The latest in gadgets: Goodbye, Motorola
LAS VEGAS – The latest developments surrounding the consumer-electronics show in Las Vegas known as CES:
Lenovo phasing out Motorola brand
A famous name in mobile phones is going away. Lenovo, which bought the Motorola phone business from Google in 2014, is phasing out the Motorola brand for its phones.
CNET first reported Lenovo’s decision. A Motorola representative confirmed Thursday that Lenovo will still use the name “Motorola Mobility” for the company’s phone division, but it will shift the branding of its phones and wearable devices to “Moto” and “Vibe.”
Intel fights problem of online harassment
Intel wants to tackle the problem of online harassment, starting with a series of “hackathons.”
The giant computer chip-maker is using this week’s CES gadget show in Las Vegas to kick off a campaign against online abuse of women, minorities and others who are frequently targeted for digital harassment. At an event Thursday, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich urged others in the tech and online media industries to help fight what he called a “pervasive” problem.
Krzanich has become outspoken on what many see as a related issue – diversity in the tech industry – by setting ambitious goals for his own company to hire more women and minorities.
Krzanich has enlisted support for the Hack Harassment campaign from the online publisher Vox Media and Recode, one of its sites, as well as from Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation.
MLB, NBA push fantasy sports sites
Some states think daily fantasy sports sites like DraftKings and FanDuel offer little more than thinly disguised sports gambling.
At a sports-business panel at the annual CES gadget show on Thursday, Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred argued that when people complain the same players keep winning, they actually prove the contests are games of skill rather than chance. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, a proponent of making legal sports betting more widely available as a legal and regulated option, said the sites should be regulated at a federal level to make them fairer.
Neither Manfred nor Silver would say if they thought the sites constituted gambling, although Silver drew a comparison to the stock market, which he said is a gamble for many people. He also pointed to state lotteries as evidence gambling is no longer considered a “moral sin.”
The NBA is directly involved with FanDuel, while Major League Baseball is partnered with DraftKings. The sites have come under intense scrutiny this year including in New York, where the attorney general has ordered the sites to shut down.
Microsoft touts
Windows 10 assistant
Microsoft is promoting its voice-activated digital assistant, Cortana, which is built into its Windows 10 software, as a user-friendly controller for Internet-connected appliances and home systems. (Apple has made its Siri program work with home systems in a similar way.) Microsoft showed how Cortana works with Samsung “smart” appliances Thursday at the CES gadget show in Las Vegas.
In the demonstration, a Microsoft presenter asked Cortana to let him know when a Samsung washing machine would be finished with its laundry cycle. Then he showed how Cortana could chart appliance use by different individuals in the house, assuming each person carries a small keychain sensor that lets a smart home system track their movement.
The presenter asked how many hours a fictional boy named “Billy” spent watching TV during the afternoon. After showing the answer in a bar graph, Cortana also was able to report how many times “Billy” opened the refrigerator door – and how many minutes the door was left open each time.
It sounds like “Billy” needs to buckle down and do his homework.
Car sensors helping fill in detail on road maps
No matter how many cameras, lasers and radar sensors a car has, it will still need super-detailed road maps to drive by itself.
Here, a German company owned by Audi, BMW and Mercedes, and Mobileye, out of Israel, are making the maps, and both will rely on data gathered by cameras and other sensors that are showing up in cars today.
Mobileye, General Motors and Volkswagen announced deals this week to start gathering the data. GM vehicles with forward-facing cameras will start providing it later this year through the OnStar system, while VW has plans to send data in 2018. Eventually, Mobileye hopes to get the rest of the auto industry on board with crowd-sourced data to make the mapping accurate to within a few centimeters.
Google and other companies are working on sensors that can read lane lines and monitor other cars and pedestrians. But cameras can’t see in low sunlight and bad weather, and radar and laser have limitations.
Here is using data from other cars as well as truck fleets and roadside sensors to build its map. The company announced mapping of North America and Western Europe and is working to make maps of the entire highway network in both places by 2018.
The detailed maps rely on car sensors and computers that record the distance from fixed roadside landmarks such as signs.
Eventually the map computers will record the actual speed and behavior of cars to guide autonomous vehicles in traffic, said Alex Mangan, Here’s product marketing manager. “Building a map at this scale with this level of detail, it takes time. This is a self-maintaining map.”