computer

When scientists at the University of Washington recently drilled into the skulls of seven people with severe epilepsy and placed thin sheets of electrodes directly onto their brains, they were surprised by the brain activity they observed.

While physicians were studying neuro activity to investigate seizure signals, a separate team of bioengineers was simultaneously on the lookout for exactly how the brains of the seven volunteers behaved as they learned to move a cursor using their thoughts alone. It turns out that, in as few as 10 minutes, activity went from being centered on the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with learning new skills, to areas seen during more automatic functions, such as waving one's hand or kicking a ball.

In other words, in just a matter of minutes these brains behaved as if they had already mastered these Jedi mind tricks.… Read more

They work them hard in German banks.

They make the eat, breathe, and sleep their jobs. Especially that last one.

At least that's the impression that must be gleaned from the tale of a German bank employee who fell asleep on his computer keyboard.

Oh, we've all done it. We've all woken up hours later to read that we just wrote: "CHHCHCHCHCHCCHCHCHCHCCCO."

And yet this bank employee seems to have fallen asleep during a transfer of funds.

As Agence France-Presse tells it, a court in Hessen heard that he was supposed to send 62.40 … Read more

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Reality isn't what is used to be. With increasingly powerful technologies, the human universe is being reimagined way beyond Google Glass' photo-tapping and info cards floating in space above your eye. The future is fashionable eyewear, contact lenses or even bionic eyes with immersive 3D displays, conjuring up a digital layer to "augment" reality, enabling entire new classes of applications and user experiences.

Like most technologies that eventually reach a mass market, augmented reality, or AR, has been gestating in university labs, as well as small companies focused on gaming and vertical applications, … Read more

IT spending is likely to be even lower this year than initially expected but should start to revive in 2014, according to JPMorgan Chase.

An new estimate in a report released Thursday by JPMorgan Chase analyst Mark Moskowitz calls for growth in IT spending of just 0.6 percent this year. That's down from the previous forecast of 1.2 percent.

Moskowitz expects businesses to spend less on IT hardware, which accounts for a huge part of the lower estimate. Companies have been shifting more of their cash away from traditional computers toward mobile devices.

Moskowitz now expects spending … Read more

Salesforce has entered a definitive agreement to acquire ExactTarget, a digital marketing software firm, for $2.5 billion, marking the cloud software company's biggest acquisition to date. 

Under the terms of the deal, Salesforce will buy all the outstanding shares of ExactTarget for $33.75 per share in cash, marking a premium of more than 50 percent on the company's stock closing price on Monday.

"The CMO is expected to spend more on technology than the CIO by 2017," said Salesforce chairman and chief executive Marc Benioff in prepared remarks. "The addition of ExactTarget … Read more

Apple apparently still has its eye on NFC, at least as described in a freshly won patent.

Awarded Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, an Apple patent called "System and method for simplified data transfer" describes a way of automatically transferring data from one device to another.

Both devices would be configured to copy data from one to the other. The first device may be set up to save and transfer data associated with specific apps. Powering up the second device would automatically tell the first device to transfer the data. The devices outlined in … Read more

My first encounter with one of Adam Audio's smallest speakers, the ARTist 3, took me by surprise last year. That little speaker is still in the line, but when I learned Adam just introduced a less expensive, but slightly larger desktop speaker, the F5, I was eager to get it in for review. The ARTist 3 has a better tweeter, bigger amps, a more robustly designed cabinet, and it's a lot nicer looking. The F5's black vinyl-covered cabinet is strictly business, and at $499 a pair it lists for $300 less than the ARTist 3.… Read more

Amid questions to Google from Congress about privacy concerns related to Google Glass, a San Francisco startup is preparing an API to recognize faces with the controversial gadget.

The Google Glass Face Recognition API (application programming interface) from Lambda Labs will be available to developers within a week, TechCrunch tells us, quoting co-founder Stephen Balaban. … Read more

LAS VEGAS -- For parents looking to settle backseat brawls over which kid gets to hold the tablet next, Digital Innovations' EasyMount contraption for tablets offers one affordable solution.

The patent-pending plastic and aluminum mount hooks onto the front-seat headrests with sliding arms that can accommodate most cars, trucks, and vans. Adjustable arms and clips in the mount's center accommodate tablets of varying sizes. The result? A tablet that's equidistant from the left and right back seats, and that can be controlled by any passenger.

The device looks sturdy, though I wasn't able to see it in … Read more