Author Archives: Frederic Lardinois
The GPS-Enabled DJI Phantom Quadcopter Makes The AR.Drone Look Like A Toy
Back in 2010, our own John Biggs rightly described Parrot’s AR.Drone as ” the coolest thing [he had] seen in a long, long time.” Since then, Parrot has launched the AR.Drone 2.0 and while it’s still a very cool gadget, quadcopters have come a very long way since 2010. Last month, the folks at DJI, who mostly specialize in developing unmanned aerial systems for commercial use, sent me one of their consumer-oriented and GPS-enabled DJI Phantoms to review. Most quadcopters are aimed at hobbyists and take a good amount of assembly and at least some experience with flying remote-controlled aircraft. The Phantom, which has a list price of $849 but currently retails for about $680, comes mostly pre-assembled and is extremely easy to fly, thanks to its built-in compass and GPS module. Thanks to having GPS built-in, the drone always knows where it is in relation to you. So depending on the mode you are flying in, every input you give will always be interpreted in relation to you and not in relation to where the front of the aircraft is (here’s a video that explains how this works). The other cool thing about the GPS mode is that the drone can hover in position even if it’s windy. It’ll just auto-correct for the wind, thanks to its built-in autopilot (you probably want to turn this mode off when you are trying to take a video, however, as the constant corrections will show up in your videos). This autopilot also kicks in if the Phantom loses its connection with your remote control if it flies out of reach or your remote runs out of battery, the drone itself is very low on battery, or because you turn it off to see if the autopilot actually works. Once the failsafe mode kicks in, the drone will simply fly up to 60 feet, fly back to where it first took off and land. I actually tried this and it worked surprisingly well. The drone touched down just about 3 feet from where I launched it. When you spent $700 on the drone and another $300 or so on a GoPro 3 Silver, that’s a nice feature to have. The Phantom is a clear step up from something like the AR.Drone. Its communication distance is just under 1,000 feet and a maximum horizontal speed of about 32 feet per second and a descent speed
N2A Cards Brings Jelly Bean And All Android Apps To B&N’s Nook
Barnes & Noble's Nook Color and Tablet are capable and affordable media tablets, but they run an old and locked-down version of Android. If you are fairly technical, you can obviously use CyanogenMod to bypass B&N's firmware and install a new version of Android on your device. If you're not that technical, though, the easiest way to get Jelly Bean on your Nook tablet is to buy one of the company's pre-loaded cards for $29.99 (available online and at Fry's) or $19.99 to download the software and install it on your own microSD card.
N2A Cards Brings Jelly Bean And All Android Apps To B&N’s Nook
Barnes & Noble's Nook Color and Tablet are capable and affordable media tablets, but they run an old and locked-down version of Android. If you are fairly technical, you can obviously use CyanogenMod to bypass B&N's firmware and install a new version of Android on your device. If you're not that technical, though, the easiest way to get Jelly Bean on your Nook tablet is to buy one of the company's pre-loaded cards for $29.99 (available online and at Fry's) or $19.99 to download the software and install it on your own microSD card.
Salesforce Acquires TechStars And TechCrunch Disrupt Alum Thinkfuse
Thinkfuse, a Seattle-based startup that allows companies to send regular progress reports to managers, executives and other stakeholders, just announced that it has been acquired by Salesforce.com. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Thinkfuse describes itself as "an enterprise software-as-a-service provider that turns status reports into a powerful business tool." The service is shutting down completely on July 25, 2012 and current users will have to export all their data by that time. Thinkfuse recommends its users to move to Mailchimp.
Backup Box Makes Switching Between Cloud Storage Services Easy, Now Also Supports Google Drive
Chances are, you have quite a bit of data on your favorite cloud storage service by now. But with the recent changes in this space, especially with Google and Microsoft making a push to compete with startups like Dropbox, what happens if you decide to switch to a different service? Moving data between different backup and cloud storage services is usually a manual and slow task, but that's where Backup Box comes in. What started as basic tool for moving data from an FTP server to Dropbox has now become a fully-featured backup and data transfer service with support for FTP, SFTP, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft's SkyDrive, MySQL, and - starting today - Google Drive.
Microsoft: Bing Maps’ High-Res Imagery Will Cover All The U.S. And Europe By The End Of The Year
With Google and Apple making back-to-back announcements about their new mapping efforts in the last few weeks, Microsoft obviously felt a bit left out. Today, however, the company is launching its largest imagery release in its history: Bing Maps today features a full 165 terabytes worth of new data that spans about 1 million square miles. What's maybe even more interesting, though, is that the Bing Imagery Technologies group completed its mission to cover 100% of the U.S. with aerial photography in June and that the company expects to hit the same 100% milestone for Europe this fall. All of this imagery will be published by the end of 2012.
Google: More Than 500 School Districts In The U.S. And Europe Now Use Chromebooks
It seems like schools are the one market where Google is having some success with its Chromebook initiative. Today, the company announced that there are now 500 school districts in the U.S. and Europe that actively use Chromebooks. The company also announced a few new districts that have recently decided to use Google's web-centric laptops, including Rockingham Country Schools, N.C., Transylvania County Schools, N.C., and Fond du Lac School District, Wis. One of the reasons Google is able to make this push for Chromebooks in education is that its laptops meet the new hardware and operating system guidelines set by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).
Google: More Than 500 School Districts In The U.S. And Europe Now Use Chromebooks
It seems like schools are the one market where Google is having some success with its Chromebook initiative. Today, the company announced that there are now 500 school districts in the U.S. and Europe that actively use Chromebooks. The company also announced a few new districts that have recently decided to use Google's web-centric laptops, including Rockingham Country Schools, N.C., Transylvania County Schools, N.C., and Fond du Lac School District, Wis. One of the reasons Google is able to make this push for Chromebooks in education is that its laptops meet the new hardware and operating system guidelines set by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).
Make A Three-Minute Call, Help Develop A Test For Parkinson’s Based On Voice Recognition
At TEDx Edinburgh today, the BBC reports, mathematician Max Little has launched a new project that uses a speaker's voice to help diagnose Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's, a devastating progressive neurological disease that develops very gradually and often starts with a very slight tremor in one hand, is notoriously hard to diagnose as there are currently no blood tests that can help doctors test for the disease. The human voice however, says Little, is affected as much by Parkinson's as limb movement and his algorithms can currently detect the symptoms of the disease with 86% accuracy. Little recently became a TED Fellow and is now working to improve the accuracy of his algorithms. He hopes to make his tools available to doctors within the next two years.
If you have three minutes, you can even help him in his mission by making a simple call to an automated system that will ask you to answer a few questions and repeat a few sentences. Besides in the U.S. (1-857-284-8035), the team is also offering call-in numbers in Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Argentina, Canada and the UK.
Thumbnails On Firefox’s New Tab Page Could Expose Your Private Data, Fix Coming Soon
Mozilla's Firefox 13 launched earlier this month and the latest version of the popular browser introduced a number of new features, including support for Google's SPDY protocol and a new homescreen and easy access to your most often used sites through the improved new tab page. That convenient new speed dial-like new tab page presents a bit of a security risk, however. As the Register reports, the thumbnails that accompany these links on the improved new tab page have the potential to leak personal information. The browser, it turns out, regularly takes screenshots of your browsing sessions to create these thumbnails (even while you are browsing a secure site) and, in the process, could potentially expose your private data like banking information or email subjects to anybody else who uses your computer.