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Pebble Technology has recently entered into the Kickstarter hall of fame with their E-Paper watch gaining over $10,000,000 US in funding after only 26 hours of being put on the site. So, what makes the E-Paper watch so popular? It functions as a connection interface between your smartphone and as a wrist-mounted watch with app capabilities, a relatively simple embedded system.

Pebble Smartwatch (via Pebble)

The watch can be infinitely customized with different watch-faces (which is always on) and is compatible with both iPhone and Android (2.3 and higher) smartphones with a wide range of apps that let you check e-mail/text messages, caller ID and Facebook/Twitter accounts among others. The E-Paper watch connects to your smartphone through a Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR/4.0 connection and houses an ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller which has over 8X more Flash memory and 12X more RAM than their previous inPulse Smartwatch. The ‘face’ is actually a high-resolution (144 X 168) black and white e-paper display and has a vibrating motor with a 3-axis accelerometer that’s capable of gestural detection. Charging the watch is the same as you would a smartphone by using a USB cable either for your PC/wall-outlet or mobile charging platform and has a life-span of 7 days before it needs to be re-charged. For those of you who love the water, E-paper is expected to be fully water-proofed to either 3 or 5 ATM (up to 165ft) if you can stand the pressure but make no mistake the watch IS NOT water-proof. Pebble Technology has sold out their first batch of 85,000 units, so the rest of us will just have to wait for E-Paper’s second coming.

Cabe

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NSA concept drawing (via NSA)

The National Security Agency (NSA) is currently carrying out a project called “Fishbowl” that is intended to encrypt telephone communications with high levels of security within networks using commercially available cell phones, cell phone components and the open source Android software. They are working with the Department of Defense, and other national agencies, to coordinate this security effort. They are also encouraging private companies to follow suit with their own encrypted Android-based networks by making some specifications of this type of network available to the public.

On February 1st 2012, the NSA released a document called the Draft of Mobility Capability Package that summarizes the 5 major components of the this secure “Fishbowl” network: Mobile Enterprise Infrastructure, Interoperability, Secure Voice, OS/Apps and Mobile Device and Mobile Transport (Carrier).

The NSA created 100 phones from commercially available parts that are compatible with the network and capable of highly secure communication. All of the sensitive telephone conversations are handled by the NSA’s own VoIP server which runs them through an IPsec VPN with real-time transport protocol for encrypting the voices involved in every phone call. If a private company whishes to create their own secure network, they will be required to obtain they own server.

A priority of the NSA is to obtain complete interoperability so that their Information Assurance Directorate is not compromised and available across all government networks.

Eavesdropper

(via TechNet study)

Some say the mobile device "app gold rush" is over. Both the iOS and Android markets have the better part of a million applications each, how can there be room for more? I disagree. I think the field is flush with possibilities. So far, 466,000 jobs have been created in the "app economy" business. There is room for more.

The App Economy generated $20 billion USD in 2011 alone, according to the TechNet study on the industry. The revenue includes app sales, in app advertising gains, virtual and physical goods sold due to apps. The major contributors to the app markets are not surprising: iOS, Android, Blackberry, Facebook site apps, and Windows Mobile/Phone. (I would say Blackberry may be a dwindling market for the developer, beware.)

(Left) App jobs per state  (Right) App jobs per city (via TechNet study)

Geographical location was also obvious in the report. California state, USA, takes the crown having 23.8% of the jobs. New York, Washington, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Georgia, Virginia, and Florida round out the top 10 in order. Being close to the OS company in Silicon Valley is a popular choice for app developers, while others want to be near advertising/media concentration in New York.

Growth is predicted, by the report, to be significant in the coming years. Between 2010 and 2011, an increase of 45% was seen in the job want ads. If you have the skill, the jobs are plentiful.

App career growth chart (via TechNet study)

With feature phones (dumb-phones) outnumbering Smartphones 4:1, globally, as of 2011, the app market has the potential to grow 400%. Take $20 billion and make it $80 billion to give another perspective. There are 82.2 million Smartphone users in the USA(2011), those numbers will only grow over time. I liken this to the adoption of computers in the home. At first slow, now every home has several.

Want to get started? Try the Goolge/MIT App Inventor. No coding needed.

Cabe

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See the full TechNet study, attached to this post

(2011)

The frontiers for Arduino developers have been widened since Google announced the release of their Android Open Accessory Development Kit. This new USB micro-controller is based on the Arduino Mega2560 and Circuits@Home USB Host Shield designs. This micro-controller board can be controlled as an Android USB accessory by supporting devices. (The Android 3.1 platform (also back ported to Android 2.3.4))

(screen capture, via Google IO session videos)

“Shields” access the ADK boards’ input and output with customizable firmware to define their functionality. The shields can be bought or created and programmed for customizable applications.

A gargantuan application of this new ADK board was demonstrated at the Google head quarters where a colossal labyrinth and ball game was played by tilting a Xoom tablet.

(via mrmeng at YouTube)

The Android Open Accessory Development Kit includes a USB micro-controller board that will be implemented as an Android USB accessory, an Android Demo ADK Shield that includes a joystick, LED outputs and temperature and light sensors, all of which can be customized.

In the form of software, it includes, a library based on the Arduino USB Host Shield library to allow transactions between the board and USB devices. An Android accessory protocol library which shows how to enumerate the bus, how to find an Android device that supports accessory mode and begin communication with this device and an Arduino Sketch C++ program that defines firmware for the ADK board. Many other third party libraries are also supported which is to be expected out of a project that mixes the great open source Arduino with the technology of Google’s Android.

Read more about this development at the Google IO Developer's Conference pages. There you can find countless articles, video, and examples.  However, do not think this accessory will be as cheap as it looks. The Arduino dev boards are clocking in at $400 USD each. With time, I am sure the prices will come down. Accessability for all is the ultimate goal of the endeavor, despite the price being a major hurdle.

Cabe

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Androind app running on PC via CES 2012

I have the same app on my webOS phone, Android phone, with a PC equivalent installed. With the explosion of mobile devices, a new platform brings another set of apps one must download. The main problem I have is syncing all of these gadgets together. The going trend is to bring users into an eco system that requires one to stay in that area.

However an app designed by BlueStacks reverses that trend enabling you to use Android-based apps on your PC. BlueStacks ‘App Player’ allows the user to control or use almost any of the current 400,000 apps available and at full screen levels on both laptops and PC’s. The software was introduced back in October for Windows 7 but BlueStacks has updated the App Player to work with the up-coming Windows 8 OS as well as Microsoft’s Metro UI so you can use the app on just about everything running the respective software without the need for ‘port-over’ emulation. For more information on BlueStacks and to download the App Player see their site.

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Capacitive touch screen devices are already being used by doctors in a medical setting. (see the recent webOS MRI scanner app.)  Just when you thought your Droid or iPhone could do no more, scientists from the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology say they are working on technology that would give your touch screen phone the capability of diagnosing illnesses.

This technology would stem from the existing mechanism used to detect a conductive touch. Research assistant professor Hyun Gyu Park said that different pathogens or bacteria cause different biomarkers that could be detected as different capacitances by the touch screen. For example, a drop of saliva, blood or urine could be used to diagnose if you have strep throat, the flu, or food poisoning.

Park says touch screen technology is already extremely sensitive, so much so that software is applied in every phone to make the touch screen less sensitive. This software prevents accidental interactions from sweat or water.

Obviously, no one wants to smear any bodily fluid on the screen of their phone, so Park and his team will develop a special film to cover the screen when it is used to diagnose. (Why use a phone at all? Perhaps they should be looking into developing a whole new line of devices for medical applications.)

They have already done tests on touch screens to measure their sensitivity. A touch screen phone successfully identified different DNA concentrations of a Chlamydia causing bacteria. Now they must see if the screen can identify bacteria.

This technology is still years from being released to the public. As beneficial this would be to families everywhere, one of the issues that may halt this progress is businessmen’s lust for money. Social benefits are obvious but changes to the current phone manufacturing process would need to be made so monetary benefits must be proven as well.

Eavesdropper

It was only a matter of time. A real-time language translation service was demonstrated by the Japan company Docomo at "Wireless Japan 2011." The service is simple, one person speaks into their phone, a cloud based system translates the spoken words to which-ever language, and the correct language is spoken at the other end. However, the person at either end may never hear what the other's voice may sounds like, since the cloud system reads the words back in a pleasant "computer voice." Inflections, verbal suggestions, and pauses for effect are completely filtered out. Docomo reports that the system is not at 100% yet, but the R&D team vows to increase accuracy over time. Meanwhile, they are considering level of inaccuracy that consumers would be willing to take.

Demonstrated on Android based smartphones and tablets, when either side speaks, text of what is said is displayed in both languages on both user's screens. This will enable further corrections after seeing what the other would hear or understand. I would like to have this just for speaking in the same language to other people. Sometimes people are misunderstood, and having it in writing solves that problem.

Only a hand full of times did I have to communicate with people who did not speak a language I know. Almost every time it was for business. So, I would allow for a large margin of error just to be able to speak in real-time.

Eavesdropper