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Samsung launch kickstarts the smartwatch boom
TECHNOLOGY Cheating is cheating – in any language
–Watch of the future–
Time for a change Smartwatches that connect to your phone could be the next big thing CELLPHONES liberated many of us Such watches could also take on from the need to wear a wristwatch – the traditional role of a phone. Holding they not only tell you the time, they the Galaxy Gear to your ear lets you also let you check Facebook. But the answer a call, Dick Tracy-style, for watch is poised to make a comeback. example. “For everyday moments “Smartwatches”, which let you check you don’t have to take out your text messages and social media, could smartphone anymore,” Samsung be the next big thing. research director Pravin Mistry says. Not convinced? Many still aren’t, but But it doesn’t end with less fiddly big tech is banking on them. The first phoning: as they are in contact with of the big name smartwatches was your skin, smartwatches offer the unveiled on 4 September at the perfect wearable platform for fitness International Radio Exhibition in Berlin, apps. Developers could build in Germany. Called the Galaxy Gear, this “Holding Samsung’s new $299 Android-powered smartwatch smartwatch to your ear has been developed by Samsung to lets you answer a call, communicate wirelessly with the Dick Tracy-style” firm’s phones. While other firms have created similar gadgets, it is Samsung’s launch that has really fired the gun on dedicated workout tracking devices the race to corner the market. like the FitBit or Nike FuelBand. The idea is that smartwatches will Samsung isn’t the only firm liberate us from the hassle caused by creating such tech. Apple is thought the cellphone itself – sparing us the to be readying an iWatch to connect bother of retrieving our smartphones wirelessly with iPhones, while others from our pockets to see who has called, hatching smartwatches include tweeted or texted. Instead, a flick of Google’s Motorola Mobility, LG of your wrist could tell your smartwatch South Korea and Qualcomm of San to get wireless updates of texts from Diego, California. Then there’s the your phone. Other “micro interactions” host of crowdfunded start-ups could also be programmed, such as typified by Pebble of Silicon Valley. voice commands to check Facebook Competition comes in the form of messages or call your best friend. Google Glass, which also controls a 22 | NewScientist | 14 September 2013
smartphone via micro interactions: the voice command “OK Glass” gets the system’s attention before you tell it to, say, reply to a message. Thad Starner, technical lead of Google’s Glass project, believes it’s early days and that there will be many ways to interact. “Wristwatches are certainly another way to do micro interactions. Simple features like displaying caller ID can be very powerful. I suspect we’ll see a suite of devices in the future from which a user can choose what suits them best.” Robert Milner, who works on smart devices at UK-based Cambridge Consultants, agrees. “It is users that will drive the form these devices eventually take. Smartwatches could be a stepping stone to Google Glass, for instance, but in sports, glasses could get in the way. The watch is perhaps a better platform for adding multiple features. It is far from obvious which way this is all going to go.” Whatever happens, it is ease of use that will win out, says Starner. “The difficulty is in creating interfaces that provide the maximum utility for the minimum visual or manual attention on the part of the user,” he says. “Creating the right set of features is where the magic is.” Paul Marks n
LAZY students take note – lifting an article off the internet, translating it into another language and presenting it as your own work won’t necessarily go unnoticed. It used to be really tough to spot this kind of plagiarism, thanks to creativity on the part of online translators. Not any more. A team led by Alberto BarronCedeno at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain, used a number of statistical methods to analyse suspicious-looking documents. One involved breaking each text down into fragments that were five sentences long and looking for elements of words that were similar in two languages. Another method used a bilingual dictionary to automatically check how many words in each text were the same. The documents could also be translated into a language with a common root to make the analysis easier. The results surprised even them: their technique showed “remarkable performance” not only in identifying entire documents that had been copied – but in spotting tracts that made use of excessive paraphrasing, too (Knowledge Based Systems, doi.org/nqc). If a document is flagged by the system as being similar to another, then human experts can take a closer look. Paul Marks n
Chris Shinn/stone/getty
Sean Gallup/getty
Insight Wearable tech
–Watch of the future–
Time for a change Smartwatches that connect to your phone could be the next big thing CELLPHONES liberated many of us Such watches could also take on from the need to wear a wristwatch – the traditional role of a phone. Holding they not only tell you the time, they the Galaxy Gear to your ear lets you also let you check Facebook. But the answer a call, Dick Tracy-style, for watch is poised to make a comeback. example. “For everyday moments “Smartwatches”, which let you check you don’t have to take out your text messages and social media, could smartphone anymore,” Samsung be the next big thing. research director Pravin Mistry says. Not convinced? Many still aren’t, but But it doesn’t end with less fiddly big tech is banking on them. The first phoning: as they are in contact with of the big name smartwatches was your skin, smartwatches offer the unveiled on 4 September at the perfect wearable platform for fitness International Radio Exhibition in Berlin, apps. Developers could build in Germany. Called the Galaxy Gear, this “Holding Samsung’s new $299 Android-powered smartwatch smartwatch to your ear has been developed by Samsung to lets you answer a call, communicate wirelessly with the Dick Tracy-style” firm’s phones. While other firms have created similar gadgets, it is Samsung’s launch that has really fired the gun on dedicated workout tracking devices the race to corner the market. like the FitBit or Nike FuelBand. The idea is that smartwatches will Samsung isn’t the only firm liberate us from the hassle caused by creating such tech. Apple is thought the cellphone itself – sparing us the to be readying an iWatch to connect bother of retrieving our smartphones wirelessly with iPhones, while others from our pockets to see who has called, hatching smartwatches include tweeted or texted. Instead, a flick of Google’s Motorola Mobility, LG of your wrist could tell your smartwatch South Korea and Qualcomm of San to get wireless updates of texts from Diego, California. Then there’s the your phone. Other “micro interactions” host of crowdfunded start-ups could also be programmed, such as typified by Pebble of Silicon Valley. voice commands to check Facebook Competition comes in the form of messages or call your best friend. Google Glass, which also controls a 22 | NewScientist | 14 September 2013
smartphone via micro interactions: the voice command “OK Glass” gets the system’s attention before you tell it to, say, reply to a message. Thad Starner, technical lead of Google’s Glass project, believes it’s early days and that there will be many ways to interact. “Wristwatches are certainly another way to do micro interactions. Simple features like displaying caller ID can be very powerful. I suspect we’ll see a suite of devices in the future from which a user can choose what suits them best.” Robert Milner, who works on smart devices at UK-based Cambridge Consultants, agrees. “It is users that will drive the form these devices eventually take. Smartwatches could be a stepping stone to Google Glass, for instance, but in sports, glasses could get in the way. The watch is perhaps a better platform for adding multiple features. It is far from obvious which way this is all going to go.” Whatever happens, it is ease of use that will win out, says Starner. “The difficulty is in creating interfaces that provide the maximum utility for the minimum visual or manual attention on the part of the user,” he says. “Creating the right set of features is where the magic is.” Paul Marks n
LAZY students take note – lifting an article off the internet, translating it into another language and presenting it as your own work won’t necessarily go unnoticed. It used to be really tough to spot this kind of plagiarism, thanks to creativity on the part of online translators. Not any more. A team led by Alberto BarronCedeno at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain, used a number of statistical methods to analyse suspicious-looking documents. One involved breaking each text down into fragments that were five sentences long and looking for elements of words that were similar in two languages. Another method used a bilingual dictionary to automatically check how many words in each text were the same. The documents could also be translated into a language with a common root to make the analysis easier. The results surprised even them: their technique showed “remarkable performance” not only in identifying entire documents that had been copied – but in spotting tracts that made use of excessive paraphrasing, too (Knowledge Based Systems, doi.org/nqc). If a document is flagged by the system as being similar to another, then human experts can take a closer look. Paul Marks n
Chris Shinn/stone/getty
Sean Gallup/getty
Insight Wearable tech