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‘research’ Stories

Android malware: Threat or FUD?

Chris Davies, Nov 21st 2011 Discuss [25]

Android faces an exponential growth in mobile malware, according to researchers, with a 472-percent increase in rogue Android Market apps since July 2011. Increasingly complex apps are taking advantage of loopholes in the Android platform's security to gain root access and grab user-data, Juniper Networks claims, going on to send premium-rate messages unknown to the user or share data covertly with remote hackers. However, while those apps are supposedly proliferating in the Market, it's unclear how many users are actually impacted. Read The Full Story

iPad 2 is holiday must-have

Chris Davies, Nov 17th 2011 Discuss [13]

Finding something the whole family can agree on at Christmas is usually a nightmare, but it seems as long as what's in giftwrap is rectangular, has a 9.7-inch touchscreen and an Apple logo, then kids, teenagers and adults will be happy. Market researchers Nielsen claim Apple's iPad is the most coveted gadget, rating the highest for buying-interest over the next six months in both the 6-12 and 13+ brackets. Non-Apple tablets, meanwhile, languish behind in fifth place. Read The Full Story

Haptic touchscreen tech creates virtual textures [Video]

Chris Davies, Nov 16th 2011 Discuss [1]

A new haptic touch system that can dynamically change the physical feel of a control surface beneath the fingertip has been developed, potentially revolutionizing touchscreens and portable devices. Swiss EPFL researchers discovered that a piezoelectric surface that flexes at the micron level can create a textured panel a user's finger can perceive. Read The Full Story

Smartphone, laptop battery life to see 10X increase

Rue Liu, Nov 15th 2011 Discuss [19]

Smartphone and laptop batteries could soon see a ten-fold increase in both the charging speed as well as battery life. Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a lithium-ion electrode that enables conventional lithium-ion batteries to get ten times more capacity and would still run five times as efficient as current batteries after 150 charging cycles or about a year of use. Read The Full Story

MIT’s computer chip mimics the human brain

Rue Liu, Nov 15th 2011 Discuss [1]

Researchers at MIT have unveiled a computer chip that mimics the human brain. Its purpose will be for studying how the brain's neurons respond and adapt to new information, a phenomenon known as plasticity. This process is believed to underscore many human brain functions such as learning and memory. Read The Full Story

Pico Projector packing phone makes collaboration easy

Shane McGlaun, Nov 14th 2011 Discuss [2]

It's often not easy to collaborate with someone while you are talking to them on your mobile phone the problem is that not all devices allow you to use the touchscreen while on a call. Even if you can use the touchscreen, it's usually too small to make for comfortable work. Researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen have an interesting and bulky concept device that makes collaboration using your phone easy. Read The Full Story

Google X labs plan robot researchers to map the future

Chris Davies, Nov 14th 2011 Discuss [3]

Google could release a fleet of autonomous data collection robots, supplanting its current Google Street View cars insiders suggest, using robotics and AI research from the search giant's mysterious Google X incubator labs. The high-tech exploratory 'bots - which would build on Google's self-driving cars - are one of several outlandish projects currently underway among the company's more prophetic engineers and developers, according to an NY Times piece on the clandestine R&D facility. Other avenues apparently include space elevators and the "web of things" where meshes of network-enabled objects, potentially as mundane as tableware, can communicate online. Read The Full Story

Heat Lamp Solves IQ test puzzles

Shane McGlaun, Nov 10th 2011 Discuss [2]

Researchers at North Carolina State University have invented an interesting process that might be applied to manufacturing of packing materials and other uses in the future. Anyone that has ever taken an IQ or achievement test will recognize the open pattern and having to figure out what the closed pattern will look like should recognize the patterns here. This is what 2D boxes and shapes look like before they are folded into 3D. Read The Full Story

Nokia GEM concept clad entirely in touchscreens [Video]

Chris Davies, Nov 10th 2011 Discuss [2]

Nokia Research loves its concept phones – the flexible Kinetic concept was one of our favorite things at Nokia World last month – and for the team’s 25th anniversary they’ve produced this, the Nokia GEM. Built around the idea of the entire phone’s surface being a touch-sensitive display – front, sides and back – GEM learns from your most common tasks and adapts its default appearance to suit, so if you play games most of the time the phone will usually look like a gamepad.

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Genetically modified rice grows human blood component

Shane McGlaun, Nov 8th 2011 Discuss [2]

This is gross and cool all at the same time. Apparently, scientists have been able to genetically modify rice that can be grown in fields that is able to produce a specific human blood protein called Human Serum Albumin. This is the most important protein on human blood and is often given to people that have suffered massive amounts of blood loss. Read The Full Story

ASIMO goes autonomous: Honda robot divorces operator

Chris Davies, Nov 8th 2011 Discuss [1]

Honda's ASIMO robot has been given a new round of upgrades, slimming down and gaining the ability to autonomously monitor and interact with its environment, out of the control of a human operator. Advanced balancing - including quick reactions when ASIMO senses it's falling - together with an array of sensors that track physical objects and moving people, and predictive response algorithms that can independently decide on the next course of action all come together and shift the robot another step closer to integrating into a public environment. Read The Full Story

comScore: Android still way ahead, but Apple now grabs 10% US market share

Rue Liu, Nov 4th 2011 Discuss [26]

Research firm comScore has just released a US smartphone market report for the period ending in September 2011, revealing as expected that Android is still way ahead of the pack, but that Apple continues to grow steadily. In fact, one in ten mobile subscribers in the US now own an iPhone and this is even before Apple released the iPhone 4S. Read The Full Story