matter
Latest
Samsung's Home Hub is a tablet for controlling SmartThings devices
One of the products Samsung showed off at its CES 2022 keynote was the Home Hub, an 8.4-inch tablet for controlling all the connected home devices in your household.
Arlo's Security System has a keypad you can activate with a tap of your phone
At CES 2022, Arlo introduced a security system that includes an all-in-one multi-sensor with eight monitoring functions.
Eero will upgrade mesh WiFi routers to support the Matter smart home standard
Eero says it will upgrade its 'modern' WiFi mesh routers to the new Matter smart home standard.
Google is redesigning its smart home Developer Center to support Matter device makers
The developer center will include everything companies need to build for the Google Home ecosystem.
Nanoleaf Lines are customizable smart light bars
Lines will let you draw stick images over your wall and light them as you wish.
Matter smart home networking standard delayed to 2022
The Matter smart home standard embraced by Amazon, Apple and Google has been delayed to 2022.
Amazon says most Echo speakers will support the Matter smart home platform
Amazon's support for the Matter smart home platform is coming into focus.
Google's commitment to Matter could unite the fragmented smart home industry
Google shared a few updates around its Nest and Android products that focus on a commitment to the recently renamed Matter ecosystem.
Smart home networking standard Project CHIP rebrands as 'Matter'
Open smart home standard Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP) is now known as Matter.
Scientists find the universe's 'missing matter' using mysterious cosmic bursts
One of astrophysics' longest-running mysteries has been solved.
Optical laser uses shockwaves to peer inside distant planets
Scientists at SLAC's National Accelerator Laboratory are able to peer even further into space thanks to an improved optical laser. The laser uses shockwaves to create high pressure conditions in materials, and the material's response is then captured by an ultra-bright X-ray laser, revealing what's going on inside planets and meteors. Upgrades to the optical laser means it's now three times more powerful, with the equivalent power of 17 Teslas discharging their 100 kilowatt-hour batteries in a single second.
AI learns to recognize exotic states of matter
It's difficult for humans to identify phase transitions, or exotic states of matter that come about through unusual transitions (say, a material becoming a superconductor). They might not have to do all the hard work going forward, however. Two sets of researchers have shown that you can teach neural networks to recognize those states and the nature of the transitions themselves. Similar to what you see with other AI-based recognition systems, the networks were trained on images -- in this case, particle collections -- to the point where they could detect phase transitions on their own. They're both very accurate (within 0.3 percent for the temperature of one transition) and only need to see a few hundred atoms to identify what they're looking at.
ICYMI: Physicists just cracked a big anti-matter hurdle
Today on In Case You Missed It: CERN scientists announced they were able to measure anti-matter on the optical spectrum after a full 20 years of trying. This could not only help us understand the universe better but probably solve the mystery of the aliens everywhere meme-- kidding! That guy is unexplainable. Meanwhile Stanford scientists were able to see how starfish larvae move through water, creating vortices to both swim and move food closer to their mouths, something that had previously been unknown. If you're looking for a laugh, feel free to check out synthesizer bike guy, round two. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
NASA's next rocket will sniff the remnants of a supernova
There's been a lot of space stories this week, including rockets going up, satellites coming down and supply craft doing both, but not in the right order. Not to be deterred, NASA is talking up its next big experiment which will send a probe to examine the contents of the Cygnus Loop, a remnant of a supernova that exploded 20,000 years ago. The mission will involve a sounding rocket, which will sniff the x-rays that are still being emitted from the stellar event, which scientists hope will help them understand what it's made up of.
Newly discovered particle is both matter and antimatter at the same time
You probably think of matter and antimatter as mortal enemies, since their equivalent particles (such as protons and antiprotons) normally destroy each other on contact. However, there are now hints that the two might get along just fine in the right circumstances. Researchers claim to have successfully imaged a Majorana particle, which exists as both matter and antimatter at the same time. The team created it by placing a string of iron atoms on top of a lead superconductor, forming pairs of electrons and antielectrons -- except for one lone electron at the end of the chain, which exhibited properties of both.
Your photos are super boring, but Matter can change that
Matter is a strange app. In all honesty, there's absolutely no reason for it to exist, and it serves virtually no meaningful purpose. That being said, I absolutely love it and I find myself using it far more often than I ever would have imagined. Matter is a photo manipulation app that lets you add physical objects to your photos, but that description probably isn't going to sell you on how cool the app really is, so let me show you a photo I took -- along with the object I added in Matter -- which took me about 30 seconds to create: Isn't that cool? I think it's cool. What is this crazy structure jutting out of the pond? I have absolutely no idea, but I put it there. I dropped the object in, tweaked the shadow a little bit to match the shadows in the photo, and saved it. Ta-da! But to be fair, that photo was pretty cool even before I added Matter to it, so let's take a look at an extremely boring photo instead. Here's a shot of an apartment complex garage. It doesn't get much more bland than that, right? Now we'll add some objects that definitely don't belong there. What are these strange UFO-esque discs hovering over the garage and parking lot? Your guess is as good as mine, but that totally drab snapshot is now a peculiar work of art thanks to Matter. As you've probably gathered by now, this isn't the kind of app that is going to let you put a vintage filter on a touching photo of your kid, or help you create the perfect selfie. What it will do, however, is give you the tools to put dozens of geometric shapes into your world in an extremely easy way, and make your utterly dry photos actually enjoyable to look at. You can't ask for much more than that for US$1.99.
Microsoft cancels Gore Verbinski's 'Matter' for Kinect
Matter, a Kinect game expected to launch on Xbox Live Arcade in 2013, has been cancelled by Microsoft. It was to be the first game developed in partnership with film director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Rango) and Blind Wink Games."Microsoft Studios is no longer pursuing this title," says a company representative. "We have no further details to share at this time."Phil Spencer, Corporate VP of Microsoft Studios, told Joystiq in June last year that Verbinski had pitched Matter as a means to instill and demonstrate emotion in typically motionless game players. A futuristic metal sphere, seen moving through a futuristic landscape in the game's E3 2012 trailer, represented an active control surface implemented through Kinect."To a lot of people who haven't played games for a long time, somebody standing completely stationary with a controller in their hands kind of seems emotionless, even though we know that we'll be sweating or twitching," Spencer said. "And [it was] his feeling, that with motion and movement, that the connection of the emotion that's happening on screen and how the player feels would be more natural."Blind Wink, which is attached to a film production company partnered with Universal Pictures, has not responded to requests for comment.
Pocket announces digital publishing partnership with Matter
Just last week we mentioned that Pocket, formerly known as Read It Later, was growing its little empire of features and various apps, but hadn't yet landed on a solid monetary plan. Well here that comes now: Pocket has announced a partnership with a Kickstarter-funded digital publisher called Matter, teaming up to bring Matter's content into Pocket's readers, wherever they happen to be. Matter is a subscription-based content service, where you pay just 99 cents a month for a series of well-written pieces and editorial insight. And Pocket's made a deal to bring that content into its readers. So without installing or downloading anything else, you'll be able to access Matter's material directly, as well as use all of Pocket's various sharing and other features while doing so. It's a pretty smart plan, actually, though of course it will all depend on the quality of Matter's content. As The Daily has shown us just today, charging a subscription for digital content is a tough game to play, and one that quite a few smart people have failed to win just yet. But all of the ingredients are here: Pocket has a large audience of users who appreciate high quality content, Matter has a lot of supporters (through its Kickstarter campaign) also willing to pay for a good read and the groundwork's been laid in terms of making Pocket's interface and feature set very appealing. We'll probably look for more partnerships like this from Pocket in the future, and see if delivering this content is enough to earn these companies the money they're looking for.
Gore Verbinski's 'Matter' coming to XBLA from Blind Wink Games
This E3 brought the announcement of Matter, a new Xbox-exclusive game from the mind of Gore Verbinski, the director of Rango, The Ring, and 75 percent of Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Matter appends a title to the first project from Blind Wink Games, which was formed in partnership with Universal Studios. Phil Spencer, Corporate VP of Microsoft Studios, says Verbinski was the one to pitch the game in the first place. "He had been exposed to Kinect, and had this idea for a game. We heard the pitch and we were able to find a developer to plug in. So it was really born of his mind, and his idea."The idea, first shown by an abstract, Tron-esque trailer during Microsoft's E3 2012 press conference, came from Verbinski's desire to highlight an emotional connection between players and their movements on screen. "You should hear it from him, he does a much better job than I do in explaining it," Spencer says, "but the idea was that in your physical motion, your emotion actually comes through."To a lot of people who haven't played games for a long time, somebody standing completely stationary with a controller in their hands kind of seems emotionless, even though we know that we'll be sweating or twitching," Spencer adds. "And [it was] his feeling, that with motion and movement, that the connection of the emotion that's happening on screen and how the player feels would be more natural."We still don't know much of the Kinect game, but it sounds like it may be some kind of abstract puzzle game. According to Spencer, the shiny sphere in the teaser trailer is used as "a control surface for the game" (like rolling a Katamari with your hands, perhaps?), and the visual presentation is in line with a futuristic aesthetic that Verbinski wanted to explore in games.Matter is coming to Xbox Live Arcade sometime in 2013.
'Matter' for Kinect announced, coming in 2013, Gore Verbinski involved [update: trailer]
Gore Verbisnki's Xbox 360 title, Matter, was just announced during Microsoft's E3 2012 press conference. The trailer showed a personality sphere-like robotic eyeball orb navigating through a maze of shifting metal structures, like some kind of Tron Marble Madness. Matter will launch sometime in 2013.
