Impulse Man

How to Create Animated GIFs With Your Smartphone

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Did you know you can whip up tasty animated GIFs on your iPhone or Android handset, in seconds, free? We’ve found a superb app that will help you animate photographs and GIF-icize video.

Whether you want to join in with a popular meme, give a social avatar a bit of motion enhancement or just create something that will make your friends laugh, we have a super-simple way to do it.

SEE ALSO: 10 Hilarious Animated GIFs that Took the Web by Storm

Take a look through the gallery for our easy-peasy walkthrough. Just remember to use your newly-found, GIF-making superpowers wisely!

Source: Mashable » Tech

Connected Cars: How to Accelerate Mainstream Adoption

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Steve Tengler is a user experience (UX) director at Altia, Inc. He spent over 20 years in automotive design at OnStar, Nissan and Ford.

Every so often, the media tells us about an automotive manufacturer on the cusp of delivering wireless, cooperative systems. The reader immediately thinks of Knight Rider, and wanders through a fantasy of connected car heaven.

However, this type of news is often miles from accurate; connected car offerings in the near-to-distant future are a different reality. This article examines the delays behind that “nearly done” automotive technology, and analyzes the value of our research dollars.

In 2005, several automakers introduced cooperative, wireless systems at the Intelligent Transportation Society World Congress in the parking lot of the San Francisco Giants’s then SBC Park. Messages were sent vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure via dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) or, as it would later be renamed, “IEEE 802.11p (5.9 GHz).”

Most of the applications were safety-related systems that offered a seemingly futuristic understanding of position, speed and road conditions. But that was six long years ago – so, what has changed? Apart from the Giants stadium name-change, not much. Technology is no closer to the marketplace. Let’s explore why.

The “Co” in Cooperation

If you’ve heard the saying “the second mouse gets the cheese,” then you understand the fate of the first mouse — snap! Similarly, no company has succumbed to the lure of the first-to-market-cheese since each has foreseen the trap: producing a cooperative system with no cooperation.

Let’s imagine you are a leading automotive manufacturer that holds 20% of the U.S. market. That market is projected to reach 14 million vehicles in 2012. Considering there are over 250 million vehicles on the road, you could potentially communicate with 1.1% of the vehicles after just one year, assuming you installed the $ 200-$ 300 worth of equipment on all of your vehicles.

The first customer to purchase a wireless device creates the equivalent of a tree falling in an unoccupied forest. How satisfied will he or she be? If there’s no one else with whom to communicate, then not very satisfied at all. And how differentiating will that system be when all other automotive companies introduce systems that communicate the same information as your breakthrough device? Again, not at all. The moral to this story? In this case, being first has few rewards.

The Technology Hurdles

There are still four hiccups in the technology that, surprisingly, don’t make it to the media all that often.

  • Security: If someone hacks into the system, there needs to be a means of crime identification and removal (e.g. law enforcement, disabling hardware, ignoring false broadcasts, etc.). Otherwise, Joe Hacker could ease his commute by diverting traffic or creating city-wide chaos. However, this level of security management requires a backhaul system to a centralized certificate authority (someone who manages the system). At one point, the government considered making this a series of installed roadside or intersection locations, but that was too expensive and fraught with state-to-state complications. The individual OEMs could seek an embedded or accommodated cellular connection (e.g. OnStar or SYNC), but those require cuts in penetration, depending on the actions of the customer, who could cancel his OnStar subscription, forget to connect, or turn on a Bluetooth cellphone. So, right now there’s no easy one-size-fits-all solution to security.
  • Positioning: Any semi-autonomous system currently provides lane positioning by white-line monitoring (i.e. lane markers), but according to AASHTO, the likelihood of a lane departure fatality is twice as high in rural areas, where lane markings are less common and also tend to have inferior lighting and snow removal. To overcome that challenge, the vehicle must have highly accurate, autonomous positioning. This can only be achieved with one of several expensive solutions.
  • Packet Collisions: Imagine being on the floor of the stock market — lots of people screaming, no one can effectively hear everyone all at once. During the initial phases of cooperative research on platooning done by the automotive manufacturers, this is exactly what the investigations determined. In congested multi-lane highway situations, each vehicle would be trying to broadcast its location, but no one would be able to “hear” it. Therefore, platooning would not be successfully (or safely) achieved.
  • Intelligence: As artfully described by Hotchkiss in “Understanding the Human Part of the User Experience,” we humans are unbelievably adept decision-makers. Replacing us for even simple, predictable tasks like chess has taken decades and serious processing power. Driving is a complex task that requires thousands of decisions and reactions every mile. Implementing humans’ complex, dynamic decisions and observations to create an autonomous system is an enormous task.

The Business Case

How does the automotive manufacturer make a profit on these cooperative, non-differentiating systems? How can an automotive manufacturer easily charge for the hardware? If infrastructure must be supplied, how is it governed?

The question of collective business was mentioned by The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) at the 2011 Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting, despite nearly a decade of investigations into cooperative technology. Until a means of making money is clearly delineated, no companies will be lining up to platoon, regardless of the societal benefits.

The solution occasionally proposed is that Wi-Fi could provide the accident avoidance systems, along with non-safety Internet connectivity at intersections. This plan is fraught with technological issues (the latency to join the intersection group — known as association timing — is too great) as well as business issues. Who pays to install Wi-Fi at millions of intersections? If the government gets that bill, how does it avoid competing with the private sector? Regardless of public or private, how does today’s car count on the infrastructure 10 years from today? Who co-pays for maintenance? Maybe Google will provide free Wi-Fi, or maybe it will fizzle like some of the company’s other beta releases.

Some Potential Solutions

Now, we’re not expecting a Jetsons-type car, but a few key companies could help realize basic wireless functionality. The solutions, though, require the following strategic elements.

  • Creative User Experience: To differentiate from the cooperative systems competition, the user experience (UX) must be unique in some fashion. For safety systems such as intersection collision avoidance and platooning, it is actually undesirable to have non-standard interfaces, since a common warning is more likely to elicit a common reaction. To differentiate, the OEM must create non-safety applications with unique UXs that provide value using the same technology. Be it a local chat room, an automated license plate game, or a quasi-classified information exchange, the human-machine interface that provides the unique customer experience in a safe manner will justify or subsidize the costs.
  • Sleeping with the Enemy: Entering the market via only one OEM is insufficient, but co-launching the system with one or two other vehicle manufacturers could easily result in 50-60% market penetration. This would require a coordinated launch, which is difficult enough with one OEM across multiple vehicle platforms, but is especially challenging between competitors. As crazy as it sounds, GM and Toyota have already discussed the opportunity, but reportedly struck no deal for co-distribution. Some OEMs are awaiting a mandate from the U.S. government that requires companies to install DSRC equipment, but that’s the best way to arrive last to the party with little to no differentiation.
  • The Alpha and the Omega: To launch the system, the vehicle and the infrastructure must exist first. The only ways for an automaker to ensure this is to either use something existing or provide the enabler on its own. Be it an embedded cellular system (e.g. Lexus Enform, GM OnStar) or an integration solution (e.g. Ford SYNC), the backhaul must attach to a privately-run security system. Otherwise, the design is fraught with risks that no manufacturer will accept, unless mandated by the U.S. Department of Transportation. If embedded, though, the UX must provide a flexible interface that will allow additional safety and non-safety applications to be added and removed as risks are determined.
  • Customer Reaction: Research notes that 57% of people consider themselves better than average drivers. Human behavior studies have proven that people are only willing to trust an autonomous system in hazardous situations if it is familiar, and has a proven history of reliability. To launch anything successfully requires a commitment to marketing and usability demonstrations so that the public becomes comfortable with the new features.

Last, but not least, I want to leave you — the reader, the taxpayer, the automotive buyer — with this thought: Consider a technology investment no different than any other investment: value vs. cost. The government believes wireless systems could address 81% of all light-vehicle target crashes, but that’s on paper, with no mitigating circumstances. What’s the real number?

As for the cost, various government programs, like IntelliDrive, have spent over $ 100 million. A study by the Vehicle-Infrastructure Integration (VII) program estimates a piece cost of $ 50 per vehicle, with infrastructure deployment costs of $ 3.2 billion, and operating costs of just under $ 200 million per year. What is the acceptable prevention-to-investment ratio? Does money matter when it’s your spouse or child saved? Will the slick UX of non-safety apps offset that cost? Whatever your thoughts, these decisions are being made nationally. Try to understand the reality of the situation before the industry takes off.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alubalish, Flickr, colinbrown, mrlerone

Source: Mashable » Tech

Space Agencies Put Moon Base Back on the Table

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Russian Space Agency Roscosmos is considering the construction of a permanent base on the moon, according to a report.

The agency is in talks with the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA to turn this dream into reality.

“We don’t want the man to just step on the moon,” said Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin. “We are now discussing how to begin [the moon’s] exploration with NASA and the European Space Agency,” said Popovkin, giving two possible options to create a permanent outpost on the moon: “either to set up a base on the moon or to launch a station to orbit around it.”

Popovkin also mentioned the agency is currently developing a “prospective manned transportation system” to be sent to the moon.

In NASA’s recent detailed space exploration roadmap (or starmap, if you will), a human mission to the moon is planned for the 2020s. A permanent base on the moon is still a distant future, as many other technologies must be enabled prior to such a mission.

Russia also plans two unmanned missions to the moon by 2020, Popovkin said.

SEE ALSO: View of Lightning Storms Over Africa Will Knock Your Socks Off [VIDEO]

Unfortunately, Russian space exploration efforts have suffered several setbacks in recent years. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Roscosmos sorely lacked funds for interplanetary missions. Most recently, a Russian space probe that was slated to visit the Martian moon Phobos crashed into the Pacific Ocean

Image credit: NASA

[via Ria Novosti]

Source: Mashable » Tech

New Year’s Eve Ball Drop Goes Even Higher-Tech [COMIC]

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Seems like every year, there’s a new high-tech addition to the ball-dropping ritual in New York’s Times Square. Always on the lookout for the latest technology, our editor-in-chief and cartoonist Lance Ulanoff might have discovered yet another innovation: Here’s an efficient way to keep people’s heads from being buried in their smartphones as they participate in tonight’s gigantic New Year’s Eve street party, which is expected to be attended by more than 1 million people.

From all of us at Mashable, Happy New Year, everyone!

Source: Mashable » Tech

The History of Email [INFOGRAPHIC]

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Email, you’ve come a long way, baby.

In its 40-year tenure as a form of communication, email has run its course from the domain of über nerdy computer scientists to one of the most common ways to keep in touch, both personally and professionally.

Although email as a mode of communication was around for ten years before the term “email” was actually coined, we now count on it in our daily lives. In fact, the use of email has become so pervasive that the Oxford English Dictionary recently added a slew of email acronyms to its official canon.

And finally, just this year, the AP Stylebook, a.k.a. the holy book of all (or most) journalists, amended the spelling of e-mail to email, allowing articles such as this one to save bigtime on hyphens.

SEE ALSO: The History of Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]

To give you a timeline of email’s progress through the decades, here’s a commemorative 40th anniversary infographic from email delivery company Reachmail.

Click image to see larger version.

Source: Mashable | The Social Media GuideTech & Gadgets

Sunspots Suggest a Drop in Solar Activity

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Results from three separate studies indicate that the sun could be less active in its next cycle. While the relationship between solar activity and climate is still a matter of scientific debate, some scientists say this could slow down the warming trend on Earth.

The results of the studies were announced on Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s solar physics division.

“This is highly unusual and unexpected,” Frank Hill, associate director of the National Solar Observatory’s Solar Synoptic Network, told Space.com. “But the fact that three completely different views of the sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.”

All three studies suggest an upcoming period of less solar activity than the typical 11-year cycle of solar activity would suggest. One indicator was the number and frequency of sunspots, which are caused by intense magnetic forces. Others included the magnetic strength of those sunspots and patterns in a gas stream under the surface of the sun.

Scientists say the sun’s activity will peak in about 2013, reports MSNBC, but that the indicators from the studies point to an extended period of low activity after that.

The sun had a similar period, between 1645 and 1715, that coincided with lower temperatures on Earth. That period on Earth is known as “the Little Ice Age.”

But scientists are still debating whether there’s any link between solar activity and climate. (The Little Ice Age also coincided with a period of increased volcanic emissions that could have played a role.) According to MSNBC, there is little evidence so far to support that it does, and scientists don’t expect to see a large change in Earth’s climate even if the sun does go into semi-hibernation for a while.

Image courtesy of Flickr, nasacommons

Source: Mashable | The Social Media GuideTech & Gadgets

Want to Sleep Like a Baby? iPhone App With Vibrating Strap Can Help

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The Gadget of the Day Series is supported by the Energizer® Inductive Charger, which brings you the next generation of charging with Qi technology. Qi is the new universal standard for wireless charging … now that’s positivenergy™.

Product: The Lark

Price: $ 129

What It’s Good For: Getting vital information about how well you sleep and waking you up without annoying your partner.

Who It’s Good For: Anyone who works too hard, sleeps too little and sees diminishing returns; anyone whose partner needs to sleep in.

Limitations: Wristband isn’t actually attached to sensor; no way to alter alarm once it’s started.

Bottom Line: Not the most advanced technology out there, but a very convenient, user-friendly sleep aid and silent alarm.

Every human being alive wants a good night’s sleep, and given that it should (if done right) occupy a third of our entire lives, the business of getting a good night’s sleep ought to be one of the largest on the planet.

Which it why it’s a surprise that the launch late last month of the Lark system for the iPhone ($ 129), a wristband and app combo that tracks your sleep, hasn’t made a bigger splash. It is, in short, the easiest system ever created to help you get a good night’s sleep. As an added bonus, it uses vibration rather than noise to rouse you, so it won’t wake up your significant other.

Prior to the Lark, the best sleep system I’d seen was the Zeo alarm clock ($ 200). The Zeo asks you to wear a slim-fitting headband with a lightweight chunk of brain-reading circuitry in one end. What you get in return is total access to your sleeping brain. Throughout the night, using transmissions from the headband, the alarm clock tracks which one of four sleep states you’re in, from deep sleep (the kind that makes you feel like a million dollars) to REM sleep (the bit that’s interesting if you’re into lucid dreaming.) In the morning you get something called a ZQ — a “sleep score” out of 100, basically — which you can try to improve on night after night.

But the troubles with Zeo are many. The ZQ would only really be interesting if we all started using it, and could therefore trash-talk each other’s ZQs in some kind of massively multiplayer sleep improvement game. That is what the company was aiming for; it hasn’t happened yet. The alarm clock featured an interesting graph of your night as it was unfolding, but lacked the one thing that could let you live with such a thing in your bedroom — a dimmer button. (Ironically, Zeo’s literature advises you to kill extraneous light sources for better sleep.) Also, you try strapping on a headband at bedtime every night.

The Lark delivers on Zeo’s promise — in a manner that is somewhat less informational but way more user-friendly. This time, it’s a wristband rather than a headband. It feels like putting a watch on when you go to bed. But the plastic velcro-wrapped doohickey, which recharges on a tiny nightstand, is transmitting to your iPhone the whole time. The Lark app runs in the background on the iPhone, so your phone can be off the whole night. (Always a good idea to keep an iPhone plugged in when it’s running an app for seven or eight hours, of course.)

So what do you get in the morning? Well, the Lark can’t read your brain. It can’t tell you when you’re in REM sleep or deep sleep, which is a pity. But once you’ve strapped it on, the Lark is like Santa Claus — it sees you when you’re sleeping and knows if you’re awake.

How? Because the wristband is incredibly sensitive to tiny movements. It turns out that when we sleep, we’re as good as paralyzed. All those rolling over tricks we do at night are actually brief moments of wakefulness. And if you’re awake, you’re moving, if only slightly. Go ahead, try to keep your wrist perfectly still for more than a minute. Try pretending to be asleep. The Lark knows all.

In the morning, you’ll know how long it took you to fall asleep (a very good indicator of your sleep health), how many times you woke up in the night and how many hours and minutes you slept for, cumulatively. For $ 60 more, you can get access to a “personal sleep coach” via the Lark website, as well as a Myers-Briggs-style assessment of your “sleep type.” But I’m not sure that extra cash is entirely necessary here. Simply seeing a string of four, five or six-hour nights in the “sleep history” tab on the Lark app, alongside the admonition that “you slept too little,” is enough to shame you into doing all the stuff sleep experts tell us to do: head to bed earlier, banish light sources and TVs from the bedroom, and don’t drink in the few hours before bed.

The Lark isn’t perfect, of course, being a first generation device. There is no way to change an alarm once you’ve set it, and there are too few instructions included in the box. The velcro wrist strap simply wraps around the sensor, which means the two can get easily separated when plugging it in to the rechargeable dock. And would it have been so hard to include an iPhone charger in the dock itself, rather than making you plug a charger cable into the back?

But none of these caveat are worth avoiding the Lark for, if you’re interested in learning how you sleep and learning to sleep better. The vibrating alarm worked every time for me, and I’m often harder to wake than a bear in January. If you’re worried, though, there is a backup alarm sound available on the app under the “peace of mind” setting. A few weeks with this device and the hope is that you’ll have plenty of that.

Series Supported by Energizer®

The Gadget of the Day Series is supported by the Energizer® Inductive Charger, which brings you the next generation of charging with Qi technology. Qi is the new universal standard for wireless charging. Energizer® has always been designed with performance and responsibility in mind … now that’s positivenergy™.

Source: Mashable | The Social Media GuideTech & Gadgets

Pocket-Sized Bluetooth Speaker Delivers Astonishing Sound

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The Gadget of the Day Series is supported by the Energizer® Inductive Charger, which brings you the next generation of charging with Qi technology. Qi is the new universal standard for wireless charging … now that’s positivenergy™.

Product: Soundmatters foxL v2.2 Bluetooth Speaker

Price: $ 199

What It’s Good For: Taking high fidelity along with you in a palm-sized package.

Who It’s Good For: Frequent travelers who own Bluetooth devices and like to listen to music; well-heeled audiophiles who appreciate great sound in a small form factor.

Limitations: No auto-off function, pricey.

Bottom Line: Hold this hotshot in your hand and feel its incredible power. Such sound has never shoehorned itself into such tiny speakers and been worthy of such praise. Even though you get a lot of original technology for your money, it’s pretty expensive at $ 199.

There are plenty of Bluetooth speakers in the world, but none are like the foxL v2.2. Even though it’s a mere 5.6 inches wide, this 9.5-oz speaker rocks some downright amazing sound.

Although it feels like metal, Soundmatters has constructed the speaker out of something it calls “glass-filled composite,” otherwise known as fiberglass, the same thing surfboards are made of. That makes it lighter than it would be if it were built entirely of metal. That light weight and its small size practically beg you to take it with you on your next trip.

We can thank ex-NASA engineer and actual rocket scientist Dr. Godehard Guenther for the clever ideas that went into this product. Revered in the audio industry, he’s figured out unique ways to get maximum sound out of the smallest amount of space.

The speaker’s two 25mm drivers are powered by four digital amplifiers, pumping out a total of 8 watts of power, which is a lot for a speaker of this size. Dr. Guenther has freed up space inside the speaker by moving the “BassBattery” toward the outside, where it’s also utilized as a moving part that he calls a “moving wall radiator” that generates a surprising amount of bass.

Let’s put it through its paces. After four hours of charging a battery that’ll run for about five hours on a charge, the foxL was ready to go, its Bluetooth radio pairing up almost immediately with a laptop, iPhone and iPad 2. If you don’t want to use Bluetooth, you can plug any audio device with a standard headphone jack into the foxL’s auxiliary port.

So what is the overall effect of all this serious engineering? Astonishing sound, that’s what. It’s a kick to turn this thing on and hold it in your hand, feeling it rocking your arm from fingertips to elbow with its vigorous sound.

But it’s when you put it on a solid surface that its true nature is revealed. There’s actually enough bass pumping out of its little drivers to make you feel like moving your feet. Even though its optimal listening distance is about three feet away, it sounds good from further out, too. Plug it into an AC outlet or USB port, and suddenly it’s running on twice the wattage than the battery, giving it a noticeable increase in oomph. It’s remarkable.

It also performs admirably as a speakerphone, and if you have it linked to a smartphone via Bluetooth, when a call comes in it immediately turns into speakerphone mode, letting you answer the call with a slightly awkward routine of pressing and holding a Bluetooth button. And its built-in mic faithfully reproduces your voice, sounding better than most speakerphones I’ve used.

Summing up, if you can afford it, you’ll want to take this whippersnapper along with you on your next adventure. It’s beautifully designed, pumps out plenty of clean sound even at low volume and plays loud enough to entertain a rowdy crowd.

Come along on a tour of the foxL Bluetooth speaker in this gallery:

Series Supported by Energizer®

The Gadget of the Day Series is supported by the Energizer® Inductive Charger, which brings you the next generation of charging with Qi technology. Qi is the new universal standard for wireless charging. Energizer® has always been designed with performance and responsibility in mind … now that’s positivenergy™.

Source: Mashable | The Social Media GuideTech & Gadgets

HOW TO: Make a Mini Movie Theater With Your iPhone

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The Gadget of the Day Series is supported by the Energizer® Inductive Charger, which brings you the next generation of charging with Qi technology. Qi is the new universal standard for wireless charging … now that’s positivenergy™.

Product: MiLi Power Projector 2 pico projector

Price: $ 399.95, around £200 in the UK

What It’s Good For: Portability, easy set up and decent picture quality.

Who It’s Good For: Anyone who wants to share his iPhone’s video content with a group or see it larger.

Limitations: It’s not a cheap gadget.

Bottom Line: The MiLi Power Projector 2 offers iPhone owners a fun way to watch and share video.

The second-gen MiLi Power Projector boasts a few improvements on the first. It has shed a good few inches of bulk, boasts better 2.5-hour battery life and now has a fanless design for near-silent operation. Offering a fun way to view video content larger and with a group of others, we were interested to test it out.

Setting up the projector is easy. Once you’ve charged it via mini USB, just open it, pop out the stand, stick your iPhone on the built-in Apple dock, and it recognizes the input right away. You can tweak brightness and contrast in the menu using the remote control, while the volume control and the focus wheel are on the projector itself.

MiLi claims a projection area of up to 70- inches, but you do have to consider that the further away the projector is from the wall, the less bright the image will be. We found a sweet spot of size and brightness to be around 40 inches, which is obviously much larger than the iPhone’s display and a decent size to watch a movie.

In a dark room, the image quality was good. The projector only boasts a VGA resolution, so you’re not going to see the nuances and details you might be used to on your big screen TV, but it’s not a replacement for that — it’s a fun and very portable way to share video from your iPhone or iPod touch.

We feel the pico projector’s novelty value doesn’t necessarily outweigh the high cost, but we were impressed with the gadget and can recommend it to anyone who can afford to splash out.

Series Supported by Energizer®

The Gadget of the Day Series is supported by the Energizer® Inductive Charger, which brings you the next generation of charging with Qi technology. Qi is the new universal standard for wireless charging. Energizer® has always been designed with performance and responsibility in mind … now that’s positivenergy™.

Source: Mashable | The Social Media GuideTech & Gadgets