Windows 8.1

Windows 8.1 is here, and for the most part, we dig it.  The first major update to Microsoft’s Windows 8 OS, Windows 8.1 isn’t a wholesale refresh so much as a series of smaller tuneups that come together to smoothen out its predecessor’s rough edges.
If you’re a staunch anti-Start-screenite, Windows 8.1 won’t change your mind, but it does make a handful of concessions to you and your ilk. And if you’re already down with Microsoft’s new touch-centric ways, the update makes things even better. Either way, there’s more than a few new things to see here, so here’s a quick rundown of how you can take advantage of them.

The New Start Button

The most publicized part of Windows 8.1 is also the least significant. Yes, the Start button is back at home in the bottom left corner of the desktop, but it still doesn’t bring the Windows 7-era Start menu back with it.
Instead, simply tapping or clicking on it will bring you over to the new Start screen. Putting the button back is a nice way to show Microsoft is at least somewhat listening to its audience, but its vision for the future of computing seems to be set in stone.

Booting to the Desktop

Windows 8.1’s new “boot to desktop” option is probably going to be the most useful addition for old-school Windows users. When it’s enabled, it does exactly what its name suggests–instead of going to the Start screen when you boot up your computer, you can go straight into desktop mode and ignore those ‘live tiles’ completely.
To do this, all you have to do is right-click on the desktop taskbar, select Properties, click on the Navigation tab, and then check off the box next to the phrase “When I sign in or close all apps on a screen, go to the desktop instead of Start.” Hit Apply and OK, and then you’re all ready to ignore the ‘Modern UI’ for as long as you’d like.

Shutting Down Faster

The Win+X menu has gotten a bit of a boost with Windows 8.1 too, but its most useful tuneup is its new quick shut down option. Pressing the Windows and X keys together or right-clicking on the new Start button will bring up, among other things, a “Shut down or sign out” prompt. Select it, and you can, well, shut down or sign out of your PC without having to go through the old convoluted method of powering down from the Start screen. Nothing major, sure, but it might save you a headache or two.

Keeping Your Background Consistent

One of the more aesthetically pleasing upgrades with Windows 8.1 is the ability to make your Start screen background the same as your desktop’s background. There’s no significant step to make it happen–just set an image as your background like you normally would, and it’ll carry over to both sections.

If you want to change the Start screen’s background back to what it was before–or to one of the new colors Microsoft’s included with the Windows 8.1 update–just swipe open the charms bar while you’re on the Start screen, press Settings, then Personalize, and then change away.

Expanding Your Lock Screen

Along those lines, Windows 8.1 also expands the lock screen’s functionality. Now, you can set it to display a photo slideshow by going to Settings from the charms bar, then clicking Change PC Settings, then hitting Lock screen under the Personalization menu, and then swiping the “Play a slideshow on the lock screen” option to on. From there, you can display photos that are either stored locally on your PC or stashed in your SkyDrive account.

In those same settings, you can also choose to access a variety of apps from the lock screen. Microsoft’s native camera app is the most integrated one–once you ensure that the “Swipe down on the lock screen to use the camera” option is turned on, you’ll be able to–you guessed it–swipe down on the lock screen to access your PC’s shooter.
Furthermore, the lock screen settings now let you enable certain apps to show quick notifications while you’re signed out. If you receive a phone call while signed into Skype, for instance, you’ll be able to answer it while your PC is locked.
Skype and the default mail, alarm, and calendar apps will display status updates on the lock screen by default, but the aforementioned settings menu lets you enable notifications from up to three other apps like Twitter, NFL Mobile, and Facebook as well.

Reorganizing Your Start Screen

While those new desktop and lock screen features are worth noting, the majority of Windows 8.1’s upgrades apply to Microsoft’s ‘Modern UI’ interface. More specifically, you can now organize your Start screen in a few new ways.
For one, app tiles on the Start screen can be resized into two new shapes: a smaller square one, and a larger square one. We find the smaller ones to be particularly handy, as you can now fit four small tiles in the same space as one medium one.

But whatever your preference, changing these tile sizes is done the same way as before–just long press or right-click whatever Start screen app you want to change, hit the Resize button that appears on the bottom menu bar, and select its shape.
Long pressing an app will also bring up another one of Windows 8.1’s new features, which is the ability to organize particular apps into a named group. So if you wanted to put Twitter, Facebook, and Skype together under one group called “Social media,” just long press one of those apps, type “Social media” into one of the “Name group” bars that will appear near the top of the screen, and slide over your chosen programs under that new banner.

Making Better Use of Apps View

The Apps view is back and can still be accessed by swiping down on the Start screen, but it’s worth mentioning that apps can now organized by the date they were installed, how frequently they’re used, and their category (Kindle is a “Books & Reference” app, Evernote and Calendar are “Productivity” apps, etc.). These options can be accessed by tapping “by name” (or however you have it organized at any given time) at the top of the Apps view screen.

By right-clicking on the desktop taskbar, clicking Properties, and going to the Navigation tab, you can further change the way you use the Apps view too. There, you can check off boxes to make Apps view the default view when you hit any Start button, to make it so desktop apps are automatically listed first in the Apps view, and to make it so searching in Apps view returns results from everywhere on your PC rather than just your apps themselves.

Preparing for Quiet Hours

Windows 8.1 expands the Modern UI app catalogue, but it also gives you the ability to turn off any notifications you receive from those apps for a select period of time. It’s a feature that’s been done before, but Microsoft calls it “Quiet Hours,” and it can be accessed in the same Change PC Settings menu we mentioned earlier. From there, you go to Search and Apps, and then Notifications. Then you can change your particular Quiet Hours, or turn the setting on or off entirely.

Reshaping Your Apps

One of the most obvious complaints with Windows 8’s Modern UI was its poor multitasking capabilities, but Microsoft has at least made some steps towards fixing things this time around. Instead of only being able to have a maximum of two apps on screen at once, you can now have up to five–provided that your monitor(s) have enough room, at least.

Even if they don’t, though, Windows 8.1 gives you a little more control over the window sizes of whatever apps you have going on. Instead of strictly taking up either half or a third of your display, the apps can now take up as little or as large amount of space as you’d like when you adjust the sliders on screen. Any app can now have more than one of these “snapped” windows open at once as well.

‘Smart’ Searching with Bing

Windows 8.1’s most impressive new feature is also its easiest to use. Microsoft’s essentially baked its Bing search engine into the OS itself, and the result is an attractive and highly practical search function that can give you info from your PC, apps, and the web all at once. Activating it is done the same way as before–either select Search from the charms bar or just start typing your query at any point while you’re on the Start screen–but the improvements here make search more unified, intelligent, and accessible than it was in Windows 8.

Taking Your SkyDrive Docs Offline

As it did with Bing, Microsoft has made it a point to make SkyDrive a fundamental part of Windows 8.1. If you use Dropbox or Google Drive, there’s not much for you here. But if you’re already on Microsoft’s cloud storage bandwagon, Windows 8.1 will let you save and sync all of your files from your PC by default–if you’re online, that is.

Thankfully, though, Microsoft has also added in the ability to easily save your SkyDrive docs for offline viewing and editing. If you’re in the SkyDrive folder in File Explorer, just right click on a file and select the “Make available offline” prompt. And if you’re in the SkyDrive Modern UI app, just swipe any files and select the “Make offline” option that will appear at the bottom. If those offline files end up taking up too much local storage space for your liking, you’re able to make them online-only again.

Saving Good Reads in Reading List

Microsoft’s fine tuned a wide variety of Windows’ built-in apps with the 8.1 update, with everything from Mail to Xbox Music to Internet Explorer becoming noticeably more functional.
A few new native apps were added as well, though, and our favorite of the bunch is Reading List. The reading app is essentially Microsoft’s take on Pocket, but like the updated Bing and SkyDrive apps, it impresses by being so deeply integrated with the OS itself.

It can be accessed like any other app, but adding articles and other snippets from the web to your Reading List is quite simple. When you’re in the Modern UI’s Internet Explorer app, just select the Share option from the charms bar, and you’ll see an icon to bookmark your current web page for later reading. Hit it, and it’ll be saved in Reading List for later.
It’s also worth noting that the Modern UI version of Internet Explorer supports a new “Reading View” option that presents web pages in a warmer and (generally) more aesthetically pleasing format. You can access that for articles and the like by clicking on the little book icon next to the bottom-based address bar in IE 11.

Subtle Improvements

There are a few other goodies included with Windows 8.1, but the acts of using them are mostly self-explanatory. The Windows Store is better looking, a handful of new apps have been added, and the whole thing runs like a dream on Windows 8 machines. It doesn’t fix all of the larger-scale issues with Windows 8, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Take advantage of all the new things it has to offer, and you just might come around on Microsoft’s new methods. Maybe.

Nelson Mandela dead: Three wives and a family life haunted by shadow of tragedy

South Africa was moving forward, but nothing could make up for the toll taken on his family life by his years in prison – and before that on the run

Taken its toll: Mandela's personal life was filled with sadness, his second daughter Makaziwe was named after his first daughter who died aged nine months

Getty

Mandela's personal life was filled with sadness and tragedy.
South Africa was moving forward, but nothing could make up for the toll taken on his family life by his years in prison – and his years before that on the run as a wanted man.
Known worldwide for his warmth and humanity, Mandela admitted he had been “a demanding, ambitious father” and “physically undemonstrative” with his children.
Married three times, he fathered six children and had more than 20 grandchildren and 13 ­great-grandchildren. But, in his lifetime, he also lost two sons, a daughter and a great-granddaughter in tragic circumstances. While in prison, he also missed the funerals of his mother and son, when the authorities refused to let him attend them.
After stepping down as President in 1999, he set about making amends to his family – becoming a father to his children as well as a nation.
The irony was that Mandela loved children. He delighted in spending time with his sons, daughters and grandchildren – and in meeting every new great-grandchild. He later moved back to the town where he was born, Qunu, to live as simply as his status would allow. With third wife Graca he also supported children’s charities and loved to be surrounded by young people.

First wife: Evelyn

Getty

Still, the shadows of the past were never far away. Mandela’s first marriage, to Evelyn Ntoko Mase, lasted 13 years but was put under strain by his days on the run as a revolutionary, when he would pop up at rallies all over the country confounding the authorities but could never return to his family home.
Three of four children from that first marriage died. The couple’s first daughter, Makaziwe, died from illness aged just nine months and they named their second daughter in her honour.
Their eldest son Thembi, 25, died in a car crash in 1969, Mandela – ­imprisoned on Robben Island – was not allowed to go to his funeral.
Then, when the couple’s youngest son Makgatho died from Aids in 2005, it inspired Mandela to take up the fight against the disease – using his famous name to challenge the taboos surrounding it.

Makgatho: Died from Aids, aged 54

Reuters

 He led by example, saying that he wanted to let it be known publicly how his son had died. “That is why I announced my son has died of Aids,” he said. “Let us give publicity to HIV/Aids and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness, like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died of HIV/Aids and people will stop regarding it as extraordinary.”
In 2003, he established a campaign to fight Aids that was so close to his heart he gave it his prison number, 46664.
Apart from the loss of his children and the road accident that killed his great-granddaughter Zenami in 2010, there were other deep sadnesses. Without a doubt, one of the deepest was Mandela’s failed marriage to Winnie.
From childhood, Mandela had always loved women. In Long Walk to Freedom, he writes: “The game I most enjoyed playing with the girls was what we called khetha, or choose-the-one-you-like.
“This was a spur of the moment sport that took place when we accosted a group of girls our own age and demanded that each select the boy she loved. Our rules dictated that the girl’s choice be respected and once she had chosen her favourite she was free to continue on her journey escorted by the lucky boy she loved.”
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela – his second wife – came from Mandela’s own Transkei region. The country’s first black social worker, she was working in Johannesburg when they met. Married in June 1958, Nelson and Winnie Mandela had two daughters, Zenani, born in 1958, and Zindzi, born 1960 – just 18 months before her father was sent to Robben Island.
Zenani grew up to marry Prince Thumbumuzi Dlamini, elder brother of King Mswati III of ­Swaziland.

Premiere: Mandela's daughter Zindzi

Getty

 At the age of 25, Zindzi, who had barely known her father, read out his speech refusing his conditional pardon in 1985. Mandela’s letters from prison overflow with love for Winnie. “Whenever I write you, I feel that inside physical warmth, that makes me forget all my problems,” he says in one letter.
“I become full of love.”
In another he wrote: “We couldn’t fulfil our wishes, as we had planned, to have a baby boy.
“I had hoped to build you a refuge, no matter how small, so that we would have a place for rest and sustenance before the arrival of the sad, dry days. I fell down and couldn’t do these things. I am as one building castles in the air.”
During Mandela’s incarceration, Winnie took on the mantle of his political heir and the “Mother of the Nation”.

Love: With second wife Winnie

Getty

 But her increasingly radical views caused tensions between them. Her supporters were behind the infamous “necklace” murders, where tyres filled with petrol were put around the chests and arms of suspected collaborators and set alight.
Then her personal bodyguards, known as the Mandela United Football Club, kidnapped a 14-year-old activist named Stompie Moeketsi who was later found murdered.
The ANC leadership declared Winnie was out of control but Mandela, in jail and in ill health, refused to repudiate her.
On his release in 1990, Winnie walked by his side but Mandela refused to move into her Soweto mansion and relations between them cooled. In 1991, Winnie was charged with the assault and kidnapping of Stompie.
Initially convicted and given six years in jail, Winnie appealed and had the sentence reduced to a fine. For many years, Mandela had tried to find excuses for the wife he felt he had left abandoned during his years on Robben Island. But in 1992, they announced their separation.
Divorce followed in March 1996, with Mandela citing Winnie’s adultery.
A newspaper editor had shown him a letter that confirmed Winnie had been unfaithful. In court, after gentle prodding by his own lawyer, Mandela quietly described how he had been “the loneliest man” after he was released from a 27-year imprisonment in 1990.

 

 Winnie, he testified, had been having an affair with a young colleague and never entered his bedroom while he was awake.
Yet even on the day of their formal divorce, Mandela still paid tribute to Winnie – known inside the ANC as Comrade Nomzamo – saying: “I shall never regret the life Comrade Nomzamo and I tried to share together. Circumstances beyond our control however dictated it should be otherwise.
“I part from my wife with no recriminations. I embrace her with all the love and affection I have nursed for her inside and outside prison from the moment I first met her.”
In 2003, Winnie was found guilty of 43 counts of fraud and 25 of theft, and was sentenced to five years in prison. This was later appealed and she received a suspended sentence.
As a result of the initial verdict she resigned both her parliamentary seat and the presidency of the ANC Women’s League.
In Long Walk to Freedom Mandela writes that Winnie “married a man who soon left her; that man became a myth; and then that myth returned home and proved to be just a man after all”. In 2007, Winnie was elected to the ANC national executive, winning the most votes of any candidate. Whatever scandals scar her past, she remains a powerful figure in the ANC and in South Africa.

His third wife: Graca

Getty

 On his 80th birthday in 1998, Mandela married Graca Machel. She was the widow of Samora Machel, one of his old ANC allies who became president of Mozambique and had died in an air crash 12 years earlier.
Graca was 52 when the couple married – almost three decades Mandela’s junior.
She was an international stateswoman in her own right and already well known as a ­humanitarian activist and campaigner on women’s and
children’s rights.
After more than a decade of marriage – and a chance to at last spend time with the children who saw so little of him in their childhoods – Mandela called Graca “my life”.

New Technology to Help with Hearing Loss

Hearing loss is a problem that affects a substantial part of the population, both young and old. As many as 36 million American adults report hearing loss to some extent, and while a vast number of them would greatly benefit from the use of a hearing aide, only 20% of the people that should wear them actuallydo.
One of the major complaints concerning hearing aids is that they don’t always allow the wearer to distinguish between the sounds they want to focus on (like people speaking to them) from distracting background sounds. However, a new technology has incorporated the use of “neural networks,” allowing many hearing impaired people to hear and recognize speech almost as well as regular hearers do.

New Technology to Help with Hearing Loss

A team of hearing scientists at Ohio State University has paired up with computer engineers to address the problem of filtering out words from distracting background sounds, and they may have come up with a viable solution. The new technology takes advantage of neural networks to increase the ability of test subjects to differentiate spoken words from other sounds. Thanks to these neural networks, test subjects have up to 90% recognition – much higher than the 10% recognition enabled by older hearing aids.
A computer algorithm developed by DeLiang Leon Wang, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Ohio State University, analyzes the sounds detected by the hearing aid, picks up speech patterns, and removes the interfering background noise. The computer algorithm examines all of the sounds, looking for the speech that is dominating the sounds in the background. Noisy speech is the name given to other people talking in the background, and stationary noise is the name given to background sounds (which include traffic sounds, air conditioners, background music, etc.). Both of these types of speech are dominated by noise, but foreground speech dominates the noise around it. The algorithm looks for the speech that dominates the noise around it, and filters out the rest of the sound.
The technology has proven to be incredibly effective, and a number of patents have already been taken out on it. It enables people to comprehend about 85 percent more foreground language, despite background babble or conversations; this is up from 25 percent from previous technology. Interestingly, a test administered to non-hearing-impaired students at Ohio State University proved that this technology worked better than they expected. Those without hearing impairment scored lower on the listening test than those that suffered from hearing loss.
The sky is the limit when it comes to potential uses for this technology. It can be integrated into smart phones, Bluetooth headsets, and other communication devices. Now that the technology has effectively begun to solve the “cocktail party problem” of too many background conversations on top of background noise, this breakthrough could provide the hearing impaired with a real chance of being able to communicate effectively.

Razer iPhone game controller leaked online

iPhone users apparently will have yet another game controller to add to their arsenal.
Seen in a series of photos tweeted by Evleaks, the Razer Kazuyo will offer a wraparound case that turns your iPhone into a lean, mean gaming machine. The photos reveal a design similar to iPhone game controllers offered by Logitech and Moga.
The controller sports four action buttons on the right and an arrow button on the left. The iPhone can also be tilted to give you a better view of the action.
Razer is known for its gaming tablets, laptops, mice, keyboards, and accessories. The … Read more

Nintendo's Fils-Aime: Fan desire 'doesn't affect what we do'

Nintendo's Fils-Aime: Fan desire 'doesn't affect what we do'

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime made abundantly clear in a recent interview that his company's direction is driven by strategy and not the changing desires of its fan base.
In an interview with Siliconera published on Wednesday, Fils-Aime was asked how does "what fans want or say influence [his] decisions." His response, which centered mainly on petitions brought to Nintendo by fans asking them to bring legacy games to newer devices, was telling of Nintendo's view of the market.
"I have to tell you -- it doesn't affect what we do," Fils-Aime … Read more

Strategists rejoice: Chromecast scores tic-tac-toe

Strategists rejoice: Chromecast scores tic-tac-toe

Nevermind HBO Go, Hulu Plus, or Pandora. The app that could show the depth of Chromecast as more than a short-range, media broadcasting dongle is TicTacToe.
Last updated on the Google Play Store in October, this iteration of tic-tac-toe requires two players, and works on both Android and iOS. Once you and a friend have installed the game on your smartphones, you'll be able to connect to the Chromecast and play X's and O's until your thumbs fall off.
The two-player nature of the game foretells a possible future for Chromecast, where the increasingly higher quality of … Read more

Microsoft's Project Spark starts to glimmer

Microsoft's Project Spark, an ambitious attempt on the company's part to turn gamers into developers, is making its debut on Windows 8.1 on Tuesday.
The app, which will be available later today in the Windows Store, according to The Verge, will be in beta when it's launched. In order to actually start using the app, users will need to download the program and then input a special beta key to activate it. Microsoft has not said how many people will be allowed to test the beta, but has a section on its Project Spark page letting … Read more

Apple to Samsung: Cough up $15.7 million for legal fees

Apple might have enough cash to buy up entire industries, but that doesn't mean it can't use a tiny bit more.
Apple on Thursday filed a motion with the United States District Court Northern District of California requesting that it be reimbursed $15.7 million for legal fees associated with its patent disputes with Samsung. The fees are roughly a quarter of the total compensation Apple paid to its attorneys in connection with the case it won in August 2012, and was deemed to be owed $929 million in damages last month.
In many cases, victorious companies will … Read more

Apple

Apple's tight grip: iPad Mini Retina still not in carrier stores

The newest iPad Mini with Wi-Fi and cellular capability (3G/4G) has yet to reach carrier stores in the US, pointing to Apple's tight control of supply.
Verizon shows the iPad Mini with Retina Display back ordered until December 16, as of Friday morning Pacific time, while AT&T is still showing 21-28 days when the device is ordered online.
Neither carrier, when contacted by CNET, could provide information about when the iPad Mini Retina would reach its stores.
T-Mobile's Web page for the iPad Mini Retina is showing, as of Friday, that the tablet will be &… Read more

Apple

Apple shows 74 percent of devices now run iOS 7

Despite some complaints about Apple's iOS 7 redesign, with its flat graphics and zooming animations, it appears the lion's share of users have now adopted the operating system.
Apple published an updated chart on its developer Web site for the iOS App Store, which shows that iOS 7 is now on 74 percent of all iOS devices. This means adoption of the operating system has grown 10 percent since numbers last reported in October.
The tech giant debuted iOS 7 in September, along with the launch of its new iPhone 5S and 5C. Just one month later, Apple … Read more

• CNET
• News

Apple

Apple shows 74 percent of devices now run iOS 7

Despite some complaints about Apple's iOS 7 redesign, with its flat graphics and zooming animations, it appears the lion's share of users have now adopted the operating system.
Apple published an updated chart on its developer Web site for the iOS App Store, which shows that iOS 7 is now on 74 percent of all iOS devices. This means adoption of the operating system has grown 10 percent since numbers last reported in October.
The tech giant debuted iOS 7 in September, along with the launch of its new iPhone 5S and 5C. Just one month later, Apple … Read more

Google Voice Search learns new languages

Google Voice Search learns new languages

With Voice Search a key component of Google's search strategy, the company announced Thursday that it now works with three other languages besides English.
Google Voice Search, part of the Google Search app for Android and iOS, can now respond to many queries in French, German, and Japanese in the language that they were originally asked.
Google did not immediately respond to questions about what languages are planned next, or why these three languages were chosen. However, given how many people speak Hindi, Spanish, Mandarin, and Cantonese, it would stand to reason that they would be high on Google'… Read more
Originally posted at Internet & Medi

• CNET
• News
• Mobile

Mobile

Apple tops smartphone market, but Samsung, Motorola gain

While Apple has continued to crush the US smartphone market, Samsung and Motorola also have seen some gains.
New data from ComScore analyzing the smartphone market in August through October shows that Apple nabbed 40.6 percent of the market share, up 0.2 percent from July. However, Samsung and Motorola also saw market share boosts. Samsung's share went up 1.3 percent to 25.4 percent, and Motorola nailed the third spot by rising 0.1 percent to 7 percent share.

Dragging behind were HTC and LG, respectively. Both of these phone makers lost market share during the … Read more

December 5, 2013 4:32 PM PST By Dara Kerr

Topics:

Smartphones,

Apple,

Android

Tags:

market,

Android,

Comscore,

Motorola,

Apple,

smartphone,

iOS,

Samsung

BlackBerry turned down Bieber because 'he's not going to last'

Time and cruelty have a wicked relationship.
I fancy they sit in a bar together most nights and look back to see what they both have wrought.
That's why tonight they might be having a beer, a giggle, and dance at news that has just emerged about the company formerly known as RIM.
Bloomberg Businessweek has been chatting to quite a few current and former employees of BlackBerry in order to understand what went right and what went less right.
While you might be fascinated with some of the technological debates surrounding this fascinating company, I was moved by … Read more

Originally posted at Technically Incorrect

December 5, 2013 4:19 PM PST By Chris Matyszczyk

Topics:

Media,

Random,

Social networking,

Advertising

Tags:

Technically Incorrect,

BlackBerry,

Marketing,

Justin Bieber

Google Voice Search learns new languages

With Voice Search a key component of Google's search strategy, the company announced Thursday that it now works with three other languages besides English.
Google Voice Search, part of the Google Search app for Android and iOS, can now respond to many queries in French, German, and Japanese in the language that they were originally asked.
Google did not immediately respond to questions about what languages are planned next, or why these three languages were chosen. However, given how many people speak Hindi, Spanish, Mandarin, and Cantonese, it would stand to reason that they would be high on Google'… Read more
Originally posted at Internet & Medi

RIP Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

RIP Nelson Mandela (1918-2013). #WEF pic.twitter.com/LSkyjw59dT

OnLine Electric Vehicles (OLEV)

OnLine Electric Vehicles (OLEV)
Wireless technology can now deliver electric power to moving vehicles. In next-generation electric cars, pick-up coil sets under the vehicle floor receive power remotely via an electromagnetic field broadcast from cables installed under the road. The current also charges an onboard battery used to power the vehicle when it is out of range. As electricity is supplied externally, these vehicles need only a fifth of the battery capacity of a standard electric car, and can achieve transmission efficiencies of over 80%. Online electric vehicles are currently undergoing road tests in Seoul, South Korea.

BBC News - Technology

Get the latest BBC Technology News: breaking news and analysis on computing, the ... The UK government wants to make Britain a world leader in developing ...www.bbc.com/news/technology/

RIP Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

Broadcom CTO's crystal ball shows wearable widgets, gigabit broadband (Q&A)

In an in-depth interview, Henry Samueli predicts a lot more bits in our future with multigigabit Wi-Fi, LTE, and home broadband. Moore's Law is a tougher challenge, but Broadcom plans high-end CPUs, too.

by Stephen Shankland

December 4, 2013 5:00 PM PST

Broadcom founder and Chief Technology Officer Henry Samueli

(Credit: Broadcom)

Maybe it's time for Broadcom Chief Technology Officer Henry Samueli to get a little of the limelight.
For years, CPU makers like Intel, IBM, and Apple got the glory in the processor industry. But as mobile and cloud computing explodes, communication chips are getting more important, and that's the market where the company Samueli co-founded is a dominant player.
Wednesday, the company announced a new processor that's emblematic of the new trends in the computing industry. The BCM20736 is a modest little thing -- a chip that lets a device communicate over low-power Bluetooth links and charge its batteries wirelessly. But the chip fits neatly into two hot new trends: wearable computing and the Internet of things.
This first category includes fitness devices, Google Glass, and assorted smartwatch efforts. The second involves spreading the Net beyond PCs and phones to things like cars, thermostats, houseplants, smart power meters, and, yes, coffeepots.
Samueli founded Broadcom in 1991, a time when wireless communications were a rarity in the industry and unheard of for consumers. Now electromagnetic waves carry not just data, but power, too. But wired communications remain critical to the overall Internet.
Samueli shared his vision for communications technology in an interview with CNET's Stephen Shankland. Here's an edited transcript of a conversation that touched on wireless charging, LTE mobile networks, gigabit broadband for the home, and more.
Q: You have a new Bluetooth chip with wireless charging. Where do you think wearable computing is headed, and where do you think the Internet of things is headed? It's hard to sift the hype from the reality.
Henry Samueli: There's enormous hype, but for good reason. It's actually a pretty exciting market because it really is hundreds of markets in one. When you talk about the Internet of things, you're covering hundreds of industries. At the core of it is communications. That's the piece we supply -- this ultra low-power, low-cost communications chip that you put into whatever flavor of thing that you happen to want to build. The nice thing about this Internet of things market is that the barriers to entry are fairly low. You don't have to be a monstrous company. There are going to be thousands of startups created to deploy all these devices.
You buy a simple solution, like from Broadcom we have this whole product line called WICED -- wireless Internet connectivity for embedded devices -- it's a very easy-to-use platform with software that you can connect up to whatever type of sensor you may find out there. Whether it's an environmental sensor, a medical sensor that measures bodily functions, a sensor in your home for security, you need to connect it to a communications device. Then it goes out to the Internet.
It costs a lot to lay a fabric of sensors all over creation. It's a big investment if you want to wire up all your roads and traffic lights and streetlights and houses and power meters. Where are the places where this is going to catch on? What are the markets where it's financially justifiable at the outset?
Samueli: Infrastructure is going to take time, but it's going to take time. Every meter will be a smart meter -- you'll have sensors everywhere in the environment. The shorter-term opportunities are consumer gadgets that people will buy on Amazon. We're starting to see a lot of it in the health sector. It's more of a fitness craze where you're wearing wristbands that monitor your steps. Eventually you'll have more sophisticated sensors that are monitoring your heart rate or other bodily functions.
Smartwatches is another interesting opportunity. We're seeing a lot of major companies as well as startups coming up with smartwatches that replicate a lot of the functionality you might have in your smartphone. Will it be as big a market as smartphones? Probably not, but it still can be a very substantial market.

Related stories

• Broadcom gears up for the wearable revolution
• Broadcom brings Gigabit and Wi-Fi to power line networking
• Broadcom unveils new 5G Wi-Fi chips for PCs, tablets, phones
• Faster Wi-Fi tech rumored to be arriving on Macs in 2013
• Nvidia still has a lot to prove in the mobile market

And then, in the home, we're starting to see a lot more wirelessly connected appliances. Smart thermostats, smart smoke detectors, and all the flat-panel screens everywhere talking to all your tablets and smartphones and providing full multimedia distribution around the house.
What about getting power to all these devices? You're with the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP). Can you use that to get power to anything and everything? Today it's a very short-range technology: You have to set your device down on a charging pad.
Samueli: Currently, yes. But there are people looking at longer-range wireless power. You can direct the wireless power toward a device over a much longer distance. That's still very experimental, but over the next few years, you might have the ability to do wireless power at a larger distance. I think that's ultimately the way you're going to charge many of these devices. Or if you can get the power dissipation down far enough that you can run it on a coin cell [battery] for a year, you might be OK with that.
You've signed up for A4WP. Wouldn't it be nicer if we just had one wireless charging standard?
Samueli: We have to get to one, and they're talking. There are three consortiums out there. They are now actively speaking to one another to come up with some convergence. You can't create a mass market if you don't have a common standard. If you lay your device down on a pad and it doesn't charge, you're going to be very upset. It has to converge, and I think it will.
Why did you go with A4WP?
Samueli: We're very customer focused, and customers were pushing us in that direction. We also could very easily do the other approaches as well. They're all fairly similar in terms of the core technology, and you can even do a multimode chip that can accommodate all three.
Then there are energy-harvesting ideas, using the kinetic or thermal or solar or radio energy in a device's environment. Is that good for anything useful, or is the amount of current too miniscule?
Samueli: It would have to be a very low-level sensor to be able to survive on harvested power. I'm sure there will be some applications for it, but I don't think that'll be a mainstream market segment.
I'm curious about your thoughts about LTE wireless networking for mobile phones. You guys bought the LTE assets from Renesas Electronics. You've been a laggard in the LTE market, so will this catch you up?
Samueli: The deal closed October 1. The intent there was to accelerate our time to market for LTE. The Renesas team, which is originally the Nokia modem team, has been working on LTE from the very beginning of the early standards days in 2002, 2003, and 2004. They've been developing the technology for over a decade, so it's very mature. It's been carrier-qualified and carrier-certified. We're very excited about finally entering the market for LTE.
Can anybody catch Qualcomm there? What's your go-to-market strategy going to be -- now you have a second supplier? Or is it going to be more aggressive?
Samueli: It's important that the market has multiple suppliers for this kind of technology. Anytime you have a market this large, the customers demand multiple sources for their technology. The opportunity is huge to enter this market. It's a matter of having a complete set of solutions, not just the LTE. Broadcom has a leading position in connectivity -- all the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC (near-field communications). Combining that with the LTE baseband allows you to develop a full platform solution for your customer, which gives you a very powerful position. We do believe we have the ability to make a very significant play into that market.
Why did it take you that acquisition to get you there? LTE has been around for quite a while, and Broadcom is right at the heart of wireless communications. Why didn't you have this in-house?
Samueli: LTE has accelerated faster than most people had anticipated. It really took off very quickly from the time it was introduced. We did have our internal development road map, but we just needed to accelerate it.
With LTE, as I understand it, if you want to get the real high data rates, you have to use higher frequency bands, and in order to do that, you have put your base stations closer together because high-frequency signals attenuate faster and the transmission range is shorter. To meet the potential for LTE, will wireless network operators have to build a bajillion new towers?
Samueli: We're projecting forward now 10-plus years. For the next decade, the current infrastructure will serve us just fine because LTE data rates get you to several hundred megabits per second with LTE and LTE Advanced. But if you look out 10 years and beyond, where you're going to need to get multigigabits per second, then yes, smaller cells are going to be required, so there is going to have to be fairly major infrastructure expansion.
You do network equipment for fixed-line communications, too, not just wireless. What do you think about fiber-optic links to the home? You see Google trying to push Google Fiber. Is that ever going to be big or cost-effective?
Samueli: It will. The drivers are services demanded by the consumer within the home. You have to look at the Ultra HD [high-resolution 4K video] that's just been deployed. You're going to have higher data rates for digital television and high-speed Internet access that consumers want. You're going to need gigabit data modems -- cable modems, DSL modems. Fiber-optic transmission will be a part of that with passive optical networking. Broadcom is a market-share leader in every one of those markets. Driving higher data rates to the home because of consumer demand will absolutely happen.
What's your forecast for 10 years from now? What fraction of homes in the US are going to be hooked up with fiber? I imagine it'll still be pretty low. I'm amazed how much people keep milking out of copper wiring.
Samueli: The current infrastructure is primarily dominated by the hybrid fiber-coax networks. The cable companies deliver fiber to a node, and then the node splits off over coaxial cable to your house. The consumer just sees coaxial cable. That hybrid structure will last for a long time -- certainly 10 years if not longer. The penetration of fiber will still be low for a while.
How fast can you get the coax cable infrastructure to go?
Samueli: Right now we're working on the next generation of the standard called DOCSIS -- the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. DOCSIS 3.1 is being defined. That will allow somewhere between 5 and 10 gigabits per second delivered to the home. That is a very high data rate that will satisfy the needs for the consumer for the next decade easily.
What are the constraints on that working?
Samueli: Very little. We're designing it to be compatible with the existing coax cable infrastructure that's out there. All you have to do is upgrade the cable head end [the cable company's network gear] with a new box that supports DOCSIS 3.1, then you'll have a DOCSIS 3.1 cable modem and you'll have 5 gigabits of data rate capability. It's going to happen soon -- probably within three years you're going to start seeing deployment of that in a fairly significant way.
Is the 802.11ad, 60GHz Wi-Fi technology going to be good for anything, or does it not have much utility since the super-high frequency means the signal range is so short?
Samueli: It's a trade-off -- range vs. data rate. If you really want 5Gbps to download a file extraordinarily quickly and only need it to run over 1 meter, then maybe you'll use the 60GHz technology, so I wouldn't write it off. There may be interesting applications for very high-data-rate, short-range wireless, and I think 60GHz has potential over the next three years.
What programs do you have in place to support that?
Samueli: We have internal R&D efforts in the 60GHz space. We have products that are being developed.
And you expect to bring those to market in the next couple years?
Samueli: Yes, definitely.
You've been making communications chips and radio chips, but there are a lot of applications processors and CPUs out there, too. What are you doing about application processors on the mobile phone, as long as you've got the sales pitch to customers of one big package of integrated chips?
Samueli: Today we're one of the largest shippers of application processors in the world. The difference is if you look at the span of applications processors, you have a very thin slice at the very high end, and then you have a lot of mainstream 1.5GHz-class processors which form the bulk of the shipment. Then you have some low-end, sub-gigahertz CPUs. The market we've chosen to address is the mainstream high-volume segment. Virtually all of our cell phone SOCs [system-on-a-chip processors, which integrate multiple functions into one package] that we ship today contain either dual-core or quad-core ARM CPUs running at 1.2GHz to 1.5GHz. At the very high end, the 2GHz-plus segment...
Like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800s.
Samueli: Yeah. That's a much lower-volume segment. Over time, we will extend our portfolio to address those high-end segments. But we've made the conscious decision to go where the volume is today.
What are your forecasts for the best way to move beyond Moore's Law, to keep the computer performance going? As you get to ever-smaller transistors, you run into a barrier. What do you do beyond that -- photonics, spintronics, III-V materials? What's the next step after traditional silicon CMOS?
Samueli: Your guess is as good as mine. Nobody knows. That's the problem. CMOS has been on an amazing run for 50 years, and to just snap your fingers and expect another technology to supplant it and continue that run for another 50 years is optimistic thinking. My personal view is I think it's going to be a slog. We're going to push Moore's Law as hard as we can. We'll stretch it for another 15 years or so, but nobody has yet come up with a viable technology to extend the transistor further. We may really run into a dead end there where you may not see this kind of scaling over the next 50 years like we've seen in the last 50 years. We really are going to have fundamental physical limits slowing down the progression of computer performance.
We already have seen some of those limits -- not Moore's Law, strictly speaking, which just governs how many transistors you can lay down on a silicon chip, but in terms of limits when you're trying to get performance out of them. Power constraints have pushed chipmakers toward very multicore designs. Do you think software can catch up to the multicore world, or is that fundamentally an intractable problem for most programmers?
Samueli: I don't think that's going to be an insurmountable challenge. Anytime you put a challenge out there, people come up with a creative solution on the software side. I agree the multicore approach is the way to deal with the power dissipation limits you run into with CPUs, so you will see many more mainstream, multicore chips. Even cell phones have quad-core processors. People are figuring out how [to use] very efficient compilers and load balancers that distribute the processing across multiple cores.
You announced ARMv8 server processors [with technology licensed from ARM Holdings]. Does ARM have a shot at the server market? You're looking at just network-specific functions, but what's your forecast -- is there room to take on Intel in the server market?
Samueli: If you look at where our product portfolio is, we focus more on the communications processor segment of the market as opposed to the pure server segment. It's still an infrastructure market, but it's an infrastructure that's performing communications processing like deep packet inspection and security processing. There today we're shipping MIPS-based processors -- we have a portfolio of MIPS-64 custom CPUs that we've designed. And recently we've announced an ARMv8 version of a custom architecture that we'll be developing. When we introduce that product, we'll have the world's highest-performance ARM CPU. We talked about a 3GHz-class CPU in 16-nanometer CMOS [complementary metal oxide semiconductor manufacturing technology]. That will target the communications processing segment because that's where we have the best foothold and ability to penetrate the market and have done well so far with our acquisition of NetLogic.
Can some of those products apply to the server segment? They can, and maybe over time we'll look at expanding into that segment. It's to be determined whether people will be successful in the server segment against ARM.