LG has made a “smart” lightbulb with numerous features, many involving your smartphone. It comes across as a case of “what can we make it do?” rather than “what need should it serve?” The bulb itself is a relatively ordinary LED bulb that fits standard light fittings and draws 10 watts at full brightness. The […]
IBM’s Jeopardy!-winning supercomputer Watson is to start exploring genetics in an attempt to tackle a rare brain cancer. Watson famously beat two champion Jeopardy players in a three-day challenge in 2011. While supercomputers can process information far more quickly than humans, the victory was significant as it showed Watson was able to process language and […]
One of the breakout stars from this year’s SXSW festival took his passion for music and his desire to create a new collaborative experience for musicians and the entire music industry to a deeper, more enriching level. MIT grad Philip Cohen has created a new cloud-based platform that transforms the way music is created. AudioCommon […]
An “antisocial” app offers users the ability to avoid people who you aren’t too keen on seeing in real life. The app is something of an anti-Foursquare. You connect it to other applications (including Instagram and Foursquare itself) and then get a map of any of your contacts who are near you, along with an […]
The ARM-powered CUBESTORMER 3 robot has smashed the Guinness World Record for solving a Rubik’s cube, recording a time of 3.253 seconds at the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham, UK. [ARMflix | Via]
The American pay-TV industry as a whole has had an overall drop in subscribers for the first time. But even if it’s evidence of “cord-cutting,” the firms involved haven’t really lost out much. There have been a few cases before where individual cable firms have had a quarterly decline in pay-TV subscribers. Now Leichtman Research […]
Wearable technology is no longer this vague idea we think of from sci-fi films. While walking around downtown Austin during SXSW, I stopped noticing how many people were outfitted with their Google Glasses or Samsung Smartwatches anymore. It was just as commonplace an accessory as a hat or sunglasses. These devices, which create a deeper, […]
The recent 2014 SXSW (South by Southwest) Festival in Austin, Texas featured a Game of Thrones exhibit. Within that exhibit, however, was a virtual reality simulator called Oculus Rift. Actress Maisie Williams (‘Arya Stark’) was one of the GoT actors on-site who tried the new gaming system. After stepping into a tiny cage-like room, she […]
Sony and Panasonic have confirmed details of their planned successor to the Blu-ray format, which will be officially known as Archival Disc. A 300GB edition is coming next summer, with a plan to eventually release a one terabyte version. As we noted last July, the two firms had both been working on archival technology that […]
Georgia Tech has developed a prosthetic arm that can play the drums following instructions from a human’s biceps — even if their arm is amputated at the elbow. According to a press release: The prosthesis was created for Jason Barnes, a drummer who was electrocuted two years ago and lost his right arm below the […]