Boot up: Starbucks wireless charging, Kindle limits?, a cabbie explains

‘Uber wants to resell my work back to me'. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

A burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

The deal is a major victory for Powermat and the Power Matters Alliance, which remains embroiled in a standards war with the Wireless Power Consortium, purveyor of the Qi charging standard. And at least right now, we're at something of a stalemate.

Qi's technology has been embedded into the design of far more smartphones, including the new LG G3, Nexus 5, and numerous Nokia devices. PMA's wireless charging solution hasn't enjoyed the same adoption among manufacturers; most people still need to buy a compatible case for their phone before ditching the USB cable that came with it. But Schreiber suggested the tide is turning. Consumers can buy PMA-compatible back covers for some Samsung smartphones that enable Powermat charging, and Apple — which hasn't officially picked a side in this battle — sells a Duracell Powermat iPhone case at its retail stores.

"Devices will come out with compatible technology, and we'll see an industry that's been hamstrung a bit with standards issues and conflicting implementations coalesce a common ground," [Powermat president Daniel] Schreiber said. If you don't own a supported device, you'll be able to purchase a tiny, inexpensive receiver "ring" that plugs into your phone and lets you toss it onto the pad for recharging. (Schreiber wouldn't reveal whether Starbucks plans to sell these directly.)

Wonder why Starbucks would start rolling out wireless charging in mid-year using a standard that's not used on many smartphones at present.

jh1453 asked:

Hi - I was wondering why all of Amazon's Knights of Sidonia volumes are now restricted to only Kindle devices, as opposed to the Kindle app for iOS or the cloud-based e-reader. Over the last few months, I've bought and read through volume 5, but now I can't continue my collection because I don't own a Kindle.

vertical-inc replied:

That's Amazon's choice. We would never have them restricted to specific machines. (Actually our novels are on all Kindle platforms and our first eBooks were also, but Amazon changed those policies themselves for whatever reasons).

Seems incredible that Amazon would cut off ways for people to consume content bought from it. It's like declining to sell boo....

Nintendo's announcement at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles didn't really tackle the basic problem the gaming-console pioneer faces: Nintendo's customers are giving up on the Wii. Unlike the PlayStation and the Xbox, Nintendo's Wii has long catered to younger users who like the company's cartoon characters, most notably Mario. As the cost of smartphones and tablets continues to fall, however, parents are less willing to fork over several hundred dollars for a Nintendo Wii U when they can instead let Junior play a few online games, often for free, on a cheap Android device.

Nintendo executives "seem to think that the issue is the lack of games," Amir Anvarzadeh, a BGC Partners analyst in Singapore, told Bloomberg Television today. However, "the real issue here is that Nintendo is focusing on the casual gamers, [while] the gamers are migrating to smartphones and tablet platforms where games are free."

Nintendo, you have a problem.

Black cab driver RJ Cudlip:

Let me just explain one little bit of Taxi/PH [private hire] law first; as a Taxi driver (because of the extra training that allows me to accept instant hails) I am allowed to take bookings direct, unlike a PH driver who must accept a booking from a PH Operator like Addison Lee. This is why what Hailo do (connect me to a punter direct) is within the law and what Uber do isn't. As previously stated, PH cars are not allowed to make themselves "available for immediate hire" and again, this is what Uber are doing and therefore breaking the law. Then there is the issue of their "virtual meter". The law states that a PH vehicle is not allowed to be equipped with a meter. Uber, with TfL's blessing, argue that a smartphone isn't a meter. I think most right minded people would think that if it does the same thing as a meter, then it most probably is a meter. And an important point here is that Taxis are made to have meters fitted to protect the public from being ripped off.

…There are also issues around Uber not asking for destinations (required by law) and Uber not having an operating center in the UK, but in Holland. This final point seems to be the only one that TfL are admitting is a problem and that if they'd known about it before may not have issued their operator licence!

…what Uber and Hailo really want is to take a big cut of the multi billion pound taxi market. Do they have drivers interests at heart? Definitely not. Do they even have customers interests at heart? Almost certainly not. What they really want is to resell my work to me for a fee. Isn't technology wonderful?

Beyond the fact most of us had nothing better to do in the 1980s, a big reason to own a gaming console was that they were a phenomenally good deal. In 1985 Nintendo introduced the Famicom to North America as the Nintendo Entertainment System for a mere $199, an remarkably low price considering the average PC cost around $2,400.1 While PC prices soon began to fall, the Playstation/Nintendo 64 generation was still nearly $1,500 cheaper than the average PC.

Over the last two generations of consoles, however, prices have actually risen, and today a Playstation 4 or Xbox One is nearly the same price as an average PC.

In some respects, this makes no sense: why hasn't Moore's law had the same impact on consoles as it has had on PCs? Moreover, when you consider that consoles now compete with a whole host of new time-wasters like phones, tablets, social networks, dramatically expanded TV offerings, the Internet, etc., it's downright bizarre.

I think the answer lies in a specific part of disruption theory. Specifically, incumbents are driven by their best customers to add more and more features that drive up the price, causing the incumbents' product to move further and further away from the average customer's needs (needs which have actually been decreasing as more entertainment options become available):

Once that happens, all sorts of strange things become possible. And why not an Android TV that could serve gamers? Though of course Sony already seems to have thought of this.

Kurzweil is also known as one of the most enthusiastic proponents of "the Singularity" - when computers encapsulate or surpass human intelligence:

I have had a long-term wager with Mitch Kapor in which I predicted that a computer program would pass the Turing test by 2029 and he predicted that this would not happen, see links below.

This was the first long-term wager on the "Long Now" website. The bet called for $20,000 to be donated from us to the charity of the winner's choice.

As a result, messages have been streaming in from around the world congratulating me for having won the bet.

However, I think this is premature. I am disappointed that Professor Warwick, with whom I agree on many things, would make this statement. There are several problems that I describe below, including a transcript of a conversation that I had with Eugene Goostman, the chatbot in question.

This is going to be a great disappointment to all the imaginary 13-year-old Ukrainian boys with passable English who are rude about their female classmates.

One Reddit user built a program with Leap Motion's to browse articles with one-finger swipes left and right, or upvote articles with two finger motions. Though, in watching his video, other than the novelty, it's tough feel a huge improvement over using a mouse and keyboard. But on the other hand, it's hard not to think of an extremely rudimentary version of the screens in Minority Report. Time will tell.

Leap Motion has been pushing the next generation of its tracking software, improving motions like touching one finger to another hand, or pinching two fingers together. Those seem like simple motions. But if a game requires a player to, say, pick up a ball and throw it, the sensors require incredible precision to know the exact moment the player's hand would have wrapped around and made a grip on the sphere - not to mention when they've released it.

Leap Motion is clever, but still very much a technology desperately seeking an application.

Mike Barry and Brian Card:

Boston's Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) operates the 4th busiest subway system in the U.S. after New York, Washington, and Chicago. If you live in or around the city you have probably ridden on it. The MBTA recently began publishing substantial amount of subway data through its public APIs. They provide the full schedule in General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format which powers Google's transit directions. They also publish realtime train locations for the Red, Orange, and Blue lines (but no Green or Silver line until 2015). The following visualizations use data captured from these feeds for the entire month of February, 2014. Also, working with the MBTA, we were able to acquire per-minute entry and exit counts at each station measured at the turnstiles used for payment.

We attempt to present this information to help people in Boston better understand the trains, how people use the trains, and how the people and trains interact with each other.

Simply fantastic visualisation; set time aside to read and play with it. Bonus: you'll learn what a Marey diagram is, if you don't already know.

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