Apple's New Spaceship Headquarters in Cupertino (pics)

    Apple, Cupertino, Calif.Rendering of Apple's new campus in Cupertino, Calif., expected to open                                                                    in 2016.

 The new 2.8-million sq. ft. facility was brought to the Cupertino city council by late CEO Steve Jobs. Its                                                                   diametre is greater than that of the Pentagon.

 The project is meant to incorporate and develop much of the surrounding green space, with a system of bike lanes, bio-fuel buses and its own natural gas-burning power plant.

Holographic Technology: Make the world your Office

It could be as simple as negotiating an elaborate deal with a businessman — even when you are sitting in an office on the other side of the world. Or it could be as complex as a hospital’s chief cardiologist making final checks before surgery — for a patient lying in an isolated village 500 miles away. Or it could be as personal as making sure you see your children when they get home from school — even though you are in a different time zone.

In the next few years, a technological leap in video communication is about to change the way we interact, work and live our lives.

Software such as Skype – which boasted 299 million users in June 2013 — and Apple’s FaceTime have already transformed personal relationships, meaning that families and friends can stay in touch from anywhere in the world.

But now teleconferencing — and its modern appellation, telepresence — is beginning to change our professional lives, too.

The last few years have already seen a sharp rise in “remote working” — employees working from home. According to a 2012 Ipsos/Reuters poll, around one in five people in the world frequently “telecommute” to work, and nearly 10% work remotely from home every day.

Meanwhile, companies expanding around the globe face pressure from shareholders and regulators to minimise staff travel between offices for meetings, enabling more energy-efficient choices and reducing expenses. 

A proliferation of better-quality, cost-effective technology addresses this need. The TP3200 video conferencing system for example, was recently launched by communications technology provider Huawei Enterprise. It is designed especially for group meetings and uses a specialised image-processing device — a so-called co-optical centre camera — to provide the world’s first panoramic telepresence system.

“HD (high-definition)-resolution cameras and reliable broadband connectivity have vastly improved the teleconferencing experience,” says Jack He Liang, video conferencing director at the firm. 

“More people, and more employers, are beginning to see the benefits of video communication.

“Not only can it reduce costs, improve efficiency and save on human resources, but video conferencing also makes it easier to convey your idea. When you can communicate with your eyes and face, both sides [of the meeting] feel more confident.”

Teleconferencing no longer requires participants to submit to a fixed system of technical standards. Instead, many systems now utilise what is called BYOD.

“It’s short for ‘Bring Your Own Device,’” says He Liang. “The system recognises that many workers already own tablets, smartphones and laptops with cameras — and integrates them.”

The result is a step change in how we see, and carry out, our jobs.

So it is little surprise that global businesses are expected to spend $3.75bn (£2.3bn) on videoconferencing technology by 2016. Smart 2020, a study commissioned by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, (a programme launched in 2001 to promote sustainable development in the ICT sector), found that US and UK businesses can save almost $19bn (£11.7bn) as a result of deploying 10,000 telepresence units by 2020.

By cancelling the need for long- and short-haul executive flights between offices, the same study suggested that teleconferencing technology and other virtual tools could reduce global annual greenhouse gas emissions by 15% by the year 2020.

But that is just the start. The next generation of video telepresence systems aims to fit even more seamlessly into our lives — by adding realistic 3D capabilities.

The technology, known as holographic telepresence, is more Star Trek than staff meeting. Instead of a flat screen, a three-dimensional moving image of a user is reproduced at each meeting location.

Currently the effect is not a true hologram. The technology company Musion, based in the UK, adapts an illusion commonly used in theatres and theme parks known as the Pepper's ghost effect. An HD projector illuminates a thin, effectively invisible, sheet-like “foil” from a 45-degree angle, creating a 3D image almost indistinguishable from an actual person. The Musion TelePresence system can now transmit full-sized people and objects in real-time “without any significant delay in communication”, the company says.

The system achieved a Guinness World Record in 2012 by helping Indian politician Narendra Modi deliver a 55-minute campaign speech to audiences in 53 different locations simultaneously. And in the entertainment world, Musion was one of three companies credited for digitally resurrecting rapper Tupac Shakur onstage at the 2012 Coachella festival.

But true holograms might not be far away. Leia Display System is currently working on an alternative technology. The Polish company has built a holographic room, measuring 3m (10ft) by 2.5m (8ft), which uses laser projectors to beam 3D images onto a thin cloud of water vapour — providing not only a giant 3D multi-touch screen, but also the ability to walk through the images and see them from any point of view.

Holographic telepresence like this has obvious potential beyond from the business world. Healthcare is already being revolutionised by telemedicine, allowing patients to be treated remotely, whether in isolated areas or on a distant battlefield.

Hologram technology could also see advances in areas like education, enhanced movies, television programming, advertising, gaming, 3D mapping, aerospace navigation and robot control.

Still other improvements could be imminent. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US is examining how physical surfaces can be manipulated by gestures, with objects being resized, reshaped or moved remotely by people thousands of miles away. This offers the potential for virtual offices, where hundreds or even thousands of people could collaborate on a product without ever touching it.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo are also working on adding haptic feedback (vibrations, for example) to holographic projections by using ultrasound waves. A user can touch and interact with a hologram and receive tactile responses as if the holographic object were real.

In an IBM survey of 3,000 researchers, respondents named holographic video calls as one of the five technologies they expect to see in place by 2015.

There are obstacles to using these technologies, of course. Not least is the cost of holographic technology: Musion currently rents its system for around $65,000 (£40,000). Live telepresence also needs a fast, direct connection of 10-20 megabytes per second (Mbps), as the recordings are of higher quality.

“But thanks to 4G and LTE networks — and 5G coming soon — bandwidth is no longer a problem,” says Huawei Enterprise’s He Liang.

“[Telepresence] will mean that we don’t have to work in an office,” he explains. “That we don’t have to travel miles to be treated by a doctor. That we can interact with our families from a different country. It will begin to change the world we live in.”

Huawei released the industry's first panoramic telepresence system(TPS). This TPS adopts Huawei's patented co-optical center camera with panoramic gapless imaging and image stitching technologies, giving users a truly immersive experience.

Huawei's panoramic TPS provides open interfaces to interconnect with the systems of other vendors, thereby protecting the customer's investment.

Huawei's panoramic telepresence system is able to save up to 30% TCO for the customer because it requires 25% less bandwidth, 42% less energy, and 26% less physical space.

NASA discovers 715 new planets

LONDON: Nasa's Kepler mission has found 715 new planets in what is the largest number of planets discovered in a single go. 

Nearly 95% of them are smaller than Neptune which is almost four times the size of Earth. 

These newly-verified worlds orbit 305 stars revealing multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system. 

This discovery marks a significant increase in the number of known small-sized planets akin to Earth than previously identified exoplanets which are planets outside our solar system. It also brings the confirmed count of planets outside our solar system to nearly 1,700. 

Four of these new planets are nearly 2.5 times the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's habitable zone defined as the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of a planet may be suitable for life. 

Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets. Discoveries include more than 3,600 planet candidates of which 961 have been verified as bona-fide worlds. 

"The Kepler team continues to amaze and excite us with their planet hunting results," said John Grunsfeld from Nasa's Science Mission Directorate. 

"That these new planets and solar systems look somewhat like our own portends a great future when we have the James Webb Space Telescope in space to characterize the new worlds," he added. 

To verify this bounty of planets a research team co-led by Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at Nasa analyzed stars with more than one potential planet all of which were detected in the first two years of Kepler's observations - May 2009 to March 2011. 

The research team used a technique called verification by multiplicity which relies in part on the logic of probability.

Samsung Unveils Water-resistant Galaxy S5 to launch in April '14

Samsung on Tuesday announced the Galaxy S5, its new flagship Android smartphone with an Apple iPhone 5S-like biometric sensor button. The phone is dust and water-resistant, sports a faster camera and offers fitness-related features.

The Galaxy S5, which was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, will be available in 150 countries, including India, on April 11. However, the company did not announce the price of the new smartphone.

It sports a slightly larger 5.1-inch Super AMOLED (1080 X 1920p) display which looks similar to that of the Galaxy S4.

Powered by a 2.5GHz quad-core processor and 2GB RAM, the Galaxy S5 will come in 16GB and 32GB internal storage variants which will be expandable up to 64GB through microSD card.

"With the Galaxy S5, Samsung is going back to basics to focus on delivering the capabilities that matter most to our consumers," said JK Shin, president and head of IT & mobile communications division at Samsung. "Galaxy S5 represents an iconic design with essential and useful features to focus on delivering the ultimate smartphone in the market today through people inspired innovation."

While acknowledging the market murmur about lesser-than-expected sales of Galaxy S4, Shin revealed that Samsung had so far sold over 200 million Galaxy phones. Galaxy S4 was launched in the summer of 2013. It has faced tough competition from the likes of Apple iPhone 5 and 5S, LG G2, HTC One and Sony Xperia Z1.

Usually, Samsung launches flagship Galaxy phone every year after World Mobile Congress (MWC). But, this year, the company announced Galaxy S5 at the MWC because it wants to replace Galaxy S4 as soon as possible.

In Galaxy S5, Samsung has introduced several unique features aimed at fitness conscious users in a bid to steal Apple's thunder. It is widely rumoured that the iPhone maker will launch the successor of iPhone 5S with a clutch of health and fitness-related features.

"With the enhanced S Health 3.0, the Galaxy S5 offers more tools to help people stay fit and well. It provides a comprehensive personal fitness tracker to help users monitor and manage their behaviour, along with additional tools, including a pedometer, diet and exercise records, and a new, built-in heart rate monitor," said a Samsung spokesperson.

"Galaxy S5 users can further customize their experience with an enriched third party app ecosystem and the ability to pair with next-generation Gear products for real-time fitness coaching,"

Another highlight of the phone is a new iPhone-like fingerprint sensor integrated with the phone's home button. The finger scanner will offer a biometric screen-locking feature and mobile payment experience to consumers.

The Galaxy S5 sports a 16MP rear camera and a 2.1MP front-facing camera. The rear camera is capable of capturing 4K video at 30 frames per second. Samsung claimed the Galaxy S5 offers the world's fastest auto-focus speed up to 0.3 seconds.

The smartphone runs on Android 4.4.2 KitKat, the latest version of Google's mobile operating system. It is IP67 certified dust and water-resistant. The back panel of the phone sports a dimpled soft-touch cover, similar to the Nexus 7(2012) tablet.

Nokia X series of Android smartphones unveiled

Nokia has unveiled its first three Android smartphones after several turbulent years that saw the Finnish manufacturer lose its top spot in the mobile market as Google's free OS became the biggest mobile software in the world.

All three Android phones by Nokia - X, X+ and XL - run on a 'customized' version of Android operating system and will not have access to Play Store.

This means that those looking for a number of popular Android apps will still not have access to those. The company has also not innovated much by way of design for the new range and carried over the monobody design of its Lumia series in the new Android smartphones.

Nokia XL, the biggest of the three new smartphones, has a 5-inch screen, 5MP auto-focus camera with LED flash on the back, 2MP front camera and 1,500mAh battery.

On the other hand, Nokia X and X+ have 4-inch screens and 3MP fixed-focus cameras, said former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop while unveiling the devices.

All three devices will run on a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor with just 512MB RAM, have access to 3G networks and have display resolution of 800x480p. Nokia will offer a 4GB microSD card free with X+ and XL smartphones, but not with the entry-level Nokia X.

As expected, Nokia has preloaded the X, X+ and XL smartphones with Microsoft's cloud services like SkyDrive and One Drive, instead of Google's software, which may prove a dampener for some. The company is offering 10GB of One Drive storage for free.

Some of the apps pre-installed on the devices are Here Maps, Nokia Mix Radio, Facebook, Skype, BBM etc. Users can download apps from the Nokia store, or choose to sideload apps directly from the web.

Interestingly, the home screen of Nokia's three Android smartphones is heavily influence by that of Windows Phone operating system and features Live Tiles. The company has also included FastLane multitasking solution, which it debuted with the revamped Asha series, and Glance Screen in the new smartphones.

Nokia announced that Nokia X will be available immediately in Europe for 89 euros, whereas X+ and XL will hit the stores in early Q2 2014 for 99 and 109 euros respectively. However, it added that the three models will hit markets like India, Africa, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Europe first, without indicating the price range for these markets.

Elop said that Nokia, set to be acquired by Microsoft soon, will encourage app ecosystem for the Nokia X platform.

Batteries that run on human movement

MELBOURNE: Scientists are developing gen-next batteries that capture the energy of our everyday movements, such as walking, to convert it into electricity to power cellphones and other devices. 

Researchers have for many years attempted to harvest energy from our everyday movements to allow us to trickle charge electronic devices while we are walking without the need for expensive and cumbersome gadgets such as solar panels or hand-cranked chargers. 

Lightweight devices are limited in the voltage that they can produce from our low-frequency movements to a few millivolts. 

Now, Jiayang Song and Kean Aw of The University of Auckland, New Zealand, have built an energy harvester that consists of a snake-shapes strip of silicone, polydimethylsiloxane, this acts as a flexible cantilever that bends back and forth with body movements. 

The cantilever is attached to a conducting metal coil with a strong neodymium, NdFeB, magnet inside, all enclosed in a polymer casing. When a conductor moves through a magnetic field a current is induced in the conductor. 

This has been the basis of electrical generation in power stations, dynamos and other such systems since the discovery of the effect in the nineteenth century. 

Using a powerful magnet and a conducting coil with lots of turns means a higher voltage can be produced. 

In order to extract the electricity generated, there is a need to include special circuitry that takes only the positive voltage and passes it along to a rechargeable battery. 

The development of kinetic chargers has been stymied by current diode technology that requires a voltage of around 200 millivolts to drive a current. 

Song and Aw have now side-stepped this obstacle by using a tiny electrical transformer and a capacitor, which acts like a microelectronic battery. 

Their charger weighing just a few grammes oscillates, wiggling the coil back and forth through the neodymium magnetic field and produces 40 millivolts. 

The transformer captures this voltage and stores up the charge in the capacitor in fractions of a second. Once the capacitor is full it discharges sending a positive pulse to the rechargeable battery, thus acting as its own rectifier. 

The team concedes that this is just the first step towards a viable trickle charger that could be used to keep medical devices, monitors and sensors trickle charged while a person goes about their normal lives without the need for access to a power supply. 

The study was published in the International Journal Biomechatronics and Biomedical Robotics.

Samsung to unveil bendable tablet

South Korean media is abuzz that Samsung, the biggest maker of smartphones in the world, is set to unveil the first-ever bendable tablet. The device will be showcased behind closed doors to a select group at a private exhibition, according to a report by ET News. 

The report says that the tablet, to be showcased at Mobile World Congress  next week, will bend at 90-degree angle in the middle. The lower half of the bendable Samsung tablet will feature as a keyboard, while the upper half will be used as the screen and show the apps, quite similar to the setup in a laptop. 

While the technology will be demonstrated at the MWC, it is not to hit the mainstream market until next year at least. At the Samsung Analyst Day conference last year, the company revealed its roadmap, showing that it plans to bring bendable displays to the market in 2015. It also said that foldable smartphone displays will be launched in 2016-17. 

Samsung unveiled its first set of professional-grade tablets at Consumer Electronics Show last month. These tablets have bigger screens than other similar products in the market and can run four apps simultaneously, making operating them similar to multitasking on laptops. 

The highlight of Samsung's MWC event will be the unveiling of the Galaxy S5 smartphone. The device is said to have a 5.25-inch screen with 2K resolution, 16MP rear camera, eight-core processor option, 3GB RAM and Android 4.4 (operating system). It is widely expected that Samsung will debut the next version of its TouchWiz user interface with this smartphone. 

The company is also expected to launch the Galaxy Gear 2 smartwatch at the same event.