Sony's US Mobile Strategy: Whatever

Sony has dropped three new mobile devices into the US market -- its Smartwatch 2 and its Xperia Z1 and Z Ultra smartphones -- but it doesn't seem to be playing a very high-stakes game. That's possibly because it doesn't need to. "Sony is a diversified consumer electronics and digital content company," noted tech analyst Stephen Blum. "Its competitive advantage is its brand."

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Phonebloks: a phone that can be built like Lego

A smartphone with detachable parts that could last forever has been designed.

Phonebloks is a sustainable device that can be built like Lego and would allow users to replace its parts over time instead of buying new smartphones.

Dutch designer Dave Hakkens designed it after his favourite camera broke and he was advised to buy a new one as it was cheaper than replacing the broken part.

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Aeromobil takes to the skies: Is the age of flying cars finally here?

The design space for a machine that can roll out of a standard parking spot, unfurl a pair of wings, and hurl itself into the air has been explored as thoroughly as any. Stefan Klein, an engineer from Austria, has been working on such machines for the last 20 years. His latest concept, the Aeromobile 2.5, has some impressive specs, and seems to have little trouble getting airborne. The question that comes to mind when watching footage of the prototype is — can it stay there?
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NTT researchers entangle photons 300 kilometers apart using fiber optics

Japanese telecom giant NTT is concerned with more than routing phone calls — it is exploring the technology to enable a new kind of super-fast communication based on quantum mechanics. NTT’s recent experiments with quantum entanglement have reached a true milestone in the understanding of this phenomenon. A team led by Takahiro Inagaki at the NTT Basic Research Laboratories in Kanagawa has managed to keep two particles entangled over a distance of 300 kilometers through fiber optic cable.

Entanglement has been of huge interest to physicists over the years for its ability to seemingly transfer information simultaneously from one location to the other without actually crossing the space in between. Two particles that are entangled share the same quantum state, describing properties like spin, momentum, and polarization. Thus, observing one of the particles tells you about the other.

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Hydrogel implants could be a fiber optic network for your body

The biggest problem with wetware is the “ware” part. Enormous metal implants like those seen in The Matrix or Elysium look cool and all, but any real-world interface of metal and flesh is precarious; surface implants are often rejected by the body, leading to infection and even death. Technology has gotten smaller, more efficient, and able to better communicate wirelessly, but for all the nifty implants we can build, actually implanting them has proven difficult, and controlling them even more so. Now, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital claim that a special hydrogel could change all that.
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How the NBA’s SportVU ball and player tracking tech changes the face of sports

Tonight sees the return of the NBA, but along with LeBron’s continued dominance and Derrick Rose’s return, comes a new breed of technology and influence. Each team in the NBA now has access to the SportVU, a camera system so technologically advanced that it has opened the door for Big Data to invade and shape the NBA, and subsequently, the sports world.
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AWS Updates Big Data Analytics Platform With New Support For Hadoop And Its Ecosystem

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has updated its Elastic Map Reduce platform with a new version of Hadoop and updated support for its data analytics ecosystem.

Elastic Map Reduce is AWS platform for processing large amounts of data. But unlike many vendors, AWS offers a hosted service. The challenge for AWS is to keep Hadoop and its accompanying ecosystem updated and in pace with the latest open-source platforms.

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Next Android mobile software version dubbed ‘KitKat’

Google on Tuesday said the next version of Android will be called “KitKat” in keeping with its penchant for giving tasty names to its software for powering mobile devices.
“Since these devices make our lives so sweet, each Android version is named after a dessert,” the California-based technology titan said in a blog post.chocolate
“As everyone finds it difficult to stay away from chocolate we decided to name the next vertion of Android after one of our favorite chocolate treats.”
The list of Android software names over the years includes Cupcake, Donut, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Jelly Bean.

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How the NBA’s SportVU ball and player tracking tech changes the face of sports

Tonight sees the return of the NBA, but along with LeBron’s continued dominance and Derrick Rose’s return, comes a new breed of technology and influence. Each team in the NBA now has access to the SportVU, a camera system so technologically advanced that it has opened the door for Big Data to invade and shape the NBA, and subsequently, the sports world.

From hardcore Fantasy sports players to casual fans of individual sports, almost everyone is aware of how stats-intensive sports are in modern times. If it’s a thing that happens, you can give it a fancy acronym and start tabulating how many times that thing took place. Baseball is the stats-heavy sport, but the NBA has been on the forefront of the digital revolution for quite awhile now — allowing clips to remain on YouTube, introducing the mobile League Pass, making a hard push into the podcasting and blogging space with the acquisition of the former Basketball Jones team, and working with TNT on a live multi-camera user-chosen view with TNT Overtime. So, it’s only right that LeBron’s league ushers in the age of data and technology.

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