Wall Street Journal reporter Ryan Dezember writes about Thasos Group, a company co-founded by Prof. Alex “Sandy” Pentland that aims to “paint detailed pictures of the ebb and flow of people, and thus their money” by gathering anonymous data about people’s activities through their smartphone usage.
Wired reporter Aarian Marshall writes that AgeLab researchers are studying how drivers interact with their phones, in an effort to reduce fatalities caused by distracted driving. Research scientist Bruce Mehler explains that researchers are, “focused on taking a really fresh look at the whole design approach to evaluating human-machine interfaces in the car."
Prof. Vladimir Bulović, associate dean for innovation, speaks with Paul McDougall of Scientific American about developing a solar-powered smart phone. “You want something that can be reasonably efficient at a reasonable cost so it doesn’t change the paradigm of what your cell phone costs,” says Bulović.
In an article for Optics.org, Matthew Peach writes that MIT researchers have developed a technique that exploits the polarization of light to improve the quality of 3-D imaging. The technique “could lead to high-quality 3-D cameras integrated into cellphones, and perhaps to the ability to photograph an object and then use a 3-D printer to produce a replica.”
Liz Stinson writes for Wired about THAW, a project out of the MIT Media Lab that allows screens on smart devices to interact with one another. "We don’t really think of it as a product,” says Media Lab student Phillip Schoessler. “We’ve really just touched the surface of the applications.”
“Researchers from MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group and Fluid Interface Group are working on a project called THAW that allows smartphone cameras to identify what’s happening on another screen and interact with it,” writes Lily Hay Newman for Slate.