Forget B2C, B2B or even P2P – the future is M2M – machine to machine communication.

And forget virtual world vs. real world, in this M2M Internet of Things, the two are fused together in synthesis.

These are the two central messages of a useful special report out today by the Financial Times: The Connected Business 2013.

• The next wave of online innovation for the “network of networks” is M2M – machines connecting, communicating and collaborating with machines.
• By 2020, the Internet of Things will include 50bn connected objects, this is already creating new business models, improving business processes, and reducing costs and risks (GE predicts that M2M will remove $150bn in waste).
  • In healthcare, swallowable M2M smart modules will check internal health, whilst smart implants will monitor health (BP, drug delivery) and connect to body/brain care specialist.  M2M technology can also help with ‘compliance’ – taking right medicine regularly at the right time, with smart dispensers – typically pill cases and inhalers (WHO estimates that 1 in 10 hospital admissions are due to non-adherence/non-compliance)
  • In automotive, the EU has called for all vehicles to be fitted with M2M technology by 2015 – to request maintenance automatically, warn when components are in danger of failure and dial emergency services in the event of a serious accident, giving the vehicle’s location.
  • In retail, stores and malls now contain “Experience Stations” and other interactive POS devices, all connected up to the Internet to provide feedback and be managed remotely. Likewise smart connected vending machines can handle secure, cashless payment and check inventory levels and machine functionality.
  • In urban planning, hundreds of thousands of sensors will be embedded city infrastructure designed to create ‘Smart Cities‘ that maximise the efficiency of everything from traffic flows and emergency services to electricity consumption and energy storage. Objects as traditional as lamp posts are being given IP addresses and fitted out with M2M modules (In Northern Portugal, Cisco and Living PlanIT are prototyping a new smart city)
  • Within five years, most homes will have 200 devices linked to the internet from lightbulbs to washing machines
• The key technology involved are cheap machine-to-machine “modules” that have a sensor  (e.g. temperature, pressure or movement) and communications electronics (e.g. GSM, WiFi) that allow data to be sent and received. These modules have fallen in price by 2/3 from $65 to under $20 in the last 4 years
  • In Germany, over 100m vending machines, vehicles, smoke alarms, and other devices are sharing information automatically as part of an M2M initiative launched last year by operators including Deutsche Telekom.
• A key challenge – and opportunity – is to master the massive amounts of data produced by the M2M Internet – a single 787 flight generates half a terabyte of data – data is the fastest growing commodity on our planet.  Smart analytics will need to be predictive and adaptive - learn from experience and constantly improve.  The data challenge of M2M is more about filtering out the irrelevant than finding the golden nuggets.
• A second key challenge/opportunity is standards - devices will need a common language in order to talk to each other – right now the data tower of babel is a cacophony of  languages; ZigBee, JenNet-IP, KNX, Digital Addressable Lighting Interface, WiFi and Near-Field Communication.
• Finally, data security is the third challenge and opportunity – data theft, identify theft and hacking.  Already in London, of the 100,000+ wireless networks in London, 27% had few or no security.

Article courtesy of Social Commerce Today

Chalk this up as one to watch closely in the world of consumer fintech. Numbrs, a mobile-first banking app founded out of Swiss company builder Centralway, has raised 7.5 million Swiss francs (~$7.7 million) from its parent, capital it will use to build on its pending German launch, with the UK and Swiss markets up next, followed by Singapore and Hong Kong.

The startup, which also hails from Switzerland (a country known for its “innovative” banking) bills itself as a mobile banking app to rule them all, offering a financial dashboard similar to something like Intuit-owned Mint.com, which enables a user to intelligently track and predict their spending, but with the added functionality of being able to actually make transactions and pay bills from within the app, too. That’s something that most, if not all, of its competitors lack.

Longer term, however, Numbrs’ ambition is to get this working across all countries and all banks, which would be some feat. Tackling Germany first makes sense, where I understand there exists a single and independent protocol over which Numbrs connects to banks locally.

In contrast, the UK — where Numbrs is gunning for a Summer/Fall launch — lacks a common B2C standard. Instead, the startup is working with a “leading” but unnamed API vendor (though I understand it’s not Yodlee, the U.S. company that powers a number of competing dashboards) which has already already done the heavy lifting of creating connectors to all the major UK banks. This will enable Numbrs to authenticate the user with their bank accounts, import and conduct transactions, and present all data in the same aggregated view already present within the German version of the app. It also makes it harder for the banks to pull the plug on Numbrs, since its the same system they use for their own consumer apps.

Another key feature of the Numbrs app, and something that is central to its planned advertising-based revenue model, is what the startup calls the Future Timeline, a technology that predicts what a user’s finances will be like in the future by analysing historical patterns of incoming and outgoing payments, thus enabling financial targets to be met. It’s also the sort of data that I’m guessing advertisers would, indirectly, kill for.

Finally, as part of Numbrs’ UK launch, TechCrunch has learned that Centralway is opening a London office, scheduled to open in September, where the Numbrs UK country manager and other marketing personnel will also be based.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Last week, representatives of many of the world’s leading cities – including London, Boston, Mexico City, Barcelona and Christchurch – came to San Francisco to learn from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs about how to make their cities smarter. One of the people behind this LLGA Cities Summit was the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Hirshberg, formerly the chairman of Technorati and now one of the world’s leading pioneers of smart cities.

Citing innovative urban data startups like MotionLoft and QuickPay, Hirshberg believes there are now huge opportunities for entrepreneurs with products that can make a city smarter. We are just at the beginning of this thing, he told me, before explaining that the biggest entrepreneurial opportunities lie in the development of crime, healthcare and traffic data – particularly in terms of making this data “predictive”.

But smart cities are about more than just making money, Hirshberg believes. In the Sixties being a citizen meant we protested, he told me, while today the good citizen builds APIs that make a city more habitable. And that’s why, he insists, we have to make what he calls “smart architectural decisions” to enable the right level of anonymity in the 21st century city. Otherwise, he warns, the smart city of the future will be too smart about all of us, thereby destroying the privacy of its citizens.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

It’s been a little over a year since Google started teasing something it called “Project Glass.” The futuristic, wearable computer that would change the way that you interact with the world was nothing more than a series of rumors for months before it was “formally introduced” in April 2012. Not known for hardware and not having a current bonafide physical device that was popular among consumers, many opined that this was Google’s way of begging for attention. It might have been, and it definitely worked.

In thirteen months, Glass has gone from Star Trek fantasy to reality. It’s been quite the whirlwind of activity.

The “wearable computing” age is upon us, and it’s been widely reported that Apple was working on a watch, therefore many assumed that Google was working on a similar device to keep up. This was clearly not the case and Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin took special interest in the Glass project and has been leading the charge going back to when prototype weighed around eight pounds in August 2011.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane, as a lot has happened over the past year in Glassland.

It’s real(ish)

The video from Google itself got sent people’s imaginations into overdrive. It was called “One day…” and gave us a glimpse into the life of a daily user of what Google had up its sleeve. We now know that the “One day…” reference had more to do with what the product could become, not what it would be in its first iteration:

The user experience in this video is aspirational, at best, as the current iteration of Glass is more of a compliment and utility to your day, rather than the augmented reality “enhancer” as this video demonstrates. Still, the elements that make Glass handy are all there, taking calls, getting directions and taking pictures from a new point of view.

Immediately after the video, and public admonishment that the project was real, the press wondered out loud if Apple should compete and that other companies should stand up and take notice. We also now know that the rumored final name for the device, Google Eye, isn’t likely. Good thing, because it sounds way creepier than Glass. We’ll get to more “creepiness” later.

It was clear that Glass was getting a lot of attention, both positive and negative, from the start. Even Jon Stewart did a parody about them.

OK, now they’re really real(ish)

Before Google’s I/O developer conference in 2012, Sergey Brin started showing Glass off to folks like Gavin Newsom. This is the first time that we found out that Glass had a trackpad that would let you scroll through its UI, even though we didn’t know what that UI looked like yet.

Even Google CEO Larry Page got into the act, wearing his pair at the Google Zeitgeist event in London. Was Page making important company decisions without us knowing, using his futuristic eyewear? Probably not, but it was cool to think about.

Holy crap, they’re really really real(ish)

At Google I/O 2012, developers sat in the Moscone Center not knowing what to expect from the company that has been using its advertising business to fund all types of cool projects. After all, who would have thought that a search and advertising company could actually pull off something like Gmail? Or a web browser? And now a driving car? A pair of glasses? Crazy talk. Well, on June 27th, 2012, Google fed into that crazy talk with…a crazy stunt.

The man at the helm of Google X and Project Glass, Sergey Brin, pulled off a stunt so memorable, that many of us in attendance still don’t fully understand what we saw.

Brin jumped out of a zeppelin wearing Glass, and participated in a live video Hangout the entire time:

After that, a bunch of people hopped onto bikes and drove into the keynote auditorium. The audience looked at one another, as if to say, “Did this just really happen?”

It was indeed Google’s “Apple moment.”

After Brin took the stage, we were left to wonder if he would then go into full Oprah mode and tell us all to check under our seats for a pair of Glass that would be our very own. Nope. At I/O 2012, the “Glass Explorer Program” was announced, and the first 2,000 attendees that wanted to pledge to pay $1,500 for the opportunity to develop apps for the Glass platform, could.

There was no date given for when the device would be shipped, but nobody cared. These things were real(er). Think about it, developers signed up to pay $1,500 for a device that they had never even touched. I was one of them, and even I felt silly. There was something about the cadence that Google had been marching to up to I/O that year that felt right.

Bloggers got to try Glass on for a few seconds, but didn’t get to do anything with them. The hypefest was on. Our founder, Michael Arrington, had a fun, and grounded, thought after the announcement:

“I can imagine in a couple of years we’ll all be wearing these at events. Then a couple of years after that maybe we’ll look back and think we all looked like idiots.”

Perhaps.

They’re real(er)(ish)

After I/O, Google started communicating with its Glass “Explorers” about all of the device happens, introducing its skunkworks team along the way. Those who joined the program at the conference would get to participate in Hangouts, attend conferences and get exclusive news on Glass. In retrospect, Google set itself up for people to start making fun of those clamoring for the device, whom are affectionately/unaffectionately referred to as “Glassholes.” You see, whenever something is only available to a select group of people, those not inside of that group tend to lash out a bit. Sure, there are those who think that Glass will never amount to anything, but those on the fence had no choice but to attack. It’s kind of like high-school.

As the months went on, the press flirted with Glass, as more and more Googlers starting wearing them on campus. Stories about Microsoft’s “Glass” plans and a reminder of Apple’s wearable tech patents were peppered in, too.

In late 2012 and early 2013, Hackathons were announced, Brin rode the subway wearing Glass and its API, dubbed Mirror, was introduced at SXSW.

OK, Glass. You’re real.

In April, a group of heavyweights in Silicon Valley announced a partnership called “The Glass Collective.” Developers who wanted to build things for Glass, without ads or any means to make actual money, could visit either Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz or Kleiner Perkins, and if their project was interesting enough, they could get funding from all three.

It was at that event that Google Glass team member, Steve Lee, let it slip that developers would soon be receiving invitations to pick their pair of Glass up from Mountain View, Los Angeles or New York City. They could have them shipped, but that’s no fun. Glass was officially real.

In just a few days after that Collective event, the first pairs of Glass for developers were coming off of the production line, the Mirror API guidelines were posted, its companion app for Android was released and full specs were released for the first time.

This “moonshot” that Google had been cooking up in its super-secret X Labs were going to see the light of day, outside of Google’s campus’. People just then started to realize that certain folks would be meandering around town with cameras on their face, and focused solely on how the device would affect them…the ones not wearing the device. The ones not in the “club.” A quick search for the term “Google Glass privacy” shows the same story written by hundreds of reporters, most of them never having worn the device.

I was able to pick up my pair of Glass on April 17th, and it’s interesting to see what the device really is in its current state, as opposed to what we saw in the video released last year. We did a “day in the life” video, showing what I was seeing on the display:

While it’s not as “pretty” as Google’s first teaser video, the elements are all there. In its current state, Glass is a utility that allows you to do some of the things that your smartphone does now. The difference with Glass is that you can do these things hands-free, quicker than before and in a less socially disrupting way.

What’s next for Glass?

For a period of time, we’ll see the same types of stories about how creepy Glass is. At this year’s I/O, none of Google’s executives wore the device on stage or while walking around the Moscone Center. It was its way of turning the “lens” onto developers and saying “It’s time to make this yours.” Still, we heard about people wearing Glass in the bathroom, as if to remind us that not everyone is ready to feed into the hype of the device.

It’s hard to argue with the point that the Glass platform is the most interesting one for developers to iterate upon since Apple’s introduction of the App Store. For the first time in years, these developers are getting a chance to re-imagine their existing services, or build new ones, for a brand new device. Glass isn’t perfect, and will only be as good as the apps that are developed for it.

During this year’s I/O, Twitter, Facebook and a slew of others announced their own Glass apps. The Facebook app is great, while the Twitter app will need more work. As I’ve continued to wear the device while I’m not at the computer, I’m finding myself trying to get away from all of the crazy and unnecessary notifications that I get on my phone and desktop. The Twitter app, for example, sends me mobile updates that I’ve subscribed to, @ replies and direct messages. This simply won’t fly, and Glass users are going to need more granular controls for what pops up on their display. It’s early though, and these are good learning experiences.

No matter what you think about Glass, you have to admit that the past year has been a good one for Google and its fancy, futuristic device. From a secret pet-project to developer-only playground, it will be fascinating to see what happens next in Glassland. There’s no telling when the device will be available for everyday consumers, but I can guarantee that it won’t be until developers have had ample time to explore the possibilities. I do know one thing: If you’re really worried about being spied on by someone wearing Glass, don’t be. You’re not that interesting.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google is under fire in the UK for its tax practices in the country, and a new key witness (who spoke to The Sunday Times) might put them in deeper hot water when he hands over a reported 100,000 emails and documents to the British Revenue & Customs (HRMC) services. Barney Jones, a former Googler who was at the company between 2004 and 2006, says he has material proof that Google’s London sales staff which would negotiate and close sales for the UK market, despite claiming its Dublin HQ handled finalizing all deals.

Jones was prompted to speak out by testimony given to the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) last week by Google VP Matt Brittin, who said that London-based Google staff were never closing any ad sales deals, though some selling efforts were made there. Brittin had previously gone on record in November 2012 with statements asserting that no one in the London office was doing any kind of ad selling.

The matter of where the deals were finalized is especially important because if a sale closes in London, it’s likely they’d be taxable in Britain, rather than in the extremely low tax-rated Ireland. Jones told the Sunday Times that Google is fully aware of this, yet there are still records of Google staff closing major deals from companies like eBay and Lloyds TSB, but Google doesn’t seem at all certain that any of the documentation will absolutely prove that it has done anything strictly against UK tax law, according to a statement provided by Google Direct of External Relations Peter Barron to the Sunday Times.

“As we said in front of the public accounts committee, it is difficult to respond fully to documents we have not seen,” the statement reads. “These questions relate to Google’s business in the UK going back a decade or more. None of the allegations put to us change the fact that Google pays the corporate tax due on its UK activities and complies fully with UK law.” Google reiterated this statement to TechCrunch when we contacted them for comment.

Ireland uses its lower corporate taxation rate, which is 12.5 percent, or a little over half of Britain’s 23 percent, to attract big names who base their European corporate headquarters there, including Apple and Facebook in addition to Google. The search giant is currently under fire from UK parliament members for its tax practices, thanks to a Reuters investigation that revealed statements it made last November to the PAC about its London operations may not have been entirely accurate.

Amazon is next in the PAC’s sights for its UK tax practices, as Reuters has also recently uncovered evidence to suggest that it, too, is doing a lot of selling through an autonomous London-based unit, despite routing its sales on paper through a tax-exempt affiliate based in Luxembourg. In fact, for most on Google’s footing, avoiding taxes seems to be the exception, not the rule, and a recent piece by V3′s Madeline Bennett explains that even if this fresh round of hearings reveals that these schemes do run afoul of UK tax regulations, it’s unlikely we’ll see situations change all that dramatically. Governments are too dependent on the general economic benefits of hosting big corporations, and get too much out of awarding them contracts, she says, to risk doing long-term harm to those arrangements.

Still, what Jones claims to have would be incredibly embarrassing for Google, especially if it spells out in no uncertain terms that closing deals was regularly handled by Google’s London staff, in direct contradiction to what Brittin has told the committee, but until we see the goods, there’s no telling how deep down the rabbit hole his information actually goes.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I’ve spent the last two weeks wandering around London, Paris, and Istanbul (not Constantinople.) As an experiment, I left my trusty MacBook Pro behind and brought only the $199 Chromebook on which I type this. And to my considerable surprise it has served admirably. So admirably, in fact, that I believe ChromeOS is only one or two iterations away from being the right choice for many-if not most–homes.

I was skeptical to begin with: after all, I thought, Chrome is acceptable when you’re online, but I’ll be spending much of my travel time offline, which probably makes it a non-starter, right? — So I devoted most of my Chromebook’s (bizarrely spacious) 320GB hard drive to an install of Ubuntu. Which I then never used even once.

I suppose I would have if some kind of critical work emergency had come up: after all, I’m (mostly) a software developer by trade, and ChromeOS isn’t much of a developer platform. But that didn’t happen. Good thing, too, because Linux-on-the-desktop seems as ugly and frustrating as ever for someone, even a deeply techie someone, who just wants to get things done.

ChromeOS, though, is both very pretty and almost painless. Its biggest problem is that out of the box it naively insists that you’ll be online all the time–even though it can be perfectly serviceable while disconnected. You may not have known that nowadays both GMail and (most) Google Docs can work just fine offlne.

And if you didn’t, well, Google sure isn’t about to proactively tell you. You actually have to make a point of seeking out, installing, and then activating Offline Gmail and Offline Google Docs from the Chrome Web Store. Why ChromeOS doesn’t prompt you with this option as part of the onboarding process is truly beyond me. Similarly, why on Earth are “Gmail’ and “Offline Gmail” two separate apps? Google may be full of incredibly smart people, but they can also be insanely myopic when it comes to end users.

Once those were up and running, though, my Chromebook was a charm to use under almost all circumstances. Offline, I could write documents, check old email, and even play a few free games from the Chrome Web Store, although most Chrome games still seem to require an initial server connection to start up. And online, of course, the world was my oyster.

Did I have access to all the features of, say, Word or Excel? Hell, no. (You still can’t create a Google Docs spreadsheet when offline, either.) Was it an all-guns-blazing gaming experience? Again, no, although Chrome’s rapidly evolving Native Client ought to keep matters improving here. What I could do, though, was email, play a few games, surf the Net, communicate (via GChat or Google Hangouts, which worked excellently), and write documents — which unless I’m much mistaken is pretty much everything that most people use their computers for at home.

ChromeOS still needs better, and simpler, offline support; and I’d like to see more diversity of available hardware; but once those two things are addressed, which shouldn’t take long, I would happily recommend a Chromebook to my parents the next time they upgrade. In fact I’d happily recommend one to anyone who wants a small second laptop for travel, or who doesn’t need to do serious work on their home computer.

Long ago Neal Stephenson, when comparing operating systems to vehicles, described MacOS as a hermetically sealed day-glo VW Beetle; MS Windows as a clunky two-tone station wagon; and Linux as the product of a horde of dreadlocked hippies who spent their time building M1 battle tanks and giving them away for free. Which sounds great at first, but who actually wants to drive a tank?

Well, if I may extend that a little, ChromeOS is like a sleek, shiny Airstream trailer built around that same M1 engine. There are many things it can’t do, and a bunch more at which it’s very clumsy, but within its bailiwick, casual exploring, it’s both very attractive and awfully comfortable.

I don’t think Stephenson’s original analogies quite hold any more, though. Nowadays OS X is more like a Porsche…and Windows is a gas-guzzling pickup truck, or a cube van that makes disturbing noises whenever it corners. Still suitable for work, but not particularly great for either road trips or sub/urban living — and nowadays looking nervously over its metaphorical shoulder at the flotilla of drones and self-driving cars on the horizon.

Image credit: Dan McCullough, Flickr.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

TechStars, the popular startup accelerator with locations in Boston, Boulder, New York, Seattle, London, and more, has today announced an expansion to Austin, Texas – a city TechStars founder and CEO David Cohen refers to as the “natural next stop for us” in this morning’s announcement about the new location.

The program will launch its first program this August, and is accepting applications now.

TechStars Austin will operate out of Capital Factory in downtown Austin, and will be managed by Jason Seats, who sold his company Slicehost to Rackspace in 2008, making him VP of Engineering there. Seats has worked with the TechStars organization since 2011, serving as Managing Director of TechStars Cloud. He’ll now be relocating from San Antonio to Austin with his new position.

Cohen also notes that Austin has been named the “number one boomtown” and best place for your startup by folks like Forbes and Bloomberg, and recently became the second city chosen to receive Google Fiber. It’s also already home to a number of growing startups, as you probably know.

Austin’s Chamber of Commerce named 28 companies to its “A-List” showcase, its annual list which now includes startups like Spredfast, MassRelevance, Sparefoot, and MapMyFitness (to cite those Cohen pointed out), as well as others like myEDU, Uship, InfoChimps, Socialware, Emmoco, and many, many more. There’s also Indeed, HomeAway, Bazaarvoice, Spiceworks, and the 150+ others can pull up here in CrunchBase.

As with TechStars’ other locations, TechStars Austin won’t focus on any particular vertical, but is generally just looking for disruptive Internet companies backed by strong teams.

Mentors and investors involved in the new program include: Brett Hurt (Bazaarvoice), Tom Ball and Mike Dodd (Austin Ventures), Sam Decker (Mass Relevance), Jeff Dachis (Dachis Group), Kip McClanahan and Morgan Flager (Silverton), Josh Baer and Bill Boebel (Capital Factory), Ned Hill and Aziz Gilani (Mercury Fund), Rony Kahan (Indeed), Rob Taylor (Black Locus) Lori Knowlton (HomeAway), and more.

Austin’s scene is so hot right now that TechCrunch is even taking a roadtrip to that city this month (May 30th), kicking off the TechCrunch Meetup + Pitch-Off series, our 60-second pitch competition. First prize winners receive a table in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013,  while second and third place winners will receive tickets. (Those event details are here.)

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Tomorrow is Day 1 of Google I/O, and you know what that means: it’s keynote time!

We’re rolling out to the event in force, and will be bringing you along for the ride with our up-to-the-second liveblog and coverage beginning at 9 AM Pacific.

Remember last years keynote? It was pure, absolute madness. Skydivers! Dudes on BMX bikes jumping from rooftop to rooftop! It was like Cirque Du Soleil minus the elaborate costumes, the singing, and the sexual tension. So, fine, it was nothing like Cirque Du Soleil — but if only for a day, Sergey Brin got to be the closest thing we’ve seen to a real world Tony Stark.

What’ll we see? An upgraded Nexus 4 phone and Nexus 7 tablet, perhaps? A dramatically overhauled Google Maps? Google’s long-rumored unified chat system, or their equally gossiped Spotify competitor?

Connectivity allowing, our liveblog should start flowin’ just before 9 AM Pacific (That’s 10 AM Mountain, 12 PM Eastern, 5 PM London time, and… well, a bunch of other times elsewhere.) Check back tomorrow AM for the linkage!

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Fresh from last week’s Verizon Lumia device launch, Nokia has taken the wraps off a new smartphone in its Windows Phone-based Lumia range at an event in London today. The Lumia 925 is its first flagship for T-Mobile in the U.S. This means that following the Lumia 928 launch on Verizon, and factoring in Nokia’s initial launch of the Lumia 920 on AT&T last year, Nokia now has a flagship Windows Phone ranged on all three major U.S. carriers. Globally the Lumia 925 will be ranged with Vodafone in Europe, coming to markets including Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K. (priced at €469), and in China with China Mobile and China Unicom. The device will ship in June in Europe, with a U.S. launch slated for soon after.

The Windows Phone 8-based 4G Lumia 925 continues Nokia’s strategy of emphasising the camera smarts of its flagships Windows Phones, including PureView branding, Carl Zeiss optics and an 8.7MP lens with image stabilisation tech inside. But the camera hardware in the 925 is a little different to the 928 and 920, with one extra lens. This sixth lens improves photo performance in bright sunlight, according to Nokia, as well as sharing the low light performance abilities of its fellow flagships. In addition to that new camera hardware, the phone includes new software, called Smart Camera, that’s aimed at extending the photography experience by giving users new ways to capture and share photographs.

The camera software on the device includes a burst mode which allows up to 10 shots to be captured at a time. The software also has three new capture modes that take advantage of this burst feature, namely: Best Shot, for composing a composite shot from the best elements of several images; Action Shot for snapping a series of stills of action shots, such as sports, that can then be edited and shared as a sequence; and Motion Focus, a Lytro-style mode that allows the snapper to pick different elements to be in or out of focus after the shot has been taken. Nokia confirmed to TechCrunch that the latter featured is the first bit of software to make use of technology Nokia acquired when it bought imaging company Scalado last July.

“Whatever you do you can go back and edit again and again,” said Jo Harlow, head of Nokia’s smart devices unit — pictured above left, with SVP of product design chief Stefan Pannenbecker at the London launch. “The Nokia smart camera is our latest uniqie experience for our Nokia Lumia portfolio.”

The Smart Camera software is exclusive to the Lumia 925 initially but will be pushed out as an over-the-air update called Amber to Windows Phone 8-based Lumias in Q3, the company said. Nokia looks to be trying to bolster its efforts against Samsung here, which included a raft of new camera features on its flagship Galaxy S4 device, such as Dual-Shot and Drama Shot. The lack of Instagram for Windows Phone continues to hamper Nokia’s photo-focused efforts however, but also today it announced a partnership with Oggl, Hipstamatic’s new photo community app — noting that since Oggl has a relationship with Instagram, users will be able to access the latter service via that app.

Design wise, the Lumia 925 is the first Lumia device to include metallic trim. A silver aluminium band runs around its four edges, and doubles as the phone’s antenna — taking its cues from the iPhone’s design (but with “rigorous testing” to ensure no repeat of antennagate, according to Nokia). The mobile maker’s trademark polycarbonate clads the back of the device, so there’s a two-tone look and feel.

Nokia says the plastic back is designed to make it feel nicer and grippier in the hand. It may also be about keeping the weight down (to 139g), since heavy handsets is something Nokia has been criticised for. It certainly felt lightweight and slender during a brief hands on. Handset colour options are muted rather than the usual bold Lumia offerings, with black, white and grey options for the plastic back. Wireless charging shells, sold separately, can reintroduce the usual Lumia splashes of yellow, cyan and red.

Under the hood there’s a 1.5GHz Dual-Core Snapdragon chip, and 1GB of RAM. On board memory is 16Gb plus 7MB free cloud storage on Microsoft’s SkyDrive. The 4.5 inch AMOLED display has a resolution of 1280 x 768. Dimensions are 129 x 70.6 x 8.5mm. The 2000mAh battery is good for up to 12.8 hours of talk time on 3G, or up to 6.6 hours video playback, according to Nokia.

A ‘true PureView’ Windows Phone device — codenamed EOS — has been rumoured for several months, and the Lumia 925 looks to be that device. However it certainly does not include the 41MP sensor and pixel oversampling techniques featured in the Symbian-based 808 PureView. It seems unlikely that bona fide PureView technology will ever make it to Windows Phone, not least because it’s something of a camera pro curiosity, rather than a consumer-friendly mainstream feature. Rather Nokia is extending the PureView branding — to associate it with a range of camera-centric features, not just that original huge sensor.

Harlow closed the presentation by hinting at further new device launches from Nokia “later this summer”. “I can’t wait to see you later this summer when we will continue to bring new innovation and new experiences to our Lumia portfolio,” she said.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Bing recently introduced its updated people search feature and today, Microsoft is adding a few improvements to its people search that will make it even easier to find information about celebrities, politicians, athletes and many people with public LinkedIn profiles. Bing’s search box now auto-suggests names as you type. Because many people share the same name, this also means that it’s now easier to tell Bing who exactly you are looking for before you even hit the return key.

According to the Bing team, about 10 percent of searches on Bing are currently about people. This makes it the second most important search category on the service, right after navigational queries.

Microsoft has invested heavily in improving its people search and other semantic search features on the site, which now compete directly with Google’s Knowledge Graph. Bing’s Satori Entity Engine powers all of these features, which are typically revealed in Bing’s Snapshots bar (that is, in between the regular web links on the left and the social sidebar on the right).

In many ways, Satori’s mission is akin to Google’s Knowledge Graph, as it aims to help Microsoft understand more about the world. As Microsoft’s director of online services Stefan Weitz told me when the company released its last update to Satori, Google’s Knowledge Graph is a “kick-ass encyclopedia,” but Bing wants to go a step further and make all of this information “actionable.”

This new update, Microsoft notes in today’s announcement, was co-developed by its Search Technological Center (STC-E) in London in close collaboration with the User Experience team in Bellevue, Wash.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch