golf – Page 35 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

HP sells Palm trademarks; brand could be resurrected with new smartphones

Palm, the legendary smartphone and PDA company, might seem dead and gone, but it’s now looking like the name “Palm” will rise again as a zombie brand. For a quick refresher: HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion in 2010. HP killed the Palm brand after about a year of ownership and stopped making WebOS devices entirely about a year-and-a-half after the acquisition. Since then, Palm has been pretty dead. Lately, though, the brand has started to stir. The diehards over at WebOS Nation have been keeping a close eye on Palm.com , which recently stopped redirecting nostalgic visitors to hpwebos.com and started sending people to mynewpalm.com . The page shows a looping video of a Palm logo along with the text “Coming Soon” and “Smart Move.” No one was sure who was behind the site resuscitation until this document was found, which shows the transfer of the Palm trademark from Palm, Inc (still a subsidiary of HP) to a company called Wide Progress Global Limited. Wide Progress Global Limited doesn’t seem to be a company with any kind of real purpose—it’s just a shell meant to hide the true buyer. The person signing the paperwork for Wide Progress Global Limited is Nicolas Zibell, who also just happens to hold the title “President Americas and Pacific” at Alcatel One Touch. Couple that with the fact that the “Smart Move”—the text that appears on the new Palm site—is Alcatel One Touch’s slogan, and it’s pretty clear that Alcatel One Touch bought the Palm brand. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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HP sells Palm trademarks; brand could be resurrected with new smartphones

Google Tracker 2015: Everything we know Google is working on for the new year

The New Year is almost here, and that means it’s time for the bi-annual Google Tracker, our round up all of Google’s news, rumors, and acquisitions. Hopefully it paints a clearer picture of what will happen with the company in the future. We’re not really predicting launch dates or guaranteeing that everything in this article will launch in 2015, we’re outlining a list of projects and initiatives currently underway at Google HQ. Think of it as a big “to-do” list for Google—things can be delayed, moved around, or canceled, but to the best of our knowledge, this is a good synopsis of the company’s current goals. The 2013-2014 version of the Ars Google Tracker worked out pretty well: Android Wear, Google Play Games, Android One, the Nexus Player, YouTube Music Key, and many features of Lollipop were all represented. So if you play close attention to Google news, this post should be a good refresher. And if you’re just a casual Google observer, it’s time to catch up on all you’ve been missing. Table of Contents Nest: Google’s Home Automation Division Android M and Google’s feature experiments OS-wide fingerprint support Selectable app permissions Split-screen apps Google Hangouts, your personal IM assistant Copresence—cross-platform, ultrasonic pairing of nearby devices Person-based reminders Android Apps as a universal binary Android turns into a real car infotainment OS Material Design hits the Web WhatsApp competition, but not Google Hangouts Chromecast 2—new hardware that supports “second screen” interactions Virtual reality with a piece of cardboard Google X Life Sciences—Basically the “Google Healthcare” division Smart contact lenses Baseline Study Continuous monitoring via disease-detecting nanoparticles Liftware, a stabilized spoon for tremor sufferers Calico Google X Self-driving cars Google Glass 2—powered by Intel The Google X Display Division Project Ara—Will the modular phone concept finally become a real product? The Google graveyard Other stuff The world’s most ambitious tech company Nest: Google’s Home Automation Division Nest The Nest Thermostat, Nest’s first consumer product. It lets you control your thermostat remotely and learns your schedule. 4 more images in gallery Home automation was a major expansion point for Google in 2014, and the market feels like the company’s next big ecosystem. At the very beginning of 2014, Google bought Nest Labs , the makers of the Nest Thermostat, for $3.2 billion. Shortly after the acquisition, news came out that Tony Fadell—Nest’s founder and “one of the fathers of the iPod”—was a direct report to Google CEO Larry Page. Only a handful of Google employees deal directly with Page, and they’re usually heads of divisions at Google. So at the time, we posited that Fadell would be running Google’s “smart home” division . Read 118 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google Tracker 2015: Everything we know Google is working on for the new year

Watching lava fight with snow in Kamchatka

Depending on the context, volcanic eruptions are either terrifying or transfixing—sometimes both, but rarely neither. The opportunity to safely view the otherworldly spectacle of lava rarely fails to ignite a child-like, giddy wonder. The damage currently being done by a lava flows in the Cape Verde Islands , on the other hand, is heart-breaking. We study these things because they are both lovely and terrible. We want to see a lava flow spill across a snowfield out of curiosity, and we want to better understand the hazards surrounding snow-capped volcanoes out of caution. Benjamin Edwards of Dickinson College and Alexander Belousov and Marina Belousova of Russia’s Institute of Volcanology and Seismology got the opportunity to witness one of these events last year in Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. For nine months, Tolbachik spewed basaltic lava flows that ultimately covered 40 square kilometers, reaching as far as 17 kilometers from their source. The lava flows came in two flavors , known to geologists by Hawaiian names. (While frozen Kamchatka doesn’t exactly evoke coconuts and grass skirts, these lavas are similar to those of the Hawaiian volcanoes.) First there’s ‘a’a (pronounced as a staccato “AH-ah”), which ends up a chunky, blocky crumble of basalt. The other is pahoehoe (roughly “puh-HOY-hoy”, which is how volcanologists answer the phone), which flows more like thick batter and can solidify into a surface resembling a pile of ropes. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Watching lava fight with snow in Kamchatka

EFF: Feds can’t get around Fourth Amendment via automated data capture

OAKLAND, Calif.—A federal judge spent over four hours on Friday questioning lawyers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and from the Department of Justice in an ongoing digital surveillance-related lawsuit that has dragged on for more than six years. During the hearing, US District Judge Jeffrey White heard arguments from both sides in his attempt to wrestle with the plaintiffs’ July 2014 motion for partial summary judgment . He went back and forth between the two sides, hearing answers to his list of 12 questions that were published earlier this week in a court filing. That July 2014 motion asks the court to find that the government is “violating the Fourth Amendment by their ongoing seizures and searches of plaintiffs’ Internet communications.” The motion specifically doesn’t deal with allegations of past government wrongdoing, nor other issues in the broader case. Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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EFF: Feds can’t get around Fourth Amendment via automated data capture

Activist group sues San Diego Police Department over “stingray” records

A legal advocacy group has sued the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) and the city of San Diego in an attempt to force the release of public records relating to stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators. Stingrays are often used covertly by local and federal law enforcement to locate target cellphones and their respective owners. However, stingrays also sweep up cell data of innocent people nearby who have no idea that such collection is taking place. Stingrays can be used to intercept voice calls and text messages as well. Earlier this week, a local judge in Arizona ruled that a local reporter could not receive similar stingray documents from the Tucson Police Department because disclosure “would give criminals a road map for how to defeat the device, which is used not only by Tucson but other local and national police agencies.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Activist group sues San Diego Police Department over “stingray” records

AnandTech snapped up by parent company of Tom’s Hardware and LaptopMag

Purch, Inc. announced on Wednesday that it had purchased AnandTech.com, ending the site’s 17-year run as an independent publication. Purch also owns a number of other long-running technology sites, including LaptopMag (founded as Laptop Magazine in 1991), Tom’s Hardware (founded 1996), and a handful of other offshoot tech publications. Purch says the acquisition will help it “dominate the tech expert and enthusiast market.” Anand Shimpi, founder and original editor-in-chief of the site, left his post for Apple in late August. Shimpi says he is “happy to see [AnandTech] end up with a partner committed to taking good care of the brand and its readers.” Current Editor-In-Chief Ryan Smith says the site has “grown by leaps and bounds over the past several years” but that it was “nearing what’s possible as an independent company.” Smith goes on to say that Purch values AnandTech’s exhaustive hardware testing and reviews, and that Purch would enable the site to grow “without compromising the quality that made us who we are today.” Under Smith, AnandTech has continued to run reviews of individual PC components and, less frequently, complete consumer products like laptops, phones, and operating systems. While the site misses Shimpi’s voice and expertise (and that of former mobile editor Brian Klug, who also left for Apple this year), its coverage and testing procedures continue to be deep and thorough, and they will hopefully remain that way post-acquisition. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

FCC expected to fine Sprint $105 million for overcharging customers

The Federal Communications Commission is reportedly on the verge of fining Sprint $105 million for cramming charges that brought complaints from tens of thousands of customers. The $105 million fine would match one levied on AT&T , which was accused of the same illegal practice. The US government has also sued T-Mobile over cramming charges. The FCC has not confirmed the action against Sprint, but it was reported Monday in the National Journal and yesterday in The Wall Street Journal . “According to the enforcement action, which hasn’t been finalized, Sprint billed customers for third-party services it knew they hadn’t asked for and didn’t want,” National Journal wrote. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Judge says reporter can’t get public records about cops’ “stingray” use

A local judge in Arizona ruled Friday that the Tucson Police Department (TPD) does not have to disclose records related to the use of stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators, under the state’s public records act. According to a Saturday report from Capitol Media Services , a state news wire, complying with reporter Beau Hodai ’s public records request “would give criminals a road map for how to defeat the device, which is used not only by Tucson but other local and national police agencies.” Hodai sued the TPD and the City of Tucson in March 2014 to force them to hand over such records. The devices are often used covertly by local and federal law enforcement to locate target cellphones and their respective owners. However, stingrays also sweep up cell data of innocent people nearby who have no idea that such collection is taking place. Stingrays can be used to intercept voice calls and text messages as well. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Judge says reporter can’t get public records about cops’ “stingray” use

Synaptics builds a fingerprint reader right into its trackpads

Consider the trackpad. The ones in Windows laptops are rarely (if ever) their best feature, but they nevertheless remain ubiquitous. Synaptics is one of the biggest names in trackpads, and today it announced a new one called the ” SecurePad ” that integrates a fingerprint reader into the trackpad itself rather than as a separate component. The SecurePad will have a small, 4mm by 10mm sensor on the trackpad’s surface that can scan a “fingertip placed at any angle on the sensor.” Said sensor will be available in a variety of different Synaptics trackpads, including the TouchPad , ClickPad , and ForcePad , and those trackpads will all be available in a variety of sizes. LED lights will provide feedback and allow the sensor to be used in dark environments. Fingerprint data traveling between the sensor and the “host processor” is encrypted to prevent the information from being accessed by other apps (Apple uses a similar sort of encryption with TouchID , and it prevents user apps from accessing fingerprint data in transit). We’ve contacted Synaptics to see if storing and reading fingerprints securely requires a separate chip to be installed in laptops that use the SecurePad and to get more detail on how this encryption works—we’ll update this article if we receive a response. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Synaptics builds a fingerprint reader right into its trackpads

A silk casing enables long-lasting, implantable Wi-Fi medical devices

Not the silk casing discussed. Flickr user: CameliaTWU For a variety of medical reasons, it’s useful to implant devices inside the body. These devices may be needed to help regulate the cardiovascular system, or they can release drugs inside the body. Unfortunately, they’re also problematic. Once such a device has served its function, it must be removed, which necessitates another surgery. Plus, the presence can lead to complications such as infection, inflammation, and pain. To address some of these problems, scientists have developed new kinds of circuitry that can safely dissolve in the body. While these water-soluble devices don’t need to be removed, they come with a new problem—they dissolve too quickly for many purposes. So a group of researchers have now reported that they’ve developed a new way to control how long the devices last. The researchers propose that dissolving devices could be encased in a material made from silk protein and magnesium. The advantage of this approach comes from a property of the silk: its crystallinity. Different preparations of silk dissolve in water at different rates depending on their crystallinities. Altering this property allows researchers to choose among a range of dissolution times from only a few minutes up to a few weeks. This gives more control over the duration of the device, which is important, since different medical situations require devices that can last vastly different times. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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A silk casing enables long-lasting, implantable Wi-Fi medical devices