Samsung and Visa join forces to enable NFC mobile payment at 2012 Olympics

From a gadgeteer’s point of view, one of the best things about the Olympics is its tendency to bring in new technologies to the hosting city. Take the 2012 games, for example: not only are the London Underground stations getting WiFi hotspots, but news has it that Samsung and Visa are holding hands to deliver NFC mobile payment solutions to the city. In fact, more than 60,000 locations in London are already geared up with contactless payment systems, and right now Visa is negotiating with banks to get its contactless cards and mobile phones approved. For the latter, one such device will be Samsung’s Olympic and Paralympic Games mobile handset that comes with a Visa-enabled SIM card, and it’ll be made available to sponsored athletes as well as various retailers. Furthermore, this alliance will continue after the Olympics, and Visa is rolling out its mobile payment system in many other countries as we speak, so it shouldn’t be long before we hear more Visa handset announcements.

Continue reading Samsung and Visa join forces to enable NFC mobile payment at 2012 Olympics

Samsung and Visa join forces to enable NFC mobile payment at 2012 Olympics originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

Zdenek Kalal’s object tracking algorithm learns on the fly, likely to make next 007 flick (video)

Microsoft’s own OneVision Video Recognizer may be novel, but if the folks in Redmond are seriously looking to take things next-level, they should probably cast their gaze across the pond. Zdenek Kalal, a researcher at the University of Surrey, has just created what may be the most sophisticated vision system known to the civilian world. In essence, it takes the mundane task of tracking objects to an entirely new platform, enabling users to select an object on the fly and have the algorithm immediately start tracking something new. Within seconds, it’s able to maintain a lock even if your object twists, turns, or leaves / returns. Furthermore, these “objects” could be used as air mice if you force it to track your digits, and if you teach it what your staff looks like, you’ll have a fully automated security scanner that can recognize faces and grant / deny access based on its database of white-listed individuals. Frankly, we’d rather you see it for yourself than listen to us extolling its virtues — vid’s after the break, per usual.

Continue reading Zdenek Kalal’s object tracking algorithm learns on the fly, likely to make next 007 flick (video)

Zdenek Kalal’s object tracking algorithm learns on the fly, likely to make next 007 flick (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

Facebook Now Allows Personal Profiles To Be Converted Into Business Pages

For the first time, Facebook now allows personal user profiles to be converted into official business Pages, turning all their friends into fans. The “Profile To Business Page Migration” tool will help people who either created a personal profile for a business before Pages existed, or accidentally started accumulating fans as friends instead of Likes.

The migration tool should come as exciting news to business owners struggling with the decision of whether to continue a profile with its limited capabilities, or start a Page from scratch with zero fans. Facebook has not formally announced the tool, but it appears to be available worldwide.

Facebook has added a new Help Center article on converting profiles to Pages with details about the migration process.

Nanogenerators produce electricity by squeezing your fingers together, while you dance

It’s been a while since we last heard about nanogeneratos — you know, those insanely tiny fibers that could potentially be woven into your hoodie to juice up your smartphone. Dr. Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology has reported that he and his team of Einsteins constructed nanogenerators with enough energy to potentially power LCDs, LEDs and laser diodes by moving your various limbs. These micro-powerhouses — 1 / 500 the width of a single hair strand — are embedded with piezoelectric zinc oxide atoms and can generate electrical charges when flexed or strained. Wang and his team of researchers shoved a collection of their nanogenerators into a chip 1 / 4 the size of a stamp, stacked five of them on top of one another and can pinch the stack between their fingers to generate the output of two standard AA batteries — around 1.5 volts. Although it’s not much, we’re super excited at this point in development — imagine how convenient to charge your phone in your pocket sans the bulky battery add-ons. And that’s only one application of this technology. Yea, we know.

Show full PR text
First practical nanogenerator produces electricity with pinch of the fingers

ANAHEIM, March 29, 2011 – After six years of intensive effort, scientists are reporting development of the first commercially viable nanogenerator, a flexible chip that can use body movements – a finger pinch now en route to a pulse beat in the future – to generate electricity. Speaking here today at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, they described boosting the device's power output by thousands times and its voltage by 150 times to finally move it out of the lab and toward everyday life.

“This development represents a milestone toward producing portable electronics that can be powered by body movements without the use of batteries or electrical outlets,” said lead scientist Zhong Lin Wang, Ph.D. “Our nanogenerators are poised to change lives in the future. Their potential is only limited by one’s imagination.”

The latest improvements have resulted in a nanogenerator powerful enough to drive commercial liquid-crystal displays, light-emitting diodes and laser diodes. By storing the generated charges using a capacitor, the output power is capable to periodically drive a sensor and transmit the signal wirelessly.

“If we can sustain the rate of improvement, the nanogenerator may find a broad range of other applications that require more power,” he added. Wang cited, for example, personal electronic devices powered by footsteps activating nanogenerators inside the sole of a shoe; implanted insulin pumps powered by a heart beat; and environmental sensors powered by nanogenerators flapping in the breeze.

Wang and colleagues demonstrated commercial feasibility of the latest nanogenerator by using it to power an LED light and a liquid crystal display like those widely used in many electronic devices, such as calculators and computers. The power came from squeezing the nanogenerator between two fingers.

The key to the technology is zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires. ZnO nanowires are piezoelectric – they can generate an electric current when strained or flexed. That movement can be virtually any body movement, such as walking, a heartbeat, or blood flowing through the body. The nanowires can also generate electricity in response to wind, rolling tires, or many other kinds of movement.

The diameter of a ZnO nanowire is so small that 500 of the wires can fit inside the width of a single human hair. Wang’s group found a way to capture and combine the electrical charges from millions of the nanoscale zinc oxide wires. They also developed an efficient way to deposit the nanowires onto flexible polymer chips, each about a quarter the size of a postage stamp. Five nanogenerators stacked together produce about 1 micro Ampere output current at 3 volts – about the same voltage generated by two regular AA batteries (about 1.5 volts each).

“While a few volts may not seem like much, it has grown by leaps and bounds over previous versions of the nanogenerator,” said Wang, a scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology. “Additional nanowires and more nanogenerators, stacked together, could produce enough energy for powering larger electronics, such as an iPod or charging a cell phone.”

Wang said the next step is to further improve the output power of the nanogenerator and find a company to produce the nanogenerator. It could hit the market in three to five years, he estimated. The device’s first application is likely to be as a power source for tiny environmental sensors and sensors for infrastructure monitoring.

###

The scientists acknowledge funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (of the U.S. Department of Defense), the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Air Force.

The American Chemical Society is a non-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Nanogenerators produce electricity by squeezing your fingers together, while you dance originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 20:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink