Google Glass is back: Filing points to a sleeker, more durable, foldable version for enterprises

Earlier this year, Google had announced that its much-hyped Glass project had been temporarily shelved. The company had announced it was time for Glass to grow out of its baby steps and put on their big kid shoes. In other words, stop selling its head-mounted computer to consumers and come back with a new, improved version.

Well, it’s back. Made especially for the workplace, the aptly dubbed Google Glass ‘Enterprise Edition’ is on its way to make a mark in a territory that had received it positively and seen many use cases when it debuted. According to the pictures filed by Google with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the new Glass features a foldable form, thanks to the addition of a hinge that makes it fold down like a regular pair of glasses. 9to5Google reports that the hardware being used for Enterprise Edition is much better from the earlier one, with an Intel Atom processor, improved battery life and better wireless connectivity with a 5GHz Wi-Fi band for video streaming applications. The report also reveals that the new Glass boasts of better heat management, thanks to the new chip and its improved performance.

FCC images of Glass reveal a larger prism too. The report also explains how the power button has been moved from its awkward location on the inside to the back of the device. The front light comes on when the camera is in use and there is a yet-to-be-seen external battery, made by Google that attaches to the device magnetically. Also, the report claims that the device is waterproof and closed-off to keep it safe from debris and other substances that might find its way to the hardware. While Google has made no formal announcements, sources tell 9to5Google that the device has been in the hands of hundreds of people across Glass for Work startups and might be released soon.

 

Research firms and analysts always believed that Glass was a better fit at the workplace than with the general consumer. The device has already seen many success stories. A construction project manager used Google Glass to improve safety and efficiency, an art teacher used Google Glass to help teach her online class, and a firefighter is building an app to help firefighters navigate dangerous situations. Companies like Virgin Atlantic also used Google Glass with customer service agents, resulting in several positive reviews from passengers. And the possibilities for business apps on the Glass are endless.

“The device is already being used for Policing services in the city of Dubai as well as in the healthcare vertical by physicians across the globe to access critical patient information in real time. It is also slowly becoming more common in sports as teams and broadcasters worldwide are exploring options to bring fans closer to the action. Augmented Reality applications on the glass can also prove extremely helpful for marketers in tracking the eye movements of the consumers for relevant advertising on the go,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst and Group CEO, Greyhound Research.

ABI Research also feels the use case for general-purpose smart glasses in the consumer space is weak, especially at a technical level, where projector quality has some way to go, as does battery life along with RF components and the miniaturisation of these elements. Also, at a practical level, most people are not prepared to wear glasses because many simply do not normally need to, and if they do, they need specific lenses. Lastly, many glass wearers have moved to wearing contact lenses. “It just seems a retrograde form-factor and a very obtrusive one for the user and general public,” added Senior Practice Director Nick Spencer. Longer term, ABI Research believes a consumer wearable device needs to be far more subtle, with smart watches and, even better, wireless smart ear buds being a good example.

New metamaterial with unusual refraction of light to speed up computers

MOSCOW, December 28. /TASS/. A team of Russian scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) and the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences have proposed a two-dimensional metamaterial composed of silver elements, that refracts light in an unusual way. The research has been published in Optical Material Express journal. In the future, these structures will be able to be used to develop compact optical devices, as well as to create an "invisibility cloak." 

The results of computer simulations carried out by the researchers showed that it would be a high performance material for light with a wavelength from 400-500nm (violet, blue and light blue). Efficiency in this case is defined as the percentage of light scattered in a desired direction. The efficiency of the material is approximately 70% for refraction, and 80% for reflection of the light. Theoretically, the efficiency could reach 100%, but in real metals there are losses due to ohm resistance. The results achieved can be applied to control optical signals in ultra-compact devices. In this case we are talking primarily about optical transmission and information processing technologies, which will help expedite computer processing in the future. Electrical interconnects used in modern chips are operating at the limit of their carrying capacities and inhibit further growth in computing performance. To switch from electrical to optical interconnections we need to be able to effectively control optical signals on nanotechnology. In order to solve this problem the efforts of the scientific community are focused to a large extent on creating structures capable of "turning" the light in the desired direction.

Volkswagen to ditch ‘Das Auto’ in makeover

Scarred by a public relations thrashing over its "Dieselgate" scandal, Volkswagen is planning an image offensive, and its "Das Auto" global advertising slogan is an early casualty.

Launched in 2007 under ousted boss Martin Winterkorn, the slogan has had the advantage of simplicity, merely meaning "The Car". However, the German carmaker's leaders, anxious to proclaim a reformed corporate culture, have criticized it as out of step with a company trying to show newfound humility.

A Volkswagen spokesman would not pronounce "Das Auto" dead quite yet, but said it would no longer accompany the famous VW badge in the coming advertising campaign.

Its replacement is hardly radical. "Wherever our logo appears in future, it will be backed by the new brand slogan 'Volkswagen'," the spokesman said.

"The slogan will be rolled out in stages across the world."

VW has been largely on the defensive since US authorities revealed in September it had admitted rigging exhaust emission tests on some diesel-powered models. For weeks, it volunteered little information about the extent of the cheating, instead reacting guardedly to a flood of revelations and allegations.

The new campaign, discussed last week at a closeddoor meeting of 2,000 group managers, is VW's latest attempt to regain the initiative in rebuilding its reputation following a sharp drop in sales in some markets, including the United States and Britain.

While the group produces everything from Bugatti supercars and Ducati motorbikes to heavy-duty Scania trucks, the meeting in the eastern German city of Dresden focused on the main VW brand.

According to a manager who was there, Volkswagen brand chief Herbert Diess described the Winterkorn-era slogan - which could suggest that VW alone can define the modern motor car - as absolutist.

Such an image of regal arrogance ill fits the reality of VW today: a company facing huge costs from recalling and modifying cars to meet emissions regulations, plus likely regulatory fines and a welter of lawsuits.

Smartphone based systems for better driverless cars developed

A SMART SOLUTION TO FILL IN GPS GAPS IN DRIVERLESS CARS

Researchers have developed two new smartphone-based systems that can accelerate development of driverless cars by identifying a user’s location and orientation in places where GPS does not function.

These can also identify the various components of a road in real-time on a regular camera or smartphone.

“Vision is our most powerful sense and driverless cars will also need to see. But teaching a machine to see is far more difficult than it sounds,” said Professor Roberto Cipolla from University of Cambridge who led the research.

The first system, called SegNet, can take an image of a street it hasn’t seen before and classify it, sorting objects into 12 categories such as roads and street signs in real-time.

The researchers presented details of two technologies at the International Conference on Computer Vision in Santiago, Chile, recently.

Reliance Jio differs with Airtel, Vodafone and Idea on spectrum cap, reserve price of airwaves

Reliance Jio Infocomm has disagreed with GSM telcos Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea on spectrum limits for operators and the reserve price of airwaves to be auctioned, although it concurs that bandwidth for high-speed mobile broadband services shouldn't be offered for sale any time soon.

Mukesh Ambani-controlled Jio, in a submission to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), said the government must abolish the cap on the amount of airwaves an operator can hold in a band, while retaining the overall limit of 25% in a circle.

Responding to the regulator's consultation paper on valuation of the reserve price of airwaves in various bands, the company said, "Since the auctioned spectrum is technology neutral, intra-band spectrum caps have become redundant."

Jio said band caps can constrain service providers and they are forced to opt for multiple bands. This takes away the benefits of a higher quantum of spectrum for mobile broadband services in terms of enhanced spectral efficiencies.

However, other members of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) including Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, suggested that the cap within a band should be retained at 50% and sought an increase in the overall cap in a circle from the current 25%.

COAI argued that the intra-band cap was crucial to ensure that no operator cornered all the spectrum in a particular band, which would lead to "monopolisation."

It said the overall cap of 25% is "stifling the growth of operators" and raising this limit would not lead to market concentration by any operator. The reason cited was that some operators have more than 30% of the market share and are growing but not allowed to hold more than 25% of the spectrum.

Both Jio and its rivals agreed that the time was not right to auction air waves in the 700 MHz band, which can be used for high-speed 4G data services, because the associated ecosystem was still in a nascent stage. Jio said the government must evaluate whether the ecosystem for this band is ready in two years. If the industry is unable to use the airwaves adequately, it would be a waste of resources, it said.

COAI said that if the government does auction the 700 MHz band, the airwaves should be valued at 50 per cent of the price discovered in the 800 MHz band in 2013-15. Alternatively, COAI said the 700 MHz band could be valued on par with the 1800 MHz band.

Both sides agreed that the price of airwaves in the 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and the 2100 MHz bands discovered in March should be taken as the market price of airwaves in the upcoming auctions as well. They opposed any further indexation of the last-discovered price in these bands.

The COAI said the reserve price of frequencies sold earlier this year should be fixed at 80% of the valuation, while Jio proposed that the price discovered at the previous auction should be taken as the reserve because the "price of spectrum in a new auction should not ideally be less than the price discovered in an earlier auction."

The industry body also argued against treating 2300 MHz and the 2500 MHz bands as one. Jio said that the reserve price for both these bands should be the winning price of the 2300 MHz in the 2010 auctions. Jio argued that the industry has undergone significant changes since 2010 and if the government were to index the price of airwaves in the 2300 MHz band using the SBI PLR index, it would make these bands unattractive.

COAI said the 2500 MHz band should be valued at 80% of 2300 MHz as the propagation characteristics of the former are poorer and the government must fix the reserve price for both bands at not more than 70% of their value. On the 2300 MHz band, COAI agreed with Jio and said the last auction-discovered price must be taken as its valuation.

Google Developing Messaging App With AI-Powered Bots: Report

Google, part of Alphabet Inc , is building a new mobile messaging application to
 better compete with rival services such as those offered by Facebook Inc ,
The Wall Street Journal reported.

The new service would tap into Google's artificial intelligence know-how,
integrating chatbots, or software programs that answer questions, inside a messaging app.

The new app will enable users to text friends or a chatbot, which will search the
Web and other sources for information to answer a question, similar to how
Google search works.

It is unclear when the service will be launched, or what it will be named, the report said,
 though it adds that Google veteran Nick Fox has been leading a team working on
 the new service for at least a year.

Google declined Reuter's request to comment on the WSJ report.

Popular messaging apps include Facebook's WhatsApp and Messenger services,
and Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat, while Google has a service called Hangouts.

California, Google Ready For Autonomous Vehicle Showdown In 2016

SAN FRANCISCO -- California’s lead in the race to autonomous, self-driving vehicles could come to a grinding halt should the state adopt draft measures announced this week that would all but make Google’s driverless vehicles illegal. Publicized by the state Department of Motor Vehicles Wednesday, the proposed regulations would require individuals licensed to operate autonomous vehicles to be present in these new-age cars at all times. The rules also say these drivers must be able to take control of the vehicles at any time, essentially requiring pedals and a steering wheel.

Those are elements notably missing from the driverless-car prototypes developed by the Google unit of Alphabet Inc. in Mountain View, California. It is wording that has the potential to hamper other major technology players such as Apple Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. that also reportedly have been working on self-driving vehicles. Unsurprisingly, the draft regulations have left Google and other staunch supporters of this technology “perplexed.”

“This maintains the same old status quo and falls short on allowing this technology to reach its full potential while excluding those who need to get around but cannot drive,” said Chris Urmson, the head of Google’s self-driving car initiative. These rules cut out many individuals, such as the elderly or those with disabilities, Urmson argued in a Medium post published Thursday.

And Urmson isn’t alone in his arguments. Many others in the auto and tech industries, as well as leaders in California, have come out against the DMV’s proposals, calling for rules that won’t stifle innovation, or worse, send it elsewhere.

“Autonomous-vehicle technology will continue to advance in spite of DMV regulation, but it may well relocate to states [or nations] that adopt a more flexible and accommodating regulatory structure,” said Michael Cunningham, senior vice president of public policy at the Bay Area Council. “We would stand to lose the economic benefit of having this cutting-edge industry based in California, and we’d fail to secure the full safety, mobility and access benefits that autonomous vehicles could offer.”

It’s a sentiment that was echoed by California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom Thursday. “We must guard against unreasonably holding back California from doing what it does best -- inventing the future,” Newsom saidin a statement.

While the proposals constitute a hit on the companies hoping to build the first self-driving vehicles, there are many, including some in the tech world, that welcome regulation that prioritizes keeping consumers safe on the roads.

“While [Google boasts] over a million miles of incident-free driving, they fail to mention that most of the time these cars aren’t driven in the scenarios a consumer would commonly face,” said Sam Pasupalak, CEO of Maluuba, a natural-language processing company in Waterloo, Ontario. “It may be many years, perhaps over a decade, before we see a consumer version of a self-driving car that works in the scenarios Google is proposing [i.e. the driver sitting in the back seat with the self-driving car doing all of the driving].”

Kicking the Bucket Down the Road

The California DMV is still early in its rule-making process. The measures proposed Wednesday will be reviewed at two workshops early next year, when the agency will collect input from the public, manufacturers, industries, consumer groups and “anyone who has a stake with dealing with an autonomous vehicle in any way,” said Jessica Gonzalez, an agency representative.

“Public policy is having to catch up with the rapid innovation happening in California,” said Ratna Amin, transportation policy director at SPUR, formerly known as the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association. “We need to all understand each other better across sectors for something like driverless cars to succeed.”

The DMV workshops will be conducted in January and February. Afterward, the agency will take the feedback and potentially alter the rules it formally submits, a lengthy process in and of itself. It could be 2017 before any final guidelines are put in place.

“The most important thing is that this is just the starting point in a longer dialogue that needs to happen,” said Brad Stertz, Audi of America’s corporate communications manager in Washington.

However, some view the DMV’s decision to announce draft rules, rather than a formal proposal, as a way to kick legislation further down the road, allowing players such as Google to continue innovating in California without any government limitations.

“They’re going to hold hearings, and it’s going to be at least a year before anything happens,” said Alan Pisarski, an expert on transportation. “In the meantime, some of this uncertainty [in the autonomous-vehicle sector] will clarify itself.”

Meeting Requirements:

The DMV’s proposed regulations on the matter are associated with California Senate Bill 1298, a measure adopted by the state years back that called on the agency to regulate the testing and consumer sales of autonomous-vehicle technology.

Although some, such as Google, viewed this legislation as a progressive measure and a milestone for autonomous vehicles, others have said California acted too early with its legislation, potentially hampering the development of the technology. According to Pisarski:

“When you regulate too soon, you can inhibit the technology. This is always the great fear when the government comes in and makes rules.”

Despite Google hailing this 2012 legislation as recently as Thursday, it is conceivable the original measure could hamper the tech sector. In the legislation, there are sections that say an autonomous vehicle does not include cars that are incapable of being driven by humans, rendering Google’s prototypes illegal.

“People need to start looking at that and realize there’s requirements in there that we had to put in these regulations,” the DMV’s Gonzalez said. If the legislation “mandates something, it is the statute that provides the authority for the regulation, and DMV could not create something that is not consistent with that statute.”

As much as they’d like innovation to continue taking place in California, Google and its allies may have to go back to the California Legislature if they truly want driverless cars to roam the streets and highways of the Golden State.

Fleeing California:

For now, Google and others are threatening to move their autonomous-vehicle operations from California unless the DMV’s proposed regulations are loosened, but it’s unclear whether these companies would actually follow through on that threat.

“A lot of people who have gone to California to look at it as a test bed are surely going to threaten to head somewhere else,” Pisarski said. “You could certainly see some rivalry here among the states.”

Potential landing spots include Nevada and Texas, two states where legislation has been welcoming of self-driving-vehicle technology. But a bigger fear among those in the auto and tech worlds is that legislation of this technology could result in a checkerboard pattern across the U.S. They’d rather see autonomous vehicles regulated on the federal level.

“Too many states doing too many different things could just end up being a massive mess,” Pisarski said.