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There’s a new player in the bustling world of “commercial space,” although the “space” part is a matter of definition. A Tucson, Arizona-based start-up plans to use a helium balloon to lift big-ticket customers in a pressurized capsule to around 98,000 feet. That’s a journey to the edge of space, if not into space as traditionally defined. This artist's rendering shows the tourist capsule (inset) planned by World View Enterprises that would be carried by balloon to an altitude of 98,000 feet, from where passengers, paying $75,000, could see the Earth's curvature below and the black of space above. The passengers would ascend for 1½ hours before spending two hours admiring the world from on high. Then the capsule would be disconnected from the balloon and begin a free fall, but a parafoil above the capsule would become increasingly effective in the thickening air and the capsule would glide to the surface, landing on skids. Price point: $75,000. The eight passengers on board would presumably come from the same customer pool that feeds high-end luxury vacations, such as round the world golf tours. said Jane Poynter, co-founder of Paragon Space Development Corp., which has lined up investors for the new venture, World View Enterprises. More than just hot air: This artist's rendering released Tuesday by World View Enterprises shows its capsule to be lifted by a high-altitude balloon to around 98,000 feet It hopes to begin the balloon flights in three years. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration announced Tuesday that, for purposes of regulation, the capsule will be treated as a space vehicle because it will be built to operate in outer space. it stated. The venture’s website promises a “truly transformative human experience.” The company said Tuesday it will offer There’s no distinct boundary between the atmosphere and space. Rather, the atmosphere steadily thins with altitude. On tourism trips, the World View balloon would rise to about 98,000 feet. One commonly referenced boundary of space is the Karman Line. That’s at 100 km (328,000 feet) and is roughly the altitude above which aerodynamic flight is impossible, even in theory. But in the minds of the people behind World View, they’re getting into space tourism. said Paragon co-founder Taber MacCallum. Poynter and MacCallum are well known in the entrepreneurial space community. In the early 1990s they spent two years as “bionauts,” sealed inside Biosphere II, a massive, greenhouselike structure in the Arizona desert. Their company, Paragon, has had contracts with NASA for life-support technology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZCAnLxRvNNc Toy Robot in Space! - HD balloon flight to 95,000ft. The highlights of the entire space flight from the music video for 'Edgar' by Lucky Elephant, this was published in 2010, but you can have a look at what you will experience with the ticket you may buy for your own space flight. The field of commercial space has been growing in recent years. Virgin Galactic, backed by billionaire businessman and adventurer Richard Branson, hopes to carry passengers on suborbital flights in 2014. It will use a rocket-powered vehicle called SpaceShipTwo, still in testing, that is designed to reach altitudes above the Karman Line. The company has sold nearly 650 tickets in advance. The ticket price recently jumped to $250,000 a seat, up from $200,000. World View’s MacCallum said. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9VXUTXroxIM A clip from You Have Been Warned/Outrageous Acts Of Science 'Homemade Heroes' episode on Discovery Channel (UK+International) and Science Channel (US), explaining the science behind filming in near-space using a helium filled weather balloon. Paragon also is working with billionaire Dennis Tito on his Inspiration Mars plan — a 500-day mission that, if technically feasible, would send two astronauts on a flyby of Mars during a rare alignment of the planets five years from now.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Yesterday, Apple not only released its OS X Mavericks operating system, it also announced that it would be free. That's great! For you, for Apple, and for the future of computing. Releasing Mavericks for free seems like a simple idea. And in theory, it is. But in practice, the logistics are a bit more complex. Not only have previous versions of OS X actually made Apple money, which Apple is now passing up, but offering up big files for download costs Apple money. Especially when everyone and their brother (or in this case, millions of existing Mac owners) is pulling down an update. Mavericks isn't just free for you, it's expensive for Apple. But don't you worry about Cupertino. They're still coming out ahead. Why it's good for you For starters it's free. Duh? But that helps more than just your wallet. The real benefit is that it's way more likely now that everyone else will have Mavericks too. To see the benefit of getting all devices in an ecosystem on the same page, you don't need to look much further than Apple itself. Unless you really go out of your way to run away from updates, your iPhone is running the same OS as everyone else. Ditto the iPad. And unity is a large part of what makes the iOS App Store second to none. Likewise, the Mavericks update should make developing for Macs a whole lot easier. Devs will now be able to reasonably assume that everyone is running the same operating system. Granted there's different hardware, but not much of it. So instead of retooling and optimizing for different versions of OS X, developers can just develop for OS X, period. That means more, better apps for you, and more websites and services taking advantage of new features like smart notifications. You couldn't ask for a better situation. Along with the flurry of hardware updates, Apple announced substantial upgrades to iLife and iWork. Features run the gamut from seamless integration… Read… Speaking of apps, there are the new (also free!) versions of iLife and iWork to look forward to, complete with features like new interfaces and cloud syncing. And again, it's great for you to have them, but doubly great to know everyone else does as well. It makes collaboration in iWork almost as natural of a go-to as Google Docs. Just like iMessage benefits from more of your friends being on iOS, iWork and iLife will by more people being on Mavericks. And that little detail can suddenly make a MacBook so much more useful, even if it's (up to) five years old. Suddenly there's an even playing field that everyone gets to be on, for free. Your Mac will play nice with your iPhone will play nice with your iPad and you don't even have to think about it. That's a fantastic reason to buy into Apple right there. And if you already had, what you've got is now even better. Why it's good for Apple Yeah Mavericks is great for you, but it's even greater for Apple. Yes, they're losing a little of revenue up front. But this is about the long game. Apple has always been a devoted soldier in the holy war against fragmentation. And with this one move, it can easily suck up the (Snow Leopard and up) world of Mac users, drop them in the future, and deal with them as a unified block. You've got your iOS users and your OS X users. Simple as that. And with OSX users cordoned off into one space, it's extra easy for Apple to try to get you in for life. iLife. The new, compelling cloud features in iLife and iWork (which all OSX users who are picking up new hardware will have!) are a great way to get you really wrapped up in MacWorld and stay there for ever and ever and ever. And every person who winds up storing just a little more of their iLife in the iCloud just because Mavericks is free is another customer who's more faithful than ever. Besides, there are few things that can generate marketing good will like "free." That's not sinister or anything, it's just Apple's latest push on a core ideal: a great, consistent world for its users to live in. A world that's Apples to Apples. And inside that world, everybody wins. Why it was inevitable The end of Mac is coming, and this update is a heavy nod to that near-future. Mavericks in and of itself doesn't mean that iOS and OS X are definitely on a path to converge or that the merge is imminent. But it will happen eventually, and when it does, OS X updates (or whatever it's called at that point) will have to go free. You can't just start charging to upgrade an iPad. So did Apple just kill the paid OS update forever, for real? It's a coup de grâce if anything; the paid OS update has been dying for years. Even now, when the hard evidence to suggest that a OSX/iOS convergence is in the works, we're already seeing this move towards mobile, where the baseline price there is already "free." And with the cross-platform hooks in iLife and iWork, the cables that will contract to pull the two operating systems closer together until the eventually merge are already in place. You can actually see Microsoft running into the implications of this already. Windows 8.1 already sort of walks a line between incremental OS update and Service Pack, and it's free for (Windows 8 users). But if you think ahead a little further, Windows 9 will be a weird thing to price. Asking folks for money to upgrade their desktops is fair, sure. But can you imagine Microsoft having the gall to charge for upgrading to Windows 9 RT (if it even ever exists) on a Surface 2? It seems absurd. And it looks like Apple is headed down a similar road, except it's making its changes ahead of time. By the time iOS and OSX come together, upgrade cycles and payment schemes aren't going to be something you have to think about any more. There will just be a suite of devices, some big, some small, some with keyboards, some without, and they'll all work together, play together, and upgrade together. For free. It's a small sacrifice to make; Apple makes its money off of beautiful, high-margin hardware, end of story. That's why the iPhone 5S is (probably) outselling the iPhone 5C. It's why an underspec'd, over-priced, but still beautiful little tablet managed to make it into millions of hands. It's why the new retina iPad mini is $400 versus its $230 (and mostly comparable) contemporaries. And why it will sell like hotcakes regardless.

In the city, getting somewhere is only half the battle — and sometimes much less than that. Finding a parking spot can be an even bigger time-waster. Not any more, if Israel-based Anagog has its way. Via multiple apps and a service for developers to integrate into their own apps, Anagog has built a real-time service that knows when people are vacating parking spots, and where you should go to get them. The company calls it “the first living parking map of an urban center,” and says that its data has just been built into the Easypark app. “We all saw what crowdsourcing did for traffic and navigation, and we are excited to see this concept brought to the world of parking,” says Ofer Tziperman, CEO of Parx, which makes EasyPark. Clearly, he’s referencing another Israeli startup, Waze, which was recently bought by Google for about $1.3 billion. And, of course, the two would be perfect companions: Waze to help you find your destination, Anagog to get you parked once you get there. Anagog has a variety of apps such as FindMyCar, 2Park, OTO, StopPark, and ParkDroid, which help people find their car again after parking. Clearly, data accumulated by those types of apps feeds into the open parking spot database, as does data from EasyPark and other partners. Altogether, Anagog says it has about 500,000 users, which enables it to do this: Israel, of course, is one story. The company has about 100,000 users there, in a country of about eight million people. Getting good enough data for San Francisco, New York, London, or other global cities is an entirely other matter, with 400,000 Anagog users spread over the rest of the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UuPKLQibUTo Still, partnership like that with EasyPark will help — Parx currently works in 130 cities. But more partners will be needed. says Yaron Aizenbud, Co- CEO of Anagog. Anagog is currently raising a funding round.

A new way of verifying you’re a real person and not a spam machine might eliminate the chore of typing phrases like “beetle sausage” and so on, with a start-up looking to gamify the art of verifying you’re a human. The PlayCaptcha system, developed by the UK’s Future Ad Labs, replaces the tired old text verification system with a mini game, suggesting it’s quicker than squinting at a normal captcha and, in good news for advertisers and brands, provides an exciting new little animated box that grabs the attention of internet users. Products made and advertised by giant conglomerates Heinz and Reckitt Benckiser are among the first to sign up to these interactive adver-games on their sign-up pages, so look out for them the next time you’re voluntarily adding your details to some company’s spam database. The early demo example supplied asks you to move the (Heinz branded) salad cream onto the sandwich, a gaming experience that’s perhaps not quite up there with the 20-minute epic police chases people are currently enjoying in GTA V, but still. It’s quicker and easier than identifying some wonky words.

With the iPhone 5s launch behind us, industry watchers are now turning up the heat as they sniff around for details on next year’s iPhone 6. We have already seen a few early reports from multiple solid sources suggest Apple will finally make the move to a larger display in next year’s iPhone 6, and now another report from a well-respected source suggests Apple is indeed finally getting ready to satisfy critics and launch a smartphone with a larger screen. Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek on Monday issued a research note to investors in which he reversed course on Apple. Misek previously had a Hold rating on Apple shares with a $450 price target, but he’s now bullish on Apple’s prospects. As a result, Misek upped his target to $600 on Monday morning and slapped a Buy rating on Apple’s stock. There are a few reasons for the analyst’s change of heart, one of which is that his supply chain sources indicate that Apple is getting more favorable prices from its component suppliers. This is a change from Misek’s position earlier this year and if accurate, it would obviously boost Apple’s bottom line. Beyond margins, however, the analyst says Apple is finally going to cave and launch an iPhone 6 with a bigger display. “Despite still seeing risk to CQ4 and FY13 revs, we now believe better [gross margins] will allow Apple to skate by until iPhone 6 launches with its 4.8″ screen,” Misek wrote in the note. ”We est ~50% of smartphone shipments have >4″ screens and that iPhone 6 will catalyze a large upgrade cycle. The stock is attractive based on the attitude change, FY15 revs >+15%, and valuation.” Misek has had a few good calls regarding unreleased Apple products in the past, and he is considered by many to be among the top analysts covering Apple right now. That certainly doesn’t make an iPhone 6 with a 4.8-inch display a done deal, but it adds fuel to earlier reports from The Wall Street Journal and plugged in KGI Securities analyst Ming-chi Kuo. Apple shares jumped more than 1% on Misek’s report.