Google has won approval to bolster work on its Minority Report-style touchless technology, which enables electronics to be controlled by hand gestures.

The Federal Communications Commission has approved Google’s plans to use more powerful sensors for its Project Soli initiative, first unveiled in 2015. The radar-based technology is now poised to kick on to the next level after Google was given special permission to use higher frequencies for its tests.

When Google first showcased the tech in 2015, it came under the X Labs banner and was focused on smartwatches, with specific gestures replacing a physical tap on the touchscreen. For example, it was possible to rub two fingers together in the vicinity of the watch to cycle through menus or turn up the volume of media.

Now the company could expand the operation to enable the sci-fi like air gestures we’ve seen in films like Minority Report and the Iron Man franchise, on larger screens and devices. The waiver granted by the FCCcould also be highly beneficial to tech users with mobility, speech, and tactile impairments.

In a statement (via Reuters), the FCC said: “The ability to recognize users’ touchless hand gestures to control a device, such as a smartphone, could help people with mobility, speech, or tactile impairments, which in turn could lead to higher productivity and quality of life for many members of the American public.”
The regulator also said there’s little chance of Google’s Project interfering with other spectrum users and has approved the tech for use on aircraft.
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Google hasn’t commented on the news yet, but it’ll be interesting to see what the company has in mind for Project Soli moving forward. Hopefully, we’ll find out more in 2019.

Do you ever wonder how long you spend reading emails or doing research? A little device named Tiller may be able to get you an answer.

Tiller is a small puck that plugs into your computer to help track your tasks. Tap it, and it’ll start timing you. Tap again, and it’ll stop. Spin the wheel on top, and a minimal interface will pop up on screen, letting you scroll from one task (say “emails”) to the next (maybe “writing” or “coffee”).

This new puck comes from a small Australian design firm named Joan. The Tiller is Joan’s first hardware product, and the company’s been working on it for more than two years. The idea came out of the company’s own desire to better manage and track its time. “We were trying to run the business better,” says Nick Hallam, one of Joan’s co-founders. “Apps weren’t working.”

Tiller is targeted mainly at freelancers and workers who take clients – accountants, lawyers, designers, consultants – and need to bill by the hour. 

There’s also a dot of light in the center of the device, which lets you know it’s recording and serves as a reminder. “I don’t know how many times I get up, see my light’s on” and remember to pause it, says Hallam. “We definitely believe the hardware makes a big difference.”
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Tiller is launched on Kickstarter, where it’s looking to raise $68,000 AUD (around $54,000 USD) to fund the run. Tiller units sell for around $89 USD to $119 USD to Kickstarter backers, and they’ll eventually cost $129 USD when the product leaves Kickstarter.

A vending kiosk company in Wisconsin plans to implant a microchip into each of 50 willing employees so they can more easily open doors, buy snacks, log in to computers, and use office equipment The bizarre experiment conducted by Three Square Market will make it the first U.S. business to implant chips in its workers.

“Eventually, this technology will become standardized allowing you to use this as your passport, public transit, all purchasing opportunities, etc.,” 32M CEO Todd Westby said in a company press release.

Each participating employee will have the RFID and NFC-based chips implanted between their thumb and forefinger. The devices are no larger than a grain of rice and are capable of storing and recognizing small amounts of digital information. Similar products are found in transit cards, pet trackers, and even some passports. NFC is also found in smartphones and most commonly used to purchase items at stores or vending machines.

A company representative explained how someone can use their chip to buy snacks from its kiosks, or “micro markets.”

“We’ll come up, scan the item. We’ll hit pay with a credit card, and it’s asking to swipe my proximity payment now. I’ll hold my hand up, just like my cell phone, and it’ll pay for my product.”
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It’s important to point out that no one is required to get the implant, and the company claims there is no GPS tracking inside. Three Square Market will pay for each of the tiny $300 devices and will start chipping its workers at a company party on Aug. 1.

The average driver would be willing to pay nearly $5,000 more for a fully self-driving car, a new report finds.
Researchers from Cornell University found that the average U.S. household is prepared to pay $3,500 for some automation and $4,900 for full automation on top of the normal price of a car. That number varies widely from household to household—a large group of people were willing to pay above $10,000 for a self-driving capability, while many others wouldn't pay anything for it, according to the study in Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies.

"Automation of personal transportation is becoming a reality at a faster pace than anticipated," the study's lead author Ricardo Daziano said in a statement. "To plan for and analyze the large impacts of automation, policymakers and car manufacturers need to understand the market. Our study is an initial attempt to quantify how households currently perceive and economically value automated vehicle technologies."

To find out how much people valued different features, the researchers surveyed 1,260 people across the U.S. about hypothetical vehicles with different prices.
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The study also found that the demand distribution for self-driving technology was evenly spread between high, modest, and low interest, so researchers suggested that auto dealers should create flexible sale options for automation features as they become more available on the market.

Around 21 million fitness trackers were sold in 2016 and the 2017 forecast by Gartner is 25 million, with the promise of monitoring and improving activity levels.

Devices and health apps that advise people to walk 10,000 steps a day could be doing more harm than good, scientists have warned.

Dr Greg Hager, an expert in computer science at Johns Hopkins University, said many apps and devices had no real evidence base and that a one-size-fits-all approach could be harmful for some people.

Dr Hager told delegates at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston that the 10,000 steps doctrine was based on just one study of Japanese men dating back to 1960.

“Some of you might wear Fitbits or something equivalent, and I bet every now and then it gives you that cool little message 'you did 10,000 steps today’,” he said. 

“But why is 10,000 steps important? Is that the right number for any of you in this room? Who knows? It’s just a number that’s now built into the apps.

“I think apps could definitely be doing more harm than good.” 

In 2013, the NHS established a Health Apps Library to provide patients with a choice of health and treatment software and GPs were encouraged to recommend apps to their patients.

Yet the University of Liverpool found that just 15% of those listed for depression were proven to be effective.
Dr. Steve Flatt, of the university’s psychological therapies unit, who co-authored the study published in the BMJ, said: “This field is currently in its infancy and can currently be likened to the snake oil salesmen of the 1860s.

Simon Leigh, a health economist who co-authored the BMJ paper, said: “A GP, endocrinologist or other fitness specialist would unlikely recommend 10,000 steps for most people.” 

Research last year by the University of Pittsburgh concluded that people who used a wearable technology device lost less weight than those undertaking standard weight loss techniques.

Dr. John Jakicic said not everyone was physically capable of doing 10,000 steps. “If you are elderly or infirm then this is not going to be good for you,” he said.
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“We need to be careful about relying solely on these devices. However, there is a place for these, and so we need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater in my opinion.”

Senstone may be one of the world's smallest wearables — and perhaps one of the most useful. 
The tiny device has one function: to help you keep track of your ideas, to-do lists, and notes while you're on the go. 

Senstone records voice memos, uploads them to an app, and transcribes them for you. The device is on Kickstarter with the goal of raising $50,000.

Here's how it works. Senstone records voice notes that are then uploaded to an app on your iPhone. The device connects via Bluetooth. To record a note, you push a button on the side of the device. To stop recording, you press it again.

The device is designed to help "capture the things in your daily life that you don’t want to miss" — things like goals, ideas, or notes. Rather than taking out your phone and typing out a note, Senstone wants to be like a low-effort journal. 

With different interchangeable backs, you can clip it to your collar, wear it as a necklace or even wear it as a wristband.

The device can record for up to one minute at a time — for now. Eventually, Senstone will be able to record for up to four hours offline, and longer when it's paired with your phone. 

You can charge Senstone by sitting it in this charging dock, which connects to any USB port. Early testers have used the device for up to a week without charging the unit. 

Finally, Senstone's technology can automatically transcribe your notes for you, saving both a written version and the original recording and labeling them by the date, time, and location at which you recorded. It supports dictation in 11 languages including Mandarin and Ukrainian.

And by saying "hashtag" and then a word before you stop recording your note, Senstone will identify that as a category tag. If you press the hashtag button at the top of the app, it will take you to all of your notes from your hashtagged categories. 
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Early backers of Senstone's Kickstarter campaign can get the aluminum or plated brass versions of Senstone by pledging $80.

Three years ago, Menash Michael stepped out of his Tel Aviv home to walk his dog. By the time he reached his driveway, he was lying unconscious on the ground. He’d fainted. Fortunately, his tumble was spotted by a next-door neighbor who called for an ambulance, and he was rushed to the nearest hospital.

Menash is a type 1 diabetic, meaning his pancreas doesn’t work properly and is unable to produce the insulin required to turn glucose into energy. He was diagnosed with the chronic condition almost 30 years ago, and since then has had to inject himself with artificial insulin four times a day. Every day.

It’s important that Menash gets the timing and doses of these injections precisely right. If he makes a mistake, the consequences could be fatal.

When your blood sugar level hits 50, you become confused. If it drops to 30, you faint and need an emergency glucose injection.

When he tumbled to the ground three years ago, his blood sugar level was just 23. “I was almost dead,” he said.

It turned out that Menash had accidentally given himself double the normal dose of insulin. This is a very easy mistake to make, albeit one with potentially serious consequences.

But although unpleasant, this episode got Menash thinking how he could irradicate the problem for others. Enter Insulog.

This device clips onto the end of any standard disposable insulin injection pen and automatically records whenever the user adjusts their insulin dose or injects themselves. This is then displayed prominently on the device’s LCD display, making it harder for someone to inadvertently double-dose themselves.
“The insulog has a multi-sensor system. When you turn the dial of the insulin pen or press the injection button, the sensors detect how many units you’re taking, and records it on the display,” Michael said. 
The device comes with a built-in battery, which lasts up to six days and can be recharged via MicroUSB. It also boasts Bluetooth connectivity allowing users to automatically synchronize their injection data with their iOS or Android smartphone, which can be later shared with their physician to help them manage their diabetes.
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The Insulog is being launched on IndieGoGo and backers can get their hands on a kit for as little as $109 with delivery promised in July, 2017.

According to WHO data, 285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired worldwide. Whether totally blind or with low vision, they face daily challenges in moving around and interacting with their immediate environment. 

It was in 2014, after a chance encounter with a blind person, that the idea of Horus was born. It's a wearable device aimed at describing the physical world to those who cannot see it. 

"I was with my co-founder Saverio Murgia in Genova, close to the train station," Horus Technology CTO Luca Nardelli says. "We saw a blind person trying to get around following the corners of the buildings. Unfortunately, on that day, there were some works on the street, and he couldn't recognize the landscape." 

Murgia and Nardelli, two biomedical engineers, were both studying how to help robots detect and avoid obstacles using artificial vision. "We stopped and thought: why not apply our knowledge to help people instead?" Nardelli says. 

After two years and some small and not-so-small prizes, Horus is gradually coming closer to having a commercial product. 

Externally, it looks a bit like an old Sony Walkman: a rectangular box, which contains the battery and the GPU, to be worn using a belt hook or kept in the pocket, linked to a headset. 

But the headset, unlike that found on a Walkman or an iPod, does not only emit sounds. Two cameras film the environment, and the information is then sent to the GPU, where the processing is done in real-time, and the visual inputs are converted to verbal messages that help the user detect obstacles, describing pictures and scenes, identifying objects and people, and reading text. 

The presence and location of obstacles is reported using differently modulated sounds. Horus divides the space in front of the user into sectors: lateral obstacles generate high-pitched sounds in one of the two speakers, while central obstacles generate low-pitched centered sounds. 

Just as with intelligent parking systems on cars and trucks, the sounds grow more frequent and more alarming as the obstacle gets closer. It's generally up to the user to decide which of Horus' features to activate through a vocal menu, although some are automatically launched. 

For instance, when the person is walking, the accelerometer detects the movement, and Horus starts giving instructions. The messages are not sent using headphones but with bone conduction, which leaves the ears of the person free to hear the noise of the street as well. 

It sounds great on paper -- but whether Horus will be successful depends mainly on how well the company manages its execution. 

"So far, we're still prototyping, testing the first versions of our electronic components," Nardelli says. "Our goal is to have the device ready for launch by the end of this year." 

The device will be launched initially in Italy, as a first test market, and by spring 2017, it should also reach the UK and other English-speaking countries. 
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The initial price of the device hasn't been set, but it should be in the €1,000 to €2,000 ($1,060 - $2,120) range.

The next time someone asks you for your cell phone number, you may want to think twice about giving it. 
The cell phone number is more than just a bunch of digits. It is increasingly used as a link to private information maintained by all sorts of companies, including money lenders and social networks. It can be used to monitor and predict what you buy, look for online or even watch on television. 

It has become "kind of a key into the room of your life and information about you," said Edward M. Stroz, a former high-tech crime agent for the F.B.I. who is co-president of Stroz Friedberg, a private investigator. 

Yet the cell phone number is not a legally regulated piece of information like a Social Security number, which companies are required to keep secret. And we are told to hide and protect our Social Security numbers while most of us don't hesitate when asked to write a cellphone number on a form or share it with someone we barely know. 

That is a growing issue for young people, since two sets of digits may well be with them for life: their Social Security number and their cell phone number. 

Among people ages 25 to 29, the share of homes that have only wireless phone service stands at 73%. 

Investigators find that a cell phone number is often even more useful than a Social Security number because it is tied to so many databases and is connected to a device you almost always have with you, said Austin Berglas, a former F.B.I. agent who is senior managing director of K2 Intelligence, a private investigator. 

"The point is the cellphone number can be a gateway to all sorts of other information," said Robert Schoshinski, the assistant director for privacy and identity protection at the Federal Trade Commission. "People should think about it." 

But if a cell phone number and the private computer behind it open the door to new risks, technology, as is so often the case, can also be employed to combat those risks.

 "What you can do with the cell phone number and mobile technology represents a pretty substantial advantage in the ongoing war against fraud and identity theft," said Rajeev Date, a venture investor and former banker, who was previously deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

But a cell-phone-only life presents problems for many independent professionals and workers at start-ups and small businesses, who make business calls on their personal cellphones. But now, professionals and other mobile business people can turn to a new app Sideline to add a second number to their cellphones so their personal number remains personal.
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The service is free for individuals and $10 a month a number for groups of workers in a business, who get extra features like a company directory and voice mail transcription. One of Sideline’s ad mottos is: “Keep your personal number private. Add a second number to your smartphone.”

At a recent Cisco Live conference, the company previewed a new digital assistant, currently named Monica. Digital assistants have moved into the mainstream, with attractive offers including Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Google Now, and Amazon Alexa. Each service is a bit different but follows a similar model: a local device for mic and speaker, and a powerful back-end cloud to interpret and process requests.

Cisco doesn't make personal devices like PCs, smartphones, or residential canisters (Amazon Echo), so Monica lives in Spark – which the company believes will soon be everywhere (desktops, smartphones, and meeting rooms).

Cisco does not believe that the world needs another personal digital assistant, and so Monica is intended as a work, or team-oriented, collaboration assistant. Monica isn't for shopping lists or reminders, but rather, to improve team productivity.

Speech has only become reasonable as a user interface (UI) in the past decade. Even now, it's limited and typically requires a nearby microphone. The break-through with Amazon's successful Echo device was its miniature seven-mic array that enabled room-based or far-field communications.

Cisco realized that it could also do far-field communications with its installed base of telepresence rooms, which are already equipped with microphone arrays. The WebEx and Spark clouds are already in place, so the only thing missing, until now, was the artificial intelligence to drive it. Cisco is evaluating several AI services to power Monica, and will likely also consider IBM's Watson, given its announced partnership last summer.
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Cisco provided few details on what Monica will do, when it will become available, and what its released product name will be. The product name "Monica" is unlikely to survive.