Samsung branded B&N Nooks get teased in video, reminds us of the Amazon Fire Phone teaser a little too much

The Barns & Noble Nook was a pretty cool little device when it first came out. The revamps they did over the years didn’t seem to make it a mega hit like they had hoped. B&N in general has been suffering for a number of years closing 63 physical stores in the past five years. While I love myself a good physical book in hand, the digital era is taking over. One doesn’t need to spend time, gas, or money hoping they have a book in stock that you want from your favorite author. It is certainly much easier to pull out your device, open an app, buy the book and start reading near instantly. In an effort to help re-kindle, no pun intended, their digital offerings, B&N has partnered with Samsung to bring a new Nook-ish device to consumers.

The device will be a co-branded Samsung galaxy Tab 4. It is sure to have the same, or darn near similar, specs tot he current Tab 4′s out there, but we assume that B&N will have had a hand in some sort of UI overlay design that will take front and center. Much like their Nook does now, and like Amazons Kindle has. The video below shows off some peoples reactions to the new device. Needless to say, there is a grumpy cat too. You might also notice the similarities in the reactions and the way they angle the device to another teaser video that was released for the Amazon Fire phone. I doubt Samsung got crazy and made a 3D display just for B&N, more so they are playing up the comedy aspect of it all. Take a watch.

The grumpy cat is the best. Now, a visual reminder, actually, the old video, from the Kindle Fire Phone teaser.

Anyone out there interested in what Samsung and B&N are cooking up together, or are they both kind of tossing up a hail mary to see if anyone catches the ball?

Source: Liliputing

The post Samsung branded B&N Nooks get teased in video, reminds us of the Amazon Fire Phone teaser a little too much appeared first on AndroidSPIN.

.CPlase_panel display:none;

Boston PD monitored concertgoers with facial recognition

With perhaps the exception of the bands on stage, no one really goes to a concert to be seen — they go to feel the music coursing through their veins and melt into a crowd. As it turns out, fun-seekers at the 2013 Boston Calling music festivals weren’t just caught on film by photographers and Instagram nuts. According to recent, intriguing reports from Dig Boston and Noisey, the city was quietly watching thanks to more than 10 active security cameras and some scarily clever IBM software that recognized concert-goers and passersby based on their skin color, clothes, and facial features. Smile!

All of that visual data was relayed back to a command center of sorts where members of the city government and the Boston Police chewed on it, along with social media snippets that helped flesh out their understanding of the crowd’s actions. It’s not hard to see why a city still recovering from a senseless terrorist attack would want to dial up the level of security at a pair of huge concerts. To hear Dig tell the tale, the city hoped to use that preponderance of data to (among other things) identify “suspicious objects,” find logistical logjams and keep an eye out for possibly sketchy characters.

The scope of the test project was at the same time impressive and unnerving: An IBM memo unearthed by the Dig Boston team purportedly outlined plans to use that face capturing tech on every one of the show’s attendees. Even more unnerving than the notion of being silently surveilled is the fact that some of that data remained accessible well after the concerts came to a close. Kenneth Lipp, one of the journalists who broke the story for Dig, told Vice’s Noisey that he was able to recover a full 70 hours of recorded footage from the concerts just before the team pulled the trigger on their story — keep in mind, it’s been nearly a year since the second monitored Boston Calling came to a close.

Comments

Via: Noisey (Vice)

Source: Dig Boston

.CPlase_panel display:none;

A restaurant in China lets robots do a lot of the work

Let’s face it, the Robot Apocalypse is near. Just a few days ago, we met A.L.O Botlr, a robot from the high-tech Aloft Hotel in Cupertino, California that acts as a butler. Naturally, the food industry, as important as it is, couldn’t stay behind, so here’s where a new restaurant in China comes in. Simply called Robot Restaurant, the place, located in Kunshan, China, has over a dozen androids in its staff. Some of them are waiters, others cook and a couple greet customers as they come in — sorry, everyone, no booze-carting servers here. Robot Restaurant’s owner and founder, Song Yugang, that his peculiar staff members can understand about 40 “everyday sentences,” making them smart enough to interact with human customers. Most importantly, he adds, “They can’t get sick or ask for vacation. After charging up for two hours they can work for five hours.”

Filed under: Misc, Robots, Alt

Comments

Via: Yahoo News

Source: New Vision

.CPlase_panel display:none;