Geek deals: 20% off Wacom Bamboo Create tablet

Once upon a time when I was really bored, I would play with the most basic PC app ever: MS Paint. That’s right: eclectic combinations of geometric shapes and various colors were combined to make the crudest drawings known to man. If I actually had any creative interest in drawing, that’s when I would have realized that one of these stylus tablets from Wacom would have taken my MS Paint skills to the next level.

Therein lies the fallacy though: tablets like these aren’t just good for free-hand drawing on a PC. The next big application for Wacom’s slabs is obviously graphic work in Photoshop, for which a copy of Photoshop Elements is included, but have you thought about note-taking? I grew out of pen & paper note-taking in 2002, but I also feel you lose something just by typing notes. This tablet has a texture to help simulate a pen & paper feel and includes the highly popular Evernote software to organize and share your notes.

Another neat use I have seen for these tablets is during presentations. Whether live or in a recorded webcast, presenters can simply record their screen and voice to present easy-to-understand visuals without spending lots of time creating complex charts and recordings. It works surprisingly well and opens up a lot of possibilities for communicating ideas.

This Wacom Bamboo Create Pen Tablet is one of the best bang for the buck stylus tablets out there, with its large 9 x 5-inch work area and bundle of included software from Adobe, Corel, AutoDesk, and more. Setup is also a cinch, so you’ll be up and stylus-ing before you know it.

Visit LogicBuy for this Wacom Bamboo Create Pen Tablet deal

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Canon to patent the use of low-precision EXIF data

When we think about technological progress we generally assume things improve over time — they will get smaller, lighter, more efficient, and more precise. That’s true, but when it comes to privacy and the sharing of data, more precision is not always a good thing. Fully understanding the conflict between sharing and accurate data, such as geo coordinates, Canon plans on giving their users a way to obscure the data they record. This will be done using low-precious EXIF data that adds a degrees of fuzziness to both time and location data.

When you take a picture with a modern digital camera, a small amount of metadata is stored in the image file. This EXIF data includes basic information about the camera and the shooting conditions (shot duration, if the flash fired, aperture, etc.). The EXIF can be expanded to include the camera’s owner (the image’s copyright holder), the time and, if the camera has GPS, the coordinates of where the shot was taken. If the camera has a compass on-board it can even tell you the direction the camera was facing when the shot was made.

All this data is great if you are a major Lightroom user or if you want want more information about a certain image, but it can be problematic if you share your images. For example, you might email an image to someone about an item you have on Craigslist. Then, without any warning, a complete stranger knows where you took the shot, what time you took it, and how expensive your camera is. The same is true, in an amplified version, with images posted to social networks.

The issue of sharing too much data has only started to be noticed with cameras, but it’s much more prevalent with smartphones — after all, just about every smartphone has both a camera and GPS. Canon has taken noticed and has patented a method in which the camera will make EXIF data less accurate than what the hardware recorded. For example, rather than say the exact time a photo was taken, it could give a time range (that example uses an hour) and as opposed to an exact latitude and longitude it will give a bounding box, with the location in question somewhere inside of it.

Ultimately, Canon’s patent concerns the process of adding some degree of fuzziness to the recorded data. It’s a better solution than removing the information entirely, though it remains to be seen if the patent gets through the Japanese system.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a company work to obscure EXIF data. Adobe’s Lightroom 4 makes it possible for the user to define a certain area as a privacy zone. Any shots that are tagged with geo data inside that zone will give their location as predefined area, as opposed to an exact point.

via CanonWatch

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Feeling insecure? There’s now an easy button for total data annihilation

Oh, the joys of personal data destruction! Hackers may love to try and poke around and grab at your data (and often do), but you may be able to have the last laugh, after all.

Like an “Easy Button” from one of those forever-annoying Staples’ commercials, RunCore’s InVincible SSD promises you the ability to destroy all your data with a single click.

Your peronally-identifiable information or insanely confidential company date was devilishly fiended away? Don’t worry; Be happy, says Chinese-based RunCore. An easy click will do one of two very sneaky things: It will either turn all your data in to meaningless, garbled code (the “intelligent destruction” option using the green button), or a different click will zap that SATA SSD in to oblivion by overcurrent rendering it dead, man (the “physical destruction” red button option).

Don’t believe it? Check out the video, where you will quickly notice one of the key target audiences for RunCore are armed forces all over the world (though given RunCore’s red, white, and blue flag-like logo, perhaps only one major military with a huge budget comes to mind).

It is particularly fun to watch the host of the video explain how she needs to step back a little right before she engages the red button or as she calls it “the dangerous part.” See the smoke.

“It must be really hot,” says our under-excited host. “Wow. This is really the ultimate destruction… You can see all components including the chips are burned and cracked and I don’t think it’s gonna work again. Not to mention if anyone can get any information from it.”

Other key features of this SATA II solid state drive: It boasts “Superb Ultimate” temperature ranges from -45 degrees Celsius to +95 degrees Celsius, that is, if you decide not to wipe it out by shock treatment.

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Why it’s unlikely we’ll see multiple Nexus devices this year

Since the early days of Android, the loyalists in the Google ecosystem have hoped that one day Andy Rubin would descend from the Googleplex with a series of devices that were stock Android with unlocked bootloaders. In other words, the simultaneous release of multiple “Nexus” type devices is the dream of a large part of the Android community.

The core problem with the current Nexus system, in a nutshell, is that it is designed to be a reference device. It is the first device on the latest version of Android, and as such the rest of the Android OEMs will deliver vastly superior hardware to that product a month or two later. Take the recent Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which was recently thoroughly trounced by the Snapdragon S4-powered HTC One X in every way but the pure Android experience.

So now, at the height of the Android excitement, there comes word from on high that Google might be planning to drop five new phones and a tablet into the Google Play Store when the next iteration of Android is ready. If you’ve all finished salivating, we can take a look at why that is so unlikely.

We’re still awhile away from Jelly Bean

It wasn’t but a year ago that Google said that they had plans to slow down the release cycle for Android, in order to better accommodate the ecosystem. Unlike the Chrome browser, where they can push a dozen updates a week and no one is the wiser, Android devices have shown that they take an excess of six months to catch up to a single version release from Google. On top of that, Google is now supporting a phone platform, a tablet platform, and a set top box platform that their audience will expect to be in similar standing as the entire OS evolves.

As it stands right now, very few existing devices have made transition to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Over the next month that number is expected to increase, on top of the new devices coming out with Android 4.0. So, here we sit — in the middle of May — with the Android ecosystem just barely catching up to the last version of Android, which was released by Google in December. Do you really believe that Googlers thinks it’s a good idea to hop up on stage next month an announce a new update to the OS?

What about developers? Most developers still haven’t rolled over into Android 4.0, in many cases because it isn’t necessary yet. Most app developers will only support the version of Android where the highest volume of users are, and right now that is Android 2.3. Supporting ICS isn’t a priority because only 1% of the entire Android ecosystem are using the latest version. If the developers are already not supporting the latest version, what incentive is there to push an update that even fewer Android users will adopt right away? Plain and simple, the entire Android ecosystem isn’t ready for another version of Android yet. I don’t think it makes any sense for the Android world to expect another version of Android next month.

Misunderstanding, and the Google environment

So, if Google isn’t dropping Jelly Bean next month, what are all of these devices we keep hearing about? Google should absolutely take the reigns and release a swath of devices to the Google Play Store, right alongside the Galaxy Nexus. No contracts, just flat out hardware. I am in full support of what is basically the original Nexus plan.

Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as that if you are on a CDMA carrier.You’ll notice that the Google Play Store doesn’t sell the Verizon Galaxy Nexus, or the Sprint Galaxy Nexus for that matter, at that delicious $399 price tag. Google isn’t quite as willing to threaten those relationships by hitting them in their subsidy wallet. Not to mention, you can’t have a pure AOSP build of a CDMA Android device, due to the licensing issues involved. So, if Google releases a batch of phones, expect them to be GSM.

The other thing to consider is that Google might not be planning to release devices at all. If you’ve been paying attention to the speakers at this year’s AnDevCon, you’d see that there are no shortage of Googlers with beta builds of Jelly Bean. Several developers in attendance at that event have made note of it and it’s not surprising. Google tests their OS in every stage of the build process in very much the same way. In fact, Google has private developer space in Mountain View for OEMs and other partners that would like to come an work with them on the next version of Android.

The cost of this? You sign a few NDAs and nothing you do inside the Googleplex is allowed to leave the building until Google says you can. The result is often devices that are ready much earlier than would normally allow. Take, for example, the HTC Flyer. Mere weeks after Android 2.3 was announced, HTC had Android 2.3 wrapped in Sense at a trade show. When asked how this was possible, HTC flat out admitted that Google gave them access to the software before it was publicly available.

The future of Nexus

I think it is very likely that there are multiple OEMs working on hardware for the next version of Android at Google. I fully believe that Google plans to add more devices to the Play Store, and I am absolutely sure that Google is working with someone on a Nexus-branded tablet running the next version of Android as their reference device. In no way do I think any of this will be ready next month, nor do I think that Google is prepared to offer a swarm of devices on the Play Store.

It seems far more likely that this rumor is the result of snippets of information from “sources in the know” that were sewn together into an elaborate construction. With the Android ecosystem the way it is right now, however, it just doesn’t seem remotely possible that such a story will come to fruition anytime soon.

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Geek projects: Adventures in balloon mapping

A single image, from about 500 feet high

Along with 462 other people, I backed a Kickstarter project earlier this year. The open hardware project sold balloon mapping kits to tinkerers like myself, and cost $85 for a package that included everything but the camera and the helium. I finally got an opportunity to give the kit a chance, and this article is going to run through my experience. We’ll cover the gear I bought, but the more important subject is that of hobbyist balloon mapping (a very important subject indeed).

Balloon mapping is a pretty simple concept. You fly a weather-sized balloon (about 5-feet in diameter) in the air and dangle a camera from it. If done properly you’ll get any number of overheard shots of a small parcel of land, which you can stitch together into a map without too much difficulty. It’s best thought of as a poor man’s aerial or satellite imagery, as you get the same effect, with a total investment of under $300. And due to the proximity to the ground, you can get great results with very inexpensive equipment. It’s not so much a replacement for satellite/aerial imagery as it is a low-cost, high-resolution alternative.

Upon receiving the balloon mapping kit, and resisting the urge to assemble it in my apartment, I realized that I’d need something to inflate the balloon with. In this case it’s helium, which you can get at any party store, but it won’t be as simple as you expect. I knew my balloon required 80 cubic feet of helium, but the worker at the store measured their helium tanks in terms of how many (party) balloons they could fill. In my case a small tank, about 2 feet tall, could handle 60 balloons or a more reasonably-sized tank, at about 4 feet tall, was good for 120 balloons. Opting for too much as opposed to too little I got the larger one, which cost me $50 plus a $200 deposit. The smaller size, which I now think would have been fine for a single inflation, would have been $30.

The other component mappers will need to think through is the camera. In my case I have an old Canon point-and-shoot setup with the CHDK firmware. This means I have an intervalometer on it, which I can set to shoot however I’d like (such as one shot every 3 seconds with a 5 minute delay on the first shot). This is the high-tech solution, the alternative would be any camera with continuous shooting and a rubber band holding down the trigger. This doesn’t sound like a great idea to me, but I suppose it could work.

With the hardware out of the way, it was time for the setup. There is some knot tying and light construction, but essentially you’re filling a 5.5-foot diameter balloon, hanging a camera from it, attaching a rope, and then letting it go in the air (while holding the rope). My kit included a 1000-foot spool of high-quality kite string, which did the job nicely and was totally tangle-free so long as I was careful. The documentation talked about a rope length of 1000 meters so I was disappointed with the amount of elevation I got, but I will remedy this before I balloon map again.

Once the rig is up in the air, most of your work is done. At this point it was time for some light mathematics (basically figuring out how long the memory card will last) and then directing the balloon. The balloon is completely subject to the wind so you can only direct it as far as you can walk in in a given direction. The more important part of is keeping the string away from trees and pesky power lines.

While flying, there were two things that surprised me, though both should have been completely obvious. The first was just how windy it is above the tree line. I was mapping on what seemed like perfectly still day (winds of 1-2 mph) but the whole time the balloon was being pushed to the northeast by the wind. What was nonexistent where I was standing (the tops of the trees weren’t even moving) was enough to have me mapping about 500 feet away from my intended target. There was not one point in the day where the balloon was close to directly overhead, and again, this was a very still day.

The other factor that surprised me is the weight of the rope. Even very light Dacron line weighs over a pound when you have 1000 feet of it, so when using a balloon with under 10 pounds of lift the length of the lines has a major impact. There was a noticeable deflection in the line between the endpoints, all of which was caused by the weight of the line. So it was possible for me to pull in line and have the balloon actually go higher. While I’m very happy with the Dacron, I’m considering something lighter, possibly a braided fishing line (though I have yet to explore this sufficiently).

The main downside with the kit I bought was its method for supporting the camera. It proposed the use of the top half of a 2L soda bottle, with the camera tethered inside. The rig is easy to set up, cheap, and light, but also flimsy. During my first flight I only got about 50 out of 500 shots because my camera shifted after being hit with a gust of wind. After this I redesigned the camera rig, using some of the parts I had lying around. I ended up using an insulated faucet cover, which is much more secure, protected the camera better, and is more stable in the wind. At $1.50 it’s barely more expensive than a bottle of soda.

Once you have all your pictures taken, your quest has only just begun. At this point you need to stitch them together, a task which you’ll pretty much have to do manually. MapKnitter.org has a very nice tool for this, but it won’t do the work for you, it will just give you the tools to lay out and contort your image (remember, the camera moved side-to-side a lot, so not all your images will have a perfectly flat perspective). Ultimately if you took enough pictures, and you edited through them diligently, you’ll end up with a map that you can save, print, or expand upon.

With it all said and done, I can say that I’m quite happy with my balloon mapping experience. I’ll be doing it again soon, with a few changes to my routine. Next time I hope to have more line (1000 meters maybe?), be more methodical about my mapping coverage, get the smaller tank of helium, start earlier in the day in order to avoid winds (6am or so), and I’ll attach a GPS tracker to the rig. The GPS won’t make a huge difference as the areas are easy to approximate, but I’ll appreciate having the extra data to work with.

The result of my mapping were mixed, but mostly I was impressed with what I got. The shots were of a location that will remain undisclosed (it might or might not be a family member’s home), but next time I’ll be sure to make a map available. For now you can view a single image I took (at the top) or a sample from MapKnitter directly below.

Sample map: Baseball field by anonymous

The balloon mapping kit is still available for purchase through the organization behind it all, the Public Laboratory, if you’re interesting in giving it a shot.

Baseball field by anonymous

[kit image via public laboratory]

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Review: HTC EVO 4G LTE for Sprint

The single best selling Android phone on Sprint is the original HTC EVO. Since that device, Sprint has tried to re-capture the EVO effect with several devices, all from HTC. The HTC EVO Shift and the EVO 3D really didn’t do so great in comparison, but that hasn’t stopped HTC and Sprint from trying again. With Sprint’s LTE network just a flick of the switch away (or so they tell us), the HTC EVO 4G LTE is has come to Sprint.

Hardware, and the return of the kickstand

The original HTC Evo was an ugly phone. It was the first 4.3-inch Android handset, but managed the same resolution as the smaller screens available. As a result, most of the icons looked cartoonish, and the overall usability suffered as a result. The EVO came to Sprint at a time when Sprint needed to deliver their new 4G network, so it combined a 4G radio with the first huge phone screen. The result was a recipe for success.

The EVO 4G LTE comes equipped with many of the same features, only they have been fine-tuned after years of hardware improvement across the mobile ecosystem. This new EVO is lighter, thinner, stronger, and much faster than anything else on Sprint right now. Combine that with a terrific Super LCD qHD display and an LTE radio, and you’ve got the makings of a really great phone.

When the EVO 3D was released, HTC told us that they weren’t able to squeeze in a kickstand like the one found in the original. It was too hard and they couldn’t make the phone any thinner. Times sure have changes, because the EVO 4G LTE comes in at 0.35-inches thick and manages to include a kickstand. In fact, after two years of trying to put a kickstand in a phone, this new EVO finally does it right. You can stand the phone up on either of its long sides, or lay it on the back and let it wobble a little.

The casing for this phone is clearly the result of HTC’s attempts to fine-tune this design for the past couple of years. The front and most of the back is a matte finish plastic that is unfortunately an oil and fingerprint magnet, but feels very comfortable to hold in your hand. The top portion of the casing, just above the kickstand, is a glossy black plastic that is pretty different from the rest of the phone. The different texture is a little strange to look at, but actually makes it easier to hold the phone as your fingers rest on the two different textures.

The removable glossy backing reveals a microSD slot, but no SIM slot. In fact, the SIM slot is not accessible by the user at all — the EVO 4G LTE has an embedded SIM. It is unlikely that will cause any issues, but the idea that you can’t get to the SIM sets me on edge a little. You also don’t have access to the 2000mAh battery in the phone, but that is a growing trend in thinner, sexier phones.

You’ll also fin NFC on the inside of this device, an 16GB of internal storage. All of this is powered by the 1.5GHz dual core Snapdragon S4 and 1GB or RAM, similar to what we’ve seen in HTC’s ONE X. What really sets this phone apart from the others on Sprint is yet to come. When the Sprint LTE network is turned on, the EVO 4G LTE will be the only LTE device on the network where the radio baseband is found on the Snapdragon chipset, instead of on a separate chip. In theory, this will mean better battery usage than the other LTE devices.

Screen and Camera

In a world with Goliath phones like the Samsung Galaxy Note, it is not enough to simply have the biggest screen anymore. HTC put a 4.7-inch 720×1280 SuperLCD screen in the EVO 4G LTE. This is not only just under half an inch larger than the EVO screen, but significantly higher quality and greater resolution display. The phone doesn’t disappoint, everything on the phone looks great. As an LCD display, it has a great color balance and the resolution makes text display very sharp. When you take the phone outside, expect the sun to wash out the screen a bit, and in direct sunlight understand that the backlight on the phone will lose out most times. You’ll need to rely on your shadow to use the phone to read something outside. Otherwise, it’s a really great screen.

The EVO 4G LTE also comes with HTC’s amazing new 8MP camera with a backlit sensor. From a hardware perspective, this means you’ll be able to take great photos even in low light. The camera really does compete with most of the low-end point and shoot cameras. The hardware is combined with HTC’s camera app, which has been finely tuned to offer you the best shot possible. Because of the dedicated shutter button on the EVO 4G LTE, you can hold that button down and allow the burst mode of the camera to instantly take 20 rapid fire photos, and then the software will help you pick the best one. The software even allows for HDR shots, which have a high likelihood of turning out absolutely amazing as long as you can hold the phone still.

HTC Sense and Sprint

The phone has no shortage of what most would consider bloatware, but the case of the EVO 4G LTE is somewhat unique. This is the first phone I have ever used that had bloatware from HTC, Sprint, and Google. The typical HTC Sense 4 apps are all there, ready and willing to try really hard to not get in the way of using your phone. On top of this, Sprint has their arsenal of account apps, Sprint TV, and so far it looks like these apps can be removed.

It is good to see Sprint keeping promises and HTC not stopping basic Android 4.0 functionality from allowing the users to choose what is on their phones. However, added to the normal lineup of additional software from carrier and OEM, I found new Google apps. The Google Shopper app, for example, is pre-loaded on the phone. Nestled right next to the Google Wallet app, Shopper is on the phone to help you look for things that you can buy with Google Wallet online, in case you aren’t in the store to buy it.

If the software comes from Google, is it still bloatware? It’s an interesting though, considering I’ll probably never use the Shopper app, and I have yet to use a phone where Shopper came pre-installed.

Final Thoughts

When Sprint’s LTE network is finally turned on, I am sure this will continue to be a really great phone. As it stands right now, the lack of any kind of 4G is the only thing holding this phone back from being one of the best devices out there. Compared to AT&T’s or Verizon’s LTE, the Sprint 4G service is mildly akin to dial-up in my area. It made the phone fairly difficult to use any time I traveled outside with it.

The biggest question I have about the EVO 4G LTE phone can’t be answered until the LTE network goes live, and that’s how the battery life on the phone is with LTE on, specifically how it compares to the rest of the LTE devices out there. Aside from the battery life question, the HTC EVO 4G LTE is by far the best phone on Sprint today.

This review was based on an Evo 4G loaner unit, provided by Sprint.

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Verizon preparing to kill unlimited 4G data

The big US carriers have slowly been tightening the noose in order to drive users to more profitable tiered data plans. Until now, Verizon Wireless was good enough to allow existing customers to keep their unlimited data plans even when upgrading to 4G LTE handsets. Verizon’s CFO has finally dropped the bomb we’ve all been expecting: unlimited data on Verizon is about to go away.

Big Red will no longer allow users to buy new 4G LTE phones without moving to a capped data plan. This change will come in conjunction with the move to a new series of “data share plans.” These are, of course, the family data plans we’ve been promised for years. They will let those on a family plan to share buckets of data like they already can for minutes.

Verizon killed unlimited data plans for new customers last summer, but that still left millions of users with those reasonably-priced unlimited plans. Verizon always said the situation might change, but that probably won’t do anything to stem the flow of complaints. It is Verizon’s intention to get everyone on a data share plan, which Verizon’s CFO praised as “beneficial” to the carrier.

There is no firm date for the rollout of the new plans which will signal the end of unlimited data for existing customers. The new plans are expected sometime around the middle of summer, so there is still time for an upgrade. If you pick up a 4G device before then, you will probably get 2 years of unlimited data. However, the next time you upgrade, get ready for capped plans. The alternative is to live on 3G for as long as possible, but eventually all phones will be LTE.

via Cnet

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Vizibility ends private beta, readies NFC business cards for all

There are two types of people when it comes to business cards: you see them either as a useful way to quickly exchange your contact information or they are a just more clutter in your desk. For the people that really use business cards, you know that you can either have a basic white card with your phone number and email address on it, or you try to stand out and have some fun with it. There’s no shortage of companies out there ready to push your contact information through their printer to make you an ordinary paper business card, but why not make your cards work a little harder for you? The team at Vizibility have put together a solution that gathers all of the information about you on the web and curates it into an NFC and QR code-ready business card.

Back at SXSW, the team at Vizibility were showing off their fresh design for their business cards pre-loaded with NFC. It meant you could quickly transfer a larger volume of contact information without even giving away the business card.

The Vizibility NFC cards held all of your contact information, plus a whole lot more if you chose. The real power behind Vizibility comes with their website, which offers you the ability to fill your business card with everything from your social networks to a video bio about you, and offers tracking information for anyone who actually scans your card. During their detailed account creation process, Vizibility allows you to go through everything about you and pick and choose what goes on your account. Right down to individual search results, you can really put your best foot forward to whoever sees your card and decides to either scan your QR code or grab your NFC tag.

Vizibility’s website offers most of these features for free, including tracking metrics for how many times your card or code was used. You can have the results delivered to you via email, SMS, or just by traveling to the site. Additionally, you can download a copy of the QR code to embed wherever you like.

After you have created an account, if you would like to buy some of ordinary QR business cards, you can get 250 of them for about $20 or just QR stickers for about $15. Vizibility also offers more advanced features, such as geo-tracking on the QR scans or a personal AdWords campaign for a monthly fee. The Premier and Premier Pro packages are $3 and $9 respectively, with the Pro account including a Personal NFC ID Card.

Vizibility has put together an impressive personal management tool for tracking how effective your business card transactions really are, and the free account alone is worth giving them a shot. Plus, right now you can get a Premier subscription free for 45 days.

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Qualcomm Tagg offer peace of mind for dog owners

I never worry about losing my phone anymore. If I have misplaced it, I hop on my computer and go to a website that will tell me exactly where my phone it. It’s effortless, and I find that the majority of the time it is exactly where I left it. When I lose my car in the parking lot, my phone tells me right where I parked, and gives me walking directions to it.

Cellular and GPS tracking has become so advanced that there’s no need to worry about losing these kinds of things anymore. That gives me more time to worry about things that don’t stay still when they get lost, like my dog. The guys at Qualcomm have come up with an inexpensive yet sophisticated method to track your dog if they ever get away from you.

The Qualcomm Tagg is, for all intents and purposes, a cell phone for your dog. The device clips into the collar mount, and lives on your pet. While it is attached to your pet, the Tagg base station will occasionally ping the collar to make sure all is well. If the collar responds within an acceptable time, everything is great. If, for whatever reason, Tagg does not respond within an acceptable amount of time, or the response identifies the pet as being outside of the perimeter you have defined, Tagg lets you know that something is wrong. From the Tagg app for iOS and Android, or from the Tagg website, you will be able to locate your pet, and even get directions to the last recorded location of the pet.

The Tagg system is really designed for larger pets, most commonly dogs that are above 10 lbs. The monitor isn’t much wider than your average collar, and snaps into place so your pet can’t pry it off. On either side of the plastic casing for Tagg are two flexible rubber tags. These tags have the antennae to the Verizon Wireless cellular and GPS radios inside, and feel quite durable. The casing is also water resistant, in case your pet likes to jump in the pool occasionally or play in puddles.

Just about once a month, Tagg will need to be taken off the pet and charged in the base station that comes with the kit. The more your pet spends outside the range of the base station, where it is using GPS more, the less battery life you will see out of the unit on a single charge.

When you set Tagg up in your house, you are given some basic control over the range of the Tagg base station. You can choose to let it stretch out as far as it will go, or you can isolate the base station to a specific room or building. If you live in an area where your pet likes to get out and mess around in the neighbors yard, you can limit the Tagg base station to just your house, and get an alert any time your pet leaves the premises.

The Tagg service works with all iOS and Android 2.2+ devices, but also via SMS on non-smartphone devices. Just send a text to a pre-determined number to check in on your pet. When you consider all of the technology inside the Tagg system, the $99 price tag is pretty small for that kind of piece of mind. Purchasing the Tagg isn’t all there is to it though, there’s also a $7.95 monthly fee for the cellular and GPS data that Tagg uses to communicate.

Tagg is currently available in the Apple Store, as well as on Tagg.com and Amazon.

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Vizibility ends private beta, readies NFC business cards for all

There are two types of people when it comes to business cards: you see them either as a useful way to quickly exchange your contact information or they are a just more clutter in your desk. For the people that really use business cards, you know that you can either have a basic white card with your phone number and email address on it, or you try to stand out and have some fun with it. There’s no shortage of companies out there ready to push your contact information through their printer to make you an ordinary paper business card, but why not make your cards work a little harder for you? The team at Vizibility have put together a solution that gathers all of the information about you on the web and curates it into an NFC and QR code-ready business card.

Back at SXSW, the team at Vizibility were showing off their fresh design for their business cards pre-loaded with NFC. It meant you could quickly transfer a larger volume of contact information without even giving away the business card.

The Vizibility NFC cards held all of your contact information, plus a whole lot more if you chose. The real power behind Vizibility comes with their website, which offers you the ability to fill your business card with everything from your social networks to a video bio about you, and offers tracking information for anyone who actually scans your card. During their detailed account creation process, Vizibility allows you to go through everything about you and pick and choose what goes on your account. Right down to individual search results, you can really put your best foot forward to whoever sees your card and decides to either scan your QR code or grab your NFC tag.

Vizibility’s website offers most of these features for free, including tracking metrics for how many times your card or code was used. You can have the results delivered to you via email, SMS, or just by traveling to the site. Additionally, you can download a copy of the QR code to embed wherever you like.

After you have created an account, if you would like to buy some of ordinary QR business cards, you can get 250 of them for about $20 or just QR stickers for about $15. Vizibility also offers more advanced features, such as geo-tracking on the QR scans or a personal AdWords campaign for a monthly fee. The Premier and Premier Pro packages are $3 and $9 respectively, with the Pro account including a Personal NFC ID Card.

Vizibility has put together an impressive personal management tool for tracking how effective your business card transactions really are, and the free account alone is worth giving them a shot. Plus, right now you can get a Premier subscription free for 45 days.

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Qualcomm Tagg offer peace of mind for dog owners

I never worry about losing my phone anymore. If I have misplaced it, I hop on my computer and go to a website that will tell me exactly where my phone it. It’s effortless, and I find that the majority of the time it is exactly where I left it. When I lose my car in the parking lot, my phone tells me right where I parked, and gives me walking directions to it.

Cellular and GPS tracking has become so advanced that there’s no need to worry about losing these kinds of things anymore. That gives me more time to worry about things that don’t stay still when they get lost, like my dog. The guys at Qualcomm have come up with an inexpensive yet sophisticated method to track your dog if they ever get away from you.

The Qualcomm Tagg is, for all intents and purposes, a cell phone for your dog. The device clips into the collar mount, and lives on your pet. While it is attached to your pet, the Tagg base station will occasionally ping the collar to make sure all is well. If the collar responds within an acceptable time, everything is great. If, for whatever reason, Tagg does not respond within an acceptable amount of time, or the response identifies the pet as being outside of the perimeter you have defined, Tagg lets you know that something is wrong. From the Tagg app for iOS and Android, or from the Tagg website, you will be able to locate your pet, and even get directions to the last recorded location of the pet.

The Tagg system is really designed for larger pets, most commonly dogs that are above 10 lbs. The monitor isn’t much wider than your average collar, and snaps into place so your pet can’t pry it off. On either side of the plastic casing for Tagg are two flexible rubber tags. These tags have the antennae to the Verizon Wireless cellular and GPS radios inside, and feel quite durable. The casing is also water resistant, in case your pet likes to jump in the pool occasionally or play in puddles.

Just about once a month, Tagg will need to be taken off the pet and charged in the base station that comes with the kit. The more your pet spends outside the range of the base station, where it is using GPS more, the less battery life you will see out of the unit on a single charge.

When you set Tagg up in your house, you are given some basic control over the range of the Tagg base station. You can choose to let it stretch out as far as it will go, or you can isolate the base station to a specific room or building. If you live in an area where your pet likes to get out and mess around in the neighbors yard, you can limit the Tagg base station to just your house, and get an alert any time your pet leaves the premises.

The Tagg service works with all iOS and Android 2.2+ devices, but also via SMS on non-smartphone devices. Just send a text to a pre-determined number to check in on your pet. When you consider all of the technology inside the Tagg system, the $99 price tag is pretty small for that kind of piece of mind. Purchasing the Tagg isn’t all there is to it though, there’s also a $7.95 monthly fee for the cellular and GPS data that Tagg uses to communicate.

Tagg is currently available in the Apple Store, as well as on Tagg.com and Amazon.

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Grad student creates working Portal turret for his final project

A Penn State grad student has created a real-life working version of the infamous player-killing turrets from the hit game Portal as his final project for graduation. I would say that after watching the video, any professor that doesn’t give this guy a Masters degree needs to be the first target of this amazing creation.

Using an Arduino Uno and wiring to a bread board, the student who goes by the handle “kss5095” was able to achieve the motion and tracking using MATLAB, a programming environment used by robotics professionals to design algorithms for the operation of their creations. MATLAB allowed kss5095 to create a friend or foe differentiation for the turret based on the color of the shirt they are wearing, in this case anyone wearing a pink shirt is shot on sight, while others are just tracked.

Complete with the sound effects from the game asking people nicely to “come closer,” the turret is eerily accurate when it senses a foe nearby. There is even a laser sight connected to one of the USB cannons that are controlled by the laptop the whole contraption is hooked up to. As you can see from the image above, this is still a work in progress because the frame of the turret isn’t accurate to the model from the game, but I have a feeling that the man behind the whole thing will take care of that quite satisfactorily in the future.

Now to find out how to order four or five of these things to place around my house to nail my kids when they are misbehaving.

kss5095's YouTube profile, via Geekologie.

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Kylo browser for HDTVs goes open source

It’s quite likely that you’ve never heard of Kylo, but the big-screen browser made by Hillcrest Labs has been providing a great living room surfing experience for more than two years. Now, the company has announced that they’re open sourcing Kylo under the Mozilla Public License (MPL 2.0).

Going open is a logical move by the makers of the Gecko-powered browser, and it’s one that will allow developers of home theater-focused linux distributions (and other media center software) to more easily customize and adapt Kylo to suit their particular needs.

Since it’s built on Mozilla’s core, Kylo offers rich support for web standards like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, and it also plays nice with NPAPI plug-ins like Flash. That’s handy for those times when you just can’t avoid Adobe’s oft-maligned tech, like when you really, really need to play a game of Robot Unicorn Attack.

One bit of functionality Kylo offers that other browsers don’t is built-in support for Hillcrest’s Freespace pointing devices, which offer gesture-powered navigation controls. The Kylo/Freespace one-two punch is used by Warpia TV, the slick PC-to-TV streaming solution that was introduced at CES 2012.

Kylo is currently available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and Hillcrest recently pushed an update that offers better support for 1080P televisions. With a full-on HD interface on board, the Kylo dashboard and overall browsing experience is more crisp, clear, and enjoyable than ever before. If you’re running an HTPC — or even occasionally hooking up a laptop to your HDTV with an HDMI cable — it’s well worth your time to take Kylo for a test drive.

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$74 MK802 Android micro-PC beats Cotton Candy to the punch

A pair of inexpensive micro-PCs have generated quite a bit of buzz this year. The dirt-cheap Raspberry Pi started shipping in mid-April, but the FXI Cotton Candy has yet to make it out the door. The $200 Android PC-on-a-stick will also have some competition once it finally arrives: a very similar $74 AllWinner A10-based system has already popped up on online shopping sites.

Meet the MK802, which (like the Cotton Candy) features an ARM processor, Android 4.0, and WiFi connectivity. It’s not quite as powerful, with a single-core 1.5GHz AllWinner A10 processor and 512MB memory compared to a dual-core 1.2GHz Exynos chip and 1GB. The MK802 does 0ffer two USB ports — one full-sized and one micro — and it utilizes the same Mali 400 GPU as the Cotton Candy.

One other difference is that the MK802 sports an HDMI port, not an HDMI plug. That means, of course, that you’ll still need a cable or a male-to-male plug to hook up to your HDTV or monitor. Really, though, that’s a reasonable trade-off when you consider that you can buy almost three MK802s for the same price as a single Cotton Candy.

If you do decide to pick up the MK802, remember that you’ll have to rely on your own stash of APKs or a third-party marketplace like the Amazon Appstore, at least initially. With the ridiculously low price tag on this device, it’s a good bet that the Android developer community will jump on this solid little stick computer and hack in support for Google Play in the very near future.

CNX Software, via Liliputing

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Hitachi’s new CinemaStar 7mm drive offers 500GB on one platter

SSDs are starting to invade small form-factor PCs and media devices as prices fall, but Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, now a part of Western Digital, is fighting back with a new range of 2.5-inch hard drives for the consumer electronics category. Three new CinemaStar drives have been announced to offer up cheap, quiet storage for a range of devices.

The top of the line drive is the new CinemaStar Z7K500. It combines a 7mm drive height with a 6Gb/s SATA connection, 32MB cache, and spins at 7200RPM. Even so, it manages to keep audible sound below 2.4 Bels and power use is typically 1.7W. Storage capacities available include 250GB, 320GB, and 500GB. That may not be a lot of storage space today, but it’s still impressive when you consider Hitachi is only using a single platter inside the drive.

Next is the CinemaStar Z5K500, which offers the same 7mm drive height, up to 500GB capacity and an 8MB cache, but only spins at 5400RPM. The advantage of that being it’s a quieter drive (2.0 Bels) with lower power use (1.5W), making it perfect for a DVR solution where you really don’t want any noise coming from the device.

HGST has also catered for those devices that need more storage, but can also cope with larger drive dimensions. The CinemaStar C5K1000 is a 9.5mm drive offering between 640GB and 1TB of storage with an 8MB cache and spinning at 5400RPM. It’s not as quiet as the Z5K500 or Z7K500 (2.5 Bels), but still offers up a decent solution if a 3.5-inch drive is just too big to consider.

Typically the CinemaStar range is for use in consumer electronics products, but there’s nothing to stop you sourcing one for an upgrade. For example, the C5K1000 would probably work well as a PS3 hard drive replacement.

via HGST

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