You wait in the doctor’s office with a furrowed brow and a heavy heart. When he returns, his face is somber and his eyes concentrate on the clipboard in front of him.
“You’ve only got a little time left,” he says apologetically. “If there’s anything you want to do before you die, now’s the time.”
That’s the experience that Tikker, a new death countdown clock, wants you to have every time you look down at your wrist. The Kickstarter project has a special handbook that gives you an estimation of your years left on this earth, which likely has very little to do with reality. From there, you can enter that amount of time into the watch.
Alongside telling you the actual time of day, Tikker will also let you know how many years, weeks, days, hours, and seconds you have left to live.
The idea is to remind you, in every moment, that life is short.
The Tikker watch is listed as a Kickstarter project that has almost doubled the asking amount of $25,000 with a solid 22 days left in the campaign. It isn’t revolutionary technology, to say the least, and it’s not particularly stylish or glamorous. So why all the success?
The answer, as Slate reminds us, is YOLO.
No matter what you’re biggest fear is, from snakes to bees to heights to confined spaces, nothing is more terrifying than the thought of letting your life slip away without ever being who you wanted to be, doing what you wanted to do, or going where you wanted to go.
As a constant reminder to go out and live life well and happily, Tikker automatically tugs on the heart strings of consumers.

If that wrapping on the door of your heart sounds a lot like “Carpe Diem”, head over to Kickstarter and check it out.

One of the more ambitious and interesting hardware projects on a crowdfunding platform recently has to be the Quasar IV, a smartphone designed entirely around security, encryption and identity protection. QSAlpha’s Quasar IV uses authentication tech called Quatrix, and a hybrid Android/Linux and Quatrix mobile OS called QuaOS to make sure communications in and out of the phone are protected.
The Quasar IV is going to be made, despite the fact that there are only nine days remaining in its Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, and only $48,796 raised out of $3.2 million sought on a fixed funding goal (meaning they don’t get anything if they haven’t got the whole amount committed). While the Quasar IV won’t raise that much money in the next 9 days, it apparently will get made regardless thanks to help from outside investors.
On the Quasar IV Indiegogo page, an update posted a few hours ago says that production with “one of the world’s largest consumer electronics OEMS manufacturers” has already begun, as a result of support from “various vendors and companies” who share the founding team’s passion for a vision of an ultra-secure mobile device. Early backers will be added to the pre-order list for the Quasar IV automatically, and will be notified about how to buy one when the time comes, which QSAlpha CEO and founder Steve Chao says will happen sometime in Q2 2014.
There’s very little in the way of information about who has picked up the tab for the initial production run, but Quasar’s appeal, while niche, applies very specifically to firms that require incredibly high levels of security and encryption, which are resistant to outside attempts (*cough* NSA *cough*) to read said data. QSAlpha has said it was inspired by the stealthy ways of the ninja in designing the phone and its operating system, and there are, conceivably, clients who would pay well for a phone that stays truly off-grid.

Indiegogo has sort of become a place for ambitious new smartphone concepts to go to attract a lot of attention before falling well short of their funding goal (see the Canonical Ubuntu Edge), but it looks like the Quasar IV might become real with a little help from some potentially high-powered friends. Or, it could always disappear in a puff of smoke, ninja-style.

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The Raspberry Pi microcomputer, which costs as little as $25/$35 and has helped fledge many a DIY hardware project, has racked up worldwide sales of 1.75 million, its U.K.-based creator, The Raspberry Pi Foundation, said today. The first Pis went on sale in March 2012, with its U.K. makers imagining they might sell a thousand in the first year (in the event they sold circa one million — and are now well on their way to two million).
Another U.K.-specific milestone for the device is that one million Pis have been produced since the Foundation shifted the bulk of production to a factory based in the U.K. (Sony’s Pencoed, Wales facility). So that’s one million U.K.-made Pis.
Initially, as with scores of inexpensive electronic devices before it, Pi was made in China. But the Foundation, itself a U.K. startup, was keen to support a production facility closer to home — to make it easier to visit and oversee elements of Pi production, but also to support local manufacturing. And so Sony was brought on board and the Pencoed factory turned out its millionth Pi today.
The rest of the 1.75 million Pis produced to-date were built in China. The Foundation’s primary Pi distributor, Premier Farnell/element 14, shifted all its production to Wales back in March but a small portion of non-U.K. Pi production remains.
As well as keeping the maker community busy by powering DIY hardware projects like this solar-powered FTP server, the Pi has been helping schoolkids cut their teeth on coding projects. At the start of this year, Google put up $1 million to fund 15,000 Pis for U.K. schoolkids, for example. Further afield, Pi has been used as a low-cost component to kit out school computing labs in Africa.
Back in April, the Pi Foundation revealed details of the countries where the — at the time — 1.2 million Pis had been shipped to. The vast majority (98%) were being sold in Western nations such as the U.K. and the U.S. Helping Pi spread further around the world to reach more developing nations is one of the Foundation’s challenges this year, Pi founder Eben Upton said then.
Discussing what it’s been doing to improve Pi distribution globally since then, Upton said Pi distributor RS Components now stocks units locally in South Africa — and can then ship directly to a number of countries in Southern Africa. “This has important implications for delivered cost, and also for reliability of delivery — it can be challenging to ship stuff into Africa reliably from Europe,” he told TechCrunch.
“We’re continuing to work to understand how to get units into South American markets without incurring very import high tariffs. Nothing to announce yet, but it’s high on our radar,” he added.
Upton also revealed that Pi shipments are growing in Asian markets.  ”Looking at the per-country stats, while the U.S. remains our largest market, and the U.K. our largest per-capita market, what’s really striking is that Asian markets, notably Japan, Korea and the Philippines, are consistently up month on month,” he said.

Today’s millionth-made British Pi (rightly) isn’t going to stray far. “Sony have made us a gold-plated case to keep it in, and we’ll be displaying it proudly here at Pi Towers [in Cambridge, U.K.],” the Foundation said today.

You’ve been played before. You’re vulnerable and nervous about opening up again. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been lied to.
Back in 2011 we heard rumors that the iPad would be graced with Office’s presence in 2012, and shortly thereafter we saw an actual photo of Office on an iPad. But… nothing. And then some more nothing. Until today.
The company is finally letting Office 365 smooch up against the iPad. Steve Ballmer today revealed at a Gartner event in Florida that an iPad-friendly version of Office 365 is in the works. The iPad version will be released after a touch-first user interface is delivered to Windows-powered machines. According to the Verge, that special touch interface is “in progress.”
Microsoft has already let Office partially into the iOS ecosystem with the release of Office Mobile for Office 365 Subscribers (catchy name, huh?). This application is only available to iPhone owners who already have an expensive Office 365 subscription.
The Verge also claims that Microsoft COO Kevin Turner expressed the “need to own the productivity experience across all devices” in a recent company meeting, which makes sense considering Office is one of Microsoft’s best and most competitive products.
Expanding distribution of the software is smart, especially if it coaxes users to pay for the pricey Office 365 subscription in order to access it. Smarter still would be to offer a specially tailored version of Office 365 on iPad and iPhone for a hefty yearly price that isn’t quite as high as the full-on desktop subscription.

In either case, though, Microsoft runs the risk of slowing down its own lagging tablet sales. After all, the only slightly interesting advantage that Surface tablets have is Microsoft’s productivity suite. After Office is rolled out to all iOS devices, that advantage simply shrinks down to the fact that it’s free on a Surface.

Apple has just announced the next round of launch dates for the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s, and a total of 52 new markets will get the devices by November 1, with a batch of 17 getting the smartphones by November 1. The first round includes Italy, Russia, Spain and South Korea, while the second group includes India, Mexico and Turkey.
Typically, Apple’s second big launch after their initial one is when the device becomes available in China, but this year China got the new iPhones at the same time as the U.S., the UK and Canada, marking a first for an Apple launch. That means these additional countries should prove the key ones to watch in terms of judging additional spikes from international sales, but we’ll likely see less of a bump than we have previously with China debuts. Apple has yet to launch the iPhone with China Mobile, however, and that could prove another high point for sales, should it arrive in 2014 as predicted by some analysts.
A full list of new countries and markets getting the iPhone follows, arranged by date:
Oct. 25: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, French West Indies, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Reunion Island, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and Thailand.

Nov. 1: Albania, Armenia, Bahrain, Colombia, El Salvador, Guam, Guatemala, India, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and UAE.

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab and the Max Planck Institutes have created a foldable, cuttable multi-touch sensor that works no matter how you cut it, allowing multi-touch input on nearly any surface.
In traditional sensors the connectors are laid out in a grid and when one part of the grid is damaged you lose sensitivity in a wide swathe of other sensors. This system lays the sensors out like a star which means that cut parts of the sensor only effect other parts down the line. For example, you cut the corners off of a square and still get the sensor to work or even cut all the way down to the main, central connector array and, as long as there are still sensors on the surface, it will pick up input.
The team that created it, Simon Olberding, Nan-Wei Gong, John Tiab, Joseph A. Paradiso, and Jürgen Steimle, write:
You can read the research paper here but this looks to be very useful in the DIY hacker space as well as for flexible, wearable projects that require some sort of multi-touch input. While I can’t imagine we need shirts made of this stuff, I could see a sleeve with lots of inputs or, say, a watch with a multi-touch band.

Don’t expect this to hit the next iWatch any time soon – it’s still very much in prototype stages but definitely looks quite cool.

Toronto-based startup PUSH is hoping to add some professionalism to an essentially amateur space with its fitness tracker aimed specifically at pros and demanding athletes who want data, not vague metrics, about general activity levels. The PUSH can provide solid data about reps, sets, force, power, balance, velocity, max weight, tempo and more to athletes who depend on informed workouts to push themselves further, and it’s nearly halfway to the $80,000 funding goal on Indiegogo it needs to make that happen.
The PUSH is a device that pairs with an elastic armband for wearing while you work out, which incorporates a motion sensor, orientation sensor, Bluetooth 2.1, a rechargeable battery good for between 6 to 8 hours of continual use (or around a week of exercising), as well as a physical button and LEDs for basic input and display. It pairs with a companion app that features an exercise database, motion analysis, sharing and trend tracking as well as visual reporting of the data it collects.
I spoke with Mike Lovas, Chief Designer of PUSH hardware and co-founder of the company. He explained that, while the activity-tracking segment is well-covered now, there’s still a huge gap when it comes to professional-caliber devices – and a strong appetite and willingness among organizations and users to spend on such hardware.
“One of the big things we’ve been really interested in is the pro-level interest,” he said. “A lot of guys from the NHL, NFL, MLB, pro soccer in Europe, rugby and those kinds of high-end users are loving what we’re doing, so that’s been super encouraging.”

PUSH is seeing a lot of that interest being driven at the organization level by coaching staff and trainers who want to help their athletes train more effectively and efficiently; a truly quantified workout routine has the advantage of being able to provide the tools needed for athletes to work out smarter and safer. You’ll have less chance of injuring yourself if professionals have access to more data, and you won’t waste time with exercises that aren’t really adding anything to your existing workouts.
“Sports science is big. Pros are using high-end, expensive research equipment and pay through the nose for that stuff,” Lovas explained, describing how it differs from what’s already out there. “We had this product that we could offer at a fraction of the price, give them similar metrics and also have it so that every athlete could wear this every time they work out, so it’s not just once a month that they could get this data, but every time they hit the gym.”
Individual users can pre-order the device for a one-time fee of $139, but for coaches and teams there’s going to be a subscription software and service product that provides them with a dashboard where they can monitor and compare all their athletes on an ongoing basis. Obviously, the hope is that this becomes a competitive advantage that teams are climbing over themselves to get at.

Lovas also says that PUSH is looking at expanding the types of activity it can monitor with different types of mounts for the PUSH, and could even get into specialized hardware and software for individual sports down the road, depending on how things go. Judging by the progress they’ve made so far toward their funding goal, there’s strong demand out there for this type of thing.

Canada’s beleaguered smartphone pioneer BlackBerry is apparently warming to the idea of a break-up, Bloomberg reports, as the Fairfax Financial buyout bid for the entire company looks a little more uncertain due to a failure to secure the appropriate amount of funding, or partners to help them do so.
The companies reportedly approached by BlackBerry as potential suitors, including SAP, Cisco and Samsung, are only interested in parts of BlackBerry, not the whole kit and caboodle, according to Bloomberg. If a break-up went through, it would give BlackBerry the chance to auction off the most lucrative parts to the highest bidders, who might be more likely to compete with one another once they don’t have to worry about also taking on the unprofitable parts of the business and mitigating the risk associated with those assets.
Reuters reported earlier this month that Google, SAP and Cisco were among companies that were interested in buying BlackBerry or its parts, and the company had also approached LG, Intel and Samsung according to that report. Bloomberg’s new information echoes that, and adds that SAP is considering the value of attempting to acquire portions of the company, while Intel is looking only at patents. None of the companies covered by Bloomberg are interested in making a bid for the entire company as it exists now.
In terms of what is and isn’t appealing to potential buyers about BlackBerry, it’s pretty clear that the enterprise business is among the most attractive targets. The phone business is not considered an asset at all, RJF analyst Steven Li tells Bloomberg, owing to its steadily declining handset sales figures. There is some good news in the phone business, however, as Canadian telco Rogers reversed its decision not to carry the BlackBerry Z30 smartphone. Still, interest in BlackBerry hardware at home in Canada isn’t representative of the appetite for its devices elsewhere.

BlackBerry seems destined for a break-up in the end, unless Fairfax can pull in some last-minute support to help its bid for the company as a complete unit. It’s much more likely that we’ll see it parted out, however, which, while sad for the brand and its defenders, could at least mean something bearing the BlackBerry name survives, if under new ownership and management.

Android users, how would you like 30 live TV channels to be available on your phone or tablet at any given time or place? If that sounds like you, then happy Thursday.
Aereo, the company that streams live television and DVR service to iPhone, iPad and desktop users across the country, is today announcing that Android users will be able to join in on the fun starting on October 22.
Android users who are running Android 4.2 or higher on their phone, tablets, or “phablets” will soon be able to join the public beta, allowing them to surf between 30 channels and record the shows of their choosing from anywhere. And if that weren’t enough, Android users have the option to access Aereo through their Roku boxes to get a real life TV experience for a fraction of the cost of a cable bill.
See, Aereo works by streaming live OTA signals to your connected devices over the internet, using tiny antennas that function in the same manner as rabbit ears on a TV set. Since those signals are free (with a couple partnership exceptions), Aereo can charge a low rate of $8/month for 20 hours of DVR or $12/month for 60 hours of DVR storage to the end user.
Obviously, this displeases many broadcast networks, who are arguing that Aereo is illegally reproducing their content. However, Aereo argues that it’s using the same fundamental process of rabbit ears on a television, except users are individually renting them out from a remote location.
The legal battle has continued across the country, beginning in New York and most recently migrating to Utah. In each case, however, Aereo has been deemed legal and allowed to continue operating. So breathe easy, future Android Aereo users, your time will soon come.
Here’s what founder Chet Kanojia had to say in a prepared statement:

We know consumers have been waiting a long time for an Aereo Android app and today, we’re happy to announce its release later this month. At Aereo, we believe consumers should have more choice and control over how they watch television and a big part of that is expanding the universe of devices that they can use to access Aereo’s technology. This year, our focus has been on growing our footprint across the country. It’s been an exciting year for the Aereo team as we’ve expanded beyond the east coast and into the south and west. Our future is bright and we remain as committed and passionate as ever to creating innovative and simple to use technology for our consumers to access live TV online.

Aereo service is currently available in New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Miami, Houston and Dallas, with expansion continuing on throughout the year.

You wait in the doctor’s office with a furrowed brow and a heavy heart. When he returns, his face is somber and his eyes concentrate on the clipboard in front of him.
“You’ve only got a little time left,” he says apologetically. “If there’s anything you want to do before you die, now’s the time.”
That’s the experience that Tikker, a new death countdown clock, wants you to have every time you look down at your wrist. The Kickstarter project has a special handbook that gives you an estimation of your years left on this earth, which likely has very little to do with reality. From there, you can enter that amount of time into the watch.
Alongside telling you the actual time of day, Tikker will also let you know how many years, weeks, days, hours, and seconds you have left to live.
The idea is to remind you, in every moment, that life is short.
The Tikker watch is listed as a Kickstarter project that has almost doubled the asking amount of $25,000 with a solid 22 days left in the campaign. It isn’t revolutionary technology, to say the least, and it’s not particularly stylish or glamorous. So why all the success?
The answer, as Slate reminds us, is YOLO.
No matter what you’re biggest fear is, from snakes to bees to heights to confined spaces, nothing is more terrifying than the thought of letting your life slip away without ever being who you wanted to be, doing what you wanted to do, or going where you wanted to go.
As a constant reminder to go out and live life well and happily, Tikker automatically tugs on the heart strings of consumers.

If that wrapping on the door of your heart sounds a lot like “Carpe Diem”, head over to Kickstarter and check it out.

I like to share pics and video that I carry around on my iPhone, obviously that’s one of the main reasons I even own an iPhone in the first place, but I have to tell you, its hard to get the full effect of some of those special moments on my phones touch screen, no matter how vibrant and amazing the screen may be, its still pretty darn small.
Welcome the Pocket Projector for iPhone 4, a nifty little, easy to use dock station and projector that can take your movies, videos or presentations and project them anywhere. Poolside movie shown on the side of your house? No problem. Camp-out under the stars while you watch the latest hack and slash film on a sheet hung in the trees? Absolutely! The device charges via USB and can also be used as a back up battery for your phone.
The Pocket Projector has a surprisingly bright 15-lumen LED projector lamp that delivers clear, brilliant images and a 640×360 native display resolution that can project up to 50″ images. The unit also includes a focus adjustment that lets you control sharpness and clarity while an integrated .5 watt speaker delivers the audio, albeit maybe not loud enough for some, but I have a wireless speaker system so its not a deal-breaker for me. All in all, a pretty good price for what you do get.
So the next time you want to show everyone your vacation movies from the islands, break out your Pocket Projector and let them see your sunburn in life size glory… so much more fun.

The Pocket Projector is available from Brookstone.com for around $229.00 

Everyone I know loves their iDevices, not all of them are simply Apple addicts, many of them just genuinely enjoy the whole iOS experience. I have to admit I do too, but I recognize some shortcomings that keep them from being truly excellent. I also have given some thought to what kind of accessories I would need to make the iPhone or iPad even more fun and useful.
One of those accessories might be the the iPhone/iPad Pocket Projector. Compact enough to fit in your purse or pocket the iPhone/iPad Pocket Projector projects your iPhone’s screen directly onto any flat surface from less than a foot away to as far as 10 feet, projecting an image that reaches up to 85” diagonal. I imagine pictures, movies and presentations… useful at work, and fun with the kids during their next sleepover.
The projector weighs in at less than 5 oz and is smaller than a smartphone. The iPhone/iPad Pocket Projector can turn your ceiling, tent, blank wall or even the side of your house into a movie theater. The projector’s 640 x 480 pixel resolution ensures a nice picture and a manual focus wheel enables you to “dial up” sharpness and clarity, your iDevice’s speakers control the sound though, so extra speakers might need to be on the menu as well.

You can also download a free app, which will then enable you to magnify or rotate images and project everything from YouTube videos to a 4 hour search for the perfect prom dress. The internal lithium-polymer battery provides two hours of projection and recharges via USB with the included cable. Compatible with most iPhones/iPads, except the iPhone 5, the new iPad with Retina Display and the iPad Mini. Get yours for under 300 bucks at amazon.com

Update: After the press release announcing this acquisition went out Cision recalled it, saying it had been released in error. We’ve spoken to Samsung and are awaiting their confirmation. This is a developing story so please check for more updates. Original story follows below.
Apple’s iPhone 5s has a fingerprint sensor embedded in the home button. HTC is rumoured to be sticking a fingerprint sensor on the rear of the forthcoming HTC One Max. And now Samsung is next in line to add biometrics to its mobile hardware: the company has today announced it’s acquiring Swedish biometrics company Fingerprint Cards AB – which makes a range of fingerprint sensor modules — for $650 million in cash.
Samsung said today that the acquisition will ”increase the accessibility of swipe sensor technology”. The Korean mobile maker made no mention of Apple’s new flagship fingerprint sensor feature — Touch ID — but that’s the clear driver here.
At the launch of its new iPhone last month, the iPhone 5s, Apple replaced its flagship smartphone’s home button with a fingerprint sensor that allows users to unlock their phone with their fingerprint, and verify purchases on iTunes without having to input a password. As well as offering users the convenience of not having to keep inputting a passcode/password, Touch ID differentiates Apple’s flagship hardware from rivals — at least for the moment. It’s now a race for Samsung to launch Galaxy-branded devices with a own fingerprint sensor to neutralise Apple’s first mover advantage here.
“Swipe sensor technology is phenomenal in every way and are going to be loved by millions of people around the world,” said Samsung CEO Kwon Oh-hyun in a statement announcing the acquisition. “Together we will create the future.”
The acquisition tallies with earlier rumours that Samsung is planning to add a fingerprint sensor to the next generation of its Galaxy Note phablet.
The acquisition has been approved by both boards, and Fingerprint Cards will become a new business division within Samsung, the pair said today. Fingerprint Cards CEO Johan Carlström joins Samsung, becoming president of the Samsung Fingerprint Cards Division, and reporting directly to Kwon Oh-hyun.
Developing story. More to come. Full release follows below…

Fingerprint Cards AB and Samsung Electronics today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Samsung will acquire Fingerprint Cards, the leading fingerprint verification company, for $650 million in cash. The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both Fingerprint Cards and Samsung. The acquisition will increase the accessibility of swipe sensor technology. The combination will extend Fingerprint Cards world class technology.

Swipe sensor technology is phenomenal in every way and are going to be loved by millions of people around the world,” said Samsung CEO Kwon Oh-hyun. “Together we will create the future.

Fingerprint Cards will become a new business division within Samsung, and Fingerprint Cards CEO Johan Carlström will assume the title of president of the Samsung Fingerprint Cards Division, reporting directly to Kwon Oh-hyun.
Fingerprints Cards and Samsung share the vision of bringing products to our customers,” said Johan Carlström. “Together, we will be able to accelerate Samsung’s plans,” Johan Carlström said.
About Fingerprint Cards AB (publ)
Fingerprint Cards AB (FPC) markets, develops and produces biometric components and technologies that through the analysis and matching of an individual’s unique fingerprint verify the person’s identity. The technology consists of biometric sensors, processors, algorithms and modules that can be used separately or in combination with each other. The competitive advantages offered by the FPC’s technology include unique image quality, extreme robustness, low power consumption and complete biometric systems. With these advantages and the ability to achieve extremely low manufacturing costs, the technology can be implemented in volume products such as smart cards and mobile phones, where extremely rigorous demands are placed on such characteristics. The company’s technology can also be used in IT and Internet security, access control, etc.
Fingerprint Cards AB (publ) discloses this information pursuant to the Swedish Securities Market Act (2007:528) and the Swedish Financial Instruments Trading Act (1991:980). The information was issued for publication on October 11, 2013 at 10.00 CET.
Important information Issuance, publication or distribution of this press release in certain jurisdictions could be subject to restrictions. The recipient of this press release is responsible for using this press release and the constituent information in accordance with the rules and regulations prevailing in the particular jurisdiction. This press release does not constitute an offer or an offering to acquire or subscribe for any of the company’s securities in any jurisdiction.