Saran999

CNET's Daniel Terdiman has spun a spooky Nancy Drew adventure about trying to uncover the origins of a "big and mysterious" thing "rising from a floating barge at the end of Treasure Island" that has "Google's fingerprints" all over it. Treasure Island is a former Navy base located in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. Terdiman couldn't get a look inside the structure, "which stands about four stories high and was made with a series of modern cargo containers." But after a lot of detective work, he concludes its most likely a floating data center. Google even patented the idea for one in 2009. That's less exciting than the story itself, which includes plenty of photos and paragraphs like this:

Apple’s full-frontal assault on Microsoft yesterday didn’t go unnoticed by the folks in Redmond. During its iPad event yesterday, Apple went out of its way to not only attack devices like the Surface but also go after the company’s approach to operating system upgrades and productivity software. Today, Microsoft is striking back, and it’s taking the very same direct approach that Apple did. In a post on the official Microsoft blog, communications VP Frank Shaw railed back against Apple, which he argues has extended its reality distortion field beyond Cupertino. Defense 1: Unlike the iPad, the Surface is a work machine While Apple CEO Tim Cook might argue that hybrid devices like the Surface are a sign that its competitors are confused, Shaw says the Surface’s hybrid approach is actually its biggest strength. he writes. Translation: When Microsoft gave the Surface both a touchscreen and a physical keyboard, it wasn’t because the company was confused — it was because Microsoft knew exactly what people wanted in tablets and was responding to that. In other words, the Surface is meant to be for work and play. Apple, Shaw argues, can’t say the same thing for the iPad. Defense 2: Microsoft understands productivity (better than Apple does) This, Shaw points out, taps into another one of Microsoft’s traditional strengths: As the history of Windows and Office shows, Microsoft understands productivity better than just about anyone else. (Or so it claims.) he writes. Microsoft, it seems, is drawing the line in the sand: While Apple’s tablets may be good for burning time, Microsoft’s approach the tablets make them better for both burning time and actually getting work done. Defense 3: Apple’s approach to productivity software is ‘watered down’ Shaw, also uses his post to take a few shots back at Apple’s iWork productivity suite, which he says is “watered down” compared to Office. (Presumably, this is also how Microsoft justifies charging $99 a year for a subscription to Office 365. You get what you pay for, right?) More, Shaw also downplays the significance of Apple’s decision to make iWork free, a move he says wasn’t surprising or significant because not many people were using iWork to begin with. he writes. Ouch. Overall, a few things should be clear from the above: Apple’s comments yesterday clearly touched a nerve at Microsoft, which is still struggling to catch up with tablets despite throwing lots of money at it. Shaw’s argument that the iPad “isn’t a productivity machine” ignores the fact that, for a lot of people, it is a productivity machine. No amount of spin can change that It’s also telling that Shaw didn’t respond to Apple’s move to make Mavericks, the latest version of OS X completely free. Why? Because this is an area where Microsoft really doesn’t have much to say. Software upgrades are a big part of its business, while for Apple they’re quickly becoming just one check box in the feature set for Mac owners.

Google has been posting a bunch of “Google Ideas” discussions to YouTube this week. One that went live today discusses smartphones and their role in making law enforcement “smarter.” It’s only seventeen minutes long, so it won’t take too much of your time. Google says in the description. Robert Muggah, Research Director at Igarape Institute and Vanessa Coimbra, Pacification Police Units, Military Police of Rio de Janeiro attempt to answer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KJ0im58A35w More of the talks are available at the Google Ideas YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleIdeas?feature=watch

This week, eBay announced the launch of some new personalization and curation features for the eBay Marketplace, and that it is expanding its efforts in local commerce, including the extension of its eBay Now delivery service into 25 new markets by the end of the year. It has been about a year since eBay unveiled its Pinterest-like feed design, which it rolled out to users in February. Now, eBay is continuing in the Pinterest/Etsy-esque direction, launching five new specific features: Collections, Curators, Follow, Profiles and eBay Today. Collections are described as groups of products that have ben handpicked by “expert curators, buyers and sellers.” Curators are “top trendsetters across a variety of interest areas, who create beautiful collections on eBy to help you easily connect you with items you’ll love.’ At least they didn’t say “tastemakers.” The Follow feature lets eBay users personalize their feeds by following collections, curators or regular eBay users, as well as specific interests. The Profile is pretty basic. It applies to both buyers and sellers, and lets you share info about yourself, the collections you’ve created, your interests, and the people you follow. Finally, eBay Today is a new page aimed at helping users discover “the very best collections of items” on eBay, selected by the company’s Chief Curator and Editorial Director Michael Phillips Moskowitz. eBay has 200 curators including: Alexandra Cousteau, Andrea Linett, Ashley Avignon, Benjamin Clymer, Billy Farrell, Brian Walton, Cecilia Dean , Chris Benz, Chrissie Miller, Darcy Miller, Eddie Borgo, Graham Hill, Janie Bryant, Jauretsi, Jen Atkin, Jeremiah Brent, Jon Rose, Justin Bell, Kelly Oxford, Lucy Sykes, Pharrell Williams, Richard Rawlings, Ryan Block, Solange Knowles, Tenzin Wild, Todd Selby, Veronica Belmont, and Zem Joaquin. eBay tells sellers, I have to say, the discussion out there around these features from what I seen has basically consisted of tumbleweeds. One reader, however (commenting on this very article) makes an interesting point, saying, Is eBay in fact trying to be something that it’s not? Must everything consist of social/follow features? Frankly, I personally don’t have a lot of use for them on a site like eBay, but perhaps a substantial amount of people do. It will be interesting to see how the enormous eBay community engages with these features over time. Will sellers really see a significant difference? The local stuff, on the other hand, may just turn out to be huge for businesses and consumers alike. We’re talking rapid delivery of products, and it’s only the very early days of this roll-out. eBay Now was first introduced a year ago. It lets shoppers have products from local stores delivered to them in an hour or less. As mentioned, it’s expanding into 25 new markets. It goes live in Chicago on Tuesday, and then in Dallas later this year. This will be followed by unspecified international markets, including London early next year. eBay also plans to offer eBay Now same-day delivery for local goods on eBay.com in cities that have the service. eBay will also release scheduled delivery for eBay Now so that customers can buy something and pick an appropriate time to have it delivered to them. In addition to that, eBay is letting shoppers order online and pick up products at local stores. This particular feature is live immediately for Toys ‘R’ Us and Best Buy, and will be for other retailers in the near future. Finally, the company announced that it has acquired Shutl, a marketplace that utilizes a network of couriers to deliver local goods on the same day. The pick-up should help eBay its expansion efforts for eBay Now.

Perhaps, you get insurance and black market... twice the revenues that you can normally get. And this is what normally happens here in EU. In fact, are the insurance companies that prescribes the GPS security locator on every truck. And if you don't comply, you don't get insurance...

NASA has smashed its record for transmitting data to and from the moon. Now, it boasts a frankly amazing 622Mbps transfer speed to the rock that circles our little planet. The Agency is able to achieve that using lasers—instead of radio waves—to transmit data between its ground station in New Mexico and a spacecraft that's orbiting the moon, 239,000 miles away. Part of the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration, the agency was also able to upload error-free data to the LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer) spacecraft at a rate of 20Mbps. It beats previous attempts to send data through space using similar techniques, in particular one earlier this year which saw NASA beam the Mona Lisa into space at a rather paltry 300 bits per second. The new success of the LLCD marks a major milestone in space communications: NASA has previously relied on radio frequency data links, but they're not able to carry the quantities of data that the agency will require in the future. So, while the LLC is currently a proof of concept, it's hoped it will see real service soon. explained Badri Younes, NASA's deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation. And frankly, when internet on the moon is faster than some home connections, you know the future had arrived.

This week, we learned that NASA can beam data to the moon — at a frankly astounding 622Mbps — using a high powered laser. Sounds like cutting edge modern tech? Perhaps. But it also sounds like the best weapon from the best scene of the best James Bond movie ever made: Goldfinger. Auric Goldfinger is the gold-obsessed megalomaniac with a plan to take the world's precious metals market hostage. James Bond gets in the way, so Goldfinger puts him in the way of his newest destruction device: I don't need to tell you what happens next. You've memorized it, and the first half-dozen or so times you saw it, it made you squirm in your chair. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DoQwKe0lggw To me, this is the pinnacle of Bond bad guy moments. Goldfinger isn't making a tangential threat, a promise to harm England or the world or the only woman James Bond ever loved. This is pure visceral terror. And while this high tech torture device comes with all the right space-age buzzwords (lasers! the moon!), it's not so far outside the realm of reality. Given the audacious endeavors of later Bond villains, a rich businessman procuring an industrial laser to fillet his enemies seems downright plausible. Tonight, fix yourself a drink (you know exactly which one) and settle in for a night of dashing and debonair world-saving. And hope nobody at NASA hatches an evil plan involving that laser.

Time travel has always been the thing we associate with the future. But we keep reaching the future, only to find that time travel still eludes us. What's holding us back? Nothing, it turns out. Okay, traveling through time at the same speed as everyone else is kind of ... commonplace. But compared to the enormously complex things you'd have to do to break the chains holding us temporally together, living your life at normal pace sounds a lot easier. And hey, you can still tell people you're a time traveler! https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FflcA85zcOM

You're a different person online compared to your real life. It's okay. You don't have to irrationally like cats just because you're obsessed with cat videos. You don't have to literally poke the people you poked on Facebook. You don't have to like or follow or tag or comment or stalk celebrities like you do on the Internet. Because if you did that in real life, you'd be a total creep. BuzzFeed Video imagined 7 things that'd be super creepy to do in real life, even though you do them on the Internet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ziQFFh5jznI

This is something very common in EU, and I'm really surprised that there where no GPS locating systems in the truck. The only thing that arise in my mind is that US it's new to this sort of robberies, and seems that until truck owners and companies don't acknowledge this behavior will be an easy hunting for all the thugs that are used to and that are immigrated in US

And for the ones that don't want to do a google search, or add-on search, to find it, here it is... https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/ Thanks for the heads-up, Great post! Cheers

Thanks for the update @oobydooby. Do you also know the publishing date of this news?

I've never though about that... very clever! And now, they will ban the 3D printers... and supplies... nice

Lamborghini has taken the wraps off the Veneno Roadster, a stunning embodiment of speed and audacity limited to a handful of production models in 2014. As part of its 50th anniversary celebration, Lamborghini has unveiled a raging beast of a prototype. Next year, the luxury supercar company will launch a super-limited run of one of its most exclusive models: the Veneno Roadster, a sports racer with an asking price of more than $4.5 million. The sleek carbon fiber roadster follows the Veneno, unveiled in March and limited to a production run of just three cars. They're named after a famous Spanish fighting bull -- the fierce beast that adorns Lamborghini's logo -- to signify power, strength, and vigor. With its cutting lines and brilliant red body, the open-topped Veneno Roadster is a stunning embodiment of speed and audacity.

Thanks @vanacharla to push me to discover this thread. I love engineering and those are the best examples I've ever seen. And off course, thanks to @GemMan. I've added my likes accordingly... Cheers

The mellifluous sounds of the cello have been delighting ears since the 18th century, but the instrument's form has changed little over the centuries. Adhesives giant Bayer MaterialScience has a suggestion or two about that. What would Bach say? The Cello 2.0 is designed to be interactive. The manufacturer recently unveiled a futuristic redesign of the venerable stringed instrument, and has been showing it off at K 2013, a plastics and rubber trade show in Germany. The Cello 2.0 is made of transparent, lightweight cast resin fashioned in a swirling cutaway shape that's designed to make it much more portable. But it also plays videos. The concept instrument has some features of a regular electric cello, yet it was tweaked by design firm TEAMS Design, which describes it as The neck and fingerboard incorporate "different LEDs and mini video projectors," according to a Bayer release, while "a tuning device or surfaces for video jockeying (VJing) can also be installed in the instrument. In one alternative solution, LEDS and ultraflat OLED displays could be integrated directly and used to display photos and videos." The cello's surface can display graphics or videos, as shown in the illustration above. A pattern of light could display the rhythm of a piece the cellist is playing, for instance, or show when the wrong notes are being played. It could also change color when its tuning or intonation is off. TEAMS Design said in a release. Bayer said. The company's polycarbonate-ABS plastic blend has already been used to make a funky alto saxophone that's one of the lightest in the world, and it wants to create keyboard, plucked, and wind instruments based on the Cello 2.0. Whatever will they think of next? I, for one, still love my battered old electric bass.

Have you always wanted to turn an Internet video or animated GIF into a lenticular print? There's a Kickstarter project for that. Unhappy leaving animated GIFs relegated to the Internet, a duo from Brooklyn, N.Y., wants to turn them into coaster-sized cards that play when you angle them back and forth. You might have seen something similar on souvenir postcards or movie posters, but designers Rachel Binx and Sha Hwang who launched a new Kickstarter project called Gifpop!, see the 70-some-odd-year-old lenticular film technology as a business opportunity. The project, which has already raised more than twice its minimum goal of $5,000, aims to turn GIFs as well as videos from Vine and Instagram into printed cards that can play back "around" 10 frames of any animation. Binx and Hwang say they're planning to use the money not just to set up the production of said products, but also a site that will let users upload that content and get it printed out to different sizes of cards. Part of that plan also involves offering up a place for GIF artists to hawk their wares on the Gifpop site, and the pair is giving some early backers copies of some of those designs. the pair says. This isn't the first such project to turn GIFs into physical keepsakes. Back in 2007, Motionbox (which was bought up by HP's Snapfish and later shut down) turned user videos into flipbooks for $8.99. An unrelated DIY version of that idea remains through GIFprint, which turns animated GIFs into printable PDFs that can be converted (by hand) into flipbooks. There was also the 2011 "Physical GIF" Kickstarter project that aimed to do the same thing using laser-cut zoetropes. And not to be outdone, there's also the GIF-TY, a concept product that would not only capture 1 to 5 second video clips, but also turn them into a paper flipbook. Of course none of those held the potential to double as a coaster, an unadvertised (and likely unadvised) feature of this particular project. Here's the pitch video: http://vimeo.com/77618304

For the first time since the launch of Piper Jaffray's semi-annual report on the habits of American teens, Facebook lost its spot as the most important social network among teenagers. Facebook's popularity among teen users has been on a steady slide, with many complaining that its size, privacy risks and tendency to incite drama has made it a "social burden." Just 23 percent of teens now deem Facebook the most important site, down from 42 percent from a year ago, according to Piper Jaffray's survey. Facebook is tied with Instagram -- a social network a third its age, with a tenth as many users -- as the second most important social media service among teens. Twitter came out as number one. The survey, which polled 8,650 teens, looks bad for Facebook, but it's not all good news for Twitter: Its popularity among teens has actually dropped 4 percent since the spring. And while Facebook might be less likeable to teens, there's evidence they're still using it more than any other social network. A quarter of teen social media users are on Twitter, 94 percent have Facebook profiles and 11 percent have Instagram accounts, according to Pew's 2013 report. Also, remember, Facebook owns Instagram. The real winners of the Piper Jaffray survey are a bit harder to tease out. Certainly Instagram can celebrate -- the percentage of teens who consider it the top social site has nearly doubled in a year. The big growth of the "other" category suggests services like Vine and Snapchat, not specifically mentioned by the survey, are also taking off. Facebook, once the dominant social networking service, is facing competition from more niche sites, which seem to have real cachet among younger users. Facebook's attempt to replicate its way to lasting dominance doesn't look to be paying off. Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly insisted Facebook doesn't have a teen problem. He assured investors in July that Facebook had signed up virtually the entire population of American teens, whom he noted were using the site as actively then as they had in the preceding year-and-a-half. Using and joining Facebook is one thing. Liking it, however, is another.

Samsung is working on its own head-mounted display to take on Google Glass, a new patent filing reveals. Partly confirming an earlier rumor, the design patent filing shows a pair of spectacles listed as "sports glasses," with its general design and functionality bearing a considerable resemblance to that of Google's own device. The Korean design spotted by the Wall Street Journal mentions that the glasses have integrated earphones for music and phone calls, rather than using the same bone conduction technology that Glass employs. A small display in front of one eye, built into a transparent or translucent lens, displays notification alerts from the smartphone, but it could in theory offer similar functionality to Google's version. While Glass connects wirelessly, cables from either side of the Samsung device lead back and join together into one single connecting plug. While the filing at least confirms that Samsung is working on such devices, it is probable that any released device of this kind will go through a few more design iterations to improve some aspects, such as removing the connecting cable. If it does reach the market, it has to take on not only Glass, but also a potential competitor from Microsoft, as well as a whole raft of smart watches, including Samsung's own Galaxy Gear.

It’s not long now until Microsoft will start shipping out stock of Xbox One consoles to retailers. But even with tight security surrounding the distribution and launch, some leaks are bound to happen. The latest is a leaked copy of the manual, although I’d usually call this a quick start guide. The guide details how to go about connecting your console to a TV, cable box, and the Kinect, as well as how to insert the batteries on the controller and get the headset working. But by far the most interesting piece of information it contains is the optimal positioning guidance for the Kinect sensor. Here’s the diagram taken from the manual: As you can see, the optimal height for the Kinect sensor is a minimum of 0.6 meters from the ground all the way up to 1.8 meters. Players should not stand or sit closer then 1.4 meters from the Kinect. The height measurements match those of the original Kinect for the Xbox 360, however, the distance players need to stand back from the sensor has been reduced. With the original Kinect you had to be at least 1.8 meters away when playing alone, or 2.4 meters if there were two players. In other words, Xbox One with Kinect is going to work in smaller rooms or without you having to move your furniture back to make sure you have the required minimum distance to the sensor. The only other details this guide: http://jogos.download.uol.com.br/levelup/manual_xboxone.pdf reminds us of is the fact the Xbox One has a power brick and that you still need batteries to power the controller. A Play and Charge Kit will be available, but that’s an extra $25 you need to spend.

Samsung has been ordered to pay 10 million New Taiwan dollars (or $340,000 USD) for organizing an internet campaign that violates fair trade rules, reports Bloomberg. It was discovered to be hiring writers to post positive comments about its own smartphones, and leave negative comments about HTC’s products. This was done through a third-party marketing campaign, and two marketing firms have also been fined a total of more than $100,000 for their participation. This isn’t the first time Samsung has been caught doing this – earlier this year it admitted to bribing developers to promote Samsung on the developer community Stack Overflow. This is a very minor victory for HTC, but it seems that damage has already been done, as the company recently posted its first quarterly loss.

Amongst the more than 400 species of plants and animals discovered in the Amazonian jungles is a monkey that purrs softly like a cat. In a period of 4 years, scientists discovered 441 new plants and animals species. The total number of plants is in excess of 200 species. Well over 80 types of fish, 59 amphibians, 22 reptilian members, 18 avian cousins and one mammal have been found to exist in the Amazon canopy forests. It is a vast biome which remains largely unexplored in many of its regions. Included in the very bizarre and weird species that inhabit this corner of the world is a flame-patterned lizard, a very tiny frog, a vegan piranha, a fluorescent-colored serpent and a lovely pink orchid. The species form a singularly precious resource for biologists not to mention the world’s biodiversity. said Claudio Maretti, Leader of Living Amazon Initiative, WWF. The peculiar monkey is called the Caqueta titi and is one among many variants in the list of primates. The young have a very cute and lovable quality. They purr when at ease. It is a great gift of the Amazon that such special species that are unique to its fundamental environment are coming on the scene thanks to efforts by scientists. Environmentalists are doing all they can for this region. It is a source of oxygen and the rainforest acts like the lungs of the planet. Once the rainforest vanishes, humanity too will be vanquished from the face of the earth. Therefore preservation is of the essence.

Chrome: Reading a bright screen at night is never a pleasant experience. If you're a fan of the night mode in many ereaders and apps, Hacker Vision is an extension that does the same thing on your computer and turns bright sites a darker color. When you visit any site with a light background, Hacker Vision inverts the colors to make the background black and the text white. This should make it easier to read at night because it's not as bright. You can set Hacker Vision to pause for a while when you're browsing during the day, or only change on select sites as well. If you're looking for a little eye relief at night, Hacker Vision's a lot easier than changing the accessibility options on your computer. Go get it at: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-vision/fommidcneendjonelhhhkmoekeicedej

From Canon's Mixed Reality System to Microsoft's see-through 3D display to Google Glass, the world's biggest technology companies are getting good at tricking our eyes into seeing things that aren't really there. But the missing piece in the feedback puzzle has always been the sense of touch. Videogame controllers can vibrate to simulate gunfire and racing car engines, but they require you to be physically grasping the devices. Now, however, the folks Disney Research have created a way for those tingly little nerve endings on your skin to receive feedback. And they've done it by sculpting air. This new haptic technology is called Aireal, and through it the gamers that it's initially aimed at can feel virtual objects, experience the sensation of touching various textures, or get kinetic feedback. All without any need to wear gloves, vests or suits. Puffs of air can be controlled in terms of varying strength and speed. So it will be capable of creating a sensation as gentle as a butterfly's wings or as strong as a baseball caught in a glove. So how the heck does this work? The technology creates a vortex, which is a tightly held column of moving air that can travel relatively far and keep its shape and speed. (A tornado is a type of vortex.) Vortices can travel much farther than regular jets of air. In fact vortices can travel nearly five feet before accuracy drops below 80 percent. But when this traveling spinning ring of air touches something, like a person's skin, the low-pressure within the vortex collapses and this produces a force the user can feel. Next question: How can this "force" provide haptic feedback that is perceived by the user as three-dimensional? Aireal uses a flexible nozzle secured to a gimbal (a gimbal is a structure that allows for something to rotate in all directions on a single axis.) A 3D depth camera tracks the user and using data from various sensors this nozzle can send a vortex of air to precise locations anywhere within a three-dimensional space. Place multiple nozzles in multiple locations, and you've got your dimensional bases covered. Each module for Aireal is made from 3D printed parts so the costs of production are low. And the modules are scalable, meaning they could fit in something as small as a phone or large enough to cover a commercial theater. Disney says there are a wide range of applications for interactive spaces: Including gaming, storytelling, but also providing physical feedback from mobile devices or other digital screens or displays. While textual descriptions of this technology can only go so far, the folks at Engadget do a fairly good job of describing what they found at SIGGRAPH, where an Aireal demo was held. They describe the experience of feeling a virtual butterfly here: Of course a video may be the best (and fastest) way to understand and visualize the whole thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xaFBjUJj00M

A Taiwan-based nonprofit R&D organization announced Wednesday a virtual display that allows users to control virtual keyboards and touchscreens that float out in front of users. The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) said its new technology uses special glasses and DDDR (defined distance with defined range) camera technology to allow users to see and interact with virtual data, images and devices with finger strokes. The heads-up display technology resembles the sci-fi technology displayed in the movie Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise. The new i-Air Touch technology is being developed for an array of devices, including PCs and laptops, wearable computers and mobile devices, that allows a user's hand to be free of any physical device such as a touchpad or keyboard for touch input. i-Air Touch glasses allow virtual interaction with computer screens i-Air Touch's see-through capability enables a user wearing a pair of special eyeglasses to see and interact with a virtual input device, such as a touchscreen or mouse that appears to be floating in the air, while still being able to see and interact with the real world. Golden Tiao, deputy general director of ITRI's Electronics and Optoelectronics Research Laboratories, said in a statement. ITRI plans to license the patented technology to manufacturers. The company sees the heads-up display technology being used in not only consumer arenas, but also for medical applications such as endoscopic surgery and any industrial applications that benefit from hands-free input. The DDDR camera is the key functional component of i-Air Touch, ITRI said. The camera discerns the virtual images for interaction, but it conserves battery power, which is a major issue facing manufacturers of many wearable computers, the company stated. How it works The camera uses a phase- and color-coded lens to discern an object at a predetermined distance of 11 inches to 12.5 inches away from the eyeglasses. The camera detects and activates only in the presence of a fingertip within that input range. The virtual images shut off if a user's fingertip isn't present, allowing a clear field of view. The DDDR camera essentially captures the image of a user's fingertip out in front of it and splits the image into green and red color codes to provide segmentation in image processing, while phase coding provides distance and depth perception of the fingertip. i-Air Touch allows multiple screen/keyboard interaction. The DDDR camera lens focuses the green light component at 11 inches and the red at 12.5-inches. The combined green and red components resolve to the strongest image signal at the midpoint between the two light components (about 11 13/16-in). The camera then captures the image signal at that midpoint as "input." Because the camera does not register signals outside of the 11-in.-to-12.5-in. virtual target plane, it consumes no power other than when a fingertip is present. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=UUFT7NKSwWDHDecfIjnqRQjA&v=CWZUJoutGoM Additionally, by detecting when a user's fingertip is in input range, the camera ensures that the user is intentionally trying to air-touch the virtual input device and that the camera does not mistake other user movements for input. ITRI stated in a news release. While the glasses cannot take photos, like Google Glass, they can be used with cameras in others kinds of wearable computers, the company said.