Full Technology Devices

You've seen the ad: A family is vacationing out of town and the parents suddenly wonder if the house is locked up properly. They use their smartphone to remotely activate the smart locks and security system.

Or this one: Someone rings the doorbell or merely approaches a home, and the homeowner uses a smartphone to speak through the video doorbell system -- even when not at home -- perhaps bewildering the visitor (or potential intruder) who can't tell where the voice is coming from.

There's also the "Calling Ashley" commercial for Amazon's Echo Spot:

Reams have been written about how great it is to use your voice to control your home's smart devices; how your smart, Web-connected fridge can monitor its contents and be programmed to replenish stocks automatically; how you can control your home's smart lighting and locks with your smartphone; and how your smart Internet-connected appliances can be controlled -- and even repaired and maintained -- remotely.

This picture has a dark side, though, as many Alexa-powered device owners recently found when Amazon Web Services' U.S. East region experienced a widespread outage that knocked out service to their gizmos.

Amazon's servers were down for a large part of the morning on the day the outage occurred, taking Alexa-powered devices out of commission. Incidents like this may occur more often as the popularity of smart home devices grows.

Overall, 75 percent of security device sales include at least one smart home device, according to Parks Associates.

Smart speaker shipments totaled 32 million units in 2017, 300 percent up year over year, Strategy Analytics found. Google and Amazon accounted for 90 percent of sales. Google's market share increased to about 35 percent in Q4, while Amazon's share fell to about 50 percent. Meanwhile, there were a host of new entrants to the market.

"The most common feature for smartphones right now is smart devices," noted Michael Jude, Michael Jude, research manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan. "After that, it's smart lighting, security and then other things."

Intelligent agents like Alexa have a "rather low penetration rate of about 9 percent," Jude told TechNewsWorld, but that number "is growing fairly quickly."

Frost projects a worldwide market of nearly 1.8 billion smart agents by 2025.

For pretty much my entire career, CEOs have been almost invulnerable. Even when Steve Jobs, Apple's founder and lead spokesperson, tried to get then-CEO John Scully fired from Apple, he lost and got fired himself.

I've watched CEOs at companies with zero-tolerance employee dating policies have affairs with subordinates and get a pass. (At Intel this was so bad it seemed like an unofficial CEO perk.) Even though Jobs went behind his board's back to issue himself stock options, he survived that during his term as CEO.

Holy crap -- have things changed. Almost every week, another CEO bites the dust for misbehavior. Last week it was brand new Texas Instruments CEO Brian Crutcher. The week before it was Papa John's CEO John Shnatter (which I think was an obvious coup).

Other than the U.S. president, the CEO who is acting out the most right now and still has his job is Elon Musk. (Without any proof, he accused one of the heroic divers who carried out the Thai cave rescue of being a pedophile.) That leads me to wonder whether Musk is next.

I'll share some thoughts on that possibility and close with my product of the week: the Fitbit Versa, which appears to be the best fitness smartwatch in market. It's closer to Steve Jobs' Apple ideal than the Apple Watch is.

I've long expected the market to turn on CEOs and put them on the endangered list for employees, largely because their compensation has become unreasonably large. It really looks irresponsible, if not negligent, for boards to pay some of these folks -- particularly those running companies that can't seem to spell profit -- massive amounts of money.

Instead of being humble about it, many of these folks seem to want to rub their employees' noses in this fact. I was particularly taken aback by Brian Krzanich, Intel's now ex-CEO. While announcing a layoff, he argued that he needed to be paid millions more because he was underpaid. It was the modern equivalent of the Marie Antoinette "let them eat cake" event. Given that she was beheaded, I expected his term to end badly -- and it did.

Lately CEOs have been dropping like flies even though it's often not known why the guys -- and yes, they are mostly men -- have been fired. The implication is that most of them were behaving badly in connection with some female employee. However, as with any feeding frenzy, you are likely to see some CEOs who likely shouldn't have been fired get caught in the melee.

Mobile phone cameras are about to get a significant performance boost.

Sony on Monday introduced a 48-megapixel sensor for cellphone cameras that measures less than one-third of an inch diagonally. The sensor is slated for release in September.

To pack that many pixels into such tight quarters, Sony had to shrink their size to 8 microns. Shrinking pixel sizes usually results in performance degradation, not improvement. It usually results in poor light collection and a drop in saturation sensitivity and volume.

"With traditional sensor architecture, the pixels get so small that they pick up a lot of noise, so the pictures aren't as good as sensors with fewer but larger pixels," David D. Busch, creative director of the David Busch photography guides, told TechNewsWorld.

Better Digital Zooming

However, the new sensor is designed and manufactured with techniques that improve light collection efficiency and photoelectric conversion efficiency over conventional products, Sony said.

The smaller pixel size makes the sensor suitable for many mobile phones.

"Any component that fits into current hardware design trends, like thin bezels, will be attractive to OEMs," noted Gerrit Schneemann, a senior analyst with IHS Markit.

Meanwhile, the large number of pixels enables high-definition imaging, even on smartphones that only have digital zooms.

"Having that much pure resolution opens up more options when it comes to a digital zoom, as opposed to optical zoom, which happens in the lens," said Stan Horaczek, technology editor at Popular Science.

"Digital zoom happens by basically cropping in on an image as you capture it, rather than in post capture," he told TechNewsWorld. "More megapixels help for that, because the system doesn't have to guess what details should look like."

The new Sony sensor is an "amazing product," said Kevin Krewell, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

The sensor blends a 48-megapixel super resolution mode with a lower resolution mode that offers high sensitivity for low light conditions, he explained.

"The 48-megapixel mode, combined with a precise lens, will offer very detailed pictures," Krewell told TechNewsWorld. "The smaller area for each pixel will limit the amount of light those pixels receive, but the quad-pixel, low-light mode addresses that limitation."

Sony works its low light magic through something called the "Quad Bayer color filter array." In low light conditions, that technology allows the signals from adjacent pixels to be added together, effectively doubling their sensitivity.

"Sony is combining four smaller pixels into one in order to improve resolution in low light circumstances. Overall, this is a proven, sensible approach to solving a common problem," observed Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

"Huawei is another OEM utilizing this type of technology to increase low-light performance," IHS' Schneemann told TechNewsWorld. "Subjectively, this has worked for Huawei. It remains to be seen if Sony can deliver as well."

Manipulating pixels may have some tradeoffs, however.

"My guess is that when they group smaller pixels to form larger pixels, they may be able to smooth over the noise in the image, but there may be loss of sharpness in the details," said freelance journalist and photographer Terry Sullivan, a former associate editor for digital cameras and imaging at Consumer Reports.

"It will also affect dynamic range," he told TechNewsWorld. "Details will be missing from lightest highlights and darkest tones."

Welcome, friends, neighbors and distant strangers to the latest edition of Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, in which your trusty columnist highly recommends a trip to your regional wine producers when not perusing the latest gadget announcements.

In our tasting flight this time around are a pair of earphones that double as earrings (or is that the other way around?); a US$1,000 blockchain-focused, dual-screen phone; a smartphone with nine (yes, nine) cameras; and an airbag for your handset.

As ever, these are not reviews. Nor can you expect to derive any true meaning from the ratings -- they exist solely to indicate how much I am interested in trying each item.

Stylish Sound

Let me make this perfectly clear right off the bat: I am compelled to give this item a rating of zero, solely on the basis that my body is not adequately prepared to use this item as intended. That's because my ears are piercing-free. Otherwise, I'd be mighty tempted to try out the Swings Bluetooth Earrings with built-in earphones. It's a practical, clever idea that many who have pierced ears might just take advantage of.

Swings certainly could fix the problem of losing Apple's expensive AirPods to the ether or having to root around in one's pockets or purse to find one's tangled-up headset. The earphones are in the lower part of what look like beaded earrings, and the motion accelerators determine when you have swiveled them to nestle inside your auricle.

You can expect five hours of listening time out of the Swings on a single charge, and you can add up to three hours of listening time with a 15-minute charge from the case. Each earphone has a microphone as well, so you can handle calls and use your favored voice assistant.

Unfortunately, the Swings are not waterproof, so they might not hold up too well if it's raining or if you engage in particularly intense gym workouts.

I am entirely for this device as a pragmatic way for those with pierced ears to keep their earphones nearby. I am almost, sort of, possibly tempted to pay someone to put holes in my earlobes so I can try them, so much so that I am walking back my initial rating proclamation.

Lenovo's Smart Display with Google Assistant hit the market on Friday.

There are two versions of the device, one with an 8-inch full HD screen and the other with a 10-inch full HD screen, priced at US$200 and $250 respectively.

"The cost is significantly below an iPad mini and it offers far more functionality than just a digital picture frame or a Bluetooth speaker," said Alan Lepofsky, principal analyst at Constellation Research.

Buyers will get three months' free access to YouTube Premium.

The Lenovo Smart Display runs on Google's Android Things, an operating system developed for the notoriously insecure Internet of Things.

Google has addressed the IoT security problem by providing three years of OS updates for free for every Android Things-based product.

Automatic updates are enabled by default. After three years, there will be options for extended support.

You Can Speak Softly

The Lenovo Smart Display lets users play music, make video calls, conduct Web searches, view their calendars, and access YouTube videos. It has native integration with Google Duo video calling and Google Photos.

However, Android Things reportedly can run only one app at a time.

Both versions of the Lenovo Smart Display have a 10W speaker with tweeters, and both offer multiroom audio support. They have two microphones that are sensitive enough to pick up commands spoken softly.

Voice commands are the main interface, but the device also has a touchscreen for follow-up actions such as zooming in on a map, for example.

The 10-inch version can be stood horizontally in landscape mode, or vertically in portrait mode. It comes with a privacy shutter to block the camera, and a microphone mute toggle setting.

Tablet or Speaker?

Sound quality is "mediocre -- about on par with the Google Home or entry-level Amazon Echo -- but nowhere near as good as a Sonos One or HomePod," noted Dieter Bohn in his review for The Verge.

The device's speaker lacks bass impact, said Daniel Bader in his review for Android Central.

Also, Android Things isn't fully baked yet, he pointed out. It lacks Netflix and other big-name Chromecast support, and it's better optimized for voice than touch.

However, the sound quality is "great," according to Nicole Lee, who reviewed the Smart Display for Engadget.

"While I have portable speakers that produce better sound overall, I was impressed with the audio quality of the Smart Display, as it was better than that of the [Amazon] Echo Show," wrote Valentina Palladino for Ars Technica.

"Lenovo is trying to thread the needle between tablets and smart speakers, but it seems like the best parts of both devices are lost in this product," observed Eric Smith, director of tablet and touchscreen strategies at Strategy Analytics.

"The sound quality isn't as good as other smart speakers, and the functionality isn't as strong as most tablets," he told TechNewsWorld. "The second generation needs a full Android or Chrome OS to be as useful as possible."

Amazon offers a docking station that enables voice input "to transform the UI and functionality of its Fire tablets at the low end of the price spectrum," Smith said, suggesting that Lenovo should follow suit.

The Smart Display's mikes are sensitive, noted Ars' Palladino. "I never had to yell or raise my voice for the Google Assistant to hear me."

Although the 10-inch device can be set up in portrait mode, it's useful only for Duo video calls, The Verge's Bohn noted, as the software otherwise isn't designed to work in that mode.

The device can be set up to recognize different voices attached to different Google accounts, but the display will default to showing information from the primary account, Bohn found.

The autonomous car has thrown the automotive industry -- an industry that is notoriously slow to change -- into the forefront of technology. The autonomous car has become a technology catalyst because it requires innovation in many areas, ranging from processor and sensor technology to artificial intelligence.

As with all new technologies, the industry rushes to focus on consumers because they represent the billion-dollar pot of gold, but as with many other new technologies, it is the industrial applications that are likely to take hold first.

The auto industry has focused on the concept of the autonomous car, but when you broaden the category to include all forms of transportation and autonomous control, the opportunity is much larger than just automating the average car.

In fact, most forecasts for car and light vehicle demand predict sales growth of only a few percentage points as the industry struggles to reach the 100-million-unit-per-year mark over the next few years. That's not to say that nearly a 100 million units annually and the transition to autonomous cars don't offer a big opportunity, because they do.

Opportunities Abound

The more automated a vehicle becomes, the more electronics it requires, which raises the total available market, or TAM, for automotive electronics. However, it is likely to take several decades before the majority of cars sold are autonomous, and that will require significant cost reductions for the electronics.

The immediate opportunities lie in mass transit, on-demand transportation, as well as trucking, shipping, and other forms of industrial transportation.

Even though the developments in these areas are not as highly publicized, there are many companies driving innovation. Autonomous shipping technology has become a focus for a range if companies -- from the underlying technology companies like NXP, to industrial manufacturers like Rolls Royce, and the shipping companies themselves.

Autonomous trucking has been attracting automotive heavyweights like Daimler and Volvo, along with startups like Tesla and Embark.

Even the ride-sharing company Uber is considering autonomous delivery vehicles.

As with other new emerging technologies, like augmented reality, autonomous technology makes sense for industrial applications. There can be an immediate return on investment for the adopter, even while the technology is establishing a foothold in an evolving market.

As with any new tech, it will take two to three generations for the ecosystem to mature. The ecosystem includes the technology, platforms, applications, usage models, and even business models that must evolve.

Industrial applications offer a new technology to customers that are willing to work through the development process and are willing to pay a premium for the technology because they can expect a return in cost savings or productivity gains.

In the case of industrial transportation, the higher equipment cost should be offset by gains in equipment efficiency and utilization rates, as well as lower accident and insurance rates, among other benefits.

Value Chain Disruption

Autonomous transportation systems also eliminate the most common factor in accidents -- human error. That's not to say that autonomous solutions will be perfect. Any intelligence platform, whether human or artificial, will have to learn new circumstances -- but the potential for failure is far lower with artificial intelligence.

I stress this because even though a few people have been killed in recent months due to autonomous cars, the National Safety Council estimates that vehicular deaths in the U.S. have exceeded 40,000 annually over the past two years.

Additionally, the business models for the automotive industry likely will change drastically as the industry moves toward autonomous vehicles. In fact, the industry already has been changing, with ride-sharing and car-sharing services like Uber and ZipCar, and the direct-to-consumer sales model of Tesla.

In addition, the vehicles have been getting more technically complicated through advanced driver-assistance systems, or ADAS, and electrification -- so much so that many traditional auto mechanics will not be able to work on hybrid, electric and autonomous vehicles.

These changes likely will alter the entire value chain of the automotive industry. Toyota, for example, has been testing a car-sharing service called "Hai" in Hawaii. If you have an automotive OEM offering electric vehicles directly to consumers in a car-sharing model, you may eliminate the need for third-party dealers, gas stations and local mechanic shops, while the OEM's primary revenue shifts to services, not the sales of vehicles.

Autonomous technology also is likely to lead to other advances in transportation. We have dreamed about flying cars since the 1950s, but just to fly a small plane requires specialized knowledge and training. Adding autonomous control eliminates a key requirement for flying applications.

In addition, autonomous flight already is well on the way to being perfected through drone technology. As a result, we finally may be on the cusp of a flying car era -- but the cars likely will be more similar to unmanned drones than to passenger vehicles.

AeroMobil, Airbus, Auston Martin, EHang, eVolo, Kittyhawk, Rolls-Royce, Terrafugia, and Uber are just a few of the companies reportedly working on flying vehicles of one sort or another.

While the thought of owning an autonomous car remains intriguing, the real opportunity for the next decade lies in the industrial applications. Looking beyond the next decade, the way society views and leverages transportation likely will change over the next century to a point where the personal car may no longer be the image of freedom, success or independence that it is today. It may simply be a form of transportation.

I just finished The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity, and it was one hell of a read.

A lot of us are concerned about the coming of robots that arguably will be substantially smarter and more capable than we are. This book likely will make some feel a tad more comfortable about the future, because it points out in some detail that a lot of the blue-collar jobs that supposedly would be going to these metallic false humans won't be.

On the other hand, a lot of the white color jobs we thought were safe -- well, they probably won't be around for long. Those of you who are in the fields where much of this coming effort is focused, like medicine -- well, you are either screwed or you're going to have an exciting time, depending on how much you like change.

I should point out that while there is a lot in this book that is impressively right, there also is a lot that is wrong. It showcases that the level of change we will be facing in the next decade or so will be so disruptive that no one, even the incredibly well-connected author of this book, Byron Reese, is going to be able to predict the future with much accuracy.

Yet this book lays a great foundation that will help you understand the changes that are coming, and understanding a change often goes a long way toward removing the fear surrounding it. It is survivable -- and I agree with Reese's point that there are stronger odds in favor of the future being far brighter than today than the other way around.

If widely read, books like this can become self-fulfilling prophecies. It can help ensure that bright future, which is one of the strongest reasons not only for reading it but also for getting your friends to read it.

I'll share some ideas on how artificial intelligence will impact the future of your career, and then close with my product of the week: a really handy International WiFi service that substantially could reduce your connectivity costs when you travel overseas.

AI and Your Job

It is really interesting to me how perceptions surrounding which jobs are most at risk have changed over the last five years. When I first started seriously covering AI, the consensus appeared to be that smart robots would take the jobs of blue collar workers first.

The logic was that those jobs were relatively easy to perform, the workers often were problematic because they really didn't enjoy their jobs, and, honestly, I think the folks making the predictions were biased in thinking the robots wouldn't take their jobs.

The book does the best job I've seen so far with regard to coming up with a way to calculate job risk -- and if you use the formula from the book, blue-collar employees are relatively safe. Since I want you to read the book, I won't share the entire formula, but in summary it suggests that the more expensive the job, the more knowledge it requires, and the more people who do it, the more likely it is that the job will be done by a future AI. This is economics at work.

AIs are great with anything that has to do with data, but they aren't good with breadth, particularly if there is a lot of random activity. The economics favor replacing highly paid workers at scale over low paid workers.

Looking the other way, the more variables you have, the closer to unique your skills are, and the less you make, the less likely it is that you will be replaced by an AI. For example, a radiologist is an ideal target for an AI while someone who repairs old clocks is not.

However, I should point out that the folks creating AIs often don't use this type of mechanism to decide on the economics of the result. For instance, another job that the book suggests should be at low risk is actor.

You might remember that a few decades back there were commercials featuring John Wayne that went up long after John had gone to that great western movie in the sky. Old footage of other deceased actors was repurposed in other such commercial efforts as well.

Now there is a substantial ongoing effort to create digital actors with their own performance capabilities.

Another profession that shouldn't be on the short list is truck drivers. The complexity of driving trucks in traffic is very high, truck drivers aren't that expensive, and while there are a lot of them, they have a powerful union that will resist the effort. When you factor in the cost of replacing the truck, the change is relatively expensive.

However, the U.S. is short something like 50K truck drivers, and folks have been predicting that if we don't fix this, it will drop the country into a recession. So, there has been a ton of effort expended to create autonomous trucks, because the need is so great. (Interestingly, this could be offset using immigrants -- particularly given that the trucking companies are willing to fund training and living costs during the training because they are so desperate -- but sadly, our government has been blind to that solution.)

This means that while the formula in the book can help you feel safe, you still need to maintain a high level of awareness of what is going on with AI research in your field, because the clear majority of folks building AIs clearly haven't been using this formula.

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