General Motors and the FUTURE LAB at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Israel have collaborated to create the Windows of Opportunity Project (WOO). General Motors challenged the students at the design academy to develop a technology that conceptualizes new ways for vehicle passengers, especially children, to have a richer and more interactive experience while on the road.

According to World Car Fans, the WOO project was “inspired by psychological studies indicating that car passengers often feel disconnected from their environment. GM asked the Bezalel students to turn car windows into interactive displays capable of stimulating awareness, nurturing curiosity and encouraging a stronger connection with the world outside the vehicle.”

One concept involves children interacting and playing with the window by drawing on it as one would with cold temperatures outside the vehicle. Another app involves a little creature that travels with passengers as they’re on the move while interacting with the vehicle’s speed and changing landscape. The enabling technology for the apps is the same technology used for augmented reality.

Thomas Seder, GM R&D lab group manager for human-machine interface explains that, “Unlike my generation where I explored the world with my dad’s tools, the kids today are exploring the world with a digital toolbox. So we’re trying to create applications that they can use to really understand in an intuitive way how the world works.”

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In a post-recession climate, commercial software continues to lose traction in favour of Free and Open Software Solutions (FOSS), particularly in the corporate environment. However, with a lack of support available both locally and internationally, companies are left having to fend for themselves, or forced to pay handsomely for specialised technical support.
South African development company, Snapt, has launched a series of revolutionary user interface tools that effectively utilise this open source software to provide powerful and economical solutions for corporate clients. Snapt’s high-end customized open source software tools are not only easy to use, but at the same time offer the kind of support and reporting traditionally associated with commercial software offerings.

Despite being relatively new to the market, it hasn’t taken long for Snapt to get noticed by some heavy hitters at both a local and international level, with NASA JPL, EuroVPS, and NeoAssist already among their pedigreed list of clients.

The company’s two initial software offerings – Snapt HAProxy and Snapt Squid – have been built with business in mind, and afford enterprises the ability to effectively manage server capacity, as well as to maintain and monitor network systems and intranets.
“Our mission in the creation of Snapt was essentially to make open source software accessible and useable for big businesses,” says Dave Blakey, CEO of Snapt. “The user interfaces we’ve created can empower enterprises to really harness these existing frameworks, and ultimately manage them in the same way they would with commercial software, but at a fraction of the cost.”

In addition to an impressive clientele, Snapt has also managed to garner the support of 4Di Capital, a venture capitalist firm who immediately saw the potential of the company to deliver real return on investment for corporate firms.

“We immediately identified with the opportunity to make FOSS network and server applications more accessible to a broader market,” says Douglas Cherry, a partner at 4Di Capital. “Snapt offers a rich supplementary layer of value-added functionality, delivery and management capabilities, and we see it as being perfectly positioned to present an advantageously disruptive product to the network and server management space.”

With on-going investment and support from some of the world’s biggest brands behind them, Snapt’s future is bright, and, according to Blakey, this is just the beginning of the journey.

“The potential of FOSS is unlimited, and we’re always looking to deliver an increased range of enterprise-ready offerings to a broader market,” says Blakey. “The need for such solutions is apparent, and we will continue to devise unique, user-friendly interfaces to efficiently and cost-effectively service the full spectrum of corporate requirements.”

Skype is currently a video chat experience commonly used between two people across devices, be it a mobile phone or PC, that are low resolution encounters. The telyHD,  a new device developed by a mall Silicon Valley startup called Tely Labs is about to change the Skype experience as we know it.

The telyHD, a black, horizontal bar less than a foot long and under 3 inches high with a wide-angle lens and multiple built-in microphones is mounted on top of the TV screen using a built-in clamp and allows for a group of friends or family in one room to chat in high definition. The device, displayed at CES 2012, is easily installed and comes with a remote control that is used to answer and terminate calls, zoom in and pan you screen image. It can connect to any other Skype-enabled device including PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets however, some of its more advanced features require a telyHD on both sides of the conversation for the device to be fully optimised.

TelyHD isn’t just a webcam but  a small computing device, powered by Google’s Android operating system. It contains software and Internet capabilities that most TVs lack, some of which go beyond simple video calls including the ability to send and receive video voice mails, retrieve pictures from a flash memory card and share with and copy pictures from another telyHD user.

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Samsung is bringing us the future with its new Smart Window that it presented at CES 2012 in Las Vegas.

The Smart Window, that brings scenes of the futuristic Minority Report to mind, is an update to the common house window that may also look like a regular screen but offers some unique, useful and fun features. The Smart Window adds a 22 inch LCD flat screen that has a resolution of 1680 x 1050 and has a 500:1 contrast ratio. The new technology developed by Samsung, has made the traditional LCD screen up to 20 percent more transparent than older technology.

With the new technology, you can look out your window at the scenery outside while simultaneously checking the latest weather forecasts or socialising with Twitter and Facebook. The window is also a one-sided pane so passers-by can’t see what you’re looking at.

Consumers are likely to have Samsung’s Smart Window available for home installation by the end of 2012.

Other announcements made and technologies presented at CES 2012 include: the iNuke Boom, Dell’s consumer tablet,  Nokia’s Lumia 900 and Facebook for Mercedes-Benz. 

View a demo video of the Smart Window after the jump:

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Beta versions of Dropbox for Mac, Linux and Windows has added automatic photo uploads, a useful new feature to the cloud storage service.

With Photo Stream, one of iCloud’s most appealing new features, Apple makes it easy for users to access photos on their iPhone, iPad and iPod touch with iPhoto, Aperture or Windows Explorer automatically. This assists with backing up photos on a computer or keeping photos in the cloud storage.  The new Dropbox feature, functions in a similar way. Once the feature is enabled, by plugging in the camera or inserting a memory card, the user will automatically be given  the option of importing photos followed by that content being directly uploaded into the Dropbox.

Once “Start Import,” is selected, with the option of automatically importing photos from the device inserted, the process begins. All of the photos and videos are then imported to a newly created “Camera Uploads” folder within Dropbox. That folder is then synced with Dropbox’s servers. So far, the process is quick and hassle free.

For people who generally avoid uploading their photos from their camera’s on a regular basis this tool ensures that all photos remain backed up in at least one more location (in addition to using iCloud).

The new Dropbox photo upload feature is currently available in the latest Experimental Forum Build of the desktop app. Mac users who want to stay on the cutting-edge with Dropbox updates should check out the MacDropUpdate utility.

Source: Mashable

A revolution has taken place in the world of music and it has been born out of Cape Town. According to Airborne, that will be launching soon with a line-up of 72 local and international artists, there are two truly important people in the music industry: the artist and the fan and what they set out to accomplish, was to find a way to directly connect them in an easy, inexpensive and efficient way.

During a time when music revenue has plummeted more than 60% in the past decade and the viral spread of file sharing is blocked by restrictive licensing resulting in the loss of millions of potential fans, Airborne provides the antidote and a new solution to the business of the music industry by providing fans with the music they love, and the artists with the payment they deserve. For just $1 a month, any fan, they call a carrier, anywhere in the world has unlimited access to the msuic they want with 70% of that going directly to the artist. Just minutes after an artist’s content is released, the fan can consumer and share that content.

The fan, or rather the carrier, can share music content, stored in the cloud, with anyone in the world on any device or social network. The idea is that with every link shared for an artist’s content, the more quickly its spreads creating a viral tidal wave of support for that artist and the spreading of similar music content between friends. Here, there are no restrictions or borders when it comes to sharing content and generating support for an artist.

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On Sunday 4th December, 6 teams presented their services as part of the Demo Night of Garage48, an event that serves to build new web and mobile service working prototypes in one single weekend. The winner, Mediminder, that is building a mobile app platform for African healthcare was announced at the Vodacom World centre in Johannesburg.

Garage 48, supported by international companies Google, Vodacom and Blackberry,  is known as a very intensive course for IT entrepreneurs that focuses on bringing ideas into real life through teamwork and motivating deadlines. It also helps talented developers to get in contact with successful entrepreneurs in Europe and America. The various teams that participate, compete to have the best start-up idea implemented. The event that began in Estonia in April 2010, has since spread to other countries in Northern Europe and Africa including Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

The winner of the Johannesburg event’s app, Mediminder, improves the effectiveness of medication, by encouraging individuals to take their medication at the correct time and in the long term aims to build information channels between doctors and patients. This is particularly relevant in South Africa, that has the biggest population of HIV infections in the world.

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We have seen a few great enhancements arriving in Windows 8, including a brilliant new touch interface, and much more efficient use of system resources – but most of the marketing seems to be focussed on tablet form factors and touch screens. The other major development is that Windows 8 will have the ability to run on ARM processors (the same type of processor you might find in your phone or tablet), but it has been recently rumoured that this is only relevant to the Metro style apps, and the existing “desktop” will not be made available on the ARM devices.

So what happens to the existing bog-standard mouse and keyboard users? If you have spent some time with Windows 8 Developer Preview, you will know the interface is not particularly intuitive if you do not have a touch screen. Yes, it is by no means complete, but it makes one wonder how relevant the Windows 8 update will be to users who use standard desktop and notebook PCs.

“Windows 8 will be largely irrelevant to the users of traditional PCs, and we expect effectively no upgrade activity from Windows 7 to Windows 8 in that form factor.” – IDC

Now it looks like IDC has been asking this same question – stating that Windows 8 will be “largely irrelevant”, as one of their Top 10 predictions in 2012. Their reasons are simple –

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