Friday, June 13, 2014

New littleBits modules make the Synth Kit more powerful and versatile

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/13/littlebits-midi-cv-usb/

Click 'em together, make some noise. Littlebits are like Lego for music nerds (like us). That's fun and all, but currently, once you've built your mini-modular synth creation, there isn't really much else you can do with it. That won't be the case for much longer though, as three new modules are coming along to spice things up.

We are raising the ceiling of complexity of what you can do with littleBits, adding wireless control, programmability, and now audio control to allow you to make sophisticated electronics in a fraction of the time and cost, allowing for whole new experiences. -- Ayah Bdeir (Founder, littleBits)

A new MIDI block lets you hook into music making software like Ableton or Logic, while the CV block means you can connect your littleBits to older/analog gear. If you just want to play with sound, a USB I/O module will let you pipe the littleBits' audio directly into your PC. No word on price, but expect to see them come to market in time for the (now noisier) holidays.

Filed under: ,

Comments

Source: littleBits

Read More...

Architects Turned A Tiny 425-Square-Foot Loft Into A Dream Home

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/425-square-feet-manhattan-micro-loft-2014-6

Untitled 1

New York City is chock-full of laughably small, awkwardly shaped apartments. Which is why it takes a good imagination to not only make them livable, but actually desirable.

The designers at Specht Harpman Architects recently worked wonders on a 425-square-foot loft on the Upper West Side.

The space, at the top of a six-story brownstone, has 25 feet of vertical space and even access to a rooftop  giving them plenty to work with.

Check out the photos below to see the new micro-loft.

This was the space before. It was run down, with exposed brick walls and dated paint.Manhattan Micro Loft

For such a small space, it didn't have much room for storage.Manhattan Micro Loft The architects' solution was to create multi-level “living platforms" in order to squeeze everything in, but still make it feel open.Manhattan Micro Loft One of their goals was to create a flowing interior "that dissolves the notion of distinct 'rooms.'"Manhattan Micro Loft A cantilevered bed on steel beams floats over the main living space on the third floor.Manhattan Micro Loft And the tiny bathroom is tucked beneath the stairs.Manhattan Micro Loft Which now have a ton of storage space. They feature built-in drawers and shelves, similar to Japanese kaidan dansu.  Manhattan Micro LoftThe roof garden at the top allows light to radiate throughout the apartment. Manhattan Micro Loft Pretty impressive. It's hard to tell that this was still the same apartment.Manhattan Micro Loft Compare it again to the new space:Micro Loft Rendering

Job well done. 

SEE ALSO: The 10 Most Expensive Homes For Sale In New York City

SEE ALSO: Business Insider is on Pinterest

Join the conversation about this story »








Read More...

These Drones Could Be The Construction Crews Of The Future

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-drones-could-build-bridges-2014-6

Jun 13, 2014 09:06

Scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, have developed cool drones that can weave cord into rope bridges, reports New Scientist's Hal Hodson.

Each quadcopter drone is equipped with a spool of strong plastic cable that runs out behind it as it flies. One end of the cable can be secured by making several turns around a pole. The drones are positioned and directed autonomously from the ground by a central computer fitted with a camera that watches them as they fly. For example, to loop cables around each other, the computer directs two drones to fly through certain points at an exact time. In this way, the fleet can tie complicated knots and form large, regularly repeating patterns strung between fixed structures.

For now, these drones are only capable of building tensile structures like the one above. Ammar Mirjan, who collaborated with Augugliaro's on the architectural side of the project, said that currently "something possible would be a structure like a bridge or a connection between existing buildings."

Successful positioning — and, by extension, movement — is one of the key problems roboticists have to solve in order to build a worthwhile robot capable of complex tasks. Given that virtually unlimited workspace that drones have access to (the sky), that problem gets solved much more easily. And if this advantage can continue to be refined, it's easy to imagine this evolving to the point that drones do our building for us.

  Jun 13, 2014 09:12

Koushil Sreenath, roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, told New Scientist that "you [could hypothetically] just program the structure you want, press play and when you come back your structure is done. Our current construction is limited, but with aerial robots those limitations go away."

Hodson says there's interest in drones-as-construction-crew at other institutions too:

At the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Neri Oxman and her team are using robots suspended on cables to build structures. And at the University of Pennsylvania, the General Robotics Automation Sensing and Perception Lab is using drones with robotic clamps to build towers of magnetic blocks.

Check out the full video demo from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology below.

Join the conversation about this story »








Read More...

drag2share: Google set to launch a health-tracking platform called Google Fit

source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/13/google-launching-google-fit-health-platform/?utm_source=Feed_Classic_Full&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget&?ncid=rss_full

Not to be left behind by Apple, Google could soon launch its own health-tracking platform for mobile devices. Forbes reports that the search giant is working on a new service, tentatively called Google Fit, which will pull in data from third-party fitness wearables and health apps and combine them into one central app. It's not known if Fit will be delivered as a standalone app or come embedded inside future versions of Android, but it would likely operate as Google-made version of Apple's HealthKit, a service that lets companies like Nike feed in fitness data, and Samsung's own fitness framework, SAMI. An open platform would also lend itself to running on top of Google's upcoming Android Wear platform, allowing smartwatches and fitness bands to feed data into Fit's open APIs. Mirroring Apple, Google is set to unveil its new health-centric service at its own developer conference, Google I/O, which kicks off on June 25th. It has a lot of wearable talks planned for the event, so we won't have long to wait to learn more about what Google has planned.

Read More...

drag2share: Visual encyclopedia builds itself by scouring the internet

source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/12/levan-self-teaching-knowledge-base/?utm_source=Feed_Classic_Full&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget&?ncid=rss_full

LEVAN shows what it knows about horses

Crowdsourced knowledge bases like Wikipedia encompass a lot of knowledge, but humans can only add to them so quickly. Wouldn't it be better if computers did all the hard work? The University of Washington certainly believes so. Its LEVAN (Learn EVerything about ANything) program is building a visual encyclopedia by automatically searching the Google Books library for descriptive language, and using that to find pictures illustrating the associated concepts. Once LEVAN has seen enough, it can associate images with ideas simply by looking at pixel arrangements. Unlike earlier learning systems, such as Carnegie Mellon's NEIL, it's smart enough to tell the difference between two similar objects (such as a Trojan horse and a racing horse) while lumping them under one broader category.

Right now, the folks at the Wikimedia Foundation have little to worry about. LEVAN has only explored about 175 concepts as of this writing, and it can take as much as 12 hours to add another to the mix. It's open to suggestions from the public, though, and the university has open-sourced its code so that anyone can build on the formula. You won't want to depend on this self-assembling information hub for vital knowledge in the near future, but it should eventually be very useful for both schools teaching basic ideas as well as computer vision software that needs a helping hand.

Read More...

âOnLive is giving enterprise cloud services one more try

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/12/onlive-is-giving-enterprise-cloud-services-one-more-try/

Stop us if this sounds familiar: after successfully launching and new a video game service, a growing cloud computing firm looks to the business sector to expand its customer base. Oh, you've heard this one? That's because OnLive is retracing its steps, following up its CloudLift gaming service (announced back in March) with an enterprise-focused counterpart. Onlive's CloudLift Enterprise is built on the same promise as its older OnLive Desktop service: your work on any device at any time -- but now it's offering its customers a bit more than a virtualized desktop.

Specifically, CloudLift enterprise is designed for graphic intensive applications -- things like drone piloting setups, military training simulators or applications for architecture and design. OnLive says it can deliver these applications to virtually any smartphone, tablet or laptop on any operating system over fairly slow connections, as low as 2Mbps.

OnLive told us that despite the potential growth the enterprise service represents, it's not designed to replace any business from its gaming division -- in fact, the company says it's well pleased with much CloudLift gaming has grown over the past few months. "The game service will continue to be a driving force for the company," Onlive Executive chairman Mark Jung told us, explaining that its enterprise service leverages the same tech that drives its gaming services. "The development work that went into our game platform is the core technology at the center of the Enterprise PaaS solution."

Filed under:

Comments

Source: OnLive

Read More...

Samsung Has A New Tablet With A Gorgeous Screen And It's Thinner Than The iPad Air

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-galaxy-tab-s-2014-6

samsung galaxy tab s

Samsung has a new line of tablets launching this summer called the Galaxy Tab S.

The Galaxy Tab S comes in two sizes: a 10.4-inch model and an 8.4-inch model. Both are essentially the same on the inside as far as specs go, but the big selling point here is the screen. Samsung put its Super AMOLED display on a tablet for the first time. It's the same type of display used on the Galaxy S5 phone, which many folks in the industry have called the best screen on the market.

The screen looks really nice in person. This is an HD video running on the tablet, but the photo doesn't really do it justice:

samsung galaxy tab sSamsung makes a lot of different tablet models under the Galaxy name, but the Galaxy Tab S will be marketed as the company's flagship brand. It's priced the same as the iPad Mini and iPad Air. The 8.4-incher starts at $399; the 10.5-incher starts at $499. (Those are the prices for the Wi-Fi models with 16GB of memory. Samsung will launch a 4G LTE version later.)

The tablets are very thin and light. Both measure just 6.6 millimeters thick (that's thinner than the iPad Air, which is 7.5 millimeters thick). The 10.5-inch tablet weighs 1 pound, and the 8.4-inch model weighs 10 ounces.

It feels good, too. Unlike previous tablets from Samsung, the Galaxy Tab S feels sturdy instead of creaky and plasticky. It looks good from the front, but the back has the same tacky dimpled plastic that originally debuted on the Galaxy S5. There's also a kitschy bronze-colored border along the sides.

samsung galaxy tab s

Also l ike the Galaxy S5, the Galaxy Tab S has a fingerprint sensor embedded in the home button. You can use it to unlock the device without a passcode or make payments through PayPal. The fingerprint sensor on the Galaxy S5 doesn't work very well, so we don't have high hopes for the one on the Galaxy Tab S.

Samsung also designed new cases for the Galaxy Tab S called Book Covers. They snap onto the back of the tablet and let you prop it on the table to three different viewing angles.

samsung galaxy tab s

The Galaxy Tab S is an Android tablet, but Samsung modified the software a lot to add some of its own features and tricks. For example, you can pair the tablet to your Galaxy smartphone over Wi-Fi and drag and drop photos and files between the two devices. You can also use the pairing mode to make calls on the tablet.

There's no specific launch date, but the Galaxy Tab S should start shipping in early July.

SEE ALSO: The most important features in Samsung's new Galaxy Tab S

Join the conversation about this story »








Read More...

Online Video Advertising Is Growing Many Times Faster Than TV, Search, And Most Other Digital Ad Markets

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/digital-video-advertising-growth-trends-2014-5
VideoGrowth_BII
Online video is growing faster than most other advertising formats and mediums.

  • Video ad revenue will increase at a three-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.5% through 2016, according to our estimates. 
  • That's faster than any other medium other than mobile. And much faster than traditional online display advertising, which will only grow at a 3% annual rate. 
In a new report from BI Intelligence we explore the key drivers of the skyrocketing growth of video ads, examine the cost and performance of the emerging digital ad format, and look at the major players that are shaping the industry.
Access The Full Report By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today »
Here are some of the key trends we explore in the report:
The report is full of charts and data that can be easily downloaded and put to use
In full, the report:

FORECASTUSAdvertisingRevenueByFormat

Read More...

You Won't Be Able To Stop Playing This Addictive Music App

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/patatap-ios-app-2014-6

Patatap

Patatap is a website that allows you to make music just by typing on your keyboard. And now it's available as an iOS app, so you can create music, even if you're nowhere near a computer.

It sounds simple, and that's because it is. But it's also mesmerizing: as you type, different animations appear on the screen. 

The site was made by designer Jono Brandel, in collaboration with music composers Lullatone; he describes the site as being a portable animation sound kit." 

Lullatone created sounds to accompany different animations. There are different color palettes, each with its own unique set of sounds. The sounds are aimed to make tapping as melodic as possible; it's like a visual drum pad. 

Patatap is even on display as a special exhibit at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California.

If you need some inspiration on tunes to play, you can check out some sheet music and see what other people have done. 

But there's no way to describe how awesome — and addicting — it is. You just have to try it yourself, which you can below.

(Pro tip: Hit the space bar to change up what the tunes sound like.)

Join the conversation about this story »








Read More...

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Panasonic FZ1000: A Large-Sensor Super Zoom That Shoots 4K Video

Source: http://reframe.gizmodo.com/panasonic-fz1000-a-large-sensor-super-zoom-that-shoots-1588817021/+kcampbelldollaghan

Panasonic FZ1000: A Large-Sensor Super Zoom That Shoots 4K Video

Since Sony released the RX10 last year, there have been exactly zero competitors to rival that camera's stellar lens quality, zoom reach, and sensor size. It redefined what a "bridge camera" could be. Panasonic is the next company to realize the advantage of bringing large sensor image quality to a fixed long range zoom.

Read more...

Read More...

Facebook Is Now Using Your Browsing History to Target Advertising

Source: http://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-now-sharing-your-browsing-history-with-adve-1589809318

Facebook Is Now Using Your Browsing History to Target Advertising

Facebook has announced that it's to start using app and website data from your browsing habits to provide more targeted ads—and you'll have to opt out if you don't like it.

Read more...

Read More...