Google Street View heads to the Aloha State

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">Google Street View is morphing into a bit of a social butterfly as of late with notable visits to some of the world’s most <a href="http://www.techspot.com/news/53009-google-sends-street-view-team-to-map-the-worlds-tallest-building.html" style="color: #05408f; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">breathtaking places</a>. The company can soon check another destination off the bucket list as Google’s Street View equipment will be hitting a number of hiking trails in the <a href="http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2013/06/apply-now-to-be-next-google-maps-trekker.html" style="color: #05408f; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Aloha State</a>.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">Through a partnership with the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB), Google will loan their Street View Trekker equipment to local tour guides to help map the landscape. Google said the partnership is perfect to introduce their Trekker loan pilot program.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><img src="http://static.techspot.com/images2/news/bigimage/2013-06-28-image-2.jpg" style="max-width: 100%; outline: none;" /></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">The first phase of the program is scheduled to kick off this month and will see Google loan equipment to tourism company Hawaii Forest and Trail (HFT). This company was chosen based on their impeccable reputation, decades of experience in the tourism business and their capable staff according to Jay Talwar, HVCB’s chief marketing officer.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">Tour guides will initially help find appropriate trails and provide the manpower necessary to carry the 40-pound Trekker camera pack in order to capture imagery. A team from Google Street View has been on location for the past week to help introduce the Trekker hardware to the HFT staff.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">The hiking team is expected to start collecting usable images next month and wrap things up sometime during the fall. We are told that the first set of images should be hitting Google Maps later this year although an exact date wasn’t given.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.techspot.com/news/53069-google-street-view-heads-to-the-aloha-state.html" target="_blank">Read More...</a></div></div>

Google Street View heads to the Aloha State

Google Street View is morphing into a bit of a social butterfly as of late with notable visits to some of the world’s most  breathtaking pla...

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Researchers see through walls with Wi-Fi

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">MIT researchers have <a href="http://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/wivi/" style="color: #05408f; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">demonstrated</a> the application of using Wi-Fi signals to track the movements, locations and number of people inside buildings. Dubbed Wi-Vi, the inexpensive and portable "through-the-wall" radar system could have practical applications in law enforcement, search and rescue operations and home security, even if it does present some potential privacy concerns.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">While listening in on radio signals transmitted by standard Wi-Fi routers and access points, a Wi-Vi transceiver<a class="vglnk" href="http://www.bizrate.com/blankets/index__af_assettype_id--4__af_creative_id--3__af_id--[AFF-ID]__af_placement_id--[AFF-PLACEMENT-ID].html" rel="nofollow" style="color: #05408f; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Link added by VigLink">blankets</a> the area with its own low-power, directional, wireless transmissions. As objects move within the target area, signals are absorbed and reflected differently. The device monitors these slight changes, giving Wi-Vi operators the ability to determine the movements, locations, speeds and the number of moving objects (e.g. people) behind walls.</div><div class="video-container" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 0px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 10px; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding-bottom: 401.625px; position: relative;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/uJkQzLjYBFI" style="height: 401.625px; left: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; outline: none; position: absolute; text-align: justify; top: 0px; width: 714px;" width="640"></iframe></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">Since Wi-Vi relies on physical radio waves instead of higher network layers, operators do not need access to a Wi-Fi network (i.e. no password is needed) in order to make use of signals emanating from a nearby Wi-Fi router or AP.</div><blockquote style="background-color: white; border-left-color: rgb(238, 238, 238); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 5px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin: 10px 20px; outline: none; padding: 15px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">Wi-Vi can detect objects and humans moving behind opaque structural obstructions. This applies to 8" concrete walls, 6" hollow walls, and 1.75" solid wooden doors. A Wi-Vi device pointed at a closed room with 6" hollow walls supported by steel frames can distinguish between 0, 1, 2, and 3 moving humans in the room. Computed over 80 trials with 8 human subjects, Wi-Vi achieves an accuracy of 100%, 100%, 85%, and 90% respectively in each of these cases.</div><div style="outline: none; text-align: justify;">Source: <a href="http://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/papers/wivi-paper.pdf" style="color: #05408f; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">people.csail.mit.edu</a> (pdf), <em style="outline: none;">See Through Walls with Wi-Fi!</em></div></blockquote><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">While Wi-Vi doesn't provide anything that resembles an actual <em style="outline: none;">photograph </em>of what's behind a wall, the results are detailed enough to be used for detecting body gestures (e.g. hand waves) with a remarkable amount of accuracy.</div><blockquote style="background-color: white; border-left-color: rgb(238, 238, 238); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 5px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin: 10px 20px; outline: none; padding: 15px;"><div style="outline: none; text-align: justify;">In the same room, and given a single person sending gesture based messages, Wi-Vi correctly decodes all messages performed at distances equal to or smaller than 5 meters. The decoding accuracy decreases to 75% at distances of 8 meters, and the device stops detecting gestures beyond 9 meters. For 8 volunteers who participated in the experiment, on average, it took a person 8.8 seconds to send a message of 4 gestures.</div></blockquote><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">Unfortunately for potential voyeurs (and fortunately for privacy advocates), it remains a far cry from detailed airport scanners, X-ray vision or even Batman's implausible <a href="http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/nailbiter111/news/?a=77546" style="color: #05408f; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">cell phone "sonar"</a> network, but it could prove to be an inexpensive way to gain life-saving insight for rescue operations and police busts. As with many technologies though, it's not difficult to imagine Wi-Vi being subverted by tech-savvy criminals, like burglars or kidnappers, to get the drop on unsuspecting victims.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.techspot.com/news/53073-researchers-see-through-walls-with-wi-fi.html" target="_blank">Read More...</a></div></div>

Researchers see through walls with Wi-Fi

MIT researchers have  demonstrated  the application of using Wi-Fi signals to track the movements, locations and number of people inside bui...

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Facebook working on a mobile news app called "Reader"

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: justify;"><img src="http://static.techspot.com/images2/news/bigimage/2013-06-24-image-2.jpg" style="max-width: 98%;" /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">Facebook is developing a newspaper platform for mobile devices. Formally called Reader, the service will act as a news aggregator that pulls together a multitude of stories coming from fellow Facebook users, as well as established publishers.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">According to the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323998604578563853135203858.html" style="color: #05408f; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal</a>, early versions of the design resemble those of Flipboard, a mobile app which collects news articles and social media reactions, and then presents the content in magazine format.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">Currently, Reader is exclusively being designed for Apple products, consisting of iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad devices.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">This move is a sign that Facebook is trying to reinvent itself, fully knowing that its share price has fallen to just 35% of the initial public-offering price (IPO). The current Facebook interface is primarily used to keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues. It is rarely used in a more professional manner; a space that LinkedIn has effectively cornered. As a matter of fact, <a href="http://www.techspot.com/tag/linkedin/" style="color: #05408f; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">LinkedIn</a> has also set its sights on the news industry, acquiring mobile application Pulse for an estimated $90 million.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">In another effort to extend its reach, earlier this month, Facebook announced that it would soon <a href="http://www.techspot.com/news/52880-facebook-officially-announces-support-for-hashtags.html" style="color: #05408f; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">add hashtag-compatibility</a>. This move should help the company to compete with Twitter; the rivaling social media destination is widely used to track trending news topics and follow events in real-time.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">Unfortunately for Zuckerberg, many analysts believe that a shift to journalism might not go so well. Nate Elliot, who works for Forrester, added, "There are a lot of things people didn't do on Facebook several years ago that they now do. But I imagine it's going to be very hard to retrain consumers to see Facebook as a go-to hub for news."</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;">So what’s pushing Facebook to make such a move? Not surprisingly, profit seems to be the driving force. News sites are an advertisers dream since users traditionally stay connected for an extended period of time. “The opportunity to own the place where people go for long-form reading is a very large opportunity, especially for advertising," explained Josh Elman, a venture capitalist at Greylock Partners.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.techspot.com/news/53002-facebook-working-on-a-mobile-news-app-called-reader.html" target="_blank">Read More...</a></div></div>

Facebook working on a mobile news app called "Reader"

Facebook is developing a newspaper platform for mobile devices. Formally called Reader, the service will act as a news aggregator that pulls...

Read more »