MAVEN blasts off to Mars on $671 million mission

 

 

 

The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifted off at 1:28 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft on a 10-month journey to the Red Planet.

(Credit: NASA)

A new NASA Mars probe began a 10-month voyage to the Red Planet Monday, blasting off on a $671 million mission to study the thin martian atmosphere in a bid to find out what triggered a dramatic case of climate change that turned a once-hospitable environment into a cold, presumably barren desert.
"Something clearly happened," said Principal Investigator Bruce Jakosky. "Water was abundant on early Mars, the environment was something that was capable of supporting liquid water yet today we see a cold, dry planet that is not able to support water. What we want to do is to understand what are the reasons for that change in the climate."
Taking off just ahead of approaching clouds, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution -- MAVEN -- spacecraft, mounted inside a protective nose cone atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, blasted off on time from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 1:28 p.m. EST (GMT-5).
Generating 860,000 pounds of thrust, the first stage majestically boosted the rocket out of the dense lower atmosphere and fell away just over four minutes after liftoff. The rocket's hydrogen-fueled Centaur second stage then ignited for the first of two planned "burns," firing for nine-and-a-half minutes to complete the initial phase of ascent.

Google settles with states in Safari-tracking case for $17M

Google agreed Monday to pay $17 million to settle claims from 36 states and the District of Columbia that the company violated user privacy when circumventing the tracking cookie blockers in Apple's Safari browser.
The fine follows revelations that Google installed tracking cookies on Safari users' computers without permission to assist its DoubleClick advertising business, bypassing Safari's default settings that block third-party tracking cookies.
Google has denied that the violations occurred intentionally, but agreed to the fines nonetheless.

The fine follows the company's year-old settlement with the Federal Trade Commission on the same matter, which cost Google $22.5 million.
The settlement includes the District of Columbia and the following states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The nearly $40 million in cumulative fines levied against Google for the tracking cookie-related privacy violations have been costly, which The Associated Press estimates earned the company only $4 million. The settlement is a public relations black eye for Google, but keep in mind that Google earns billions of dollars per year.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement that people should be able to know when they're being tracked online.

"By tracking millions of people without their knowledge, Google violated not only their privacy, but also their trust," he said.
In addition to the fine, Google has agreed to abide by several policy remedies designed to prevent the problem from reoccurring, including not deploying the type of code used to override the browser's cookie-blocking settings; not misleading its customers about how they can control how Google serves ads on Web sites; improving users' ability to learn about and control tracking cookies; and not interfering with Safari's third-party tracking cookie blocker.

Sprint, Best Buy give students a free year of talk, text, and data

"If you sign up for a new Sprint line at Best Buy, you can score one year of talk, text, and data. The catch is, you must be a student."

 

 

Students can pick up a Sprint phone at Best Buy and score a free year of Sprint service.

Hey students, your report card can now earn you a free cell phone plan. Best Buy and Sprint announced Monday that they've teamed up to offer free unlimited talk and text, plus 1GB of data, for one full year to students.

It works like this: Head to Best Buy between November 18 and January 4 and buy a new feature phone or smartphone at the Student Activated Price (the average phone price is $530), and activate it on a Sprint Unlimited, My Way plan. You'll need to pay for the cost of the phone, plus a $36 activation fee, taxes, and any other applicable fees.
Next, go to Sprint's student verification site within 14 days of your purchase to prove that you're a current student. One you're verified, your account will be credited for one year of unlimited talk and text, plus 1GB per month of data if you buy a smartphone, which Sprint says is a $70 per month value.
If 1GB of data isn't enough for your studying -- or let's be real, social media -- needs, you can pay $10 per month for unlimited data. You can also trade in your current phone to get a new handset with the offer. It's worth noting that you don't need to sign a two-year agreement for the student line. Lastly, students can get up to nine extra free years of service when a new line is added to the same account they're on.
Before you start thinking of ways to game the system, here's what you need to prove to Sprint that you're a student:

• You must be a part-time, full-time, or vocational student.
• You must be enrolled in a US-based elementary school, middle school, high school, college, university, or other accredited institute.
• Students under 13 must get parental consent when filling out the student verification form.

Additionally, you need to submit one of the following via fax, or with your online form:

• Valid report card from current school year
• Student ID
• Enrollment confirmation or tuition receipt for current school year
• Required state documents if home schooled

After your free year is up, you (or the primary account holder) will be charged $70 per month for the services, unless you terminate the line. For more info on the program, head over to Sprint's site. And remember, just because your college ID never expires, that doesn't mean you should still claim you're a student five years after graduation.

The dirty little secret behind smoking cessation apps

 

One in five deaths in the U.S. can be attributed to cigarettes, according to the Centers for Disease Control, amounting to roughly 440,000 deaths a year. (That's 1,205 a day, or 50 an hour.)
Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that smoking cessation apps are all the rage. More than 700,000 such downloads are averaged for the Android OS alone each month, according to Lorien C. Abroms, assistant professor at the George Washington School of Public Health and Health Services, and they enjoy a minimal level of regulation given the Food and Drug Administration has its hands full trying to stay on top of medical apps. In a sea of 40,000-plus health-related apps, those having to do with "wellness" and "lifestyle" have very little oversight.
So Abroms and colleagues decided to conduct a study of the most downloaded cessation apps -- 47 for the iPhone and 51 for Android in February 2012 -- and uncovered a dirty little secret: very few actually adhere to key evidence-based practices shown to help smokers quit, or recommend approved medications, or refer users to quit lines.
Smartphone apps "do not promote aspects of treatments that have proven to work in quitting smoking and so we as public health professionals have reason to be concerned," Abroms said in a Health Behavior News Service release. The researchers published their findings in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (PDF).

The researchers were optimistic that so many people are seeking help, and that technicians are working on apps to meet that need. "But the bad news is smartphone apps may not give people the guidance they need," added Michael C. Fiore, director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. "What we're missing with smartphone apps is universally recognized, science-based recommendations."
While it's entirely possible that what works when using an app could be different than what works without one -- and the researchers didn't actually delve into whether these apps proved to be effective -- the tendency to not use the best known and most effective cessation techniques is, they say, cause for concern.

Enter Australis: Mozilla streamlines Firefox's look

 

 

Australis, Mozilla's overhaul of Firefox's user interface, gives the foreground tab new emphasis and makes the others fade more into the background. To the left of the tabs, pinned tabs that users might want to access often show just by their narrow favicon images. The entire menu has been reduced to a customizable toolbar with a few buttons on the upper right of the interface; clicking the three parallel horizontal lines opens up the menu.

 

 

Mozilla took a major step Monday to launch a significantly revamped look for Firefox Monday, a project months in the making called Australis that will unify the browser's look across personal computers, tablets, and phones.
Australis brings a new look to the frame around the Web page: curvy tabs, more emphasis for the tab you're using and less for the one you're not, and graphical menu that looks more like a grid of apps than a list of options.
At Australis landed in the nightly version of Firefox for browser testers on Monday, taking its first step into regular testing and beginning the path that leads through the Aurora test version of the browser, then the Firefox beta, and last the final Firefox release. If all goes well, the first Firefox Nightly with Australis will arrive Tuesday, then Australis will arrive on PCs several weeks from now.
"It's a streamlining and simplification of the default interface, to declutter and better focus on how people use a browser today," said Madhava Enros, leader of the Firefox user experience design team, in a blog post Monday.
Johnathan Nightingale, vice president of Firefox, offered another reason to want the revamp in a separate blog post: "It's screaming fast, and it makes you faster, too."

A major interface change like Australis will be traumatic for some, just because it's change. Even if it's smart, anything that's different means millions of people will have to learn anew how to do things they previously understood.
But change is inevitable in the browser world, and Australis shouldn't be totally unfamiliar. Some changes paved the way, such as the the collapsing of Firefox menu bar into a single menu button. And some changes are conceptually similar to what Microsoft has done with Internet Explorer and Google has done with Chrome.
If people don't like what they see, they can customize the Australis version of Firefox. For example, they'll be able to drag icons from the menu out into a toolbar area to the right of the browser tabs.
One thing that's not different is the dual address and search boxes. IE and Apple's Safari followed Chrome's lead in unifying these, but Mozilla has kept them separate, at least so far, even though typing a search query initiates a search.
Another expected set of difficulties will come from add-ons, which in Mozilla's case can customize the interface. When the interface changes, customizations can break.

 

 

Want a new look? Australis is better for showing off themes, Mozilla believes.

Mozilla is working on a guide to Australis-related add-on changes for developers. According to the document, add-ons will have to reckon with changes to toolbars, buttons, status bars, and menus. Some of these complications are easier with the new Add-on SDK (formerly called Jetpack).
Themes, which can provide background graphics to Firefox, also will change
Australis also carries over to the mobile domain, an important realm for Firefox as Mozilla tries hard to reproduce its PC influence in the fast-growing new market dominated by Apple and Google browsers today.
"You'll notice elements of Australis across all our platforms, mobile and desktop, as we try to have Firefox feel more like one product everywhere," Enros said in a video introduction to Australis.

 

 

Firefox's menu under the Australis interface turns into a panel -- a grid of links.

 

 

Two elements of Australis already have arrived: First, a forward button that only appears when the mouse pointer hovers over the back button, and second, a download indicator in the toolbar that shows download progress.
And beyond the main changes now under way, Australis will lay the groundwork for changes to Firefox's start page and make the interface more flexible, Mozilla said.
All the change is worth it, Mozilla argues the advantages far outweigh the difficulties.
"We spend more time in our browsers than we do in our cars. Many of us log more hours in a browser than we do in our beds," Nightingale said. "For a tool you use that much, ergonomics matter; design matters; beauty matters."

Google, Microsoft ramp up fight against online child pornography

 

 

 Web giants agree to modify search algorithms to exclude search terms associated with photos and videos containing child sex abuse.

In response to the alarming proliferation of photos and videos containing child pornography on the Internet, Web search giants Google and Microsoft plan to introduce measures to block the content from their search results.
The modifications will prevent more than 100,000 search terms from generating results that link to images and videos associated with child sex abuse and instead trigger a warning that the associated content is illegal. The restrictions, which apply to English-speaking countries, will be expanded to more than 150 languages in the next six months, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt wrote in an article for the Daily Mail on Sunday.
"We've listened, and in the last three months put more than 200 people to work developing new, state-of-the-art technology to tackle the problem," Schmidt wrote. "We've fine-tuned Google search to prevent links to child sexual abuse material from appearing in our results."
Once it's determined that content represents genuine abuse and not innocent bath time photos, the content is assigned a unique digital fingerprint that speeds the detection and deletion process when the images appear in Google's system, he wrote. "Microsoft deserves a lot of credit for developing and sharing its picture detection technology," Schmidt wrote.

Engineers at YouTube have also created new technology to identify child porn videos on the video-sharing site, and the company plans to make the technology available to other Internet companies and child protection agencies, Schmidt wrote.
The effort is the result of a call to arms this summer by UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who praised the move as a "really significant step forward."
"Google and Microsoft have come a long way," he told the Daily Mail. "A recent deterrence campaign from Google led to a 20 percent drop off in people trying to find illegal content, so we know this sort of action will make a difference."
The companies have long been focused on eradicating child pornography from the Internet. Google announced plans in June to build a database of child porn images that can be shared with other tech companies, law enforcement, and charities around the world, allowing for greater collaboration toward content removal. In addition to joining the Technology Coalition, which looks at how technology can be used to end child exploitation, the search giant has also donated millions of dollars to nonprofit organizations that work for the cause.
Microsoft has also actively battled child pornography on the Web. The software giant helped develop the hashing technology for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's PhotoDNA program. The technology is also used by other Internet companies, including Facebook.

Behind the lens: Shooting the Ford GT feature

Three days prior to this we'd had XCAR's biggest shoot to date, the BMW roadster film. Despite each of those cars being magnificent in their own right, it arguably worked as a dress rehearsal for this day. We has the same location of Castle Combe, the same video crew of four, but this time, three cars: the Ford GT, GT40 and GT70.
Needless to say this was no ordinary day. Every roadworthy Ford to have the honour of the GT moniker bestowed upon it, here in our presence. To our knowledge these three had never been brought together to be filmed. The Mk III GT40 was one of seven in existence, the GT70 one of six. We were humbled to be among royalty for a day, true unicorns.
The blanket of detailed darkening cloud ensured a dramatic backdrop as we grouped the cars together. We began with all three, then just the GT40 and its modern-day relative, the GT. Attempting several different angles, nose to nose proved to me the most striking, a fascinating insight into the aesthetic similarities and differences between the racing legend and its modern inspiration.
Even some light rain could not dent the camaraderie amongst us all, as these machines had an infectious feel on the mood and buoyed us onward. Opening both GT40 and GT up, the engine bay and the bonnet, was a dream shot. I love when supercars do this as they appear otherworldly, out of reach, as if they're about to take flight.

We'd brought stacks of equipment to do justice to every aspect of these cars, as each camera is suited to a slightly different purpose. For the static shots we had Ben on the RED armed with some fantastic lenses. The amount of detail you can pick out is truly staggering, which more than justified its cinematic sensor on these stratospheric machines.
Its slow-motion capabilities were also advantageous, as you could break down each of these cars as they glided through the frame down to the tiniest movement, as the RED Scarlet can film 120 frames per second at 2K (full HD). We also had Canon dSLRs and a Panasonic AF101 as assisting cameras, again with the lenses creating beautiful images, but with rolling shutter perhaps not as suited to capturing fast movement.
With more cameramen than cars, you might think this day was a breeze, but we needed to split the team up and ensure everyone was working at full capacity while taking into account the time, as on days like these everything is over before you've even gotten into your stride. Individual details needed to be so thorough, as each car is from a completely different era and designed for different purposes, each exterior and interior so unique. While two of us toiled away on this enviable and infinite task (the more beautiful the car, the harder it is to pull yourself away -- I could spend the entire day without turning the key), the other two focused on capturing the movement and sound of each.
Sound is an aspect often overlooked or under-appreciated, but it is the difference between a bad and good film. It can be easy to get distracted by what you see and overlook the sound, but it's just as important and in the case of cars arguably more difficult to capture.
The GT40's 4.7-litre V8 pumped out a symphony audible throughout the circuit, it echoed for miles and provided the most pleasant soundtrack to work alongside. This is a noise you want to do justice, but picking it up is fairly tricky. The exhaust is the place to be but too close and the noise will overwhelm the mic no matter how low you get your levels. And it will melt. As you can imagine, these things run fairly warm. You also have to remember the wind at these kinds of speeds can become overpowering, especially in the turbulent air behind the car. Gaffer tape is most definitely your friend in this instance; it was a case of trial and error to get the perfect mic placement that allowed us to add some great sound to complement the drama of the visuals.
As you can see from the above, just one small aspect of the film isn't the quickest to capture. Setup changes are often lengthy and cannot be rushed, especially when you realise the cost and rarity of the vehicles being handled.
The day did not go without incident. The Ford heritage shed is fantastic at making sure these cars are in good working condition, they want them to be appreciated out on the road and track where they belong rather than covering dust in a shed. But the mileage and wear that these classics have invariably gone through does make the occasional hiccup unavoidable. The GT70, designed primarily for rallying, had a racing clutch that tended to cause the odd stall. However, after initially running fine, it decided not to start without a booster. As there was also not much sound deadening inside, it made hearing Alex in the interior pieces very difficult and the balance of being able to hear him and not blowing out the sound was a fine one.
It was with 45 minutes left that our mettle was truly tested when the throttle cable decided to come loose on the GT40, with a drag-race feature and passing shots of the cars yet to shoot. Fortunately Ford's talented engineers were on hand and did a remarkable job of getting it running, though by the time the problem was fixed, we had 10 minutes to set up and film the drag race, meaning we had just one shot and needed to maximise every angle to get the coverage we needed. This epitomises a filming day, all the meticulous planning went out of the window.
Although the final product may look effortless, it is often anything but, yet having seen this project from the initial conception to completion, it went as close to the plan as it could. Not only that, but to have driven and been immersed for a day in each one of these living legends, to have seen the faces throughout of all involved, the excitement and the passion that we all hope transmitted through the final product. It may come across as hopelessly cliche, but it was an honour none of us will ever forget. I finished the day exhausted and beaten, but it felt like anything but work.

Sony sells more than 1 million PlayStation 4s in first 24 hours

While first-weekend sales appear to be strong, some frustrated buyers complain of receiving malfunctioning units.

 

 

  

 

Sony's PlayStation 4 out of the box.

If early sales figures are a reliable barometer, Sony appears to have scored a hit with its new PlayStation 4.
The next-generation game console, which went on sale in North America on Friday, sold more than 1 million units in its first 24 hours on the market, Sony announced Sunday. The company did not say how many pre-orders contributed to that figure.
"Sales remain very strong in North America, and we expect continued enthusiasm as we launch the PlayStation 4 in Europe and Latin America on November 29," Andrew House, the CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, said in a statement.
Long lines of game fans braved the elements for the PS4's midnight launch Friday around the US and Canada. One man told CNET that he waited more than 20 hours in the cold weather to be the first person in line to buy the new console during a midnight launch event held at New York's Standard High Line hotel.
While sales appear to be off to a good start, the long-awaited follow-up to the PlayStation 3 has not been without its hiccups. Frustrated buyers have flooded the company's support forums with complaints of malfunctioning units that show a flashing blue light instead of video, crash repeatedly, or fail to boot at all.

Sony acknowledged that some buyers had complained of issues but called them "isolated incidents" that were within the company's expectations for a new product launch.
"There have been several problems reported, which leads us to believe there isn't a singular problem that could impact a broader percentage of systems," the company said in a statement to IGN. "The number of affected systems represents less than .4% of shipped units to date, which is within our expectations for a new product introduction."
The next-generation console was praised by CNET reviewers for its simplified and logical interface, graphics, and its DualShock 4 controller. However, games made for PlayStation 3 are not compatible with the PS4, and there is a dearth of triple-A titles at this time.

Watch Russian meteorite's impact via security cam

The meteor lit up the early morning sky on its way down to the ground.

 

 

Last February, a fireball streaked past the Russian town of Chelyabinsk, releasing 500 kilotons of energy as it ran up against some serious resistance from Earth's atmosphere and exploded, blowing out windows all over town in the process. The biggest resulting chunk of space rock finally ended its journey by crashing into a frozen lake a few dozen miles away.
Remarkably, the moment of impact was captured by a security camera located at what looks like some sort of maintenance shop near the edge of the lake. Even more remarkable is the fact that an object that had essentially caused an explosion of A-bomb proportions in the sky just moments earlier was whittled down to the size of a small boulder that created little more than a whispy puff of snow and dust upon hitting the surface of the lake.

This is likely because the snow and crust of ice on the lake offered next to no resistance to the meteorite that could have still been traveling at thousands of miles per hour when it came knocking -- sort of like placing a sheet of aluminum foil in the path of a bullet. Had the meteorite struck something more solid, like say, that truck in the shot, we might be looking at photos of a large crater right now.
Watch the edited version of the video below from the SETI Institute, which also pulled out individual still frames to better illustrate the moment of impact. Talk about a close call. And now scientists tell us it won't be the last.

Apple reportedly acquires PrimeSense for $345M

     Apple has reportedly purchased the company behind the Kinect.

Apple has reported closed a deal to acquire PrimeSense, the 3D-sensor company behind Microsoft's Kinect sensor.
Apple paid $345 million for the Israel-based company, according to a Calcalist financial newspaper report on Sunday that didn't cite sources. Perhaps best known for powering the gesture control used by Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console, the company's technology is also used in 3D scanners, iRobot's Ava, and the Asus Xtion.
However, while noting that the two companies were engaged in discussions regarding a possible acquisition, sources told allThings that that the deal has not been finalized. They also reportedly said the final value of the deal -- if it is ratified -- would likely be slightly greater than $345 million.
CNET has contacted Apple for comment and will update this report when we learn more. PrimeSense declined to comment on the report.

"We are focused on building a prosperous company while bringing 3D sensing and natural interaction to the mass market in a variety of markets such as interactive living room and mobile devices," a spokeswoman for PrimeSense told Reuters. "We do not comment on what any of our partners, customers or potential customers are doing and we do not relate to rumors or recycled rumors."
PrimeSense has raised $85 million from Israeli and US venture capital funds such as Canaan Partners Global, Gemini Israel, and Genesis Partners, according to Calcalist.
Apple was said to be talks to acquire the 3D-sensing company since July when it was said to be offering $280 million for the Tel Aviv-based company. Apple has found Israel to be a veritable treasure trove: last year, the company confirmed that it acquired Israel-based flash storage maker Anobit for $400 million.

High-tech Skully helmet: A Google Glass that's born to be wild

SAN FRANCISCO -- The scariest thing about riding a motorcycle is the cars and trucks. To help riders deal with big, boxy, and often lethal vehicles, the Skully P1 motorcycle helmet sticks a Google Glass-style heads-up display, rear-view camera, and Bluetooth in the helmet. But isn't that tech more distracting and dangerous?
It's hard to imagine how hurtling yourself at freeway speeds down the road while dealing with what appears to be a Google Glass knockoff is a safe way to get wherever you're going. It sounds extremely cool, and ridiculously dangerous.

How can you pay attention to cars zipping about you, sometimes within inches of killing you, while flipping your eyes around to focus on a clear plastic box at the bottom of your field of vision?
That's what I was considering on Thursday in the bright noontime sun as I slid on the Skully P1 and gently wiggled my glasses back into the helmet, one of three prototypes in existence.
I was the first person outside the company to road-test the helmet, which is based on a shell from one of the top American helmet manufacturers and has been in development since May 2012. Skully's founder, Marcus Weller, and its director of mechanical engineering, Drew Shirmer, had given me plenty of background on the helmet: how it works, why it works, which features were operational and which ones were yet to come.
Since its debut a few weeks ago at a tech conference in San Francisco, where the angel-funded Skully scored the DEMOgod award, the Skully P1 has attracted more than 35,000 requests through an online form from would-be beta testers, said Weller.
The Skully helmet is not designed to give you full Internet access. Its limited features -- GPS maps and navigation, always-on rear-view camera, a Bluetooth connection to your phone for music streaming and call management -- nevertheless might prove more appealing to some people than the more open ended tool that Google Glass is. Skully's helmet is for Internet-augmented motorcycling, and even in its rough, in-development form, it's possible to evaluate those features.
We stood on an unusually wind-free and warm Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay, about a mile from the Google barge, and I struggled to adjust the heads-up display. It sits on a ball joint in the lower right corner of the helmet, unobtrusive and no taller than the breath deflector, but I couldn't see what it was supposed to be showing me.

Skully Helmets founder Marcus Weller, holding a prototype Skully Helmet that sports a heads-up display, rear-view camera, and integrated Bluetooth.

Finally, we realized that the display brightness might have to be adjusted because of the bright sun. Closing the prototype helmet's tinted visor did the trick, and suddenly in the right corner of my field of vision I could see a small display of the world behind me, projected what appeared to be 15 to 20 feet ahead of me.
The goal, he said, is to make the heads-up display appear far enough away so that it requires as minimal an amount of ocular muscle accommodation as possible, but not so far that it appears to be a small TV at the end of a long tunnel.
The rear-view camera was not the final production model, Weller later told me. The one on the helmet I was testing offered up a view of around 75 to 80 degrees. The final production will give riders a full 180 degree view, said Weller.
In the video above, you can see me turning my head to check my side mirror. That won't be eliminated with the final Skully, but you'll have to do it a lot less.
Surprisingly, even in its rough prototype state, the foundational promise of the Skully helmet holds fast. A gentle flick of your eyes downward and you can check your surroundings for incoming vehicles. That quick shifting of the eyes down and up again takes less time than it does to turn your head to the mirror, or even further around.
Right there, that's safety gold. To be able to see what's around you without taking your eyes off of the road in front of you is an incredible boon to bikers.
"It's like being surrounded by ninjas," said Weller. "You know one of them is going to attack you, but you don't know which one. Imagine you can keep your eyes on them right in your periphery while looking forward."
While it may seem that attempting to see in front of yourself and behind yourself at the same time while avoiding becoming street sushi is a task too dangerous for the human brain, it worked impressively well. The display was not distracting, as long as I treated it like a conventional side mirror.
"What's the opposite of distracting is taking all that information [from the rear-view camera] and putting it up in one place, so that I can consume that information at a rate that was physically impossible before," said Weller.

The key to the Skully helmet is the heads-up display, which looks large here but is actually unobtrusive from inside the helmet.

 

The lower right corner was an intentional placement for the heads-up display. Bikers already look there when checking their side mirrors, Weller said, and he explained that the easiest way to get people comfortable with the helmet was to make it as familiar as possible.
"We wanted natural familiarity," he said. "Familiarity breeds liking. The more you're exposed to something, the more you like it."
That familiarity, he said, would come from exploiting actions riders already make. "You capitalize on behaviors you know that people have, you don't create new ones." Otherwise, Weller added, "you have so many user adoption and safety issues."
The integrated rear-view camera and display would probably be enough for many riders, but the Skully P1 has more features.
The helmet comes with onboard GPS, so that if you don't have a smartphone you can still get directions. Directional arrows appeared in my display with a soft glow, and then went away in the same manner. Weller said that the company's research showed that abrupt pop ups would distract the rider, so they went with more gentle visual notifications.

 

 

This mock-up of what riding with a Skully will look like. The main view takes up most of your field of vision, while the heads-up display sits out of the way in the lower-right corner. The reality of using it was closer to this than you'd expect for a prototype.

(Credit: Skully Helmets)

However, the full GPS system was not yet functional. One of the difficult design challenges for the GPS, Weller said, is to create a display and rider experience where they're given just the right information at just the right time. Missing a turn in a motorcycle can be a deadly error. A planned but not active Wi-Fi component will allow people without smartphones to update and synchronize their maps, otherwise you'll be able to do it on the fly with your phone.
The Bluetooth phone pairing and built-in audio speakers were functional, and streamed music from the phone in my pocket to the helmet in crisp, clear sound. The planned microphone, which will give the rider voice control over the helmet and allow for phone calls, was not yet built into the model I tested.
Listening to music while riding is one thing, but having an occasional voice tell you when to turn has the potential to be another high-risk riding activity. Unfortunately, even though the speakers were working, the GPS's audio component demonstrated in the Skully promotional video was not yet operational.
Also planned but not available to me was a remote control for the handlebars.

CNET's Seth Rosenblatt tests an early, pre-market prototype of the Skully Helmet.

 

 

The Skully helmet is designed to be a premium product costing somewhere "north of $1,000, but not obscene," said Weller. It'll have a nine-hour battery life, to outlast a full day's worth of riding.
Weller and company are looking at new kinds of fabric for the helmet's insides, and ways to charge the battery while on the go. Weller is aiming for an ideal weight toward the lower end of the helmet range, meaning closer to three pounds rather than five.
Demand is much higher than Weller expected, so while he'd like to have it available for the 2014 riding season in the spring, he's not sure his company can hit that production target.
Just as there are always more variables when you go out for a ride than you can actually plan for, any number of problems could crash the Skully project. But assuming that Weller and his team continue to exert the same kind of attention to safety and detail that has taken them this far, the Skully helmet could be the first of a revolutionizing wave of heads-up display technologies that reach far beyond mere motorcycle tech.