Tech Talk

Fulton Innovation, manufacturer of eCoupled wireless chargers, demonstrated at CES this week what it hopes will be a feature of the next generation of wireless power products—two-way wireless power. The company plans to introduce this technology to the Wireless Power Consortium, the group that developed the wireless power standard Qi, for inclusion in its next update. 

Given that people tend to carry multiple mobile devices, two way charging, the company says, will let people easily share power between devices rather than worrying about making sure they are all fully charged. For example, say a pad computer’s battery is almost out of power, but the user wants to catch the ending of a movie before shutting it off; he might decide to pull a little power from a mobile phone. Alternatively, a laptop or pad computer could act as a backup power source for a smartphone.

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First, in the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I'm a bit of a Nolan Bushnell fangirl. I met him 30 years ago while writing an article about the birth of video games (he started the whole thing with Atari), and have followed his entrepreneurial adventures (Chuck E. Cheese, Etak, Androbot, and others) ever since. So I couldn’t miss a chance to hear him speak at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

As an electrical engineer, Bushnell has developed a lot of technology and started many companies during his career—some successful and some not. But he’s always passionate, and always focused on technology in pursuit of fun.

These days, Bushnell is focused on completely changing the way kids are educated. It's bold mission, but given that he's already decidedly changed the way kids play, I wouldn’t put it past him.

Bushnell thinks that schools are teaching the wrong things in the wrong way. He says using the power of computers, software, and data analysis, we can teach four years of academics in six months, and spend the rest of the time developing creativity in children through project-based learning. And he’s started a company, BrainRush, to build the software to do this. “Think of it,” he says, “as Wikipedia meets Zynga”

Bushnell says BrainRush’s software will be able to adapt to children in the same way videogames do, by keeping people operating at the edge of their ability, and “leveling up” the minute it starts getting too easy. “Games keep adapting to your skill set and keep you on that edge,” he says, “that’s why video games are so addictive.” He thinks he can make learning just as addictive.

Today Bushnell announced that he will also use tools developed by BrainRush to study learning, starting a nonprofit, BrainRush Labs, to do so. BrainRush Labs will do research on the factors that affect learning, he says. For example, the effect of what a student ate for breakfast. “There are  a lot of opinions and no data. It’s the sloppiest science alive.” BrainRush’s software will measure rates of learning, so will be enable researchers to study the impacts of nutrition, exercise, sleep, and other factors.

“In a year, we are going to know more about learning than we have any time before,” Bushnell promised. In a year we’ll check back with him and find out.

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DNA is a linear information storage medium, like a magnetic tape, but written with a very limited character set—just A, C, G, and T.

Here’s how we read that tape today: we dub a copy of the tape, stop at some point when we reach the character A, cut the tape there, and toss the fragment into the A bin. Then we make another copy, stopping at some point on another A, snip the new copy short, and toss that fragment into the bin. We repeat this millions of times, and then start over again for C. And again for G and T. When we’re done, we measure lengths of all of the millions of A fragments, C fragments, G fragments, and T fragments and then use a computer to sort them by length and tell us where in the sequence we encountered all of the As, Cs, Gs, and Ts. What could go wrong?

It would obviously be much quicker, cheaper, and more reliable if we had a DNA-read-head, a device we could just run the DNA-tape over to detect the sequence directly, in a single pass.  Back in 1995, George Church and colleagues figured out one approach: it might be possible to use a low intensity electric current to pull long strands of DNA through nanometer-scale pores in a membrane and measure the electric field variations of the four nucleic acids—A, C, G, T—as they passed through.

Scientists are working on it, but we’re not there yet. Key questions remain unanswered. One of them is fundamental: How does DNA move through a pore? Does it slide through end-on? Or does the pore grab it somewhere in between, bend it double, and suck it through doubled over (like a strand of spaghetti slurped up from the middle). Every cell in your body, after all, carries about two or three meters of DNA. Even a mere fragment of 50,000 base pairs is about 16.5 micrometers long—thousands of times the diameter of a nanopore. If mere chance determines the orientation, one would expect that almost all DNA should pass through a nanopore doubled over.

Fortunately for the future of bedside genomics, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Researchers at Brown University have developed an elegant method for determining exactly how a DNA molecules passes through a nanopore. They can see if it slips through end-on or goes through doubled over…and, if it does double over, they can tell where along its length it folds.

Physicists Mirna Mihovilovic, Nick Hagerty, and Derek Stein followed the travels of about 1100 pieces of double-stranded DNA  (for aficionados, they were 48,502 base-pair segments of bacteriophage lambda, measuring about 16.5 micrometers in length) as they slithered through an 8-nanometer-diameter pore in a 20-nm-thick silicon nitride membrane, urged along by a 3.6 nanoampere current. They measured the current flowing through the pore 50,000 times a second, and found it dropped when passing DNA partially blocked the pore. The interruptions lasted only a couple of milliseconds, and the magnitude of the current reduction was proportional to the cross-section of DNA blocking the pore—which is to say that the current dropped about 0.28 nanoamperes when there was a single strand in the pore, and about 0.56 nA when the DNA passed through “sideways.” Thus, the current profile revealed the DNA’s orientation: the relative durations of the double-strand and single-strand current reductions showed just where the molecule had folded. (So a 3-millisecond drop of 0.28 nA might indicate that the DNA had speared straight through the pore, while a 1.5-millisecond drop of 0.56 nA indicated a fold exactly in the middle. The diagram at right makes it clearer: ECD stands for “event charge deficit,” the current drop integrated over time, which remains approximately constant for each DNA passage.)

The researchers found that DNA passes through the pore smoothly, end-on, about 25% of the time—far more than most current models would predict. This surprisingly high proportion—indicating, they say that the orientation is a function of “the configurational entropy of the approaching polymer”—bodes well for developing a nanopore-based DNA direct reader.

Figures: Derek Stein/Brown University

The last thing I need in my house is another computer; we’ve got plenty to go around. That said, Intel’s demo at its press conference in Las Vegas, today, almost made me want one.

First, let me take you back to New Year’s Day, when my whole family was gathered together in the living room, all in one place at one time, and each person with their noses stuck in a laptop, my husband and sons taking the isolation one step further by wearing their new noise-cancelling headphones. (Whatever my daughter and I were doing didn’t require sound.) The scene was odd enough for me to pull out a camera and snap a picture. (At which point they all looked up, in spite of the headphones, and said, “Mooom, why are you taking a picture?”)

Intel’s vision of home computing includes all those laptops (preferably with Intel Inside) but adds one more computer—an “Adaptive Multi-Touch-All-In-One”computer. Intel demo’d one built by Lenovo that can lie flat on a table, and showed a family playing Monopoly and then a group of Intel employees demonstrated a poker game. Software available for this family-sized tabletop computer will also include dominos, mahjong, and a number of games from Sesame Street. Intel says the gizmo will bring back family game night. I was thinking it would make the coffee table look like one of those table-video-games I used to play PacMan on in a local bar, and to really catch on it’s going to need spilled-drink-proofing. Still, it was nice to contemplate my family gathered around a single screen instead of retreating to the corners of the room with their laptops, though I’m not entirely sure why a Monopoly board or a deck of cards wouldn’t work just as well.

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A few months ago, we all thought we knew the future of television displays. 2013 was going to be the long anticipated year of OLED.

According to TV manufacturers launching new products at CES, this still may be true. Or it may be the year TV screens with 4K resolution—also called Ultra High Definition—capture our attention. Or it may be time for a new technology to take the spotlight. Whatever the future of television is, it is sure to be expensive, at least for a while.

Last year at CES, Samsung and LG promised televisions using Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) technology would hit the market by the end of 2012. That date slipped somewhat, but yesterday at a press conference, LG spokesmen indicated that the manufacturing problems have been resolved and global shipments of LG’s first OLED TVs started this month. It will go on sale in the U.S. come March for $12,000.

In the next breath—or perhaps without stopping for a breath—LG announced that it is also launching 4K televisions this year, built using standard LCD technology. They'll be available in a range of screen sizes, from 55 to 84 inches in diagonal. The format, also called UltraHD, doubles the resolution of today’s HDTV screens.

Samsung, too, seemed to give equal play to its 2013 OLED launch and to UltraHD. Samsung put an original twist on its OLED offerings with a feature the company calls Multiview. With Multiview, Samsung takes advantage of OLED’s fast switching speed to display two different programs to two people in the room—glasses with built-in headphones separate the images and the sound.

Samsung also announced that its new smart televisions will incorporate recommender technology that not only knows what you want to watch, but when you want to watch it. That is, it takes into account that TV watchers have different preferences at different times of day.

Panasonic who last summer announced that they would be working with Sony on OLED, was notably silent about the technology in its pre-CES press conference, but did announce UltraHD televisions. Sony also announced UltraHD models (the 56-inch OLED model is pictured above), and said that it will bring out a 4K media player and distribute 4K programming starting this summer. Sony’s distribution announcement answers a big question about UltraHD—what can you watch on it? Sony also presented a prototype 56-inch OLED TV, but gave no ship date or pricing information.

The future of television got even more interesting yesterday when Sharp Electronics predicted a TV technology future that brings a new technology into the game. Sharp’s new televisions are implementing a new display technology using Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide, or IGZO. IGZO, a Sharp spokesman said, is vastly more energy efficient than current LCD technology, and has a much faster switching speed, important clear action shots and gaming. Sharp announced IGZO displays ranging from 4 to 32 inches in diagonal.

So the future of TV is, well, confusing. But that may be more accurate than the scene here at CES in 2010, when the industry was in complete agreement that 3-D capability was the next must-have feature. Consumers, of course, did not rush out to replace their fairly new high definition TV sets with 3D models, and those who simply needed or wanted a new TV and ended up with the 3D feature don’t use it much, if at all.

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Update: Panasonic later in the week revealed a 56-inch 4K OLED TV, although indicated that this was meant as a technology statement, not a product announcement.

Strolling the aisles of Digital Experience, an event for CES press attendees held last night in Las Vegas, there were lots of shiny, colorful, cute, or sleek objects on the hundred-plus tables, with eager entrepreneurs, designers, and marketers ready to convince me that their product/software/service is the next big thing. A fair number were fairly easy to walk by. But the simple silver cones on one table, however, drew me like a magnet. I loved the industrial design and the name, Transporter, seemed to fit the design. I hoped that whatever the heck this gizmo was made as much sense as its look and name.

Geoff Barrall, Transporter founder, convinced me that it did. The Transporter is essentially a cloud in a cone; pop it somewhere it can connect to the Internet (preferably in a different building than your computer) and it acts as offsite backup or file sharing device, requiring no setup or computer connection. Barrall first envisioned his customers as lawyers and other professionals who don’t want to entrust confidential information to a commercial cloud, but at $200 for a bring-your-own-drive version or $300 for a 1terabyte version, sees the product catching on with consumers who want off-cloud storage, or to share files within a small group.

Barrall said his campaign on Kickstarter, the micro funding service, hit 200 percent of its milestone yesterday, and the company will start shipping Transporters by the end of the month.

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Each year the consumer electronics industry coins a few new words to describe the next big thing. Some catch on (smartphone), some don’t (remember “convergence?” It was supplanted by smartTV.) As some 150,000 members and watchers of the consumer electronics industry gather in Las Vegas this week, they share new buzzwords as easily as they share flu germs. I’d heard of ultra before (as in UltraHD, the TV format formerly known as 4K). But the rest of these were new to me:

Second-screen devices: You think of your smartphone or pad computer as, well, a smartphone or pad computer. To the TV industry, they are something entirely different. They are second-screen devices, to be used while watching your TV, or to control your TV. These are also being called companion devices, but that makes them sound like guide dogs; I think second-screen will be the buzzword that catches on.

Superphone: Smart phones are, well, not that smart. Or not as smart as the next generation of smart phones will be—that’s why they’re being called superphones. I’m still trying to find out what exactly makes a smart phone earn the super title.

Linear content: What is linear content? It’s the opposite of streaming content. I think.

I’ll be updating this post with new consumer electronics buzzwords as they buzz by me.

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Last year at CES, I was wow'd by a coating technology, offered by several companies, that invisibly waterproofs electronics.

Yesterday, I caught up with Liquipel’s Alex Hill to see how the technology was doing in the market, and whether or not Liquipel had sorted out possible warranty issues. (That is, would coating devices void their warranties?) Hill reported that Liquipel has completely reformulated its technology since last year, and said that the company hasn’t had any warranty issues, but is just happening to offer its own device warranties as part of its service. The company has yet to announce any deals with major manufacturers, but reports that it has waterproofed tens of thousands devices and is coating “several hundred” more daily in its Santa Ana, Calif., facility, and has licensed the technology to companies in Australia, Hong Kong, and Malaysia.

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Consumer electronics companies have envisioned the connected home for years. I’ll say up front, I’m not entirely sure I want all my appliances to talk to each other. I’m also not sure I want to be able to start a load of laundry from a smart phone when I’m not at home—should I really be thinking quite so often about laundry?

That said, I perked up when LG announced its new line of connected appliances at a press conference held in advance CES. That’s because LG’s chattering appliances are not going to be jamming up the home WiFi network as they discuss what’s in the refrigerator or the oven, instead they’ll be using near-field communications, or NFC. This communications technology is commonly used for payments in many places outside the U.S. Those of us in the U.S. are not quite so familiar with it, though it is built into some smart phones (but not iPhones...yet). LG envisions smart phones as the ultimate remote control for the smart home.

Other smart house companies are also embracing NFC. Allure Energy introduced a new generation of its home management system, EverSense 2.0, that uses NFC to spot where people (or at least their phones) are in the house, and adjusts thermostats and lighting accordingly.

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When I first saw the UrbanHello phone, last night at the Consumer Electronics Show, I laughed. A speakerphone for landline phones? The landline phone system is going away. Then I realized what it was—a product at the leading edge of the very telephony revolution IEEE Spectrum had just done a story about.

A few weeks ago we published an interview about the end of the public phone network—this is the idea that the circuit-switched network is going away, in favor of end-to-end packet-switching. And just like the transition from analog to digital television brought us HD TV, the big benefit to moving from analog telephony to digital would be HD telephony. UrbanHello is the first HD phone I’ve seen, one of the first ever.

The phone is basically a cordless handset that can communicate with any base station that adheres to the DECT-GAP standard. If the base station is part of a home’s analog (PSTN) phone network, it just works as another handset. If the base station is digital, however, and uses the emerging CAT-iq standard, then the UrbanHello unit will make an HD-quality call. The phone's keypad is cleverly hidden in the base.

The handset broadcasts the call out loud on its speaker, and frankly, sounded pretty good even in the terrible audio conditions of CES—a room packed with exhibitors and press. In a living room, using HD, it would be a huge step up from the lousy speakerphone systems we use today. UrbanHello won a CES 2013 “Innovations Award,”  and, of course, it’s a Kickstarter project.

Our interview last month made the point that HD has faced a chicken-and-egg problem: Why build products, when the networks aren’t all-IP, and why switch the networks over to IP, when there’s no obvious benefit to end-users. HD voice can’t come soon enough. It’s good to see someone getting the ball rolling.

Image credit: UrbanHello