Thursday 23 August 2012

Facebook sued for stealing Timeline idea



The Chinese company Cubic Network claims Facebook has stolen its Timeline feature which allows people to tell the story of their lives in chronological order. The Chinese start-up founded four years ago claims they launched the same layout in 2008 and is suing Facebook for potential patent infringement. Mark Zuckerberg is believed to have attended a talk about the Timeline feature held by Xiong Wanli, the founder of Cubic Network at Stanford University.

Facebook unveiled its own Timeline feature in 2011, three years after Cubic Networks, at F8, the social network’s annual developer’s conference. Zuckerberg said at the conference: “Millions of people curate stories of their lives on Facebook every day and have no way to share them once they fall off your profile page; we have been working on Timeline all year; it’s the story of your life and completely new way to express yourself.”

Timeline has just been made mandatory in the UK, some users are not happy with the forced change due to the radical departure from the previous layout and the way members show their personal information.

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Saturday 4 August 2012

TshirtOS: the world's first programmable T-shirt


Whiskey maker Ballantine’s and the London-based clothing company CuteCurcuit have developed “TshirtOS”, the world's first wearable, washable and programmable T-shirt which could announce a new era of wearable digital technology.

This prototype features a 1000 RGB LED screen, a USB port, two headphone sockets, an accelerometer, a built-in camera which according to its makers will be the smallest in the world, measuring 2.5 by 2.9 by 2.5 millimetres; and Bluetooth that allows TshirtOS to connect to your Smartphone to share Twitter and Facebook updates as well as Instagram pictures. Also it will be able to play music and videos.

Peter Moore, global brand director said “The T-shirt is the original canvas of self-expression. Whether you wore the Smiley Face, Che Guevara or Frankie Says Relax, your favourite T-shirt tells the world something about you. Ballantine’s has taken that thought and made it bigger.”


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Wednesday 1 August 2012

Kuratas: the world's first giant boardable robot


The boardable robots era has come; the Japanese company Suidobashi Heavy Industry on Sunday in Tokyo at the Wonder Festival unveiled a 13ft combat robot called “Kuratas” which can be controlled from inside as well as remotely via 3G. Engineers Wataru Yoshizaki and Kogoro Kurata have been working on the robot since 2010, the company also released a video where the pilot Anna gives step by step instructions of how to operate the Kuratas.

Kuratas has 30 hydraulic joints which can be moved by the pilot using Motion Sensor technology, the diesel-powered robot weighs 4.5 tonnes and includes two humanoid arms and four wheeled legs, and it can run at a top speed of 10 km/h.

Kuratas is inspired by Japanese comic book “mecha”, it features a "shot-proof" armour and a futuristic weapons system which includes two gatling guns capable of shooting 6,000 BB bullets a minute, which fire when the pilot smiles; Suidobashi call this "the smile shot", and a Lohas launcher, a rocket launcher that fires water plastic bottles.

The rumoured price tag is $1 million (£637,000). 

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