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Friday, October 4, 2013

Intel's updated NUC squeezes in Haswell Core-i5, HD 5000 4K graphics

posted on Friday, October 04, 2013

Intel has cranked up its NUC (Next Unit of Computing) mini-computer to near gaming levels of power with the release of its 4th-gen Core-i5 D54250WYK kit. The new model comes with the latest HD Graphics 5000, for one, and also uses Intel's Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 to kick the CPU into overdrive when the need arises. It's got the chip giant's Quick Sync video to speed up encoding, a DisplayPort 1.2 jack with 4K capability, four USB 3.0 ports, an infrared sensor, stereo/mic jacks and a gigabit Ethernet controller. There's no pricing or date yet, but bear in mind that you'll need to add RAM (up to 16GB), an mSATA drive and some kind of monitor to make it fly -- though dwarfing it with a 4K display (like this one) might be overkill.

Filed under: Desktops, Intel

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Source: Intel

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Steam announces Family Sharing beta, for lending out your digital downloads

posted on Friday, October 04, 2013

You probably thought family plans were just for cellular data. Well, sir or madame, you are wrong. Soon enough you'll be able to share games you purchased through Steam with your friends and family, as well. The king of downloadable gaming has just announced Steam Family Sharing, which will allow customers to authorize certain devices to access their library of lendable titles. The same way that you're able to loan out a physical copy of a game or a book, you'll now be able to lend your digital downloads to others. And, if you see that your brother has a game you've been on the fence about, you can request access and try it for yourself. There are, of course, limitations. Your library can only be used by one person at a time. So if you, the primary user, log in to spend some quality time with Call of Duty Ghosts, your buddy checking out Bastion ahead of Transistor's release will have only a few minutes to either save and quit, or buy the title for themselves. Family Sharing will be launching in a limited beta next week, and you can sign up for it at the source link.

Filed under: Gaming

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Source: Steam

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iSketchnote digitizes your doodles to an iPad using a natural pen (video)

posted on Friday, October 04, 2013

iSketchnote has hit Kickstarter with an interesting take on the sketch digitizing game. Rather than drawing straight onto the screen of your tablet with a stylus, Galaxy Note or Wacom style, its iPad cover digitizer lets you draw in ink with a "natural pen" onto any notebook or paper. A sensor matrix detects your scrawls and even color thanks to a magnet in the pen, and the drawings appear on your iPad screen with about 50ms of latency. Thanks to a built-in SD card slot, you'll also be able to take the cover on the road without the iPad (4GB will hold about 100 pages). When it ships around May 2014, it'll just work with an iPad, but the developers say you'll eventually be able to digitize to a Mac or PC with a free software update. iSketchnote's already zoomed past its $35,000 Kickstarter goal, having bagged around $50,000 with 29 days left. If you want to grab one along with three pens, its $119 for early birds at the source.

Filed under: Tablets

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Source: Kickstarter

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Is wireless USB finally real? Spec ties USB to Wi-Fi for gigabit speed

posted on Friday, October 04, 2013

"Media Agnostic USB" to work over 2.4, 5, and 60GHz bands.

via Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com

Cota by Ossia hopes to charge your phone wirelessly, no contact required

posted on Friday, October 04, 2013

We've all heard of wireless charging before, but most solutions still require your phone to come in touch with a base station. Well, Cota is a technology that aims to power your mobile device completely wirelessly -- without any physical contact at all. Hatem Zeine, a physicist and CEO of Ossia Inc, demonstrated the technology on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt when he successfully charged his iPhone when plugged with a Cota prototype, seen above, while holding it several feet away from a charging station.

It all seems like voodoo, but the secret lies in sending a magnetic charge over the same 2.4GHz spectrum that WiFi and Bluetooth already use. If you're concerned about safety, Zeine assures us that only one watt of power is transmitted -- that's a third of what cell phones already transmit. Line of sight isn't required, and Zeine claims that one station can power multiple devices at once. Just like a WiFi hotspot, you can set it so that it only works with certain devices or simply open it up so that power is available to all Cota-enabled handsets within range, which is around 30 feet.

Filed under: Cellphones, Science, Mobile

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: Cota by Ossia

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PPL Connect is a virtualized smartphone that lets you make and take calls from a web browser

posted on Friday, October 04, 2013

Sure, you've heard of virtualized computing environments before, but a start-up here at TechCrunch Disrupt called PPL Connect is a platform that virtualizes your phone's capabilities in real-time. That means you can make and receive calls and texts and access the photos and videos on your phone from any device with a web browser. It's kind of like AirDroid, only you don't need to have your phone with you or even have it turned on to make calls or receive texts once you've signed up. It's a platform agnostic solution for a fragmented mobile world.

The magic happens via a localized app on your phone and Amazon cloud service to dish out your data where you need it. That cloud component both serves as cloud storage for your data and as a back-end VoIP relay station for calls and texts. Currently, photos, videos, contacts, calls and texts are what's handled by the service, but the plan is to eventually fully replicate your phone's capabilities. For folks who are concerned about putting your digital life in the hands of PPL connect, all transmissions to and from its servers are encrypted. And, the company is currently devising a fully encrypted system whereby the data's only accessible with a single, user-owned key.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Software, Mobile

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Source: PPL Connect

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Udacity launches Open Education Alliance to help modernize university curriculums

posted on Friday, October 04, 2013

Udacity's first partnership with an institution of higher learning might not have turned out as well as it hoped, but a setback at San Jose State University won't cause the online learning portal to call it quits on college campuses. Quite the contrary, in fact. Today, Udacity announced the creation of the Open Education Alliance to "bridge the gap between the skills employers need and what traditional universities teach." The alliance is comprised of both Silicon Valley heavyweights like Google, AT&T and NVIDIA and educators including Georgia Tech and Khan Academy. The OEA's goal is to enlist the help of both companies and educators in building a new curriculum to help students learn what they need to choose and succeed in a modern career.

Here at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013, Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun and California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom discussed the need for a shift in our educational system, and consequently the OEA. "It's important to be creative about this," said Thrun, "we need to move away from an 'industry of drones' by enabling students to learn at their own speed." Naturally, accomplishing this task requires a combination of Udacity's online learning tools to give folks on-demand access to learning materials they need and a physical classroom environment to keep students on task. According to Newsom, "It's not mass education anymore, it's personalized."

Filed under: Misc, Internet

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Source: Udacity blog, Open Education Alliance

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