Cota by Ossia hopes to charge your phone wirelessly, no contact required

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/09/cota-by-ossia-wireless-power/

We've all heard of wireless charging before, but most solutions still require your phone to come in touch with a base station. Well, Cota is a technology that aims to power your mobile device completely wirelessly -- without any physical contact at all. Hatem Zeine, a physicist and CEO of Ossia Inc, demonstrated the technology on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt when he successfully charged his iPhone when plugged with a Cota prototype, seen above, while holding it several feet away from a charging station.

It all seems like voodoo, but the secret lies in sending a magnetic charge over the same 2.4GHz spectrum that WiFi and Bluetooth already use. If you're concerned about safety, Zeine assures us that only one watt of power is transmitted -- that's a third of what cell phones already transmit. Line of sight isn't required, and Zeine claims that one station can power multiple devices at once. Just like a WiFi hotspot, you can set it so that it only works with certain devices or simply open it up so that power is available to all Cota-enabled handsets within range, which is around 30 feet.

Filed under: Cellphones, Science, Mobile

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: Cota by Ossia

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PPL Connect is a virtualized smartphone that lets you make and take calls from a web browser

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/09/ppl-connect-is-a-virtualized-smartphone-that-lets-you-make-and-t/

Sure, you've heard of virtualized computing environments before, but a start-up here at TechCrunch Disrupt called PPL Connect is a platform that virtualizes your phone's capabilities in real-time. That means you can make and receive calls and texts and access the photos and videos on your phone from any device with a web browser. It's kind of like AirDroid, only you don't need to have your phone with you or even have it turned on to make calls or receive texts once you've signed up. It's a platform agnostic solution for a fragmented mobile world.

The magic happens via a localized app on your phone and Amazon cloud service to dish out your data where you need it. That cloud component both serves as cloud storage for your data and as a back-end VoIP relay station for calls and texts. Currently, photos, videos, contacts, calls and texts are what's handled by the service, but the plan is to eventually fully replicate your phone's capabilities. For folks who are concerned about putting your digital life in the hands of PPL connect, all transmissions to and from its servers are encrypted. And, the company is currently devising a fully encrypted system whereby the data's only accessible with a single, user-owned key.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Software, Mobile

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Source: PPL Connect

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Epic Privacy Browser Blocks Tracking, Ads, and More

Source: http://lifehacker.com/epic-privacy-browser-blocks-tracking-ads-and-more-1278427701

Windows/Mac: Keeping your data private on the web is no easy task. Epic Privacy Browser is a Chromium-based browser that seeks to give you a private browsing experience without slowing down your browsing speed.

Out of the box Epic Privacy Browser blocks web sites that track you, ads, and more. It doesn't store cookies, your history, cache, autofill, or anything else. When you close the browser, everything you did is deleted. Epic Privacy Browser also offers one-click proxy servers and encrypted data protection for Wi-Fi networks. It's not as comprehensive as something like Tails, but as a souped-up Incognito mode, Epic Privacy Browser works well.

Epic Privacy Browser | via One Thing Well

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Flowers Shatter Like Glass Thanks to Liquid Nitrogen and an Air Gun

Source: http://gizmodo.com/flowers-shatter-like-glass-thanks-to-liquid-nitrogen-an-1279365378

There are some science class staples that will never cease to be amazing, no matter how often you see them—among them, liquid nitrogen. To wit: these beautiful images of flower blooms, flash-frozen using liquid-state nitrogen and shattered in front of a camera lens for our amusement.

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Snapchat Micro will bring disappearing messages to Samsung's Galaxy Gear

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/09/snapchat-galaxy-gear/

There seems little doubt that much of the Galaxy Gear's success or failure will hinge on the selection of apps that arrive on smartwatch. Samsung is making a strong push for third-party software (even in the face of limited device storage), courting a big cross section of developers at places like Path and eBay for its wearable. Popular messaging app Snapchat will also be hitting the device in the form of Snapchat Micro. As you'd expect, the app harnesses the Gear's 1.9-megapixel camera to send self-destructing images. The company's founder told Techcrunch, "Our team is constantly looking at ways to reduce the time between our experience of a moment and our ability to share it." Walking around with a camera on your wrist is certainly one way to go about it.

Filed under: Wearables, Software, Samsung

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Via: Techcrunch

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