Samsung camera sensor captures image and depth information with a single piece of silicon

3d scanners in phones soon. You should also be able to capture body motion and gestures... Shh now, little phone. 

The Verge - All Posts
Samsung CMOS RGB and Range Camera Sensor

By using an RGB camera in tandem with a depth sensor, Microsoft's Kinect has opened up a world of interactive possibilities, and now Samsung has announced a new camera sensor that melds the two elements into one. The CMOS sensor utilizes rows of depth-sensing z-pixels alternating with a traditional RGB array, allowing the sensor to capture both sets of information simultaneously. The sensor outputs a resolution of 1,920 x 720 on the image side — 1.38-megapixels — while the z-pixels are four times the size of their image-sensing counterparts, providing a depth image with a resolution of 480 x 360. Given that the z-pixels take up physical space on the sensor itself, image-processing software interpolates the values for the missing values. 

Find: Forking the code: how GitHub is changing software development

About the impact of github. 

The Verge - All Posts
Programming bookshelf (1020)

The web-based software hosting service GitHub is everywhere lately, hosting over 2 million source code repositories being visited by 1.3 million users. Wired has a great look at the origins of the company — and the service itself — starting with the very beginnings of the Linus Torvalds-created Git version control software in 2005. What GitHub has excelled in doing is providing access and opportunity to programmers from around the world, giving them the chance to tinker with code that they may not have otherwise had the chance to touch, and then share their changes with a broad community of participants. It's a marked shift from the way software development had often been approached, with only a select few given permission to commit...

Find: Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview event videos now available online

The Verge - All Posts
Windows 8 Consumer Preview Event Steven Sinofsky

Microsoft covered a lot of ground this morning, giving us a look at the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, the new OS running on ARM tablets, and the Windows Store. If you've read our live coverage and hands-on articles and still want more, you're in luck: Redmond has posted videos of the event on its website for streaming or download. Head on over here to see it all for yourself.

Find: The Verge Interview: Stephen Elop 'more confident than ever' about Windows Phone

I also think things are still looking promising for wp7. 

The Verge - All Posts
verge interview stephen elop_640

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is on hand at MWC this week to help spread the company's message to business partners, carriers, and the press. Ever gregarious and approachable, Elop gave us a few minutes of his time today to discuss the first year of Nokia's transition, which got started with the announcement of a strategic alliance with Microsoft in February 2011. He was candid about the downsides of this fundamental change in strategy, noting the number of jobs Nokia has had to cut in an effort to streamline operations.

Today, Nokia remains very much in the middle of its transition, says Elop, but a lot has been accomplished in those short twelve months. His present assessment of the decision to move to Windows Phone is no less sanguine than...

Find: Official: Apple iPad 3 event slated for March 7th in San Francisco

Here it comes. This is a furious pace. 

Ben. 

The Verge - All Posts
ipad 3 crop

Yes, it's finally, really happened. We just received our invite for Apple's next big event — almost certainly where the announcement of the iPad 3 (or iPad HD, or some other name no one has guessed yet) will take place. The event is being held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco at 10AM PST, on Wednesday, March 7th, and the Verge team will be there covering the news live as it happens. Until then, let your imagination run wild about the next iteration of the world's most popular tablet!

As you can see in the image above, that's no regular iPad display. It appears to be a higher resolution than the iPad or iPad 2. Also, the casing of the product pictured looks darker than current iPad models. It's hard to say if...

Find: Samsung Galaxy Beam hands-on

Projector in a phone, 15 lumens. A dim projector is around 1000 lumens....
The Verge - All Posts
Gallery Photo: Samsung Galaxy Beam closer hands-on
We've just had a chance to check out Samsung's Galaxy Beam here in Barcelona, a phone that's not very interesting at first blush — Android 2.3, 4-inch WVGA display, and a 1GHz dual-core processor — but the hook here is the presence of a built-in TI DLP nHD (640 x 360) projector at 15 lumens of brightness. Samsung says that at 12.5mm, the Beam "isn't any thicker than any other phone in the world" — clearly that's not true, thanks in no small part to Samsung's own devices like the Galaxy S II, but this is easily the thinnest retail-ready projector phone we've played with. That thickness also permits a 2,000mAh battery, which is big for an ordinary 4-inch device without LTE support... but add in a projector, and it's another story....

Find: The Verge Interview: Kieron-Scott Woodhouse, Head Designer at ADzero

Wood phones. 

The Verge - All Posts
Gallery Photo: ADzero Bamboo Phone interview gallery

Last week we sat down for a chat with Kieron-Scott Woodhouse, the designer behind the ADzero bamboo phone. Still an undergraduate at Middlesex University, Woodhouse tells us how he managed to get noticed, how it feels to see his work nearing production, the designers that influence him, and why he chose bamboo.

We also got a chance to see prototypes of the ADzero in both bamboo and rosewood — it's striking how well the natural materials work, with the design comfortable to hold and the woods feeling warm and soft to the touch. The handset development is well underway, and with the finished product expected to be available within the year, we're looking forward to seeing Woodhouse's take on how Android should look and feel.

Find: Nokia launches 808 PureView with 41MP camera

New top of line cam supersamples for great quality from 41 to 5 megapixels. But Symbian? 

The Verge - All Posts
Gallery Photo:

It's rare that we have to put news about a smartphone in our photography hub, but that's just what Nokia has merited today with the introduction of the PureView 808. The headline spec is that the brand new camera sensor inside it is composed of 41 million pixels, however as you might have surmised, this handset doesn't take full 41-megapixel stills. Instead, it oversamples — taking the image data from seven neighboring pixels and consolidating it into one pixel's worth — and generates pictures roughly 5 megapixels in size. That's still plenty of dots for most uses, and the image quality you can obtain from such a system is frankly ridiculous. Nokia showed me poster-sized samples captured with the 808 PureView (printed entirely...

Find: Asus Transformer Pad Infinity 700 series and Transformer Pad 300 series announced

Mobile world congress flood begins: new top of line tab with hd res and cortex a15  chip. 

The Verge - All Posts
asus

In addition to renaming their Transformer lineup — it's "Transformer Pad" now, not "eee Pad Transformer" — Asus has announced the new Transformer Pad Infinity 700 series. It's claiming to be the first full HD LTE tablet, and is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 SoC, its first ARM Cortex A15 class CPU. The device retains the tablet/keyboard combo of previous generations, but has upped the display to an impressive 1920 x 1200 Super IPS panel. Alongside this, the Infinity 700 series pairs an 8-megapixel rear camera that can shoot at up to f/2.2 with a 2-megapixel webcam on the face of the device, packing all of this hardware into a case just 8.5mm thick.

Additionally, Asus has also announced the Asus Transformer Pad 300 series....

Find: Andy Rubin: 850k Android activations a day, 300m total devices, 12m tablets

The Verge - All Posts
Vrg_7603_large

Google is now activating 850 thousand Android devices a day, bringing the platform to some 300 million total devices — including 12 million tablets. That's according to Andy Rubin, who clarified the numbers in a meeting with reporters earlier today: he said that Google only counts activations once per device ID and doesn't "chop things up" when users reset or sell their phones. Devices like the Kindle Fire that don't include Google services aren't included in the numbers — Rubin said that Samsung's larger Galaxy Tabs are the most popular tablets counted. As far as apps, Rubin noted that there are now some 450 thousand apps in Android Market, up from 160 thousand a year ago.

Rubin also said that Nexus devices aren't huge sellers, but...

Find: Google to 'double down' on Android tablets in 2012, says Andy Rubin

Andy rubin: android tabs will get there. But doesn't plan on anything special. Last year android tabs about 20% of total market. 

The Verge - All Posts
Gallery Photo: Eee Pad Transformer Prime ICS update photos

It's no secret that Android tablet sales have lagged far behind Apple's iPad, and Google's planning to do something about it. In a meeting with reporters today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Android chief Andy Rubin called the 12 million Android tablets sold thus far "not insignificant, but less than I'd expect it to be if you really want to win," and said that "2012 is going to be the year that we double down and make sure we're winning in that space."

Rubin said that the biggest problem for Android on tablets is "there's no organized way for consumers to recognize it as a viable platform," and that Google wants consumers to see its tablets as part of the broader Android ecosystem. "The educated consumer realizes it now that..

Find: Nokia's Stefan Pannenbecker on design: 'thinness isn't everything'

Industrial design head at Nokia. 

The Verge - All Posts
Stefan Pannenbecker, Nokia_1020

Stefan Pannenbecker is the Vice President for Industrial Design at Nokia, where his job consists mostly of trying out a variety of crazy new ideas in search of the one or two that would help Nokia maintain its edge in design. The company's fiercely loyal fanbase has grown at least in part due to some iconic designs (remember the 8110?) and a consistently excellent build quality in its phones. Those are the hardware design department's chief competencies and the things Pannenbecker has been entrusted to maintain. Keep reading for our full interview below, including a guest visit from Kevin Shields, who just wanted to tell us that everything at Nokia is presently, has always been, and will forever continue to be awesome.

Find: AT&T making plans to let mobile app developers pay users' data fees

You can make data with your app free. 

The Verge - All Posts
Gallery Photo: Samsung Galaxy Note for AT&T hands-on photos

AT&T is apparently planning a new system that would shift the charges for data use from subscribers to app developers. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, AT&T network and technology head John Donovan said that the company is looking to create a form of "toll-free calling" for mobile apps in which companies would pay for users' data charges on a specific application.

"A feature that we're hoping to have out sometime next year is the equivalent of 800 numbers that would say, if you take this app, this app will come without any network usage," said Donovan, suggesting that companies would want to pay for usage in order to entice users to make in-app media purchases without worrying about the mobile equivalent of shipping fees....

Fnd: Windows Phone Tango: improved MMS, voice notes, app restrictions

The Verge - All Posts
Gallery Photo: Windows Phone Tango hands-on pictures

Microsoft announced today that it will bring a Windows Phone 7.5 update to existing handsets in April. Codenamed Tango, the update lowers Microsoft's minimum specification for Windows Phone and introduces some new features to existing devices. We got an early hands-on look at several builds of Windows Phone today, all of which include new MMS features and several restrictions for devices with 256MB of RAM.

Microsoft is removing background agents with Windows Phone Tango if a device has 256MB of RAM, meaning certain background tasks will not work. Microsoft believes around 95 percent of existing applications will work fine on 256MB of RAM, but the company is encouraging developers to test their applications and is undergoing a testing...

Find: ASUS Reveals Padfone Specifications

Phone docks to tab docks to keyboard. 

AnandTech

ASUS has been talking about its Padfone product for quite a while now but we're finally getting some more detailed specs on it. As a recap, Padfone is a smartphone that can dock into a tablet, which can then dock onto a keyboard to build a ultraportable netbook/notebook.

The Padfone itself is based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4, although it's not clear what S4 model number is being used. The MSM8960 would obviously make sense, but since ASUS isn't listing LTE connectivity as a feature it could easily be the MSM8260A. The 4.3-inch display features a qHD resolution, although when docked into the Padfone station you get a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 IPS panel driven by the phone.

Find: Adobe lays out the future for Flash: a platform for the next 5-10 years

No flash on mobiles. On desktops, just games and copyrighted movies. Games on desktops are stagnant, that leaves only movies, and alternatives are coming for those. Flash's future looks grim. 

Ars Technica

Adobe has published its roadmap for its Flash browser plugin and its AIR desktop application counterpart. More releases, more features, and more performance, are all planned, but on fewer platforms: Adobe is giving up entirely on supporting smartphone browsers, sticking to the core desktop platforms for its plugin—and with a big question mark when it comes to Windows 8.

The company sees Flash as having two main markets that will resist the onslaught of HTML5: game development, and premium (read: encrypted) video. To that end, the features it has planned for future updates focus on making Flash faster, with greater hardware acceleration and improved script performance, and more application-like, with keyboard input in full-screen applications, and support for middle- and right-mouse buttons.

Find: T-Mobile takes $3 billion AT&T breakup fee, builds 4G-LTE network

Beginning to look like the us government was right to block the AT&T/tmobile merger. Certainly lte is a minimum for tmobile survival, now they can afford it. 

Ars Technica

When AT&T finally admitted defeat in its bid to purchase T-Mobile USA, the company said the failure of the acquisition would harm customers and stifle "needed investment."

But things haven't quite worked out that way. While AT&T panned T-Mobile's prospects as an independent carrier in a world moving from 3G to 4G speeds, T-Mobile is now using the breakup fee it received from AT&T to build a new LTE network. T-Mobile announced on Thursday a "$4 billion network modernization and 4G evolution effort, which will improve existing voice and data coverage and pave the way for long term evolution (LTE) service in 2013." T-Mobile expects to cover "the vast majority of the top 50 markets."

When the T-Mobile/AT&T merger fell through as a result of opposition from the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission, it was announced that T-Mobile would receive a $3 billion breakup fee from AT&T, which is surely helping to fuel the company's network modernization effort. The $4 billion investment figure touted by T-Mobile includes $1.4 billion in "incremental network investment" over the next two years. While it seems AT&T's prediction about stifling of needed investments hasn't come to pass, T-Mobile still faces a difficult road.

T-Mobile (which is also trying to block Verizon Wireless's planned purchase of additional spectrum) lost 800,000 customers in the most recent quarter, and is "the last of the four major US operators" to hop on the LTE bandwagon, Ovum Chief Telecom Analyst Jan Dawson said in a statement. "T-Mobile will be late to the LTE party, and its coverage will lag its major competitors for some time. Marketing the service will be tough when it has spent the last several years convincing its customers it is already offering 4G."

Find: If Android is a "stolen product," then so was the iPhone

Great history of touch technologies: as usual, it shows apple isn't the great innovator so much as the great synthesizer. And you know what? That's still pretty great. 

Ars Technica

According to his official biographer, Steve Jobs went ballistic in January 2010 when he saw HTC's newest Android phones. "I want you to stop using our ideas in Android," Jobs reportedly told Eric Schmidt, then Google's CEO. Schmidt had already been forced to resign from Apple's board, partly due to increased smartphone competition between the two companies. Jobs then vowed to "spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank to right this wrong."

Jobs called Android a "stolen product," but theft can be a tricky concept when talking about innovation. The iPhone didn't emerge fully formed from Jobs's head. Rather, it represented the culmination of incremental innovation over decades—much of which occurred outside of Cupertino.

Find: Nokia becomes the biggest Windows Phone manufacturer in just one quarter

Wp7 is growing, but probably not as fast as android or iOS. 

Ars Technica

Nokia has surpassed HTC and Samsung to become the largest single manufacturer of Windows Phone handsets, according to market research firm Strategy Analytics. In spite of the fact that Nokia's Lumia lineup was not available throughout the fourth quarter, Strategy Analytics claims that it has taken 33 percent of all Windows Phone sales.

The company also claims that the Windows Phone OS grew by 36 percent over its third quarter performance, with total sales of 2.7 million handsets.

If these numbers are accurate—official figures from Microsoft and Nokia are still lacking—they should be modestly encouraging for the Finnish firm: the Windows Phone market is growing, and Nokia's handsets seem to be desirable.

With new models and new markets likely to be announced at next weeks's Mobile World Congress, Nokia looks well-placed to both expand its slice of the Windows Phone pie, and make the pie itself bigger.

Find: LG reportedly building first Boot2Gecko phone as Mozilla preps app store

A new entry into the mobile os sweepstakes sounds a lot like chrome os. Makes me think the reported convergence of chrome os and android may be real. 

Ars Technica

Mozilla's Web-centric Boot2Gecko (B2G) mobile platform is maturing at a rapid pace. As we reported earlier this month, the operating system has already attracted hardware partners and will be demoed at the upcoming Mobile World Congress event. Mozilla is also planning to unveil its new application storefront, called the Mozilla Marketplace, which will allow third-party developers to sell applications that are built with standards-based Web technologies.

A new report from ExtremeTech cites anonymous sources who say that LG is one of Mozilla's hardware partners. The company is said to be working towards the launch of a developer-focused smartphone that will ship with an early version of the B2G operating system.

Job: SmartOnline - Hiring IOS and android grads

Image001

Folks,

A job opportunity in Durham.

Best,

Ben

Benjamin Watson
Director, Design Graphics Lab | Associate Professor, Computer Science, NC State Univ.
919-513-0325 | designgraphics.ncsu.edu | @dgllab


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Steve Brady <steve.brady@smartonline.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 10:44 AM
Subject: Re: SmartOnline - Hiring IOS and android grads
To: bwatson@ncsu.edu
Cc: Bob Dieterle <bob.dieterle@smartonline.com>, kimberly.allen@smartonline.com


 

 

Hi Ben,

 

I work for a company called SmartOnline . We are in Durham and are heavily recruiting for Iphone and Android Developers, as well as QA’s. We are looking for the best and brightest and I was wondering if you had any students that you could refer to come in for interviews. If they are a little green that is OK. We are looking for someone that can grow within the culture.

 

 

Please let me know if you have any questions.

 

Thanks

 Steve

 

 

Steve Brady

Senior Account Manager

soln-new-logo-blue
4505 Emperor Boulevard, Suite 320
Durham, NC 27703

T 919.237.4218   F 919.765.5020   

www.smartonline.com

 

 


Guest: Billy Houghteling on March 19

Folks,


We will be visited by Billy Houghteling, director of the Office of Tech Transfer at NC State, and founding director of Springboard @ NC State, an university incubator. He'll offer his input on your critiques.

Best,

Ben

Talks: Two games related speakers next week: Gillian Smith & Brian Magerko

Folks,
Two games related talks in our department next week, both in EB2 3211:

Talk Title: Procedural Content Generation for Game Design
Speaker: Gillian Smith, Center for Games and Playable Media, UC Santa Cruz
Talk Date: Tuesday February 28, 2012, 12:30PM
Abstract: Computer game design has always been driven by technology, from advances in graphics to new user interfaces such as the Wii and Kinect. The future of game design lies in the development of technologies that enable new player experiences and game genres. This talk describes two ways in which procedural content generation stands to influence the future of games: as a tool that supports players designing their own content for games, and as a means for allowing meaningful player choices that change the game environment.


Talk Title: Creativity, Cognition, and Computation in Digital Media
Speaker: Brian Magerko, Georgia Institute of Technology
Talk Date: Wednesday February 29, 2012, 12PM
Abstract: This presentation will focus on the integration of studying human creativity and cognition with the purpose of creating digital media experiences that have a key computational component.  It will present two current works on this theme of creativity, cognition, and computation: the Digital Improv Project, an NSF-funded multi-year effort focused on the cognitive study of professional improvisational actors to inform interactive narrative technology practices; and EarSketch, a software and curriculum approach that leverages student creativity to learn computing principles through the remixing of music with code.  These two projects will be used as exemplars of Dr. Magerko's research in leveraging human creativity for the design of digital media technologies and experiences.  This talk will conclude with a description of the long-term trajectory for this research in entertainment and educational digital media applications with examples of upcoming projects.

Find: Mobile Web performance challenges and strategies

Basic networking for mobiles. 
Google Code Blog
Author Photo
By Ramki Krishnan, Technical Program Manager
Consumers are increasingly relying on their mobile devices to access the Web, thrusting mobile web performance into the limelight. Mobile users expect web pages to display on their mobile devices as fast as or faster than on their desktops.
As part of Google’s effort to Make The Web Faster, we invited Guy Podjarny, CTO of Blaze.io, to talk about some of the major performance concerns in the mobile web and ways to alleviate these issues. Guy’s talk focused on Front-End Optimization and highlighted 3 areas: mobile network, software, and hardware. Each of these impacts performance in myriad ways. The full video is available here, and runs just under an hour. If you don’t have time to watch this enlightening talk, this post discusses some key takeaways.

Find: Landing in Las Vegas

Detail on google apis, including calendar. Good to see that the Goog has a sense of humor. Beam me up!

Google Code Blog
Post by Peter Deng, Product Marketing Manager

Come celebrate 40 years of Star Trek at the 5th Annual Official Star Trek Convention -- and while you're at it, learn more about Google APIs. Our API teams will be on hand at the confab in Las Vegas today through Sunday. Besides unveiling KML support for Google Maps for mobile, we'll be doing live demos of Google Earth KML, the Google AJAX Search API, Google Calendar's data API, and the Google Gadgets API.

Hope to see you there, preferably in a uniform. But if you can't appear in person, just transport yourself.

Find: Electric Vehicle Charging

Found this video in my YouTube subscriptions about a new mobile-app being used in Sweden to control charging of EVs from mobile devices. Thought it was interesting considering one of our project options is also a EV app. If anyone is interested in that btw, I have a post on the forum.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUbIKcJtzSU&feature=g-u-u&context=G2ce8b60FUAAAAAAAAAA

Find: Google Glasses Will Be Powered by Android

On closer inspection, many of them turned out to be wearing tiny earpieces that connected wirelessly to their smartphones.

What’s next? Perhaps throngs of people in thick-framed sunglasses lurching down the streets, cocking and twisting their heads like extras in a zombie movie.

That’s because later this year, Google is expected to start selling eyeglasses that will project information, entertainment and, this being a Google product, advertisements onto the lenses. The glasses are not being designed to be worn constantly — although Google engineers expect some users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed, with the lenses serving as a kind of see-through computer monitor.

“It will look very strange to onlookers when people are wearing these glasses,” said William Brinkman, graduate director of the computer science and software engineering department at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. “You obviously won’t see what they can from the behind the glasses. As a result, you will see bizarre body language as people duck or dodge around virtual things.”

Mr. Brinkman, whose work focuses on augmented reality or the projection of a layer of information over physical objects, said his students had experimented on their own with virtual games and obstacle courses. “It looks really weird to outsiders when you watch people navigate these spaces,” he said.

They have not seen the Google glasses. Few people have, because they are being built in the Google X offices, a secretive laboratory near Google’s main Mountain View, Calif., campus where engineers and scientists are also working on robots and space elevators.

The glasses will use the same Android software that powers Android smartphones and tablets. Like smartphones and tablets, the glasses will be equipped with GPS and motion sensors. They will also contain a camera and audio inputs and outputs.

Several people who have seen the glasses, but who are not allowed to speak publicly about them, said that the location information was a major feature of the glasses. Through the built-in camera on the glasses, Google will be able to stream images to its rack computers and return augmented reality information to the person wearing them. For instance, a person looking at a landmark could see detailed historical information and comments about it left by friends. If facial recognition software becomes accurate enough, the glasses could remind a wearer of when and how he met the vaguely familiar person standing in front of him at a party. They might also be used for virtual reality games that use the real world as the playground.

People flailing their arms in midair as they play those games is a potentially humorous outcome of the virtual reality glasses. In a more serious vein is the almost certain possibility of privacy issues and ubiquitous advertisements. When someone is meeting a person for the first time, for example, Google could hypothetically match the person’s face and tell people how many friends they share in common on social networks.

This month, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a research and advocacy group for Internet privacy, asked the Federal Trade Commission to suspend the use of facial recognition software until the government could come up with adequate safeguards and privacy standards to protect citizens.

Mr. Brinkman said he was very excited by the possibilities of the glasses, but acknowledged that the augmented reality glasses could pose some ethical issues.

“In addition to privacy, it’s also going to change real-world advertising, where companies can virtually place ads over other people’s ads,” he said. “I’m really interested in seeing how the government can successfully regulate augmented reality in this sense. They are not really going to know what people are seeing behind those glasses.”

Okay, so maybe it's not a rumour. You thought people talking to themselves was weird....

Find: Walk in Raleigh. Why not?

I need to give this a try!

Raleigh Philosophical Society
One of the biggest complaints people tend to have about navigating downtown Raleigh is that the streets are confusing and that there's little parking. (I'll somewhat agree on the first part but disagree with the latter.) However, one advantage Raleigh has over other cities is the relative compactness of the downtown core. In short, it's really easy to get around the DTR on foot. Now, urban planning student Matt Tomasulo is trying to illustrate just how easy it is to walk in downtown Raleigh.

Tomasulo "says he got the idea for Walk Raleigh after a friend mentioned that it took only a few minutes to walk between Glenwood South and Seaboard Station.

“That kind of got me thinking, ‘Wow, it really isn’t that far to walk in Raleigh,’” he told WRAL.

Tomasulo, an urban planning student, installed 27 signs at three intersections in central Raleigh last month, with help from friends. People can scan the high-tech signs with their smartphones and get a customized walking route on Google Maps.

“Sometimes you can end up taking longer on the bus, so if the weather's nice, there's no reason not to walk,” said North Carolina State University student Heath Kent.

Tomasulo said he hopes the signs will encourage people to walk, and not just for the health benefits.

“There are going to be more people in the street, more social interaction. It really adds to the experience and ambiance of downtown,” he said.

Tomasulo's project is getting international attention. He says BBC News is coming to Raleigh Tuesday to shoot a story about his signs, and he hopes the coverage will help him expand the program.

Tomasulo has created other projects, including one called “North Is That Way” in New York City. The project places temporary stickers at subway stops to help pedestrians find their way around the city.

He also founded City Fabric, an online site that sells T-shirts and prints featuring maps of cities.

He's completing a graduate program in city and regional planning at N.C. State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Announcment: an update on projects

Folks,

I've decided to extend the time available for submitting proposals to allow more potential partners to submit possible project. You now have until Wednesday February 29 to submit your proposals.

I've updated the current list of available projects. Keep in mind that you can propose other projects, but only the best student proposed projects will be approved: I reserve the right to assign you to one of the projects on the list if I don't find your project particularly compelling.

As always, I'll let you know when new projects arrive.

Best,

Ben

***

P.S. I will not be updating the available project pdf regularly since the list is something of a living document.

Opp: More on IBM Summer Internships

Folks,

More on the opportunity at IBM. Three important details:
  • The summer opportunity is iOS focused
  • They cannot hire you if you don't have citizenship or permanent residency.
  • There is a url with the job description below.
Best,

Ben

Benjamin Watson
Director, Design Graphics Lab | Associate Professor, Computer Science, NC State Univ.

919-513-0325 | designgraphics.ncsu.edu | @dgllab


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Edward Shockley <drshock@us.ibm.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 9:10 AM
Subject: Re: Summer Internships
To: Ben Watson <bwatson@ncsu.edu>
Cc: watsonb@gmail.com


Ben,

As far as internships and class, undergrad or grad is not a concern.   I would rather the student have prior experience with mobile apps from other internships, coursework, and even self-taught projects.  +1 for having bought your own Apple SDK license.  And +1 again for having your own app store posting.  My best iOS experiences have been with those students who also have done some Cocoa on the Mac.   About citizenship,  IBM does not provide sponsorship for US employment visas and ultimately our internships are about developing a pipeline of candidates for future fulltime opportunities here in the US.    So our applications ask students the two questions below and that was where my US comment comes from.

Are you a US National, permanent resident, refugee, asylee, or authorized to work under the amnesty provision under the US Immigration law? If you have immigration status E-1, F-1, H-1, or J-1, then the answer to this question should be NO. 

Will you now or in the future require sponsorship for employment visa status? 


Here's a LinkedIn url to the Connections Mobile summer opportunity, http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=2243349

Regards,

 
Edward Shockley, PMP®
Senior Software Engineering Manager, Connections Mobile
IBM Collaboration Solutions

Opp: Fwd: Summer Internships

Folks,

You may be interested in this internship opportunity.

Benjamin Watson
Director, Design Graphics Lab | Associate Professor, Computer Science, NC State Univ.
919-513-0325 | designgraphics.ncsu.edu | @dgllab

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Edward Shockley <drshock@us.ibm.com>
Date: Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 10:25 AM
Subject: Summer Internships
To: bwatson@ncsu.edu


Professor Watson,
I was at the NCSU engineering career fair earlier this month representing IBM.    In particular representing the part of IBM that designs and develops native mobile applications (formally under the Lotus brand).    In meeting students at our booth I was informed about a course dedicated to mobile device software at NCSU.   I understand you deliver/developed this course and that it deep dives aspects of both UX and code implementation.

We typically run several summer internships every year at the mobile group, both with the engineering team that I run and the design team that a peer of mine has.    We do cocoa touch here, as well as Java for both Android and Blackberry as part of native-hybrid designed apps.  And we're also gearing up on Windows Phone.  We do very little web-based work though, our specialty is native development.

We're always looking for exceptional students with prior mobile app skills so I thought I would reach out and introduce myself given your course.

Right now in fact I am looking for an experienced US student who prefers Apple native development,  who would have an opportunity to work on the iOS flavor of the IBM Connections mobile app for social business this Summer.  

Regards,

 
Edward Shockley, PMP®
Senior Software Engineering Manager, Connections Mobile
IBM Collaboration Solutions

Find: Searching for creative young minds ((tags: finds, competitions, google)

Sounds amazing....

Google Student Blog
Cross-posted from the European Public Policy Blog

Are you between 18 and 24 years old and have done something to make an impact in the world? Do you fancy the opportunity to come to the UK and meet some of the great minds of our time?

If so, apply by March 19 to Google's youth challenge, Zeitgeist Young Minds, by uploading a short video telling your story, what matters to you and how you’re making a positive impact on your world. We want to find the most exceptional and inspiring young people who are helping others through science, the arts, education, leadership or innovation.


Winners will meet the leaders attending 2012 Zeitgeist. Previous Zeitgeist speakers have included Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Black Eyed Peas’ will.I.am, Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts, and Google CEO Larry Page.

Find: To Do: Check Out Clear

Nyt likes it. But it does what it does, and no more. How could we make it do more? 

NYT > Personal Tech
A new to-do list app, Clear, does away with traditional interface features to create something both new and compelling. Is it the solution to your organization woes? Probably not.

Find: TheO turns your smartphone into an indestructible foam ball with Wii-like games

Creative, but I'd be nervous watching my phone roll away. 

The Verge - All Posts
Gallery Photo:

Physical Apps released its foam ball smartphone accessory at Toy Fair 2012 in New York this week, and we took the opportunity to play with the strange toy. It's called TheO, and it's about as simple as it gets — it's a soccer-ball size foam ball with a large slot in it that you can stuff your iPhone, iPod touch, or Android device into. Once you get your phone in there, it's pretty much indestructible (so long as you avoid water), and you can load up an accelerometer-based game and start playing your smartphone apps — physically.

A specially-made bowling app was on display — you stand up as if you're bowling, move the ball side-to-side to aim, and once you're ready you click your phone's screen and bowl TheO (and your smartphone...

Find: Orange launches Facebook for all phones in Africa

A glimpse into how apps are done in Africa. 
The Verge - All Posts
Facebook Windows Phone
Facebook has 40 million African users, but only a fraction of them are able to connect to the social network on their mobile phones, either because the phones don't support mobile internet or because the service is too expensive. Customers on mobile carrier Orange, however, will soon be able to purchase access to a simplified version of Facebook through a partnership between Orange and Myriad. The service works by using Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, or USSD, a technology that's similar to SMS but uses a continued connection rather than discrete messages. USSD is already used for social networking or mobile email in places like India, but Orange says it will be the first carrier to launch USSD Facebook in Africa.

Find: Voluntary TV spectrum auction on tap with approval locked in Congress

Yay! Faster wireless for everyone. 
The Verge - All Posts
Congress
The House passed an extension of the payroll tax cut this morning after representatives from both sides of the chamber hammered out a deal earlier this week; a Senate vote is planned for this afternoon, and early indications are that it'll pass. That may not seem like an interesting development for members of the wireless community, but approval of the voluntary auction of spectrum currently reserved for television broadcasts — a contentious issue over the past couple years — is attached to the bill, and virtually every stakeholder in the wireless community (including the FCC) is in favor of the auction. The National Association of Broadcasters, which represents television stations that currently own the licenses, had been a key...

Find: BrailleTouch brings 'eyes-free' texting to the visually impaired

Cool. 
The Verge - All Posts
BrailleTouch
Georgia Tech is developing a mobile app to help the visually impaired type on their phones. Called BrailleTouch, the open-source app features a six-button set-up — with three buttons on either side of the screen — and the device is held with the screen facing away from you. Written Braille characters use a six-dot code for the English alphabet, with different combinations of dots corresponding to each of the 26 letters (and various symbols). BrailleTouch will read out the letters as you type, and early research shows that users have been able to type at speeds of up to 32 words per minute while maintaining 92 percent accuracy. In addition to aiding the visually impaired, the team behind BrailleTouch is also looking at turning the...

Find: Clik turns your phone into a remote for YouTube parties (hands-on)

Nice. What other website apps could we control on Internet tvs with our phones?

The Verge - All Posts
Clik iOS

The developer behind popular messaging service Kik has released a new app designed for those of you who throw plenty of YouTube parties. Clik essentially turns your Android or iOS device into a remote, letting you control YouTube videos on any internet-enabled screen, whether it's your desktop or a smart TV. Unlike may similar apps, though, Clik doesn't require Wi-Fi, instead giving you the option to use your phone's 3G connection instead. Syncing up your mobile device with a bigger screen is a simple process — all you need to do is visit clikthis.com and scan the giant QR code that pops up. Once that's done your browser window will turn into a video player with all of the controls mapped to your phone.

Find: 20 things every mobile developer should know

Found this and thought it was a good read: http://www.netmagazine.com/features/20-things-every-mobile-developer-should-know

Opp: a few participants needed for a mobile visualization experiment

Folks,

We are performing some early experiments with a new mobile browsing app for IMDB we're developing. If you have the time and interest, please contact my student Ju Hee Bae at jbae3@ncsu.edu.

We have pressing need of students tonight and tomorrow. If you can't get in touch with Ju Hee before then, we could still use your help, but likely later.

You will be able to earn participation credit for your help with the experiment. It will take less than an hour of your time.

Thanks,

Ben

Find: Japanese increasingly opt for foreign phones, reports Nikkei

While Japanese market grows overall, share owned by domestic device makers shrinks to 40%. Perhaps this will convince them to sell outside of Japan. 

The Verge - All Posts
japan 1020

Japanese cellphone makers can’t catch a break – they’ve been focusing on the domestic market with functions like water resistance and digital wallets, but despite their best efforts they're actually losing domestic market share, reports Nikkei. According to data released Tuesday, mobile phones and PHS handsets (an Asian standard operating in the 1880-1930MHz frequency band) from Japanese manufacturers fell 11.1 percent year-over-year, sinking to 29.58 million units, while the entire market — including handsets from foreign makers — actually grew four percent. Offerings from companies like Apple, Samsung, and LG are hot sellers in Japan, and foreign makers are estimated to have nearly 60 percent of the handset market there.

Find: Some iOS developers used 'well-known' download bots to manipulate App Store top 25

Cheating bots in app stores. 

The Verge - All Posts
Mac App Store Icon

Download bots were a "well-known secret" of the iOS ecosystem that developers used to fake their way into the top 25 list of Apple's App Store. That's the claim by Inside Mobile Apps, which says automated programs and bots have been used for over a year to download apps and fraudulently promote some iOS applications. The process is organized by marketing firms and can cost a developer up to $15,000 for a top 25 slot in the US App Store within two days.

Apple is cracking down on chart ranking manipulation though. The company sent a letter to developers earlier this month, warning that using fake App Store chart services could lead to the loss of an Apple Developer Program membership. There will always be a market for such services despite...

Find: BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 'likely' to launch during MWC

Mobile world congress (mwc) is coming, so news will be thick. 
Rim is announcing bbos 2, which will finally have native email. 
The Verge - All Posts
Gallery Photo: BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 pictures
Initially announced at CES, version 2.0 of the BlackBerry PlayBook OS is finally set to launch during Mobile World Congress at the end of this month. According to Senior Brand Manager Jeff Gadway in an interview with PC Magazine, the update will be available "very soon" and is likely to go live during MWC, which kicks off on February 27 and will have a fairly large RIM presence. RIM had initially planned ro release the update in February so a launch during MWC would be cutting it pretty close. The 400MB update, which will be pushed automatically to all PlayBooks once live, will introduce a number of new features to the OS, including several glaring omissions from the initial release. Most notably there's finally a native email client...

Find: Nvidia: Tegra 3 smartphones will ship this quarter, integrated LTE chipset this year

Lte integrated into the SoC: longer battery life. 

The Verge - All Posts
Tegra 3 chip

Nvidia announced its yearly earnings today, and while $4 billion of sales and $581 million in profit might sound like a bit of a snooze, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang spiced things up by telling investors that quad-core Tegra 3 smartphones are right around the corner.

This quarter we are expecting to ship Tegra 3 based superphones. At Mobile World Congress is when we expect to announce these devices, and we expect to announce and ship them this quarter.

Nvidia previously told us we could expect to see Tegra 3 phones at MWC, but it looks like you won't have long to wait to experience the fruits of the company's labor for yourself. Will those shipping products include the HTC Endeavor, the LG X3 and Fujitsu's new phone? We'll find out later this...

Find: FCC approves tighter rules against telemarketing and spam texts

No more spam texts! Yay!

The Verge - All Posts
Spam text 1024

In addition to placing new requirements on VoIP services, the FCC today approved new measures designed to help consumers better deflect unwanted telemarketing calls and spam SMS messages. "Consumers by the thousands have complained to us, letting us know that they remain unhappy with having their privacy invaded and their time wasted by these unwanted calls," said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Going forward, telemarketers will need to receive written permission — via either physical or electronic means — prior to reaching out to consumers with prerecorded or direct calls. Further, the agency has reversed a stipulation that once allowed businesses to dial current and former customers with new offers unrelated to the services that...

Find: iOS apps and the address book: who has your data, and how they're getting it

Although it is against app store policy, any ios app can upload your contact data to its servers without asking you. 

The Verge - All Posts
iOS contacts mitm 1024

Over the course of the past week, a firestorm has erupted in the world of iOS apps, thanks to the discovery that Path was uploading data from your iPhone's address book without asking for explicit permission. Upon opening the app and registering, Path automatically uploaded your contact data in order to "find friends" that you might want to connect to. Path has since apologized and updated its app, but the problem exposed by the episode remains.

Stated simply: any iOS app has complete access to a large amount of data stored on your iPhone, including your address book and calendar. Any iOS app can, without asking for your permission, upload all of the information stored in your address book to its servers. From there, the app developer...

Find: HTML5 bullets: Sencha issues developer scorecard for Chrome on Android

Chrome is a big leap forward for android and html5 webapps. 

Ars Technica

Google issued a beta release of Chrome for Android last week. The port, which brings Chrome's feature set and excellent support for Web standards to Android, is a major improvement over the mobile platform's current default browser.

As we reported in our coverage of the beta, Android's default browser has historically had difficulty handling sophisticated application-like Web experiences. The new port of Chrome has the potential to remedy that weakness and bring highly competitive HTML5 support to Android.

Find: A new standard in design: in-depth with the PlayStation Vita

They like it. Nice tour through the new ui. Not much on gameplay here. 
Ars Technica

It's a confusing time in the world of mobile and portable gaming. Consumers seem to be moving away from the idea that they need an entirely separate device to play games on the go, settling for cheap, generally simple touchscreen games on their cell phones and tablets. Nintendo, following up the insanely successful DS system that rested on a seemingly gimmicky double screen design, added a newer glasses-free 3D gimmick to its Nintendo 3DS—only to see extremely slow sales force it into a premature price drop. Sony's PlayStation Portable, meanwhile, has carved out a niche for itself as a serious gamer's system, especially in Japan, but is beginning to show its age as a system designed in the pre-smartphone era.
For the new PlayStation Vita, Sony responded to this confusion by throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the system. For hardcore gamers, there are two analog sticks—a first for a portable system—and a gigantic screen loaded with pixels. For casual players, there's the now-ubiquitous touchscreen as well as a unique rear touch panel to enable new tactile, touchy-feely gameplay. The Vita has two cameras, a GPS receiver, and a 3G data option. There's music and video players, a Web browser, Google Maps, and even a proximity-based social network. Oh, and it also plays games, I guess (more on those in a separate post).

Find: Mobile Internet devices will outnumber humans this year, Cisco predicts

Ars Technica

Cisco came up with an interesting prediction in its latest forecast of global mobile data traffic: by the end of this year, there will be more Internet-connected mobile devices than people on Earth.

"By the end of 2012, the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on Earth, and by 2016 there will be 1.4 mobile devices per capita," Cisco said in its Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update released today. "There will be over 10 billion mobile-connected devices in 2016... exceeding the world's population at that time (7.3 billion)."

The numbers include not just phones but tablets, laptops, handheld gaming consoles, e-readers, in-car entertainment systems, digital photo frames, cameras, and "machine-to-machine modules." That latter category includes applications such as using wireless networks to update digital billboards.

Global mobile data traffic doubled for the fourth year in a row in 2011, and will grow 18-fold by 2016, hitting 130 exabytes a year (the equivalent of 33 billion DVDs, 4.3 quadrillion MP3 files, or 813 quadrillion text messages), Cisco said. Not surprisingly, streaming content, video in particular, is expected to play a huge role in increasing data traffic. Good news for users: mobile network speeds will increase nine-fold by 2016. Bad news: the days of unlimited data plans seem to be expiring quickly, with few exceptions.

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Opp: SV Application Deadline February 13!!!

Hey folks,

Last day to apply to attend siggraph as a volunteer. SIGGRAPH is the premier graphics event. Highly recommended.

Best,

Ben

Benjamin Watson
Director, Design Graphics Lab | Associate Professor, Computer Science, NC State Univ.
919-513-0325 | designgraphics.ncsu.edu | @dgllab


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <Mikki_Rose@siggraph.org>
Date: Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 1:40 PM
Subject: SV Application Deadline February 13!!!
To: bwatson@ncsu.edu


Hello alumni! The SIGGRAPH 2012 Student Volunteer Program application deadline is rapidly approaching and we're asking for your help! All SV applications must be completed by Monday, 13 February 2012, 22:00 UTC/GMT (note, that is 2:00pm PST). If you or any students you know are applying would you please help spread the word about this deadline? If applications are started but still incomplete by that time they will not be considered for the program. Thank you so much for your help, we appreciate it!

Think they need some inspiration? Please feel free to share this video created by the SV Subcommittee, it's sure to get students red-diculously pumped!

Thank you again for your help, and good luck to your and your student friends!

~Mikki

Find: Super Bowl 2012: Nothing Curbs App Usage Except Madonna

Flurry

The Super Bowl is an American phenomenon, now largely considered a de facto American holiday.  As the premier media event, it regularly attracts record-breaking audiences.  This year, Super Bowl XLVI, played on February 5, 2012 between the New York Giants and New England Patriots, became the most watched television program in history, drawing an audience of 111 million viewers according to The Nielsen Company.  Prior to this, the record was held by last year’s Super Bowl, which itself had overtaken the number one spot held for twenty-eight years by the final episode of M*A*S*H.

The Second Screen

Also breaking new ground this year was the concept of the "second screen," which illustrates that while watching TV (the first screen), people often interact with second screens such as smartphones and tablets.  To avoid losing attention paid to the first screen, marketers increasingly are exploring ways to complement the first screen experience with the addition of hash tags, QR codes, voting and more.  Among the most ambitious was Shazam, a music and media discovery service, which worked with ad partners such as Toyota, Best Buy, Pepsi, Bud Light and Fed Ex to drive additional second screen interactions related to advertising via the Shazam mobile app.  During the halftime show, for example, viewers could get the setlist, buy music and download mobile apps from the artists.  Shazam reported millions of audio tags as a result.

Aside from a handful of innovators like Shazam, Flurry believes that the second screen is still largely more disruptive than complementary.  If a consumer is not paying attention to the television program in front of her, she is likely using an application to post social updates or play games.  For example, if a Super Bowl ad isn’t holding a viewer’s interest, playing another round of Words with Friends is a likely activity.  Monitoring app usage provides Flurry the ability to understand this tightly-coupled, inverse relationship between the first and second screen.

Massive Second Screen App Audience

For this report, Flurry tracked U.S. app usage, per second, over the course of Super Bowl XLVI, mapping application session starts to each television spot aired, game time segment, the halftime show, and more.  We further studied behavior differences between males versus females.  With Flurry Analytics in over 160,000 applications, the company detects app usage on more than 90% of all iOS and Android devices per day.  Let’s start by comparing the size of the U.S. application using audience to Nielsen’s report of the number of people who watched the Super Bowl last Sunday.

Flurry SuperBowl App vs TV AudienceSize resized 600

The left-hand column shows the number of users Flurry estimates launched applications in the United States between the hours of 3:15 PM PST to 7:15 PM PST on Sunday, February 5.  During this four-hour window, in which the Super Bowl was played, Flurry estimates that nearly one-third of the U.S. population used an application.  Compared to Nielsen’s estimate that 111 million people watched the Super Bowl this year, the two audiences are similar in size.

Flurry SuperBowl AppStarts perSecond V4 resized 600 


Disguising One Apple Design Icon as Another

Sweet. 

Core77

0retroiphcas01.jpg

At first I thought these were just a Photoshopped gag, but nope, these are real and for sale. A company called Schreer Delights is selling a line of iPhone cases that reference Apple's design history, printing visual elements from the original Mac, the original iMac and the original iPod directly onto the case. Each runs a little under 50 bucks.

0retroiphcas02.jpg

It's kind of a weird commentary on what exactly is cool about retro styling; if you make your iPhone 4S look like a 3G, that's dumb; but make it look like the first iPod of ten years ago and that's cool.

0retroiphcas03.jpg

Find: Halliburton Drops BlackBerry for iPhone

Uh oh. If rim is losing companies like this, who will they keep?  

Bits
In more troubling news for Research In Motion, Halliburton, the energy services company, has announced plans to ditch corporate support for the BlackBerry in favor of Apple's iPhone. It's yet another example of how the iPhone is eating the BlackBerry's lunch in the area it once dominated: business customers.

Find: More smartphones than computers shipped in 2011, says study

Another milestone passed. 
The Verge - All Posts
Gallery Photo: Kyocera prototype Speaker-less Smartphone
For the first time, smartphones have become more popular than traditional computers. Research group Canalys estimates that 487.7 million smartphones were shipped in 2011, an increase of over 60 percent from 2010. Computer shipments grew too, but more slowly — around 15 percent more shipped last year. Even counting tablets as personal computers, that's only 414.6 million units. The report's data corroborates much of what we've been hearing from other places, namely that while smartphones aren't replacing computers, they are quickly overtaking feature phones as the mobile device of choice.
Canalys, however, doesn't necessarily expect the increase in smartphones to continue as rapidly next year. It suggests that manufacturers will...