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Motorola exec struts Medios TV guide platform capabilities in IBC video
After seeing Motorola's sweet-looking NYXboard QWERTY remote last week, we were itching to know if the hardware was part of a bigger plan. A new video featuring exec Malcolm Latham now answers that question, highlighting several key features in the company's Medios TV guide platform. We've known that at its core the HTML-based software was created to provide a similar viewing experience across phones, TVs, and computers, but more meaty bits like cross-platform bookmarking, a content recommendation engine, and so-called "Social TV" have been revealed. We're certainly all for our devices playing together nicely and new content suggestions, but Social TV has us a bit skeptical. The idea is similar to any instant message client in that it allows your friends to know when you're on Medios and then view what exactly you're watching. Sure, there might be some value in it -- Ping is betting that's true with music, -- but the potential for getting caught watching Gossip Girl is a serious deterrent. What's worse is that your friends can then rag you about it via chat right on the screen using their handy NYXboard remote. To see where we're coming, from check out the video after the break.
Microsoft reveals multi-platform Robotics Studio
It seems that Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Academy isn't the only organization working on multi-platform robotics software these days, as Microsoft has just revealed its own so-called Robotics Studio, which is intended to be a rich, scalable programming environment that can control anything from the simplest Lego Mindstorms creation to a highly-complex, car-assembling industrial bot. Unveiled at the RoboBusiness Conference and Exhibition in Pittsburgh, PA, the new software development kit will let users employ a visual programming tool for building command sets or debugging their applications, and also utilizes technology from PhysX manufacturer Aegia to enable realistic 3D simulations for determining how programs will execute in the real world. Not only does the platform support interaction with properly-formatted third-party languages, it will also allow outside developers to build their own commercial applications in the same way that software manufacturers create programs to run on Windows or Windows Mobile today. You can download a preview of the new toolkit-- which also enables web-based bot control -- by following the Read link, or if you just want to know a little more about its history and capabilities, Channel 9 has a great video featuring demos and interviews with the development team.[Via Information Week]
