This transparent speaker hints at the soft, stretchable future of electronics

In the future, the most interesting electronics will be the ones you don’t see.

Materials scientists at Harvard University have created a proof-of-concept speaker built with a kind of transparent gel-based electronics. Unlike today’s devices, which transmit currents via electrons, devices using this new system will transmit currents using ionic charges — opening up a variety of new applications.

Some of these are particularly interesting: Because our bodies also use ionic charges to transmit signals, the Harvard tech could be used for implants and artificial muscles. Also, because the tech is highly stretchable, it can be used in both large displays and in the sort of small ones we’ll soon see on wearable devices.

“Engineered ionic systems can achieve a lot of functions that our body has: they can sense, they can conduct a signal, and they can actuate movement. We’re really approaching the type of soft machine that biology has to offer,” project co-lead author Christoph Keplinger tells Harvard.

Also interesting are the ways the transparent tech could augment the capacity of windows. Imagine, for example, a transparent smart window that could mimic the technology found in noise-canceling headphones to cancel out the sound from the outside world. This is one example where transparency is core to the application. (The same goes for any potential uses in glasses or other heads-up displays, where transparency is also key.)

In the meantime, though, Harvard University is already working to commercialize the idea, which could soon appear in smartphones, tablets, and computers.

Filed under: OffBeat

This transparent speaker hints at the soft, stretchable future of electronics

Broadcom’s CEO bets on a behemoth market for wearable chips (interview)

Michael O’Donnell, Shiny Red Photo

Scott McGregor, CEO of Broadcom

Broadcom has become a big name in consumer electronics and networking chips. But now the multibillion-dollar Irvine, Calif.-based chip design firm sees an even bigger opportunity in the market of silicon chips for wearable computing devices. The market for connected, wearable electronics is expected to hit $1.5 billion by 2014. And the company’s WICED Direct platform brings Internet connectivity to all sorts of previously unconnected appliances and wearable devices.

The whole electronics industry has been inspired by projects such as Google Glass and fitness devices, says Scott McGregor, chief executive of Broadcom – so much so that they’re eager to create chips that provide the computing and low-power needs of wearable devices. Broadcom plans to create the chips for accessories, clothing, and wearable sensors that connect and transfer data to smart mobile devices and the cloud. That will enable things like jewelry with proximity detection or helmets with action cameras and bracelets that unlock doors.

Broadcom doesn’t make those cool gadgets itself. But its components will be the foundation for them, and since chips must be created far in advance of the products that use them, McGregor can foresee the products that are coming out well ahead of the rest of us. His vision is consistent with that of Imagination Technologies, which also said this week that it is working on wearable chips.

We caught up with McGregor this week for an interview. Here’s an edited transcript.

Broadcom

Broadcom logo

VentureBeat: Do you want to start with a summary of what’s going on?

Scott McGregor: We’ve made an announcement about combining some technologies — what we call WICED [pronounced "wicked"] (Wireless Connectivity for Embedded Devices) with something called Wi-Fi Direct. Wi-Fi Direct, as you’re probably aware, enables peer-to-peer communication between devices. We believe that, as all these wearable devices come out, they’re going to want to communicate directly with each other, not just through access points.

We have that whole family of products. We have Bluetooth devices. We have wireless LAN devices. We’ve designed them in a very small footprint. For example, a Bluetooth device includes an ARM processor, and it’ll run on a coin battery for a year. You could create a form factor in something roughly the size of a button, including the battery, and seal it all in plastic. You’d have an Internet-connected device that you could embed into clothing and use to power things or sense things or drive lights or whatever you want to do.

The goals are threefold. We want low power. We want a small form factor. We want low cost. We need to drive the price to single-digit dollars for relatively low quantities. We think it’s going to lead to a whole lot of new guys creating these devices.

If you look at smartphones, two guys make 50 percent of all the smartphones in the world. Ten guys probably make 90 percent of all the smartphones in the world. Those guys are going to make watches and all kinds of other things. But I think the majority of new devices are going to come from little companies we’ve never heard of, via Kickstarter and other kinds of funding sources, spending tens of thousands of dollars rather than hundreds of millions of dollars. We’re going to see a lot of innovation. That’s why we’re excited about it. Our goal is, we want to do our best to enable all these new devices that are coming out.

VB: Do you have a name for this whole project, the combination of WICED and Wi-Fi Direct?

Broadcom

Broadcom living room

McGregor: We certainly name the individual technologies, but the real goal is to focus on wearable technology and the Internet of Things. There are a lot of names that people are using for those devices. Our goal is not so much to name all the categories as it is to make sure we get into as many of those devices as possible. We imagine that when you can build a lot of sensors like that into pocket-sized objects or things you wear on your body, you can create some really immersive game experiences.

VB: You foresee this as an open platform?

McGregor: The advantage of opening it up is that then you enable very widespread application development. That’s one of the magic things about smartphones. The guys who won in smartphones, the reason they won is because they had app ecosystems. They were able to innovate faster than the guys who didn’t have strong ecosystems. If you had a competitor to Google Glass that was open and enabled app developers, that would be a pretty significant threat unless Google does that themselves.

VB: What do you think is going to happen if, say, you apply Moore’s Law [the doubling of transistor counts every two years] to this for two or four years?

McGregor: The usual things – smaller, faster, cheaper – definitely apply. The interesting question is, how do you get the form factor? The glasses are still heavy. They run hot. The battery doesn’t last very long. Those are all things you could make significant improvements on. My view is that in enough decades, that stuff all gets embedded. That stuff should be in your retina. It should be directly integrated. But we’re not there yet. That’s a number of decades away.

Where does it go between now and then? It depends on what people are willing to wear and what they’re willing to put up with. Some people don’t like to wear glasses. Outside of Silicon Valley, if you wore those into a bar, you’d get beat up. Wearing them into a restaurant or a concert, somewhere that doesn’t allow recording devices — there are just a lot of social issues you have to deal with. We’re not quite prepared to cope with it. Going forward, because you can make cameras so small, it’s a fact of life that people will be able to record anything anywhere.

Filed under: Business, Gadgets, Mobile

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Broadcom’s CEO bets on a behemoth market for wearable chips (interview)

AT&T readies its no-contract Aio Wireless for nationwide launch in Sept.

Aio Wireless/Twitter

Aio Wireless, the pre-paid contract free service from No. 2 major U.S. carrier AT&T, is preparing for a nationwide launch next week, AT&T announced yesterday.

Aio Wireless is basically AT&T’s answer to rival carrier T-Mobile’s strategy to start offering contract-free mobile data plans to its customers as a way to differentiate itself from others.

Right now Aio Wireless is only available in a handful of regions, including Atlanta, Chicago, Florida, and Texas, but that’s set to change as of Sept. 1 when everyone across the country will have access to the service.

AT&T’s Aio service will range in price from about $40 to $70 per month, which includes a data plan at 4G LTE speeds and a set number of minutes and text messages. The selection of devices include those from Samsung, Nokia, and others, and customers can trade in eligible devices for an in-store credit towards a new device.

Via The Verge

Filed under: Business, Mobile

AT&T readies its no-contract Aio Wireless for nationwide launch in Sept.

10 companies battle it out at Conquest, India’s largest student-run startup competition

BITS Pilani

Conquest isn’t your typical startup competition.

It’s based in India, not Silicon Valley. It’s run by students, not a large corporation or VC fund. And it’s been around for almost 10 years now.

After starting out as a business plan competition in 2004 by the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) in Pilani, India, Conquest refined itself over time to find the best and brightest of local startups. In 2007 it opened up to international companies. In 2010 it dumped the focus on business plans altogether so that it can focus on startups with the most innovative ideas (even if they don’t have a clue how to make money yet).

“We’re the first in India to have shifted from a plain business plan model to a startup challenge, so it’s similar to a Y Combinator demo day,” said Suvonil Chatterjee, Conquest’s coordinator and a fourth-year student at BITS Pilani who has been involved with the competition for the past four years.

For this year’s competition, which will be held on September 15 in New Delhi, Conquest dug through thousands of applications to find 50 promising companies. All of those companies received extensive mentoring over the past four months, and the 10 strongest were chosen to compete at next month’s finale, which is expected to have an audience of more than 600 people. The finalists will be competing for the Hottest Startup of India Award, sponsored by Groupon India, and the India Rising Star Award, sponsored by Gandhi Capital.

As part of this year’s competition, Conquest offered around $4,500 (300,000 rupees) of equity-free seed money to all of the finalists, and more than $151,000 (10 million rupees) in incubation opportunities. The finalists will also receive sponsored services, including cloud computing, CRM, and customer support worth around $300,000. Most of the finalists have already received seed funding and are currently seeking their Series A rounds, Chatterjee tells me.

Conquest will host two grand panel discussions with some top Indian entrepreneurs and investors, including Amit Ranjan, cofounder of Slideshare; Ankur Warikoo, CEO of Groupon India; Alok Kejriwal, founder and CEO of Games2Win; Dev Khare of Lightspeed Ventures; and Rajesh Sawhney, founder of the GSF Accelerator and GSF Superangels. Google’s India business development team will also sponsor the best social startup at the competition.

If you’d like to attend the Conquest finale next month, you can get a 50 percent discount off of your ticket with the code “CON13+VB” (move fast, because the discount is limited).

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Here are the companies competing at Conquest next month:

m.Paani

A social enterprise service that designs and implements mobile-based loyalty programs that empower underserved communities. By connecting how communities spend towards development rewards — in the areas of safe water, education, healthcare, energy, nutrition, and mobility — it can transform their lives. M.Paani won the Hult Prize in 2011, a $1 million award, and also received support from Water.org and the Clinton Global Initiative.

LinkSmart Technologies

Provides innovative, safe, and low-cost authentication and verification solutions to the business community in its quest to ensure the integrity of its physical goods. SmartDNA, the company’s technology, addresses primary risk factors such as connivance, tampering, and counterfeiting. It was one of the top 20 innovative technologies for the year 2012 profiled in MIT TR35 Magazine.

HuntShire

A talent engagement platform for companies. HuntShire was named in YourStory.in’s TechSparks 2012 TECH30 Companies, which covered the 30 best emerging tech startups from India. It was also selected to present at India Internet Day 2013.

Freshmentors

An online mentoring platform that allows for students, high schools, and education institutions to interact with a vast mentor network across reputable universities in the U.S., Singapore, and Canada to seek personalized mentoring on college admissions and their careers via live video chats. Freshmentors has 150 mentors from universities like MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Yale, Harvard, Georgia Tech, UCLA, Cornell, Columbia, UT Austin, USC and many more.

Mobile Harvest

A mobile social networking platform for the emerging billion. Mobile Harvest has received awards from Shri Montek Singh Ahluwalia for FICCI’s India Innovates 2013, and it was also selected to present at India Internet Day.

BuyingIQ

A smart decision maker for all the electronics buyers in India. BuyingIQ reports 400,000 monthly visitors and 50 percent month-to-month growth, and it claims to have over 98 percent price data accuracy.

InCights Mobile Solutions

A developer of remote authentication and identity theft protection using voice biometrics. It enables businesses to conduct secure remote transactions over the telephone and Internet. InCights has filed a patent for Semantic Enabled IVR and Linked Data in India. It was also named among the top companies at Economic Times Power of Ideas.

MyPref

MyPref is a mobile app solving two major customer problems: Where to eat what I want to eat, and what to eat where I go to eat. After launching with support for Indian food in the U.S., it now intends to do the same across cuisines in India. MyPref also presented at the DEMO 2012 Fall conference, which was co-run by VentureBeat .

iTraveller

The world’s first cloud based, social enterprise resource planning platform for the travel and tourism industry. ITraveller aims to automate and integrate travel agents, tour operators, and hotels in the tourism industry.

TradersCockpit

A provider of cloud-based financial markets analysis for investors and traders. TradersCockpit provides software tools for making informed decisions and for providing quality online financial markets education modules.

Filed under: Business, Entrepreneur

10 companies battle it out at Conquest, India’s largest student-run startup competition

Of course “twerk” belongs in the dictionary—it’s been around for 20 years

Bringing up the rear of the cultural commentary parade around Miley Cyrus’s VMA performance was the announcement that Oxford Dictionaries Online has added the word twerk.

Twerk, of course, rhymes with bezerk, and that is what reliably happens every time a dictionary offers up another “look what we added!” press release. A few pop-culture words are publicized as new additions to the “the dictionary” and anyone who’s ever internalized the Oxford comma rules or used the word bathetic correctly in a sentence complains that THIS TIME, the dictionary has gone too far, English is ruined forever, and from now on they will only be writing in unspoiled languages, such as French and Inuit (they have all those words for snow, dontcha know…).

Following the initial uproar come the voices of reason: Ben Zimmer of Visual Thesaurus, Oxford’s Katherine Connor Martin, and John E. McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun step in and try to soothe the mob. These words have existed for a long time (20 years, in the case of twerk) without the language crumbling into dust; dictionaries merely report the language; nobody’s forcing you to write srsly instead of seriously and so on and so forth. As a bonus, include grumpy lexicographers explaining (for roughly the one gazillionth time) that Oxford Dictionaries Online (or ODO) is not the same as the Oxford English Dictionary (or OED).

I’m all in favor of bringing people’s attention to new and lesser-known words; the endless creativity of English speakers and writers brings me considerable joy and is one of the reasons that I became a lexicographer in the first place. But the framing that’s been brought to these new-word announcements isn’t one of scientific discovery—we don’t approach these new words in wide-eyed wonder at the marvels of our age; instead, it’s all condemnation of the kids today, ruining the language with their selfies and their squee.

As with Miley’s performance itself, there’s a strong and dismaying undercurrent of appropriation and exploitation in the words that are featured. It’s worth stopping to think about how these words from marginalized groups are used to give even more power and authority to an institution that has historically been employed to justify the belittling of the language of those same groups.

Just contrast the recent discovery of a new mammal the olinguito (pronounced oh lin GHEE toe) whose name was not added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online in this latest batch. Nobody questioned whether or not the olinguito is a “real” carnivore or responded to the coverage with the declaration that the chordates are completely ruined and that the scientists just let anyone into the class Mammalia these days. Nobody said that sure, the olinguito is cute and all, but since you probably shouldn’t eat one, it’s not really an animal. The existence (or non-) of words is a fact, just as the existence of animals or plants is a fact; a fact that is entirely separate from the judgment of a word’s aesthetic value.

This cycle of lexicographical announcement and peever outrage (which has repeated at regular intervals since at least the publication of Webster’s Third New International in 1961) has increased in both frequency and fervidity in the two decades that I’ve worked as a lexicographer, but it can’t go on forever. With these “new words” announcements, lexicographers take advantage of the general perception of dictionaries as arbiters of language (where being “in” is the sign of a “real word” and being out, is, well, outré). If dictionaries were truly descriptive, they would be more like search engines—less of a “who’s who” and more of a “what’s what.” But with every back-and-forth—adding sensationalistic new words and then backtracking with a “but we just record the language” the exercise loses its attention-grabbing power. Perhaps the new-words announcement needs to join “does she or doesn’t she?” and the Burma Shave signs in the confraternity of marketing tropes that have outlived their cultural relevance.

The truth is, these days, anyone with an internet connection and even the most remedial search skills can find out what words “mean” in a few milliseconds. What a dictionary should provide is more context, more nuance, more space for discussion. (Disclosure: in 2008 I founded a new online dictionary, Wordnik.com, dedicated to doing just this.) Dictionaries should be thinking about what it is that they bring to readers and writers today—what needs do they serve? How are they relevant? What are the questions that people have about English words, and how can a dictionary answer them? Putting together a list of buzzworthy new additions to a dictionary is necessary, but certainly not sufficient.

You can follow Erin on Twitter at @emckean. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com. 

Of course “twerk” belongs in the dictionary—it’s been around for 20 years

Nokia’s Here Auto platform brings the power of the cloud to in-car navigation

Nokia

Even though many people now rely on their smartphones for navigation, there’s still a good argument for having a dedicated navigation system inside your car.

That’s exactly what Nokia is betting on with its new connected car platform, Nokia Here Auto, which launched today.

Here Auto builds upon Nokia’s many years of map creation (the company’s Navteq mapmaking cars are even geekier than Google’s Street View vehicles) by bringing its navigation data out of smartphones and directly into cars. Behind the scenes, a cloud service synchronizes your Nokia Here experience across your smartphone and car, and also gives you access to live maps, weather information, and real-time traffic data.

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Editor’s note: Our upcoming CloudBeat conference, Sept. 9-Sept. 10 in San Francisco, will be tackling revolutionary cases of enterprise cloud usage. Register today!

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“A really great solution to providing a real-time picture of what is happening everywhere didn’t exist, so we built one,” Nokia’s Pino Bonetti wrote in a blog post today. “Here Traffic now relies on a new data processing system that crunches traffic probes even faster and more accurately, integrating the growing volumes of higher-quality traffic probes, with historic data, weather data and more. With our traffic engine, you get more accurate travel time estimates, so you can better plan your routes and quickly re-route on the go.”

Nokia has developed Here Auto companion apps for Windows Phone (naturally) and Android, while an iOS app is currently in the works. The company says Here Auto is already integrated with Continental’s Open Infotainment Platform, and it’s currently seeking out more partners. We can expect more details around Here Auto partners at the Frankfurt Motor Show on September 10.

Filed under: Cloud, Gadgets, Mobile

Nokia’s Here Auto platform brings the power of the cloud to in-car navigation

#MyDash: Whitecaps FC of Major League Soccer

The Vancouver Whitecaps FC are a force to be reckoned with on the pitch, but so too are they elite on the playing field that is social media.

The social media “team behind the team” need to be as quick as the players, and keep their heads up to watch the play unfold (online, as it were). On networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, the Whitecaps staff will already take you with the bus, into the locker room and onto the practice pitch; now they are taking you inside their HootSuite dashboard, and sharing some of the secrets in their social media playbook.

We spoke with Adam Rootman, the Whitecaps’ Digital Media Manager, about how the team stays competitive on social media using the HootSuite dashboard. What we discovered is that match-days are as big for the social team as they are for players and fans.

Jordan Behan, HootSuite: What is the primary goal for the club’s social media efforts?

Adam Rootman, Whitecaps FC: The primary goal of our social media channels would be engagement with our brand. Ultimately, with increased engagement with our brand, we gain more fans and hopefully that leads to a full BC Place for every home match.

JB: What ideas have you had about how to increase your reach on social networks?

AR: We’ve really embraced the “takeover” (where a fan or player takes over the team’s social accounts for a day, or a roadtrip) this year. Fans really appreciate seeing things unfold from someone else’s perspective. Handing over our feed to fans and players, on the road and at home has given us content that staff just couldn’t get.

JB: How large is your social team? Is it bigger on match day?

AR: We have a full time social media manager, Shaina Walker, who is the primary voice of the organization and the main listener on social. There are however a host of individuals that contribute ideas and help out with execution. There are four of us that meet on a weekly basis to plan the upcoming week. Often those meetings get quite lively, with lots of wacky ideas thrown around until we can whittle them down to something appropriate to push out on our channels. Plus, our videographer often cuts/shoots pieces that are solely for social. On match day we generally have two people on social – one person running our regular feed and one person running a second feed that’s more of a clinical play-by-play.

JB: What unique things have you done with your HootSuite dashboard that our readers might find interesting?

AR: We  have a stream to follow our competition both in the local market (Vancouver Canucks, BC Lions) and whatever MLS team we are facing next. We also follow all of our players and ReTweet the best of their messages, both on match day and on off days. We like to be first responders because we find that we get the best results when we our responses are timely.

Whitecaps’ SMM Shaina Walker’s dashboard. Note the separate tabs for match day, and for each network such as YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Click to enlarge.

JB: You have been very keen on social video (YouTube, Vine and Instagram) for a while. How important is it to your strategy, and how has it worked for you so far?

AR: Video is key for our strategy moving forward. We find that any tweet with a video attached often gets the most shares. Video is such a great way to tell a quick story and so easy for the fan to ingest on mobile. After every match, our videographer cuts individuals highlights of the plays of game and then we push those out through the week to build excitement to the next match.

JB: What advice do you have for other sports clubs that would like to emulate your successes as a social organization?

AR: I’d say the biggest advice that I can give is to take some risks. We were very reluctant at one point to let anyone other than core staff near our social feeds. However, we have huge success handing over our Twitter/Instagram feeds to players and fans and for the most part nothing bad has really happened. The risk also applies to messaging. We try to teeter on the edge a bit. We don’t want to offend, but at the same time we don’t want to be vanilla, because that’s just boring and nobody wants that. We make an effort for our feed to be fun, playful and little bit cheeky here and there.

JB: This seems to be a good time to share an example. While we were setting up this interview, this happened:

@VanCanucks Ever wonder what makes all the noise in @bcplace? http://t.co/ihHC2AKUU0

— Vancouver Whitecaps (@WhitecapsFC) August 21, 2013

 

Deadspin.com created this split screen of the two tweeted pics

AR: Credit Shaina Walker, our Fan Development and Social Media Manager with that stroke of brilliance.

JB: Well played. I’m a Canucks fan, but that’s funny stuff. Tell me about a “big win” that you may have had with social media.

AR: We had two guest Instagrammers a little while back who are well known in the Instagram community Scott Rankin (@othellonine) and Tina Albrecht (@bittadesign). They did a great job covering one of our matches and then the following day we were put on Instagram’s suggested user list for a week. Our number of followers grew by 15,000 that week.

JB: That’s impressive growth! How important are the supporters clubs and loyal fans to your social media efforts?

AR: Our supporter clubs are hugely important to our efforts. We’ve have a really loyal following and having them to amplify our message to the greater fan base is just fantastic.

JB: Adam, thank you very much for meeting with me and sharing some of your secrets. I like the look of your dashboard too! It’s blue, it’s white. It’s… well, it’s dynamite.

Have you tried HootSuite? Try it now free, or try a free upgrade to HootSuite Pro for 30 days.

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#MyDash: Whitecaps FC of Major League Soccer