Microsoft files for gesture patents: Project Natal + Minority Report
Just ahead of next week’s public unveiling of its Project Natal motion control system for the Xbox 360, Microsoft has filed for several patents covering technology for controlling PCs and game systems with gestures and motion tracking. The patent applications reiterate that Microsoft’s work on gesture input systems predate Natal and go far beyond the game console. They also makes it clear that this technology is no longer the realm of science fiction as in the movie “Minority Report.” The applications don’t mention Natal specifically but describe related technology for controlling systems with depth-sensing cameras and voice commands that serve as interfaces to control computers with large visual displays
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Microsoft files for gesture patents: Project Natal + Minority Report
Google has stopped using Bing-like photo backgrounds on its home page by default. Marissa Mayer, the art-loving Google executive in charge of search products and user experience, confirmed via Twitter that the page is back to “normal” this morning
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Google ends foray to Bingville, home page "normal" again
With the E3 game conference less than a week away, the industry titans are getting their talking points ready. Xbox director Aaron Greenberg got the ball rolling today with a tweet that slapped Sony, saying that Xbox exclusive “Halo 3″ has outsold all of the top PlayStation 3 exclusives: Just in from research team (NPD): Halo 3 has outsold Resistance 1 + 2, Uncharted 1+2, Killzone 2 and God of War III COMBINED….wow But how does “Halo 3″ stack up against “Wii Fit “?
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Xbox director starts E3 trash talking on Twitter
Microsoft’s adding a new “social” search feature to Bing today that shows trending topics on Facebook and Twitter. The beta feature was demonstrated by Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi at the SMX Advanced search conference this morning.
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Microsoft’s Mehdi on Bing’s iPhone deal, new social search & more
Here’s this morning’s demonstration of the new Bing social search feature that includes results from Facebook and Twitter to searches of trending topics. Microsoft Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi is explaining the features, which go live today.
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Video: Bing boss demos new social feature with Facebook
Google search guru Matt Cutts just happened to be in Seattle the day the company announced its new “Caffeine” Web indexing system that’s intended to provide 50 percent fresher search results. “Fundamentally the change is as soon as a document gets crawled boom, it gets indexed,” Cutts said at the SMX Advanced search conference, where his audience Q&A is a highlight of the annual event. Cutts told host Danny Sullivan that the upgrade enables Google to immediately index the results of its Web crawling, rather than updating the index in a staggered process.
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Google’s Matt Cutts on Caffeine index boost, HTML5 and more
Hands-down, the best deal on the Web today is Microsoft’s SkyDrive combined with the free online version of its Office apps. This package has been available to beta testers for a while, but Microsoft today opened it up to the general public (in the U.S., Canada, U.K.
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Deal of the day: Free Microsoft Office on SkyDrive open to public
Seattle video startup Delve Networks is jumping onto WebM , a new Web video standard announced today by Google, Mozilla and others. WebM is intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to commercial video standards — namely the H.264 codec that’s widely used for Web video today and favored by Apple.
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Delve boss dissects Google’s new Web video standard
A week after Michael Dell let slip that his company’s new Streak mini tablet/smartphone devices will go on sale in June, I spotted a batch of them being tested in Belltown. Network techs had a bank of the Android-powered gadgets aimed up Second Avenue and connected to a set of laptops during the lunch hour today. They were just around the corner from the now-defunct Brasa restaurant
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Spotted in Belltown: Dell Streak mini tablets, in red, on AT&T
It turns out love was a factor in Facebook opening a Seattle office, perhaps even more than the area’s technical talent. The story begins with Ari Steinberg, a Facebook engineering manager, and his wife, Daniela Witten, a Stanford grad student. When Witten began looking for a job teaching biostatistics, the couple decided to think about places where Facebook could someday open an office.
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Facebook’s move to Seattle: The backstory
The Tech Alliance relaeased a study today saying that 381,546 people work at tech companies, accounting for 13 percent of the state’s jobs. Those jobs pay an average salary of $110,145, compared with the state average of $57,654 according to the study, prepared for the Seattle-based trade group by William Beyers at the University of Washington.
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Tech Alliance: tech companies provide 13% of state jobs
After I destroyed what credibility I had left with the Open Source community last week, gushing over Office 2010 and, in particular, OneNote, a Mac user emailed me and asked if I knew of any cross-platform tools that were similar to OneNote. I figured it was worth taking a step back from my love
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Are there alternatives to OneNote?
This has to be the geekiest collectors’ item since the Pets.com sock puppet . It’s the Cheezburger Night Bobblehead that’s being given away at the Mariners’ June 3 game against the Twins, during a promotion sponsored by Seattle Web sensation Icanhascheezburger.com .
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Mee-ow! Check out Mariners’ Cheezburger bobblehead
At the Grand Challenges Summit in Seattle today, the University of Washington’s Ed Lazowska channeled Bill Gates. Lazowska resurrected Gates’ “digital decade” line to describe the advances that computer science will bring to scientific research. “You’re going to see a revolution in discovery in the next 10 years,” said Lazowska, the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science.
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"Looming data tsunami" coming, UW prof warns
Seattle’s funkiest tech conference may be the Fremont/Ballard Tech Fair hosted by NautilusNet today. About 150 people are expected at the shindig that starts at 11:30 with “shameless self promotions and introductions.” Presentations follow on topics such as LeftHand iSCSI Solutions, “greening your datacenter” and SAN storage virtualization. But the big draw may be the free hot dogs provided by Dante
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Free hot dogs at Fremont, Ballard tech fair today
It looks like Apple may be emulating Microsoft in one regard. The Associated Press is reporting that federal regulators are preparing to investigate whether Apple violated antitrust rules with its application development platform for mobile devices. The story follows up on a report yesterday by the New York Daily News , which first disclosed that the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are discussing which agency will lead the examination.
OK, it’s their tagline, but it’s catchy, isn’t it? For those of you unfamiliar with the company, Shmoop is a company whose mission is “to make learning and writing more fun…
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Shmoop will make you a better lover…if you have a Sony Reader?
Another showman is moving to the Emerald City. Michael Arrington, founder of the TechCrunch blog that’s become a Silicon Valley institution, announced today that he’s moved to Seattle . Arrington continued to diss the city’s startup scene even as he broadcast his new home.
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TechCrunch’s Arrington moves to Seattle
Skillsoft, a provider of online training and professional development, released a new tool called inGenius earlier last month. Since then, I’ve had a chance to both talk both product…
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Skillsoft takes social learning to a whole new level with inGenius
Phone sales grew 19 percent in the first quarter, according to a new report from ABI Research , which noted that sales of 3G handsets overtook those of 2G handsets. The company is predicting 1.3 billion phones will be sold this year.
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Phone sales up 19 percent, Apple up 130 percent, report says