Friday, 11 October 2013

Software & Hardware news

A company in Japan has an interesting answer to what might be a next step in touchscreens. In fact, its approach may change our concept of a screen, with the company’s concept of floating-image displays that permit the user to interact, The company is Asukanet and the device is called the Aerial Imaging Plate. As the name suggests, this is a device to project an image into the air. The image appears to float around from light that passes through it. In a demo of the product, Asukanet CEO Yukio Fukuda said, “At first sight, our AI Plate just looks like a sheet of glass. But in fact, it’s an optical device, designed to reflect light twice. An ordinary mirror just reflects things, but the AI Plate forms an image from light passing through the plate, at the same distance beyond the plate as the object is from the plate.”
One application would see the AI Plate put to use for digital signage, where promoted products would float in the air. Digital signage, though, would be a limited result not fully exploring AI Plate’s potential, as the technology behind it allows for an interactive experience, and that opens up many more uses.
AI Plate makes use of a free pico-projector to create objects that move backwards and forwards. The use of a motion sensor accompanying the device makes images feel alive and responsive, in tracking the user’s movements, such that, as one example, a character’s eyes and head could follow the user’s hand movements. Asukanet is thinking about applications such as point-of-sales machines for ordering food and even slot machines.
This week the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced that they had manufactured 1 million Raspberry Pi computers in the UK. In an age when the very thought of manufacturing anything outside of China would be considered foolhardy, the supply of these low cost computing devices from a factory in South Wales showed that it is still possible to manufacture technology in a developed western nation, albeit a fairly basic no-frills device.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation was established by a group of academics at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory who were concerned with the general decline in numbers of students applying to computer science. They felt that they could tackle this by providing a means for teachers at primary and secondary school to introduce programming and computing skills training. As such the Raspberry Pi was developed as a very cheap and expandable computing device that could plug into a TV.
The Raspberry Pi is runs a version of the Linux operating system which provides support for developer tools and other software. Children in particular were to interact with a development environment called Scratch which was designed by the MIT Media Lab as a creative environment that would allow children in particular to learn basic programming skills. In early 2013, Google got behind this idea and funded the supply of 15,000 Pis to schools in the UK.
Despite the educational ideal, the majority of the 1.75 million Pis sold have gone to middle-aged hobbyists who have put the devices to a plethora of uses. These range from media players to a re-enactment of Felix Baumgarten’s skydiving world record using a Raspberry Pi equiped teddy bear called Babbage who made a leap from 39,000 meters, transmitting data and video along the way.
This is not the first time someone has tried to create a low cost computer to try to improve computing literacy. In the early 1980’s the BBC teamed with the Acorn Computer company to create a personal computer called the BBC Micro. Although popular with schools in the UK (80% of schools owned one), they were still relatively expensive at the time and their integration into the curriculum was limited by cost and more importantly by lack of skills required to teach using them. Eventually the Acorn computers were eclipsed by PCs running Microsoft’s DOS and Windows but the development gave rise to the ARM processors that power most smartphones today.
Although on the surface, the encouragement of computer science skills in school children may be seen as a laudable goal, one would have to ask whether these efforts are likely to succeed. More importantly, is the declining number of students taking courses in computer science simply an indicator that subject’s time has passed?
This question has been the source of much debate in the IT industry, with people arguing that skills required for successful developers are not the highly technical and theoretical ones that come from a degree in computer science but those of problem solving, collaboration and communication.
Another problem with any sort of degree is that the technologies used by industry change so rapidly that anything taught at university has a very short shelf-life, making continuous self-training necessary in any case.
Others would argue that programming is a craft which requires little in the way of more formal training. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were both self-taught programmers who saw little value in completing their degrees.
In any event, it is unlikely that the Raspberry Pi will replace the home PC or tablets that are rapidly becoming their mobile replacement. The Pi will always struggle to match the simplicity and richness of a PC, iPad or Android tablet’s interface and access to millions of apps. Teachers are only now coming to grips with the ubiquity of laptops and tablets in the class and are unlikely to invest even more time on learning a new environment and technology.
While the manufacture of a million Raspberry Pis in the UK is an achievement worth marking, it is unlikely to make the Chinese technology manufacturers feel threatened in any way.
Source: The Conversation, story by David Glance

Despite their educational appeal, the majority of Pis sold have been bought by middle-aged hobbyists. Credit: Yan Arief via Flickr

Apple’s iOS 7 represents the most dramatic update to date of the software that powers iPhones and iPads. It also appears to be one of the buggiest.
When released last month, iOS 7 generally drew rave reviews from tech analysts, including yours truly, who liked its clean look and new features. But since almost Day One, users have complained about a smattering of problems with the new software.
Do a search on Google for “iOS problems,” and you’ll find a litany of them.
Hackers quickly discovered a flaw in the iOS 7′s lock screen that allowed users to gain access to the device without having to enter a passcode. More recently, some users complained that iMessage, the text and multimedia messaging service built into Apple’s devices, refuses to send messages.
Apple quickly issued an update to iOS 7 to fix the lock-screen problem, and it told The Wall Street Journal last week it was working on an update to fix the iMessage problem.
But users are encountering plenty of other problems that Apple has yet to address. Many have complained that the new software drains the battery life of their devices or slows them down noticeably.
Worse, many users with visual impairments or motion sensitivity say that iOS 7′s new design has made using their phones difficult or even impossible. Some say the new software makes them dizzy or nauseous because apps zoom into view when launched and zoom out of view when they return to their home screens.



 
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