Adobe announced on Tuesday that it has acquired the team behind Ideaclouds, for use in the Creative Cloud department. Ideacodes is a creative consultancy, which Adobe says will help it “continue to create an excellent Creative Cloud experience.”
The San Francisco-based company specializes in design and user experience of smart apps, digital products and networked communities.
“Our job at Adobe is to deliver an incredible experience every time a customer accesses Creative Cloud,” said Jeff Veen, vice president, product management, Adobe Creative Cloud. “The Ideacodes team will help us realize our goal of making Creative Cloud indispensable for creatives worldwide.”
Ideacodes co-founders Emily Chang and Max Kiesler write on the Ideacodes homepage, “We started Ideacodes nine years ago with the shared desire to design unique and engaging experiences for the digital age, and to create a design company that was agile, forward-focused and collaborative. It’s been a pleasure and honor to have worked with so many visionary, talented individuals at startups, tech companies, businesses, design organizations and universities. Together, we’ve created delightful and useful digital experiences for people worldwide and promoted the power and positive effects of the connected age.”
“But this is only the beginning,” they add. “We’re as passionate as ever to create the ultimate user experience, and this time it’s for the creative community: one that we’ve been a part of for sixteen years. We’re excited to announce that we’ll be joining Adobe as Creative Directors of Creative Cloud. It couldn’t be happening at a better time. Creative Cloud is an ecosystem for creatives worldwide, a subscription-based platform that comes complete with advanced versions of much-loved software, instant access to a plethora of tools and services, file syncing and sharing and the benefits of community through Behance. We look forward to helping lead and shape the creative vision for what’s next and to evolving the design experience of Creative Cloud.”
Zortrax! Drukarko moja! Ty jesteś jak zdrowie. The Zortrax (yeah, really) M200 is a $1,899 3D printer made in Poland that will be shipped internationally by a team of crack Polish engineers and designers. It has a 7×8 inch build plate and can print objects of up to 488 cubic inches. It prints ABS and Nylon and has a specially treated plate so you don’t need to lay Kapton tape down before you build.
The best thing? As the creators note, it comes in a “slick, aluminum” case “that just works.” “It really ties your office space together,” they write. Finally: a 3D-printer company that is thinking about the Feng Shui of your crib. Best of all, this guy makes it for you:
All kidding aside, it’s interesting to see this sort of crowdfunding project coming out of Europe, let alone Poland. The company that created the Zortrax is called Gadgets3D and has headquarters in Poland and Hong Kong. They seem to have a great deal of experience in RepRap kits and the like, and this is their first foray into a fully functional 3D printer for less than $2,000. That they’re taking a chance on the world stage – and that they’re nearly funded – is a testament to the power of crowdfunding sites.
Should you consider the badassedly-named Zortrax vs. something local like Makerbot? I’m not certain. However, if you want a bit of a deal, want to support the Polish motherland, and like your 3D printers to smell like kabanos, this might be the model for you. You can check out the Kickstarter project here.
Google has introduced a new Chrome Experiment called Roll It. It’s essentially a skee ball game that you can control with your phone as you play on your computer.
To play, you touch your phone’s screen to aim, and swing it to roll the ball. With one phone, you can have up to three players. You don’t have to have Chrome on your phone, but Google says it works better. Either way, you just go to g.co/rollit, sync your device and you should be good to go.
Earlier this year, Google launched Super Sync Sports, a similar Chrome experiment, which also lets you use your phone to control a game on your computer.
Earlier this month, Google showed off another one at Google I/O. That one was called Racer.
Even though I need my Chromebook Pixel for work, I still risk living on the bleeding edge. Instead of running the most stable version of Chrome OS, I took the plunge a few weeks ago to install the Chrome developer channel. That’s cutting edge, particularly for a work computer. Now Chrome OS device owners can enjoy the same new features but with some added stability: Google updated the Chrome OS Beta channel on Tuesday.
That means most, if not all, of the nifty new features I’ve been using lately can be had without worrying too much about system crashes and glitches. To be honest, I haven’t seen too many on the dev channel, but beta is surely a safer place to be. So what’s new in Chrome OS 28.0.1500.20 (Platform version: 4100.17.0)
Immersive mode is one of my favorite new additions. Think of it as a full-screen mode that’s even better than the standard full-screen feature. In immersive mode, everything above a web page’s content is pushed off the top the screen; like an auto-hide feature for the URL bar, bookmarks, etc….
The Chrome OS launcher also autohides on the bottom of the display. The end result: You get a a true full-screen mode and gain a bit of working screen space. (Note: On the dev channel, I had to enable the feature in chrome://flags; you may need to do the same in beta.) Here’s a look at Techmeme in immersive mode, for example:
If you look closely, you can see small indicators at the top and bottom of the screenshot; these show the open tabs and apps. You can mouse over these to un-hide the full information bars. I tend to skip that though: Using a three-finger trackpad gesture in dev, I scrub through my tabs quickly.
Here are a few of the other goodies in the new beta version:
The Files app — your Finder or File Explorer — gains new ways to view files. Files are grouped in new category additions: Shared with me, Offline and Recent.
When taking a screenshot, you’ll get a notification of success. Tap it to view or edit the screenshot, or ignore it and the notification panel will disappear.
Touch link higlighting isn’t something I use, but if you want some visual indication of where you’re tapping on a Chromebook Pixel, you can see it with this function.
Although the use cases are still relatively limited, screen rotation is also supported in this version.
Unless there are major issues with this beta build, I’d expect all Chrome OS users to see the new features in the stable channel within 4 to 6 weeks. Google is generally on a six-week schedule for Chrome OS updates, keeping the platform maturing on a refreshingly predictable basis.
Adobe has acquired its third design-focused startup within the past six months. On Tuesday Adobe said it purchased San Francisco-based design consultancy Ideacodes, and Ideacodes co-founders Emily Chang and Max Kiesler will join Adobe’s Creative Cloud team.
The news follows Adobe’s acqui-hire of mobile design team Thumb Labs last week, and design community startup Behance for a reported $150 million back in December 2012. These efforts are focused on helping Adobe shift from selling packaged software design tools to selling its Creative Suite via a subscription in the cloud.
Adobe has been integrating the Behance community into its Creative Cloud community and tool-sharing site that it launched for designers and developers early last year. And likewise Adobe says that the Thumb Labs teams “will begin focusing our mobile talents on a united mission to empower the creative world.” Nine-year-old Ideacodes has worked with digital groups from MTV to Ideo, and even did some early work on GigaOM’s website.
Not everyone is stoked with Adobe’s transition to the cloud. There’s a growing group of creators worried about how the subscription model will effect everyday consumer creators. But Adobe had to evolve and embrace the cloud in some way, and would likely suffer if it didn’t. These acquisitions can also be seen as a way that Adobe is trying to make sure the transition is more designer-friendly.
We’ll be featuring the tech industry’s most innovative and forward-thinking experience designers at our RoadMap event in November in San Francisco (tickets will go on sale this Summer, and you can sign up here to get first access to them).
More smartphones are sold in China than in any other market right now, but Apple just hasn’t been able to establish itself there as it has in most top markets around the world. According to new data from Strategy Analytics picked up by The Korea Herold, Samsung bested several competitive local brands in the first quarter of 2013 to become the top-selling smartphone vendor in China. Samsung sold 12.5 million smartphones in China last quarter according to the firm’s data, topping No.2 Huawei’s 8.1 million units and No.3 Lenovo’s 7.9 million units by a huge margin. Apple sold just 6.1 million iPhones according to Strategy Analytics, good for the No.6 spot behind ZTE (6.4 million) at No.5 and Coolpad (7 million) at No.4. Apple is reportedly planning to launch a new mid-range iPhone alongside its flagship iPhone 5S later this year in an effort to better address markets like China, which are dominated by low-cost handsets.
Encrypting sensitive files is a good way to keep them protected from prying eyes, and the solutions currently on the market are not in small numbers.
CryptSync is a simple tool designed not only to encrypt our files but also to synchronize them between two folders. More specifically, it makes sure that two user-defined locations have the exact same content, with th… (read more)
Apple may have held onto the top spot in terms of smartphone industry profits in the first quarter this year, but there’s a new sheriff in town when it comes to revenue. According to data analyzed by Yonhap News Agency, Samsung’s smartphone sales pushed ahead of Apple in Q1 2013 for the first time ever. The South Korea-based company racked up an estimated $23.62 billion in revenue from sales of its smartphones alone last quarter, while iPhone sales in Q1 totaled $22.95 billion. And to help illustrate just how massive the divide is between Samsung/Apple and the rest of the smartphone industry, Nokia was the No.3 vendor in terms of smartphone revenue in the first quarter with just $3.64 billion in sales, and LG claimed the No.4 spot with revenue totaling $2.95 billion.
Design lab onformative has used its facial recognition algorithm to scan the Earth using Google Maps to uncover parts of the planet that appear to make human-like (or monster-like in some cases) faces. Here it is in action:
“One of human’s most characteristic features is our desire to detect patterns. We use this ability to penetrate into the detailed secrets of nature. However we also tend to use this ability to enrich our imagination. Hence we recognize meaningful shapes in clouds or detect a great bear upon astrological observations,” explains onformative. “Objective investigations and subjective imagination collide to one inseparable process. The tendency to detect meaning in vague visual stimuli is a psychological phenomenon called Pareidolia, and captures the core interest of this project.”
Here are a few more examples of faces the algorithm has spotted:
The Nest learning thermostat and Google Glass have had a love child and it’s called Glass Nest. Developer James Rundquist got his Google Glass unit earlier this month wanted to get his hands dirty with some Glassware development, he tells me in an interview. The result is a mash up between two of the most buzzy devices to hit the Internet of Things in 2013.
Rundquist’s Glass Nest is an app for Google Glass that can control the Nest learning thermostat with voice controls, and enable the user to do things like check the temperature in your home hands-free, or turn the thermostat to “away-mode” when you’re leaving the house. The app is a functioning piece of glassware, and Rundquist has opened it up to a few other people who have both Glass and Nest — though, at this point that’s a very niche market.
His small amount of users are giving him feedback, says Rundquist, and “so far everyone is loving it,” he says. The code is open sourced and up on Github, so anyone who wants to help, contribute to the project, or play around with the code can do so. Rundquist says he’d like to open up registration for the app to everyone who has both Glass and Nest if Google’s Mirror API terms of service become less restrictive around distribution or if Google gives the O.K. to the project.
Rundquist lives in an apartment in Atlanta and after installing a Nest in his place he started thinking about how he’d like to check the temperature on his Nest from his new Glass hardware. He tells me that he built a different app before Glass Nest that pushed down the top images from imgur.com every ten minutes, but after about a day of use, he says he decided that wasn’t really what Glass was for.
As I wrote in this post in March, I think that using Glass to control the Internet of Things will be one of the most disruptive uses of Glass. Rundquist tells me that in his short experience experimenting with Glass, he see Glass apps more suited for passive and quick interactions — “less content consumption, more quick one off actions and passive information gain.” He says:
I imagine some day it [Google Glass] will basically be a device that is like Google Now on steroids, always just showing you relevant information based on where you are, whats going on around you, conversations you are currently having.
It will be interesting to see what Nest thinks of the unofficial Glass Nest app. Nest has taken a cue from Apple on a lot of its strategies, which makes its philosophy a bit more closed than Google’s mostly open ecosystem.
An example of a Flexenclosure eCentre modular data center that was recently deployed in Sudan. The private equity arm of The World Bank has invested in Flexenclosure in hopes of accelerating wireless communciations access in emerging markets. (Photo: Flexenclosure)
Factory-built data centers are gaining traction as a tool for bringing IT operations to emerging markets. A unit of the World Bank said today that it will invest in provider of modular data centers in hopes of accelerating wireless phone access in parts of Asia and Africa.
International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private equity arm of the World Bank, is leading a consortium that it investing $24 million (U.S. dollars) in Flexenclosure, a Swedish company that has developed pre-fabricated data centers ahnd power infrastructure, primarily for the telecom industry. The round also includes Flexenclosures existing investors, the Swedish investment funds Industrifonden and Andra AP-fonden.
The investment will support the deployment of Flexenclosure’s modular data centers, as well as the on-site power systems that can support wireless towers using a combination of solar and wind power and batteries. eSite can provide backup power in areas where the grid is unreliable, and stand-alone power in areas where grid power is unavailable and diesel generators are impractical.
Boosting Emerging Economies
IFC, which focuses its investment in boosting emerging economies and reducing poverty, sees the potential for Flexenclosure’s technology to extend the reach and reliability of communications in rural areas.
“An estimated 800,000 cellular base stations in emerging markets rely on diesel generators for their power supply,” said Andrew Bartley, IFC’s Chief Investment Officer for Telecoms, Media, and Technology. “This is a great potential market for Flexenclosure’s innovative product offering. Its growth strategy is directly aligned with IFC’s goal to improve access to mobile-phone systems for people in rural areas in emerging markets while also reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions.”
Flexenclosure, which was founded in 2001, has helped clients like Ericsson and Airtel expand networks into remote areas of Africa and Asia.
Expanding in Asia, Africa
“During the last year we have opened offices in Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, India, Malaysia and Dubai,” said Flexenclosure CEO David King. “Having IFC as a strategic investor will give us access to their global expertise and network, further enhancing our expansion strategy. We have an aggressive research and development program and are growing our sales operations in emerging markets.”
The new capital will be used to further develop Flexenclosure’s eSite and eCentre technologies. Here’s an overview:
eSite is a family of energy-efficient hybrid power systems for base station sites in areas where grid power is unreliable or unavailable. The product can be configured to use solar panels and wind turbines, and can be used to reduce the use of diesel generators, or as a “community power” system to support not only a wireless station, but also provide power for mobile phones, water pumps and schools. eSite includes software that can manage multiple power sources to achieve the most economic approach.
eCentre is a prefabricated modular data centre solution to house and power data and telecom equipment. Optimized for energy efficiency and low total cost of ownership, eCentre includes power, cooling and security.
Flexenclosure customers say the system can accelerate infrastructure deployment in areas where construction is difficult. One example is provided by MTN Ghana, a mobile network with 8 million sibscribers.
“We have found that building a brick and mortar data centre in this and the adjacent countries is problematic because of faltering building standards, and a containerized solution is a lot quicker,” said MTN operations manager Max Maxted. “The situation is similar with for example MTN Nigeria and we see this solution as a very positive one.”
Here’s a video that provides an overview of Flexenclosure’s eCentre enclosures:
The new Samsung flagship camera from the NX series, the NX300 has been recently launched on the market and it brings a fresh new look to the lineup, along with some technical features that were never embedded into previous models.
Although Samsung NX210 was a big step forward in terms of specifications in comparison with its predec… (read more)
Last month, the EU finally released a public document discussing Google’s proposal to end a lengthy antitrust investigation. With the document, the Commission began seeking feedback on the commitments Google offered to address concerns. Unsurprisingly, the feedback has included demands from some that Google do more.
Here is the list of Google’s proposals, as shared in the EU’s announcement:
Google offers for a period of 5 years to:
(i) – label promoted links to its own specialised search services so that users can distinguish them from natural web search results,
– clearly separate these promoted links from other web search results by clear graphical features (such as a frame), and
– display links to three rival specialised search services close to its own services, in a place that is clearly visible to users,
(ii) – offer all websites the option to opt-out from the use of all their content in Google’s specialised search services, while ensuring that any opt-out does not unduly affect the ranking of those web sites in Google’s general web search results,
– offer all specialised search web sites that focus on product search or local search the option to mark certain categories of information in such a way that such information is not indexed or used by Google,
– provide newspaper publishers with a mechanism allowing them to control on a web page per web page basis the display of their content in Google News,
(iii) no longer include in its agreements with publishers any written or unwritten obligations that would require them to source online search advertisements exclusively from Google, and
(iv) no longer impose obligations that would prevent advertisers from managing search advertising campaigns across competing advertising platforms.
A third party would be required to monitor Google’s implementation of its commitments.
It was clear from the beginning that competitors did not think these went far enough, though they did go further than Google’s actions settling a similar investigation in the U.S.
Reuters now reports that EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said the commission will press Google for further concessions, though the report does not get into specifics. It does say that Almunia said “Google would almost certainly be asked to improve its proposals.” Foo Yun Chee writes:
The EU competition authority initially gave complainants until May 26 to comment, but later extended the deadline to June 27 following pressure from the companies.
“After, we will analyse the responses we have received… almost 100 percent we will ask Google: you should improve your proposals,” Almunia told lawmakers during a Tuesday hearing at the European Parliament.
Meanwhile, reports have recently emerged that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has been mulling opening up a new probe, this time into Google’s display advertising business.
The “Terminator” films have been mentioned more than a handful of times in discussions about Google Glass, and this is not going to do anything to make the comparison less relevant. Facial recognition is reportedly coming to Google Glass, potentially opening up the doors for anybody to have Terminator-like features.
Are you concerned about the future of privacy with regards to devices like Google Glass? Tell us what you think.
Google itself is not offering facial recognition with Google Glass. At least not yet. But that’s not stopping others from developing the technology for the device.
Matt Warman at The Telegraph, noting that Google’s terms do not forbid the use of the device for facial recognition, reports that San Francisco-based Lambbda Labs is set to launch its API to developers “in days”. He writes, “The first version of Lamda Labs software forces users take photographs, tag them with information on who is in them and then compare any subsequent photographs taken to those previously uploaded. Future versions, however, may allow real-time recognition of faces.”
Sarah Connor?
Come to think of it, this could prove even more precise than Terminator features, because even the Terminator got the wrong Sarah Connor to begin with.
Google has reportedly said that it will not implement its own facial recognition technology in Glass, until it has prviacy protections in place.
When using Google Glass, is it true that this product would be able to use Facial Recognition Technology to unveil personal information about whomever and even som inanimate objects that the user is viewing? Would a user be able to request such information? Can a non-user or human subject opt out of this collection of personal data? If so, How? If not, why not?
In Google’s privacy policy, it states that the company “may reject requests that are unreasonably repetitive, require disproportionate technical effort…risk the privacy of others, or would be extremely impractical.” Please provide examples of when Google would reject requests on Google Glass that would risk the privacy of others? Would Google place limits on the technology and what type of information it can reveal about another person? If so, please explain. If not, why not?
They gave Page until June 14h to respond to concerns (which were not limited to these specifically).
Beyond the obvious privacy implications, there are good things that could become of such capabilities. As Warman notes, people have suggested examples like apps for doormen to make admission to events easier or software for disabled people. Perhaps a blind person, for example, could use the device to capture a person’s face, and then be told whose face is in front of them via audio.
TechCrunch recently spoke with Lambda Labs co-founder Stephen Balaban. Sarah Perez reports:
Applied to Glass, the technology will enable apps such as “remember this face,” “find your friends in a crowd,” “networking event interest matching,” “intelligent contact books,” and more, Balaban explains
According to Warman, there are already 1,000 developers working with Lambda Labs’ software, generating five million attempts at recognition per month, and that’s without Glass. And that’s just one company’s software. Consider the possibility that many others could implement their own facial recognition capabilities with various features attached.
Facebook, for example has over a billion users, and it already has an app for Glass. Less than a year ago, the company bought facial recognition company Face.com. Here’s an interview we did with Face.com CEO Gil Hirsch before the acquisition.
Google, of course, has its own facial recognition capabilities, and it would be pretty surprising if it didn’t implement them at some point. In fact, the company acquired Viewdle, a facial recognition and augmented reality company, as recently as last fall.
More recently, at Google I/O earlier this month, Google revealed some new photo features for Google+, including the ability to automatically sort photos by landmark, human presence, aesthetics and other indicators. It’s getting better at recognizing what is in an image.
Of course many have expressed concerns about facial recognition technology regardless of whether or not Google Glass is involved. A Memorial Day report from the Associated Press suggests that “drones with facial recognition technology will end anonymity, everywhere.”
“Adding that capability to drones that can fly into spaces where planes cannot — machines that can track a person moving about and can stay aloft for days — means that people will give up privacy as well as the concept of anonymity,” writes Andrew Conte.
Conte has a whole series of reports on this stuff here.
“People are interested to harvest as much information they can from photos and videos… to connect with other people,” Hirsch said of his own Face.com in our interview. “It’s just another platform to connect with other people.”
To some, that’s what the technology, in general, has to offer users of a device like Google Glass. Others, however, are concerned that not everyone with access to the technology will have people’s best interests in mind.
It’s going to be quite interesting to see how Google handles these concerns. It’s been in trouble for privacy-related issus more than once in the past, and still has to answer to Congress. And this is really only one of the concerns they have (there were about ten in the letter).
I’ve heard great things about the Google Academy for Teachers by former attendees. Here’s the spiel about the program…
The GTA is a FREE professional development experience designed to help primary and secondary educators from around the globe get the most from innovative technologies. Produced by CUE, each Academy is an intensive, two-day event during which participants get hands-on experience with Google’s free products and other technologies, learn about innovative instructional strategies, receive resources to share with colleagues, and immerse themselves in a supportive community of educators making impact.
The deadline is June 10 – the training is happening July 24-25, 2013 in Chicago. They are looking for approximately 50 teachers. I would love to see some Minnesota teaches in the mix!
The third generation of the phablet that started it all was expected to launch later this year, of course, but a Samsung executive reportedly just confirmed the device for the first time. Korean language ETNews says it spoke with an unnamed Samsung exec who confirmed the Galaxy Note III will launch later this year. The anonymous official also discussed several exciting new features that might be included on the Note III, such as optical image stabilization and 3x optical zoom. Samsung’s next Note will also reportedly have a slimmer body, which will be appreciated considering the first two Note phablets were certainly on the thicker side. The report doesn’t state when the new Galaxy Note III will be unveiled, but the device is expected to debut at the annual IFA trade show in September.
For as long as Android has grown in the mobile market, developers have faced a huge challenge: How to test their apps across a wide — and constantly growing — range of devices? Some dev shops test across the most popular Android handsets and hope for the best, ; a less than ideal solution. Having users beta test mobile apps can help. But managing all of that test data is no easy task.
The service, which launched on Tuesday, aggregates app testing data in the cloud, providing developers with real-time testing information. Developers upload their .apk app file to TestFairy which sends invites to beta tests.After the apps are installed, Test Fairy captures key metrics from handsets such as CPU, memory, GPS, network usage, and phone signal to name a few.
TestFairy can even provide screenshots or videos of how testers are interacting with the application under test, which could help developers replicate certain issues. Here’s a quick peek at how the service works:
This solution sounds brilliant to me. I spent years managing a corporate software testing team and wished for tools such as this. That was in support of standard Windows apps; I can’t imagine testing apps across hundreds of mobile devices with different screen sizes, processors, graphics chips and radios.
TestFairy is launching as a free service, but it intends to add premium pay services in the future. From a developer standpoint, I can’t see why you wouldn’t consider using it. Testers might be a bit shy, however: I noticed that a device’s exact location is also tracked and reported on. I can understand why: Any location-based app would need to test for this. For internal betas that’s fine, but public beta testers may balk.
Unlikely though it may be, a new report claims that Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5S will be a bigger upgrade than most are expecting when it launches this fall. Chinese gadget blog WeiPhone on Tuesday reported that Apple’s next-generation iPhone will sport a tweaked design with a narrower bezel around the display. And despite the fact that the iPhone 5’s Retina display is still among the best in the business, the site claims the iPhone 5S (or iPhone 6, as the site says it could be called) will include a new Retina display that packs twice as many pixels into a panel that is the same size as the current model’s display. BGR previously revealed that a number of internal components have been redesigned for the next-generation iPhone, but a significant external redesign is not expected. WeiPhone, which has reported accurate details about unannounced Apple products in the past but has also issued some reports that didn’t pan out, says the next iPhone will debut in September.
There are few things as satisfying – and dangerous – as burning through stuff with a laser. Drake Anthony AKA Styropyro is a young man who enjoys making DIY lasers out of things, and he recently completed a 3000mW laser made from the diode of an old DLP projector that can blow out a beam so hot that it burns paper, plastic, and electric tape in seconds.
Considering the most powerful handheld laser you can buy clocks in at 1,400mW, Anthony’s laser is pretty powerful. He has an entire YouTube channel dedicated to his potentially-damaging efforts, although this light-saber-esque laser is probably his most impressive feat yet.
Considering he makes is enclosures and the electronics himself and he’s still in his teens, it looks like Styropyro has a long career ahead of him training his laser cannons on enemy attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
Encrypting sensitive files is a good way to keep them protected from prying eyes, and the solutions currently on the market are not in small numbers.
The new Samsung flagship camera from the NX series, the NX300 has been recently launched on the market and it brings a fresh new look to the lineup, along with some technical features that were never embedded into previous models.
