pulse

Pulse News, an elegant mobile reader

Pulse News gives you all the news from your favorite Web sites laid out in an intuitive interface. News sites are laid out vertically so you can swipe up and down to the latest news from all sites quickly, or you can swipe horizontally to read more stories from the same site. Each story heading has the headline and an included graphic, making for a more elegant approach than other news readers that show only text links. Touching a story heading gives you either a text-based summary, a mobile-optimized version for easy reading, or a way to view the story … Read more

Pulse News Reader delivers your RSS feeds with mosaic twist

Currently there are only a handful of applications in the Android Market that have been written specifically for Honeycomb. One such title, Pulse News Reader, is a shining example of how gorgeous these new OS 3.0 apps truly are. Indeed, I've noticed that my tablet user experience on the Xoom is completely different from what it was on a Galaxy Tab. And thanks to news and magazine apps such as Pulse, I'm consuming more information and becoming more productive.

In short, Pulse is an RSS feed reader for Android. But it's the presentation of your articles … Read more

The 404 751: Where Peter Ha adds The Daily logo next to his Pepsi tattoo (podcast)

Two days ago Rupert Murdoch announced The Daily, News Corp.'s latest publication built for the iPad platform, and we've been waiting all week to get its tech editor, Peter Ha, in the studio to tell us about the new pricing model and how it'll shape the future of online publishing. Lucky for us, today is that day, but the show starts off with a bit of controversy. Tune in to hear Jeff's fumble!

But Peter's not here to talk about the Korean flag or tattoos, he joins us today to chat about The Daily. The magazine/book/newspaper, or whatever you want to call it, is fielding plenty of comparisons to free news outlets like The New York Times and The Huffington Post that also have their own iPad apps, or even Flipboard, another visually interactive app for the tablet platform.

But from what Peter tells us, The Daily is a different kind of user experience in that it delivers editorial content made specifically for the iPad, whereas those other apps simply pull in RSS-feed versions of their Web-based counterparts.

For 99 cents a week or $39.99 a year, The Daily uses a set of templates to deliver content more in line with a newspaper as a backseat user experience, as opposed to the personalized, curated set of blogs you choose for Flipboard or other "mobile news readers."

The Daily also provides content interactively by way of a floating carousel of categories with 360-degree high-resolution photos, audio clips, and video. Whether or not that justifies the subscription fee is up to the user, although we're all impressed by (and a little pensive about) the ability to record and post audio comments in addition to text.

Stay tuned for the second half where we examine the plausibility of The Daily coming to the fragmented Android Market. Like it or hate it, Android is certainly the default operating system for consumers to turn to after iOS, but Wilson doesn't believe that Android users will accept the idea of paying for apps anytime soon. On the other hand, the guy can barely predict his plans for this weekend, so don't take his words too seriously.

As usual, we have a blast riffing back and forth with Peter Ha, who's not only a hilarious friend of the show but also offers valuable insight into the mobile publishing industry, the ongoing mobile OS wars, and hopefully Rupert Murdoch's to-do list. Check out today's show and let us know what you think about The Daily! Give us a call at 1-866-404-CNET and leave us a voice mail, or e-mail us at the404(at)cnet(dot)com.

Episode 751 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Mirror, mirror, show me my vital signs

How'd you like to check your pulse, respiration, and blood pressure as you brush your teeth in the mirror each morning? A PhD candidate at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology is working to make this a reality in the near future.

Electrical and medical engineering student Ming-Zher Poh has already used low-res Webcam imaging to measure the human pulse. He's now working on adding respiration, blood oxygen levels, and blood pressure to the list--all by having people simply peer into a camera or, for those who'd rather multitask, into a mirror in front of that camera.

The system works by measuring the slightest variations in brightness produced by blood flow through blood vessels in the face. Poh used public-domain software to identify facial positions in any given image and break that information into separate red, green, and blue portions of the video images.

To deal with both movement in front of the lens as well as different ambient light, Poh adapted a method known as ICA (Independent Component Analysis)--a signal-processing technique originally developed to extract a single voice from a room of conversations--to find the pulse signal amid all the video noise.

Initial results of the project, which Poh conducted with Media Arts and Sciences Professor Rosalind Picard and Media Lab student Daniel McDuff, were outlined in May in the journal Optics Express.

The pulse results turned out to be pretty reliable when compared with measurements taken by an FDA-approved monitoring device.… Read more

ADT adds energy controls to home security service

When you arm your alarm system when you leave the house, how about automatically turning off all the lights and resetting the thermostat?

Home security service company ADT next month will roll out a service that does exactly that. It's a home-automation system that uses a network of wireless sensors to let people control thermostats and lights along with their traditional home monitoring service.

Called ADT Pulse, the service uses software from start-up iControl that provides the consumer portal application as well as the back-end software, said Lewis Long, the company's vice president of residential and small business … Read more

Read the news and blow away monsters on the run: iPhone apps of the week

Even with the huge success of the iPhone 4 and the iPad, we all know Apple hasn't been resting on its laurels. We still have a big hardware event to come this fall with Apple's now annual iPod launch event. Among the rumors and speculation around the Web, some news Web sites are saying we might see a full revision to the iPod Touch, a new iPad, and maybe a completely rebuilt Apple TV.

The guys over at AppleInsider uncovered a particularly interesting tidbit by studying the "Configuration Descriptors" within the USB configuration files of the most recent iOS 4.1 beta. Apparently, by following Apple's past releases, they were able to pick out new versions of devices by the code names Apple uses for its products. Check out the story linked above to see how they figured it all out. Especially interesting is the "unknownHardware" named in the third configuration file--could this be the smaller iPad people have been talking about or maybe the Apple TV?

Like everything Apple, we will not know what the company has in store for new hardware until the event (oh, the drama), but it's always fun to watch the rumors unfold on the many Apple rumor sites.

This week's apps include an easy to use news reader and a game that challenges you to run the longest distance while killing off monsters.… Read more

Livescribe writes digital pen's next chapter

Livescribe on Sunday is introducing the Echo--the next generation of its digital pen.

The Echo will come in two models--a 4GB and 8GB model, while the prior generation 2GB Pulse will remain as the company's most affordable option, dropping to $129. The 4GB Echo will sell for $169.95 and the 8GB Echo will sell for $199.95.

From a features standpoint, the Echo resembles its predecessor, with the main selling point being its "paper replay" feature--the ability to record handwritten notes in synch with recorded audio. However, Livescribe has made several hardware changes that make the … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1245: AOL is people! (podcast)

AOL says it's hiring hundreds of journalists, which they seem to do all the time, and then they're never heard from again ... hmm. In other news today, Pulse seems to have a pulse again, while the New York Times is on life support and doesn't even know it, and we're putting together a little hit list of doomed Twitter-related apps. Oh, and if you pirated the "Hurt Locker" movie, we totally know your IP address.

Buzz Out Loud 1244: Several fights with Adam Curry (podcast)

On today's show, Podfather Adam Curry joins us for gloves-off battles about everything from whether Apple should put out the iPhone for Verizon (Adam says no) to what Nokia used to produce (boots, turns out), and just what exactly is wrong with Nokia. Be warned, today's episode pushes the boundary of indeterminate length!

Yahoo Pulse

Ah, Stevenote day! I am usually lined up outside the Yerba Buena Center by now when Apple CEO Steve Jobs takes the stage but today I am comfortably observing from my New York City office.

I both love and hate the hysteria that goes on around an Apple event. Part of me wonders why we can't all hold our horses and just see what happens. But no! We must speculate, rumor hound, pontificate! This is the bloggosphere, darnit! We must work ourselves up over this, by God!

So be it. We will have a summary of today's Apple … Read more