The maker of the BlackBerry said Friday that it wants U.S. and Canadian regulators to investigate a “false and misleading” report by a financial analyst that claims the company’s new smartphone is being returned in unusually high numbers. Thorsten Heins, the CEO of Research In Motion Ltd., said returns of the new BlackBerry Z10 are […]
Artificial intelligence
Kickstarter of the Week: Portable Mini Detector Tests Radiation Anywhere
Creators of APOC demonstrate the power of in-house engineering projects The amount of radioactive things we encounter in our everyday lives is quite astonishing. It can be found in everything from rocks to ceramic kitchenware and even food. In some parts of the world, radiation can be exceedingly rampant. So, who wouldn’t want their very […]
Bitcoin Bursts: Hacker Currency Gets Wild Ride
It’s a promising form of electronic cash free from central bankers and beloved by hackers. It — Bitcoin — may also be in trouble, registering catastrophic losses that have sent speculators scrambling. Although the cybercurrency has existed for years as a kind of Internet oddity, a perfect storm of developments have brought it to the […]
Coding Boot Camps Promise to Launch Tech Careers
Looking for a career change, Ken Shimizu decided he wanted to be a software developer, but he didn’t want to go back to college to study computer science. Instead, he quit his job and spent his savings to enroll at Dev Bootcamp, a new San Francisco school that teaches students how to write software in […]
Paint By Slumbers
High-tech beds are outfitted with sensors to turn sleep patterns into unique works of art. Last year, the Ibis hotel in Paris kicked off a unique project in collaboration with Swedish production company ACNE, the BETC ad agency in Paris, and ABB France’s Robotics division. Ibis launched the Sleep Art Project as part of an […]
Toilet App Brings Relief to Those Caught Short in Shanghai
April 8 – Technology is bringing relief to smartphone users who need to answer the call of nature in Shanghai, a bustling city of 23 million. Despite being a tourist magnet, Shanghai is lacking in public toilet facilities, although a new app designed by a local company is now addressing the occasionally urgent problem. Elly […]
SpaceTop, CHI 2013
SpaceTop fuses 2D and spatial 3D interactions in a single desktop workspace. It extends the traditional desktop interface with interaction technology and visualization techniques that enable seamless transitions between 2D and 3D manipulations. SpaceTop allows users to type, click, draw in 2D, and directly manipulate interface elements that float in the 3D space above the […]
Heck Yeah! The Emerging Everyday Engineer
Graphic artist, electronics hacker, and pinball enthusiast, Ben Heck has made a mark in both the maker community and the world of hackable engineering. Armed with geeky humor, an array of hardware from element14, and his trusty red tweezers (the same pair for 20+ years), this maker-community hero spends each week hacking, modding, and redesigning […]
Advancing Secure Communications
In a development that could make the advanced form of secure communications known as quantum cryptography more practical, University of Michigan researchers have demonstrated a simpler, more efficient single-photon emitter that can be made using traditional semiconductor processing techniques. Single-photon emitters release one particle of light, or photon, at a time, as opposed to devices […]
Health Awareness Spurs Quadrupling in MEMS Sensor Market
From smart wristwatches that record heart rates, to intelligent armbands that track physical activities, wearable electronics and fitness monitoring devices are attracting increased attention from health-conscious consumers, causing shipments of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) sensors used in these products to more than quadruple in just five years. Starting with a stable base in the $20.0 million […]