the-end-of-the-smartphone-era-is-coming-?




 

DVF Google Glasses

MSFT



http://www.businessinsider.com/the-end-of-the-smartphone-era-is-coming-2012-11


You've heard that Google is working on computerized glasses. They're called Google Glass, and developers can already buy them.
It turns out Microsoft is working on something similar. It filed some patents on the project and Unwired View dug them up.
There's a big difference between what Microsoft is working on and Google Glass, though.
The most recent word out of Google is that Google Glass isn't going to use "augmented reality" – where data and illustrations overlay the actual world around you.
Google Glass is actually just a tiny screen you have to look up and to the left to see.
Microsoft's glasses seem to utilize augmented reality. In a patent illustration we've embedded below, you can see that the glasses put data on top of a live action concert and a ballgame.
Both gadget concepts are very interesting.
Lots of people disagree with me, including other BI writers, but I think something like Google Glass or whatever Microsoft is working on could end up replacing the smartphone as the dominant way people access the Internet and connect to each other.
First off: something has to. Disruption is inevitable.
Secondly: The trend is obvious.
Computers have been getting smaller and closer to our faces since their very beginning.
First they were in big rooms, then they sat on desktops, then they sat on our laps, and now they're in our palms. Next they'll be on our faces.
(Eventually they'll be in our brains.)
By the way, you can bet that if Microsoft and Google are working on computerized glasses, so is Apple and Jony Ive.
And that's pretty exciting.
Here's the patent illustration from Microsoft:


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-end-of-the-smartphone-era-is-coming-2012-11#ixzz2DihWhbSh
You've heard that Google is working on computerized glasses. They're called Google Glass, and developers can already buy them.
It turns out Microsoft is working on something similar. It filed some patents on the project and Unwired View dug them up.
There's a big difference between what Microsoft is working on and Google Glass, though.
The most recent word out of Google is that Google Glass isn't going to use "augmented reality" – where data and illustrations overlay the actual world around you.
Google Glass is actually just a tiny screen you have to look up and to the left to see.
Microsoft's glasses seem to utilize augmented reality. In a patent illustration we've embedded below, you can see that the glasses put data on top of a live action concert and a ballgame.
Both gadget concepts are very interesting.
Lots of people disagree with me, including other BI writers, but I think something like Google Glass or whatever Microsoft is working on could end up replacing the smartphone as the dominant way people access the Internet and connect to each other.
First off: something has to. Disruption is inevitable.
Secondly: The trend is obvious.
Computers have been getting smaller and closer to our faces since their very beginning.
First they were in big rooms, then they sat on desktops, then they sat on our laps, and now they're in our palms. Next they'll be on our faces.
(Eventually they'll be in our brains.)
By the way, you can bet that if Microsoft and Google are working on computerized glasses, so is Apple and Jony Ive.
And that's pretty exciting.
Here's the patent illustration from Microsoft:


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-end-of-the-smartphone-era-is-coming-2012-11#ixzz2DihWhbSh

Most genetic changes in humans occurred in past 5000 years, finds new study

Subodh Varma, TNN Nov 29, 2012, 02.55PM IST
NEW DELHI: In the past 5000 years, the human genome - the genetic code carried in our DNA - has accumulated a large number of variations, many of them potentially harmful. This has happened because of exploding human population, which causes naturally arising genetic mutations (changes) to keep collecting and getting passed on to progeny.
A study published today in the scientific journal Naturehas detailed when many of those rare variants arose. The study had a fairly large sample of 4,298 North Americans of European descent and 2,217 African Americans which enabled the researchers to gather unprecedented details from the genetic code. Study co-author Josh Akey, a genomics expert at the University of Washington in Seattle told Nature that the researchers now have "a way to look at recent human history in a way that we couldn't before."

Mercury's north pole has ice, Nasa spacecraft discovers


Mercury's north pole has ice, Nasa spacecraft discovers
Scientists announced that the orbiting probe, Messenger, has found evidence of frozen water, even though Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun.
CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Just in time for Christmas, scientists have confirmed a vast amount of ice at the north pole on Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun.

The findings are from Nasa's Mercury-orbiting probe, Messenger, and the subject of three scientific papers released Thursday by the journal Science.

The frozen water is located in regions of Mercury's north pole that always are in shadows, essentially impact craters. It's believed the south pole harbors ice as well, though there are no hard data to support it. Messenger orbits much closer to the north pole than the south.

"If you add it all up, you have on the order of 100 billion to 1 trillion metric tons of ice," said David Lawrence of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. "The uncertainty on that number is just how deep it goes."

The ice is thought to be at least 1.5 feet (0.5 meters) deep and possibly as much as 65 feet (19.8 meters) deep.

There's enough polar ice at Mercury, in fact, to bury an area the size of Washington, D.C., by two to 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) deep, said Lawrence, the lead author of one of the papers.

"These are very exciting results," he added at a news conference.

For two decades, radar measurements taken from Earth have suggested the presence of ice at Mercury's poles. Now scientists know for sure, thanks to Messenger, the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.

The water almost certainly came from impacting comets, or possibly asteroids. Ice is found at the surface, as well as buried beneath a dark material, likely organic.

Messenger was launched in 2004 and went into orbit around the planet 1{ years ago. Nasa hopes to continue observations well into next year.

Columbia University's Sean Solomon, principal scientist for Messenger, stressed that no one is suggesting that Mercury might hold evidence of life, given the presence of water. But the latest findings may help explain some of the early chapters of the book of life elsewhere in the solar system, he said.

"Mercury is becoming an object of astrobiological interest, where it wasn't much of one before," Solomon said.