“Ed Fries, the Seattle video game pioneer who previously served as vice president of Microsoft Game Studios, has joined the board of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Canesta. The 45-year-old executive — who currently leads “World of Warcraft” figurine startup FigurePrints — said in a release that Canesta represents a “very unique opportunity” in 3-D sensing technologies.”
“Each card comes preloaded with easy-to-use photo-transfer software that is both Mac and PC compatible. Consumers simply use a USB cable to connect the card’s mini USB jack to a home computer. Additionally, consumers receiving the card can save the photos on the card to a home computer by the same process.”
“On a train, for instance, you’d use the Portable Display with the Core Component in your bag; at the office, you’d drop it onto the universal charging base and take advantage of a bigger screen.”
“Infineon, Giesecke & Devrient, Oberthur Technologies and Inside Contactless have teamed up to support the creation of an open security standard for mobile and chip-based transport tickets.”
“Rovi and FourthWall Media said Monday that they have formed a partnership to provide technology interactive enhancements to cable TV operations. The company’s said Rovi program guides with FourthWall’s EBIF platform and applications will be integrated into set-top boxes from Motorola, Cisco and Pace.”
“Google are apparently developing a live, speech-based translation system that would allow multi-lingual phone conversations to be interpreted in real-time. The technology – which Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services, reckons will “work reasonably well in a few years’ time” – combines voice recognition, speech-to-text and voice synthesis”
“Working in the 30GHz to 300GHz frequency range, this is designed to replace wired communication channels inside electronic devices, with Sony claiming it will deliver “advantages such as size and cost-reduction and enhanced reliability of the final product.” Basically, erecting 1mm antennae that can beam information at each other at a rate of 11Gbps turns out to be simpler and more reliable than printing ever wider data lanes into the circuit board.”
“4Home, maker of software that allows you to control all the appliances and electronics in your home from a central dashboard (spanning your television, computers and smart phones), has just raised $4.27 million in fourth-round equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Riding the trend toward greater household automation, the Sunnyvale, Calif. company is poised to become a Smart Grid contender as well as a major home media service.”
“Today Zugara is introducing “ZugSTAR” (Zugara STreaming Augmented Reality), a technology that allows people in different locations to have shared Augmented Reality experiences from within their video feeds. Picture a web based video conferencing system similar to Skype, but with the added functionality of being able to see one another’s “augmented” experience in real time.”