We've seen terahertz cameras that can look through walls and X-ray scanners that fit in the palm of your hand. Now, scientists at MIT have developed a way to track movement through walls using Wi-Fi signals.

The idea is pretty simple: take two transmitters and one receiver. Each transmitter sends out a signal that is precisely 180 degrees out of phase with the other, so the two cancel each other out, and the receiving antenna “hears” nothing.

But put any moving object in the area, and it reflects the signals. The signals don’t cancel out, and where once there was no radio “noise” at all, now radio energy is emanating off the moving object or person. A still object also reflects radio waves, but the time it takes for a wave to bounce back to the receiver stays the same, and the reflections will still cancel out.

The invention — which Dina Katabi, an electrical engineering professor, and her graduate student Fadel Adib are developing — is called Wi-Vi. The two will present it at the Sigcomm conference in Hong Kong this August.

There are several uses for this technology. A small handheld detector could find people buried under tons of rubble, showing rescue workers where to look, or police could use it to see if there is someone inside a room.

Wi-Vi differs from traditional X-ray or terahertz wave systems. In that case a beam of radio waves is sent to an object that reflects them back. This kind of detection is just like what your eyes do – seeing reflected light. (Radio waves just happen to be in a different part of the spectrum).

It’s also a twist on a previous attempt at using Wi-Fi routers to see through walls by taking advantage of the signals they emit. Wi-Vi doesn’t require that a router be in place.

The advantage here is that this works with radio frequencies that penetrate walls relatively easily, at least for short distances. The wavelengths are also short, so the antenna doesn’t need to be very large. It also needs just one receiving antenna, so it can be fit onto a hand-held device.

And the reason it uses Wi-Fi type signals is that they aren’t reserved for the military, and are open to use by any device with less need to get approvals from regulators.

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A couple of days ago, Flipboard received an update that brought a couple of minor improvements along with the usual bug fixes and performance optimizations. As it turned out, though, that same update also brought a notable change involving Instagram‘s recently launched video feature.

As noted by The Next Web, Flipboard has been updated with support for videos shared from Instagram. Now, the popular social-magazine app is able to display videos from the popular photo-sharing and video-sharing social networking app.

For some reason, the addition of this enhancement was not included in the changelog of Flipboard’s latest update. What did get included are the following:

Reminder: Log in to Google Reader on Flipboard on or before June 30th to save your feeds and folders.

Now you can share to Twitter and Facebook when sharing to your magazines.

Flipboard is available in the App Store for free. The app also received an update earlier this month that gave users the ability to co-curate magazines.

Instagram’s video feature was launched by Facebook just last week, obviously in response to Twitter’s Vine. Not unexpectedly, Instagram’s video shares to Twitter, and presumably across the web in general, have increased at the expense of Vine’s.

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Google is killing Reader tomorrow, and as a sort of consolation prize, they’ve added some new features to Google News. There’s now a box that features a four-day forecast of local weather, editor’s picks of stories, and sports scores. This is clearly not going to be replacing Reader for anyone, but it’s always pretty nice to get weather updates.

The weather defaults to the local forecast for your location, but you can also set it for a specific place. It also features links to other weather services such as the Weather Channel and the Weather Underground for more detailed information.

Editor’s Picks are limited to the categories of “Technology” and “Business” with more on the way, according to Google News product manager Anand Paka. It’s easy to click over to different news sources for more picks, but it’s a far cry from something like an RSS reader.

Right now, the sports scores are limited to U.S. football, basketball, baseball and hockey (more countries and sports are set to arrive in the near future). Google might be rolling out the features over time, but right now I can’t see the sports-scores box — which I don’t actually mind.

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In what's good news for Microsoft, Windows 8 has become a more popular operating system than its much criticized Vista platform.

Although Windows 8 has taken awhile to gain traction, new data conducted by NetMarketShare.com has revealed the operating system was on about 5.1% of computers in June, compared to Vista's 4.6% share. The analytics firm used the desktop systems it tracks, which includes more than 40,000 business websites and 2 million personal ones such as blogs and profiles, as the basis of the report.

Windows 7 — the predecessor of Windows 8 — dominates the space with 44.8%, followed by Windows XP with 37.2%. The data also revealed Windows occupies 91.5% of the market and Mac takes up 7.2%. Linux trails with its 1.28% share.

Microsoft's web browser Internet Explorer 10 also experienced growth, thanks to automatic updates released by the company. Internet Explorer now makes up about 56.2% of the market share, followed by Firefox (19.2%), Chrome (17.2%) and Safari (5.6%).

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Vine released its biggest update to date for iOS Wednesday, bringing a number of new features to the video service.

Included in the update are 15 new channels ranging from comedy to cats where you can submit your videos, a new “On the Rise” section that highlights Vine videos going viral on the service, and new capture tools — such as grid and ghost tools — to add flavor to your videos.

In addition to the app enhancements, Vine’s update also adds the ability to “revine” Vine posts to your followers, much like you might retweet a tweet on Twitter, as well as the ability to create a protected account on Vine that can be seen only by specified users.

Finally, users can now set focus and exposure for their videos.

You can download the Vine update now for iOS devices from the App Store.

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Microsoft regularly introduces new features to its Bing search engine — such as the coming 3D maps — but often those features can't be used outside of Bing. That changes as of today with the launch of the Bing Platform for developers.

Announced today at Microsoft's Build 2013 conference, the Bing Platform will let app developers create experiences in their apps around Bing's services. For example, if an app wants to perform real-time translation of text, it could tie into the Bing Translator Control API for that capability, so the developer won't have to create the service from scratch.

Or, more pointedly, developers can use Microsoft's services instead of Google's.

The Bing Platform offers developers three kinds of services: First is "Entities," which bring Bing's "deep knowledge" about various subjects to apps. In a demo at the Build 2013 keynote, Microsoft Vice President Gurdeep Singh Pall showed how the Bing Entities API could be used to show information about an architect of a particular building in a maps app.

The second Bing Platform service helps developers introduce "natural and intuitive" user experiences. A major component of this is integrating voice interaction with apps, but it also includes things like optical-character recognition, so an app can interpret the text on a sign or document as information and not just an image.

Finally, Bing Platform has the "awareness of the physical world," which extends beyond simple interpretation of location, letting apps "put the user at the center of the action." That implies augmented-reality experiences with real-time response to the location of the user's device and the ways he is interacting with it.

The Bing Platform will let developers more easily create apps with features such as text-to-speech, real-time traffic and translation. It also gives them motivation to integrate Microsoft services into their apps instead of those of a third party.

Although Bing has a small market share compared to Google, Microsoft is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into the service, and it powers search on many devices beyond PCs and Windows Phones, including BlackBerry phones, Kindle tablets and Apple's Siri.

Will developers favor the Bing Platform over other services? And will it rival Google's offerings? You tell us. Give us your thoughts on Microsoft's new developer tools in the comments.

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I am in a full-on state of denial about the approaching deadline to move my news-reading off Google Reader, Google’s industry-leading RSS reader. I don’t want it to happen, although I know I am powerless to stop it.

Google Reader is how I begin my workday. It is the first web application I open, and one I turn to multiple times throughout the day. My list of feeds is longer than the Amazon. It traverses breaking news, tech updates, press releases, cultural phenomena, science and space updates and even byzantine patents. It’s a perfect reflection of my interests and world view.

Now, every time I open it, Google reminds me of its impending fate.

On July 1, Google will put a bullet in the brain of Google Reader. Not because it’s old, addled, hurt, redundant, superfluous or incongruous with modern times. No, Google is killing Reader because, as Google explained in a March 13 blog post, "usage had declined." Although the search giant characterizes Google Reader’s fate as “retirement,” I’m pretty certain I won’t find Reader wearing bad golf pants and sipping a Mai Tai while lounging beside a Boca Raton pool.

Google said it created Reader to help people keep tabs on their favorite websites. It did that and so much more. Every update, press release, minor post and more that I cared about made its way through Google Reader. A website is typically a percolating cauldron of content: multiple posts, headlines, images, ads. Google Reader broke everything down into its primary parts. In the compressed feed, I could scan much more than a few posts from one site. “All Items” gives me a never-ending list of sources, headlines, times, dates and the briefest portions of content. Even that brief bit of information was still usually enough for me to decide if I wanted to expand any post and read it fully within Reader or move on.

And read inside Reader I did. As a result, I grew accustomed to its largely unadorned, yet endearing face. Honestly, Google Reader is the ugly step sister of all Google apps. Visually, there’s nothing to recommend it. Google rarely updated Reader but always made sure it simply worked.

Its Parent

Without RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simply Syndication), Google Reader is nothing. Over the years, pundits have predicted the demise of RSS.

In 2004, I professed my love for RSS push technology and a couple of young RSS Readers: Feed Demon and the eponymous RSSReader. It would be a few years before I adopted Reader, but I soon fell in love with its far simpler interface. I also lived in constant fear that sites would, one-by-one, turn off the RSS feed spigot, and one day I would open an empty Google Reader.

RSS, however, has outlived its most popular platform. It’s also about to witness the rise of a whole new collection of readers, including ones from AOL and Digg. In an interview with Mashable's senior tech analyst Christina Warren, the Digg Reader developers said Google Reader and its success blotted out the sun for other RSS reader developers, most of whom had given up.

The Google Reader vacuum, however, is marking the rebirth of a little cottage industry for RSS readers, which seems to contradict Google’s Reader shutdown reasoning. The company said usage numbers were declining. So why would anyone else want to build a similar tool?

Tastemakers

Google Reader was never intended for consumers. Google seems to think it was, but I’ve never met an average consumer who uses a single RSS reader. Not Google Reader, not FeedDemon, not the suddenly super-popular Feedly.

For the average consumer, a reader is Flipboard. It's an attractive, highly visual mobile app that sucks in all your favorite content from sites and people you follow, and presents it in something most consumers instantly recognize: a digital magazine format.

List-style presentations favored by most readers, including my beloved Google Reader, are not for average consumers. They’re for nerds, geeks, tech enthusiasts, digital tastemakers and reporters. Those are the people who have been using Google Reader for years and the ones who, like me, are crying the loudest about its demise.

That’s also why the death of Google Reader seems like a bigger deal than it really is. People like me are writing about it not to inform the larger world of what’s happening, but to lick our wounds. If we all do this enough, perhaps Google will get confused and think the rest of the world cares about readers.

No, nobody fooled Google. But, as I mentioned, AOL and Digg are certainly caught up in it. Digg, I guess, can be excused, because its roots are in nerd culture. AOL? I’m not sure for whom they’re building a reader.

Things got downright loony last week when everyone predicted Facebook was about to introduce a reader of its own: Facebook, a service with more than 1 billion users, many of whom have no interest in technology or managing a news feed. They like content, visual stuff, funny stuff, emotional stuff, and the most they can deal with is the News Feed Facebook already provides. When Facebook changes it, they cry out in horror, not glee.

People soon came to their senses and started to realize that a Flipboard-like “reader” from Facebook was most likely in the offing. That makes sense and no one will confuse it with a successor to Google Reader.

Dealing With It

Google does not have to kill Google Reader. It could simply acknowledge, as Twitter has with TweetDeck, that there are pro-level users. People who, by dint of their roles in the Internet universe, consume content differently — maybe even at a higher level. Twitter maintains TweetDeck for people like me. Google, which seems to treat virtually all products like experiments, looks upon things like Google Reader dispassionately. When it’s done with something, it’s simply done. I can cry in my digital milk all I want. Google will not do anything about it.

I know there is nothing, short of presidential order, that will stop Google from killing Reader. I will mourn its loss and curse Google for taking away my favorite news reader and then, like everyone else I know, move on.

Share your best memories of Google Reader in the comments below.

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Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter has apologized for not pulling down a project called "A Guide to Getting Awesome with Women" following a series of complaints that called the content highly offensive.

After Kickstarter caught wind of a blog post making the rounds on Reddit, which pointed out the questionable material found on the project, the company decided to keep it on the site. Kickstarter has since pulled the project — which promised step-by-step instructions on "getting good with women" — and is donating $25,000 to anti-sexual violence organization RAINN.

"The offensive material was part of a draft for a 'seduction guide' that someone was using Kickstarter to publish," Kickstarter wrote in an official blog post. "The posts offended a lot of people — us included — and many asked us to cancel the creator’s project. We didn’t. We were wrong."

Kickstarter cited two main reasons for their call.

"The decision had to be made immediately," the company wrote in its blog post. "We had only two hours from when we found out about the material to when the project was ending. We’ve never acted to remove a project that quickly. Our processes, and everyday thinking, bias heavily toward creators. We feel a duty to our community — and our creators especially — to approach these investigations methodically as there is no margin for error in canceling a project."

The company wrote the factors "don’t excuse our decision," but it hopes to shed light on the thought behind it.

"Let us be 100% clear: Content promoting or glorifying violence against women or anyone else has always been prohibited from Kickstarter," the company wrote. "If a project page contains hateful or abusive material, we don’t approve it in the first place. "If a project page contains hateful or abusive material, we don’t approve it in the first place. If we had seen this material when the project was submitted to Kickstarter (we didn’t), it never would have been approved. Kickstarter is committed to a culture of respect."

Those who funded the project will not receive their money back, the company wrote. "There is no taking back money from the project or canceling funding after the fact. When the project was funded the backers’ money went directly from them to the creator. We missed the window."

In addition to pulling down the project, Kickstarter is prohibiting “seduction guides” or other projects that encourage "misogynistic behavior".

"These things do not belong on Kickstarter," the company wrote.

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Google Reader may be on its way out, but AOL is getting ready to launch its own product in the near future that will give users a way to find new content online.

The AOL Reader site is already live, featuring the tagline "all your favorite websites in one place." The site says it is in private beta right now.  Read more…

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Digg will begin rolling out its new reader product next week and open up the beta version to everyone on June 26, the company said in a blog post Monday.

Digg, which is owned by Betaworks, announced in mid-March that it would develop an RSS reader, shortly after Google announced plans to kill off Google Reader. Since then, Digg's team has apparently received feedback from 18,000 on how to design the product.

"For our first public release, in time to (just) beat the shutdown of Google Reader, our aim has been to nail the basics: a web and mobile reading experience that is clean, simple, functional, and fast," Digg's team wrote in the blog post. "We’re also introducing a tool that allows users to elevate the most important stories to the top."

The beta version of the product promises an easy solution to migrating from Google Reader, as well as tools for subscribing, sharing and saving articles. Digg will also introduce an iPhone app for Digg Reader, and plans to introduce an Android app in the near future.

Digg teased the launch with a couple preview images of the Digg Reader product, including the one above and the one below:

The news comes amid rumors that Facebook may announce its own reader product at an event later this week. Google Reader is set to shut down July 1.

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Using high-tech dashboards, drivers can reference navigation systems and voice control in the comfort of a quiet car, but motorcyclists still don't have an effective, high-tech solution. Referencing maps requires a roadside stop, and GPS systems can be distracting.

Now, the team at LiveMap is looking to fund a project that would bring built-in navigation and augmented reality to helmets. Think Google Glass in helmet form.

The motorycle helmet, which is currently listed on crowdfunding site Indiegogo, comes with technology and features so powerful only fighter pilots currently have access. The project already has the financial backing and support from the Moscow Department of Science and several other Russian organizations, but LiveMap is looking for additional funding to get it up and running.

Similar to F-35 fighter jet helmets, a colorful, translucent picture would project onto the visor and create a clear, unobstructed view. It would come with its own interface — not iOS or Android — and prevent users from watching videos or playing games while riding. Read more…

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Wearable tech fashion is dominating the headlines, with excitement brewing over Google Glass and potential smart watches by Apple and Samsung.

Tech giants aside, smaller companies are also entering the wearable tech space, including Embrace+, which alerts wearers to smartphone notifications "through a combination of visual and tactile cues." What's more, this happens all while the mobile device remains inside a purse or pocket.

"Through a simple set-up of some basic parameters on the smartphone you already have, the Embrace+ will show you what you want, and when you want to know it," according to the company's Kickstarter page. "What it shows, how it displays your information and how frequently you see the information is completely up to you." Read more…

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In what seems like a guy's worst nightmare, an app called Lulu is bubbling up as a controversial social platform that lets ladies post reviews and recommendations about past dates.

The concept — which launched in February in the U.S. and is available for iOS and Android — is for women only. Men are denied access, deeming it a safe zone for females to rate guys on a variety of topics, from humor and ambition to first kiss and sex.

Here's how it works: After female users ages 18 and up access the app and sync it to Facebook, they can add a guy to the database and upload a picture. All users are anonymous — no names included — and activities are kept off Facebook. But if you come across a profile that might be of interest to someone you know, you can share profiles with Facebook friends. Hashtags can also be added to the guy's profile, so characteristics are searchable. Read more…

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Apple showed off iWork for iCloud at WWDC 2013, a version of iWork that runs in the cloud — and in the web browser.

iWork for iCloud looks like a cross between Office 365 and Google Docs. It has the user-interface polish of some of Microsoft's Office 365 web offerings and the speed of some of Google's offerings.

With iWork for iCloud, users will be able to create and edit documents on Macs, iOS devices and web browsers on which those apps aren't even installed, which presumably includes Chrome on Android. During the keynote, a representative from Apple demonstrated how a Windows 8 user can edit a document in Chrome or Internet Explorer.

iWork for iCloud supports dragging and dropping files — just drop a file onto a browser window with iWork running, and it'll open. iWork for iCloud will also work with Microsoft Office documents: You can open and edit a Word document right in your browser, similar to Office 365.

Apple said iWork for iCloud would support Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. It'll be available as a developer preview Monday, with general availability later in the year. Read more…

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In the shadow of larger announcements during Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote Monday were new AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule devices.

Apple updated its AirPort Extreme base station ($199.99) to include 802.11ac Wi-Fi, which supposedly works three times faster than Wireless N. The elevated design departs from the previous generation and now has six antennas to improve dispersion of the signal.— three antennas for the 2.4GHz band, three for the 5GHz band. Read more…

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Recent headlines about PRISM, the U.S. government program that allows security officials to spy on people's Internet activity, confirm what conspiracy theorists have long been foretelling: Big Brother is watching.

But is the government the only entity keeping tabs on what you search for, watch and discuss with friends? The truth is, there are others out there — businesses, advertisers, scammers — hoping to line their pockets by collecting your personal data.

And they have a variety of tools at their disposal to gather the information they need — tools you might even have with you right now. That's right: Everything from the smartphone in your pocket to the television in your bedroom can potentially be used to spy on you.

Here are some ordinary gadgets with serious spy potential. Read more…

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Hulu has rolled out a new interface for Hulu Plus on Roku, select Samsung TV and Blu-ray players and the Nintendo Wii.

The update mirrors changes made to the PlayStation 3 Hulu Plus interface last fall and this spring's Apple TV redesign.

The update is more living room-centric, with a focus on larger artwork, an easier way to scroll through recommendations and improved search. It also brings the Hulu Kids section into the living room.

Roku users should get the update now, as should 2012 and 2013 Samsung TV and Blu-ray owners. The update will hit the Wii soon.

At least five companies are reportedly bidding on Hulu — including Yahoo. While Hulu's top traffic draw is its free website, the more than 4 million paying Hulu Plus subscribers are the key to the company's future.

Read more…

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Google has just issued another update to its Google Search app on iOS.

According to its release notes, the update contains "Location improvements & bug fixes." Apparently, these pertain to how Google Now, which was built into the app about a month ago, handles location updates.

Shortly after its launch on iOS, Google Now was criticized by some users for its noticeable impact on battery life, presumed to be a result of its frequent location updates.

Now, Google appears to have improved its location updating protocol, which it maintains has never been a battery hog to begin with.

Indeed, Google's release notes for the latest update to the Google Search app includes a reminder to users on how Google Now performs location updates.

First of all, Google Now doesn't require GPS. Instead, it receives passive updates from nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots.

In addition, the app pauses location updates at low battery levels. It also stays asleep unless a significant difference in distance is detected.

Nevertheless, if you really think Google Now is working well at the expense of your device's battery life, just tap the location icon in Google Now to manage Location Reporting. Read more…

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Some apps just don't get the love they deserve. Whether they're native programs that came installed on your phone or an early purchase that seemed like a good idea, these apps are like guests that overstay their welcome.

But they don't have to be. Apple is notorious for pre-programmed apps and rigid barriers against customization. So how can you get the most out of your iPhone while working within its parameters? Specifically, how can you use the apps ... that seem unusable? We've selected five such apps that can still serve a function. Read more…

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Apple released Final Cut Pro X, the newest version of the Final Cut video editing software, back in 2011. It met mixed reviews: Many long-time users of the program found X's changes in layout a step backwards from the previous version, Final Cut Pro 7.

Regardless which version you have, you've probably achieved a decent understanding of how it works — so we'll skip the basic "tricks."

Instead, we've compiled the most helpful YouTube channels for cool Final Cut tips: shortcuts, visual effects and color grading, to name a few. Some are geared specifically for X, while others highlight techniques that can be used across all versions, whether you're looking to brush up on a few techniques, or just curious about how other editors work best. Read more…

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