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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YzkfC7–jog#!

Samsung started a new ad campaign to tease its upcoming next-generation Galaxy smartphone earlier this month. We weren’t huge fans of the ad that featured a top-secret meeting with Jeremy, the 13-year-old “secret messenger of Samsung Unpacked 2013.” Today, Samsung has released part two of the ad. It continues with Jeremy’s story but doesn’t reveal anything new.

Google Glass has yet to even land as the “Explorer Edition” for developers, but devs are already fast at work on innovative applications for Google’s head-mounted computing platform. With Google I/O right around the corner, we have been seeing more and more concepts for potential Glass apps popping up– including this one from Google and another designed by JetBlue. We’ve seen concepts for apps such as GPS and navigation, photo and video, and weather and alerts, but today NewScientist (via Engadget) pointed us to a new app called “InSight” being developed to allow Glass users to easily detect friends and co-workers by learning and identifying the patterns and colors of clothing they wear.

Imagine a near future where humans are carrying smartphones and wearing camera-embedded glasses, such as the Google Glass. This paper intends to recognize a human by looking at him or her from any angle, even when her face is not visible.

A group at Duke University is developing inSight, and it focuses on allowing Google Glass users to recognize humans without using traditional face recognition technology. It would also allow users to spot people they are looking for in a busy crowd, even if their back is turned. The paper described Google Glass users being able to see a nametag for each person in a room, or, when names are not suitable, users could share a tweet such as “looking to share a cab.”

For instance, Alice may look at people around her in a social gathering and see the names of each individual – like a virtual badge –suitably overlaid on her Google Glass display.

Where revealing names is undesirable, only a tweet message could be shared. People at the airport could tweet “looking to share a cab ”, and Alice could view each individual’s tweet above their heads. In general, we intend to extend augmented reality [1, 2] to humans and the key challenge pertains to differentiating individuals. We explore options outside face recognition [3, 4]

The full paper on InSight from Duke University can be found here and is definitely worth the read if you’re interested in seeing how developers might leverage the unique form factor of Glass to create innovate new apps.

We heard in October that Google had plans to further reduce Motorola’s workforce after cutting around 20 percent, or roughly 4,000 jobs, in August. The Wall Street Journal reported today on an email from Google that confirmed the company is beginning to cut around 1,200 employees (a little over 10 percent of its current total headcount):

Motorola MSI -0.74% staffers were informed by the company via email this week that “while we’re very optimistic about the new products in our pipeline, we still face challenges.” The company email added that “our costs are too high, we’re operating in markets where we’re not competitive and we’re losing money.”

As for where the cuts might take place, we previously reported that Motorola, which was unprofitable for 14 of its last 16 quarters, planned to reduce its operations in Asia and India, but today’s report said the layoffs would hit workers in the United States, China, and India. Google also warned that further restructuring might be necessary and significant costs could be involved.

In a recent piece from The Wall Street Journal highlighting Google executives’ fear that Samsung is gaining too much dominance, Android chief Andy Rubin said the purchase of Motorola was “a kind of insurance policy against a manufacturer such as Samsung gaining too much power over Android.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgxyreJRLj8

Samsung is already using the Immersion haptics technology in a couple of its products including the Galaxy S3, but today the two companies announced a multiyear licensing agreement that would allow Samsung to bring Immersion’s TouchSense and Integrator technology to new devices.

“We are very pleased by Samsung’s broad adoption of our haptic technology, and we believe that this agreement marks an important milestone in our strategy to monetize our technology more fully within the mobile market,” said Immersion CEO Victor Viegas.

The Integrator tech works together with Immersion’s TouchSense technology, and it is described by the company as an option for OEMs “that automatically add haptics into the Android UI and applications and provides an easy way to customize the overall tactile feel of the device.”

The press release also noted that the deal extends to “Samsung’s prior and future use of simple forms of haptic effects, sometimes referred to as Basic Haptics, in its smartphones and other mobile devices.”
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In addition to updating its application for the iOS App Store, Twitter has updated its Android app with a similar feature set. The updated Android version includes an improved, more timely search and Top Tweets experience, an improved Discover tab, and an extended conversation view that allows users to see more tweets. Unlike with the iOS application, Twitter did not remove MobyPicture, VodPod, and its own Posterous as video uploading services through Android. Release notes:

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Google has been accused today of having too much power with the Android operating system in China, according to a white paper published by a group from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Reuters reported today that the technology ministry said “Google had discriminated against some Chinese companies developing their operating systems by delaying the sharing of codes.”

The white paper also claimed the country’s R&D in the mobile operating space is “too dependent on Android” and that there is an opportunity for China to develop its own operating systems.

The paper pointed to Baidu Inc., Alibaba Group, and Huawei Technologies as companies developing their own operating systems and claimed that Google has deals in place that “restrain the business development of mobile devices of these companies.”

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According to a report from The New York Times, citing ” a person who has tried the phone,” Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S4 will include a new “eye scrolling” feature that tracks the user’s eye to determine where to focus and when to scroll on the page:

The phone will track a user’s eyes to determine where to scroll, said a Samsung employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. For example, when users read articles and their eyes reach the bottom of the page, the software will automatically scroll down to reveal the next paragraphs of text.

As noted in the report, Samsung actually filed for a trademark in Europe for “Eye Scroll” in January and again in the United States for “Samsung Eye Scroll” in February.

Apple and other companies have filed patents for similar technology that tracks the movement of a user’s eyes to zoom, scroll, and manipulate the elements on a display without physically touching it.
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Samsung does some great ads. This is not one of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIEfNaNCkKM

Samsung teased last week that the upcoming event would live streamed to Times Square and beyond.

Specs for the device seem to be a 4.99-inch 1080p display, quad-core Exnos 5410 1.7GHz processor with 2GB of RAM, and a PowerVR SGX 544 MP GPU. Add to that a 13-megapixel shooter. We heard these specs before—and having a 5-inch 1080p display seems to be what 2013 is all about.

https://twitter.com/Faryaab/status/308204123877154816

We’ll be on-hand at the event in a few weeks. In the meantime, we have these commercials to get us by.

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Posted via Tweet, Samsung announced this morning that it’ll be live streaming the Galaxy S IV unveiling at Times Square in New York City.  Samsung plans on starting the event at 7AM in the Big Apple on March 14th. If you can’t make the trip there though, you can live stream the event on Samsung’s Youtube channel the day of the event.

Samsung is today officially unveiling its “Samsung Wallet” mobile app solution, and it is quickly gaining attention for similarities to Apple’s iOS 6 ticket, card, and coupon solution known as Passbook. For those familiar with Apple’s app, Samsung Wallet appears to work much the same way. The app will allow users to store event tickets, membership cards, coupons, and boarding passes in one central app. From there, users will be able to present the digital passes and companies supporting the standard can scan a barcode included for each digital ticket.

Samsung has already posted a developers document for the app to outline how devs can implement support for the app using an API (via The Verge). The document also explained how the app works and noted that users will also receive real-time notifications related to their tickets, just as Apple does with Passbook.

As for the Apple influence, aside from the look and feel of the app and icon (pictured above), the Samsung Wallet app doesn’t seem to offer any additional functionality above and beyond what Passbook already offers. The company confirmed to TheVerge that the app will initially not be integrated with NFC wallet solutions (despite a new partnership with Visa), but it did confirm partners for the app’s launch include: Walgreens, Belly, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com, and Lufthansa. 
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[ooyala code=”9wc3FtOTpudZkeXdJrtb8gXF-WmHpm1i”]

In the video above, Bloomberg West speaks with 72andSunny’s partner and creative director Jason Norcross about the thinking behind some of Samsung’s latest campaigns. 

If there is one person qualified to discuss the state of Apple’s current marketing efforts, it’s Ken Segall. Working alongside Steve Jobs’ creative team for more than a decade, Segall, the man who put the “i” in iMac, served as creative director at ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day. He created some of Apple’s most iconic ads such as the legendary Think Different campaign. Segall took some time on his Observatory blog today to share his thoughts on how “momentum has been lost” for Apple’s marketing department at the hands of none other than the company’s biggest rival, Samsung:

While you can still argue that Macs and i-devices have a ton of appeal, you can’t argue that Apple is still untouchable when it comes to advertising…The fact is, it is being touched — often and effectively — by none other than Samsung…Samsung has made remarkable inroads in a very short time, for two big reasons.

According to Segall, the two big reasons Samsung’s advertising has eclipsed Apple’s is due to Sammy’s massive advertising budget and willingness to “bash away at Apple, delivering ads that are well produced, well written and seem to be striking a nerve.” Specifically, Segall pointed to Samsung’s decision to run creative new ads at the Super Bowl and Oscars: 
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While Google might be happy with the mobile ad revenue Samsung brings in shipping roughly 40 percent of the devices running Android, The Wall Street Journal said Google execs worry behind closed doors that Samsung could use its dominance to renegotiate its cut of revenue from mobile ads and search:

Google executives worry that Samsung has become so big—the South Korean company sells about 40% of the gadgets that use Google’s Android software—that it could flex its muscle to renegotiate their arrangement and eat into Google’s lucrative mobile-ad business, people familiar with the matter said.

Citing its usual “people familiar with the matter,” WSJ claimed executives at Google are betting on companies like HTC and HP to release compelling Android devices that compete with Samsung. According to the report, Android chief Andy Rubin discussed the situation at a recent event for Google executives. He described Motorola as “a kind of insurance policy against a manufacturer such as Samsung gaining too much power over Android.”
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Samsung and Visa today announced a deal that would see future Samsung devices preloaded with the Visa payWave applet, allowing consumers to “wave and pay” through Visa’s contactless payment terminals. The Visa payWave service will of course only come preloaded on select Samsung devices, but rumor has it that the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4 will be the first to receive the functionality. While Samsung and Visa were showing off the technology with existing NFC-enabled devices at MWC this week, CNET and others have apparently confirmed through sources that the S4 will indeed be the first device to get the applet preloaded.

• Global Strategic Alliance
  Visa and Samsung have agreed to work together to enable the next generation of Samsung mobile devices with Visa payment technology, and to partner with financial institutions to accelerate the availability of mobile payment solutions globally.

• Samsung to Connect to Visa’s Mobile Provisioning Service
  In order to enable financial institutions to launch large scale mobile (NFC) payment programs, Samsung will offer banks the ability to load payment account information over-the-air to a secure chip embedded inSamsung devices, using Visa’s Mobile Provisioning Service³ which is linked to Samsung KMS (Key Management System) – a service that creates secure data storage domains for issuers.

• Samsung Awarded Global Visa payWave License
  The Visa payWave mobile applet will be preloaded onto selected next-generation Samsung mobile devices featuring NFC technology and an embedded secure element. Off the shelf, these devices are ready to be personalized with Visa payment account information – a simple step that consumers will be able to initiate using a mobile payment application provided by their financial institution.

Visa also noted that the partnership, which isn’t exclusive with Samsung, will allow financial institutions with mobile payment programs to “use the Visa Mobile Provisioning Service to securely download payment account information to NFC-enabled Samsung devices.”

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TuMHScgnRUI#!

Following the official announcement of Samsung’s 8-inch Galaxy Note smartphone and tablet hybrid, Asus today made things official for its own 7-inch tablet with built-in 3G calling capabilities. We’re not exactly sure if consumers are asking for a 7-inch or larger device for making calls, but the addition of an HSPA+ radio is on top of otherwise decent specs compared to its competitors. Dubbed the FonePad, Asus said the device includes a 1.2GHz Intel Atom Z2420 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 1,280-by-800 HD display, and a PowerVR SGX540 GPU. The Fonepad also packs a 4,270mAh battery that Asus said should bring around 9 hours of battery life.

As for availability, Asus said the Fonepad would arrive to customers in the U.K. sometime in late Q2 of this year with prices starting at £179 (inc VAT) for the 16GB variant.

The company also announced another phone/tablet hybrid today, the next-generation PadFone. Asus has released previous generations of the device including a smartphone and tablet dock that allows users to quickly switch from the tablet form factor to a smartphone. It announced it is upgrading the smartphone portion to a 5-inch, 1080p display, while the 10.1-inch tablet gets a new 1,920-by-1,200 display and upgraded internals (via Engadget):

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Galaxy S IV Render via SamMobile

Samsung has confirmed that it will début its next Galaxy smartphone at an event in New York on March 14. Notably, the U.S.-based launch comes after Samsung has revealed its previous Galaxy phones internationally year-after-year.

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After lots of leaks, rumors and outright company forecasts,  Samsung today announced the Galaxy Note 8.0, an 8-inch iPad Mini competitor. The 1280×800 pixel display will have a slightly better PPI of 189 than the Mini and match camera specs and a quad core processor. Samsung’s Note 8.0 will also double up the Mini with 2GB of RAM and add an S-Pen for those who need/want it as well as expandable storage via the Micro-SD card slot. Just like the Galaxy Tab 7 2 it has an IR blaster with a rebranded Peel station navigation. On the down side, it won’t have LTE (only HSPA+) and it will run a slightly out-dated 4.1.2 version of Android Jelly Bean. It also weighs almost an ounce more than the iPad Mini.

Oh and it can make calls like a huge phone.

Will this go head to head against the Mini? My gut reaction is no. Samsung’s Touchwiz overlay and pen will keep these out of the hands of mainstream users. No price or launch date is yet planned but the specs tell me (720P TFT display) that Samsung is aiming for a low price. I’d expect to see this at $250 in the US probably just after it launches in the 2nd quarter in a number of Asian and EU territories.

https://twitter.com/9to5mac/status/305507515855167489

Press release follows:

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