GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

Small always-on handheld devices equipped with low-power sensors could signal a new class of “context-aware” gadgets that are more like personal companions.

Such devices would anticipate your moods, be aware of your feelings and make suggestions based on them, says Intel.

“Context-aware computing is poised to fundamentally change how we interact with our devices,” Justin Rattner, CTO of Intel told attendees at the company’s developer conference.

“Future devices will learn about you, your day, where you are and where you are going to know what you want,” he added. “They will know your likes and dislikes.”

Context-aware computing is different from the simple sensor-based applications seen on smartphones today. For instance, consumers today go to an app like Yelp and search for restaurants nearby or by cuisine and price. A context-aware device would have a similar feature that would know what restaurants you have picked in the past, how you liked the food and then make suggestions for restaurants nearby based on those preferences. Additionally, it would be integrated into maps and other programs on the device.

Researchers have been working for more than two decades on making computers be more in tune with their users. That means computers would sense and react to the environment around them. Done right, such devices would be so in sync with their owners that the former will feel like a natural extension of the latter.

“The most profound technology are those that disappear,” Mark Weiser, chief scientist at Xerox PARC and father of the term “ubiquitous computing” told in 1991 about context awareness in machines. “They are those that weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life.”

Making this possible on PCs has proved to be challenging, says Rattner. But the rise of smartphones and GPS-powered personal devices could change that.

“We now have the infrastructure needed to make context-aware computing possible,” says Rattner.

The next step is smarter sensors, say Intel researchers. Today, while smartphones come equipped with accelerometers and digital compasses, the data gathered from these sensors is used only for extremely basic applications.

“Accelerometers now are used to flip UI,” says Lama Nachman, a researcher at Intel. “But you can go beyond that to start sending human gait and user behavior.”

For instance, sensors attached to a TV remote control can collect data on how the remote is held by different users and build profiles based on that. Such a remote, of which Intel showed a prototype at the conference, could identify who’s holding the remote and offer recommendations for TV shows based on that.

Overall, context-aware devices will have to use a combination of “hard-sensing,” or raw physical data about a user (such as where you are), and “soft-sensing” information about the user, such as preferences and social networks, to anticipate needs and make recommendations. This creates the cognitive framework for managing context.

On the hardware side, context-aware computing will call for extremely energy-efficient sensors and devices. Devices will also have to change their behavior, says Rattner.

“We can’t let devices go to sleep and wake them up when we need them,” he says. “We will need to keep the sensory aspects on them up and running at all times and do it at minimum power.”

So far, context-aware computing hasn’t found commercial success, says Intel. But as phones get smarter and tablets become popular, the company hopes users will have a device where apps disappear and become part of the gadget’s intelligence.

Photo: Intel CTO Justin Rattner holds up a prototype sensor that could help enable context aware computing in devices/ (Priya Ganapati/Wired.com)

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Most of us can’t fully succumb to our technolust until we’ve seen a finished gadget in use. Here’s the dirty secret, though — none of your perverted fantasies about multiple-touchscreen smartphones can be realized until someone makes a dual-core chip that would know what to do with them. Samsung’s new Orion 1GHz dual-core ARM microprocessor could make those kinky dreams come true.

Samsung announced the new chip in a press release today; it will be pushed out to “select customers in the fourth quarter of 2010″ and go into “mass production in the first half of 2011.”

So what’s the big deal? We’ve had dual-core processors in our laptops for years! Ah, but those processors are way too big and power-hungry for mobile standards. You don’t want to strap your laptop’s battery to your phone, do you? By necessity, mobile chips are all about small size and low power-consumptions. That’s why IBM’s working on mobile chips with super-sleep modes and Intel just went ahead and bought smartphone chipmaker Infineon just to get in the game, as Gadget Lab reported last week.

But wait — haven’t Qualcomm and Texas Instruments already announced their dual-core processors for mobile devices? And didn’t LG even announce today that they’re going to start packing graphics champ NVidia’s Tegra 2 dual-core processor into smartphones? This can’t just be about mobile multicore processors.

How right you are. This is where we have to unpack those other big numbers attached to the Orion’s specs. The real gem of the Orion is its video processing. Part of this is just the multicore processing; lightweight single-core mobile chips can’t really handle true high-definition (1080p) video. Like the Tegra, the Orion can. What’s more, it’s got an “onboard native triple display controller architecture that compliments multi-tasking operations in a multiple display environment.” Translation: three-way. Smartphones with multiple screens that can display different video to each screen, plus output an entirely different video to a third. These chips are polymorphously perverse.

So that’s the truth about these chips. A smartphone or tablet’s hardware body and capacitative touchscreen are just pretty clothes and suggestive sunglasses. Once you strip those away away, all of the hot, sinewy action is happening underneath.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

If you think Intel chips are just for PCs, take a look at this touchscreen kiosk that the company has created for retailers.

The hulk of metal, plastic and glass looks like a Star Trek prop but it promises to replace the traditional CRT monitors with green-tinted screens that are still at the check out point in most stores.

The kiosk tries to bring the best features of online shopping, such as recommendations, history and easy check-out to retail stores, says Ryan Parker, director of marketing and architecture. We first wrote about this last year but Intel had a polished and slicker-than-ever demo ready Wednesday.

When a customer swipes a card or slides their purchase across the horizontal screen, the display will show the price and payment options –which include the option to pay by cellphone. As you scan the items, the kiosk also makes recommendations on what else you can buy and gives you a quick snapshot of it.

The entire kiosk is powered by Intel’s Core2Duo processors and it uses a solid state drive that helps the overall system work faster and consume less power than existing registers. The chips also include Intel’s vPro technology, a virtualization technology that Intel builds into the chip itself, to make it secure and easy to manage.

The whole set-up is pretty neat, especially when you compare it to the self-check out counters at a Safeway or Lowes. But I can also see something like this potentially slowing down the check out process and longer lines at exit are not something consumers want.

Intel says it retailers don’t have to buy this whole idea as it is. They can pick the pieces they want and integrate it into their existing stores.

Photo: Stefan Armijo/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

For the last few months, Intel has been offering us tantalizing tidbits about its upcoming chips for smartphones. Now we have a sneak peek of the device from Europe.

Steve Paine, who edits the Carrypad and UMPC portal got his hands on a prototype smartphone running Intel’s chips and MeeGo, a Linux-based operating system developed by Intel and Nokia.

Intel’s smartphone chip codenamed Moorestown, is based a processor based on the company’s Atom platform. Moorestown for cellphones has been created to be extremely power efficient, yet pack enough computational muscle for multimedia features such as video conferencing and HD video, says Intel.

Intel had hoped to have the first phones featuring its chips in hands of consumers later this year but last week, the company said the devices are expected to launch early next year.

Though Intels chips power most desktops and notebooks, Intel chips are absent in smartphones. Almost all smartphones are today use chips based on Intel rival ARMs architecture.

There’s no word yet on performance and how Intel chips are handling multimedia content.

Meanwhile, Intel has also been working with Nokia to bring the MeeGo OS to market. Last year Intel had been working on Moblin, a Linux-based operating system designed specifically for netbooks. Separately, Nokia had been working on a new Linux-based software platform called Maemo for smartphones and tablets.

At the Mobile World Congress conference in February this year, Intel and Nokia announced they had combined efforts and spawned a new OS called MeeGo. MeeGo is hosted by the Linux Foundation and is designed to live on phones, netbooks and TVs.

Paine says Intel and Nokia have now released version 1.1 of MeeGo that includes the the handset user experience or UX available to developers for review. MeeGo will have its first developers conference in Ireland in November.

The protoype phone running MeeGo has an interesting user interface. MeeGo is still in pretty early stages so we will have to wait and see if other handsets manufacturers will take a shine to it and MeeGo it can become an alternative to Android.

Meanwhile, check out Paine’s photos of the Intel prototype to get an early sense of what MeeGo looks like on the phone.

Photo: Intel prototype phone/Carrypad

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Intel’s attempt to get inside cellphones will take just a little bit longer.Though the company had hoped to get smartphones with Intel chips in the hands of consumers this year, it is likely that the first phones powered by Intel will debut early next year.

Mobile handsets featuring Intel processors are likely to be shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in January next year or at the Mobile World Congress conference in February.

“That would clearly be the window of opportunity for us,” Intel CTO Justin Rattner told Wired.com.

In May, Intel showed its new chip codenamed ‘Moorestown’ for mobile devices. The company said the chip would be extremely power efficient, while offering enough processing power for features such as video conferencing and HD video.

Though Intel’s chips power most desktops and notebooks, the company’s silicon is glaringly absent in the fast growing category of smartphones and tablets. Worldwide, companies shipped 54.7 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2010, up 56.7 percent from the same quarter a year ago, estimates IDC. Most talked about smartphones today from companies such as Motorola and HTC are powered by chips based on Intel rival ARM ’s architecture.

Intel has tried its hand in the phone-chip business earlier, with little success. In 2006, the company sold its XScale ARM-based division to Marvell. More recently, it tried to pitch its current generation of Atom processors to smartphone makers but the chips were not accepted because they consumed too much power for phone use.

‘Moorestown’ processors can beat the competition, says Intel. Rattner hopes the chips will also go beyond smartphones and into tablets.

So far, Apple has sold more than 3 million iPads in just three months since the product’s launch. Apple uses its own chip for the iPad.

Rattner says tablets using Intel chips are on their way and will be available to consumers by the end of the year.

“Almost all the tablets at Computex (a trade show for PC makers held in Taiwan every year) were Intel-based devices,” he says. “There’s a tremendous amount of interest and activity in the tablet space.”

Yet Rattner says he is “cautious” in his hopes for the tablet market. Rattner does not own an iPad but has an iPhone 3G S.

“A lot of people are saying that the tablet is the next netbook,” he says. “I am not so sure.” More than 85 million netbooks have been sold, since the devices became popular about three years ago.

Netbooks appealed to consumers because of their price, portability and their ability to offer a computing experience comparable to a notebook, say Rattner.

“With tablets, their utility remains to be seen,” he says. “The first generation of tablets including are missing some important things. The absence of a camera is especially baffling in the iPad.”

The iPad may have its flaws but for consumers it’s the only choice for now–unless you count the very flawed JooJoo.

Some tablet makers were waiting for ‘Moorestown’ chips but Intel has already started production and handing it to manufacturers, says Rattner.

“Apple’s gotten everyone’s attention and they have set that bar,” he says. “For others now coming to market, they have to have something substantially more capable than the iPad and it is going to take time to get there.”

Photo: (liewcf/Flickr)

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews