Lip Reading Technology May End Noisy Phone Calls
Lip Reading Technology May End Noisy Phone Calls
Researchers at the annual CeBIT fair are showing off new technology that could put an end to people talking loudly on their mobile phones.The device could allow users to carry on quiet conversations over the phone with a technology that measures tiny electrical signals produced by muscles that reverberate when someone speaks.
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Steve Ballmer: Microsoft ‘betting our company’ on the cloud
Remarks may signal change in strategy for software giant
Microsoft is still most closely associated with its desktop software (Windows, Office etc), but on Thursday CEO Steve Ballmer said Microsoft was “betting our company” on the cloud. About 70% of Microsoft employees are working on cloud-related projects right now; that figure will reach 90% within a year, he said.
Ballmer’s remarks – made during an address at the University of Washington – may portend a change in mission for the software giant, which for years has talked about a future of software plus web-based services. Contrast that with the tagline Microsoft is now using for its cloud efforts: “We’re all in.”
Some highlights:
• The video cliche: Ballmer starts out by asking what the cloud is and then running a video of random people being asked what the “cloud” is. It’s supposed to be funny.
• The “cloud” has always been a source of tension at Microsoft; Ballmer refers to Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s famous 2006 memo, in which he said that advertising-supported services and software presented a fundamental challenge to the company’s business. Ballmer says that years later “there’s so much unrealized potential.” (Ozzie, by the way, is in the audience).
• Ballmer gives a shout out to Apple’s app store, saying that the company has done “a very nice job” with it.
• He notes privacy issues that emerge as people move online. There was a big “internal debate” at Microsoft when it launched the most recent version of Internet Explorer with an “in-private browsing” mode.
• The opportunity for progress in search: When Ballmer searches to buy flowers online, he doesn’t want to see a bunch of blue links and instead wants to immediately see where he can buy them. Also notes that when he was trying to research the U.S. healthcare debate in order to determine what society was spending (presumably on healthcare?) it wasn’t easy.
• The future of social and professional interactions? “The day we all agree that virtual interaction through the cloud is as good as being here”.
• Ballmer talks about the new version of Office – coming to market in June – and how it will run online as an area of “important work” at the company.
• Sure browsers are important, but Ballmer says that the “devices you use to access do matter; the cloud wants smarter devices.” The previous version of Windows Mobile, for instance, was designed for “voice and the legacy world.” By contrast, Windows Phone 7 Series is designed for the cloud.
• “The cloud fuels Microsoft and Microsoft fuels the cloud.” Says 70% of employees are doing something cloud-based or cloud-inspired. That will go up to 90% in a year. “We’re all in,” he says. “This is the bet for our company.”
• Is this a change in strategy for Microsoft, which has now launched a ‘Cloud’ website? For several years now, Microsoft has said it believes in a future of “software plus services” but Ballmer hasn’t mentioned that once.
• Ballmer is asked by a student whether Microsoft is being reactive. He responds, “All companies have their mix of proactive and reactive muscle; I’m keen on increasing hit rate in terms of early and often.” Yes, Microsoft is following Google in search, but he also says that Google itself wasn’t first to that market.
Related stories
Microsoft’s Ozzie On His Company’s Web Strategy
Microsoft’s Personal Reboot: Web-Centric, But Beyond “The Cloud”
View full post on Technology: Technology blog | guardian.co.uk
Google executive: ‘Desktops will be irrelevant in three years’
Google’s prediction jumps on an obvious trend – but the implications betray the company’s growing hubris
It’s likely that you don’t know a lot about John Herlihy, the head of global advertising operations for Google. He’s not a publicly-recognised figure in the same way as Eric Schmidt, Larry Page or Sergey Brin, and – like many vice-presidents at big corporations – he doesn’t get a great deal of time in the limelight.
But he is certainly basking in it today, after a series of comments – reported by Silicon Republic – caused a stir around the web.
“In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant,” he told an audience at University College Dublin. “In Japan, most research is done today on smartphones, not PCs.”
“Mobile makes the world’s information universally accessible. Because there’s information and because it will be hard to sift through it all, that’s why search will become more and more important. This will create new opportunities for new entrepreneurs to create new business models – ubiquity first, revenue later.”
Various camps reacted in a mixture of ways. Desktops? Irrelevant? What? What does this tell us about Google? What does it tell us about the future? What, oh, what does it all mean?
The truth is, he’s right.
It’s been obvious for a very long time that the traditional desktop computer is going to become an artifact of history, at least outside offices and hardcore nerds. Laptops and netbooks have become much more important parts of the computer market, and the volume of powerful mobile phones continues to rocket. The writing has been on the wall for desktop PCs for a long time.
Three years may be pushing it, but in fact, this development is so obvious that stating it in such fist-pumping terms borders on the inane. It’s as if he stood yelling “Communism is a bankrupt philosophy!” a decade after the Berlin Wall fell.
Perhaps I’m being a little harsh – but the point stands.
Despite that, though, there are other interesting twists in what he said that are worth examining more closely.
First off, there’s the fact that he’s toeing the party line. In many ways, Herlihy was echoing the comments made by Eric Schmidt at Mobile World Congress a couple of weeks ago, when he said the company was moving to a “mobile first” strategy.
“Culturally it is time to figure out a way to say yes to the emergent
new services and ideas that will not come from Google but from those
literally millions of companies and programming shops that will be
built on this new platform,” he said.
“Now is the time for all of us to get behind it. What I would suggest
to you here, right now, at Mobile World Congress is to understand that
the new rule is ‘mobile first’; mobile first in everything.. it’s time for us to make mobile first the right answer.”
So what we’re hearing is the mobile drumbeat from Google. They want us – and their rivals – to know that they’re serious.
Secondly, there’s the fact that this mobile drumbeat conflicts with everything that Google is doing in the PC business. If the desktop is irrelevant, what does that mean for its Chrome operating system? For its web browser? For all the people relying on its desktop business?
Google doesn’t have a great track record of keeping products alive once they’re outside of its target area… so should the users – and developers – attached to those systems be worried?
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, there’s a level of hubris in all this that leaves me more than a little concerned.
The implication of Herlihy’s words is not simply that there will be “new opportunities for new entrepreneurs”. The coded message is that there will be new opportunities for Google. And with $24bn in the bank and an acquisitive hunger that seems insatiable, you wouldn’t bet against them trying to dominate these new markets just as they do search.
Indeed, Herlihy also said that Google’s culture is based on “relentless brutality and execution” – the kind of warning to rivals that is not easy to miss (it’s worth reading our extract from Ken Auletta’s book on Google for more insight here, too).
Thanks to the European commission and the US regulators, we’re already seeing a few chickens starting to look at their watches and think about heading home.
When you’ve grown up in a culture of “don’t be evil”, it’s easy to see everything you do in a positive light. But if you’re in Google’s path, the conflict between these two images – a quirky web business and a relentless machine – is hard to overcome. Perhaps Steve Ballmer wasn’t so out of step earlier this week when he said Google’s success was largely the product of incumbency, not culture.
Ballmer’s probably in a better place to judge, since he will recognise the attitude of making sweeping pronouncements about the future while simultaneously intimating that you are that future – because it’s precisely what his company did while it watched its in-built advantages slip away. To me, Google’s language today sounds eerily reminiscent of Microsoft at its peak.
So, there’s little doubt in my mind that desktops will be irrelevant sooner rather than later. But the bigger question is whether Google making that sort of statement sounds like the dawn of an empire, or the end of one?
View full post on Technology: Technology blog | guardian.co.uk
Tech Trends – Vogue.TV
Trend Watch: The latest gadgets that fuse the worlds of technology, art, design and functionality. Visit www.Vogue.TV to watch the newest episodes.
Best Concept Cars
The most beautifull concept cars in the moment
A car that runs 200 miles on compressed air.
Europe and the rest of the world are developing new technologies that will give them the economic edge in technology and products, as America unthinkingly erodes into a third world nation as our politicians who are beholden to fossil fuel companies, legislate for them to make billions of dollars. A car that runs on compressed air (that should be an American idea and benefit America’s economy), is a French invention that orchestrates old technologies into a new chassis. Behold this newsworthy clip (that is not ready for US corporate controlled prime time news or even political debate) edited from HD Theater, “The Future Car: Fuel”. Just another example of how corporations who control our legislative and executive branches of government are misallocating our resources, treasury and wealth, to insure their short term wealth and global domination, as we deteriorate economically and do nothing to preserve our economic leadership. What is America doing with its “talents” (see Matthew 25:14-25:39)?
Renault – 4 Electric concept cars Zero Emission
Renault Twizy ZE Concept, Renault Zoe ZE Concept, Renault Fluence ZE Concept & Renault Kangoo ZE Concept in one video !
Revolutionary New Discoveries about Water! part 1 of 12
Amazing new discoveries about the properties of water could revolutionize our world! Filmmaker and mystic ecologist David Sereda discussed some of the amazing properties of water– it may actually have memory and consciousness, he said. Human beings are mostly made up of water and he suggested that restructured water could have healing properties on their bodies. Following up on the groundbreaking work of Masaru Emoto, Sereda exposed water to the sounds of the sun, and the water crystals changed to a beatific shape. A subject drank restructured water and their blood cells showed a healthy response, and prayer/intention directed at water can beneficially alter its structure, he detailed. Such water must be drank right away as the restructuring may be temporary, he added. Could water itself be a kind of memory system, actually containing the Akashic Records?, Sereda pondered. He noted in addition to healing, structured water could potentially be useful in exploring nuclear fusion, reclaiming polluted areas, and developing “super sensors”– instantaneous signals that can be sent out into the galaxy.
Concept Cars 1
50 concept car shots in 4 minutes. #1. For design research. Creative Commons photos. Music: Some Chakra. (Concept Cars 4 is probably the easiest of these slide shows to use. Side views. No zoom and pan. Labels.)
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