Journalism Students Are Learning To Operate Drones For…Journalism

Journalism Students Are Learning To Operate Drones For…Journalism

Journalism Students Are Learning To Operate Drones For…Journalism

In an attempt to keep pace with rapidly evolving technology, the journalism schools at the University of Missouri and University of Nebraska both offer classes on drone reporting, in spite of the fact that this practice is currently illegal for professional journalists.

Domestic drone regulations are changing quickly. For example the Missouri state government is currently considering a bill that would prohibit the use of drones for agricultural monitoring. Such practices are being championed by companies like Monsanto, which claim that using drones to collect data about crops would reduce operating costs. While drones offer clear advantages for field checks and reporting, a slippery slope of privacy concerns have largely sidelined their use thus far.

In the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln started in 2011, and the Missouri Drone Journalism Program at the University of Missouri started this year, students learn how to fly unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs), collect video footage and photographs, interpret Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations and grapple with ethical questions. Nebraska's program is a collaboration between the journalism school, Information Technology program, and radio station KBIA, the local NPR affiliate.

Both schools consider the classes to be experimental and are using the drones for things like water sampling, drought surveillance and controlled fire tracking. Get ready for a descending swarm of over-eager drones reporting from the skies above. [Fast Company]

Image credit: Shutterstock/Stephane Bidouze

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GOOGLE CFO ADMITS MOTOROLA’S PHONES HAVEN’T HAD A ‘WOW’ FACTOR

GOOGLE CFO ADMITS MOTOROLA’S PHONES HAVEN’T HAD A ‘WOW’ FACTOR

A Google (GOOG) executive revealed that Motorola’s current line of devices don’t include anything that would “wow” consumers. Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference on Thursday, Google’s chief financial officer Patrick Pichette said the company inherited a pipeline of unimpressive products, at least by Google’s standards.

“The case with Motorola is that we’ve inherited a pipeline,” he said, according to The Verge. “Motorola has a great set of products, but they’re not really like ‘wow’ by Google standards. Dennis Woodside and his team have inherited 18 months of pipeline that we have to drain right now.”

These products include recent releases such as the DROID RAZR MAXX HD and DROID RAZR M, both of which have received positive feedback from critics and consumers. Recent rumors have suggested that Google is working on a high-end flagship smartphone with Motorola codenamed X Phone that could debut at the company’s annual I/O Developers Conference in May.

Pichette also revealed that Google hopes Chrome OS will become the PC equivalent of what Android is on mobile. The executive praised the operating system’s security for enterprise users and its integrated Google Docs support. While the company previously offered low-end and affordable Chrome OS computers, the recently announced Chromebook Pixel highlights Google’s plans to attack the high-end market as well.

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Samsung touts market share, infographic style

Samsung touts market share, infographic style

Samsung shipped a hell of a lot of phones last year, and a bunch of them were smart phones -- 213,000,000 according to their latest infographic. That's a number which equates to over 30-percent of all smart phones shipped in 2012, and as we see is more than the total population of Brazil.

Samsung of course hopes to keep this trend going into 2013, with new releases like the Galaxy Note 8.0 and the upcoming Galaxy S4, as well as the multitude of entry-level phones and tablets for emerging markets. We'll have to see if this strategy works for them as well this year as it did in the last.

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WINDOWS 8 FAILS TO IMPRESS HOLIDAY SHOPPERS

WINDOWS 8 FAILS TO IMPRESS HOLIDAY SHOPPERS

Following the seemingly tepid launch of Windows 8, critics were told to wait until after the holiday shopping season was over to properly assess Microsoft’s (MSFT) newest operating system. The latest monthly numbers from analytics firm Net Applications are in and Windows 8 usage remains low. After two months into the new year, the operating system only accounts for 2.67% of web traffic, a small increase from 2.36% in January. Windows 8 continues to lag behind Windows Vista (5.17%), Windows XP (38.99%) and Windows 7 (44.55%). Last month also marked the end of Microsoft’s deep discount on Windows 8. The operating system now costs a whopping $119.99, making it even more difficult for the company to entice consumers to upgrade.

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Why Google Made Its Own High-End Laptop, the Chromebook Pixel??

Why Google Made Its Own High-End Laptop, the Chromebook Pixel??

Why Google Made Its Own High-End Laptop, the Chromebook Pixel??

Google unveiled the Chromebook Pixel, a laptop that it designed and built itself. Unlike prior Chromebooks, whose main draw was their value, this one is built to compete with the top end of the market.

The three biggest appeals of the Pixel will likely be its touchscreen and high-density display, its elegant design, and the fact that it’s a Web-based device. Google set out to build the best possible device for “power users living in the cloud,” said Sundar Pichai, Google’s SVP of Chrome, speaking at a launch event in San Francisco today.

Like other Chrome OS products, the Pixel does not support desktop software, and would have its users live entirely in browser windows using Web-based applications.

The Pixel, which will ship as early as next week and starts at $1,299 for a Wi-Fi-only model (more specs analysis here), evolves from previous products Google made with partners such as Samsung. But it’s a far step above them.

Most notably, the screen has more pixels per inch than any other laptop, Google said.

The focus on detail and design is unheard of for a Google product. Where the company had tiptoed into hardware before, it’s striding in wholeheartedly now.

The smooth device’s hinge gives “the feeling of a luxury car door opening and closing,” Pichai said. The touchpad is made of glass, and has been tuned with a laser to have a maximally grippy surface. There are three microphones, with an additional one set below the keyboard so typing noises can be canceled out. At one point, a Google hardware designer at the event started waxing poetic about “tuning the force function of the mechanical keys to be more responsive.” Really.

In many ways, the Pixel is similar to Google’s Nexus device line, which sets the bar for production of Android mobile phones.

But the Pixel goes beyond that, because Nexus devices are explicitly built with hardware partners, and Google isn’t even naming the Taiwan-based OEM it is working with for the Pixel.

At the same time, this is very much a first-generation device. Some of the Pixel’s hardware capabilities — like the third microphone, and gestures on the touchscreen — aren’t even supported by Google’s own services yet.

And that’s not the only awkwardness. The Pixel brings Google back to the perpetual question of why Google is building two operating systems, Chrome and Android, that are converging on each other.

“What we are showing here is once you build a touchscreen laptop, the lines blur,” Pichai allowed. But he added, “We’re comfortable at Google with two viewpoints, and we are doing both.”

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Reach Into Transparent Computer, Grab Content

Reach Into Transparent Computer, Grab Content

Whether you’re surfing the Web, scrolling though your iTunes library or trying to find that spreadsheet for your boss, all of your day-to-day computer interactions exist in a two-dimensional realm. But it’s about to go 3-D. A transparent computer lets users “reach inside” and move files and data with their hands.

The SpaceTop 3D computer, developed by Jinha Lee, a grad student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was unveiled last week at the TED conference in California.

The system uses a transparent display equipped with two cameras — one that tracks users’ gestures and one that tracks the eyes to evaluate one’s gaze. This second camera helps adjust the perspective of the projection one sees when looking through the screen. Imagine reaching under your monitor and seeing your hand going through a list Web pages like you’d they were physical documents in a file cabinet. You would simply place your hands behind the screen to type, manipulate icons and handle documents.

“If you somehow allow computers to accept different types of modalities in the same workflow, that will be much more effective,” Lee said in an interview, according to Wired.

While still in its early stages, Lee’s system could represent, as Wired’s Ryan Tate noted, a sort of quantum leap in computer interfaces should it go mainstream. Whether it does or not, Lee’s system is a bridge between the physical and digital realm. This union will permit more automated physical interactions — something Lee calls “programming the world.”

“Programming the world will alter even our daily physical activities,” he told the crowd at the TED conference. “With our two hands we’re reaching into the digital world.”

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