| Swimming robots break wave-powered distance record, don't even stop for high-fives Mar 15th 2012, 22:47 Remember those autonomous sea-faring robots we saw back in November? Well, it looks like their self-propelling paddles have slowly waded them into the record books. The bots have traveled a distance of 3,200 nautical miles (2,876 land miles), cutting the previous record of 2,500 adrift -- not bad considering there's no fuel involved. The quartet of data-hunting droids initially set off from San Francisco, before completing the first leg of their journey in Hawaii four months later. The quadrumvirate are now set to split, with two heading off to Japan, crossing the Mariana Trench (believed to be the deepest place on earth) while the other pair head south to Australia, with both duos aiming to reach their final destinations later this year. Swimming robots break wave-powered distance record, don't even stop for high-fives originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink  BBC |  Liquid Robotics (PDF) | Email this | Comments | | Sony applies for 'head control' patent to frustrate non-verbal communicators Mar 15th 2012, 22:19 The company formerly known as Sony Ericsson applied for a patent in 2010 that's yet to be granted, but you never know, one day it might wind up in a handset near you. Having recently introduced the "floating touch" Xperia Sola that doesn't require your hands to make contact with the display, the next logical step is to make the whole thing controlled just with the movement of your head. Wearing a Bluetooth earpiece with a motion sensor, you then map a custom motion onto a phone action, so shaking your head could answer a call, nodding up and down ends it and going from side-to-side will fire up an app. Designed for when it's not safe to jab at your phone (i.e. driving) we think it's a pretty neat idea, unless you're the sort who, even on the phone, nods in agreement to what the other person is... oh, nope, hung up again. Sony applies for 'head control' patent to frustrate non-verbal communicators originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | USPTO | Email this | Comments | | Square gets a few more Chinese clones, Jack Dorsey may or may not be flattered Mar 15th 2012, 21:53 Never mind what PayPal has just unveiled today -- look at these mobile phone credit card readers from China instead. If you ask Square CEO Jack Dorsey, we're sure he'll have to a thing or two to say about these familiar-looking dongles (and not to mention the various weibo microblogging services that were inspired by Jack's Twitter platform). Coincidentally, all three of these pictures above showed up on Sina Weibo earlier today, albeit from different accounts with very little detail in each post -- we'd like to think they're trying to make a point one after the other. So who's behind these little plastic bricks from the Far East? Starting from the left (courtesy of Xiaomi Vice President Li Wanqiang) we have Lakala, a well-known Chinese payment service provider whose POS terminals are featured in major supermarkets and convenience stores. We spoke to the company's CEO Sun Taoran who assured us that this is a booming business in China, as credit cards are more popular than you'd expect these days (most large earteries, supermarkets and even karaoke bars in domestic cities will happily accept them); and of course, he'd certainly want a slice of that massive smartphone pie over there. The Beijing-based company also said its dongle will function even without a phone client installed, but it wouldn't further elaborate at this point. Expect to see Lakala's product launch in May. Continue reading Square gets a few more Chinese clones, Jack Dorsey may or may not be flattered Square gets a few more Chinese clones, Jack Dorsey may or may not be flattered originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Mar 2012 17:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink Sina Weibo (1), (2), (3) | | Email this | Comments | |
