Tech Today w/ Ken May

We’ve come to love the fantastic and sublime images of space taken from such satellites as the Hubble, but the truth is that the technology that created those images is incredibly out of date. And while you can’t argue with the results, it has gotten to the point where the sensitivity, angle of view, and data collection rate just need to be moved up to 21st-century standards. The European Space Agency (ESA) is happy to bring space into the gigapixel era, and they’re packing a monster camera array onto their Gaia astrometry platform. The mission of Gaia is accurate mapping of the entire Milky Way galaxy, and they plan to chart the positions of a billion stars about seventy times each over the next five years. The result will be (they hope) a more accurate and precise three-dimensional map of the galaxy. They’ll also pick up innumerable minor bodies (i.e. asteroid, planets, and so on) and will collect a ton of other useful miscellaneous space data. The camera itself is actually over a hundred individual sensors put into an array — which makes sense, as a single gigapixel sensor would likely be far too small and pixel-dense to be of any use in this situation. The 102 sensors are 4.7×6.0cm each, and arranged in a large 1.0×0.5m field, and four more are used for quality checks. The precision of the camera is pretty insane. It can resolve items of magnitude 15, which is 4000 times dimmer than what can be seen with the naked eye, down to 24 microarcseconds. To give you an idea of how powerful that is, if the Gaia array was on Earth, it could measure the thumbnails of a person standing on the moon. It will produce a huge amount of data, but its transmitter will be able to maintain a multi-megabit connection to its base station here on the ground even at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers. There’s a ton (or tonne, I suppose) more information at the ESA’s Gaia site , and some other links at Network World .

We’ve come to love the fantastic and sublime images of space taken from such satellites as the Hubble, but the truth is that the technology that created those images is incredibly out of date. And while you can’t argue with the results, it has gotten to the point where the sensitivity, angle of view, and data collection rate just need to be moved up to 21st-century standards. The European Space Agency (ESA) is happy to bring space into the gigapixel era, and they’re packing a monster camera array onto their Gaia astrometry platform. The mission of Gaia is accurate mapping of the entire Milky Way galaxy, and they plan to chart the positions of a billion stars about seventy times each over the next five years. The result will be (they hope) a more accurate and precise three-dimensional map of the galaxy. They’ll also pick up innumerable minor bodies (i.e. asteroid, planets, and so on) and will collect a ton of other useful miscellaneous space data. The camera itself is actually over a hundred individual sensors put into an array — which makes sense, as a single gigapixel sensor would likely be far too small and pixel-dense to be of any use in this situation. The 102 sensors are 4.7×6.0cm each, and arranged in a large 1.0×0.5m field, and four more are used for quality checks. The precision of the camera is pretty insane. It can resolve items of magnitude 15, which is 4000 times dimmer than what can be seen with the naked eye, down to 24 microarcseconds. To give you an idea of how powerful that is, if the Gaia array was on Earth, it could measure the thumbnails of a person standing on the moon. It will produce a huge amount of data, but its transmitter will be able to maintain a multi-megabit connection to its base station here on the ground even at a distance of 1.5 kilometers. There’s a ton (or tonne, I suppose) more information at the ESA’s Gaia site , and some other links at Network World .

Garmin Ltd. and Navigon AG just announced that the two companies have reached an agreement and a subsidiary of Garmin will acquire the privately-held navigation company. The financial terms of the transaction was not released. German-based Navigon pulled out of the North American PND market in 2009 and has since focused on the European region and smartphone apps. It’s likely that these two areas of investment were key to Garmin’s interest. We reviewed Navigon’s last US-centric GPS units in 2009 and while they were competent, failed to eclipse Garmin’s or TomTom’s models in anyway. Navigon is also a major player in the automotive OEM field, which might lead to big things for Garmin and consumers. Right now most baked-in GPS solutions aren’t exactly impressive and could a dash of Garmin charm would go a long way. Going forward, Navigon will operate as a subsidiary of Garmin Ltd pending the acquisition’s approval and closing. CrunchBase Information Garmin Information provided by CrunchBase

Just last week we posted a video of the new Nook (which we just reviewed ) running Angry Birds . Not exactly the best match for an e-paper display, but it does show that the underlying Android install is sound and functional. Further proof comes this weekend, with forum-dwelling hackers installing the ADW Launcher home screen and even the Kindle app on it. Sure, the animation is busted, but it could still be super useful. Oh, and by the way, it has Bluetooth . That wasn’t in the specs, but is probably part of the chipset they used. Was Barnes & Noble going to announce this? Doesn’t matter much, we know now! Looks like the “Nook Touch” is going to be about as popular a hacking platform as the Nook Color. I wonder if the similarly-specced Kobo will get a similar treatment?

Short version : Rosetta Stone launched its iPad app today, which is basically just a lighter version of its core “course” software. The app itself is nothing extraordinary, but the way it teaches languages is pretty awesome. Foreign language has never been my best subject, but I had a blast playing with this app because it feels way more like a puzzle than a language lesson. The worst part is the price: you have to be a Rosetta Stone customer to access the app. Features : All five language levels, with corresponding units and paths Swipe-to-scroll through tracks A single tap enlarges small contextual images Drag-to-zoom offers a little extra zoom MSRP: Free with a minimum $179 Rosetta Stone software purchase Pros : Easy-to-use Interface Very accurate voice detection Cons : No studio sessions despite the iPad’s video-chat support Requires purchase of Rosetta Stone desktop app If you take learning languages seriously, I would gladly argue that there is no better language-learning app out there. But if you’re looking for something light and fun, the price tag on this app will certainly outweigh your desire for it. Rosetta Stone has always been kind of like a yoga mat. I love yoga, and I wish I went everyday, but I hesitate to spend the money on a mat for fear it could go to waste. The same has been true of Rosetta Stone. It always sounded pretty cool, and I’ve always wanted to learn different languages, but shelling out the cash is a step I’ve never been willing to take. But after sitting down with the Rosetta Stone team and checking out the brand new iPad app, I’ve been converted. And that’s partially due to the app, itself. As far as learning languages goes, Rosetta Stone seems to have the process nailed. Instead of learning through simple flash-card style memorization or by-the-book translation, the Rosetta Stone TOTALe Companion app forces you to problem-solve while you learn. For instance, instead of reading a sentence in Spanish, hearing it, and then repeating (parroting), Rosetta Stone gives you a couple of different pictures of whatever phrase or word the lesson focuses on, and turns language learning into a puzzle. The core idea seems to come from the way children learn languages for the first time. Children hear words they don’t know and use the context around unknown words to fill in the blanks. An example given by Rosetta Stone CTO Mike Fulkerson resonated well with me. “If I am with my five-year-old and say ‘we’re in a hotel suite,’ my son knows all the words in that sentence except ‘suite,’” he said. “If I ask him what the word ‘suite’ means, he can figure out from the rest of the sentence, and his surroundings, that a ‘suite’ is a big hotel room.” The Rosetta Stone app works the same way. Some pages ask you to choose the picture that best represents the word or phrase being spoken, gradually integrating new words that you haven’t learned yet. Other pages display a pattern of different ideas or sentences, and require the user to complete the pattern. For example, one page showed four different pictures with corresponding sentences: 1. I have red apples. 2. We have green apples. and 3. I have a red bike. Based on the first three sentences and their corresponding photos, the user must then figure out what the fourth sentence will be (We have green bikes.). The iPad app still integrates the majority of the features found in the desktop app’s “course” offering, which is the main curriculum of the Rosetta Stone software. Studio sessions, where the user talks with a coach fluent in their chosen language in a video chat, aren’t supported within the iPad app. This was pretty shocking to me, since the iPad has a front-facing camera which would be perfect for studio sessions on-the-go. When I asked about it, Fulkerson explained that the company wanted to bring a lighter experience to the tablet, something that falls between its basic “parroting” iPhone app, and the much heavier desktop app. On a PC, you can really immerse yourself in a lesson, but on the iPad, most people switch back and forth from applications pretty regularly – what Mr. Fulkerson referred to as iPad ADD. For that reason, the Rosetta Stone TOTALe Companion app remains on the page you last visited once you close the application, whereas the desktop app always sends you back to the home page. A few other tweaks were made to the desktop app, as well, to get as much out of the iPad’s functionality as possible. For example, you swipe side to side to access new tracks (mini lessons) and instead of hovering over an image to zoom (like on the desktop app), iPad app users can touch to enlarge, and drag to zoom with smaller images. Of the 31 Rosetta Stone-supported languages, 20 are available in iPad app format. Right-to-left languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and Farci, will be rolled out in an app update, along with Irish, since its font isn’t yet supported by the iPad. Now for the bad news: Non-Rosetta Stone customers simply don’t have access to the app. In other words, you must buy Rosetta Stone desktop software in order to log in to the iPad application, which is a free download from the Apple App Store. Most Rosetta Stone languages come with five levels, and a few smaller languages come in a three-level set. For a single level, the software costs $179. Two levels cost $279, three levels costs $379, and if you opt for the full five-level set, the software costs $479. For now, the Rosetta Stone TOTALe Companion app is only available in the Apple App Store, but Mike Fulkerson promised an Android version at some point, he just couldn’t say when. In my opinion, the content of the app is its biggest selling point. In the few minutes I played with the app, I truly enjoyed learning a little bit of French. And this is coming from an eight-year Spanish student, who hated just about every minute of it. The app itself is nothing extra special. The interface has a clean look and is pretty self-explanatory, lacking any complex multi-touch actions. Moving through lessons was pretty snappy, and I found the app’s voice detection to be incredibly accurate. The most minor pronunciation errors are detected immediately, basically forcing the user to say the word or phrase correctly, which is the whole point of the Rosetta Stone iPad app in the first place.

We’re here at Google’s massive HQ in New York City (they own an entire block) for what Google was calling a “partner event” but everyone knew was really an “NFC event” . Sure enough, Stephanie Tilenius, Google’s VP of Commerce, has taken the stage to announce Google Wallet and Google Offers. Right off the bat, Tilenius wanted to make it clear that this would be an open platform. She invited “payment networks, carriers, banks, join us in creating tomorrow’s shopping experience”. And some of those partners are already on board. Citi, Mastercard, FirstData, and Sprint are the initial partners. Read More

This is sort of silly but still worthwhile. Of course prices of developing technologies drop over time, but the infograph from Wired is still fun if for nothing else than a bit of nostalgic reminiscing. I can recall the first two plasmas we got while I worked at Circuit City: a Panasonic for $10k and a Pioneer for $12k. Of course that was back in the wild and crazy times of 2002 when credit was available to anyone with a pulse and a social security number.