Emoji join Dali and van Gogh in New York’s MoMA

You might think of emoji as a lowbrow form of communication, but according to MoMA, it’s art. The museum added the original 176 emoji, developed by Shigetaka Kurita for Japanese pagers in 1999, to its collection. “With the advent of email in the 1970s … the conveyance of tone and emotion became both harder and more urgently important,” MoMA design specialist Paul Galloway wrote. “When combined with text, these simple images allow for more nuanced intonation.”

MoMA licensed the emjoi through a licensing deal with DoCoMo. In December, the New York-based museum will display them in the lobby, using both standard graphics and animations. “In a sense, what we’ve really acquired is a new communication platform,” Paola Antonelli told the New York Times.

Developing the 12 by 12 pixel characters for NTT DoCoMo was no easy task. To convey a host of information with just 144 dots, Kurita studied manga, street signs and Chinese characters. Some of the 176 pictograms, like a heart, laughing smiley and martini glass, are instantly recognizable. Others, like a red circle with three lines, are obtuse unless you know the translation (a hot spring!).

Used at the time to convey the weather and other messages, the symbols were a hit and copied by rival Japanese carriers. However, it took another 12 years for them to go mainstream. First they were translated into unicode in 2010, then Apple unveiled a much larger set for its original iPhone the following year. They’ve expanded rapidly ever since, and there are now almost 2,000 standard emoji and a freaking movie, something Kurita probably never saw coming.

Via: NYT

Source: MoMA

Spam texts could help solve a Canadian murder case

If you own a mobile phone, chances are that you’ve received at least one spam text message. Normally, an unscrupulous company is trying to hawk its financial services or help you save money on a pair of Ray Bans, but Canada’s Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) will today take the unusual step of sending thousands of potential witnesses unsolicited text messages in an attempt to solve a 2015 murder case.

The case in question centers on 65-year-old hitchhiker Frederick “John” Hatch, whose body was found in Erin, Ontario on December 17th, 2015. Officers say he was last seen alive the day before in Ottawa, 450 kilometers away. With the investigation now almost a year old, the OPP has unveiled a “innovative new technique,” which involves collecting the phone numbers of everyone who was in the area via court order.

Roughly 7,500 phone numbers were identified to have been used in the vicinity of West Hunt Club Road and Merivale Road in Nepean around the time of Hatch’s death. The numbers in question will receive two texts later today — one in English and one in French — which directs their owners to a police website and asks them to answer a number of questions.

The OPP obtained the numbers via a Production Order, which forces mobile providers to provide the logs of all cellphone use in the aforementioned area. Police have been quick to state that the logs have been scrubbed of any identifiable information but say that witnesses have the option of sharing that data if they do decide to answer the questions.

Before his death, Hatch was apparently seen wearing a denim vest with Mickey Mouse characters on the back, a black leather jacket, a blue and white bandana, glasses and black Harley-Davidson boots. He also carried a red duffel bag. Police hope that people will remember seeing a man wearing those distinctive items and provide new insights into the ongoing homicide case.

#OPP pioneers investigative technique with high-tech text message canvass to identify potential witnesses in murder case. #mrhatch pic.twitter.com/GP77kTzH4W

— Ontario Prov Police (@OPP_News) October 26, 2016

Via: Motherboard

Source: OPP

Qualcomm just announced the biggest chip acquisition ever

The smartphone world is starting to slow, and the companies that make the chips that go inside them are teaming up to stave off dwindling profits. Perhaps that’s why Qualcomm today announced that it’s picking up NXP Semiconductor for $47 billion, in what is set to become the biggest ever semiconductor deal.

While NXP does make smartphone chips — it makes the NFC payment chips and once supplied Apple’s motion co-processors inside the iPhone — the company has a huge presence in the automotive, security and Internet of Things industries. In fact, in its disclosure of the deal, NXP boasts that it powers 14 of the 15 most-popular vehicle infotainment consoles.

Qualcomm has expanded into similar markets but has found things slow going. The acquisition is all about consolidating efforts, ensuring the merged company will dominate semiconductor markets on a number of different fronts.

“By joining Qualcomm’s leading SoC capabilities and technology roadmap with NXP’s leading industry sales channels and positions in automotive, security and IoT, we will be even better positioned to empower customers and consumers to realize all the benefits of the intelligently connected world,” says Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm.

As with any major buyout, the deal will be subject to regulatory approvals across the globe. Qualcomm believes it will get the green light before the end of 2017.

Source: Qualcomm