Category: Event

Event Recap: NJ Tech Meetup #68

Posted on by Ben Hone

On Monday, January 11th, the Media Lab attended the 68th New Jersey Tech Meetup. The guest speaker for this first meetup of the year was Mark Gerson, the co-founder and Chairman of the Gerson Lehrman Group and of Thuzio, a service that connects businesses to celebrities for local appearances. He has also founded a number of philanthropic organizations including United Rescue and the African Mission Healthcare Foundation. Mr. Gerson spoke about his early history as an entrepreneur, beginning with a $50 wager over fantasy basketball in grade school. After this early taste of success, Mr. Gerson shared his experience as a founder where he had to pivot and adapt his companies’ missions in order to fit the market and client demand. He also shared a good bit of advice on starting a company, which was to find the dumbest person you know and tell them your idea. If they don’t understand, refine the idea.

Aside from the fireside chat, three entrepreneurs took the stage to introduce the group to their new businesses. Indicative, based in Union Square, provides behavioral analytics for marketers with a focus on clean data visualization for the end user. HYPR is a marketplace that connects brands to relevant social media influencers based on their proprietary grading system. Their three main verticals include political campaigns, app promotion, and CPG. They are active on a variety of social media, including Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Vine.

Last but not least, GrownOcean presented their mobile app for adventure travel planning. The app allows users to create a bucket list of adventures and helps them sort out the logistics by making lodging and travel recommendations, as well as providing a supply checklist for their voyage. Although still in the early stages of growing their user-base, GrownOcean is set up to enable brands to promote content in the form of custom adventures and recommended travel items, with a link to purchase.

The NJ Tech Meetup kicked off 2016 with an impressive array of inspirational entrepreneurs and the Lab is excited to see what else is in store for the new year.

 

CES 2016: Lenovo To Launch First AR-Capable Smartphone With Google’s Project Tango

Posted on by Lab Team

Today at CES, Chinese PC-maker Lenovo announced that it has inked a deal with Google to create the first smartphone with Augmented Reality (AR) capabilities. Set to launch later this year, this yet-to-be-named phone will incorporate Google’s Project Tango technologies to let user take 3D-scanning of the surrounding environment and superimpose information and digital images onto those images.

Project Tango, launched by Google in 2014, has gotten off to a rather slow start, and this new partnership with Lenovo could spell great opportunities for Google to push AR technologies into the consumer market.

For more of the Lab’s CES coverage, click here.

 

Header image courtesy of Lenovo’s Twitter

CES 2016: These Smart Wireless Earplugs Will Send You To Sleep

Posted on by Lab Team

There’s no shortage of wireless headphones and earplugs at this year’s CES, but Hush’s smart earplugs stands out for its unique function. Instead of focusing on great sound quality or customizable shapes, Hush is designed to block out the noise by crooning sleep-inducing sounds into your ears and help you fall asleep.

Users can choose the sleep sounds of their choice via Hush’s smartphone app and load it onto the smart earplugs, which helps to preserve the phone’s battery. It will also recognize the alarm you set on your phone and play it to wake you up on time. As more and more everyday devices become connected with the smartphone and gain new functionality, we expect to see more smart gadgets like this infiltrate our daily life.

For more of the Lab’s CES coverage, click here.

Header image courtesy of Hush Technology’s Website

 

CES 2016: ModiFace Brings Next-Gen Smart Mirror To Retail

Posted on by Lab Team

Smart mirrors that virtually change outfit or makeup for customers are exactly new – Ralph Lauren has started testing smart mirrors created by Oak Labs at its NYC flagship store. But at CES 2015, ModiFace came out with a new smart mirror that brings interactive mirrors to the next level. Not only can it change makeups on demand with great accuracy, it can also be programmed to simulate skin-care, anti-aging, teeth whitening, and contact lens effects on users’ live 3D videos. It even features gesture control in some makeup selections that allow users to change lipstick colors by kissing the camera or changing their eye shadows by raising their eyebrow.

Dubbed ModiFace Mirror HD, it is available for brands to customize for their products and put to use in stores today. For brick-and-mortar retailers, especially those in fashion and cosmetics, this offers a great new tool to engage shoppers in stores and encourage on-site sampling.

For more of the Lab’s CES coverage, click here,

 

Header image courtesy of ModiFace

 

CES 2016: Intel Unveils 3D-Printed Connected Dress

Posted on by Lab Team

This year at CES, we are seeing a lot of connected clothing that tracks biometric data for fitness and health purposes. Among them, the “Adrenaline Dress” showcased by Intel caught our eyes. Its namesake came from the fact that our muscles expand when our adrenaline level is high. With built-in Curie computing module made by Intel, the dress can monitor your adrenaline level based on the conductivity of your skin, and can expand and contract itself accordingly so that it would always remain a perfect fit. For now, it is only a prototype made entirely with a 3D printer, but it points to an exciting new possibility for the next generation of wearables.

 

For more of the Lab’s CES coverage, click here.

CES 2016: YouTube Keynote Session Promises Digital Video Domination

Posted on by Lab Team

Earlier today, Chief Business Officer of YouTube Robert Kyncl took the stage at CES 2016 to deliver a keynote session on the growth and future of digital video. He kicked off the session with a bold yet reasonable prediction that by the end of the decade, digital video will be the thing that people spend most time on besides sleeping and working. Throughout his keynote address, he laid out four key reasons why digital video, and YouTube by implication, will dominate our future media landscape.

Mobile

Digital videos may have started out on the desktops, but it is inherently fitted to transit onto the mobile screens. Where TV has struggled to go mobile, YouTube took the plunge long ago, and now more than half of YouTube’s traffic comes from mobile devices as consumers become increasingly used to consume media on mobile devices.

Music

“Half of teens today use YouTube as their primary music streaming source,” Kyncl pointed out. To capitalize on YouTube’s vast library of music and music videos, YouTube Music Key is now included in YouTube’s subscription service Red. Scooter Braun, the man who discovered Justin Bieber on YouTube and made him into a star, took the stage and shared some insights into YouTube’s impact on the music industry.

Diverse Content

Kyncl also counts YouTube’s diverse content as one of its strength. “YouTube is a democratic platform, which allows everyone to create a video for anyone,” he said, and that’s why YouTube has something for everyone. Therefore, digital videos are choice-based viewing, and YouTube holds the biggest content library for viewers to choose from.

Immersive Content

Looking ahead, YouTube is betting on spherical videos and VR-mode viewing to be the next big thing in digital video. Kyncl invited Nick Woodman, CEO of GoPro on stage to talk about the allures of 360-dgree videos, and announced a partnership between YouTube and GoPro, which aims to help create more immersive content on YouTube using GoPro’s 360-degree cameras.

 

For more of the Lab’s CES coverage, click here.

CES 2016: What’s New And Hot In VR and AR

Posted on by Lab Team

With Oculus Rift set for its late March ship date, it seems like Virtual Reality is making its first step towards the consumer market. Besides Oculus, the show floor at CES 2016 is abuzz with a number of lesser-known players in the VR and AR spaces showcasing their newest products. Here are some of the Lab’s favorites.

Avegant Glyph
Elegantly designed as a one-piece VR audio-visual headset, Avegant Glyph (pictured) offers users a personal theater experience that integrates the screen into the band of headphones.

Orcam
Designed for those with sight disability, Orcam is a pair of smart AR glasses that read out the name of what you point to.

Solos
Solos showcases their cycling AR glasses that put performance and fitness data right in cyclists’ field of vision.

NASA VR
Using both Google Cardboard and the Oculus DK 2, NASA let attendees experience a few of their VR apps to inspire and educate about space.

Krush Moveo/ooVoo
The Krush products offer a 4D experience with a free-rotating VR simulation pod that allow users to experience virtual reality content in 360-degree.

LeTV’s LeVR Headset
LeTV, a Chinese streaming service is also showcasing a relatively new and lower-end VR headset that uses its smartphone as a display. The company made headlines earlier with its partnership with Qualcomm on its newest phablet LeTV Max Pro.

Immersit
Immersit makes a 4D motion platform that moves furniture in sync with the VR experiences users are watching.

Vuzix
Vuzix is showcasing its newest VR headset named iWear Wireless Video Headphones, which allows users to stream 3D, and 360-degree VR movies directly from the internet, as well as two more industrial-facing AR glasses.

 

For more of the Lab’s CES coverage, click here.

 

Header image courtesy of Avegant Glyph’s Kickstarter Page

CES 2016: Samsung’s Keynote On Its IoT Solutions

Posted on by Lab Team

This morning, the Lab attended Samsung’s keynote address to hear what Dr. WP Hong, President of Samsung SDS, have to say about Samsung’s IoT solutions. Here are some highlights from his keynote.

Devices In Sync With Real Life

Samsung is set on bringing connectivity to every facet of the modern life, showcasing a slew of IoT devices it has: its new smart fridge “Family Hub Refrigerator” in the kitchen, the new quantum dot display SUHD smart TV in the living room, a smart car integration through a partnership with BMW, and a new powerful bio-processor for fitness trackers we wear. All these new devices are aimed to serve one purpose – sync up modern consumers’ daily life no matter where they are. The company even partnered with Ascott to develop “the Internet of Real Estate,” where all connected devices in the same building will be centrally connected to create the smart buildings of the future.

Open Platform And “IoTivity”

Dr. Hong stressed at the beginning of the keynote about Samsung’s belief in the benefits of an open IoT platform and its commitment in giving the consumers more control with true interoperability among its devices (or as Dr. Wong calls it, “IoTivity”). To that end, Samsung is working closely with Microsoft to make sure its new 2-in-1 tablet Samsung TabPro S, which runs Windows 10, is capable of controlling the smart home devices plugged into its IoT platform with Cortana.

IoT Brings New Security Challenges

With a wide-ranging IoT devices and an open platform come some great security challenges. To solve those new security issues, Samsung developed Samsung Knox, a security protocol built into its IoT platform, which banks like Goldman Sachs is already using to create new security measures for their enterprise IoT devices. Moreover, it has also developed a set of Security Solutions for its smart TVs to ensure the data transferring between smart home devices and smart TVs is safe and secure.

 

For more of the Lab’s CES coverage, click here.

CES 2016: Here Comes A Human-Carrying Autonomous Drone

Posted on by Lab Team

Last year at CES, a couple of drone-makers wowed the crowd with autonomous drones. But this year, self-driving drones are no longer that surprising – until EHANG came out with a giant autonomous drone that can fly one human passenger around without manual piloting.

The Chinese drone manufacturer yesterday unveiled its Ehang 184, an electric-powered drone can be fully charged in two hours, and fly for 23 minutes at sea level. Passengers can set a flight plan, and then only need to give two commands, “take off” and “land,” using a Microsoft Surface tablet mounted on its dashboard.

For more of the Lab’s CES coverage, click here.

Photo credit: Matt Lehrer

CES 2016: The Next Big Thing Conference On The Future Of Interfaces

Posted on by Richard Yao

As part of CNET’s “The Next Big Thing” conference series at CES 2016, the “Is Typing Dead?” session on Wednesday afternoon captured our attention because of its focus on debating what’s next in human-machine interaction.

The actual voice behind Siri, Susan Bennett, took stage at the beginning of the session, and hearing her talking in her highly recognizable “Siri voice” made for an oddly interesting experience. She told the audience a brief but funny recap about her involvement in the creation of Siri, kicking off this simulating session on what will come after typing and touchscreens in the continued evolution of digital interfaces.

The four-person panelists consisted of industry thought leaders on interface designs, including Wendy Ju from Stanford University’s Interaction Design Research unit, Pattie Maes from MIT Media Lab, Marcus Behendt from BMW’s user experience department, and Vlad Sejnoha, CTO of Nuance Communications. Together, they discussed the state of voice command and gesture control, and casted their predictions for the future of user interfaces.

Voice command has been taking off in recent years with the likes of Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, and as we have seen at this year’s CES, more and more devices has added support for voice command and will start talking with users. But because of the inherent ambiguity in natural languages, as MIT’s Maes pointed out, speech is not always the most efficient way of communications, and therefore will be relegated to controlling only certain applications.

Moreover, the panelists agreed that sometimes voice command may misunderstand user intent because it is not picking up on all the non-verbal cues we use in conversations. And it would become a much more powerful tool for human- computer interaction if it is combined with personal data to learn about user’s preference and interests.

Gesture control is also a UI trend that is growing in popularity, whether it’s X-box’s kinetic gaming features, or the in-car gesture control that Volkswagen just added to its Golf electric model. BMW’s Behrendt sees gesture control mostly as communication enhancement, while also reminding everyone that some gestures may vary from culture to culture, which hinders universal adoption. And the panelists agrees that the bottom line here is that gesture control should be intuitive and shouldn’t be like a sign language that users have to learn to use.

In addition, the panelists also quickly ran through some emerging technologies that may one day power mainstream digital interfaces, such as gaze control (commend with sight), proximity-based control (such as beacons triggering actions), as well as biometric-based control that responds to the changes in your physiological stats. While all these may still be decades away from ready for mass adoption, they nevertheless points to a future where our devices will no longer just passively waiting for our commands, but rather actively uses contextual data to anticipate our needs and serve us before we even lift a finger.

For more of the Lab’s CES coverage, click here.