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Australia

Aussie Company Planning To Use Drones For Textbook Delivery 178

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the death-by-textbook-delivery-drone dept.
First time accepted submitter Michael Harris writes "According to The Age, an Australian company plans to use autonomous quadropters to deliver text books to University students in Sydney. Apparently the drone will locate you via your smartphone's GPS, fly autonomously to your location, and drop the book into your hands."
Privacy

Grocery Store "Smart Shelves" Will Identify Customers, Show Targeted Ads 274

Posted by samzenpus from the watching-you dept.
cagraham writes "Snack company Mondelez International (maker of Oreos, Trident, Cadbury eggs) will introduce so-called 'smart shelves' into store checkout aisles beginning 2015. The shelves will use Microsoft's Kinect software, in addition to other tech, to identify shoppers age and sex, and will then use that info to deliver demographically tailored advertisements. The shelves will be able to track engagement, monitor how long customer's watch each ad, and offer discounts if a customer is considering a purchase (weight sensors will tell the machine if you pick up a product). Mondelez says the software will only use and collect aggregate data, and will not record any video or photos."
Cellphones

Samsung Creates Phone With Curved Display 219

Posted by Soulskill from the now-there's-a-right-way-and-a-wrong-way-to-pocket-your-phone dept.
iONiUM writes "Samsung today unveiled the Galaxy Round phone with a curved 5.7" display. It comes with a hefty $1,000 USD price tag. This is a follow-up to the 55" curved TVs it began selling in June, and is most likely an intermediate form in the development of fold-able phones. Considering the recent LG announcement of mass OLED flexible screen production, it seems we are getting close to flexible phones. One question I wonder: will Apple follow suit? So far there has been no indication they are even attempting flexible/bendable screens."

Comment Re: MS Tablet Strategy (Score 3, Insightful) 381

The problem is if they cede the home/consumer market, the average non-IT staff member will become familiar with something else from their personal use. Now as an IT manager or CIO, you can decide to either gravitate toward what's more mainstream (assuming software vendors fill in the necessities, which is typical), or increase training spending to keep end users on the legacy platform nobody uses at home anymore. You can't make that kind of organizational switch overnight, but eventually the IT staff will also migrate toward the new popular platform, and then staff expenses will go up (I'm often tempted to learn Cobol to soak up maintenance programming contracts). It's just not feasible to turn your back on mainstream consumers and expect to maintain growth in enterprise when talking about these kind of horizontal markets.
Space

Lowell Observatory Pushes To Name an Asteroid "Trayvon" 588

Posted by samzenpus from the victim-belt dept.
Flash Modin writes "The observatory where Pluto was discovered is pushing to name an asteroid after a black teenager killed in a controversial confrontation in Florida last year. William Lowell Putnam III says his family has identified with the cause of African American rights, and thus an asteroid named after Trayvon Martin is perfectly appropriate. Putnam is the sole trustee of the observatory, which was founded by Percival Lowell during his search for canals on Mars. Astronomers at the observatory discovered the asteroid in 2000, but it has not been formally named. Putnam has already asked the Minor Planet Center once to designate the asteroid 'Trayvon,' but they told him the designation was 'premature.' Now that there's been a verdict, the observatory is reapplying in hopes the naming body will see things different."

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