A new wireless standard is launched
With 200 times the range of Wi-Fi, a new wireless standard, LongFi has been launched in Austin, Texas, by a startup company, Helium. Six years in development, the network costs 1/1000th of a comparable cellular network and has arrived just in time for the Internet of Things rush. The network requires only 150 to 200 modems, costing about $500 each, to cover an entire city. TechCrunch
dis-rup-shun: The plunging costs of network connectivity, driven lower by more capacity thanks to the upcoming availability of 5G (really fast cellular networks) and upstarts such as LongFi, remove many barriers to connected everything. Nestle is said to deploy LongFi to determine when its water cooler bottles need to be replaced, suggesting that most devices, containers and appliances in the home will soon be connected. Packaging, such as cereal boxes, dog food and laundry detergent will be able to re-order themselves using low-cost, low bandwidth networks, favoring subscription delivery models similar to Amazon Prime, or Nestle’s monthly water delivery service.
Google’s Pixel 4 smartphone rumored to include gesture control
Google’s next smartphone, the Pixel 4 was partially revealed on Wednesday. It is expected to include a sonar-like chip that reads hand gestures as inputs. The technology is named Soli. Finger gestures will mimic turning of a button, and hand gestures will enable skipping to the next song track or pausing. Ars Technica
dis-rup-shun: Voice control, facial recognition and gesture control open the world of technology to many people with impairments, disabilities and certain limitations. They also create many new uses cases for technology, such as using gesture and voice to control not only your car’s entertainment system, but transmission, seat controls and entry access. Ambient computing, defined as always-on computers surrounding you everywhere you go, is only a few years from reality.
Microsoft seeking to eliminate passwords
Windows 10 May edition is using phone numbers to transition to a password-less experience. Microsoft is implementing two factor authentication — using phone numbers, fingerprints and facial recognition to eliminate passwords as we know them. ZDNet
dis-rup-shun: Identify fraud costs an average of $263 per person. Passwords are archaic, frequently forgotten, often misused and frequently stolen. Attaching access credentials to unique attributes such as fingerprints or facial images, with redundancy, that can occur without using a keyboard, increases both security and accessibility. Expect passwords as we know them to be nearly non-existent in 3 to 5 years.