad.

10:36:40 AM PDT

10:36:28 AM PDT

My god, Apple has created the Continuous Client.

10:36:18 AM PDT

Handoff!

10:36:17 AM PDT

10:36:12 AM PDT

"It starts with AirDrop — it now works between iOS and the Mac."

10:36:04 AM PDT

10:35:54 AM PDT

10:35:52 AM PDT

"We want the transitions between devices to be as natural as possible."

10:35:36 AM PDT

10:34:57 AM PDT

10:34:53 AM PDT

"I hope the rope is multithreaded." Nerd humor alert.

10:34:48 AM PDT

He "drew" a messy cartoon bubble with the trackpad and Markup automatically turned it into a very pretty cartoon bubble.

10:34:27 AM PDT

10:34:05 AM PDT

10:33:58 AM PDT

Looks like fairly powerful image editing from within the browser. Very much a Skitch-alike.

10:33:25 AM PDT

Called Markup.

10:33:18 AM PDT

New feature within Mail — image editing a la Skitch for sharing.

10:33:18 AM PDT

10:33:09 AM PDT

10:33:01 AM PDT

"Sharing couldn't be easier in Safari. Now I can use the recent recipients menu to send it to Craig."

10:32:31 AM PDT

10:32:24 AM PDT

Scrolling tabs, and a new "tab view" which looks insanely confusing.

10:32:16 AM PDT

10:32:04 AM PDT

"If you use tabs, you're going to love this." Hey everyone in the world, you're going to love this.

10:31:34 AM PDT

Google search now name checked on stage.

10:31:16 AM PDT

10:31:10 AM PDT

Time for a Safari demo. Nothing like a demo of a web browser to get the fires of my heart a-cracklin'.

Federighi claims Safari is the fastest browser when it comes to JavaScript now. But it has been?

10:30:17 AM PDT

10:30:11 AM PDT

Safari just blazes competitors in multitab browsing and power use. That's definitely true in the real world.

10:30:10 AM PDT

A MacBook Air can get up to an extra 2 hours streaming Netflix because of those web standards.

10:30:01 AM PDT

10:29:37 AM PDT

Craig is listing off Safari's reliance on web standards.

10:29:27 AM PDT

There's a better "Share" menu, which is where you see RSS and recent people you've messaged, so you can quickly send stuff to them.

10:29:27 AM PDT

10:29:15 AM PDT

"Safari is great for privacy as well. You can create a new private window now."

10:29:11 AM PDT

10:28:50 AM PDT

10:28:46 AM PDT

This seems like a change in habit — Apple explicitly showing off Google results during a keynote for their new software.

10:28:26 AM PDT

10:28:17 AM PDT

Interesting! Apple showing Google search in Safari!

10:28:11 AM PDT

10:28:02 AM PDT

A very basic and stripped down look for the new Safari — getting almost all chrome out of the way.

10:28:01 AM PDT

10:27:49 AM PDT

10:27:48 AM PDT

"We've been able to back all of the power of Safari into this single bar."

"Next up, Safari."

The files will be stored in the cloud to be accessed.

10:26:58 AM PDT

MailDrop will create a secure link when files are too large instead of bouncing the email. Very clever.

10:26:47 AM PDT

10:26:33 AM PDT

10:26:28 AM PDT

"We're changing that with MailDrop."

10:26:23 AM PDT

10:26:18 AM PDT

"We wanted to address a fundamental problem with email — we often want to send large attachments, but we can't because the recipient can't handle the file."

10:25:54 AM PDT

10:25:47 AM PDT

New Mail — a very stripped down look.

10:25:37 AM PDT

"What the heck, we're throwing in Windows too."

10:25:37 AM PDT

10:25:36 AM PDT

Windows compatibility too!

10:25:32 AM PDT

Now there is a hard drive in the cloud, just to be clear.

10:25:22 AM PDT

10:25:18 AM PDT

So, Dropbox? Google Drive?

10:25:11 AM PDT

"But even better, you can store all your files however you want, and they're syncing across Macs."

10:24:58 AM PDT

10:24:54 AM PDT

"But now with iCloud Drive all of those docs are accessible from within the Finder."

10:24:50 AM PDT

10:24:36 AM PDT

"We all now that docs in the cloud provides a convenient way for working on something across platforms."

10:24:27 AM PDT

10:24:24 AM PDT

"Next, iCloud Drive."

10:24:20 AM PDT

10:24:19 AM PDT

Looks like Spotlight might also use geolocation to show you local information.

10:24:00 AM PDT

10:23:49 AM PDT

Can bring up results right inside the Spotlight dropdown from across the web.

10:23:33 AM PDT

Spotlight looks and works a lot more like launchers such as Alfred. Clearly there are some power users at Apple.

10:23:05 AM PDT

10:23:02 AM PDT

"You have not eaten until you've used one of Jony Ive's crafted aluminium spoons." Making fun of the accent and... the design. Cute.

10:22:42 AM PDT

10:22:13 AM PDT

10:22:09 AM PDT

Contacts now ties in searches / matches on your friends and family across documents and calendar events.

10:21:52 AM PDT

10:21:24 AM PDT

10:21:12 AM PDT

"These are all from apps that can export widgets."

10:21:00 AM PDT

Widgets in the Today View look kind of awesome. Handsomely designed.

10:20:58 AM PDT

10:20:40 AM PDT

10:20:39 AM PDT

Federighi is really fired up about this translucency.

10:20:22 AM PDT

Calendar now has a sidebar view with location information — looks helpful.

10:19:58 AM PDT

Craig showing off the translucency of the title bar — this won't seem very jarring to iOS users.

10:19:43 AM PDT

10:19:37 AM PDT

"Let's launch an app." Yes lets.

10:19:31 AM PDT

10:19:30 AM PDT

"Alright here's our first look at Yosemite live."

10:19:19 AM PDT

Demo time!

10:19:10 AM PDT

10:19:03 AM PDT

A new launcher, very similar to Alfred — Spotlight has totally changed.

10:18:57 AM PDT

10:18:53 AM PDT

10:18:29 AM PDT

"You can extend the contents of Today View with widgets from the App Store." Oh that's interesting... will we see this on iOS?

10:18:23 AM PDT

Notification Center is also translucent with a "new today view" for "calendar, reminders, weather, and more." You can "extend" Today view with 3rd-party apps and widgets too!

10:18:12 AM PDT

10:18:06 AM PDT

"It has a new Today view." Ripped right from iOS.

10:18:04 AM PDT

10:17:49 AM PDT

"Next let's talk about Notification Center."

10:17:41 AM PDT

For sidebar apps, the translucently goes beyond the title bar into the sidebar.

10:17:37 AM PDT

"This is the best ever version of OS X."

10:17:29 AM PDT

10:17:28 AM PDT

"We also have a new look for sidebar apps, like Messages." Lots and lots of glass.

10:17:01 AM PDT

"Of course these changes extend through the applications."

10:16:53 AM PDT

10:16:50 AM PDT

"We know our pro users want to focus on the center of the screen — so we also introduced a dark mode." Cheers for that.

10:16:29 AM PDT

"Now check out that trash can. You wouldn't believe how much time we spent on that trash can."

10:16:26 AM PDT

10:16:19 AM PDT

Slight translucent materials used in windows as they layer over one another.

10:16:16 AM PDT

10:16:12 AM PDT

"Carefully crafted translucent materials." As you change your desktop picture, your window subtly adapts the color temperature of the overall background.

10:15:52 AM PDT

Very much the motif of iOS 7.

10:15:44 AM PDT

"If you look at the window titlebar you see the use of translucent materials." Interesting he's calling them materials.

10:15:42 AM PDT

10:15:33 AM PDT

"Focused always on clarity, but also utility."

10:15:25 AM PDT

"We refined the toolbars and the window materials."

10:15:24 AM PDT

10:15:17 AM PDT

Seeing a lot of glass here.

10:15:12 AM PDT

10:15:03 AM PDT

Flat flat flat. But also a lot of work seems to have been done on iconography. And it looks good.

10:14:46 AM PDT

The design video starts with a focus on icon design, it looks like. The icons look great, they're flatter but not so flat that they're insane. There's a richness to them, a depth.

10:14:44 AM PDT

Cheers from the crowd — this is definitely an iOS-ified version of OS X.

10:14:37 AM PDT

10:14:31 AM PDT

Apple visually laying out some of their design basics for the new OS — lots of grids, lots of tightening up of lines. And new icons!

10:14:06 AM PDT

"I'd like to give you a look..." Time for a design video!

10:14:04 AM PDT

10:13:57 AM PDT

"First I want to talk about design." Here we go...

10:13:49 AM PDT

"And something we call continuity."

10:13:41 AM PDT

"This is a fantastic new release with a new interface and big enhancements to our apps."

10:13:40 AM PDT

10:13:26 AM PDT

10:13:24 AM PDT

"We landed on OS X Yosemite."

10:13:20 AM PDT

OS X Yosemite.

10:13:16 AM PDT

Apple is making weed jokes in its keynote. And that's kind of amazing.

10:13:01 AM PDT

"Strangely this had large pockets of support."

10:12:58 AM PDT

10:12:53 AM PDT

"We made a bold choice. Landing at OS X Weed."

10:12:42 AM PDT

He's running through some options for names... fake options.

10:12:37 AM PDT

10:12:28 AM PDT

"It's another year, and time for another name. We shoved our team into a VW minibus and sent them on the road."

10:12:26 AM PDT

10:12:24 AM PDT

10:12:11 AM PDT

"We shifted from cats to beautiful places in California."

10:11:59 AM PDT

"It was just a year ago at WWDC when we narrowly averted an OS X naming crisis."

10:11:53 AM PDT

10:11:38 AM PDT

10:11:32 AM PDT

Here we go for OS X 10.10.

10:11:22 AM PDT

Craig Federighi is out!

10:11:12 AM PDT

The audience seemed to feel legitimately bad about that.

10:10:56 AM PDT

"As it turns out, Windows 8 shipped a year before Mavericks, and it's at 14%."

10:10:52 AM PDT

10:10:49 AM PDT

That's super impressive for a new OS on a PC. Like wildly impressive.

10:10:42 AM PDT

"You may wonder how that compares to Windows. Well, I decided to make a chart."

10:10:28 AM PDT

10:10:23 AM PDT

"Also, that makes over 50% of our installed base working on our latest OS."

10:10:15 AM PDT

10:10:12 AM PDT

"We've installed over 40m copies of Mavericks. This is the most of a single release ever in Apple's history."

10:09:52 AM PDT

10:09:49 AM PDT

"Our latest release of OS X Mavericks has done really great. It has great features for power users."

10:09:40 AM PDT

The whole PC industry declined by 5 percent, but Macs grew by 12 percent. The Mac install base is now 80 million.

10:09:27 AM PDT

"We're shipping some of the best Macs ever."

10:09:15 AM PDT

"Let's get started with OS X and the Macs."

10:09:07 AM PDT

"You're also going to see the mother of all releases for devs. We've dedicated an entire part of the presentation for this."

10:09:03 AM PDT

10:08:43 AM PDT

"You're going to see how they've been engineered to work seamlessly together."

10:08:30 AM PDT

"This morning we're talking about two platforms. OS X and iOS."

10:08:27 AM PDT

10:08:15 AM PDT

That's a lot of devs!

10:08:11 AM PDT

"We now have 9 million registered developers."

10:08:03 AM PDT

"Our youngest person in the audience is 13. We're going to be seeing apps from them for a long time."

10:07:44 AM PDT

10:07:31 AM PDT

"And two thirds of the people here are at WWDC for the first time."

10:07:21 AM PDT

10:07:18 AM PDT

"We've got people from more countries than ever before."

10:07:15 AM PDT

10:07:10 AM PDT

"We have over 1,000 of our best engineers here today to talk to you."

10:07:03 AM PDT

10:06:59 AM PDT

"Now WWDC is a huge conference for Apple."

10:06:49 AM PDT

10:06:44 AM PDT

"This is a milestone year for this conference. It's the 25th year."

10:06:30 AM PDT

10:06:27 AM PDT

"From all of Apple, thank you very much."

10:06:16 AM PDT

"We're here all week to celebrate our developers and the amazing apps they're creating."

10:06:14 AM PDT

10:06:01 AM PDT

"Welcome to San Francisco."

He's excited.

"Good morning."

To big big applause.

Tim Cook is out!

"It's just magic to me."

10:05:24 AM PDT

"They make our lives better."

10:05:19 AM PDT

"You inspire me so much."

10:05:12 AM PDT

"Devs are doing extraordinary things."

10:05:05 AM PDT

10:05:02 AM PDT

"What we have is an intersection between technology and art."

10:04:44 AM PDT

Focusing on a new prosthetic arm and its user. What is on screen looks like a sci-fi future, but it is now.

10:04:36 AM PDT

10:04:10 AM PDT

This is a really well done video. Very smart, very complimentary to the developers. It also wonderfully shows the scope of what's available for Apple's platforms.

"Crazy girl looking to meet new people in London... interesting."

10:02:48 AM PDT

Emily Penn, "Ocean Advocate," is next up on the video. She uses an iPad and a bunch of apps to save the ocean. "Marine Debris tracker" for tracking the garbage in the ocean. "I think these apps are essential to be able to bring change to what's going on in the ocean."

9:54:15 AM PDT

"Please switch all devices to silent." Oh boy, we're getting underway here in just a moment.

9:56:12 AM PDT

Rumor mill strong that we'll see Apple certification and APIs related to smart-home accessories. That doesn't mean first party hardware, but imagine a smart lock that says "Made for iOS."

9:56:14 AM PDT

9:57:22 AM PDT

Okay Coldplay is back. "Sky Full of Stars." Bastille quivering in fear as they realize they're just a poor impersonation of the masters.

9:58:00 AM PDT

Looks like this could be the lead in song for the event. It's certainly epic enough!

10:00:23 AM PDT

Lights are down.

10:00:50 AM PDT

10:00:56 AM PDT

Leading with a video about developers. People describing what they think devs look like. A lot of disses!

10:01:03 AM PDT

"The apps they make let us do amazing things."

10:01:10 AM PDT

This is definitely all about the devs today.

10:01:27 AM PDT

Apple hitting its core smartly — they need buy-in from these guys always.

10:01:30 AM PDT

10:01:36 AM PDT

On the video, Daniel Libeskind, architect, is talking about drawing with Paper. He's pretty excited about it.

10:01:46 AM PDT

10:01:49 AM PDT

"AirBNB saved my life." People listing their favorite apps in the video.

10:01:56 AM PDT

"Duckface." Yes, a selfie.

10:02:03 AM PDT

10:02:34 AM PDT

10:02:35 AM PDT

Video now focusing on marine biologists using apps to study the ocean.

10:02:46 AM PDT

"The best app of all time has to be Tinder." Ha!

9:39:09 AM PDT

Jimmy Iovine is not a happy camper right now.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:39:30 AM PDT

I imagine someone is getting yelled at right now about the audio quality by a loud man in a hat, and Dr. Dre.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:40:35 AM PDT

Need a GIF of Jimmy Iovine face-palming over audio quality at Apple event STAT.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:41:24 AM PDT

Actually it's ironic given the recent purchase of a high end audio company that the music would sound as bad as it does right now. But I might be digressing a little? Probably.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:41:41 AM PDT

However, the music sounds good enough for David Pierce to sing along with. The audio quality of his voice is lovely.

by Dieter Bohn

9:41:59 AM PDT

David Pierce has very high bandwidth audio.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:43:36 AM PDT

Dieter Bohn and Jordan Oplinger were literally just duetting to "Best Day of My Life" by American Authors. What is happening.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:43:45 AM PDT

Will this be the best day of Apple's life? One can only wonder.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:45:58 AM PDT

One of the things to remember about WWDC is that this is very much an event about the developers here — Apple takes a lot of time and care to gear the narrative and introductions to the thousands of devs around the world that are going to be pushing the tools the company creates to the limit. Consider that when you hear the announcements today. This isn't technically a consumer-facing event.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:46:25 AM PDT

"Lazaretto" by Jack White is on now. It's a song that sounds like it's from the 90's where he basically raps.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:46:55 AM PDT

by David Pierce

9:48:03 AM PDT

The sound in here needs a doctor. Call the doctor.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:48:05 AM PDT

Dr. Dre.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:48:21 AM PDT

No really, call Dr. Dre.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:48:59 AM PDT

by David Pierce

9:49:30 AM PDT

Guys it's the Bastille song "Pompeii." Coldplay is on the phone. They're asking for their sound back.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:52:16 AM PDT

Apparently Twitter gets really touchy about Bastille jokes. Sorry Twitter, never again.

9:52:20 AM PDT

Haim!

9:53:03 AM PDT

Pretty good selection of popular music Apple is playing today, but thus far a notable lack of NWA.

9:15:12 AM PDT

by Dieter Bohn

9:23:30 AM PDT

Lorde is on the sound system.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:25:32 AM PDT

Tim Cook hydrates.

by David Pierce

9:26:45 AM PDT

Black Keys! Fever! Like the fever we all have for a wide selection of Apple news, which I predict we will get today, starting in just about 30 minutes.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:27:29 AM PDT

by Dieter Bohn

9:30:46 AM PDT

by David Pierce

9:31:08 AM PDT

We've heard some Lorde. Then every single device that connects to the internet in here went haywire because 5000 people were trying to jam into the same router. Also, we're all being slowly cooked by Wi-Fi waves.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:31:14 AM PDT

Those iMacs sure look like they're running a new version of OS X. That'd be 10.10, widely believed to be called "Yosemite."

by Chris Ziegler

9:32:01 AM PDT

Now, Foster the People "Coming of Age" — it's an upbeat ditty about learning to embrace your adulthood. Or it's about dancing. Or maybe not either of those things.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:32:10 AM PDT

by David Pierce

9:32:43 AM PDT

by David Pierce

9:33:02 AM PDT

For the record, there is at least one Surface Pro 3 here, and it's right next to me.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:34:14 AM PDT

Apple has been in under-the-radar mode lately, but after the Beats acquisition, there's a feeling that anything is possible at this WWDC. The word on the street is that the event will be almost entirely software focused, but there's always a chance for a surprise.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:34:38 AM PDT

The crew.

by David Pierce

9:34:52 AM PDT

That was a serious update from Josh, who will also be typing about serious things in addition to the music.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:36:58 AM PDT

The song that's playing right now (Paramore, "Ain't It Fun") has terrible, terrible high-end EQ. It hurts. Make it stop.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:37:58 AM PDT

Oh good it's fading out.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:38:16 AM PDT

"Counting Stars" is on. And let's be honest this song has some amazing hooks. Not my cup of tea, but these guys can write a pop song.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:38:33 AM PDT

by Dieter Bohn

9:38:49 AM PDT

Oh wait. The audio got super compressed (AKA lower bandwidth) which explains the nasty high-end transients we're hearing in the room.

by Joshua Topolsky

2:21:48 PM PDT

Hi there! You're a little early. We'll be live from San Francisco on Monday, June 2nd, starting at 10AM PT / 1PM ET.

2:22:37 PM PDT

Until then, check out our preview for everything that might (or might not) be happening at WWDC this year. This is, more than any other event, when Apple really talks about its future. So don't miss it!

2:26:28 PM PDT

7:50:16 AM PDT

13 things to expect from Apple at WWDC

7:28:22 AM PDT

The lobby of San Francisco's Moscone Center — home of WWDC — was already bustling around 7AM this morning.

by Chris Ziegler

by Chris Ziegler

by Jacob Kastrenakes

by Chris Ziegler

by Chris Ziegler

Guessing the black banner is for OS X 10.10, but you never know.

by Chris Ziegler

8:22:25 AM PDT

Guys. It's Josh. There are a lot of Apple logos on everything. Also things are about to get crazy. Also I'm hungry, someone help.

by Joshua Topolsky

8:51:46 AM PDT

What if Apple introduced a Surface Pro? Think about it.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:12:51 AM PDT

We're in. And it's amazing. And crowded. And there's chill, adult music on.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:13:35 AM PDT

Coldplay on the system now. Of course!

by Joshua Topolsky

9:14:10 AM PDT

Poor Chris Martin — he sounds sad in this song. Like a man suffering through a painful and very public breakup.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:14:37 AM PDT

There are some iMacs on stage we can see, so you know there's going to be some hot and heavy OS X action from the Apple crew.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:14:46 AM PDT

And yes, hot and heavy is a normal way to describe Apple demos.

by Joshua Topolsky

9:14:55 AM PDT

www.mohanvamsi.com

Here’s what Apple’s iBeacon really is & why it’s going to change everything

2014-06-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

Here’s what Apple’s iBeacon really is & why it’s going to change everything

Using Bluetooth to send ads between nearby devices sounds both boring and annoying. But that’s exactly what Apple’s iBeacon does — and Apple’s not in the boring-and-annoying business.

The ubiquitous iBeacon is Apple’s portable, low-cost transmitter that notifies other iOS 7 devices of its presence. iBeacon has won raves because of its low power signatures and rapidity of sending push notifications to Apple hardware like the iPhone, iPad, and even iPods.

While Android OS’s can receive adverts from iBeacons, they can’t transmit them. With Apple adding souped-up attribution features in iOS 7.1 recently, the word on the street is that Apple will harness the full spectrum of their power in the mobile ad space.

Chris Damron, chief innovation officer of proximity-based marketing shop BeaconStream, is currently using iBeacon to help small and medium businesses navigate the mobile targeting aspect of their companies.

With the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) opening Monday in San Francisco, Damron laid it out while he fervently believes in iBeacon, and why it will be huge for Apple.

Why iBeacon will be a major strategy in Apple’s grand plan

Unlike Near Field Communication (NFC), iBeacon has more proximity coverage, is more affordable, and requires less power.

Apple implemented this solution by using a mix of iOS and Bluetooth Low Energy devices to serve its customers at stores. iBeacons can transmit data in the absence of a GPS, Wi-Fi, or a 3G connection. Apple is looking for the next big thing, and iBeacon allows for communications in remote places like malls, mines, cruises, etc. In the current version of iOS 7, Apple enabled and implemented iBeacon technology in all of its devices, thus setting the stage for widespread use.

The impact iBeacon will have on consumers, businesses, & retailers

The impact iBeacon will have on consumers is enormous in that people will have access to information, deals, videos, and electronic coupons that are relevant to their specific interests, all in real time. No more coupons from retailers that don’t apply to their needs.

Businesses and retailers will be impacted by the fact that they will now have a direct line to their customers, drawing them to their location, as well as enticing them to buy additional items while still in the store. iBeacon will allow businesses to attach digital content to everything in the physical store.

The future is iBeacon. Here’s where to expect it

Rumors are flying that there will soon be a $1 beacon, allowing businesses of any size to use this technology and allowing companies to have multiple touch points with customers. This will change the entire product supply chain with deep analytics that can track inventory and customer needs.

iBeacon as you see it today is just the initial offering. The uses are endless, and we expect to see it combined with other applications that exist in the marketplace today. Combining iBeacon technology with point-of-sale will provide consumers with a shopping experience that is fast and easy and that fulfills both the consumer’s and retailer’s needs.

www.mohanvamsi.com

Google Invests in Satellites to Spread Internet Access

2014-06-02T10:24:00.000-07:00

Google Invests in Satellites to Spread Internet Access

Company Projects Spending More Than $1 Billion to Connect Unwired Reaches of the Globe

Google plans to spend $1 billion on a fleet of satellites to extend Internet access to unwired regions of the world. Associated Press

Google Inc. GOOGL -1.60% plans to spend more than $1 billion on a fleet of satellites to extend Internet access to unwired regions of the globe, people familiar with the project said, hoping to overcome financial and technical problems that thwarted previous efforts.

Details remain in flux, the people said, but the project will start with 180 small, high-capacity satellites orbiting the earth at lower altitudes than traditional satellites, and then could expand.

Google's satellite venture is led by Greg Wyler, founder of satellite-communications startup O3b Networks Ltd., who recently joined Google with O3b's former chief technology officer, the people said. Google has also been hiring engineers from satellite company Space Systems/Loral LLC to work on the project, according to another person familiar with the hiring initiative.

Mr. Wyler has between 10 and 20 people working for him at Google and reports to Craig Barratt, who reports to Chief Executive Larry Page, one of the people said. Mr. Wyler couldn't be reached.

The projected price ranges from about $1 billon to more than $3 billion, the people familiar with the project said, depending on the network's final design and a later phase that could double the number of satellites. Based on past satellite ventures, costs could rise.

Google's project is the latest effort by a Silicon Valley company to extend Internet coverage from the sky to help its business on the ground. Google and Facebook Inc.FB -0.58% are counting on new Internet users in underserved regions to boost revenue, and ultimately, earnings.

Google's Project Loon is designing high-altitude balloons to provide broadband service to remote parts of the world. In April, Google acquired Titan Aerospace, which is building solar-powered drones to provide similar connectivity. Facebook has its own drone effort.

"Google and Facebook are trying to figure out ways of reaching populations that thus far have been unreachable," said Susan Irwin, president of Irwin Communications Inc., a satellite-communications research firm. "Wired connectivity only goes so far and wireless cellular networks reach small areas. Satellites can gain much broader access."

Google's efforts to deliver Internet service to unserved regions—through balloons, drones and satellites—are consistent with its approaches to other new markets. Even if one or more projects don't succeed, Google can often use what it learned in other areas.

A Google spokeswoman said the company is focused on bringing hundreds of millions of additional people online. "Internet connectivity significantly improves people's lives. Yet two thirds of the world have no access at all," she said. She declined further comment.

Tim Farrar, head of satellite-consulting firm TMF Associates, expects Project Loon's balloons eventually to be replaced by Titan's drones. Drones and satellites complement each other, he said, with drones offering better high-capacity service in smaller areas, and satellites offering broader coverage in areas with less demand.

Mr. Farrar worked as a consultant for Teledesic LLC, which tried to build a constellation of low-earth-orbit satellites to deliver Internet service in the 1990s. Teledesic, backed byMicrosoft Corp. MSFT -0.27% and telecommunications entrepreneur Craig McCaw, considered using drones to provide additional capacity for the satellite system in some areas, he said. The more than $9 billion project halted satellite assembly in 2002 amid technical hurdles and cost overruns.

Earlier, Iridium Satellite LLC went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization less than a year after starting voice and data services in 1998.

History is replete with ambitious satellite plans that failed, according to Roger Rusch, who runs TelAstra Inc., a satellite-industry consulting firm. Google's project will end up "costing far more than they can imagine today," he said, perhaps as much as $20 billion. "This is exactly the kind of pipe dream we have seen before."

Google also will have to overcome regulatory hurdles, including coordinating with other satellite operators so its fleet doesn't interfere with others.

O3b, in which Google was an early investor, has been working on providing broadband Internet connectivity from satellites weighing about 1,500 pounds each. O3b has been planning to launch about a dozen satellites, aiming to serve large areas on either side of the equator.

Google hopes to cover the entire globe with more, but smaller, satellites weighing less than 250 pounds, the people familiar with the project said.

Jamie Goldstein, an O3b director and a partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, which backs the company, said he couldn't comment on what Mr. Wyler is working on, citing a nondisclosure agreement with Google. An O3b spokeswoman didn't respond to requests for comment.

During a conference in March, Google CEO Mr. Page mused about spanning the globe with Internet access delivered by Project Loon. "I think we can build a world-wide mesh of these balloons that can cover the whole planet," he said, noting that they are cheaper and faster to launch than satellites.

But satellites are more flexible and provide greater capacity. In recent years, costs to build and launch satellites have dropped sharply, according to Neil Mackay, CEO of Mile Marker 101, an advisory firm.

Consultant Mr. Farrar estimated that 180 small satellites could be launched for as little as about $600 million.

If Google succeeds, it "could amount to a sea change in the way people will get access to the Internet, from the Third World to even some suburban areas of the U.S.," said Jeremy Rose of Comsys, a London-based satellite consulting firm.

Google also is hoping to take advantage of advances in antennas that can track multiple satellites as they move across the sky. Antennas developed by companies including Kymeta Corp. have no moving parts and are controlled by software, which reduces manufacturing and maintenance costs.

Kymeta hopes to sell its ground-antenna systems for hundreds of dollars, said CEO Vern Fotheringham. They would substitute for phased-array antennas which cost roughly $1 million a decade ago, he said.

Kymeta supplies antenna technology for O3b and worked closely with Brian Holz, a former O3b chief technology officer. Mr. Holz recently joined Google's satellite project, along with Mr. Wyler and David Bettinger, technology chief of satellite-communications company VT iDirect Inc., Mr. Fotheringham said.

Technology news website the Information reported on May 27 that Google had hired Messrs. Holz and Bettinger for a satellite project.

"Google certainly has the resources to do something exciting in this area," Mr. Fotheringham said. "We and everyone else in the industry are keen to hear more about what they're working on."

—Evelyn M. Rusli contributed to this article.

www.mohanvamsi.com

Seeds [through Google Glass]

2014-05-11T10:46:00.001-07:00

This film, shot entirely on Glass, was created by alumni and students from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts as part of the Glass Creative Collective. It's our way of saying "Thank you, Mom."

www.mohanvamsi.com

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Samsung Galaxy S5 review: a solid improvement, but don't rush to upgrade

2014-04-13T10:16:00.001-07:00

"When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S5 and a trio of Gear smartwatches, the company made a big to-do about how it listens to its customers. We know, we know: Every company's supposed to be doing that. But remember, this is Samsung we're talking about. It dominates the Android market by such a wide margin that it makes rivals like LG and HTC look like quaint startups. Put it another way: Samsung could release a phone with no improvements, and it'd still sell millions.

At least, that's how it used to be. The smartphone market has seen a downturn of late and even mighty Samsung has been affected. Sales are down, and the manufacturer must now make phones that give people what they actually want (shocker, we know). So what can we expect from a humbled Samsung? A durable phone that brings a toned-down TouchWiz UI, a better camera, longer battery life, improved performance, a fingerprint scanner and enhanced health tracking. I received an unlocked review unit from GSM Nation, which was the first outlet to start shipping the phone in the US with AT&T- and T-Mobile-compatible LTE. Now that I've been testing it for a few days, let's see if the Galaxy S5 lives up to all those promises."

If you've seen one Galaxy S device, you've seen 'em all. Each iteration of the popular smartphone series has had a few nips and tucks, but overall it's maintained the same look over the years. The S5 is no exception: The only new features here are its squarish shape and its plastic, waterproof casing -- dimpled to look sort of like leather (it doesn't really). Even then, you can tell at a glance that it's a Galaxy S.

If there's one word we'd use to describe the Galaxy S5 design, it's "inoffensive." It's not exactly a visual treat like the new HTC One M8, but it's not ugly either. And that's not surprising, really: Samsung usually plays it safe with its designs. This time around, I've heard plenty of jokes referring to the GS5 as the "Band-Aid Phone," a nod to those dimples on the back. Truly, though, I only see that in certain colors, especially the gold version. Fortunately, my white unit doesn't look like a Band-Aid at all; in fact, I prefer it to the glossy covers used on the GS3 and GS4.

Indeed, there's something to having a less slippery design: I was able to grip the 8.1mm-thick phone without feeling like it was going to slip through my fingers. In particular, the blunt edges and mostly flat back make it easy to wrap your fingers around the device. And that's a good thing, since the GS5 is larger than its predecessor in every way (5mm taller, almost 3mm wider and 0.2mm thicker). In other words, if you thought the GS4 was too large, this year's version may be too much. It's also 0.52 ounce (15g) heavier, but I only noticed the difference when I was holding one device in each hand. And besides, by modern-day standards it's compact: Compared to the One M8, the GS5 is shorter, thinner and lighter, and that's with a slightly larger screen, too.

I mentioned earlier that the GS5 is waterproof. More specifically, it's IP67-certified, which means it can be immersed in up to one meter of water for up to 30 minutes. But before you decide to take it for a swim, make sure to close the back using the rubber gasket and seal the charging port. Curiously, the headphone jack is completely open, but somehow is impervious to water.

There are only a few changes to the button layout, compared to last year's GS4. The power button and volume rocker are still on the right and left, respectively. There's now a micro-USB 3.0/MHL 2.0 port on the bottom, which is protected by a waterproof tab. The IR blaster, meanwhile, sits on the top left, with the 3.5mm headphone jack over on the top right. Additionally, the home button now includes a capacitive fingerprint sensor, which I'll discuss in more detail later on. Around back you'll find the small speaker grille, but the biggest change can be found farther up: Samsung installed a heart rate monitor next to the LED flash, just underneath the rear camera.

As ever, Samsung included a removable back cover and a swappable battery, with a capacity of 2,800mAh (up from 2,600mAh). There's also a microSD slot for up to 128GB of external storage. Out of the box, you get either 16GB or 32GB of built-in storage; just remember that the operating system takes up a lot of space before you even get around to installing apps or downloading movies. In fact, my 16GB unit had a little under 12GB of space when I started using it, so if you're even slightly concerned about storing large files, I recommend going with the 32GB model or buying a big memory card to compensate.

I won't spend a lot of time on connectivity because it will ultimately vary depending on where you live and which carrier you use (that last bit is particularly true in the US). That said, most variants feature quad-band GSM/EDGE, quad-band HSPA+ 42.2 Mbps (850/900/1900/2100) and LTE Cat 4 (which offers speeds of up to 150 Mbps). The GS5 also supports carrier aggregation, which basically means that it can fuse together LTE from different towers to increase your data speeds. But again, this will largely depend on whether your carrier even supports that technology.

Finally, you'll also get Bluetooth 4.0 + LE, GPS/GLONASS, DLNA, USB OTG, MHL 2.0 and WiFi Direct. There's also dual-band WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, but the GS5 is the first phone that we've seen with two-channel MIMO support. In English, it includes an extra antenna, with which you could theoretically double your speed -- provided you have the right kind of supporting equipment, of course.

Oh, and while I'm on the subject of speed, most versions of the GS5 come with a new feature called Download Booster, which essentially combines the power of LTE, WiFi andGrayskull to help large files download faster than they would on any one connection. The service won't work on anything smaller than 30MB, and doesn't apply to certain protocols like FTP and UDP. But if you're trying to install an app, load a YouTube video or save a movie your cousin shared with you on Facebook, Download Booster should do the trick. If you don't have an unlimited data plan, however, be very careful about how often you use this -- if you're not keeping tabs on your usage, your next bill might give you an aneurysm.

DISPLAY

The S5's 5.1-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display has the same resolution as last year's flagship despite the larger size screen. Yes, pixel-density snobs, that means you're subjected to nine fewer pixels per inch (441 vs. 432). In any case, those nine pixels were worth the sacrifice: The display here is a surprising improvement over the S4. The difference is easy enough to see with the naked eye, especially when you put the two devices side by side.

For starters, the S5 is much brighter than the S4, not only indoors, but also in direct sunlight (with auto-brightness turned on, the display goes up to around 450 nits). At the same time, it's also capable of dimming down to as low as two nits in pitch-black rooms. This makes for a more comfortable viewing experience when you're reading in a dark bedroom or (tsk, tsk) catching up on Facebook during a movie. The viewing angles have improved significantly as well: Even from a severe angle, the colors are more lifelike, and it's easier to read onscreen text. Admittedly, the HTC One M8's S-LCD panel does a better job with whites and darks, although the GS5 offers more color saturation (and it's not even over-the-top saturation this time, either). As you can see, I'm being rather nitpicky here, but I believe most users will be happy with either display.

And if you're not happy? Unlike most non-Samsung phones (save for Nokia), the GS5 has five screen modes: Professional Photo, Cinema, Dynamic, Adapt and Standard. They all use a different color gamut; so if one doesn't fit your fancy, try the others to see what works best.

FINGERPRINT SCANNER

Until the iPhone 5s came out, the last flagship phone with a fingerprint scanner was theMotorola Atrix 4G -- and that was three years ago. Back then, it was clear the technology wasn't ready for prime time, mostly because the sensors didn't actually work very well.Now, in 2014, the S5 comes with a capacitive fingerprint scanner built into the home button -- yep, just like on the iPhone. It remains to be seen if this leads to another court battle, but regardless, you can't fault Samsung for choosing the home button: We touch that part of the phone dozens (if not hundreds) times a day.

So, how exactly does the scanner work here? Samsung's setup features Synaptics' Natural ID, which consists of a tiny sensor that sits underneath the button. (Synaptics calls it "a miniature touchpad with built-in capacitive sensing.") When it's time for the phone to learn your prints, you swipe your finger over the home button several times, allowing the sensor to read the inner live layers of the tip of your finger. Using signal strength, the sensor can draw a "map" of your fingerprint and presto -- you're all set. You can store up to three prints total, although I'd prefer even more.

If the sensor doesn't recognize your finger after five attempts, the phone will prompt you to enter an alternative password. It's an alphanumeric password, mind, so you'll have to include both numbers and letters instead of a simple four-digit PIN code. On one hand (no pun intended), Samsung likely did it this way to make the phone more secure, but I still believe users should be able to choose what type of password they want.

Speaking of security, should we be concerned about privacy? According to Samsung and Synaptics, the answer is no. When the sensor talks to the processor ("Hey, this print checks out just fine. Go ahead and let them in."), all information is encrypted. What's more, the prints are stored locally on the phone, and instead of storing an actual image of your print, it only logs a virtual map. Spoofing also wouldn't work; Synaptics says that any change in the physical properties of the phone will result in rejection.

All in all, Samsung makes more use out of its fingerprint scanner than Apple does with Touch ID. Both the GS5 and iPhone 5s use the scanner to unlock the phone, obviously, but that's where the similarities end. The only other thing Touch ID can do is approve App Store and iTunes downloads. Samsung, meanwhile, lets you make online payments through PayPal, as well as access a private "locker" for confidential files. I'd also like to see these companies open up their sensors to third-party developers; all in due time, hopefully.

Getting down to brass tacks, how well does the thing actually work? It depends. I trained the GS5 to recognize both of my thumbs and my right index finger, since those are the three digits I use the most when waking up the phone. Over the course of several days, I made dozens of attempts with each finger and it only recognized me on the first try about half the time -- and that's a generous estimate. More often than not, I had to swipe my finger two or three times before it let me in; typing in a PIN code would've been more efficient. Worse, there were other times when the scanner wouldn't recognize me at all, even as I adjusted my swipe speed, angle and finger pressure. And even when it works, there's a small delay after you swipe before the phone accepts your print.

As for one-handed use, don't even bother. It's technically possible, but the odds of success are so low I have a better chance of seeing Narnia each time I open my closet. Normally, I hold the phone in my left hand and try to swipe the sensor with my left thumb; however, my thumb is at such an angle that the sensor simply can't recognize it. Sometimes it'll work if I push the phone up a little higher and try to position the thumb at a more shallow angle, but even then, it takes multiple attempts, and it's so off-balance that I've come close to dropping the device several times. Apple's sensor, on the other hand, has no problem picking up my fingerprint from any angle.

To be fair, my experience may get better over time (although in Apple's case, it got worse for a while). It's obvious there's a learning curve here; it can take practice to place your finger in just the right place, at just the right speed with just the right amount of pressure. However, I don't believe most people will be that patient -- after a few frustrating attempts, users might simply turn the feature off (or worse, attempt a warranty swap because they think it's defective).

There's a bit of a silver lining, at least: If you don't like it, don't want to use it or it simply doesn't work for you (or all of the above), you don't have to use it. And unlike the HTC One Max, whose fingerprint scanner sits below the rear camera, the sensor itself isn't visually distracting.

HEART RATE MONITOR

Samsung's been making a big deal about health recently. It's offered an app called S Health for quite some time, which helps users track their exercise and food intake. Starting with the GS4 in particular, the app's been able to monitor heart rate and steps with the help of third-party accessories. Now, though, both of these features are built directly into the GS5, giving you one or two fewer fitness gadgets to carry around. That said, the heart rate monitors built into the new Gear 2 and Gear Fit smartwatches integrate with S Health, so the company's hoping you'll buy some fitness wearables after all (so long as they're made by Samsung, of course).

To get started, go to the Heart Rate section of S Health. Then, once prompted, put your finger over the sensor, keep still and stay quiet. Be careful where you put your finger, though: The sensor, which uses a light that allows it to "see" and measure your pulse, is positioned almost directly beneath the camera lens. Without your eyes directly guiding your finger to the right place, it's easy to mistake the camera lens for the heart rate monitor. (Pro tip: You'll want to keep a cloth handy to wipe off the lens if you do this a lot.) As with the fingerprint scanner, positioning is crucial. If my finger was even slightly off, the monitor couldn't measure my pulse and I'd have to redo it. When you've done it right, you'll know pretty quickly since it only takes five seconds or so to complete the process.

Our team tested the heart rate monitor against more dedicated fitness devices like the Garmin chest strap (connected to a Vivofit) and the Adidas Smart watch. After a series of tests, we noticed that the GS5's results averaged about five or six beats per minute lower than the Garmin and Adidas. That said, the scores did match sometimes, but this was the exception rather than the rule. In other words, the GS5 sensor will do a good job getting you an "in the neighborhood" reading, but you're still better off with a standalone monitor if you want the most precise results.

SOFTWARE

As with the hardware design, Samsung's TouchWiz software tends to err on the safe side; in the past, Samsung only made minor tweaks to the UI. With the GS5, however, the company's Android skin has received quite the face-lift, resulting in a design that's flatter, more modern-looking. If you ask us, it's a step in the right direction -- and a sign that Samsung knows it needs to freshen up TouchWiz. Even so, the layout is confusing. The old TouchWiz used tabs on nearly every screen, but no longer. Meanwhile, Samsung introduced a new font, and for whatever reason, the interface uses a lot of circles. Oddly, too, there are some inconsistencies; the settings menu uses large, circular icons (though you can switch to list or tab view at any time), which makes it more of a chore to scroll through the menu. Icons in the main app drawer, on the other hand, hew to the old-school TouchWiz look. And that's not all: There are elements of stock Android (4.4.2 KitKat) sprinkled in as well.

Most core apps have been redesigned to be more visually appealing, and even the recent apps menu has a fresh look. But given that Google recently had a discussion with Samsung about how it can down its Android skin, it's frustrating that there are at least two versions of most core apps -- Samsung pushes its own in-house software, even though Google provides similar apps of its own. This means there are two app stores, two music players, two browsers, two photo gallery apps, two voice assistants and three messaging apps (four on the AT&T version). While there's something to be said about choice, this is just a tangled mess, and I have to wonder if the extra baggage bogs down the phone's performance. Fortunately, you can hide the apps you don't plan to use, which at least cuts down on the clutter.

My Magazine has carried over from the Note 3, but it's now accessible by swiping from left to right. If Samsung is indeed interested in getting on Google's good side, I'd like to see the company give us the choice between My Magazine and the Google Now experience. Curiously, it's not even part of the TouchWiz launcher, but, rather, a separate application. As for the feature itself, it's basically Flipboard with a few customizations -- in fact, clicking on categories and links will often take you out of My Magazine and into the actual Flipboard app.

Older Samsung features like Air browse, Air view, Smart stay, Smart scroll and Smart rotation are all still here, though they aren't quite as in-your-face as they once were. In fact, most of them are buried in the settings, so you have to want them in order to find them. Safety Assistance, Blocking Mode and Easy Mode are also around.

In the settings menu, you'll find a small, but important addition: a search function. If you know what you're looking for, but don't feel like spending an hour swiping through 20 menus to find it, you can search for the term and head straight there. Heck, if you're searching for a checkbox, the search results will include that box in the list, so you don't even have to go into the menu to toggle it.

TouchWiz UI on the Samsung Galaxy S5

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Like the HTC One M8, the GS5 features an extreme power-saving mode (Samsung calls it, "Ultra power saving mode"), which promises to conserve power when you find yourself getting dangerously low and need to stay afloat in case a call comes in. When you turn this feature on, it changes the launcher to a simple grayscale theme, caps your display brightness and restricts most apps from working, reserving your battery for only the tasks you'd need in an emergency. Mileage will vary, but even at 10 percent, you should be able to eke out nearly a full day of battery life.

One last thing worth mentioning: the built-in "baby crying detector," which can be used with a Gear Watch. Put your phone within a meter of your little one and anytime they have a fit, your watch will vibrate. Of course, Samsung's quick to point out that this isn't intended to replace your babysitter, so if you're thinking of sneaking out for a spell, don't.

CAMERA

Samsung has a history of making smartphones with good cameras, but that doesn't mean it can rest on its laurels. The competition is getting fiercer: Nokia, Sony and even Chinese outfits like Oppo are doing some fantastic things with imaging. And so must Samsung. With the GS5, the company added a 16MP rear camera, some clever new editing tricks and a new "ISOCELL" technology that improves sharpness, low-light performance and color accuracy. (In case you're wondering, the front-facing camera is still capped at 2MP.)

Just like the One M8, the GS5's top resolution uses a 16:9 aspect ratio for widescreen images, rather than the traditional 4:3. Fun fact: If you don't like going widescreen, the highest res you can get is 12MP, which is actually a lower resolution than the GS4's 13MP 4:3 camera. Obviously, pixel count isn't everything, and there are other aspects of the imaging experience to consider, but I still found this a tad disappointing.

Resolution is likely the least interesting imaging spec on the camera, so let's take a quick look at the other stuff. The GS5 has the same f/2.2 aperture as its predecessor, as well as a focal length of 4.8mm (up from 4.24mm on the GS4). The 1/2.6-inch sensor is larger, but utilizes the same pixel size of 1.12 microns. Fortunately, ISOCELL addresses the concern with having such small pixels, and we'll cover that shortly.

The new camera settings, meanwhile, are easier to navigate now that they're accessible from the viewfinder and can all be found in one place. While this may be confusing to some, I prefer it this way over the GS4, which has multiple levels of menus. Unless you knew exactly where to go, it was difficult to find what you were looking for. Fortunately, there's space on the sidebar for up to three custom shortcuts, so you can drag over the settings you'll be adjusting the most.

The camera modes have also been streamlined here. Quite a few are no longer listed by default, but if you press the "download" option, you'll be taken into the Samsung Store, where you can find all of them. What's more, Eraser, Drama and Best photo modes have merged into one mode known as "Shot & More." This is a lot like what Nokia has done with its Smart Camera. While it makes more sense to combine them into one mode, there's still a lingering problem: I don't always know that I need Eraser until after I've already taken my shot. As an example, I usually don't know that a photobomber is going to step into my shot until I'm actually taking the picture; switching to Shot & More mode means I have to know there's a good chance that some random dude is going to try to become part of my family portrait. Lastly, the default auto mode is now smart enough to detect when it's nighttime, so it can adjust to that particular setting automatically. (That said, you can turn on the photo stabilizer effect to get even more light, if auto doesn't work well enough.)

The HTC One M8 has UFocus; now Samsung is introducing something called Selective Focus. As with UFocus, you can blur out the background or a target in the foreground. The catch: You have to be within 1.5 feet of whatever object is in the foreground. Even then, there were many times when I couldn't get it to work. Small objects, large objects -- it didn't matter. The feature is temperamental, it seems, but at least it saves the image as a regular photo if you don't succeed. Even when it does work, it's not perfect. In the image above, I took a picture focused on the red sundial and when I shifted the focus to the buildings in the background, not everything in the foreground actually blurred out, as you can see below.

I was particularly impressed by the GS5's real-time HDR feature. Normally, I have to chance it with HDR images because I don't get to see how it will turn out ahead of time. The GS5's processor is powerful enough, however, that it's now possible to see what the image will actually look like before taking it, which increases my likelihood of taking a good photo. This feature is also available in the One M8.

Samsung also says the camera is capable of focusing on targets in 300ms (0.3 second), making it just as fast as the M8. This is made possible through phase detection (PDAF). Unlike most smartphone cameras, which determine focus through contrast, PDAF divvies up incoming light into a pair of photos and then compares the two. If you don't have enough light coming in, the camera will shift back to the traditional contrast autofocus method. I couldn't see a noticeable difference in focus lock times between the GS5 and the M8 (same goes with default shutter speed). Either way, both were quicker than the GS4.

The GS5 also lets you manually tweak the settings to your liking, but it doesn't offer quite as many options (or as good a UI) as the new HTC One. It's not much different from other Galaxy phones, either: You can set white balance, metering method, exposure and ISO (up to 800). Still, HTC adds extras like shutter speed and focus type, along with sliders and the ability to save presets, so you can easily switch back and forth between modes instead of having to change each setting every time.

The GS5 may not have an extra camera to add depth information, but it brings plenty of great editing features that make you feel as if you're enjoying Photoshop on your phone. You can still rotate, crop and resize; add stickers, frames and drawings; throw in portrait effects; and adjust color saturation, contrast and temperature. What's different this time is the ability to select a specific part of your photo and tweak just that part while leaving the rest of the picture untouched. In other words, if one part of your image is blown out, you can select that area and tweak the settings to tone it down. In case you don't really know how you want to adjust the shot, there's also an auto-enhance feature that might give you a nudge in the right direction.

The size of each pixel on the GS5's main camera remains the same as on the GS4, so does Samsung do anything else to improve low-light performance? It does, in the form of its new ISOCELL technology, which first debuted last fall. The explanation of how it all works is pretty technical and I'll let the video above do most of the explaining. In short, ISOCELL adds tiny barriers between individual pixels, which increases image sharpness, color accuracy and light sensitivity -- all aspects that come as disadvantages for most BSI sensors. The new tech also allows the lens to be closer to the sensor, which makes it so the camera module can be smaller.

All told, ISOCELL improves Samsung's imaging quality, but the results aren't quite as good when compared to the One M8, Lumia 1020 and iPhone 5s. I'm not saying nighttime images on the GS5 are horrid -- they're still perfectly usable in most cases -- but the performance just isn't up to par with other devices that have popped up on the market in the past year. Simply put, most night shots appear darker and noisier.

Fortunately the GS5 holds up well in good lighting conditions. My pictures were slightly more detailed than they were on the GS4 and One M8. I didn't have to make any adjustments to the settings in direct sunlight, whereas the M8 tends to take blown-out shots if I don't dial back the exposure a notch or two. Image quality was also on par with the iPhone 5s, with only slight variations in color saturation.

(Note: I've uploaded a gallery of full-res photos here.)

PERFORMANCE AND BATTERY LIFE

In the year since the GS4 came out, we've seen two new generations of high-end Snapdragon chipsets: the 800 last fall, followed by the 801, which is what Samsung used on the GS5. As is too often the case, it won't be long before the muscle behind Samsung's state-of-the-art model is no longer the best available, as the Snapdragon 805 will land in a few months, with the 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 810 landing this time next year. Heck, maybe that's what we can expect in the GS6!

With a quad-core 2.5GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and a 578MHz Adreno 330 GPU, the GS5 is predictably powerful. Even so, I can't shake the feeling that something in the bowels of TouchWiz is preventing it from reaching its full potential. Despite having a faster clock speed than the One M8 (both phones use a Snapdragon 801, but the M8's version has a lower max speed at 2.3GHz), most transitions seem to take longer to complete and apps load slightly slower than they do on the One.

Again, it may feel like I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, but this slight lag also translates into some odd happenings on the graphics side. My game tests of choice wereAsphalt 8 and Dead Trigger 2, since both need some serious horsepower to run smoothly. Most of my gameplay unfolded without incident, but the titles slowed down and even froze up more often than they should have, considering the powerful chipset being used.

The S5's battery held up well during my week of use, and it's a slight improvement over the GS4. Still, the HTC One M8 is even better. With heavy usage, I tended to get concerned near the end of the day that the 2,800mAh battery wasn't going to make it. Thankfully, though, it never completely gave up on me. In other words, the battery got me through a full day, but more often than not, it came a little too close to empty. In our formal rundown test, meanwhile, the battery kept going through nearly 10 hours of video playback. That's not as impressive as the M8, which lasted 11 and a half hours, but it's still better than the GS4, which gave out after nine hours and 15 minutes. With more moderate use, you should last into a second day; naturally, mileage will vary depending on what you're doing with your phone and how strong your signal is.

Audio on the GS5's speakers isn't quite as loud or clear as BoomSound on the One M8. Worse, the sound rattled the back of the phone anytime I cranked up the volume. In fact, the louder the music got, the more muffled and blown-out the sound became. Plugging in a pair of headphones helped me to sidestep the problem, at least. Likewise, call quality on both my unlocked handset and my AT&T version sounded clear with no complaints on either end of the line. Bluetooth connectivity worked flawlessly, even with several devices connected at the same time, and NFC performed as well as I'd hoped. GPS navigation didn't have any noticeable issues, either.

WRAP-UP

Chances are, you'll be happy with the Galaxy S5 if you choose to buy it. It's a solid upgrade to the Galaxy S4, with reasonable improvements to the design, software and camera. I can't say this is your most visually appealing option, especially compared to the all-metal HTC One M8, but the dimpled back and waterproof casing at least add more durability than we've enjoyed on previous Galaxy S devices.

The fingerprint scanner and the heart rate monitor, on the other hand, need some work. Each delivers inconsistent results and can be quite frustrating to use. The good news is that you don't have to use them if you have the same experience that I did; the bad news is: If you don't take advantage of these features, you have fewer reasons to buy the phone in the first place. What's more, Samsung put a lot of energy into integrating these features into both the GS5's hardware and software, which makes me wonder what the company could have included instead if it left those out. If you're looking for a good Android phone, the GS5 won't let you down. I'd be happy using this as my daily driver. That said, I wouldn't waste an early upgrade on it, either.

www.mohanvamsi.com

How It Works: An Electronic Cigarette | Popular Science

2014-04-07T19:55:00.001-07:00

How It Works: An Electronic Cigarette

Since electronic cigarettes hit the market in 2007, yearly sales have reached $1 billion in the U.S. Although they’re popular, it’s still unclear how safe they are. Last year, a study from an international group of scientists showed that the toxins in e-cigarette vapor are 9 to 450 times lower than in tobacco smoke. The Food and Drug Administration is still determining its regulatory stance. It’s sponsoring more research while sorting out its position.

Don Foley

A. LED

When the e-cigarette is active, an indicator light glows like a tobacco ember.

B. Sensor

Some versions have a pressure sensor that detects the airflow of an inhalation. The sensor then turns on the battery, which triggers the heating element. Other e-cigarettes are turned on and off with a button.

C. Battery

A slim lithium-ion battery, usually rechargeable, provides the power. An average e-cigarette has about 300 puffs per charge.

D. Heating Element

Electricity passes through a resistant material—usually metal or ceramic—which produces heat. Once the heating element reaches approximately 150°F, it vaporizes about 0.005 milliliters of the nicotine liquid into a mist. Each hit has roughly 90 percent of the nicotine found in a tobacco-cigarette puff.

E. Nicotine Liquid

A viscous fluid made from propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, or a mixture of both, contains about 1 percent nicotine and flavoring such as menthol, fruit, or classic tobacco.

F. Mouthpiece

A flexible tip, sometimes made of silicone, evokes the feel of a real cigarette.

www.mohanvamsi.com

Superman With a GoPro

2014-03-20T07:07:00.001-07:00

www.mohanvamsi.com

Introducing Android Wear Developer Preview

2014-03-19T20:01:00.001-07:00

www.mohanvamsi.com

Satya Nadella, Cloud & Enterprise Group, Microsoft - He and his team deliver the "Cloud OS." Rumored to be on the short list for CEO

2014-02-01T10:49:00.001-08:00

Satya is responsible for building and running Microsoft's computing platforms, developer tools and cloud services. He and his team deliver the "Cloud OS." Rumored to be on the short list for CEO, he shares his views on the future.

Microsoft is reportedly planning to name a new CEO to replace Steve Ballmer in the next week, and there appears to be a new frontrunner: Satya Nadella.

If you don't recognize the name, you're probably not alone. Unlike some of the other candidates that Microsoft had been rumored to be considering — people like Ford CEO Alan Mulally and Nokia CEO Stephen Elop — Nadella isn't particularly well-known to people outside Microsoft.

With that in mind, here are few things you should now about the 47-year-old tech industry veteran who may soon run one of the biggest companies in the world.

He has worked at Microsoft for more than 20 years.
If you believe Microsoft needs someone in the CEO role who knows the company inside and out, Nadella is a strong pick. He joined the company in 1992 from Sun Microsystems, and has served in a number of executive roles since, starting out in the Windows developer-relations group and moving on to the online services division. In recent years, he built up Microsoft's cloud computing efforts as the executive VP of its Cloud and Enterprise group.
Microsoft's first CEO was its cofounder, Bill Gates. Ballmer, the company's second CEO, had worked at the company since 1980. Nadella, with his long tenure at the company, would fit the general formula.
He has never run a company.
If, however, you believe Microsoft needs someone with an outside perspective and experience as a chief executive, Nadella may be a more questionable pick. He worked as a member of the technology staff at Sun Microsystems and has held key roles at Microsoft, but never served as a CEO. Then again, the Microsoft division he runs is a $20 billion business, larger than many tech companies.
His vision for the future of tech: better UI, better backends
During an interview last year at the Le Web conference, Nadella offered some thoughts on tech trends he expects to see over the next decade.
"My feeling is if you look at the broad stroke of technology shifts, it seems like at least on the device side or on the client side, it's the changes in UI, or input and output, it's touch or ink or voice or gesture, that's going to be the next big revolution," he said at the time. "Then on the backend, I've always noticed that it's all about the factor of production, an improvement of utilization... What happened with virtualization was that you could get more done with less. What's happening with cloud is you can get more done with less."
When pressed about whether Microsoft could get out of its own way to grab the future, he added the following: "We wouldn't be here 30 years since our founding if we were not able to ride the new waves of technology, some more successfully than others. There's no question of that. The fact that we have the capability that allows us to go and hunt for the new concept is the key for this business and longevity."

1. People at Microsoft like him.
  Though he may not be particularly well-known outside the company, multiple reports note that he is well-liked and well-respected within Microsoft and within the industry at large.
2. He would be the first Microsoft CEO born outside the country.
  Nadella was born in Hyderabad, India, and studied engineering at a university there before moving to the United States. He went on to study computer science at the University of Wisconsin and earned a Master's degree in business administration at the University of Chicago. If he is appointed CEO of Microsoft, he will be one of just a handful of Indian-born chief executives to run major American companies.