YouTube announced on Thursday that it has increased the time limit of uploaded videos from 10 to 15 minutes. The company said it chose to do so now because of the improvements to its copy protection system, including Content ID that autom
Google has announced a new anti-piracy service designed to help protect Android applications. The licensing system will allow apps to communicate directly with an Android Market server to determine if the handset is running with an authorized license or pirated copy....Took a while, but this is the final installment of my epic 18-part series on free tools for making custom Garmin vector maps. I covered the free map compiler mkgmap in part 13, which converts OpenStreetMap data files (.osm) and Polish map files (.mp) to Garmin’s binary .img format. It’s command-line only, which can make [...] Related posts:
The term GPS backtracker is quite new – usually referring to small handheld GPS devices dedicated to routing you back to a waypoint you’ve marked. This could simply be the spot you parked your car, your favorite camping site, or even the spot where your buried the body in the middle of desert. This is nothing an advanced GPS device can’t do but it’s nice to have a small easy to use GPS handheld for the job. You could even claim your smartphone can get the job done – but good luck with that battery life. Since acquiring GPS signal usually eats up a lot of power your Android/iPhone may be out of out juice within the first hour of your adventure. You might as well keep the last 5 minutes of your battery life to record a voice message for your loved ones.
But anyhow – back to GPS X-Guider. First thing you’ll notice with this GPS device is its simplicity. Simple menus, only two buttons, but still a lot of features.
Hardware
We’re not sure what kind of GPS receiver chip is in this GPS back tracker but we’re happy with it. Out of the box (cold start) it took less than a minute to get a satellite fix and after that it was literally seconds for GPS X-Guider to figure out where it is.
GPS X-Guider is super light. Without the two AAA batteries it pretty much weighs nothing – really good if you’re anal about how much weight you’re taking with you. The batteries actually add some needed weight – so it feels good to hold. Speaking of battery life; all we can say is that it is really decent. After 3 days of on and off review it still has one bar left but we’re never patient enough to actually run it out completely and give you a specific number. The manual claims 16 hours of straight use. And you can always carry spare batteries with you.
The screen is not very exciting but it gets the job done without wasting power. It is definitely sunlight readable and when it is dark out the neo blue backlight comes in handy and makes it a pleasure to use GPS X-Guider.
GPS X-Guider comes with a really durable silicon case that fits tightly and makes it IPX6 water resistant. Pressing the buttons with the case is still very easy; so no worries there. There’s also neck strap / lanyard in the case so it is ready to attach to your backpack or put around your neck.
Software
Software of GPS X-Guider is very comprehensive. It lets you organize your theme destinations, back tracing way points, route plans, and the tracks you’ve logged. One side of the window is the options we listed and the other pane is live Google Maps. You can drag, zoom, switch between map, satellite, hybrid views just like you’d in your browser. If you don’t like the software for some reason you can always export your tracks to other formats which include KML, GPX, and NMEA.
Say you’re planning a trip: the software even allows you to name each point on your route so you know which waypoint you’re headed to. To be more specific you can call your waypoints as such: “1)car park, 2)trail head, 3)good place for pics, 4)cross over creek here, etc etc”.
Firmware
When we say firmware we’re talking about the menus and options that are actually on the device itself. There’s isn’t much to say here. Once you get used to it is pretty easy to navigate around.
One screen shows the time that gets set automatically using your position and satellite time. Another screen shows compass; arrow pointing north, and the smaller arrow around the edge pointing to your destination. Another screen is the speedometer; which also includes the direction of your destination. In the actual guider you’ll get a giant arrow pointing to where you need to head, and the name of your next waypoint. And then there’s the trip info screen which shows details such as speed, odometer, distance, altitude, etc. Like we said; small device packed with features.
Long story short we found GPS X-Guider to be a very handy and inexpensive hanheld GPS back tracker. We do recommend it. You can grab one at GPS X-Guider for $109. Good deal.
Verizon smartphone owners may ultimately use more data than their supposedly more aggressive iPhone-using counterparts at AT&T,Validas discovered. Despite stereotypes, those with Droids and other Verizon devices use about 25 percent more 3G data on average, chewing about 428MB per month where an iPhone owner uses 338MB. Very frequent users are also much more common: 11 percent of Verizon users consume between 500MB and 1GB of data where half as many (5.6 percent) iPhone users do the same.
Apple's device has an edge in the minimum amount of data used, as slightly more use over 200MB of data, but Verizon can claim more use at the extreme, as four percent use 2GB or more per month where just 1.6 percent of iPhone owners are as eager.
The approach suggests that Android owners are even more likely to use their 3G connections and that Verizon may be better prepared for the possibility of a CDMA iPhone as its network can already cope with a large number of frequent users. The Droid line still trails the iPhone in terms of absolute users, but Verizon already has millions of Android phone owners and has yet to see a significant bandwidth crisis where AT&T has had trouble in key cities for over two years.
Validas' metrics deliberately omit BlackBerry owners, as RIM's dependence on compressing all data makes it difficult to see the effect of heavy use.
CloudMade’s platform allows third parties to create applications with stylized and customized map tiles, fully featured turn-by-turn navigation, in-app advertising, local search and data sets relevant to thousands of consumer activities. CloudMade distributes its collaborative mapping, package maps, geo services and advertising to developers and businesses; its main customers are mobile developers, OEMs and network operators. Some of the 12,000-plus developers using CloudMade’s API include Skobbler, OffMaps, Geocaching, Trails, Ride the City, GayCities, and Dopplr.
The startup uses data from partnership with OpenStreetMap (OSM), a wiki map of the world that has over 250,000 users worldwide (and is adding 3,500 new users per week), making over 7,000 edits per hour. CloudMade’s CEO Juha Christensen likens the relationship between his company and OSM to that of the Mozilla Corporation and the non-profit arm Mozilla Foundation. In fact, OpenStreetMap founder Steve Coast works at CloudMade.
The company will use the funding to attempt to build the world’s most comprehensive map and geo database, and serve this data to developers, device manufacturers and mobile
operators. The investment will also be used to build out and add to CloudMade’s suite of consumer-focused mapping products, Mapzen.
Christensen believes that collaborative mapping will do to the mapping industry what Wikipedia did to encyclopedias. Of course, the startup faces competition in space, including Google. But CloudMade has built a loyal base of developers and OpenStreetMap seems to have no lack of participation from the crowd, making its data incredibly valuable.
With Garmin GPSMAP 695 and 696 if the current approach is known, it will automatically select the correct chart based on the flight plan.
You will have to wait until 4th quarter of 2010 to get your hands on the new georeferenced version of Garmin FliteCharts. It will cost one-time fee of $500 and can be enabled at fly.garmin.com.
Last week, CNN Money published an article claiming Android had an 80% customer turnover rate based on a survey by Yankee Group. Despite the fact that this number would mean Android users are more dissatisfied than users of any other smartphone OS, the story made the rounds.
CNN Money later came out and admitted they had made a rather large mistake. The statistic they quoted was the percentage of smartphone users who said “Android” in response to the question, “What operating system will your next smartphone run?” Clearly this 20% goes from being abominable to rather positive for Android, which is currently estimated to control 13% of the smartphone operating system market. A jump to 20% would be a massive gain.
We had the quarterly results from Apple and Nokia which were the big news in the Smartphones bloodbath for last week. Both companies had further bad press, Apple around Antennagate on which I did some math about the real scale of Apple's numbers, and Nokia around rumors that the CEO may be replaced. But there was more news in the 2010 smartphones bloodbath.
AT&T
AT&T reported numbers that for Q2 there were 3.2M iPhones activated (which is up 19%) leaves only 5.2M for rest of world (which is down 14%). The big reason why the rest of the world is down in Q2 is that the new iPhone 4 was only launched in 5 countries, so the AT&T proportion will be more than normal. This is not a sign of problems for the iPhone abroad.
We also learned from Yankee Group that the average household income of iPhone owners is 100,000 dollar household vs 85,000 dollars for other smartphone owners (the US median household income is 52,000 dollars according to US Census Bureau). No big surprise that the iPhone has highest earners, but note that the Blackberry is by far the most common US employee phone smartphone, for mostly mid and senior management. They are well paid. So with that in mind, yes the iPhone is in a very high price bracket as a luxury good, and far from a mass market consumer device.
Death grip - Switzerland becomes second country to delay iPhone 4 launch until Antennagate is fixed. And IDC survey from Friday of Apple's Antennagate press conference reported that 2/3 of existing iPhone owners will delay iPhone 4 purchases until antenna is fixed. Bad news for Apple as most iPhone 4 sales were to existing customers. They still say all phones they can manufacture are sold, and there are week-long waiting periods, but that is temporary and now diminished. They might have had 3 week waiting periods through to October haha, now the waiting periods will soon subside as Apple ships its next batches to stores, if existing iPhone owners stay away. Meanwhile Apple continues to keep the Death Grip Antennagate in the news. After its press conference Apple added a Nokia and a Motorola smartphone to its video collection, which to me seems like a bad strategy of remining users of Antennagate and keeping it in the press.
(Personally I think Apple will bring a new variant of the iPhone 4 which will be called something clearly different, to try to move away from the Death Grip problem very soon and bring those customers back who are waiting).
Microsoft
Microsoft revealed the launch partner phone makers for its new OS, Phone 7. The phone makers are Samsung, LG, Dell, Acer and HTC. Only two of the five are major handset makers, as Samsung and LG are numbers 2 & 3 among the world's top 10 biggest dumbphone makers. The maker conspicuous in its absence is Motorola, which did provide Windows Mobile smartphones but has apparently abandoned the Microsoft family. Samsung, LG and HTC all provide Android phones already so it remains to be seen how eager they are to provide major support to Phone 7. As Samsung has its own Bada OS, don't expect huge effort by Samsung to support Phone 7. And HTC is the bestselling Android maker so it would seem they would put most their effort to retaining the lead on the fastest-growing smartphone OS platform. But it is also possible especially for LG to do a differentiation strategy against SonyEricsson, Motorola and ZTE, by focusing on Phone 7. We have to see and monitor the developments.
In other MS news, it was revealed (but not confirmed) that AT&T has committed to selling 8 million Phone 7 smartphones from Microsoft. But while that number may seem big, remember that AT&T sells more than 12 million iPhones annually, so it does not yet spell awesome success for Phone 7.
HTC
HTC has said they will launch 6 more smartphones before the end of 2010.
RIM
Blackberry maker RIM Admitted it didn't see the kids coming.. That it took RIM by surprise to find all the youth around the world falling in love with the Blackberry.
That is the rest of the news in the smartphones space. We will keep monitoring the Bloodbath wars here at the Communities Dominate blog
Android 3 is now believed to be in field testing as a check of online analytics has shown examples in the field. Some phones running the Linpack online benchmark have been caught running 3.0, 3.0.1 and 3.2. While the releases could use faked version numbers, they're believed to be examples of concurrent development which will branch out once 3.0 is finished.
The appearance supports notions that Google is advancing in its development of Android 3.0 and could have the OS ready in the fall. Among the expected changes are a more intuitive interface and likely support for upcoming services like Google Music.
Google's timing comes just as Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar claimed that Android 3.0 would be the heart of a Motorola tablet design. A 10-inch slate would ship in November preloaded with the new OS. Not much else is known, but it could be the rumored Verizon tablet and would have built-in 3G if so.
The device could be the first significant, mainstream competitor to the iPad in the US. Samsung's Galaxy Tab isn't yet known to have an American release, and most other competitors are newcomers such as ICD and Notion Ink.
Researchers at Sony together with those at Japan's Tohoku University said they have developed a blue-violet laser that can create 1TB Blu-ray discs. The ultrafast pulsed semiconductor laser has a laser wavelength of 405 nanometers and can generate optical pulses just the picoseconds in duration. Moreover, the new laser doesn't require a large light source and a specialist technician to operate, as required in the past with similar technology....
You won't be coloring us shocked if this plays out exactly as rumored, but word on the street has it that Panasonic will be busting out a consumer-level 3D camcorder as early as next week. 'Course, this is a company that already has a built-to-order 3D camcorder available to those with just over 20 large in need of a new home, and with the 3D push happening at a breakneck pace, it was just a matter of time before one of the big boys came along and served up an option for the Average Joe / Jane. Specifics on the device -- which will be "shown at a Tokyo news conference scheduled for July 28" -- are few and far between, but we're hearing that it'll be "about the same size as a conventional consumer-use camcorder," will integrate a pair of lenses (like so) in the front and will ring up at "far less" than professional models.
On most LCDs, there are three dots per pixel: one each of green, red, and blue. This is how it’s been for a long time, before pixels were really pixels and before LCDs were common. Some LCDs, however, in order to save space or increase effective pixel density, share dots between pixels, based on a different display model — you may hear this referred to as matrix or Pentile layout, but it’s comparatively rare, and low-cost LCDs like you see on most cameras are going to have 3 dots per pixel.
153000/640=240
Probably not 640×240, that’d be a tiny panorama.
153000/480=320
Well there you go! 480×320x3=~460K dots.
If you apply this method to a few more common dot counts, you get the little chart I made to the right, there. A 1280×720 LCD panel won’t be advertised as having 2765K dots — they’ll just call it 720p, because that’s more marketable than obscuring the actual number with a dot count.
So, now you’re prepared. You can even figure out the PPI — if you feel like doing a little trigonometry. I don’t, so you’re on your own there.
Google’s Developer site has, regularly as a clockwork bit of the internet, updated its breakdown of Android users – stats it compiles by counting connections to the Android Market through the various handset types out there.
Android 2.1 has now pushed further into the lead, thanks to the arrival of many, many new phones and the gradual updating process of older models – while Android 1.5 drops by a few percent.
Good to see Android 2.2 raising its stake, too – that was on 1.8% of Android phones in the previous data and is now on 3.3% this this. The Nexus One obviously carved itself out quite a following.
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“Android cost isn’t material for the company,” Google CFO Patrick Pichette noted. He said that it’s important to remember that perhaps the key products for Android — the phone hardware — isn’t developed by Google at all. Droid X, for example, was entirely an investment by Motorola to make the device. “The entire ecosystem is exploding,” Pichette said.
“I think the most important thing beyond the growth is that the most popular app is a browser,” Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s SVP of Product Management, added. And what do people do there? They search — more than they ever have, Rosenberg continued. In fact, he says that search on Android devices grew 300% in the first half of 2010.
Rosenberg also added that mobile search growth across the board is up some 500% in the past two years from a traffic perspective. “Android is an accelerator of that,” Rosenberg concluded.
When another question wondered if the Android strategy was more defensive (presumably against Apple), Pichette said that Android is being done for “offensive reasons, not defensive reasons.” He reiterated the importance of an open ecosystem and said that smartphones are creating a new set of activities for search and transaction.
“I don’t think of this is defensive at all,” Rosenberg chimed in. He noted that all of this was in its nascent stages and that Google is investing heavily. ”We see this platform as winning. It lets us build the mobile Internet,” he said.
In terms of making money off of Android’s software (beyond search), Rosenberg said it was too early to answer that. “We’re mostly focused on building out the platform with Android.“
Darpa’s leading advocate for crowdsourcing and other ways of tapping new talent is leaving to join Microsoft — after only a year at the Defense Department’s top R&D division.
Peter Lee, the former head of Carnegie Mellon University’s computer science department, joined Darpa to head up its new Transformational Convergence Technology Office. The group quickly became known within the agency for avoiding the traditional cadre of military researchers — and reaching out to the rest of us, instead.
Lee helped organize Darpa’s “Network Challenge,” which sent people scouring the country for a set of 10 big red balloons in an attempt to “explore the roles the internet and social networking play [in] timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization,” according to an agency website.
Lee’s office also launched “Transformative Apps,” a project to create a marketplace for soldier software. “It’s like an iPhone store. Everybody figures out rapidly which apps are really the coolest. And instead of paying for the development of software, we pay for the usage,” says Dan Kaufman, director of the Information Processing Techniques Office.
Kaufman is assuming Lee’s accounts and intends to keep up Lee’s unconventional approach.”We’ll also set up a big community of war fighters chatting about what they really freakin’ need — and developers get to jump in and say, ‘Hey, I can do that.’”
Lee will officially depart from the agency in the fall to join Microsoft Research Redmond as managing director. He’s the third director of Darpa’s seven major offices to leave since Regina Dugan took over the agency in June 2009.
That’s heavy turnover, even in an agency which prides itself on keeping managers only briefly. “It’s bittersweet,” says Kaufman. “We owe him a lot, even though he wasn’t here very long.”
Photo courtesy Carnegie Mellon University
As some readers already noted, this previously covered patent application could be the base of the new continuous AF in video mode/live view feature which will first be implemented in the new Nikon D3100 DSLR camera. As you can see from the drawings, Nikon produced various camera configuration as a possible implementations of this patent, which could indicate that this solution will spread across all future Nikon cameras, including the EVIL system.
Nikon patent application 20100150539 is for a focus adjustment solution (see wikipedia’s explanation of the two different passive focus solutions: phase detection and contrast measurement). Different implementations are shown in this patent application: the first drawing is a camera with a half mirror, the second is mirrorless (EVIL) camera, the third implementations is without a prism (Pellix camera?) and in the last drawing the sensor is located under the mirror (instead of behind the mirror):
From the July 2010 Issue
By Sara Schreiber
Emergency managers and responders on ground level still count information sharing among their biggest obstacles when it comes to navigating disasters. Despite applications that promise to help ease the challenge, synching up these systems among individual agencies is another matter entirely. In February of 2009, the Department of Homeland Security began a pilot program for an information sharing solution that could ultimately allow its users to share real-time information fast between multiple jurisdictions, on any platform, using only existing software. Before testing on Virtual USA was even completed, emergency managers minding the effects of an unprecedented oil spill on the Gulf Coast were asking how they could get their hands on it.
Hurricanes, wild fires and beyond
David Boyd, director of command control and interoperability in the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) insists Virtual USA is "limited only by your imagination." The beauty lies in the fact that the solution is both application and platform agnostic -- it can be used with ESRI, Google Earth Enterprise, mobile public versions of Google Earth, Microsoft Bing Maps ... anything that has a geographic capability. Whether a tornado hits a small town or a passenger jet is barreling towards a government headquarters, any information that is of importance to responders starts at a local level. It is necessary that such information is disseminated quickly and accurately to the people who need it.
About three years ago when a hurricane struck Alabama's coast, the state's governor had a hard time seeing the damage in real time as it unfolded. The State of Alabama sought help from the Department of Homeland Security, in hopes they could find a way to expand an application, initially based on Google Earth, that would allow them to use mapping and imagery to geographically focus on what was actually happening on the ground. They wanted to compare previous imagery to photographs they'd taken after the incident.
A similar thing happened in Virginia. When a series of wild land fires tore through the state, it was discovered a local operations center -- then trying to keep tabs on the blaze -- had 18 different Web pages open at the same time. After having requested an of-the-moment map of the fires, the emergency manager was presented with an image that was, by then, three hours old. They needed an alternative. What if they had access to an application that pulled together all types of information on a map so any necessary information would be geographically related, and could be shared with whomever desired access? In fact, it is entirely possible.
Working with what you've got
"Once we found these two [states] we said, 'Okay ... our experience has been it's incredibly difficult to try to develop a single system and have every state or every organization come on board,'" recalls Boyd. "So we said, we can work with you and see if we can figure out how to pull information from one of these systems to the other, and allow each of you to see the other's information on your own viewer.
"We were able to quickly demonstrate that we could, in fact, do that. And that led to the creation of what we called the Southeast Regional Operation pilot platform."
We have another set of smartphone user data underlining the astonishingly rapid growth of Android and that of its handset-making partners, courtesy of ChangeWave Research – which shows smartphone awareness at an all-time high.
The below graph shows but one element of the data – how HTC has dramatically risen to public prominence in the smartphone arena over the last few years. Is it thanks to its Windows Mobile powered HD2? Probably not, eh?
Looks like Motorola’s DROID-powered late ’09 popularity spike is flattening out, while HTC is rocketing away in terms of user awareness. HTC’s HQ has literally blasted into space. HTC is in orbit right now, looking down on us and laughing.
On the downside, despite the crazy internet furore regarding iPhone 4′s dodgy reception, Apple is still on a high – it’s users are happy (AKA smug) with their purchases and loving it. Poor old RIM owners, though, are sinking into a PIT of DESPAIR.
Read much, much more about the state of the smartphone universe over at ChangeWave. It’s some great data. Very comprehensive. Nice work, CW.
HTC was the only major challenger to see demand grow, as the combination of the Droid Incredible and Evo 4G pushed it from 12 percent of planned phone buys in March to 19 percent in June. The balance may change with Motorola's Droid X nearing release.
Analysts blamed RIM's decline almost exclusively on happiness with BlackBerries. The number of owners who said they were "very satisfied" with the phone sank to an all-time low of 30 percent in June, down from 38 percent in March and well below the high of 55 percent from 2008. The age of the OS and a lack of interesting devices has seen the BlackBerry lose its "cool factor," ChangeWave wrote.
Apple was slightly lower in June as well, but at 73 percent had much more overall satisfaction than even HTC, which reached just 39 percent. RIM wasn't the lowest; companies that depended heavily on Symbian or Windows Mobile, such as Samsung, Nokia and Sony Ericsson, ranged as low as 20 percent.
French electronics company Parrot SA plans next month to release a toy helicopter with a twist. The WSJ reports.The $299 toy is the latest example of an effort to commercialize augmented reality, a technique in which extra information or graphics are added to ordinary surroundings. From virtual mirrors that superimpose a shade of lipstick on a potential buyer's face, to restaurant reviews that pop up when a person points a camera phone at a restaurant, proponents say the technology has a range of possible uses beyond videogames that mix the real and virtual worlds.The AR Drone has a pair of cameras to relay video to iPhones or iPads, which function as the remote control. The device also recognizes certain objects, such as other AR Drones, and can add graphics to the video feed, creating a videogame played out in the real world.
Read full article.
Magellan just updated their eXplorist lineup with three new models. These are Magellan eXplorist 510,Magellan eXplorist 610, and Magellan eXplorist 710.
First off, all three new eXplorists come with a 3″ color touch screen, 3.2MP camera with auto focus, mic, speaker to mark waypoints not only with a dot on a map but also include a photo, some audio, or even some video. It’s like geotagging on steroids.
All of the devices come with preloaded maps which include road network for the U.S., Canada, Western Europe and Australia, as well as water features, urban and rural land use, and a realistic shaded relief background. 510, 610, and 710 are all IPX7 waterproof, offer 16 hours of battery life, a digital almanac, and track summary and area calculation feature.
All of them are great for paperless geocaching. Check out the new models here.
As far as differences between these three models:
I gave Garmin the opportunity to comment, but received little more than what they told me when I asked about the improved 450 screen…
…we’re continually striving to make great products even better through continuous software and hardware improvements.
I’ll take that as a non-denial. I assume Garmin is doing this because they want to retain the 550 series as the top of the line Oregon model (for the time being anyway). But such a move creates confusion among consumers. If I buy a 550 today, which screen will it have? At least when they changed the chipset on the 60CSx, you could tell which it had by the firmware version. This could be good news if you really want the geotagging camera found on the 550 series, but good luck determining which screen you got, unless you can do a side by side comparison with a 450 or older 550 series unit.
