2011: The Year of the Personal Robot?

I only posted ONE page of the article so to complete the and read the SECOND page just click on the "original article" link :) it was FAR too long to post.

What does 2011 hold for the field of robotics? Plenty, if 2010 is any indication. This will not be the year that mobile, artificially intelligent robot nurses assume the responsibility of caring for the world's growing elderly population, but it does promise to be a pivotal time for the development of the underlying technology that will enable safe and reliable automated elder care, not to mention other services that robots are expected to perform in the coming decade.

Thanks to a standardized platform introduced in 2010, roboticists can now collaborate as never before. Last May, Willow Garage, a Menlo Park, Calif., maker of robot hardware and software, released a test version of its personal robot platform. The PR2 includes a mobile base, two arms for manipulation, a suite of sensors and two computers, each with eight processing cores, 24 gigabytes of RAM and two terabytes of hard-disk space. The out-of-the-box robot, which costs $400,000, also features an operating system that handles the robot's computation and hardware manipulation functions.

"There are a lot of innovations in the PR2, but the most significant thing from my perspective is that it is a standardized, well-designed, well-tested platform that has a whole bunch of software that works right out of the box," says Charles Kemp, an assistant biomedical engineering professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "You never had that situation before."

Kemp and his team at Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab, which he formed in 2007, are focused on creating robots that can safely and effectively help care for senior citizens. The machines would go beyond current efforts to create bots able to follow the elderly around their homes to provide them with Internet access and remind them to take their medicine. For starters, the Healthcare Robotics Lab researchers want their robots to be able to open doors and drawers to retrieve objects such as pill bottles while being guided by a laser pointer, radio signals or touch.

Kemp's lab is one of 16 institutions that experimented with the PR2 during the latter half of 2010. South Korea's Samsung Electronics is using the PR2 to enhance the company's existing robotics research in a country that hopes to put a robot in every home by 2020. The Bosch Research and Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif., part of electronics and appliances maker The Bosch Group, has begun a two-year project to integrate its advanced sensor technology—including microelectromechanical system (MEMS), accelerometers, gyroscopes, force sensors, and air-pressure sensors—to improve the PR2's performance and reliability. Other beta-testing sites include Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the French National Center for Scientific Research's (CNRS) Laboratory of Analysis and Architecture of Systems.

Great GATSBII*
Kemp sees the combination of his PR2, named GATSBII, and a free and open-source robot operating system as a way to accelerate his lab's work with the help of a standardized platform and a budding community of roboticists working with the same tools who can now offer more practical advice to one another. "We're actually releasing things that other people can use, and we're using other people's things," Kemp says.

Prior to GATSBII, Kemp and his team used parts from a variety of suppliers to build three different mobile manipulators. The first EL-E, built in 2007 to perform assistive tasks for sufferers of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which impairs physical motor functions. The researchers have since built two more robots: Dusty, which has a lift tray designed to pick objects up off the floor; and Cody, whose two arms and omnidirectional mobile base resemble those of GATSBII. Unlike GATSBII, Cody is the product of many different manufacturers, including Meka Robotics, which supplied the arms, and Segway, which delivered the omnidirectional mobile base. In the cases of EL-E, Dusty and Cody, Kemp and his team designed the robots and then found the parts they needed to actually build them.

Original Article.

Cancer Testing? There's an App for That

It wouldnt surprise me, if this was the next step. there is basically an app for everything! whats next online grocery shopping through your iphone!

Many people already use their smart­phones as far more than mere telephones—as gadgets for Web surfing, e-mailing or listening to music. Some scientists are now turning them into handheld tools to diagnose cancer or infectious disease, track treatment progress or check water safety. Given that the handsets are so common, they could bring cutting-edge health care technology to the developing world.

Diagnosing cancer is a challenge because it requires expensive, time-consuming assays. But in a recent study published in Science Translational Medicine, Ralph Weissleder and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School used a cell phone and a lunch box–size machine to diagnose cancer from tiny pieces of tissue, taken via needle from the abdomens of patients with suspected metastatic cancers. Researchers mixed the samples with antibodies that bound to four known cancer-related proteins. The machine analyzed the samples using nuclear magnetic resonance—measuring levels of the antibody-bound proteins based on their magnetic properties. It then sent the results to the smart­­phone, which, using an app that the researchers designed, displayed the data. Because doctors don’t need a laptop or desktop, it would be easier for them to assess patients outside the clinic. In comparison, results from more traditional diagnostic methods are typically not available for three days and require more invasive tissue sampling.

By using different antibodies, doctors could use the device to diagnose any form of cancer, says Har­vard systems biologist and co-author Hakho Lee. They could also track treatment progress. “If there is a decrease in either the number of cancer cells or the expression levels of certain disease markers, then that means the treatment might be working,” he says. He expects a product within five years.

Other researchers are taking advantage of smart­phone cameras to create diagnostic microscopes. Electrical engineer Aydogan Ozcan and his colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed a 4.5-centimeter-long phone attachment that shines LED light on biological samples, producing holograms of each cell based on how the light scatters. The phone’s camera then snaps a photograph, compresses the image and sends it to a clinic for evaluation. With the ability to decipher details as small as 1/1,000th of a meter, the microscope could identify sickle-cell disease or malaria from blood samples and perform blood cell counts. The devices could bring an elegant simplicity to nations that struggle with infectious diseases.

Original article.

Zuckerberg Somehow Qualifies for Mortage, buys house!

I like mark Zuckerberg, i don't know what it is.. i don't know if the social network helped and i just grew to admire his hard work, and all the slack he takes for his action, but i don't know there is something about him that i like. anyways he finally bought a house apparently he has been renting.. which is cute haha but yeah if you click on the real article it will show more pictures of the house he just purchased.

Must be nice! Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has the financial wherewithal to get a home mortgage, as evidenced by his recent purchase of a $7 million spread in Palo Alto, California. Zuck had apparently been renting a house up until now, which is adorable.

Let's take a look at his new digs, shall we?


Article.

Oil steadies after 10 percent drop

Currently right now in my city gas is 4.30 a gallon. RIDICULOUS!! honestly i remember when gas was 236 and i thought that was bad it just keep rising every week it seems like. poor middle class America, soon it will only consist of two classes.

Reuters) - Oil prices steadied on Friday following a torrid 10 percent slide the previous session, as shellshocked traders mulled market fundamentals and the frenzy this week that wiped out half the year's gains.

Upbeat U.S. jobs data aided crude's early rise from Thursday's shock-inducing collapse, when Brent fell by as much as $12, a record, in a furious, high volume session that saw waves of selling as key techinical levels were broken.

Crude eased off the early gains on Friday as the dollar rose.

"I think it's just a little reaction to the way oversold conditions we got into yesterday, it was quite a bloodbath," Mike Zarembski, senior commodities analyst for optionsXpress in Chicago.

"Traders are still a bit shellshocked from yesterday."

Selling pressure on oil and other commodities came on several fronts this week, with investors weighing factors from the death of Osama bin Laden to the impact of higher fuel and commodity costs on the economies of consumer nations to monetary policy in major economies.

Brent crude traded up 30 cents to $111.10 a barrel at 1:50 p.m. EDT in heavy trade, with volumes already 83 percent over the 30-day moving average.

U.S. crude futures fell 57 cents to $99.23 a barrel. U.S. crude was off earlier highs of $102.38, pressured by the dollar's gains against the euro, which can support prices for dollar-denominated economies.

A German news report, later denied, suggested Greece had raised the possibility of leaving the euro zone. The euro fell to its lowest in more than two weeks and headed for its biggest weekly decline against the dollar since January.

Data from the Labor Department showed U.S. private employers added jobs at the fastest pace in five years in April, pointing to underlying strength in the economy, even as the jobless rate rose to 9.0 percent.

"The jobs data wasn't so out of kilter that it justified the sell-off or a huge bounce, but investors will want to lighten their load ahead of the weekend if they are on the short side," said Richard Ilczyszyn senior market strategist at Lind-Waldock in Chicago.

"The market got ahead of itself on the way up and now is bouncing after the sell-off."

Thursday's sell off saw U.S. crude oil futures set a record high for open interest, while open positions also rose for Brent crude, and volatility surged as traders rushing to load up on $95 to $100 put options fearing further losses ahead.

Chicago Board Option Exchange's oil volatility index fell nearly 5 percent on Friday, after briefly spiking to the highest levels in almost a year in the previous session.

Oil prices have rocketed this year to levels not seen since the record spike in 2008, driven by supply disruptions in Libya and ongoing loose U.S. monetary policy, with Brent hitting a high of $127 a barrel and U.S. crude over $114.

Goldman Sachs, which in April predicted this week's major correction in oil prices, on Friday said that oil could surpass its recent highs by 2012 as global oil supplies continue to tighten.

"It is important to emphasize that even as oil prices are pulling back from their recent highs, we expect them to return to or surpass the recent highs by next year," Goldman Sachs' analysts said in a research note.

"We continue to believe that the oil supply-demand fundamentals will tighten further over the course of this year, and likely reach critically tight levels by early next year should Libyan oil supplies remain off the market."

(Reporting by Gene Ramos, Robert Gibbons, Matthew Robinson in New York; Jessica Donati-Bourne in London and Francis Kan in Singapore; Editing by David Gregorio)

Article.

Royal wedding a top destination for Web users

Im posting two blogs today so its okay if one of them is about the royal wedding and the billions of ppl who have been search it online! it happens once every 30 years!

The royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton went off without a hitch today--both in Westminster Abbey and online.

According to global CDN provider Akamai, "early data" has revealed that the number of concurrent users streaming the royal wedding around the Web outstripped the highest peak of concurrent users who watched the World Cup last year. Akamai plans to provide final numbers on that later today.

Even so, comparing the royal wedding's performance with other major events can be difficult. For one, workers in the U.K. were given today off, which means many of them were likely watching the festivities at home from their televisions. Moreover, the event occurred when many in the United States were still sleeping, which could have negatively affected the live feed of the event, but buoyed viewership figures on videos watched later in the day.

"There are a lot of factors involved with these live events, which is why we can't call one event the biggest or larger than another," an Akamai spokeswoman told CNET in an e-mailed statement today. "It's like comparing apples and oranges sometimes."

At 3:30 a.m. PT today, Akamai said that it saw traffic to global news sites spike in Europe with 1.6 million page views pelting pages every minute. As North American viewers started joining in this morning, page views hit nearly 5.4 million per minute to the news sites it services. At that time, worldwide traffic to news sites was 64 percent higher than it is normally.

Broadband analyst Sandvine reported today that "real-time traffic in North America" was up 20 percent at 3:30 a.m. PT this morning, compared to the same time period last week.

Users have also taken to social networks to discuss the royal wedding. Both worldwide and in the United States, the royal wedding and items related to Prince William and Kate are trending topics on Twitter. A quick search on Twitter for royal Wedding-related tweets reveals people are still updating the site every few seconds with comments on the festivities.

YouTube, which partnered with the royal family to deliver the official live feed to the Web, told CNET today that it doesn't have any numbers to share just yet.

Original Article.

Free Movies, TV, Seinfeld Available on Crackle App

OO i love watching Tv shows! just bring the Office next and I'm sure lots will tune in! haha I'm sure its already on there but its a slow news week because the white iphone, playbook, and all the other tablets being released.

Other video services may be raking in the eyeballs and subscription dollars with their movie and TV offerings for the iPhone and iPad, but Sony's new Crackle app may become master of its domain for one simple reason: It has Seinfeld.

The Crackle app launched on Monday with hundreds of movies and TV shows from Sony properties such as Columbia Pictures, Tri-Star, Screen Gems, and Sony Pictures Classics. But it might be Seinfeld--which remains popular in syndication and in DVD sales 13 years after it went off the air--that gives Crackle an edge over the competition: The show isn't available from Hulu, Netflix, or iTunes. The downside? Only 10 episodes of the sitcom are currently available.

The upside? Unlike other video services, the content on Crackle is free for viewing--there's no subscription fee required to view shows and movies. You can choose to create a user account that offers some of your personal information to Sony, which comes with the ability to create a viewing queue that's available both on the app and at Crackle's online home.

Original Article.

Facebook hops aboard T-Mobile's Bobsled service

Good Afternoon! well i was checking my forms as well as google news and besides the white iPhone coming out and the blackberry playbook theres really not many other releases, but i was able to find something i thought was pretty interesting, i don't know how interesting it might be to you but I'm sure i probably wont use it but still its a cool little feature.

Facebook's 500 million-plus customers are now able to make live voice calls via Facebook Chat across the world.

T-Mobile's new Bobsled service lets PC and Macintosh users make calls between Facebook pages, add voice to any Facebook Chat and leave voice messages and wall posts on Facebook.

"We're bringing a voice to social networking," says Brad Duea, senior vice president of T-Mobile USA.

The service is fairly simple. No download or log-in is required. All of the calls are free. (Eventually, the service will be available to iPhone and iPad users.) T-Mobile may bring Bobsled to other social networks, Duea says.

"It's a good service for PC, but will be more valuable when it's available on mobile phones," says Yankee Group analyst Tole Hart, who has been briefed on Bobsled. "It should be pretty useful for Facebook's (more than 250 million) mobile users. And it fits T-Mobile's user demographic of young, heavy-duty data users."

Users interested in Bobsled need to go to www.letsbobsled.com. It's also available for free download from Facebook's application page.

Original Article.

Report: Finally, Nintendo to Announce Wii 2 This June

I love my WII!, i love just dance super Mario bros and all the wii resorts and fit games, i mean its simple i use it probably once a week or so and its the perfect console for me, so i think it all depends on the buyer. anyways im sure i wont buy the wii 2 but it will ne neat to see what they have come up with.

So it comes as no surprise that on Friday, the blogosphere was rife with reports, led by IGN and Game Informer, that Nintendo is announcing its next-generation console at the E3 Expo on June 7-9.

French tech publication 01.net reports that the console is codenamed "Project Café" and will feature an in-built sensor bar, dual analog sticks, a standard d-pad, and trigger buttons. Game Informer said the new Wii will have HD support, while Kotaku reports that the console's specs will be "more powerful" than an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

Nintendo "declines to comment on speculation or rumors," but IGN and Game Informer both cited anonymous sources claiming that Nintendo will announce the next-generation console in at E3 this year and launch it in 2012.

Targeting casual gamers with its novel motion sensor technology, the Wii was once the hottest console in the U.S. but has seen its popularity dip considerably as newer motion sensor technology, like the Kinect for Xbox 360, launched. In February Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said Wii sales dropped 31.5 percent in January (usually a big month for console purchases), more than rivals Sony and Microsoft. It's a far cry from the time PCMag editor called the Nintendo Wii the Best Product Ever.

For more, see PCMag's review of the Wii, which was launched in 2006.

Original Article.

Android: Over 3 billion apps installed; 350,000 device activations per day

Hello! Happy Friday! Ive never been happier for Friday to come, even tho i have a busy weekend ahead i just want to sit back relax, turn on the office and just enjoy the weekend,anyways recently got an android phone.. probably about 3 months ago, and I'm loving it, love all the apps i had a blackberry and the app market wasn't too great. hope you enjoy the article!

Android falls short in the apps category when compared to Apple’s trademarked App Store, but current figures show the Android Market is doing pretty well. According to Google there have now been over 3 billion apps installed from the Market. Most impressively the last billion apps were installed in the last three months, a huge jump in activity (11 million/ day). The app numbers are accompanied by an update from Google that there are now 350,000 activations of new Android devices every day. That puts the platform on a pace to hit over 127 million activations in a year.

Google didn’t share any information in the financial conference call about how many of those apps are free apps. Most likely most a few of them but if even a low percentage of the apps installed from the Market are paid, there is some money to be made by app developers. These figures from Google don’t include any app installation numbers from the young Amazon Appstore. The Amazon storefront doesn’t have many apps on the shelves and likely isn’t selling enough to include in Android numbers.

Android tablets don’t factor into these numbers in any numbers as companies are only just getting them to market. This year will see a lot of Android tablets go on sale, and it will be interesting to see how it affects these two key metrics for the platform.
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Original Article.