Gadgets and Technology Reviews

A job invented in Silicon Valley is going mainstream as more industries try to gain an edge from big data.The job description “data scientist” didn’t exist five years ago. No one advertised for an expert in data science, and you couldn’t go to school to specialize in the field. Today, companies are fighting to recruit these specialists, courses on how to become one are popping up at many universities, and the Harvard Business Review even proclaimed that data scientist is the “sexiest” job of the 21st century.

Samsung’s technology for ultrafast data speeds currently requires a truckload of equipment.The world’s biggest cell-phone maker, Samsung, caused a stir last week by announcing an ultrafast wireless technology that it unofficially dubbed “5G.” And the technology has, in fact, been tested on the streets of New York.

An Australian team unveils the fundamental building block of a scalable quantum computer that could be embedded in today’s silicon chipsBack in the late 90s, a physicist in Australia put forward a design for a quantum computer. Bruce Kane suggested that phosphorus atoms embedded in silicon would be the ideal way to store and manipulate quantum information.

In Washington, CEO Tim Cook defended Apple’s R&D cost sharing arrangements.

Apple CEO Tim Cook came under fire in Washington today at a U.S. Senate hearing focused on the elaborate strategies Apple used to avoid paying tens of billions of dollars in corporate taxes. 

Upgraded robot vision will be just one of the uses for the new version of Microsoft’s gesture control camera.Microsoft announced a new version of its Xbox games console today, the Xbox One, and with it an improved and essentially reinvented version of Kinect, the company’s body- and gesture-control sensor. That bodes well for Xbox gamers, but also for the community of hackers that have found so many original uses for the first Kinect, from robot vision to 3-D doodling (see “Hackers Take the Kinect to New Levels”). It seems likely that a new wave of Kinect hacking activity will begin as soon as the new device becomes available.

Pinpoint predictions are a long way off, but taking into account daily odds might help make the public more alert.The devastation in Moore, Oklahoma, shows the limits of sensing, modeling and warning technologies. While some technologies promise somewhat more-accurate hurricane tracks and thus sharper evacuation orders (see “A Model for Hurricane Evacuation”), tornado warnings are another story altogether (see “The Limits of Tornado Predictions”). 

Can cultural factors be more important than censorship in shaping Chinese surfing habits? Two researchers argue that a new study of the way global websites cluster together supports this idea

A techie’s San Francisco home has its own Twitter feed. Will yours be next?At first glance, you’d never guess there’s anything unusual about Tom Coates’s San Francisco home. Nestled at the end of a narrow passageway on a side street, it’s a peaceful, sunny house decorated with modern furniture and bright posters that say things like “Machines help us work” and “Make your own path.”

Jolla Mobile, formed by Nokia refugees, launches a phone with interchangable back-panels and the Sailfish OS

Almost one year after Nokia’s bloodletting, in which it cut 10,000 jobs and closed research and manufacturing facilities (see “Nokia Forced to Take Drastic Measures”), we’re starting to see new fruits of the startup culture that rose from the wreckage. 

Hardware that tracks your head, eyes and hands will make the follow up to Second Life very different to the pioneering virtual world.The founder of once-popular virtual world Second Life, Philip Rosedale, is working on a new 3D digital world that looks like it will be operated using gestures and body-tracking hardware. Rosedale declined to talk about his new company, called High Fidelity, just yet. But videos and other material posted online by the company suggest it is working on an impressively immersive virtual reality experience where you control an avatar using head and hand movements.

A $300 million project seems to have failed to produce a cheap way to make fuel from algae.In 2009, ExxonMobil announced that it would pay Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics up to $300 million to develop algae-based fuels.