GigaOm and Ha'aretz report on a $15 million investment from Intel into an Israeli startup OrCam, which makes a wearable camera that tries to interpret the world around its wearer and describe it via bone conduction. Sounds cool -- and very useful to the blind or low-vision sufferers. The camera clips onto your glasses. You gesture to tell the OrCam what you want to … [Read more...]
Kiss Controller: Nice Work If You Can Get It
Intel's got a neat blog post about a Brooklyn company called Kill Screen that's experimenting with wearable controllers for the virtual world. It centers around a set of wearable sensors that monitor kissing: Then, you notice the wires, and the gadgetry that is strapped to the guy’s face, and that, by sticking his tongue in his girlfriend’s mouth, he is steering a car on the … [Read more...]
Top IoT Vendors to Collaborate on Standards
We sometimes forget how miraculous it is that our technology talks to each other. The ability to hook a computer to a network, or Skype to a landline, is not preordained. It takes interested parties to sit together and set standards. The "Internet of Things" is a great idea, but suffers mostly from being an endless series of data islands. A dishwasher can talk to the … [Read more...]
Intel Buys Basis; Enters the Consumer Market
We didn't think they'd do it -- and in truth, it still doesn't make a lot of sense to us -- but Intel and Basis announced today that the former company has bought the latter. No price was stated, although TechCrunch put the price at $100 million. Intel, of course, wants very badly to be in the wearables chip market. Basis makes one of the better heart-rate sensor watches, … [Read more...]
TechCrunch Says Basis is Selling to Intel. We Have Our Doubts. (Update)
Late last night, TechCrunch posted a story saying that Basis -- the heart monitor wristwear company -- was selling itself to Intel for $100 million. We suspect that the reality is a bit more complicated. At Mobile World Congress last week, we heard and spoke to a bunch of high-ranking Intel execs. We had the opportunity to ask Intel president Renee James about upcoming Intel … [Read more...]
Intel’s Edison Can Do Local Voice Processing, No Cloud Required
Though it's fun to play Stupid Siri Tricks on the iPhone (we had loads of laughs asking it about the movie "Her"), there's one bit problem with it: Siri needs a network connection. It calls home to process your questions. No connectivity, no Siri. Intel's Project Edison wearable platform apparently has no such limitation. Quartz, the excellent news site from The Atlantic, … [Read more...]
CES: Intel Shows Edison, a Wearable Computer on an SD Card
Fights among microprocessor companies happen on a platform-by-platform basis. Intel won desktop computers, ARM processors are popular in phones, AMD has a grip on the graphics market. The latest battleground is wearables, with Freescale (among others) staking a claim. But at CES, Intel made it clear that it's coming heavy in the wearables market, and it's going to do it with … [Read more...]
Intel to Target Wearables, IoT With New Business Group
For those of you who keep track of such things -- and it is important -- know that Intel has formed an Internet of Things business group. The IOT Solutions Group will have products like the new low-power Quark processor and its Atom chips for embedded systems. It will be headed by Doug Davis, who ran Intel's embedded chip group. He'll report to CEO Brian Krzanich and … [Read more...]