Is there a Google car in your future?

If the major automakers won't play, Google might design its own autonomous cars and work with contract manufacturers to build them, says a report on Jessica Lessin's blog.

                                                                                 Google self-driving car.

The Google car may be more than a connection to the company's cloud and self-driving technology.

According to a report from Amir Efrati on Jessica Lessin's blog, Google has been talking to automakers and contract manufacturers about designing and developing a self-driving car to its specifications. The Google-designed autonomous cars could further disrupt the transportation industry with driverless "robo taxis" to get people to and from their destinations.

Coincidentally, Google's venture capital arm just invested $258 million in Uber, which connects human drivers with riders.

Google has been trying to work with the major automakers on its self-driving car initiative, but hasn't had much luck so far. Continental, a German automotive supplier, is reportedly establishing a partnership with Google and IBM for self-driving cars, according to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine on Thursday.

Whether Google becomes more like Tesla in building its own cars is uncertain, but the company seems committed to disrupting the transportation industry.

China eyes IBM, Oracle, EMC over possible security issues

In the wake of leaks on the NSA's PRISM program, China considers investigating the tech companies to determine if their technologies are being used to spy on the country, reports Shanghai Securities News.

Edward Snowden has provided some fuel for China.

China is determining whether it should investigate three major U.S. companies following Edward Snowden's National Security Agency leaks.
China's Ministry of Public Security is getting ready to investigate EMC, Oracle, and IBM, to determine whether their technologies are being used to spy on Chinese companies and the government, Shanghai Securities News, a China-based publication, reported on Friday, according to Reuters.
In the report, Shanghai Securities News quotes an anonymous official who said China relies heavily upon the companies' enterprise technologies, which potentially puts the country and its companies in the NSA's cross hairs. The source specifically cited Edward Snowden's leak of a secret NSA program called PRISM that reportedly provides the U.S. government access to Internet data working its way through company products.
Snowden's leaks have become a battle cry for China, which has consistently said that it's been a victim of U.S. spying. Neither the U.S. nor any of the enterprise service providers have confirmed that they're actually working together to spy on governments or companies, but China is still using the leaks to make its case.
Whether the investigation will happen is unknown at this point. If the investigation is eventually held, Shanghai Securities didn't say when it might kick off

Smart spoon helps stabilize Parkinson's tremors

Lift Labs out of San Francisco says its patented Liftware Spoon will be available next month.

Lift Labs designed its spoon for people living with Parkinson's, essential tremor, and related disorders.

For many people living with Parkinson's disease, the mere act of chewing and swallowing can be a challenge. One way to deal with this is to blend foods up to minimize the need to chew. But what if it's difficult merely bringing the spoon to one's mouth without spilling its contents?
Enter the Liftware Spoon by Lift Labs in San Francisco -- poised to hit the market in September -- whose patented spoon technology actually helps stabilize tremors in people with Parkinson's, essential tremor, and related disorders.
The folks at Lift Labs say the spoon uses an "active cancellation of tremor" technology that works to counteract the tremors people can experience in their hands and help prevent spills.
"The idea is to use active cancellation [currently in noise-canceling headphones] to stabilize larger-scale motion," Anupam Pathak, founder and CEO of Lynx Design, which is behind Lift Labs, said in a news release. While doing his Ph.D. on new materials that can be used for active cancellation in the military, Pathak said he "figured out how to make the hardware for active cancellation of human tremor very small, and realized that this would be the perfect application for active cancellation technology."
The Liftware spoon constantly steadies itself thanks to an embedded computer that takes the motion signals detected by the sensors, identifies the user's tremor, and then moves the spoon in the opposite direction of that tremor. The company reports that lab tests showed a more than 70 percent reduction in tremors.
And while it won't be the first utensil on the market to help people with tremors eat with dignity, it's probably the smartest. Many existing utensils, plates, mugs, and "crumb catchers" (yes, these are bibs) are pretty old tech, focusing on ergonomics and extra hand and finger holds.
The folks at Lift Labs say the spoon will cost $295, and they've also developed a related free iOS and Android app called Lift Pulse that records a person's tremor using the phone's built-in accelerometers and calculates its magnitude. Users can set a baseline tremor that subsequent readings are compared to.
Maybe someday spoons will be smart enough to be customizable to each user based on previous readings and baselines adjusted for time of day, energy level, and so on. For now, Liftware looks like the first step in that direction.

See the blue moon from around the world

While there are many full moons in a year, there's something special about the rare occurrence of a blue moon. We think you'll agree after seeing these photographs.

Rob Bright, equipped with a Pentax K-30 dSLR, captured this image of a passing airplane's vapor trail seen over the 2013 blue moon in Hastingwood, U.K

If you missed Tuesday's blue moon, don't worry. We've compiled some sensational shots of the rare event from around the world.
It's really something to witness the beauty of Earth's nearest neighbor from locales such as Atacama Desert in South America and ancient island peaks in Italy. Regardless of the setting and the backdrop, one constant remains: a bright, full moon that captivated countless photographers.
Want to learn more about this astronomical event? My Crave colleague Tim Hornyak breaks down the unusual history of the phrase "blue moon" in a very informative post.

Stormy weather -- on the sun -- heading toward Earth

With a massive coronal eruption from the sun, NASA warns of an approaching geomagnetic storm. While the effects will probably be mild, some power grid and satellite services could be disrupted.

 

NASA spotted a colossal "coronal mass ejection" erupting off of the sun on Tuesday morning. This solar phenomenon spewed billions of tons of particles into space at speeds of 570 miles per second and they are currently headed toward Earth, according to the space agency.
NASA estimates that the particles will reach our planet in one to three days and could cause a geomagnetic storm.
"These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth," NASA said in a statement, "but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground."
This means the power grid and any services that use satellites, like cell phones and GPS, could be disrupted. During a geomagnetic storm earlier this year, radio communications went down for a short while. And a 1989 storm was blamed for a massive power outage in the Quebec province of Canada. While 570 miles per second sounds astoundingly fast, NASA said this is an average speed for a coronal mass ejection. Eruptions of this strength have typically brought only mild effects in the past, NASA said.
Besides affecting satellites and the power grid, the geomagnetic storms can also cause stunning auroras in hues of green, blue, and red. As the fast-moving particles crash into Earth's magnetic field, they light up the atmosphere wherever they hit.
NASA said it will provide updates about the geomagnetic storm if needed

NASA image of the coronal mass ejection that erupted off the sun on Tuesday. The bright white object to the right is the planet Mercury.

(Credit: ESA & NASA/SOHO)

A star is born -- literally -- and it's stunning

Meet Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47, a very energetic youngster of a star 1,400 light-years away.

Everyone welcome another newborn to our galaxy. For now, we only know her as the Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47 (and I thought the hyphenated names in my family were clunky), and she's already a beauty. If you want to visit the new member of the family, you might want to leave soon, as she's located 1,400 light-years away in the southern constellation Vela.
The above image combines radio observations from the European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) with much shorter wavelength visible light observations from ESO's New Technology Telescope (NTT). According to the ESO, the ALMA observations are seen in orange and green to the lower right of the newborn star, and reveal a large energetic jet moving away from us. The pink and purple shapes to the left are parts of the jet that can be observed through visible light that is streaming partly in our direction.

In plainer English, what we're seeing here is a new star shooting off material at speeds up to 1 million kilometers per hour. As that material collides with surrounding gas, it glows.
ALMA, which was actually still under construction at the time of the observations, provides sharper images than its predecessors, allowing scientists to determine that those crazy, glowing streams of stellar afterbirth are being ejected at higher speeds than previously measured and carrying more energy and momentum than previously thought.
"ALMA's exquisite sensitivity allows the detection of previously unseen features in this source, like this very fast outflow," explained Yale's Héctor Arce, who was lead author on a paper (PDF) detailing the observations.

Camera quick draw: Which smartphone is fastest for photos?

Megapixels are nice, but sometimes what matters most in a smartphone camera is how fast you can open the camera app. Six of today's top smartphones are put to the test.

One should not measure a smartphone camera by megapixels alone.
To stand out in a crowded smartphone market, device makers boast about having more megapixels, more filters, more zoom, more sensors. But when your baby is taking his or her first steps, what counts is how fast you can get from pocket to picture.
Google's latest darling, the Motorola Moto X, has a trick for getting to the camera fast: twist your wrist twice and the camera turns on. No swiping icons, typing passwords, or fiddling with power buttons.
Motorola claims you'll "never miss a shot" with its method. But how much faster is its camera wake-up shortcut compared with those of other smartphones?
There was only one way to settle the matter: a smartphone shutter showdown. I pitted today's top smartphones against one another in a series of timed tests. Using a stopwatch to calculate the seconds between sleep mode and the snap, I averaged the time of seven trials for six different phones: Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom, Nokia Lumia 1020, iPhone 5, HTC One, BlackBerry Z10, and the Moto X.
To make this a realistic test, I put a password on every phone. Some camera shortcuts skip the password, and some do not.
Of course, testing how fast I can take a photo is not an exact science. There's human error and environmental factors that play a role. You may get a better time than I did after drinking a couple shots of espresso. Regardless, the test reveled clear slow-poke phones in the bunch. Some design and programming factors will trip up the fastest fingers:
Shutter buttons don't always mean shortcut
The Nokia Lumia 1020 and Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom are smartphones that center around camera quality. Each phone has a built-in shutter button, but it doesn't help with speed.
The shutter button on the Lumia 1020 will wake up the phone, yet owners still need to enter in a password before the camera app will open. Slowing things down more is the Galaxy S4 Zoom. Its shutter button will not wake up the phone, so owners will have to hit the power button, enter the password, and then hit the shutter button to open the camera app.
It's not just the Zoom that's slow. Samsung's flagship Galaxy S4 also takes longer to access the camera. It's a programming problem: there's no way to skip the lock-screen password to open the camera app. The ability to add a lock-screen camera shortcut is disabled when a password is enabled.
Not all shortcut icons are created equal
The security-centered BlackBerry Z10 will let users skip a password to snap a picture. But it involves holding down a camera icon for a couple seconds. That eats up a little more time (and patience) than the HTC One and iPhone 5, both of which have a lock-screen camera icon that skips the password with a quick tap and swipe.
With this tactic, the HTC One and iPhone 5 were noticeably faster than the Lumia 1020 or Galaxy S4 Zoom. But to see which phone is the quickest of the bunch, you'll have to watch the video above.
Update - Clarification: The Lumia 1020 is a bit different than other Windows Phone devices. The default setting is to have the dedicated camera button open the special Nokia Pro Cam app, which takes advantage of the 41-megapixel camera. It does require a password to use Nokia's advanced camera application. In settings, the camera button can be changed so it opens the normal Windows camera app, which does not require a password. (But what good is having a special 41-megapixel camera if you don't use Nokia's Pro Cam as the default for the camera button?)