Koniku Kore fuses live neurons with a silicon chip to sniff out bombs

Why it matters to you

This project demonstrates how technology might be augmented with living cells to take advantage of the computational power of an organic brain.

A device that is able to recognize the smell of explosives was unveiled at the TEDGlobal conference in Tanzania. Oshi Agabi, the man behind the creation, expressed a hope that it could be used as a more effective means of airport security.

Many artificial technology projects attempt to model its systems on the human brain, hoping to take advantage of its capacity for complex analysis. The Koniku Kore goes one step further, bringing together silicon components with living neurons sourced from mice. “Biology is technology,” Agabi said. “Bio is tech. Our deep learning networks are all copying the brain.”

Agabi explained that he and his team figured out a method of giving the neurons instructions, in order to assign the system a particular task, like scoping out bomb threats in an airport. In this particular context, the devices could be placed discreetly around the building, preventing the need for the crowded security checks that we use today.

The Koniku Kore was revealed publicly at TEDGlobal, but images of the prototype device can’t be shared at the present time. However, Agabi did show a video of the system being taken out of the lab setting and confirmed that in its current form, the living neurons can be kept alive for a “couple of months” in a normal environment, according to a report from the BBC. Other research teams apparently have been able to keep neurons alive for as long as a year, so this facet of the project should improve over time.

The device could also be used to “smell” different diseases in a medical context, reading the molecules given off by a person suffering from a particular condition. However, Agabi has greater ambitions for the potential the technology has looking further forward.

“We think that the processing power that is going to run the robots of the future will be synthetic biology-based and we are laying the foundations for that today,” he said. The Koniku Kore is a rather amazing device in its own right, but the amalgam of living neurons and computer chips that underpins the project could have a profound impact as the technology matures.

Koniku Kore fuses live neurons with a silicon chip to sniff out bombs

Why it matters to you

This project demonstrates how technology might be augmented with living cells to take advantage of the computational power of an organic brain.

A device that is able to recognize the smell of explosives was unveiled at the TEDGlobal conference in Tanzania. Oshi Agabi, the man behind the creation, expressed a hope that it could be used as a more effective means of airport security.

Many artificial technology projects attempt to model its systems on the human brain, hoping to take advantage of its capacity for complex analysis. The Koniku Kore goes one step further, bringing together silicon components with living neurons sourced from mice. “Biology is technology,” Agabi said. “Bio is tech. Our deep learning networks are all copying the brain.”

Agabi explained that he and his team figured out a method of giving the neurons instructions, in order to assign the system a particular task, like scoping out bomb threats in an airport. In this particular context, the devices could be placed discreetly around the building, preventing the need for the crowded security checks that we use today.

The Koniku Kore was revealed publicly at TEDGlobal, but images of the prototype device can’t be shared at the present time. However, Agabi did show a video of the system being taken out of the lab setting and confirmed that in its current form, the living neurons can be kept alive for a “couple of months” in a normal environment, according to a report from the BBC. Other research teams apparently have been able to keep neurons alive for as long as a year, so this facet of the project should improve over time.

The device could also be used to “smell” different diseases in a medical context, reading the molecules given off by a person suffering from a particular condition. However, Agabi has greater ambitions for the potential the technology has looking further forward.

“We think that the processing power that is going to run the robots of the future will be synthetic biology-based and we are laying the foundations for that today,” he said. The Koniku Kore is a rather amazing device in its own right, but the amalgam of living neurons and computer chips that underpins the project could have a profound impact as the technology matures.

YouTube redesign rolls out complete with new logo and vertical videos

Why it matters to you

When you go to YouTube, it will now look cleaner and hopefully will even be a little easier to use.

YouTube is getting a refresh. The YouTube logo has become a famous part of the digital world, but it’s time for that logo to move on — to make room for a new, slightly more modern one.

The logo change is part of a massive, ongoing design overhaul that first began earlier this year — one that is delivering a much cleaner look and showing off a new “dark mode” that replaces light colors with dark ones. That design overhaul, however, was kept in beta — until today. Not only is it now out of beta, but some of its features are now rolling out to mobile users, and the new logo will be featured front and center.

The logo is designed to be useful across platforms. Instead of the word “tube” being emphasized, you’ll find a small “play” icon before the word YouTube. That’s good for YouTube — it means that on mobile and in small spaces, instead of having the whole word “YouTube,” the basic play icon can be shown.

Of course, the logo is a small part of the slew of design changes coming to YouTube. The desktop interface has been upgraded to make use of Google’s “material design” language, which influences the use of the so-called “hamburger” menu, and, in general, makes things a lot cleaner and easier to view. The mobile app is also getting some of the redesign. Now, the header is white and navigation buttons can be found on the bottom of the app. You’ll also get some more playback controls in the form of gestures — including the ability to swipe left or right to advance to the next or previous video.

Another cool feature is the ability for the video to change its shape depending on the video format. So, if a video is filmed vertically, it can play back on the entire screen of a smartphone rather than playing with black bars on either side. The feature isn’t unexpected — Google teased it earlier in the year.

While these major changes to YouTube are rolling out August 29, YouTube has said that the rollout may not be complete for at least a full day — so if you don’t yet see the new YouTube, you should soon.

Hurricane Harvey: Here’s how you can help those affected

The resources to learn about Hurricane Harvey and help those affected.

It’s clear that what’s happening in Texas, and Houston specifically, is going to take months, if not years, to resolve itself. The waters keep rising in America’s fourth-largest city, and people are getting displaced.

Google has taken it upon itself to create a number of resources that users both within Texas and outside the state can use to track the storm, find shelter, and donate money. Here’s what you need to know.

Google’s Crisis Map

Google has built a Crisis Map that overlays open shelters on top of a precipitation map, allowing those in the affected region to see whether it’s the right idea to try to move to a new location.

This is the worst storm since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, and the cleanup efforts will be ongoing. Google’s Crisis Map will continue to be a resource for everything to do with Harvey.

Google also says that it is donating up to $500,000 to the American Red Cross to help with triage and, in the months to come, cleanup effort.

Hurricane Harvey Crisis Map

Carriers are waiving fees

Most of the U.S. carriers are waiving fees for prepaid and postpaid customers in the affected regions. While there are widespread power outages in most of east Texas and throughout the city of Houston, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and AT&T have all pledged to keep their service up and running, so you can call, text and use data as much as necessary to stay safe.

U.S. carriers are waiving fees for those affected by Hurricane Harvey

Do your part

If you can, we ask you to please contribute to the Hurricane Harvey relief efforts. Every cent you share can make a real difference.

• Donate to the American Red Cross
• Donate to the Salvation Army

Google Maps makes it easier to find parking with your phone

It’s hard enough getting where you want to go, but parking, once you get there, can be a trial in and of itself.

Public parking near most destinations in big cities isn’t exactly easy to find, and chances are unless you put the parking as your destination, you’re probably not lined up properly to get into it once Google Maps cheerfully states You Have Arrived. Google Maps knows that’s a big frustration and it’s starting to show parking around your destination. If you’re navigating in one of select major cities, that is.

Google is debuting the ability to find parking around your destination when you’re starting your drive, so you’re navigating to where you park rather than where you’re trying to visit. This is available for destinations in 25 cities within the U.S., including New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco.

Twenty-five cities outside the U.S. will see Parking Difficulty icons when they’re setting a destination to drive to, from limited to medium to easy, but won’t have the parking locations listed to specifically navigate to. The parking difficulty is gauged by machine learning, so it might not be correct every time, but at least having a ballpark is a step in the right direction.

Google Maps: Everything you need to know

It’s way too late to bring back Google Glass

The next step for Google feels like it should be obvious, but for some reason it’s not going to happen.

I was a Day One Google Glass user. In fact, my thoughts on Google Glass were the first thing I ever published here at Android Central. I complain every now and again about how the tech got a bad rap and Google shouldn’t have backed down on a consumer model, but today there’s a lot more to talk about. Today we have faster, more efficient tech and a growing eagerness to do more with things like Augmented Reality.

Basically, what I’m saying is, I want Google Glass back.

Admit it, there was nothing wrong with Glass

Google Glass isn’t on shelves at Best Buy today because it’s ridiculously easy to scare people. The narrative painting Glass as this master creepshot spy gadget for the 1% was crafted by the same tech bloggers who willingly stood in line for hours to get their hands on Snapchat Spectacles that never get used anymore because the tech basically never worked right. It’s embarrassing to look back at how many people were able to paint Glass as this evil, ugly thing that you could only buy if you were special. Nevermind that Glass was never an actual consumer product and was clearly labeled as such, or that actual spy cameras cost a fraction of what Glass cost at the time; it was evil because people said so.

Imagine Google Glass 3.0 with the sensor from a Google Pixel.

Take a look at the other head-mounted displays that are available now, and none of them come close to how functional Glass is in its unfinished form. Glass was the first real Augmented Reality gadget for me, in that it actually augmented my reality. I didn’t have to look away from the road to see the next set of instructions on my GPS. I wasn’t pulling my phone out every 20 seconds to check my notifications. I never worried about grabbing the perfect shot when my kids were doing something cool.

Glass was clearly the start of something amazing, and instead of more advancements with processors and cameras to streamline the design and make the headset more capable, we got Android Wear watches and third-party head-mounted displays and hideous sunglasses that only take photos and videos you can enjoy on Snapchat. Yay.

I imagine Google Glass 3.0 with the sensor from a Google Pixel, a new, smaller, and more efficient processor, and wireless charging. Maybe a more advanced display with some additional information, but not much. Honestly, having spent lots of time with Hololens and other “full” glasses, I find myself preferring the single-eye display. Human beings don’t always react well to asymmetrical designs, but from a functional perspective it worked well.

ARCore would be next-level on Glass

You know what I have absolutely no desire to do when immersing myself in AR? Hold my phone up for 20 minutes and feel like I’m staring through a window into another world. Immerse me! Make me feel like I’m actually standing among the virtual creations playing out in this other world. Google’s ARCore is all about giving Tango-like Augmented Reality to everyone, and that seems so perfect for a Glass-like headset. No holding a phone up; just walk around the world and tap the touch-pad on the side of your headset to place a virtual object. Leave my hands free for something like motion controllers, so I can continue to interact with the AR world.

The display on Glass as we know it wouldn’t have been super great for ARCore because the resolution was fairly low, but if that could be improved it would create a wildly unique experience. I could get turn-by-turn directions to the can of soup I’m looking for while walking around in a grocery store. Pokémon Go could be running in the background so an Onyx could spawn and tower over me as I walk down the street. It’s so easy to imagine the possibilities by combining what I can already do with Glass with what I can already do with ARCore. How is this not a perfect match of awesome tech?

It’s probably not going to happen

Unfortunately, Google doesn’t seem focused on Glass for consumers right now. ARCore was designed to make AR accessible and to compete with the buzz Apple created earlier this year. The Virtual Positioning System Google is currently working on seems limited to the standalone Daydream headset for now and not something more AR focused.

It’ll probably be another two years before the things we’re seeing on phones are moved back to head-mounted displays, and in some ways that’s probably for the best. It’s easy for someone like me to get overly hyped about something like Glass, but making a headset that lasts someone a full day of constant AR use isn’t currently possible. That’s the next big step, making it so AR is just sort of everywhere all the time so you can always interact with it. The limits in battery tech alone would make that impossible right now.

But if Google were to re-release Glass with ARCore onboard, I’d be first in line without a moment’s hesitation.

YouTube brings design changes full circle with new logo and more mobile features

YouTube is almost constantly evolving.

One of the world’s most popular video sites is growing, diversifying in content and platform, and its design is evolving, too. We’ve told you over the previous months how a new desktop design (with a dark mode, no less) was introduced earlier this year for users to test, and the YouTube app has already been redesigned once this year.

And it’s not done yet.

Outlined in a blog post, YouTube’s mobile apps are losing the red banners, letting the content be the only color on screen. YouTube is also going beyond the double-tap to fast-forward, and will soon experiment with swiping left and right to switch between videos. That will be a very interesting experiment, indeed, given how many of us are used to swiping back in forth in Google Play Movies and often forget the different interface when we switch back to YouTube.

YouTube’s look and feel is evolving as fast as the content it’s hosting.

Speed controls are also coming to the mobile app, so you can slow down and speed up videos as needed, and YouTube’s mobile app will adapt to different aspect ratios of videos, including the dreaded vertical video. No more black bars!

The new desktop design YouTube’s been testing for months is rolling out to everyone, at last, including our beloved dark theme, which now needs to make the jump to mobile. YouTube is also updating its logo, putting the app icon on the left while making the YouTube text a little bolder and all the same color.

There’s a lot here to unpack, and a lot that’ll be rolling out in the days and weeks ahead, so what are you most excited about? What are you hoping to see coming soon?

YouTube: The ultimate guide

Amazon Echo Dot review 2017

Amazon’s smallest and least expensive Echo is the one most folks should start with — and for many folks it’s all they’ll need.

Ed. Note: We first reviewed the Amazon Echo Dot in April 2016. In that time it’s undergone a hardware revision, and Alexa — the brains inside every Echo device — has continue to gain functionality. So we’re taking a fresh look at the Echo Dot in the context of where it stands at this point in 2017. We’re also taking a fresh look at the original Amazon Echo.

Looking back at my original Amazon Echo Dot review headline, I was either being remarkably prescient (OK, maybe not that remarkable), or trying to be a little too clever. But in any event, I was right.

An inch and a half of Alexa may be all you need.

If you need any more proof, look no further than the sheer number of Echo Dots (or is it Echoes Dot?) I’ve purchased. I’ve got a three in my home. Another in the office. Gave one to my parents and my in-laws this past Christmas.

If that’s not a rousing endorsement, I don’t know what is.

But let’s start at the beginning. What is the Echo Dot? It’s a very simple connected speaker, close to an oversized hockey puck at 3 inches in diameter, and about 1.3 inches high. It has Wifi to connect to the Internet, and Bluetooth to connect to anything else.

Four buttons are found up top — volume up and down, a button to kill the microphones should you want to make sure the Dot’s not listening in, and an “action button” to make Alexa listen straightaway. (It’s also used to get the Dot back into setup mode.)

That’s actually a change from the first-generation Echo Dot, which sported a rotating collar (like the full-size Echo) for adjusting the volume. An LED ring still lights up that collar and helps show which direction Alexa is listening. That light also shines in different colors, particularly if you’ve employed Amazon’s Alexa calling. (And messaging.)

The whole thing’s still powered by microUSB. For most folks that’s probably just fine (and it still comes with its own power cable). But for those of us who are trying to cast aside microUSB and go all-in on USB-C, that’ll be something to hope for in the next-gen Echo Dot.

Aside from switching power cables (and that’s admittedly a small complaint) I’d love to see Amazon class up the overall design of the Echo Dot a bit for the next release. We’ve seen how much a little bit of curvature can do with the Eufy Genie, which is in most every other way an inferior Echo Dot. But the expanded waist and tapered top look more sophisticated.

While I said that Alexa herself — the software underpinnings that allow the Echo Dot to do what it does — has grown a bit in the year since the Echo Dot was first released, the way you talk to her hasn’t really changed. Say her name, and she appears. (Unless you’ve changed it to “Computer,” like this guy did.) Ask her a question, and she answers. Maybe. (Amazon still lags behind Google when it comes to the depth of knowledge.) Ask her to do something (nicely, folks!) and she does it, providing that she’s got the proper Alexa Skill enabled, and your accounts are all synced up.

Amazon did the Dot first, and it did it right. What more do we need than a better-looking Dot?

That’s still the biggest barrier to entry for a lot of this — installing Skills and connecting accounts. It’s not insurmountable, and for the more nerdy among us (hi, I’m Phil, nice to meetcha) it’s a normal part of online life. But for, say, my parents, who are pushing 70? It’s a little bit of a leap. What can Amazon do about that? I don’t know.

Probably the biggest change since our first Echo Dot review is the price. The second-generation model came with a pretty steep discount, dropping the Dot from $90 to $50. And it’s not uncommon to find it on sale for $40.

That is what’s helped make the Echo Dot a true impulse buy. It’s what removed any reservation from my voice (and my typing style, I suppose) when I say “Just buy one.”

At the worst you have a $50 alarm clock and timer that can also read you the headlines and play music and do all kinds of other stuff. A ridiculous amount of stuff for $50, really. And that’s before you start adding on other Alexa Skills, like controlling lights and sprinklers and pretty much anything else anyone wants to add.

The Echo Dot is still a ridiculously good value.

See at Amazon

Buy this: Echo Dot Case

If you don’t want to wait for Amazon to redesign the Echo Dot before you can get one that looks better, maybe check this out. Amazon sells $10 cases that the Dot drops into, making it look not so much like a glossy plastic hockey puck and more like, erm, a glossy plastic hockey puck that’s inside a more stylish case. Fabric isn’t bad, and leather is way cool.

See at Amazon

Amazon Echo

• Tap, Echo or Dot: The ultimate Alexa question
• All about Alexa Skills
• Amazon Echo review
• Echo Dot review
• Top Echo Tips & Tricks
• Amazon Echo vs. Google Home
• Get the latest Alexa news

See at Amazon

Tinder Gold launches worldwide to reveal who likes you

Tinder has been trying out its Gold subscription service in a handful of countries since June, and now it’s launching the experimental tier worldwide. Pay $5 per month (this price isn’t set in stone) and you can find out who likes you without having to swipe through an endless sea of profiles. In that sense, it’s more like a classic dating site — you can go straight to the people who fancy you and match up with the ones who pique your interest. You also get other premium Tinder features like Passport, Rewind and one Boost per month.

The service already has plenty of paid features, but they tend to be one-shot purchases with short-term usefulness. Gold, in theory, is an evergreen option — so long as you’re still on the dating scene, you can make use of it. That’s good if you’re genuinely interested in romance and don’t want to waste time, but it’s also good for Tinder’s bottom line. Instead of watching its income fluctuate, it could have a relatively steady flow of cash from Gold subscribers who want to get the most out of the app.

Via: TechCrunch, Buzzfeed

Source: Tinder

Google Maps Expands ‘Parking Difficulty’ Indicator to 25 Cities Around the World

Google today announced its “parking difficulty” indicator in Google Maps for iOS and Android will now appear in 25 additional cities around the world. The feature was previously available in the United States only.

The simple feature shows a “P” icon with a difficulty level such as “moderate” or “limited,” based on how easy it will be to find parking at the destination entered. The feature is based on historical parking data and machine learning.

The following cities support the feature starting today:

• Alicante
• Amsterdam
• Copenhagen
• Barcelona
• Cologne
• Darmstadt
• Düsseldorf
• London
• Madrid
• Málaga
• Manchester
• Milan
• Montréal

• Moscow
• Munich
• Paris
• Prague
• Rio de Janeiro
• Rome
• São Paulo
• Stockholm
• Stuttgart
• Toronto
• Valencia
• Vancouver

Google Maps is available for free on the App Store [Direct Link] for iPhone and iPad.

Tag: Google Maps
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