| Reminder: Webby Award voting ends tomorrow, give the Engadget Show some love Apr 25th 2012, 18:15  Do you really want to hurt us? Do you really want to make us cry? If not, you should head on over to the Webby Awards site and vote for the Engadget Show. Seriously, though, it's an honor just to have our humble production nominated for the third year in a row alongside several other impressive products. Ballots do close tomorrow and, if you're a fan of segments like our epic tour of Asia's gadget markets, then click here (no, seriously, right there) to give us and the dozens of people who put in countless hours of hard work to make them happen a virtual pat on the back. Thanks for reading, watching and being a fan, and we promise to continue working our butts off to keep you informed and entertained. Reminder: Webby Award voting ends tomorrow, give the Engadget Show some love originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink |  Webby Awards | Email this | Comments | | EyeRing finger-mounted connected cam captures signs and dollar bills, identifies them with OCR (hands-on) Apr 25th 2012, 17:53  Ready to swap that diamond for a finger-mounted camera with a built-in trigger and Bluetooth connectivity? If it could help identify otherwise indistinguishable objects, you might just consider it. The MIT Media Lab's EyeRing project was designed with an assistive focus in mind, helping visually disabled persons read signs or identify currency, for example, while also serving to assist children during the tedious process of learning to read. Instead of hunting for a grownup to translate text into speech, a young student could direct EyeRing at words on a page, hit the shutter release, and receive a verbal response from a Bluetooth-connected device, such as a smartphone or tablet. EyeRing could be useful for other individuals as well, serving as an ever-ready imaging device that enables you to capture pictures or documents with ease, transmitting them automatically to a smartphone, then on to a media sharing site or a server. We peeked at EyeRing during our visit to the MIT Media Lab this week, and while the device is buggy at best in its current state, we can definitely see how it could fit into the lives of people unable to read posted signs, text on a page or the monetary value of a currency note. We had an opportunity to see several iterations of the device, which has come quite a long way in recent months, as you'll notice in the gallery below. The demo, which like many at the Lab includes a Samsung Epic 4G, transmits images from the ring to the smartphone, where text is highlighted and read aloud using a custom app. Snapping the text "ring," it took a dozen or so attempts before the rig correctly read the word aloud, but considering that we've seen much more accurate OCR implementations, it's reasonable to expect a more advanced version of the software to make its way out once the hardware is a bit more polished -- at this stage, EyeRing is more about the device itself, which had some issues of its own maintaining a link to the phone. You can get a feel for how the whole package works in the video after the break, which required quite a few takes before we were able to capture an accurate reading. Continue reading EyeRing finger-mounted connected cam captures signs and dollar bills, identifies them with OCR (hands-on) EyeRing finger-mounted connected cam captures signs and dollar bills, identifies them with OCR (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | | Email this | Comments | | Perifoveal Display tracks head positioning, highlights changing data on secondary LCDs (hands-on) Apr 25th 2012, 17:28  If there's a large display as part of your workstation, you know how difficult it can be to keep track of all of your windows simultaneously, without missing a single update. Now imagine surrounding yourself with three, or four, or five jumbo LCDs, each littered with dozens of windows tracking realtime data -- be it RSS feeds, an inbox or chat. Financial analysts, security guards and transit dispatchers are but a few of the professionals tasked with monitoring such arrays, constantly scanning each monitor to keep abreast of updates. One project from the MIT Media Lab offers a solution, pairing Microsoft Kinect cameras with detection software, then highlighting changes with a new graphical user interface. Perifoveal Display presents data at normal brightness on the monitor that you're facing directly. Then, as you move your head to a different LCD, that panel becomes brighter, while changes on any of the displays that you're not facing directly (but still remain within your peripheral vision) -- a rising stock price, or motion on a security camera -- are highlighted with a white square, which slowly fades once you turn to face the new information. During our hands-on demo, everything worked as described, albeit without the instant response times you may expect from such a platform. As with most Media Lab projects, there's no release date in sight, but you can gawk at the prototype in our video just after the break. Continue reading Perifoveal Display tracks head positioning, highlights changing data on secondary LCDs (hands-on) Perifoveal Display tracks head positioning, highlights changing data on secondary LCDs (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | | Email this | Comments | | Pegatron licenses Microsoft's patent portfolio for Android and Chrome devices Apr 25th 2012, 17:07  Microsoft may make a ton of money by selling Xboxes, operating systems, and other software to consumers , but it also pads its bottom line by monetizing its IP. Its newest patent profits will be coming from Pegatron Corp. -- a Taiwanese ODM that makes parts for a plethora of others, including Apple, ASUS and HP -- as the two companies have entered into a licensing agreement for devices running Android and Chrome OS. The agreement covers e-readers, smartphones and tablets, with Pegatron paying Redmond royalties of unknown amount. So, the Ballmer licensing bandwagon continues unabated, but we just hope all this new-found cash will be put to use creating fantastic new products instead of funding more courtroom conflicts. Continue reading Pegatron licenses Microsoft's patent portfolio for Android and Chrome devices Pegatron licenses Microsoft's patent portfolio for Android and Chrome devices originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | | Email this | Comments | | Harvard tired of overpaying for research, tells faculty to open up Apr 25th 2012, 16:53  The grand dame of Ivy League schools is taking action against one of higher learning's pet peeves: the exorbitant price of research journals. Even though the e-reader revolution may have already touched other schoolbooks, so far academic subscription prices -- with some journals as high as $40,000 -- are becoming unsustainable, according to Harvard. To that end, it's taking the lead and pushing its own faculty toward open access publishing, and encouraging them to quit boards of journals that aren't. That could in turn prod other schools to take the same steps, and allow Harvard to focus on more, ahem, interesting pursuits. Harvard tired of overpaying for research, tells faculty to open up originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. 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