Indiana University School of Medicine wants to track teenage kids, and insists that it is for their own good. In a study with a ridiculously small sample size of 15 teenage girls, researchers used GPS equipped cellphones to track the girls’ every move.
The reason? Not, as we would expect, in order to pass the information on to the parents, but to identify health risks. The idea is that the cellphone would know when its owner is, say, behind the bike shed and deliver a cajoling “don’t smoke” text message.
A noble aim, to be sure, but once the kids get used to this tracking, we’re sure that other, less wholesome uses will be found. Targeted advertising is the most obvious, but how long until this wealth of GPS information is hacked? Leaked records of a teenager’s whereabouts would be anything but good for their health.
Cell phones could help keep teenagers in line: study [Reuters]
Photo: Eyeliam/Flickr/CC
Had enough of the usual gang here on Gadget Lab? Think you can do better than the multitalented (but inescapably British) Rob Beschizza? Now’s your chance to show us what you’ve got.
We’re looking for an enthusiastic, eager, tech-savvy blogger to join the Gadget Lab team and help cover the most interesting and compelling daily tech news for Wired’s most popular blog. We’re not just shoveling press releases onto the web here, unlike some blogs we could mention. That’s why we want someone who can bring an intelligent, informed and entertaining perspective to our gadget coverage.
In return, you’ll get unparalleled exposure on Wired.com, plus the chance to test out, play with and write about all kinds of new gadgets long before your friends do. Oh yeah, and we pay money too.
If this sounds like your dream job, send me an email with your resume, links to 3 recent blog posts you’ve done, and a sample Gadget Lab post on a tech news item from the day you send it. Resume not up to date? Fine, just tell me what jobs you’ve worked lately. And please keep your sample post to 150 words, tops.
Photo: foundphotoslj / Flickr
What is the bare minimum amount of data you need to reproduce a piece of music? Researchers at the University of Rochester think they know, and are developing a new compression technology that can digitally reproduce music in a file nearly 1,000 times smaller than a regular MP3.
The announcement was made at the International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing this week in Las Vegas, although researchers admit they haven’t quite reached flawless reproduction nirvana.
Says Mark Bocko, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rochester:
This is essentially a human-scale system of reproducing music. Humans can manipulate their tongue, breath, and fingers only so fast, so in theory we shouldn’t really have to measure the music many thousands of times a second like we do on a CD. As a result, I think we may have found the absolute least amount of data needed to reproduce a piece of music.
Actually, Bocko’s new technique sounds horribly tedious. The technology actually reproduces the original performance based on everything it knows about the physics of a given instrument and how it is played. In this case, researchers used a recording of a clarient. Then they measured aspects of a clarinet that affects things like its sound, ranging from the backpressure in the mouthpiece to different fingering, to the way sound radiates from the instrument. Then it was time to build a computer model of the clarinet, and voilà: a virtual instrument built entirely from the real-world acoustical measurements. Kind of. But that’s for one friggin’ instrument!
Let’s agree to not even think about what it would take to “compress” a multi-instrumental song with actual human voices…
Music file compressed 1,000 times smaller than mp3 [University of Rochester]
Photo: Flickr/CyboRoZ
Apple finally managed to scoot ahead of Wal-Mart to become the U.S.’s largest music retailer — at least for the first two months of the year.
According to the latest data from NPD MusicWatch, Apple beat out the retail giant in both January and February music sales.
Based on a congratulatory noted circulated to Apple employees — and obtained by Ars Technica — we do know that the iTunes Store captured a 19 percent share of all U.S.-based retail music sales for at least one week in January, which was just enough to propell the online music store to the No. 1 spot, a few points ahead of Wal-Mart’s 15 percent share.
The NPD Group hasn’t released a breakdown of latest figures, but it’s certainly been quick climb for Apple to the top. Last June, the company breezed by Amazon to become the number three music retailer in the U.S. Six months later, iTunes bested Best Buy for two position. The only thing that remains uncertain is whether this momentum will carry Apple through the rest of 2008.
UPDATE: So there was a great deal of confusion this morning relating to the Ars Technica Apple retail report. Ars proclaimed that Apple was now the No. 1 music retailer in the U.S., but was using one week’s worth of data in January to make that claim. This, of course, also conflicted with the company’s late February announcement that it was now firmly entrenched as the No. 2 position. In a friendly note to Wired, Ars pointed out that that No. 2 position was based only on December information and was outdated. In fact, it was based on the entire year, according to the folks at NPD.
Anyway, most of the confusion was put to rest when Apple finally issued a new press release declaring itself the No. 1 music retailer for both January and February. We’ve updated our post to reflect this.
[Via Ars Technica]
Photo: Flickr/maury.mccown
Scanning several stacks of old pictures from the pre-digital era can be a chore even if your USB scanner has a ADF. Hammacher Sclemmer is now getting ready with this new solution called “Photograph to Digital Picture Converter”. As self-explanatory as it sounds, the ‘converter’ houses a 5 megapixel CMOS sensor so it actually captures whole image of your old photograph. This is needless to say insanely faster than a scanner.
With a max. res of 1800 dpi and 10 bits per color channel, the converter should give accurate digital representation of the original prints. It however can only handle just one photograph at a time so you will need to swap in another one every few seconds since the conversion process should be pretty darn quick. The converter whose USB takes care of both data and power will be on the digital retail shelves by the end of April for $149.95. If you need to scan slides & negatives instead, the same company
offer this.
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David Beckham, English footballer, and one half of the First Couple of Chavs, has been given a gold plated 32GB iPod Touch to celebrate his winning 100 caps (a footballer is literally given a cap every time he plays for the England Team). The tacky gift was given to Beckham by his team-mates, and according to the British Newspaper The Telegraph, cost a mere £600 ($1190).
It is appropriate that the squeaky voiced soccer star was honored with bling, but it raises a question. Will the iPod ever be not cool? Is it so iconic that it can shake off any insult or will it eventually become tarnished by the onslaught of gaudy tat? A golden carriage clock for the 21st century, if you will.
David Beckham century gift - a golden ipod [Telegraph]
Bandwidth hungry residents of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, can now gorge themselves on Comcast’s new 50 Megabit service. Available at a crazy $150 per month, the “wideband” service will eventually offer speeds of 160Mbps.
The Reuters article offers us some suggestions for the target customer. Alongside businesses it mentions, charmingly, “movie download fans”. Given Comcast’s history of throttling BitTorrent, it’s hard to see where these “download fans” will actually be getting their movies, but theoretically, a high-def film can be pulled down the pipes in a mere ten minutes. Bye Bye Cable TV.
Comcast offers super-fast Internet speeds [Reuters]
Sony’s new HDR-TG1 Handycam puts a high definition camera in a 10oz box. Aimed at travelers, the 1920 x 1080 also takes 4MP stills, and both still and movie modes feature face detection. The case is titanium, and the 2.7″ flip-out screen is fashionably touch-sensitive.
Of course, Sony had to ruin things. While there is a 4GB memory card supplied with the camera, it is a Memory Stick Duo Mark2. No cheapo SD or Compact Flash cards allowed.
And while the actual name of the camcorder might give Gadget Labber Daniel Dumas the shivers, Sony has called the internal image processing engine the BIONZ, which is clearly a contraction of Bionic Fonz, and therefore the best name ever. In fact, if you look again at the product shot above, you can clearly see the thumb is a held in a classic Arthur Fonzarelli pose.
Press release [Sony]
When you are talking about just 1.3″ wide for a camcorder, that’s slim and that’s what you can expect from Sony’s new HandyCam HDR-TG1. The compact size Full HD camcorder, measuring at just 4.7″ by 1.3″ by 2.5″, can record 2 hours of video in 1920×1080i video at 16Mbps or about 6 hours in 1440×1080i at 5Mbps on none other than Memory Stick Pro Duo. You’ll actually need Pro Duo Mark2, which is the new format to match the speed of AVCHD recordings. Couple with Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens, the HDR-TG1 can also take photos at a max. res of 4 megapixels on the bundled 4GB Mark2 stick.
The chassis is made of primarily titanium that is proven to be highly resistant to scratches and smudge. The HDR-TG1’s 10x zoom can be adjusted with its jog dial. There isn’t much else except for the camera’s face detection, which can identify up to 8 faces; the rotating 2.7″ touch panel LCD; and built-in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound recording system. Like it? Put down $900 when Sony accepts pre-orders on April 4th. For one third of the price, you can get yourself a
Sanyo Xacti CG9 with native iMovie ‘08 support.
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The launch of Nike+ SportBand is for those who haven’t bothered with a iPod nano. In the same manner that the original iPod kit that sends distance, pace, time and calories burned when they run to a nano from a Bluetooth module inside a Nike+ running shoe, the Nike+ SportBand is a wristwatch that also monitors a runner’s steps. The watch itself can be detached from the wristband, allowing recorded data to be sent to nikeplus.com where progress is tracked. From there, you can choose your personal online trainer that sorta helps you to better train yourself for a 5k, 10k, half-marathon or full marathon. The SportBand goes for $59, but if you don’t already have a pair of Nike+ sneakers, that would be another 70 bucks maybe.
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