Robot apps get a cash boost

APPS aren't just for your smartphone. The one-year-old Robot-App Store got a cash boost this week in the form of $250,000 from the first company dedicated to investing in consumer robotics.

Dmitry Grishin, founder of Grishin Robotics, already spent $250,000 on a telepresent robotics company called Double Robotics in September, and plans to invest a total of $25 million in the field.

Grishin says software like the apps on offer at the Robot-App Store is the key to creating a vibrant market in household robots. "Once you find a cool app, it will help to sell robots." He compares robots to computers. "A good application, like a spreadsheet, helped to sell PCs and to grow the PC market."

One app from the Robot-App Store makes the NAO robot (pictured) whistle and say "Hello, gorgeous" whenever it detects a face. Another allows you to steer the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner using your keyboard.

No killer app yet perhaps, but Grishin says that will come with the establishment of a "robot ecosystem", in which more developers create apps for a growing pool of consumers, who are in turn encouraged by the number of apps to choose from.

The world of robot software is certainly maturing. The open source Robot Operating System celebrated its fifth birthday in November.

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Fare increases needed to improve service to commuters, says Lui Tuck Yew

SINGAPORE: Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew has said fare increases are needed to improve service to commuters while keeping public transport operations commercially viable.

In a Facebook post, Mr Lui said fare increases are not to boost the short-term profits of Public Transport Operators (PTOs) or improve the salaries of bus drivers.

He said that's why the government must work with the PTOs to ensure that when granted any fare increase, they would re-invest part of this revenue to improve the public transport system to benefit commuters.

This can be in hardware, like more buses and trains and upgrading the signalling systems.

It can also be in software, like better terms and salaries for staff. This includes bus drivers and train operators, as well as the maintenance and service personnel.

Mr Lui said as fares increase, the government will have to play a larger role to keep the public transport system affordable.

He said there must be a concerted and sustained effort to upgrade the bus driving profession.

Employment terms and conditions must also be improved further to recruit new drivers and retain existing ones in order to ramp up bus capacity over the next few years.

On who pays for the increased costs, Mr Lui said there must be a proper balance among commuters in fares, or taxpayers in government subsidies, or the PTOs.

He said the government is fully committed to an affordable public transport system for the middle-income groups, the lower-income groups, the disabled community, and other vulnerable groups.

He said the bottom line is this. It is a matter of all the stakeholders - the PTOs, the government, and commuters - coming together to ensure everyone enjoys a reliable, high-quality and affordable public transport system.

- CNA/de

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Social media notes on the 12-12-12 Concert

A screen shot of 121212concert.org, featuring the night's last act, Sir Paul McCartney. As you can see, one of the author's tweets

12-12-12 was a day tailor-made for social media and there was a lot going on timed to the date. Here are some notes from the serious to the ridiculous:

12-12-12, THE DATE: Millions of people spent the days talking about the rare confluence of numbers (won't happen again till 01/01/01 in 2101), starting with 12:12:12 am local time, on Facebook and Twitter and continued around the world, hitting a peak at 12:12:12 pm local time. I, too, gave into the hype and posted a screen grab of the official US atomic clock at Time.gov turning 12:12:12 pm.

There were, of course, thousands of others making fun of all the 12-12-12 obsessed. Among them, Frank Conniff (@FrankConniff), who tweeted:
"Did you know that today is 12-12-12? Amazing! This is the only chance I'll ever have to share this incredibly dull fact!"

Here's a collection by BuzzFeed of how various corporations from McDonald's to UPS handled 12-12-12.

No one took the 12:12:12 idea more seriously than India-based entrepreneur Sharik Currimbhoy, who donated $12.12 million to his alma mater and my employer, Columbia University. The press release said, "The gift is timed to coincide with the auspicious moment of 12:12 p.m. on Wednesday, December 12, 2012--12:12 on 12-12-12."

RIP, RAVI SHANKAR: The first unusual thing I noticed after the date business was the fact that the name Ravi Shankar was trending worldwide. You wouldn't expect the passing of a 92-year-old sitar player from India to be that widely noted, but it certainly was. I tweeted a screen grab of the trending chart, saying: "Nice to see Ravi Shankar trending, thx in part to tweets from folks as different as @MarioBatali & @CoryBooker." 

Shankar became famous in the U.S. because of his work with the Beatles (though Slate's Geeta Dayal - @GeetaDayal - reminds us "Ravi Shankar wasn't just the Indian guy who hung out with the Beatles." The fact that he was the father of superstar Norah Jones (@NorahJones) and her half-sister, sitarist Anoushka Shankar (@ShankarAnoushka), who was nominated for a Grammy this week, played a role in younger folks' interest.

12-12-12, THE CONCERT: The day ended with an all-star benefit concert along the lines of what's been done for the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the Asian tsunami in 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the Haiti earthquake in 2010. The "12-12-12" concert, for Superstorm Sandy relief in New York and New Jersey, had a lot of hype built into it, starting with its memorable date, the brand-name performers and the fact that it was being broadcast live on 37 networks in the US and more than 100 overseas and streamed live on many major sites (the night's quasi emcee, Billy Crystal, promised an audience of 2 billion). There were also many celebrities manning the phone banks and brought attention to the festivities.

The concert was held at Madison Square Garden, which was also the site, in 1971, of the first of these massive benefit concerts, created, of all people, by Ravi Shankar and George Harrison. The Concert of Bangladesh (here's the Wikipedia entry; and here are several video excerpts), has quite the legacy. It inspired Bob Geldof's 1995 Live Aid concert and continues to have an impact as proceeds from the concert album and DVD benefit the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF, which has programs in Bangladesh today.

Alas, no mention of the 1971 concert or Shankar's passing was made at the 12-12-12 concert, though that would have been timely and the right thing to do (below a quick video remembering Shankar and Harrison by video news newcomer Now This News). Eric Clapton was the only star at both concerts.

Social media was baked into many parts of the evening. The #121212concert hashtag was constantly plugged on the air (see my earlier post on the right way and wrong way to do hashtags on TV). Many of the celebrities used their Twitter accounts to promote the concert before and during the gathering. Examples: Here's Cold Play (@ColdPlay), tweeting about it's lead singer Chris Martin's performance: "Don't forget, Chris plays at tomorrow's @121212Concert for Hurricane Sandy victims. Live stream info: http://bit.ly/121212Watch #121212Concert." Here's Alicia Keys (@AliciaKeys), who tweeted an Instagram of herself at the piano: "Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, and ME?! WTF?! ;-) #121212Concert"

The 121212concert.org site has prominent links to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google+ and GetGlue (a mobile-based social network that let's users check-in to TV shows, films, concerts, etc). There were electronic signs around the stage promoting highlighted tweets, encouraging those in the audience to tweet, too. And the

The site also highlighted tweets from such high-profile accounts as @MickJagger, @GQMagazine, @NYRangers and @KimKardashian. Into that mix, somehow, one of my tweets sneaked in, as you can see from the screen shot at the top of this post: "Almost entire cast of Sopranos is working the phone bank right now, so some of you may want to call 1-855-465-4357 & donate #121212concert" (this generated 63 retweets and 20 favorites as I write this).

Some of my other tweets got more than 10 retweets:
* At 9:16 pm ET, I tweeted this: #121212concert hasn't had any women or people of color sing yet - 105 minutes and counting. Great acts so far, but... [It was almost 180 before Alicia Keys took the stage. In a sign of the times, she kept telling the audience to "put your cellphones in the air" as she sang her hit "No One."]

* At 10:06 pm, I tweeted this: #121212concert needs on-screen listings of who's who & what they're performing. My kids don't know the old stuff and I don't know the new.

* At 12:23 am, I tweeted this: "I know that you really wanted @OneDirection, but it's way past their bedtime" - Chris Martin of @ColdPlay apologizing at #121212concert [Martin had a great line, reflecting on being the youngest person on the show. He said if everything donated the average age of the performers, we'd raise billions."]

Rapper Kanye West (@KanyeWest) trended during his performance, though it wasn't necessarily for his music. He was wearing something that looked like a cross between a kilt and skirt, and, sure enough, people were talking about #kanyeskilt.

The six-hour concert ended with Sir Paul McCartney (@PaulMcCartney) performing with a variety of musicians, including a rare appearance by the remaining members of Nirvana, which set Twitter abuzz.

The fundraising, through the Robin Hood Foundation, carries on and you can still donate at 121212concert.org.

Did you catch the concert on TV, the web or just via glancing blows on social media? Share your thoughts in the comments below, please.

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Hubble Discovers Oldest Known Galaxy

The Hubble space telescope has discovered seven primitive galaxies formed in the earliest days of the cosmos, including one believed to be the oldest ever detected.

The discovery, announced Wednesday, is part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field campaign to determine how and when galaxies first assembled following the Big Bang.

"This 'cosmic dawn' was not a single, dramatic event," said astrophysicist Richard Ellis with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Rather, galaxies appear to have been formed over hundreds of millions of years.

Ellis led a team that used Hubble to look at one small section of the sky for a hundred hours. The grainy images of faint galaxies include one researchers determined to be from a period 380 million years after the onset of the universe—the closest in time to the Big Bang ever observed.

The cosmos is about 13.7 billion years old, so the newly discovered galaxy was present when the universe was 4 percent of its current age. The other six galaxies were sending out light from between 380 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang. (See pictures of "Hubble's Top Ten Discoveries.")

Baby Pictures

The images are "like the first ultrasounds of [an] infant," said Abraham Loeb, a specialist in the early cosmos at Harvard University. "These are the building blocks of the galaxies we now have."

These early galaxies were a thousand times denser than galaxies are now and were much closer together as well, Ellis said. But they were also less luminous than later galaxies.

The team used a set of four filters to analyze the near infrared wavelengths captured by Hubble Wide Field Camera 3, and estimated the galaxies' distances from Earth by studying their colors. At a NASA teleconference, team members said they had pushed Hubble's detection capabilities about as far as they could go and would most likely not be able to identify galaxies from further back in time until the James Webb Space Telescope launches toward the end of the decade. (Learn about the Hubble telescope.)

"Although we may have reached back as far as Hubble will see, Hubble has set the stage for Webb," said team member Anton Koekemoer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Our work indicates there is a rich field of even earlier galaxies that Webb will be able to study."

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Workers' Party ready to offer voters a choice again

SINGAPORE: The Workers' Party (WP), which contested the 2011 general election in the Punggol East Single Member Constituency (SMC), said it is ready to offer voters a choice again in a by-election.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the WP said it has noted the announcement that the Speaker of Parliament, Mr Michael Palmer, has resigned from the People's Action Party and, by virtue of Article 46 of the Constitution, Mr Palmer's Parliamentary seat for Punggol East SMC has become vacant.

It added, that for the residents of Punggol East to be properly represented, the Workers' Party urges the Prime Minister to call a by-election in the constituency as soon as possible.

The WP statement came shortly after Mr Michael Palmer, the Speaker of Singapore Parliament and MP for Punggol East SMC, resigned over a "grave mistake" of having an improper relationship with a staff member of the People's Association.

- CNA/ck/sf

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MediaTek joins Samsung, Nvidia quad-core club

MediaTek will take on Samsung and Nvidia in the emerging market for mobile quad-core chips.

The Hsinchu, Taiwan-based company announced today the MT6589, a quad-core system-on-a-chip (SoC) that integrates a modem supporting HSPA+ and other international standards.

Integration of a modem into a quad-core chip is a first, the company says.

The processor is based on ARM's Cortex-A7 design, the same technology used in Qualcomm's upcoming quad-core S4 processors.

But that Qualcomm chip won't be available commercially until well into next year. The MediaTek chip, on the other hand, will appear in smartphones that are expected to ship in the first quarter of 2013.

That said, there isn't exactly a dearth of quad-core competition. Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 is already used in phones from HTC. And the Galaxy S3 uses Samsung's new Exynos 4 Quad chip.

The MediaTek MT6589 supports 1080p 30fps/30fps low-power video playback and recording, a 13MP camera, and up to a 1,920x1,080 resolution display.

No carriers announced smartphones using the chip today. Those phone roll-outs are expected next year.

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Best Space Pictures of 2012: Editor's Picks

Photograph courtesy Tunç Tezel, APOY/Royal Observatory

This image of the Milky Way's vast star fields hanging over a valley of human-made light was recognized in the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich.

To get the shot, photographer Tunç Tezel trekked to Uludag National Park near his hometown of Bursa, Turkey. He intended to watch the moon and evening planets, then take in the Perseids meteor shower.

"We live in a spiral arm of the Milky Way, so when we gaze through the thickness of our galaxy, we see it as a band of dense star fields encircling the sky," said Marek Kukula, the Royal Observatory's public astronomer and a contest judge.

Full story>>

Why We Love It

"I like the way this view of the Milky Way also shows us a compelling foreground landscape. It also hints at the astronomy problems caused by light pollution."—Chris Combs, news photo editor

Published December 11, 2012

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Gunman 'Tentatively' Identified in Oregon Shooting

A masked gunman who opened fire in the crowded Clackamas Town Center mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two individuals before killing himself, has been "tentatively" identified by police, though they have not yet released his name.

The shooter, wearing a white hockey mask, black clothing, and a bullet proof vest, tore through the mall around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, entering through a Macy's store and proceeding to the food court and public areas spraying bullets, according to witness reports.

Police have not released the names of the deceased. Clackamas County Sheriff's Department Lt. James Rhodes said authorities are in the process of notifying victims' families.

The injured victim has been transported to a local hospital, according to Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts.

PHOTOS: Oregon Mall Shooting

Nadia Telguz, who said she was a friend of the injured victim, told ABC News affiliate KATU-TV in Portland that the woman was expected to recover.

"My friend's sister got shot," Teleguz told KATU. "She's on her way to (Oregon Health and Science University hospital). They're saying she got shot in her side and so it's not life-threatening, so she'll be OK."

Christopher Onstott/Pamplen Media Group/Portland Tribune

911 Calls From New Jersey Supermarket Shooting Watch Video

Witnesses from the shooting rampage said that a young man who appeared to be a teenager ran through the upper level of Macy's to the mall food court, firing multiple shots, one right after the other, with what is believed to be a black, semi-automatic rifle.

More than 10,000 shoppers were at the mall during the day, police said. Roberts said that officers responded to the scene of the shooting within minutes, and four SWAT teams swept the 1.4 million-square-foot building searching for the shooter. He was eventually found dead, an apparent suicide.

"I can confirm the shooter is dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound," Rhodes said. "By all accounts there were no rounds fired by law enforcement today in the mall."

Roberts said more than 100 law enforcement officers responded to the shooting, and at least four local agencies were working on the investigation, including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is working to trace the shooter's weapon.

READ: Guns in America: A Statistical Look

Roberts also said that shoppers, including two emergency room nurses and one physician who happened to be at the mall, provided medical assistance to victims who had been shot. Other shoppers helped escort individuals out of the mall and out of harm's way, he said.

"There were a huge amount of people running in different directions, and it was chaos for a lot of citizens, but true heroes were stepping up in this time of high stress," Roberts said. "E.R. nurses on the scene were providing medical care to those injured, a physician on the scene was helping provide care to the wounded."

Mall shopper Daniel Martinez told KATU that he had just sat down at a Jamba Juice inside the mall when he heard rapid gunfire. He turned and saw the masked gunman, dressed in all black, about 10 feet away from him.

"I just saw him (the gunman) and thought, 'I need to go somewhere,'" Martinez said. "It was so fast, and at that time, everyone was moving around."

Martinez said he ran to the nearest clothing store. As he ran, he motioned for another woman to follow; several others ran to the store as well, hiding in a fitting room. They stayed there for an hour and a half until SWAT teams told them it was safe to leave the mall.

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Japan researchers invent solar-cell fabric

TOKYO: Clothes that could literally light up your life were unveiled Tuesday by Japanese researchers who said their solar-cell fabric would eventually let wearers harvest energy on the go.

The new fabric is made of wafer-thin solar cells woven together that could see people powering up their mobile phones and other electronics with their sweater or trousers.

But its creators conceded there was work to do before taking the fabric to market.

"We still have things to solve before commercialisation, such as coating for the conductive wires and improving the fabric's durability," said an official at the Industrial Technology Center in central Japan's Fukui Prefecture.

"But we've already been contacted by electronics makers, blind makers and others who showed interested in our invention."

The centre developed the fabric with a Kyoto-based solar cell maker and other private firms, the official said.

Solar power generation is attracting renewed attention in Japan as the country looks to alternative energy sources in the aftermath of last year's tsunami-sparked atomic crisis, the worst nuclear accident in a generation.

-AFP/fl

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Twitter vs. Instagram in a knock-down, drag out filters fight

With one bold step Monday, Twitter took the photo filtering fight directly to Instagram.

Until yesterday, Instagram was the undisputed leader when it comes to mobile photo filtering and sharing. But with its release of a new version of its mobile app that enables filters, Twitter has launched a very credible challenge to the crown.

To be sure, Instagram has a massive lead, and a very passionate community. But Twitter has a nine-figure user base, and now that it is offering filters -- albeit just eight, while Instagram has 18 free filters -- it can begin to chip away at its competitor's lead.

There's only one way to decide whose filters are best, though, and that's to compare them side by side. With that in mind, CNET took a single photograph and applied each of Twitter's and Instagram's free filters. Only you can decide which is best.

Which filter do you think is best? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.

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