Microsoft patent filing reveals plans for fitness-focused smartwatch
Microsoft’s rumored smartwatch finally has some specs.
A recent patent filing for a “Wearable Personal Information System” details sensors, features and other components of the fitness and health-oriented wearable device. The patent diagrams feature icons for running, heart rate and calories.
(Related: Microsoft’s designs on an eyewear device to rival Google Glass)
The filing supports a recent report that Microsoft is planning to debut a smartwatch by the end of 2014, featuring hardware such as a blood glucose monitor and a sensor to warn users of harmful levels of UV sunlight.
Given Apple’s rumored iWatch, the stable of devices running Google’s Android Wear and the countless other wrist-based fitness wearables already on the market, Microsoft is entering a particularly crowded section of the Wearables space. – Rob Marvin
Polyglot: An experimental Web framework
An experimental software project on GitHub wants to give programmers the ability to develop Web apps using multiple programming languages, libraries and environments. Polyglot allows developers to even use different versions of the same language when developing a single Web app. It provides performance scalability, extensibility, and multi-lingual, independent development, and contains an acceptor, message queue and responder.
“It means no more programming language wars; programmers can use the best language for the job and/or their favorite language to write different parts of the same Web application,” according to its GitHub repository description.
The framework doesn’t work with all types of Web apps, and it should only be used for apps that need high-performance scaling or to be developed in multiple languages. – Christina Mulligan
Google’s bug bounty hackers
Google has announced a new project, Project Zero, made up of security researchers to discover holes in software.
“Our objective is to significantly reduce the number of people harmed by targeted attacks,” the company wrote on its blog. “We’re hiring the best practically minded security researchers and contributing 100% of their time toward improving security across the Internet.”
Every bug the researchers find will be filed into an external database, and Internet users will be able to monitor time-to-fix performance, and view discussions about the bug, historical exploits and crash traces.
“You should be able to use the Web without fear that a criminal or state-sponsored actor is exploiting software bugs to infect your computer, steal secrets or monitor your communications,” Google wrote. – Christina Mulligan
Google “smart lens” technology becoming commercial reality
Back in January, Google announced that it was developing smart contact lenses that would be able to keep track of diabetes. Today, the company is announcing that those lenses might soon become a reality. Google has agreed to license the smart lens to Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis.
“This is a key step for us to go beyond the confines of traditional disease management, starting with the eye,” said Joseph Jimenez, CEO of Novartis.
Under the agreement, the two companies will work together to develop a “smart lens” with the potential to address ocular conditions such as helping diabetic patients manage their disease by tracking glucose levels, or providing accommodative vision correction to people with presbyopia, which is the gradual loss of the ability to focus on objects up close. – Christina Mulligan
