Tag: FUTURE

Google may jump into the mobile payment arena with a service that would let you check out at brick-and-mortar stores by waving your phone at the register, according to a report from Businessweek. The service could launch in 2011, and it would use near-field communication (NFC) technology to let customers pay by waving their phones up to 4 inches away from a checkout station. Google chief Eric ...

The latest mobile version of Safari supports some gyroscope-powered HTML hackery that allows users to view panoramic photos on the web. If you've got an iOS device with a gyroscope and iOS 4.2 -- i.e. an iPhone 4 or current-gen iPod Touch -- you can test it for yourself, thanks to Occipital, maker of the 360 Panorama app. Occipital is the first company to take advantage of this ...

Google is now using its Google Earth technology, including satellite imagery and historical data, to help scientists monitor changes in the Earth's environment. Google Earth Engine, now in Google Labs, combines Google Earth's data and Google's cloud computing infrastructure into a powerful environmental analysis package. Google Earth Engine can be used to measure all kinds of data about the ...

When I was a kid and used to fantasize about what the future was going to be like, I didn't envision a Google-like search engine. If anything, I thought the future would hold something more along the lines of Wolfram Alpha – an omniscient search box that would slice and dice numbers and facts in all sorts of crazy ways and spit out a bunch of cool graphs. And now, Wolfram Alpha has added ...

I have recently been experimenting with CSS3 box properties for my own personal site. I was thrilled with how easy it was to create a box with rounded corners, some shading and a border – it was really trivial. That was even before I found CSS3 Playground. Had I found this neat little tool before, I would not have had to hand-code a single line of text. Like so many other showcases and ...

Firefox 4 Beta 2 was just released, and you can grab it from the Beta page. Every tab now has a "Make into App Tab" command in the context menu, which shrinks the tab down to just the favicon and puts it on the leftmost position (similar to Chrome's pin tab feature). Also, tabs on top have arrived in the Mac version. I couldn't test it myself – share your thoughts in the comments, Mac ...

Today we have something different for you. You're not getting add-ons, beta releases or titbits from Mozilla Labs this week -- oh no, instead you're going to be treated to an interview with the Creative Lead of Firefox, Aza Raskin. It's not the frankest interview I've ever conducted -- there's definitely a little coyness; a couple of crinkled, twinkled corneas -- but it's still very ...

Google Maps now has a Google Earth view right within the site. This new addition further blurs the distinction between Earth and Maps. It's basically just like Earth, only in your browser. When I tested the feature, navigation, tilting and panning seemed just as smooth as in Earth. The 3D-buildings layer is enabled, and as far as I was able to tell, there's no way to disable it or enable other ...

By now I would hope you've all seen the amazing, adorable and humbling video of a two-year-old interacting with an iPad for the first time. If not, go watch it now (it's after the break, too). In just five minutes I had my entire world view shift; I started humming Children of the Revolution; I got to pondering the possibilities of a future where babies interact with computers before they learn ...

digg_url = 'http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/03/05/within-a-year-90-of-microsoft-employees-will-be-working-on-clo/'; I hinted that, with Office 2010, Microsoft would be moving the focus of its development towards the cloud, but I had no idea they were quite so involved! As of today, around 75% of its employees are working on cloud-related projects. "A year from now that will be 90 ...

I really, really want to be Dutch right now. After taking a look at Layar, a mobile Augmented Reality browser that's currently only available in the Netherlands, I can't wait until similar technology is available in the rest of the world. Layar uses the camera and location-based services of your mobile device -- Android devices only, so far -- and overlays information on the camera image. This ...

There's a lot of you out there that use computers everywhere, making use of web-based services like Gmail, Google Reader, Pixenate, and Zoho. Here's something that'll help you organize your computing experience no matter what computer you use: Jooce, the online desktop. We covered the service back in August, but it's finally out of beta with old features refined and new ones to offer. Jooce is ...

We usually think of email as a way to instantly communicate, but what happens when all that goes out the window and we can freeze email to send at a later date? MailFreezr is a website where people can fill out a form and send an email, in the future. The service stores your email for up to 100 years then finally sends it out. If we still have email then. t's a great way to ensure you send those ...

Mr. Star Wars, the geek-man, OB1 himself, none other than George Lucas thinks movie downloads are where it's at for the future of movie entertainment distribution. Really? We didn't see that coming. Steve Jobs has also been chatting with Lucas at various times about the idea, which isn't surprising now that iTunes now has movies from Disney, with more to follow invariably. Lucas and Jobs have ...