Posts Tagged ‘smartphone’

Future smartphones may read our minds

Thursday, September 16th, 2010

Sydney Morning Herald reports today that developing technology for smartphones are working on ‘psychic’ smartphones.  Intel researchers are working on a prototype application with Fodor’s Travel, which learns your favourite foods, where you like to visit and other such information using your GPS searches, and then makes recommendations when you visit new cities.

The techies have to train computers to look at ‘hard sensors’ data (location, voice patterns, temperature etc) and combine them with soft sensors such as calendar appointments.  Obviously, privacy issues will arise which will also need to be dealt with as the software is developed further.

Almost scarily, Intel reports that is looking even further, a computer that can read your thoughts!

Mobile shopping – get set to splurge

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Paypal, the lucrative branch of Ebay which allows individuals and businesses to pay online using different methods of payment, is looking to the Asia-Pacific region to grow e-commerce.

The latest figures from Informa Research show that in this region, buying products online with a handheld device is to go up to $139,000 billion USD in 2012, with the key markets being Japan and Korea. The rapidly expanding use of smartphones is credited for this growth in use.

To cope with the higher workload, Paypal has plans to double employees in the offices of Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore by the end of the year.

To read the full article, click here.