Toying with robotics – The New Indian Express

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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Toys always grab the attention of the children. When the students of the College of Engineering Trivandrum went to Christ Nagar International School to introduce them to the world of technology, they carried with them some cool toys. These toys are no ordinary ones. RoboCet, the robotics club of CET made robotic arms that mimic hand gesture, snakebot that moves like a reptile, a smart phone controlled car etc. The response they got from the kids was amazing.

Define box before telling us to think out of the box? said Adhitya, a seventh standard student. The googly was aimed at team Drishti. The presenters faced a volley of questions about robots and their functioning. Scientific findings are the result of imagination and experimentation. Presenter Abhishek P James told them to focus on imagination and not to worry about the theory behind it. Among the students, the team found a meticulous mind in Hari Govind who solved a puzzle, one of connecting nine dots, in his 12th attempt.

When the students of class seven and eight assembled in the classroom on the second floor of the school, they thought it would be another lecture session with slides. All sat in the class with a bored look.

It took ice breaking sessions using puzzles to get enthusiastic responses from students. At this juncture, the presenters introduced robots and the entire class came forward crowding around it. Some of them quenched their curiosity by getting their hands on it. Finally when the session got over the students gave a 11 on a scale of 10 to the Drishti team.

The team will meet selected students during the summer vacations. Selection will be based on their eagerness to learn technology. The idea is to technically adopt a high school in Thiruvananthapuram for one year and conduct sessions on basic technology. A Drishti club will be formed in the school, said Shilendra.

The year-long project will have monthly classes for students of classes 8 and 9. At the end of the year the kids will be encouraged to come up with their own project. These projects will then be included in the school expo for the next years Drishti.

#drishti_to_school

It is a campaign initiated by students of CET to inspire school kids to create innovations using technology. The campaign has been organised as part of their annual tech fest Drishti.

The objective of this campaign is to introduce technology and its potential to school students. It also aims to identify the creative spark hidden inside each child.

Sushmitha S Das, Shilendra Soman and Abhishek P James, final year students of the college from electronics and mechanical engineering departments are the minds behind the initiative. They were assisted by the members of RoboCet- Don Dominic, Sebin, Ashike Thomas and Balu Sadanandan. The event was photo documented by Rohit Punnen.

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Toying with robotics - The New Indian Express

Cobalt Robotics Introduces a (Mostly) Autonomous Mobile Security … – IEEE Spectrum

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Photo: Cobalt Robotics Cobalt Robotics' security robot uses advanced sensors and AI to navigate autonomously and look for suspicious activity.

Finding a viable business case for a commercial mobile robot is very tricky. At this point, the most you can realistically expect from a reliable and affordable autonomous platform is the ability to navigate in a semistructured premapped environment, which Savioke (to take one example) has managed to do with its delivery robots for hotels. Despite the fact that robots can do work for businesses, its been difficult to identify use cases where they can be valuable enough that said businesses will pay money to use them.

Today, Cobalt Robotics (a startup based in Palo Alto, Calif.) is announcing an autonomous mobile robot designed for indoor security applications that can work alongside human guards to provide better security than people can do alone.

The key realization here is that security guards spend the vast majority of their time doing almost nothing, and even in a worst-case scenario (like someone trying to break in, or a fire or other serious problem), their primary responsibility is making the right phone call as quickly as possible as opposed to dealing with the situation directly. In general, a security guard needs to be able to walk around a building checking on things, occasionally interact with humans in a limited capacity, and (this is the most important thing) notice if anything unusual is going on and tell someone about it.

Cobalts robot is able to do all of these things. It can navigate around premapped areas in buildings, it can recognize people and read badges, and it has a pile of sensors (day-night cameras, lidar, microphone array, RFID and badge readers, andeven smoke and CO2 detectors) that helps it to recognize potential security issues (unauthorized people, open doors and windows) and hazards (suspicious items, moved items, water leaks) and flag them for review.

Cobalt was founded by Erik Schluntz, a former engineer at SpaceX, and Travis Deyle, whos written for IEEE Spectrum in the past and comes from Georgia Techs Healthcare Robotics Lab by way (most recently) of Google X. TheCobalt teamhas enough background and experience with robots to know thatwhile autonomy is important, having the option for a human in the loop can solve a lot of problems, so its easy for a remote operator to hop into the robot and control it via telepresence whenever necessary.

We should note that there are other robots in this space alreadynamely, Knightscope, which makes a very imposing security robot. Knightscope is taking a bit of a different approach, with a large and heavy platform that uses minimal HRI (human-robot interaction) elements and isif that Velodyne on top is any indicationquite expensive. Knightscope can operate outside, which is certainly an advantage, and it seems more likely that it might scare away any baddies, but Cobalt isnt really interested in the scare factorfor Cobalt, its more about detection and then making sure the right people know whats going on in a timely manner, and having a robot that people will be comfortable working around.

Comfort is another key differentiator that Cobalt has been working on. The overall form and appearanceof the robot come from Swiss designer Yves Bhar, who came up with something that (rather refreshingly) incorporates a lot of soft, tactile fabric rather than plastic and metal. We decided that the robot should not adopt a humanoid personality, Bhar said in a statement. Instead, it should aesthetically align with the furniture and dcor of the office environment.

As with any robot intended to do the same kind of job that a human can do, theres a concern here that Cobalts platform will be taking jobs away from humans. And, well, yeah, if you just go and replace a security guard with a Cobalt robot, then thats what happens, and it may make sense for some businesses to do this. However, there are a few other things to consider here. First, Cobalt may be an option for companies who want security but cant afford a human guard, or cant afford one for all hours. Second, Cobalt says that their robots can work sort of like force multipliers, working alongside existing guards to help them be more effective at their jobs. Cobalt will also be creating new jobs for robot monitors, who will be remotely managing multiple robots from a central location.

And lastly, we should keep in mind that security is one of those utterly dull jobs that does not take advantage of the talent or creativity that humans have to offer, and long term, finding jobs for people that are more interesting and engaging is probably better for everyone, if we can make it happen.

For more details on Cobalt, we asked Deyle, the companys CEO, a few questions over email:

Why is indoor security an ideal application for a mobile robot?

One major, traditional function of indoor security is observe and reportlooking for anomalies or intruders, and contacting the authorities if andwhen anything bad happens. Using extremely capable sensors (including night vision cameras, lidar, thermal) combined with recent advances in computer vision and deep learning, robotscan provide superhuman capabilities and consistent operation around the clock without getting bored, sleepy, or losing focus. Our robot has eyes on the back of its head, can see in pitch black, and never needs to sleep. And when it finds something, it can skype in a highly trained pilot to make hard decisions,or talk to anyone in the space.

Mobility affords robots a number of unique benefits. First, robots can reposition themselves to get an infinite number of vantage points, including opportunistically relocating themselves to obtain additional information. This isnt possible with stationary security cameras; to quote one of our customers, No matter how perfect you think your security camera setup is, when something happens you always wish you had a different view or angle.Second, many security policies do not allow guards to put themselves in harms way to confront would-be intruders; mobility allows the robot torespond immediately to a would-be intruder and reduce intruder time-on-premises. A third thing is that a mobile robot roaming the premises serves as an active deterrent to undesired behavior.

Why havent mobile robots been used in indoor security in the past? Or, whats special about Cobalt that youre able to deploy robots in these semistructured environments?

Its partially about timing. Many of the component technologies (AI, machine learning, sensing, computation, communications, etc.) are now sufficiently mature to make this product feasible. Those components continue to make big gains due to investment in other areas of robotics and AI.

Its also partially about fortuitous encounters between experts in otherwise-disparate fields (robotics and physical security). Theres a famous quote from world-renowned computer scientist Alan Kay that says, A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Cobalt was founded by technologists and roboticists with many years of experience working with indoor robots. We spent a substantial amount of time speaking with forward-looking visionaries in the physical security industry who became our close advisors, initial customers, and biggest champions. While other people may have looked at robot security, we happened to look at it from the right perspective:our customers perspective.

What are some unique challenges that your robotswill have to deal with, and how are you handling them?

Indoor security is about more than deterring and detecting intrudersits also about making employees feel safe and comfortable. We focused heavily on industrial design and human-robot interaction to make our robot as easy to interact with and as pleasant to be around as possible. We use warm materials like fabric and anodized aluminum that would normally be seen in a high-end office, rather than the plastic and steel of an industrial robot. The centerpiece of our robot is a touch screen to let people interact with the robot and video chat with our pilots.

Another challenge was providing consistent security coverage for an entire night shift, or even an entire 48-hour weekend shift. We realized that the robot should never turn off while its rechargingits always on, looking for unusual activity and ready to respond. Its just like a guard standing watch at the front desk between patrols.

Can you describe how Cobalt is mixing autonomy and telepresence by having the option for a human in the loop?

We fundamentally believe that robots should interact with and around people. Cobalt provides a solution that dovetails advanced autonomous functionality with human telepresence capability. So sometimesthe robot will autonomously respondfor example, navigating up to a person and requesting badge credentials. In other situations, the robot will video call with a pilot for human-level cognition and response.

Is the security solution that Cobalt is offering both reliable and cost-effective relative to a human? How expensive are the robots, and how much money would a company be saving over employing humans?

Security is necessary, but its often cost prohibitive for companies to provide 24-hour security presence. This is a real problem with real needs and real budgets. Cobalt can provide security coverage where there are currently major gaps at one-fifth to one-third the cost of a traditional solution.

Security personnel work with a fleet of robots to provide a more reliable and more cost-effective service. Robots help with the dullest, hardest parts of security (like night-shift patrols) without falling asleep, and they will alert the rest of your security staff only if theres something worthy of note. Each robot pilot can oversee tens of robots, which allows guards to cover more ground and have visibility exactly when and where they need it. Plus, all of the sensors and components of the robot are becoming remarkably cheaper thanks to other industries, such as self-driving cars!

Cobalt will be starting pilots very soon, and were very much looking forward to seeing autonomous mobile robots out in the world doing useful things.

[ Cobalt Robotics ]

IEEE Spectrum's award-winning robotics blog, featuring news, articles, and videos on robots, humanoids, drones, automation, artificial intelligence, and more. Contact us:e.guizzo@ieee.org

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Cobalt Robotics Introduces a (Mostly) Autonomous Mobile Security ... - IEEE Spectrum

Overcome problems with public cloud storage providers – TechTarget

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If you have a new app or use case requiring scalable, on-demand or pay-as-you-go storage, one or more public cloud storage services will probably make your short list. It's likely your development team has at least dabbled with cloud storage, and you may be using cloud storage today to support secondary uses such as backup, archiving or analytics.

Every cloud storage option has its pros and cons. Depending on your specific needs, the size of your environment, and your budget, its essential to weigh all cloud and on-prem options. Download this comprehensive guide in which experts analyze and evaluate each cloud storage option available today so you can decide which cloud model public, private, or hybrid is right for you.

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While cloud storage has come a long way, its use for production apps remains relatively limited. Taneja Group surveyed enterprises and midsize businesses in 2014 and again in 2016, asking whether they are running any business-critical workloads (e.g., ERP, customer relationship management [CRM] or other line-of-business apps) in a public cloud (see "Deployments on the rise"). Less than half were running one or more critical apps in the cloud in 2014, and that percentage grew to just over 60% in 2016. Though cloud adoption for critical apps has increased significantly, many IT managers remain hesitant about committing production apps and data to public cloud storage providers.

Concerns about security and compliance are big obstacles to public cloud storage adoption, as IT managers balk at having critical data move and reside outside data center walls. Poor application performance, often stemming from unpredictable spikes in network latency, is another top-of-mind issue. And then there's the cost and difficulty of moving large volumes of data in and out of the cloud or within the cloud itself, say when pursuing a multicloud approach or switching providers. Another challenge is the need to reliably and efficiently back up cloud-based data, traditionally not well supported by most public cloud storage providers.

How can you overcome these kinds of issues and ensure your public cloud storage deployment will be successful, including for production workloads? We suggest using a three-step process to assess, compare and contrast providers' key capabilities, service-level agreements (SLAs) and track records so you can make a better informed decision (see: "Three-step approach to cloud storage adoption").

Let's examine specific security, compliance and performance capabilities as well as SLA commitments you should look for when evaluating public cloud storage providers.

Maintaining cloud data storage security is generally understood to operate under a shared responsibility model: The provider is responsible for security of the underlying infrastructure, and you are responsible for data placed on the cloud as well as devices or data you connect to the cloud.

All three major cloud storage infrastructure-as-a-service providers (Amazon Web Services [AWS], Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud) have made significant investments to protect their physical data center facilities and cloud infrastructure, placing a particular emphasis on securing their networks from attacks, intrusions and the like. Smaller and regional players tend also to focus on securing their cloud infrastructure. Still, take the time to review technical white papers and best practices to fully understand available security provisions.

Though you will be responsible for securing the data you connect or move to the cloud, public cloud storage providers offer tools and capabilities to assist. These generally fall into one of three categories of protection: data access, data in transit or data at rest.

Data access: Overall, providers allow you to protect and control access to user accounts, compute instances, APIs and data, just as you would in your own data center. This is accomplished through authentication credentials such as passwords, cryptographic keys, certificates or digital signatures. Specific data access capabilities and policies let you restrict and regulate access to particular storage buckets, objects or files. For example, within Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), you can use Access Control Lists (ACLs) to grant groups of AWS users read or write access to specific buckets or objects and employ Bucket Policies to enable or disable permissions across some or all of the objects in a given bucket. Check each provider's credentials and policies to verify they satisfy your internal requirements. Though most make multifactor authentication optional, we recommend enabling it for account logins.

Data in transit:To protect data in transit, public cloud storage providers offer one or more forms of transport-level or client-side encryption. For example, Microsoft recommends using HTTPS to ensure secure transmission of data over the public internet to and from Azure Storage, and offers client-side encryption to encrypt data before it's transferred to Azure Storage. Similarly, Amazon provides SSL-encrypted endpoints to enable secure uploading and downloading of data between S3 and client endpoints, whether they reside within or outside of AWS. Verify that the encryption approach in each provider's service is rigorous enough to comply with relevant security or industry-level standards.

Data at rest:To secure data at rest, some public cloud storage providers automatically encrypt data when it's stored, while others offer a choice of having them encrypt the data or doing it yourself. Google Cloud Platform services, for instance, always encrypt customer content stored at rest. Google encrypts new data stored in persistent disks using the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256) and offers you the choice of having Google supply and manage the encryption keys or doing it yourself. Microsoft Azure, on the other hand, enables you to encrypt data using client-side encryption (protecting it both in transit and at rest) or to rely on Storage Service Encryption (SSE) to automatically encrypt data as it is written to Azure Storage. Amazon's offering for encrypting data at rest in S3 is nearly identical to Microsoft Azure's.

Also, check for data access logging -- to enable a record of access requests to specific buckets or objects -- and data disposal (wiping) provisions, to ensure data's fully destroyed if you decide to move it to a new provider's service.

Your provider should offer resources and controls that allow you to comply with key security standards and industry regulations. For example, depending on your industry, business focus and IT requirements, you may look for help in complying with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Service Organization Controls 1 financial reporting, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard or FedRAMP security controls for information stored and processed in the cloud. So be sure to check out the list of supported compliance standards, including third-party certifications and accreditations.

Unlike security and compliance, for which you can make an objective assessment, application performance is highly dependent on IT environment, including cloud infrastructure configuration, network connection speeds and the additional traffic running over that connection. If you're achieving an I/O latency of 5 to 10 milliseconds running with traditional storage on premises, or even better than that with flash storage, you will want to prequalify application performance before committing to a cloud provider. It's difficult to anticipate how well a latency-sensitive application will perform in a public cloud environment without actually testing it under the kinds of conditions you expect to see in production.

Speed of access is based, in part, on data location, meaning expect better performance if you colocate apps in the cloud. If you're planning to store primary data in the cloud but keep production workloads running on premises, evaluate the use of an on-premises cloud storage gateway -- such as Azure StorSimple or AWS Storage Gateway -- to cache frequently accessed data locally and (likely) compress or deduplicate it before it's sent to the cloud.

To further address the performance needs of I/O-intensive use cases and applications, major public cloud storage providers offer premium storage capabilities, along with instances that are optimized for such workloads. For example, Microsoft Azure offers Premium Storage, allowing virtual machine disks to store data on SSDs. This helps solve the latency issue by enabling I/O-hungry enterprise workloads such as CRM, messaging and other database apps to be moved to the cloud. As you might expect, these premium storage services come with a higher price tag than conventional cloud storage.

Bottom line on application performance: Try before you buy.

A cloud storage service-level agreement spells out guarantees for minimum uptime during monthly billing periods, along with the recourse you're entitled to if those commitments aren't met. Contrary to many customers' wishes, SLAs do not include objectives or commitments for other important aspects of the storage service, such as maximum latency, minimum I/O performance or worst-case data durability.

In the case of the "big three" providers' services, the monthly uptime percentage is calculated by subtracting from 100% the average percentage of service requests not fulfilled due to "errors," with the percentages calculated every five minutes (or one hour in the case of Microsoft Azure Storage) and averaged over the course of the month.

Typically, when the uptime percentage for a provider's single-region, standard storage service falls below 99.9% during the month, you will be entitled to a service credit. (Though it's not calculated this way for SLA purposes, 99.9% availability implies no more than 43 minutes of downtime in a 30-day month.) The provider will typically credit 10% of the current monthly charges for uptime levels between 99% and 99.9%, and 25% for uptime levels below 99% (Google Cloud Storage credits up to 50% if uptime falls below 95%). Microsoft Azure Storage considers storage transactions failures if they exceed a maximum processing time (based on request type), while Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage rely on internally generated error codes to measure failed storage requests. Note that the burden is on you as the customer to request a service credit in a timely manner if a monthly uptime guarantee isn't met.

Also, carefully evaluate the SLAs to determine whether they satisfy your availability requirements for both data and workloads. If a single-region service isn't likely to meet your needs, it may make sense to pay the premium for a multi-region service, in which copies of data are dispersed across multiple geographies. This approach increases data availability, but it won't protect you from instances of data corruption or accidental deletions, which are simply propagated across regions as data is replicated.

With these guidelines and caveats in mind, you can better assess whether public cloud storage makes sense for your particular use cases, data and applications. If public cloud storage providers' service-level commitments and capabilities fall short of meeting your requirements, consider developing a private cloud or taking advantage of managed cloud services.

Though public cloud storage may not be an ideal fit for your production data and workloads, you may find it fits the bill for some of your less demanding use cases.

Companies move toward public cloud storage

Evaluate all variables in the cloud storage equation

Public, private or hybrid? What's the right cloud storage for you?

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Overcome problems with public cloud storage providers - TechTarget

Data limits are the worsthere’s how to stay under yours – Popular Science

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Smartphones put a world of information, games, videos, and music at your fingertips. That is, until you run out of data. It only takes a few minutes of throttled, agonizingly slow speeds to realize how much you rely on that cellular connectionand how important it is to stay within your data allowance. The solution: Cut back on the amount of data your phone chews through. Adjusting your settings to reduce data usage will come in handy for those with limited data plans or travelers who plan to spend time out of network.

We've collected some tips for staying on the right side of your data boundaries. Whether you have an Android or an iPhone, there are two sets of options you need to bear in mind: Those in your phone's main operating system settings, and those in the individual apps you've installed.

Android gives you a detailed look at your overall data usagejust tap Data usage in the Settings app (if you're not using stock Android, you should see something similar). There are a few helpful tools here: You can obviously see your current data stats, but if you tap on the graph, you can also set a level at which Android displays an alert about your usage. Check your monthly plan and configure the limit accordingly.

Tap the Mobile data usage entry further down to get a more detailed look at the data you've been using, as well as a list of the apps that have been the worst offenders for eating up your allowancethis will come in handy when we configure individual app settings later on.

You can also tap Data Saver to turn on this useful feature, built into the latest versions of Android. It limits the data apps can use in the background, which stops most apps from downloading or uploading data (think background email syncing and so on) when they're not actually openunless you're connected to Wi-Fi.

To manually set whether apps can or can't use data in the background, tap on the individual app entries in the Mobile data usage list.

Meanwhile to stop apps from updating when you're not on a Wi-Fi connection (some of those updates can be pretty hefty), go to the Play Store app, open the Settings option from the menu, and tap Auto-update apps.

Finally, tap the menu button on the Data usage screen (the three vertical dots in the corner) and then pick Mobile networks. Here you can switch off data roaming, where data is downloaded on cellular networks other than your registered one (usually when you're traveling). This can help avoid unwanted bills when you get back from vacation.

Over on iOS there are some comparable settings you can work through to take control of your iPhone or iPad's data usage. Get to know these options first and then move on to individual app settings later if you need to.

Tap Cellular Data (labelled Mobile Data in some parts of the world) in Settings to get at all the key configuration options. This screen also lists how much data individual apps are using, just like the Android equivalent does.

To prevent an app from using data when not on Wi-Fi, just toggle its switch to off. To shut down mobile data completely, toggle the top switch. The Cellular Data Options submenu, meanwhile, lets you turn off data roaming when you're not connected to your primary network (like those times when you're out of the country).

The newest versions of iOS have a Wi-Fi Assist feature, where your device will fall back to cellular networks if Wi-Fi reception is poor. It's designed to speed up browsing on patchy Wi-Fi networks, but it can chew through a lot of data. To prevent that, switch this option off underneath the apps list.

As on Android, you can tell iOS not to download app updates over cellular networks: Choose iTunes & App Store from the Settings app, then toggle the Use Cellular Data option to off.

Another option is to prevent apps from uploading and downloading data in the background while they're not in use. Tap General then Background App Refresh from Settings, and you can disable this for individual apps or stop it completely.

There are plenty of ways to configure Android or iOS to use less data, but some individual apps will have data usage settings of their own. We can't cover every app out there, but these tricks should rein in some of the most data-hungry ones.

Open up the settings in the Facebook app, for example, and you can stop videos from autoplaying when you're not on Wi-Fi, cut down on the number of notifications you get, change the quality that photos and videos are uploaded at, and more. The settings menu layout varies between iOS and Android, but these options are easy to find.

Google Chrome for Android has a data saver tool all of its ownit preloads and compresses pages through Google's servers before sending a stripped-down version to your mobile. You can enable it from the main Settings menu inside the app.

Have a look at the apps on your own phone to see if any similar options are available, particularly for those apps that are appearing high up in your data usage tables. For example, think about music and podcast appsare they syncing playlists and downloading new content over cellular connections? The settings for many of these apps will let you restrict this activity so it only happens over Wi-Fi networks.

Preparation will also help you cut down on total data usage. We've already mentioned music playlists, which you can sync ahead of time while you're still on your home Wi-Fi, but you can do the same in Google Maps: Go to Offline areas from the main menu, and you'll be able to download parts of the map before leaving the house. This should save you from using as much data when you're on the road.

Finally, get connected to as many Wi-Fi spots as you can: at work, at your coffee shop, at your friends' houses (as long as they're not unsecured networks). Any time you're not relying on cellular networks alone, you can be saving on data.

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Data limits are the worsthere's how to stay under yours - Popular Science

The 8 virtual reality films I can’t wait to experience at Tribeca Film Fest 2017 – TechCrunch

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With virtual reality, Hollywood and Silicon Valley have never been more closely aligned in their desire to push the boundaries of how people emotionally interact with technology. Video games may be drawing in a huge deal of interest but there arealso an army of filmmakers and creatives looking at how they can use VR to draw viewers in and experience something breath-taking.

Today, Tribeca Film Festival shared the list of films and experiences that will be showcased at its Virtual Arcade and Storyscapes exhibitions. There are 29 virtual reality and innovativeexhibitionsin this years batch of immersive filmmaking, including a whole lot of experiences that are being shown off for the first time ever. Im hopingto check out each and every one of these at Tribeca Film Fest later next month, but here are the eight films and experiences that are going to be the toughest for me to wait for.

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The 8 virtual reality films I can't wait to experience at Tribeca Film Fest 2017 - TechCrunch

Hands-on: The HTC Vive’s new VR accessories make virtual reality even more immersive – PCWorld

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As Ive been reminded many times this week, were coming up on the one-year anniversary of PC virtual reality, and both the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive are shaking things up to celebrate. The Rift got a $200 price cut, the Vive got a brand-new financing plan.

If we chart the progression of video games from Spacewar and Zork all the way through to 2016, then the HTC Vive is the next logical step towards realism. Read PCWorld's full review

But HTC has much bigger changes on the horizon. One of my favorite aspects of the Vive has been HTCs willingness to experiment with the hardware, post release. The Rift and Oculuss optional Touch controllers have remained essentially the same since 2015.

The Vive, though? First came a new cable, which replaced the launch version's heavy tether with a slimmer 3-in-1 cable that resembled the consumer Rift. And in the future, two further additions are coming to the Vive ecosystem: the Vive Deluxe Audio Strap and the Vive Tracker.

HTC announced the Deluxe Audio Strap and the Tracker at CES, and even stuck a price on the pair earlier this week. Theyre $99 each, with the strap arriving in May and the consumer Tracker towards the end of the year.

I got my first chance to go hands-on with the pair this week at the Game Developers Conference. And while the Tracker is arguably the bigger news, at least in terms of raw potential, its the Deluxe Audio Strap Im most excited about.

Its so damn comfortable.

The Vives incredibly powerful, but its design was rudimentary even at launch. It was basically equivalent to Oculuss second dev kita bulky pair of goggles held on by a three-part elastic strap. Problem 1: Adjusting the straps is cumbersome. Problem 2: The Vive itself is heavy, so the elastic doesnt hold it as still as youd like. Problem 3: If you overtighten the straps so it moves less, it turns your face into mashed potatoes.

Compare that with the consumer version of the Oculus Rift, which uses a rigid plastic band to both offset the weight and keep the headset more stable. Andwell, HTC has borrowed that design for the Vive.

The Deluxe Audio Strap somewhat combines the more rigid designs used by the Rift and Sonys PlayStation VR. It slips onto the head like a baseball cap; the front portion folds down in front of your eyes, and thenand this is the real magicit tightens by way of a wheel in the back, like a bike helmet. No more Velcro straps.

The HTC Vive with Deluxe Audio Strap. It makes a major difference in usability.

It takes mere seconds to get the headset on and adjusted, and it stays adjusted thanks to the more rigid design. Looking down towards the ground is surprisingly difficult with the Vives current elastic bands, because the weight of the headset tends to pull it away from your eyes unless you overtighten. But with the new Strap, theres no movement at all. Its as good as Oculuss headband, or maybe even a bit better thanks to the generous padding around the sides.

And the Deluxe Audio Strap also matches Oculuss other killer feature: the built-in headphones. When Oculus first announced that the Rift would come with built-in headphones it seemed silly. Most people own better headphones than the ones the Rift is equipped with.

It soon became clear that built-in headphones remove a lot of the hassle, though. Theres less weight to deal with, less futzing around trying to figure out where you set them down, less steps between thinking about VR and being in VR.

So again, HTC borrowed an idea and the Deluxe Audio Strap draws its name from the built-in headphones. And again, the Vives seem a bit better than Oculuss solutionmore padding, a less scratchy material on the ears, and easier to move into place.

Now the downside is, of course, that the Deluxe Audio Strap is being positioned as a Deluxe item. An add-on. It doesnt annoy me as much as, say, Oculus positioning Touch as optionalthat has a direct impact on what games developers make and the health of the VR ecosystem. The Vives new strap is a somewhat superfluous item, at least as far as developers are concerned. A person with built-in headphones and a person without still have essentially the same experience.

Butand its a huge butI think the Deluxe Audio Strap will be a must-buy for most people. Even after my brief time using it at GDC, Im already dreading going back to my Vives old elastic bands and cumbersome adjustment process, plus having to grab headphones each time I use it for the next few months.

The Deluxe Audio Strap is more comfortable, more reliable, and probably what the Vive shouldve shipped with to begin with. Well have an actual review up when it releases in May, after spending a lot more time with it, but right now I think anyone who wants the best Vive experience is going to want one of these.

The Vive Trackers a bit more complicated, at least for home users.

I should say up front: Both of the Tracker demos I did during GDC were excellent. First I tried a pair of shooters brought to the show by VRsenal, and then a few rounds of boxing game Knockout League. The Vive Tracker is basically the top of one of the Vives wands, and is position-tracked by the same Lighthouse systembut it can be built into custom peripherals.

And that was the catch with these demos. VRsenal strapped me into one of MSIs backpack computers, put a Vive on my head, and then handed me a gun that wasnt real, but real-looking enough that you might not want to carry it down the street. It also was surprisingly heavy, mimicking the feel of an actual assault rifle.

Theres a Vive Tracker embedded where the rear sight would normally be though, and thus its fully position-tracked within gamesjust like a standard Vive wand. Aiming felt completely natural, and I had a great time crawling around on the floor, leaning over imaginary walls and sniping robots. You can even reload the VRsenal gun, since the battery is hidden inside the magazine. Press a button, pull it out, and youll see the MicroUSB port inside. When its done charging, you slam it back in.

Knockout Leagues Trackers were a bit more conspicuous, drilled and mounted on the back of standard boxing gloves. It worked similarly though, with my real-world boxing gloves mapping 1-to-1 with the boxing gloves I wore in virtual reality, allowing me to (poorly) bob, weave, and throw haymakers at my opponent.

Its really amazing tech and Im fascinated by all the approaches were seeing from manufacturers. There are a few problems though.

A glove with a Vive Tracker attached.

The first, of course, is the age-old question, How many peripherals do you want in your house? Im sure many of you have (or had) a closet full of Rock Band and Guitar Hero gear, and while its great fun in the moment, eventually its just a bunch of stuff you try to store out-of-sight-out-of-mind.

Related: How much are you willing to spend on weird peripherals? The Vive Tracker will be sold to developers for $99 each. Expect peripherals to cost at least $150 to $200, and given the quality of VRsenals gun, I bet that would be even more expensive. Sure, VR is a pricey hobby and some people are no doubt willing to pony up, but its going to be hard for manufacturers to get custom peripherals into peoples homes.

Arcades? Thats the real sell here, I think. HTCs made no secret it wants to expand into arcade-type settings, giving operators a subset of software and charging a flat rate for every hour played. With the bigger spaces afforded by arcades, and the need for a unique and impressive experience, it makes more sense for business owners to buy a few position-tracked guns, some boxing gloves, or whatever else manufacturers imagine.

That audio strap, though. Its so nice, and I cant say it enough. Hopefully there arent any glaring issues with the final releaseas I said, well need to spend more time with it before rendering a verdict or giving an official recommendation. Im excited though, with my Vive experiences this week being way more comfortable over long periods of time than anything Ive done at home.

Well just have to see what developers dream up with the Tracker. There are all sorts of potential applications, and I cant wait for some random genius to generate the next big wave of VR enthusiasm with a custom-built controller.

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Hands-on: The HTC Vive's new VR accessories make virtual reality even more immersive - PCWorld

Atlanta looks to become Virtual Reality hub – Atlanta Business Chronicle

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Atlanta looks to become Virtual Reality hub
Atlanta Business Chronicle
... of Trick 3D, whose tool Floorplan Revolution helps developers take more. Joann Vitelli. A group of companies, academic institutions and government agencies have united in an effort to make Atlanta the hub of the burgeoning virtual reality industry.

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Virtual reality’s success could ride on a new initiative discussed at GDC – Polygon

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We're live at the Game Developers Conference all week, with news, interviews and livestreams direct from San Francisco.

The key to virtual reality succeeding commercially on a global scale may lie in the hands of a team of volunteers working to create a royalty-free standard.

But the clock is ticking.

Were trying to do this as fast as we can, said Nick Whiting, who is the chair on the working group trying to come up with a solution. VR headsets are already out there and have been out there for a year. We want to do something as soon as possible, this isnt a long-term project.

The Khronos VR initiative is the latest effort by the Khronos Group, an American nonprofit that focuses on creating open standards for technology. The group, which was founded in 2000 by a collection of powerful tech companies, previously helped to create or oversee a variety of royalty-free, open-standard application programming interfaces (APIs) such as OpenGL, Vulkan and WebGL.

The group held a gathering at the 2017 Game Developers Conference this week to discuss virtual reality and its OpenXR initiative, which aims to create open standards for VR, augmented reality and mixed reality.

A key issue, though, is that there are already multiple standards being used that are tied to developing for headsets from Sony, Microsoft, HTC and Valve, and Oculus.

Whiting said that the key is that all of the systems already require a relatively similar deep tech stack to work, and that the OpenXR working group hopes to create a royalty-free, open API that will be common to all the headsets.

A bunch of us on the software and hardware side realized there is a lot of common group and that people are reinventing the wheel, Whiting said. There is this gigantic web of dependencies. So we decided it would be a good idea to create a single API.

Those involved, like Oculus, Valve, Google, Nvidia, AMD, Unity, Epic and Samsung, agree that the API shouldnt be owned by a single company. Two notable companies not listed as members are Microsoft, which recently floated its own API, and Sony. Weve reached out to both for comment.

The group of those involved seem to realize that the market is so relatively small right now that they need to come together to ensure that it is as easy as possible for a developer to create VR experiences across all existing platforms.

The big concern we see at Epic is that the VR market is a little nascent, said Whiting, who is also the technical director of AR and VR at Epic Games. Its not necessarily large enough numbers to support a big game team.

Were hoping through standardization that might change.

The group announced the Khronos VR initiatives name last week, along with a call for standardization.

VR and AR have experienced a boom of interest recently, and with that, a flood of hardware and software companies have begun spinning up efforts in the field, Khronos said in a news release. While variety is great, the growing number of devices, each with their own incompatible APIs is increasing fragmentation.

The key issue now, Whiting said, is timing.

The group has to move fast, but before it can create the API, it needs to make sure everyone can agree on what common bits of the software should be included.

Once it rolls out, Whiting believes it will be a large component of virtual realitys commercial success.

Coming from Epic, the biggest thing I see is developers trying to decide which device or market they should target, he said. They have a game or an experience to make but dont know where to bring it.

Were trying to make the market more viable by combining all of these smaller markets.

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Virtual reality's success could ride on a new initiative discussed at GDC - Polygon

Could you watch a film in virtual reality? | 9news.com – 9NEWS.com

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Andrew Sorensen , KUSA 7:31 AM. MST March 03, 2017

(Photo: Andrew Sorensen, KUSA)

The Boulder International Film Festival is back this weekend with a twist: they're going virtual.

The 13-year-old festival is hosting a virtual reality pavilion at Galvanize Boulder on Walnut Street. Organizers say they'll have five projects to show off on virtual reality headsets.

Three are actual narrative films.

BIFF founder Kathy Beeck says you're likely to see more VR at film festivals in the near future.

"I think it will play a bigger role as technology advances more and more and as people experience it more and more, she said. I think it's a great way to highlight some really cutting edge films and stories.

The free VR pavilion kicks off at 1 p.m. Friday.

They also have a workshop for people interested in learning how to make their own VR films on Saturday.

For more on the rest of the festival check out their website:https://biff1.com/

( 2017 KUSA)

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Insights: Can Movie Theaters Find a Place In the Virtual Reality Future? – Tubefilter

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Insightsis a new weekly series featuring entertainment industry veteran David Bloom. It represents an experiment of sorts in digital-age journalism and audience engagement with a focus on the intersection of entertainment and technology, an area that David has written about and thought about and been part of in various career incarnations for much of the past 25 years. David welcomes your thoughts, perspectives, calumnies, and kudos at [emailprotected], or on Twitter @DavidBloom.

In the year that Netflix, ESPN, and Amazon won their first Oscarsand a little-seen film about a gay African-American teenager (eventually) won Best Picture, the industry that runs movie theaters is busily trying to figure out how to remain relevant.

What the industry comes up with matters quite a lot. The National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) says there were nearly 41,000 movie screens in the U.S. and Canada in 2016, about double the total of 30 years earlier and the most ever. Thats a lot of real estate, and jobs, tied to a business that last year generated $11.3 billion in domestic box-office receipts.

In part, that still-hefty number is thanks to a 49% jump in average ticket prices since 2002, making up for a 16% decline in ticket sales. And most of the recent growth worldwide has been overseas, which now generates about three-fourths of film-industry revenue. Growth is particularly stout in China, where theaters are still being built at a brisk clip. And Chinese money, especially from Dalian Wanda, has been a major source of investment capital as several U.S. theater chains have been bought, consolidated and upgraded.

At the same time, however, the theater business is getting ever more complicated. More people, especially young ones, now entertain themselves with mobile phones, home theater systems, video game consoles, the Internet and more. They have more reasons than ever to skip a trip to the theater for entertainment.

The business has been further challenged by studio proposals to shrink the time between theatrical release and home-entertainment distribution on platforms such as DVD or iTunes. NATO and its members generally have fiercely opposed such proposals.

That was somewhat less the case last March, when former Napster founder and Facebook midwife Sean Parker announced a plan to launch his latest industry disrupter, called Screening Room. It would charge users $150 for a specialized box, which would allow users to pay another $50 to stream a movie at home on the same day it released in theaters. The price also included two tickets to watch the same movie in a theater. That latter move was a sop that reduced some exhibitor concerns about cannibalization of its only market.

A year later, however, Screening Room remains a cryptic one-page website listing three offices and an email address for inquiries. Meanwhile, lots of other options and alternatives have popped up, trying to change and improve the moviegoing experience.

One option is to improve the theater experience itself. Ive long been spoiled in Los Angeles by high-end speciality theaters operated by the Arclight, Laemmle, and Landmark chains. But now the big chains are getting wise too.

Over the past couple of years, Ive visited showcase theaters that feature cutting-edge projection and audio technologies from Dolby Atmos and Barco. These showcase facilities such as in Regals 800-seat palace in L.A. Live, the AMC theaters at Universal Studios and Burbank, and the redone but still classic TCL Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard also feature far more comfortable seats, cleaner aisles, better concessions and even alcohol and reserved seating. For lovers of the big popcorn movies that can fill these huge spaces, its a wonderful improvement.

Investing in a better product is usually a Very Good Idea, so Im glad to see the industry stepping up. And yet, those investments wont be enough to encourage droves of people to return. First of all, it will take lots of money and many years to bring these improvements to thousands of screens nationwide. Mostly, Im guessing a better experience will reduce the reasons people have to give up the movie-going experience entirely.

So, Ill be watching closely some of the initiatives in experiential entertainment that are coming to theaters from the virtual-reality world. Done right, these experiences could generate more money while powering new creative opportunities to pull audiences even further into fictional worlds they love.

IMAX is perhaps uniquely positioned to take advantage of this, because it already produces content to run on the special projectors and giant screens that it owns and operates with partners. Last month, in a big shift, it officially opened its first IMAX VR complex here in Los Angeles, with promises of many more to come.

Each of 14 IMAX VR pods offers a different experience, like one set on the Star Wars planet of Tattooine, or another in the shoot-em-up John Wickmovies. The IMAX pods use one of two makers headsets, sensory vests, controllers and headphones to almost completely immerse users in a different world.

I talked with Will Maurer, who heads the VR and visual-effects divisions at Legend 3D/VFX/VR, about what these kinds of VR experiences could become. He sketched a vision of VR pods replacing the videogame arcades found in many theaters. And unlike those arcade games, these VR experiences could be updated regularly to tie in with films also screening in that theater complex. Such tie-in experiences could be a lucrative source of additional revenue for theaters and studios.

Its the way to upsell people who are already there, Maurer said. If youre going to the theater to see a movie, you can pay the extra $5 for the VR experience. The aftermarket (in home entertainment) for that is pretty strong as well.

But Maurer also pointed out several obstacles that will slow mainstream adoption, especially for theaters wanting such experiences in their existing screening rooms instead of a lobby arcade.

One is the tether. Current high-end headsets have an H.R. Giger-esque swoop of cables attached at the back to a honkin powerful computer that drives a lot of polygons on your screen. That tether is vital, and vulnerable. Its just not going to work at scale in facilities with dozens of daily users stomping around.

Instead, technologies will need to evolve into something like what happens now with 3D, where lightweight, cheap glasses are handed out before the film and tossed in a collecting box afterward for cleaning and reuse.

Losing the tether also would enable more of what can only be described as laser tag on steroids, experiential entertainment centers where people can freely move within large physical spaces, navigating through a realistic virtual overlay. Imagine laser tag or paintball-like experiences within a virtual spaceship interior or some long-ago land. A version of this is starting to crop up in centers in the Midwest and in China. When this is more fully realized, well be one step closer to the Holodeck of Star Trek.

Another potential obstacle lies with creators, and the way stories have to be structured for mass entertainment.

Because dozens or hundreds might be watching at once, story structure needs to be less interactive than usual in VR, while allowing some of the exploration and narrative branching that make VR so compelling.

Such approaches are often used in video games, where complex narratives allow a choice of different story lines while still ultimately converging in one ending. Done right, Maurer said, that approach can increase the social and replayability aspects, as you and friends work through different storylines, then talk about and try each others path.

Beyond that, well need new kinds of content. Maurer envisions writers creating not just a script for a feature film but simultaneously structuring a related VR experience with interwoven story lines. To get the entire experience, you need to watch both. But you also need writers capable of writing for both platforms and connecting the story lines, on projects that already take years to realize.

Im still a skeptic about the future of the theater business amid all the technological shifts already coming. Yes, I know many who still rhapsodize about the joys of a communal entertainment experience.

But surviving and thriving may require a continued embrace of new technologies and new ways to tell stories, an approach that could give a century-old mass medium longer legs than any of us might guess.

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Why SeaWorld, other theme parks are going all-in on virtual reality – Orlando Business Journal

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Why SeaWorld, other theme parks are going all-in on virtual reality
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Virtual reality is gaining in popularity as the technology becomes more accessible and accepted by consumers and theme parks are taking note. In Orlando, SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. (NYSE: SEAS) has hopped on board the virtual reality trend for ...

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Nvidia’s new FCAT VR tool will help quantify virtual reality performance – TechSpot

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Nvidia at the Game Developers Conference this week announced a new frame capture analysis tool for virtual reality. Dubbed FCAT VR, the utility is designed to help VR developers, reviewers and enthusiasts analyze the quality and performance of a virtual reality experience.

Traditional benchmark utilities arent all that practical when it comes to virtual reality. Zvi Greenstein, general manager of Nvidias GeForce team who also leads business development for VR at the company, notes in a recent blog post that traditional measurement tools like FRAPS only measure whats happening on the desktop monitor instead of whats happening on the VR headset.

In other words, they focus squarely on frame rate and dont take other important metrics into account like latency, stutter and hitching all of which can have a big impact on the virtual reality experience. If stutter and latency fall below a certain threshold, for example, they can cause motion sickness not fun.

FCAT VR, which supports the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, is said to provide a comprehensive performance measurement for frame time and stutter on the headset without requiring special external capture equipment.

The tool captures four key performance metrics:

Nvidias new utility should be available to download by mid-March.

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Nvidia's new FCAT VR tool will help quantify virtual reality performance - TechSpot

On Memetics and the Transfer of Cultural Information – Paste Magazine

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In recent weeks, the meme trash dove took the world by storm, flopping its way across Facebook into dms, statuses and comments. Trash dove became an actor in animated videos and was even brought to life through real world reenactments by talented costume makers and headbangers. Merely an online sticker, trash dove came to embody so much in so little time and was able to say much of what we were thinking but not quite ready or able to articulate.

While our reasons for using trash dove on social media may vary, what is evident is that memes are meta; they can encompass a variety of emotions, thoughts, feelings, actions and even political discourse and humor. In abstracting the world at large into content, everything becomes more digestible, even consumable across one of the most accessible mediumsthe internet.

While the internet has in many ways proliferated the usage of memes, they have existed since human beings began to share information with one another. The internet has globalized memes and has allowed people to absorb information from those sharing content on the other side of the world at exponential rates and add their own spin on them. In the past, long before the internet, memes were shared as far as one could travel across land and water and over the course of longer periods of time. Contrary to popular belief, memes have been here with us all along.

The Historical Origins of Memes Memes have existed since the dawn of civilization and have been used to share and exchange cultural information between human beings for thousands of years. The word meme, coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 novel The Selfish Gene, describes the transfer of cultural information from one person to the next. Similarly to genes, memes have competed for survival throughout history and only the dankest become viral. As cultural units, memes are vessels of information which have journeyed across human civilization to popularize certain ideas and in turn, ensure their continuity.

Our ancestors used memes for cave drawings and to teach one another to create fire. Wherever there has been an opportunity for learning and sharing knowledge, memes have enabled us to replicate concepts and ideas and build upon them. While human endeavors such as art and music may not enable us to survive genetically, they are fantastic examples of how memetics have developed. Our brains are oversized and have the ability to store vast troves of information for later use. Becoming an incredible violin player may not be conducive to spreading ones seed, yet it is a meme that has become revered amongst humans in their pursuance of the arts.

Ultimately, human beings have evolved genetically to replicate information and be extremely good at making memes. We are such excellent meme-makers that we no longer use them explicitly for sharing concepts and ideas vital to survival. In the past, memetics allowed us to learn quickly from one another how to carry out tasks that would provide us with greater capacities for hunting, foraging, gathering, finding fresh water to eventually writing, reading, creating vast agricultural systems, building shelter, traversing continents and even more amazing feats. In becoming next-level copycats, human beings have collaborated with one another to create innumerable memes, both for survival and consumption.

A major defining characteristic of successful and not so successful memes is the extent to which they last and mutate. While some memes, such as learning to boil water to ensure no dangerous bacteria lingers in it or wearing animal furs to keep our naked bodies warm in the midst of winter, have remained relevant and largely static for centuries if not thousand of years, while others, such as a unicycling frog named dat boi, come into existence swiftly and disappear altogether just as quickly. Furthermore, instances of memes such as Hand Me the Aux Cord draw on other memes and mutate to become meta. When these memes mutate into warp drive, at some point they no longer become funny and vanish between the surface of newer memes. Given this, memes of the internet age, while existing on a greater scale, are not as successful as those who have remained relevant since earlier times.

Memes of Today The memes of today are Kermits, spongegars and trash doves. Those of the not-so-far-away past were lolcats, challenges accepted and forever alones. We use memes not only for absurd humor but also for societal and political commentary. At this time in human history, every single thing that we think or do can be turned into a meme and is likely a meme already. Memes can be jokes about miniscule everyday observations or the endless woes of mental illness. Memes are cathartic and allow us to process information through the abstraction of tragedy and global events. Whatever our interests or needs, a meme exists for us.

In the age of the internet, the ways in which we communicate with one another and share cultural information change every day and do so at alarming rates. We can speak with anyone anywhere at any time and relay information about the space and time we are situated in in moments or as it happens. This ability to virtually participate with billions of others in meme-making means that the sharing and exchanging of information is limitless. Memetics is an emerging discipline and as the way we communicate and share information continues to be ever-changing, this will be an area of study for decades to come.

The concept of memetic engineering, similar to genetic engineering, describes a process of careful selection of memes to be created and distributed for successful replication. In doing so, the memetic engineer would purposefully construct memes to influence others to replicate them. These memes may be anything from political ideology used to sway voters to commercials enticing potential customers. Regardless, memetic engineers can seize the memes of production to draw in supporters.

Both memetics and memetic engineering can be used to better understand memes as simplistic and absurd as trash dove but also as complex and nuanced as the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Having existed as long as humans have transferred cultural information from one to the next, certain memes have remained largely unchanged and survived the ages while others mutate exponentially yet come and go at a moments notice. With the rise of the internet, our attention spans have shortened and the amount of available disposable content has increased. As a result, we require an influx of memes to remain entertained while navigating this technological era.

Main and lead images via twitter @striffleric and @WHATINTARNATlON

Deidre Olsen is a Toronto-based writer, blogger and poet with a love affair of social justice, technology and dank memes. In their spare time, you can find them learning Jiu Jitsu and how to code.

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On Memetics and the Transfer of Cultural Information - Paste Magazine

Middletown’s Bertoni is 4 wins away from 4 titles, state-wrestling immortality – Frederick News Post (subscription)

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In between matches earlier this month at the state wrestling duals, Danny Bertoni bites into an oversized chocolate cookie with orange frosting.

In another hour, Bertoni, a senior at Middletown High School, will pin Sparrows Points John Harris in 1 minute, 4 seconds at 138 pounds, helping the Middletown wrestling team to a 56-19 victory and its second consecutive state duals championship in Class 2A-1A and raising his own record in high-school matches to an astonishing 171-2.

In another month, Bertoni will be chasing state history as he seeks to become the first wrestler from Frederick County and sixth in Maryland history to win four individual state championships.

But all of those things seem pretty far from his mind at the moment.

Sitting in the first row of bleachers at North Point High School in Waldorf, wearing a dark warmup jacket over his singlet, the wrap on his hands for recent thumb and wrist injuries still fresh from the state duals semifinals, Bertoni is light-heartedly asked if he should be munching on a cookie with another big match pending.

He smiles, raises his eyebrows and says, Probably not.

It is, however, in accordance with his every-man charm that makes Bertoni as likable as he is successful.

If you walked into the same room as Danny, you might not know he was there, Adam Bain, a friend, teammate and regular training partner said. He is not going to be bragging about his accomplishments or anything.

In fact, all of Bertonis well-earned accolades in high school wrestling alone three state titles, four regional championships, four county titles, the most wins ever for a Frederick County wrestler command a spotlight he does not actively seek.

I am not a shy person, he says.

But hes not an outwardly expressive one either.

After winning his third state title last March, something only two other Frederick County wrestlers have done, Middletown assistant coach Yank Strube implored him to smile.

He understands the benefit of humility, Bertonis father, Dan, said. He is not going to go out there and make himself a target, talking about what he has done or what he is going to do.

Hence, Bertoni strives to treat every match exactly the same, regardless of its importance. A state final might as well be a nondescript match in the middle of the season in his mind.

Every opponent is treated with the same amount of respect, regardless of skill or experience.

We have always emphasized there are no special matches, his father said. When you make a match special, thats when you are going to start to wrestle differently. No one is more important than the other.

This approach has afforded Bertoni enough margin for error that should he be offered, say, an oversized chocolate cookie with orange frosting in between matches at the state duals, things arent likely to veer off course wildy.

He almost never has to cut weight to compete.

I always told Danny, Expect to win. Prepare for the worst, his father said. If he finds himself in a hole, he has to be able to get out of it.

Bertonis wrestling schedule extends well beyond the high school season into the early part of summer.

It takes him to, among other places, Virginia Beach, where he has placed as high as second in his weight class at the National High School Coaches Association National Wrestling Championships, and Fargo, North Dakota, where a broken nose once prevented him from placing in an Olympic-style national tournament.

However, by the middle of the July, the singlet gets packed away and wont be worn again until the leaves are no longer green.

Bertoni steps out in the backyard of his home in Jefferson and begins to kick the soccer ball around with his friends or his sister, Maria.

In addition to being the schools preeminent wrestler, Bertoni has been a midfielder for Middletowns soccer team, which captured back-to-back 2A state titles in November.

Playing another sport is a foreign concept to most wrestlers of Bertonis caliber. They devote their full time and attention to wrestling and compete year-round.

Soccer season, however, is one of the things that sustains Bertoni going on the mat. It allows him the chance to get away, clear his mind and rest his body.

Wrestling is tough, mentally and physically, Dan Bertoni said. Its not a game. When you are having a bad day in soccer, you can kick it to a teammate, and they can take care of it.

In wrestling, it all falls on your shoulders. There are times when you need to step away from it and rest, mentally and physically.

Dan Bertoni, who was a high school wrestler in upstate New York, has watched a number of kids burn out on the sport by maintaining a schedule that never allowed time for anything else.

He never wanted that for his son.

There are a lot of talented guys out there, he said. They compete all of the time, year in and year out. Then, all of a sudden, they quit the sport. It catches up with them.

For his son to reach his full potential as a wrestler, there had to be an extended break every year.

Its nice to have soccer to get my mind off of things, Danny Bertoni said. It helps me to become a better wrestler. I am just more fresh mentally, more mentally tough.

I just focus a lot better when I do get back in the [wrestling] room [in October]. I want to be back after having that break.

Bertonis matches often seem straight out of a wrestling textbook.

Much like his personality, they are direct, straight-to-the-point affairs, often not stretching beyond one two-minute period. Theres no allowance for any wasted movement or nonsense.

Just watching him wrestle as a freshman, I thought there is a guy who could win four [state] titles, said Catoctin wrestling coach Ryan Green, who works with Bertoni on his Mason Dixon Mat Hawgs club team.

Just because of how technically sound he was, how good he was, not only with wrestling positions. He was just so composed in the big matches.

Bertoni doesnt give opponents much to work with. Hes quick, strong, smart, agile.

While opponents probe for an opening, any sign of weakness, Bertoni is already busy twisting them into a pretzel.

In four years of high-school wrestling, he has yet to lose to anyone from Maryland.

Thats quite an accomplishment in itself, Linganore coach Ben Arneson said. Being able to say you have never lost to a kid from your own state.

Thats not to say there havent been setbacks.

When you wrestle in high-profile tournaments across the country, such as the invitation-only Journeymen Classic in Albany, New York, where Bertoni placed fifth at 135 pounds last October, You are going to lose matches, his father said.

Its the nature of the beast.

Bertonis only two losses in a Middletown singlet occurred in the same building, Mount St. Joseph High School in Baltimore, during one of the toughest tests on the wrestling schedule, the Mount Mat Madness tournament.

After a 44-0 freshman season at 106 pounds, Bertoni arrived at Mount Mat in December 2014 with a raised profile. But he wrestled an admittedly sloppy match against Anthony DeLorenzo of Queen of Peach High School in wrestling-rich New Jersey and lost 3-2 at 126 pounds.

That was a wake-up call, Bertoni said. There was a bunch of things I was doing wrong. Some of my shots werent very clean. I was rushing things.

The following season, during a 46-0 junior season, he won the Mount Mat title at 132 pounds.

In December, a bid for a second consecutive Mount Mat championship was thwarted by one of the top wrestlers in the country, Malcolm Robinson of one of the preeminent programs in the nation, Blair Academy in New Jersey.

Wrestling in the championship final at 138, Robinson scored a rare first-period takedown of Bertoni, and that proved to be enough for a 2-1 win.

Bertoni rode Robinson for the entire second period and then picked up an escape point early in the third. But he could not find the takedown he needed, and Robinson was eventually named the tournaments Outstanding Wrestler.

I learn from the losses, each and every one of them, Bertoni said. They teach me what I can do better, where I can improve.

Some wrestlers look like they want to rip someones head off.

They pace back and forth. They seethe. They just reek of intensity.

Bertoni, on the other hand, comes off as the guy you would want babysitting your kids.

By all accounts, hes humble, hard-working, a good student, the model teammate on and off the mat.

He has always been very level-headed, Yank Strube said. He has never thought of himself as better than anybody else on the team. Thats part of what makes him such a good leader.

Today, Bertoni will walk into the Show Place Arena in Upper Marlboro, a wrestling scholarship to the University of Maryland already in hand, as one of 36 state qualifiers from Frederick County.

His high school record has grown to 177-2, and, with four more victories and no losses, he will join Aberdeens Matt Slutzky (1989), Owings Mills Steve Kessler (1994), Herefords Josh Asper (2005), Southern Garretts George Scheffel (2007) and Centennials Nathan Kraisser (2009) as Marylands four-time state champions.

I think its incredible, something that might happen once in 15 years, Bain said. If it happens, I think everyone there will realize how spectacular an accomplishment that really is. Danny deserves it.

Bertoni is within arms reach of a milestone not even he might have thought was possible back when he was 4 years old and wrestling his first match, barely weighing more than his singlet.

He admittedly didnt know what he was doing in those days. He was just rolling around with the other kids. There was no pressure to win and no heartache or frustration with the losses.

I knew he had potential, his father said. He has been the hardest worker in the room since he was little. Hes always been very coachable. He has an incredible drive and a will to win. I am not surprised he has been successful.

During a jog around a local track in Jefferson with his young son, Dan Bertoni was randomly stopped by a woman who suggested the boy had the look of a good wrestler. Maybe he should give the sport a try.

Now, that same boy is on the verge of becoming one of the states wrestling immortals.

Bertoni is the prohibitive favorite at 138 pounds in Class 2A-1A. Every other wrestler in his bracket has at least four losses this season, or two more than the Middletown standout has in his high-school career.

But, staying true to himself to the final whistle, Bertoni is not taking anything for granted. Nor is his family.

I am trying very hard not to think about [four state titles], his father said. The journey is not over. When you think it is, thats usually when something bad happens. I am a cautious man. I am just hoping Danny can finish this season the best way he knows how.

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Dog show win for Rumor is a win for food supplement company – Channel3000.com – WISC-TV3

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Rumor turns business to reality More Headlines

PRAIRIE DU SAC, Wis. - A business that had been steadily growing over the years has seen a spike in sales after a recent dog show.

The Doctors Choice Supplements is the provider of a dog food supplement for Rumor, the winner of this years Westminster Dog Show.

Probably 20 to 25 percent busier, and I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, says Karen Duhr, warehouse and office manager for Doctors Choice Supplements.

The company has been providing Fido-Vite supplements to Kenlyn Kennels for several years. Kenlyn, an Edgerton kennel, is the owner of Rumor, a female German shepherd.

When it got down to the finals, I was thinking she cant lose, she cant lose. Then, all of a sudden when she won, Im like, I cant believe she won, says Jon Sawle, a part owner of Doctors Choice Supplements.

While the employees of the Prairie du Sac company celebrated Rumors win, they realize they are just one part of what went into the success.

You know, were just one brick in the wall, but you know youve got to have all those bricks to make the wall, says Sawle.

The Fido-VIte supplements provide a probiotic and enzyme that improves the health and appearance of a dog.

It helps the food work better, helps the overall digestion and then they absorb more nutrients from their dog food, says Sawle.

While the increase in sales is welcomed at Doctors Choice Supplements, they joke it has made for more work for the UPS drivers.

Yeah, especially on Mondays, I feel a little sorry for the UPS man, says Sawle.

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Dog show win for Rumor is a win for food supplement company - Channel3000.com - WISC-TV3

Amazon’s private label Elements expands for first time in years with invite-only vitamins and supplements – TechCrunch

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Amazon has quietly added a new product to its private label, Amazon Elements, which previously only carried Amazons own brand of baby wipes, after pulling its diaper line from the label in 2015. Now Elements is movingbeyond baby products, having introduced its own line of vitamins and supplements under the brand.

Launched on February 21st, 2017, this is the first addition to the Elements brand in years.

The label, which first arrived in 2014, had grown fairly stagnant following its exit from diapers the following year. And with last years rumors that Amazon was considering rolling out diapers again, this time under its newer, now baby food-focused brand Mama Bear, it wouldnt have beenall that surprising to see Amazon shutter the Elements brand entirely by movingthe wipes tothe Mama Bear label.

But thats not the case, as it turns out.

Instead, the brand has expanded to include a small selection of new vitamins and supplements products. Listed on the site currently is Amazon Elements Vitamin D2, Turmeric Root Extract, Calcium Complex, and Vitamin K2. Thats a small, and interesting, selection to kick off the launch but one thats likely informed by Amazons customer shopping data.

The products are branded on the site as premium and of transparent origins.

Highlighting the origins of its products is something Amazon has put more emphasis on with several of its private labels. Mama Bears baby food, for example, touts its organic nature, with no GMOs, pesticides, artificial flavoring or chemicals; while the Elements baby wipes product pagelets you click through a large slideshow that shows where and how theyre made from the water to the extracts used, and even the supplier details.

Theres alsoan Amazon mobile appyou can use to scan a transparency barcode on your item to learn about its origins and authenticity.

The transparency focus is emerging as consumers have grown more concerned about how products are sourced, made and what chemicals they contain.

Amazon today faces competition from newer e-commerce players like Jessica Albas The Honest Company, which wasin acquisition talks with Unilever last fall, but didnt sell. (Unilever bought Seventh Generation instead.) The Honest Companys baby, household and beauty products claim to avoid using the harsh chemicals found in rivals lines, and despite some missteps, have grown popular with consumers to the tune of $300 million in sales in annual sales.

With Amazon Elements vitamins and supplements, each product gets a big, splashy marketing page that details the itemsorigins and contents. Product descriptions say things like does not contain allergens, artificial colors and flavors, chemical preservatives, or gluten, and states the product was made in a Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) facility in the USA.

Amazon also verifies the potency, purity and integrity of the ingredients, and shares its test results on the site a move designed to gain consumer trust in a fairly shady industry.

The supplement markettoday is rife with fraud. Many brands even top sellers have been found to sell products that were contaminated or didnt even contain the ingredients on their label.

Amazon basically guarantees thats not the case with its own products, by stating that the product is tested both by the supplement maker ( Arizona Nutritional Supplements) and ISO accredited third-party labs.

Also worth noting is that Amazon Elements vitamins and supplements are not available to all Amazon shoppers you have to be a Prime member to order them, for starters.

But even more oddly, you have to request an invitation to buy the product at this time. According to the site, those who register their interest in shopping these products will be notified by email in the coming week when the products become available.

According to early testers, none have received their email invite yet. However, some Amazon Vine reviewers have received samples, we understand.

Amazon has been highly focused on expanding its private labels in recent months, with moves into consumables, food / consumer packaged goods, baby food, fashion, and more.

According to retail analytics firmOne Click Retail, Amazon has launched over 50 products in the past three months,with varying degrees of success. Happy Belly and Wickedly Prime sales are still small and show only mild growth, One Click Retail said, with less than 1 percent of thecategory share.

But Amazon Elements wipes have doubled sales year-over-year, and have a 12 percent share of their category.

When the new Elements products golive, expect themto be heavily promoted on the site, One Click Retail says.

We expect to see Gateway placements, Sponsored search, and Fly out banner ads if they follow the same pattern they did with other Amazon Private brands, notedSpencer Millerberg, One Click RetailCEO.

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Amazon's private label Elements expands for first time in years with invite-only vitamins and supplements - TechCrunch

How this Baltimore company is using AI to make supplements smarter – Technical.ly Brooklyn

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Artificial intelligence is already gaining steam as one of the most-talked-about tech trends of 2017.

Its one of those umbrella terms thats easy to throw around. But away from the big conferences and debates about techs role in society, the hard work to develop the predictive technology is happening.

One of those spots is theEastern Campus of the Emerging Technology Centers, where Insilico Medicine is working to develop algorithms that can help select and develop the right drugs. The company sees artificial intelligence as apath to reduce the use of animal testing in developing pharmaceuticals, and is even working on a virtual human to simulate how drugs affect the body.

The latest news from the company shows how itswork could help other companies pick out what works and what doesnt. Insilicos research on aging (one study was published in the journal Aging) showed how artificial intelligence could help show the specific molecules that influence the aging process.

This was interesting to 37-year-old Life Extension, a company that makes anti-aging supplements. The natural supplement, or nutraceuticals, market is big, but its a place where other research studies have questioned whether the supplements actually prevent disease.

Life Extensions Ageless Cell. (Courtesy photo)

InSilcos algorithms were used at the early stage of development of a new product to screen for the right compounds to help slow or reverse aging, said Insilico Medicine COOQingsong Zhu.

Some of the compounds they identified were used inAgeless Cell, a new product in Life ExtensionsGeroprotect line that was released this week.

Our collaboration with Insilico Medicine fostered a novel approach to formulating anti-aging supplements utilizing artificial intelligence and sophisticated biologically-inspired algorithms and resulted in the very first AI formulated supplement,Andrew G. Swick, Life Extensions senior vice president of scientific affairs, discovery research and product development, said in a statement.

Talk of AI and extending human life seem to go hand-in-hand around tech circles. Both are in play for Insilico Medicine.

Stephen Babcock is the lead reporter for Technical.ly Baltimore. A graduate of Northeastern University, he moved to Baltimore following a stint in New Orleans, where he served as managing editor of online news and culture publication NOLA Defender. While there, he also wrote for NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune. He was previously a reporter for the Rio Grande Sun of Northern New Mexico.

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David Duchovny Hits the Road to Seek the Musical Truth That’s Out There – PopMatters

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15 Feb 2017: Social Hall SF San Francisco

Its Wednesday night in the middle of SF Beer Week, and theres a sense of alternate realities from the realm of science fiction seeping into the current timeline. Hogwash in Lower Nob Hill is hosting a Star Wars-themed Lagunitas tap takeover complete with an appearance by a lifesize wookie, drawing in a gathering of rebel rogues and would-be Jedi Knights. Theres no band like at the Mos Eisley Cantina, although some of the recordings are piped through. But those seeking live music with a Hollywood twist need only walk a half mile up Sutter Street to catch the artist best known as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder live in concert at Social Hall SF.

Its said that the truth can be stranger than fiction and actor David Duchovny probably knows something about that. Duchovny has become a living legend around the world for his iconic portrayal of Agent Mulder on FOX TVs The X-Files, where he spent a decade from 1993-2002 searching for the truth about aliens, the UFO cover-up and a slew of paranormal phenomena and government conspiracies. The show tapped the dark pulse of the modern zeitgeist like few others have and won Duchovny and co-star Gillian Anderson (as Agent Dana Scully) a legion of lifetime fans.

Pop cultures affinity for The X-Files surged again in 2016 when Duchovny and Anderson were reunited for a series reboot of six episodes, including a mind-blowing season premiere in which Mulder summed up the entire UFO cover-up in the episodes opening minutes. With a tagline of The Truth is Still Out There, Americas fascination with seeking the truth about UFOs and extraterrestrials was rekindled. Duchovny has done some fine work on other projects too like Californication and his scene-stealing cameo as the worlds greatest hand model in Zoolander, which mined pop cultures love of conspiracy theories for comic gold.

Then theres his recent turn as a hard-boiled detective in late 60s Los Angeles on the trail of Charlie Manson in the vintage noir of Aquarius. Duchovnys character Sam Hodiak plays a little bit of acoustic guitar when hes at home on the show, and this apparently was a direct result of the actor requesting such a character trait, so he could continue trailer guitar lessons hed started in his last season as Hank Moody on Californication.

Duchovny apparently caught the songwriting bug and cut an entire album, releasing Hell of Highwater in 2015. The album mixes low-key blues and brooding folk rock with flashes of country and alternative and holds together fairly well with its character-driven songs. Now Duchovny has put together a full band to go out and play some shows. His fans cant wait to check it out as a line forms over two hours before showtime for those who bought the VIP ticket package, of which there were many. And While hes done excellent work on those other projects, the concept of witnessing the man who plays Mulder live on stage in a rock band seems like its whats providing the buzz here for one of the more unique pop culture moments of recent years.

The band opens with 3000, utilizing one of the albums more rocking tracks to kick things off on a high note. Some of the lyrics may seem to rhyme a bit too easily, but when Duchovny sings of 3,000 steps between heaven and hell, it feels like Fox Mulder is there opening up his soul. Let It Rain features a sharp Americana style chord progression with some bluesy leads and Duchovny singing to his low vocal registers strength.

Some of the slower songs find Duchovny singing in an odd Leonard Cohen-esque drawl that doesnt seem to suit him as well. The vocals seem a little flat at times during the set, but its still interesting to watch an accomplished artist daring to put himself out there in a different realm. Duchovny introduces the new Strangers in the Sacred Heart as being about a church where people pray for others instead of themselves, an interesting theme in a crazy world where the gods offer no refunds for over-praying.

A cover of David Bowies Stay finds the band getting more funky with some stinging blues mixed in and Duchovny with some serviceable vocals. More vibe boosting occurs when Duchovny takes multiple trips out into the audience to give out handshakes, high fives and stir the vibe up ala Buddy Guy playing his guitar out in the audience. Its a classy move to break down the invisible wall between performer and audience, giving fans a chance to get even more up close and personal.

Duchovny seems somewhat obsessed with the concept of rain on his album, even dropping a box of rain line into The Rain Song that seems like a nod to the Grateful Dead and trying to find the splintered sunlight that can break through even the darkest clouds (and pictures from the VIP soundcheck session indeed show him sporting a shirt with the Deads Steal Your Face logo). When the Time Comesintroduced as a post-apocalyptic love songmines a similar bluesy Americana sound and both songs feel like they could be coming from a weary Mulder serenading Scully, conjuring an endearing vibe.

Duchovnys vocal delivery seems to work best on the more up-tempo rocking material, however. This is confirmed in the encore when he and the band break out a surprise rendition of the Velvet Undergrounds Sweet Jane. The band plays through the extended introduction, leading to a cathartic breakthrough when they launch into the main progression. The crowd eats it up, especially when Duchovny sings Me, babe, Im in a rock n roll band. Then its more classic rock goodness with The Weight, as Duchovny dons one of the trending pink pussyhats that have become a symbol of solidarity with the feminist movement against the Trump regimes assault on womens rights. Another endearing audience sing-along ensues, and its been a fun night out at the very least.

Duchovnys musical soul searching may not hit quite as deep as Mulders quest for the truth, but he seems to somehow tap into a similar existential journey.

Greg M. Schwartz has covered music and pop culture for PopMatters since 2006. He focuses on events coverage with a preference for guitar-driven rock 'n' roll, but has eclectic tastes for the golden age of sound that is the 21st century music scene. He has a soft spot for music with a socially conscious flavor and is also an award-winning investigative reporter. Follow him on Twitter at @gms111, where he's always looking for tips on new bands or under the radar news items.

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David Duchovny Hits the Road to Seek the Musical Truth That's Out There - PopMatters