Tag: Google

Smart watches poised to take off in 2014

CanalysFancy a new accessory? How about a smart watch? It looks like smart watches are going to be the next “must have” item. According to Canalys, the worldwide smart watch market will exceed five million units in 2014.

Canalys estimates that over 330,000 smart watches were shipped in 2012, led by Sony and Motorola. Kickstarter-backed Pebble Technology has joined Sony as a market leader in 2013. More than half a million units will be shipped this year. Smart watches are then set to explode by the end of 2014, growing tenfold as a new generation of devices from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and others are launched.

Unlike earlier products, these smart watches will provide more sophisticated software and more elegant hardware. Glanceable information, integration across sensors and hooks into web services will be key features. These companion devices will not replace smart phones, but rather complement them as ‘appcessories’.

Stanford University researchers build world’s largest artificial neural network

NVIDIANVIDIA has collaborated with a research team at Stanford University to create the world’s largest artificial neural network built to model how the human brain learns. The network is 6.5 times bigger than the previous record-setting network developed by Google in 2012.

Computer-based neural networks are capable of “learning” how to model the behaviour of the brain – including recognising objects, characters, voices, and audio in the same way that humans do.

Yet creating large-scale neural networks is extremely computationally expensive. For example, Google used approximately 1,000 CPU-based servers, or 16,000 CPU cores, to develop its neural network, which taught itself to recognise cats in a series of YouTube videos. The network included 1.7 billion parameters, the virtual representation of connections between neurons.

Asian mobile players and operators among Global Mobile award winners

The ASUS-made Google Nexus 7 clinched the Best Tablet Award.
The ASUS-made Google Nexus 7 clinched the Best Tablet Award.

Asia is becoming a leading force in the mobile communications space. Mobile product makers Samsung and Asus and mobile operators NTT Docomo, Bharti Airtel and SK Telecom were among the winners at the 18th Annual Global Mobile awards, held at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The Government of New Zealand also nabbed the Spectrum for Mobile Broadband Award.

More than 170 independent analysts, journalists, academics, and subject matter experts and 13 representatives from mobile operators throughout the world participated in the judging of the 2013 awards.

The full list of winners and finalist for the 2013 Global Mobile Awards is available at www.globalmobileawards.com/winners-2013