Property tax confusion pokes Facebook in Oregon (AP) : Technet

Property tax confusion pokes Facebook in Oregon (AP)
Can Kodak rescue itself via a patent bonanza? (AP)
Ore. senator, others cited by digital-rights group (AP)
Rumors of a larger, 15″ MacBook Air continue to pile up (Yahoo! News)
TV time keeps toddlers’ brains active, but face-to-face interactions are still best (Yahoo! News)
The Last Words of Steve Jobs (Mashable)
UK conference seeks cooperation on cyberspace (Reuters)
Best Buy To Sell HP TouchPad for $149, with Strings (NewsFactor)
DirecTV to continue airing Fox shows (Reuters)
Latest update to Android app Remember the Milk makes it better than ever (Appolicious)
Homeland Security reviews social media guidelines (AP)
US home video spending up for 1st time since 2008 (AP)
Most smartphone users want 4G but don’t have much info about it (Appolicious)
The man making Terminator vision real: Vuzix CEO Paul Travers talks future display tech (Digital Trends)
User-generated Life in a Day movie comes to YouTube (Digital Trends)
How to make a great Halloween costume with two iPad 2s (and some fake blood) (Digital Trends)
Siri might give Apple a serious lead over Google (Appolicious)
Microsoft Adds Social Collaboration to Dynamics CRM (NewsFactor)

Property tax confusion pokes Facebook in Oregon (AP)

Posted: 31 Oct 2011 11:47 AM PDT

By JONATHAN J. COOPER, Associated Press Jonathan J. Cooper, Associated Press – Mon Oct 31, 2:47 pm ET

SALEM, Ore. – The promise of lucrative tax breaks helped persuade Facebook to build a data center in one of Oregon's most economically depressed counties. Now, the state and the company are in a dispute over how much Facebook may owe in property taxes, and the social networking giant fears it could be taxed on intangible assets like the value of its powerful brand.

Facebook has said the state's action has the potential to rewrite an economic development deal it cut with Crook County, but not even state tax officials seem to know for sure whether the company is overreacting or it's truly facing a tax surprise.

Facebook chose Prineville in central Oregon as the site of its first company-owned data center, where a collection of servers stores and transmits photos, links and status updates for many of the social networking service's 800 million users. The facility employs 55 people and expansion plans are already in the works.

Such "server farms" are popping up around the world to facilitate a voracious appetite for high-bandwidth applications like streaming video and cloud-based computing.

Facebook chose Prineville based in part on the tax breaks, but also because of the cool and dry high-desert climate that helps reduce the amount of energy needed to cool rows of humming computers.

The company this week announced plans to build its first data center outside the U.S. in Sweden near the Arctic Circle. It's also expanding a facility in North Carolina. Google Inc. last month opened a data center in Oklahoma, and Microsoft Corp. recently announced it will expand a facility in Iowa.

Many of the projects have benefited from tax incentives offered by local governments eager to lure high-paying jobs.

Officials in Crook County, where unemployment reached a high of 18.7 percent in June 2009 and still sits above 15 percent, hoped Facebook's decision to build in Prineville would help incubate a new industry for a region decimated economically by the decline of Oregon's timber industry.

Under its agreement with local officials, Facebook built its data center in a rural enterprise zone, allowing the Palo Alto, Calif., company to pay property taxes only on its land, not on its buildings and other assets, for 15 years.

Confusion arose when the state Department of Revenue asserted that Facebook is a utility company because it's involved in the communications business, and its taxes should therefore be assessed by the state under a different section of the tax code.

Oregon lumps Facebook with 75 other corporations classified as cable and Internet companies. Many of them are television and Internet access providers, but the list includes technology companies including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo Inc. and AOL Inc.

State officials say their decision doesn't change Facebook's tax bill — about $26,000 this year — and the money still goes to local governments in Crook County. But Facebook is concerned that the state will someday try to tax the company based on the value of its intangible assets, perhaps including computer files, patents, its labor force and goodwill.

The company says state tax officials sent a letter in August saying, in part, that Oregon law requires the Department of Revenue "to assess any property, real and personal, tangible or intangible."

Investments this year have pegged Facebook's total value at as much as $50 billion. Tax officials say the company's Oregon property taxes are calculated based only on the share of its business that is tied to the state.

Last week, tax authorities told the Bend Bulletin newspaper that Facebook would be taxed on $25 million in assets, leading to an annual property tax bill of $390,000. The next day, authorities said they made a mistake and backtracked, pegging Facebook's taxes at $26,000 on $1 million in assets.

After a public kerfuffle last week, Facebook and state officials have tightened their lips. They say they're researching the complicated tax laws involved and won't have more to say until they wade through them.

"We are looking forward to receiving further clarification as to the Department of Revenue's policies, so that the data center industry in Central Oregon can move forward," Facebook said in a statement.

The dispute has concerned Roger Lee, director of Economic Development for Central Oregon, who said murkiness surrounding taxation makes companies nervous.

"Companies want some type of certainty to be able to proceed in whatever they're doing," Lee said. "This provides a great deal of uncertainty and ambiguity."

People involved say it's unclear what a final agreement might look like, but it could involve new legislation next year, a definitive legal opinion from the state Department of Justice, or litigation in tax court. The dispute has risen to the governor's office, where aides have tried to intervene.

"We are researching the issues to be able to provide clarity to all parties," said Tim Raphael, a spokesman for Gov. John Kitzhaber.

Can Kodak rescue itself via a patent bonanza? (AP)

Posted: 31 Oct 2011 10:14 AM PDT

By BEN DOBBIN, AP Business Writer Ben Dobbin, Ap Business Writer – Mon Oct 31, 1:14 pm ET

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Picture this: Kodak — the company that invented the first digital camera in 1975, and developed the photo technology inside most cellphones and digital devices — is in the midst of the worst crisis in its 131-year history.

Now, caught between ruin and revival, Eastman Kodak Co. is reaching ever more deeply into its intellectual treasure chest, betting that a big cash infusion from the sale of 1,100 digital-imaging inventions will see it through a transition that has raised the specter of bankruptcy.

Kodak popularized photography over a century ago. It marketed the world's first flexible roll film in 1888 and transformed picture-taking into a mass commodity with the $1 Brownie camera in 1900. But for too long the world's biggest film manufacturer stayed firmly focused on its 20th-century cash cow, and failed to capitalize quickly on its new-wave know-how in digital photography.

As a result, Kodak has been playing catch-up. Pummeled by Wall Street over its dwindling cash reserves — and its stumbling attempts to reinvent itself as a profitable player in digital imaging and printing — Kodak has been hawking the digital patents since July. Many financial analysts foresee the portfolio fetching $2 billion to $3 billion.

But others think Kodak can haul in far more than that — and carry it off within a few months. That's because patents have become highly valuable to digital device makers who want to protect themselves from intellectual property lawsuits. In July, an alliance made up of Apple and Microsoft purchased a raft of patents from Nortel Networks for $4.5 billion. A month later, Google bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, in part, to gain hold of the company's 17,000 patents.

"The size of the (Kodak) deal could blow your socks off," predicts Los Angeles money manager Ken Luskin, whose Intrinsic Value Asset Management owns 3.8 million Kodak shares.

"It's pocket change for Google and Apple to go pay $3-or-$4-or-$5 billion for these patents," concurs Christopher Marlett, chief executive of MDB Capital, an investment bank based in Santa Monica, Calif., that specializes in intellectual property. "There is an all-out nuclear war right now for global dominance in smartphones, tablets and mobile devices, and Kodak has one of the largest cache of weapons sitting there." Marlett says he owns Kodak stock, but wouldn't disclose how much.

Even a hefty return, skeptics counter, won't solve Kodak's struggle to close out a nearly decade-long transformation and return to profitability in 2012 after running up losses in six of the last seven years.

"All the extra cash does is give you a lifeline for a short period. And then, poof, you're back in the same position without the assets to sell," says analyst Shannon Cross of Cross Research in Livingston, N.J. "If you're burning cash and not finding a way to generate recurring earnings, it doesn't matter."

Kodak's grim financial picture should become clearer when it reports third-quarter results Thursday.

Agitated investors will likely focus on the company's latest borrowing activities and cash woes — it had $957 million in cash in June, down from $1.6 billion in January. They will also want to know what kind of progress Kodak made in the July-September period in building up a high-margin ink business to replace shriveling film sales.

Kodak has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into new lines of inkjet printers that are finally on the verge of turning a profit. Home photo printers, high-speed commercial inkjet presses, workflow software and packaging are viewed as the company's new core. Kodak projects that sales from those four businesses will double to nearly $2 billion in revenue in 2013, accounting for 25 percent of all sales.

In the meantime, Kodak needs to tap other sources of revenue before those areas have time to pay off — and mining its inventions has become indispensable.

Kodak's chief executive, Antonio Perez, has signed confidentiality agreements with potential buyers but hasn't given a time frame for a deal. The patents for capturing, storing, organizing, editing and sharing digital images do not apply to the four core businesses, Kodak spokesman Gerard Meuchner says.

"One thing I would stress is: It is our intention to retain a license to any of the intellectual property we sell," Meuchner says. "It's like you sell the property but still get to live in the house."

A sale represents a sharp tactical shift. Kodak picked up just $27 million in patent-licensing fees in the first half of 2011 after amassing nearly $2 billion in the previous three years.

In the heated environment for patents, "it makes more sense for us to sell the portfolio than it does to license it company by company, which takes lots of time and expense and can involve litigation," Meuchner says.

Michael Fitzgerald, chief executive of Next Techs Technologies, a patent buying-and-selling intermediary in Houston, says that while the portfolio is valuable, "I just don't view it necessarily as a `strategic' acquisition that multiple players will fall all over themselves on."

Investor fears sent Kodak stock tumbling to an all-time closing low of 78 cents a share on Sept. 30 after it hired Jones Day, a major restructuring law firm, as an adviser. Kodak insisted it had no intention of filing for bankruptcy protection.

Kodak is also involved in a royalty dispute with iPhone behemoth Apple and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. The case centers on a 2001 patent now on the auction block — a method that enables a camera to preview low-resolution versions of a moving image while recording still images at higher resolutions.

The 21-month-old battle before the U.S. International Trade Commission, a trade-dispute arbiter in Washington, D.C., was due to be revisited on Monday, but was recently shelved until December 30.

Chief Executive Antonio Perez thinks a favorable ruling could enable Kodak to draw up to $1 billion in fees from its deep-pocketed rivals. In 2009, the commission ruled that South Korean mobile phone makers Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics infringed the same patent, resulting in $964 million in payouts.

Ore. senator, others cited by digital-rights group (AP)

Posted: 31 Oct 2011 04:20 PM PDT

– Mon Oct 31, 7:20 pm ET

NEW YORK – An Oregon senator who was behind a 1996 federal law that has made content-sharing services such as YouTube and Facebook possible is among three recipients of Pioneer Awards from a leading digital-rights group.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., was co-author of a law that protects online service providers from legal liability for content produced by their users. That means Google can let users freely post video on YouTube, and Facebook can let users write status updates and share links without worry they would be sued for defamation and other issues. In such cases, any liability would rest with the user who posted the item.

In announcing the award, the Electronic Frontier Foundation also credits Wyden with recent efforts to block legislation deemed harmful to free speech and with proposing legislation to define when and how government and private parties can access location information in cellphones and other electronic devices.

Other recipients of the award were:

• Ian Goldberg, a University of Waterloo professor credited with exposing design weaknesses in encryption systems used to protect cellphone conversations and Wi-Fi traffic, resulting in improvements to the systems.

• Nawaat.org, a blog operated by four Tunisians and credited with spreading information on social and political unrest there.

"These Pioneer Award winners are all working to make sure that technology protects freedom instead of curtailing it," EFF Executive Director Shari Steele said.

The EFF will give the awards at a Nov. 15 ceremony in San Francisco. The award does not carry a cash prize.

Rumors of a larger, 15″ MacBook Air continue to pile up (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 31 Oct 2011 06:33 PM PDT

TV time keeps toddlers’ brains active, but face-to-face interactions are still best (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 31 Oct 2011 06:18 PM PDT

The Last Words of Steve Jobs (Mashable)

Posted: 30 Oct 2011 09:36 AM PDT

Charlie White Charlie White – Sun Oct 30, 12:36 pm ET

Steve Jobs's biological sister, Mona Simpson, wrote a moving and highly personal eulogy for a private funeral service for the fallen tech titan that took place a few days after his death in early October. An acclaimed novelist, she delivered a beautifully written description of Steve Jobs's life, illness and death. She said his last words before he slipped into unconsciousness for the last time were, "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow."

[More from Mashable: 7 Creative Tributes to Steve Jobs]

Read "A Sister's Eulogy for Steve Jobs," Mona Simpson's moving tribute to her brother, published in Sunday's New York Times.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

UK conference seeks cooperation on cyberspace (Reuters)

Posted: 31 Oct 2011 08:04 PM PDT

By Adrian Croft Adrian Croft – 59 mins ago

LONDON (Reuters) – Ministers, tech executives and Internet activists from around the world gather in London on Tuesday to discuss how to tackle security threats and crime on the Internet without stifling economic opportunities or freedom of speech.

The London Conference on Cyberspace will look at ways to increase international cooperation in addressing issues raised by the rapid expansion of the Internet, as fast-growing economies are increasingly agitating for governments to have a bigger say in its regulation.

"How to ensure we can all reap the benefits of a safe and secure cyberspace for generations to come is one of the greatest challenges we face," British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who is chairing the meeting, said.

"This needs to be a collective endeavor, involving all those who have a stake in cyberspace."

Representatives from China, Russia and India are expected at the conference as well as tech industry figures such as Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, and Joanna Shields, a senior executive of Facebook. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton canceled her trip because of her mother's ill health.

No immediate agreement is expected to emerge from the two-day conference, but British officials hope it will set an agenda for future discussions.

A closed session of the conference will deal with the aspect of the Internet's rise that has seized most attention -- threats to international security.

The last year has seen a dramatic rise in reported cyber attacks often linked to governments, from apparent attempts at data theft at the International Monetary Fund and elsewhere, often blamed on China, to the Stuxnet computer worm attack on Iran's nuclear program linked to Israel and the United States.

CYBER ATTACKS

On the eve of the conference, the head of Britain's communications spy agency said British government and industry computer systems were facing a "disturbing" number of cyber attacks, including a serious assault on the Foreign Office's network.

While Western states worry about rampant intellectual property theft and hacking, authoritarian governments such as China and Russia are alarmed at the role the Internet and social media played in the protests that have swept the Arab world this year.

Fast-growing emerging economies have been seeking more say in how the online realm is policed, worrying campaigners for a loosely regulated Internet who see a risk to web freedom.

In September, China, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan proposed to the United Nations a global code of conduct including the principle that "policy authority for Internet-related public issues is the sovereign right of states."

While international security and freedom of speech are hugely complex issues, an area where there could be more prospect of international agreement soon could be cooperation to tackle conventional crime and child pornography.

Experts said the broad agenda of the London conference carried the risk it would be thin in achievement.

"At best you're going to see some milk and toast statements that are going to satisfy everybody and satisfy nobody. The big question is: Who will govern cyberspace, who will be responsible for making the rules?" said Rafal Rohozinski, chief executive of Canadian security consultancy the SecDev Group.

But John Bassett, a former senior official at Britain's GCHQ signals intelligence agency and now a senior fellow at London's Royal United Services Institute thinktank, said a "meeting of minds" was much more important than diplomatic agreements at this stage.

"If we find enough ground to start a dialogue between governments and other players, that would be an excellent result," he said.

(Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan, Peter Apps, Michael Holden)

Best Buy To Sell HP TouchPad for $149, with Strings (NewsFactor)

Posted: 31 Oct 2011 01:55 PM PDT

Jennifer LeClaire, newsfactor.com Jennifer Leclaire, newsfactor.com – Mon Oct 31, 4:55 pm ET

After the fire sale that saw Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad tablet sell out for $99 in August, the device is making its way to Best Buy store shelves once again. Best Buy will begin selling the TouchPad online Tuesday and in stores Friday.

The difference is, the discount isn't as deep this time around and it comes with a string attached. Best Buy is selling a 32 GB TouchPad for $149 -- but consumers have to buy an HP or Compaq notebook or desktop PC in order to get the deal.

Consumers who just want the TouchPad will pay $599.99. Best Buy warned that quantities would be limited. HP is not selling the tablet on its own Web site.

Revitalizing PC Business

"HP is trying to get people to start buying its computers again because everybody stopped," said Michael Disabato, managing vice president of network and telecom at Gartner.

Enterprises in particular were hesitant to purchase HP or Compaq machines because HP was considering spinning off or selling its PC business. Enterprises were concerned about buying into machines for which the company may or may not provide support. But news emerged late last week that HP had decided to hold on to its Personal Systems Group.

"HP objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG. It's clear after our analysis that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees," said Meg Whitman, the new HP president and CEO. "HP is committed to PSG, and together we are stronger."

A strategic review involved subject-matter experts from across the businesses and functions. Beyond the contributions the PC unit makes to HP's solutions portfolio and overall brand value, the study showed that the cost to recreate these in a standalone company outweighed any benefits of separation. HP is still the leading manufacturer of personal computers globally, with revenues totaling $40.7 billion in 2010.

Where Are the Apps?

The TouchPad, however, is still on the chopping block. The TouchPad seemed doomed from the beginning. Early reviews of the product, which debuted on July 1, were mixed. Some said HP released the TouchPad too early. Others called its performance sluggish. Still others said there weren't enough apps in HP's app store to compete.

"I'll still ask the question, where are the apps?" Disabato asked. "Samsung's Galaxy Tab is the only tablet that has offered any real competition for the iPad, which is why I think Apple tried to kill it off."

On the upside, the multitasking was a hit, the webOS implementation is finding praise, and the hardware is getting a nod. It didn't sell well at $499, but at $99 it seemed like a basement bargain to tens of thousands. It remains to be seen how well the TouchPad will sell with the PC strings attached, especially with Research In Motion's offer of buy two, get one free for the BlackBerry PlayBook.

DirecTV to continue airing Fox shows (Reuters)

Posted: 31 Oct 2011 05:55 PM PDT

– Mon Oct 31, 8:55 pm ET

(Reuters) – DirecTV Group, the largest U.S. satellite TV provider, said on Monday it will continue carrying all shows by Fox Networks, a week after a dispute broke out between the two over carriage fees.

Fox, which is owned by News Corp, had asked DirecTV's customers to pay 40 percent more for the same channels they already received, DirecTV said on October 21, and this could have led to DirecTV discontinuing all Fox channels from November 1.

"We both know the past ten days have been challenging, but we're pleased that both sides could eventually come together to ensure our viewers continue to enjoy Fox programing," the companies said in a statement.

(Reporting by Gowri Jayakumar in Bangalore; Editing by Gary Hill)

Latest update to Android app Remember the Milk makes it better than ever (Appolicious)

Posted: 31 Oct 2011 01:30 PM PDT

Homeland Security reviews social media guidelines (AP)

Posted: 31 Oct 2011 08:58 PM PDT

By P. SOLOMON BANDA, Associated Press P. Solomon Banda, Associated Press – 5 mins ago

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – The wave of uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East that have overturned three governments in the past year have prompted the U.S. government to begin developing guidelines for culling intelligence from social media networks, a top Homeland Security official said Monday.

Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Caryn Wagner said the use of such technology in uprisings that started in December in Tunisia shocked some officials into attention and prompted questions of whether the U.S. needs to do a better job of monitoring domestic social networking activity.

"We're still trying to figure out how you use things like Twitter as a source," she said. "How do you establish trends and how do you then capture that in an intelligence product?"

Wagner said the department is establishing guidelines on gleaning information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook for law enforcement purposes. Wagner says those protocols are being developed under strict laws meant to prevent spying on U.S. citizens and protect privacy, including rules dictating the length of time the information can be stored and differences between domestic and international surveillance.

Wagner said the Homeland Security department, established after the 9/11 attacks, is not actively monitoring any social networks. But when the department receives information about a potential threat, contractors are then asked to look for certain references within "open source" information, which is available to anyone on the Internet.

The challenge, she said, is to develop guidelines for collecting and analyzing information so that it provides law enforcement officials with meaningful intelligence.

"I can post anything on Facebook, is that valid? If 20 people are tweeting the same thing, then maybe that is valid," she said. "There are just a lot of questions that we are sort of struggling with because it's a newly emerging (issue)."

Wagner was in Colorado Springs to deliver a speech at the National Symposium on Homeland Security and Defense, a conference that included defense contractors and the military.

Aside from discussing the use of technology in unrest that has led to regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, she delivered a speech that addressed the way the department operates, saying that its crucial elements include a nationwide network of 72 fusion centers that gather and analyze reports of suspicious activity, a new National Terrorism Advisory System that replaces the color coded alert system with one that provides more information about a threat, and a "See Something, Say Something" campaign that encourages citizens to report suspicious activity.

She also said another key program involves training hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers across the country in filling out suspicious activity reports.

US home video spending up for 1st time since 2008 (AP)

Posted: 31 Oct 2011 03:37 PM PDT

By RYAN NAKASHIMA, AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima, Ap Business Writer – Mon Oct 31, 6:37 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – Americans' spending on home videos has finally emerged from the recession — helped by more purchases of higher-priced Blu-ray discs and greater outlays on cut-rate rentals from Netflix and Redbox.

For the three months through September, home movie spending rose nearly 5 percent from a year earlier to $3.9 billion, the first increase since early 2008, according to industry organization, The Digital Entertainment Group.

Buying digital copies of movies and ordering them from set-top box video-on-demand services also rose.

People bought fewer DVDs and made fewer trips to brick-and-mortar video rental stores, cutting into the gains.

For the year overall spending is down about 2 percent at $12.3 billion.

The industry is struggling to cope with a weak economic recovery and the gradual wane of the DVD era. The digital discs, once revolutionary for their clarity and durability, were shown the exit once Blu-ray became the industry's high-definition standard in 2008. Compared to a year ago, DVD sales dropped by 15 percent, or about $230 million, to $1.32 billion.

Blu-ray disc sales rose by about $156 million, to $423 million. That didn't make up for the DVD drop, even with the help of the popular re-release of the six "Star Wars" movies on Blu-ray, which racked up $38 million in North America in its first week of sales in late September.

There's still room for Blu-ray to grow. Although Blu-ray player households rose by 52 percent to 33.5 million, that's still only about a third of the TV-owning homes in the U.S.

Brick-and-mortar store rentals fell by $142 million to $353 million, but they were more than replaced by a $152 million gain in new delivery methods, such as online streaming, video-on-demand, mail-order subscriptions and cheap rentals from kiosks. Revenue from those rental methods rose to $1.70 billion. Kiosk rentals made up more than half of those gains.

Netflix Inc.'s price hike to customers on Sept. 1 may have bolstered the numbers, and Redbox said it was raising its nightly DVD rental fee to $1.20 from $1, which will likely add to the current quarter's totals.

The smallest segment remains digital purchases of movies, which rose by about $15 million to $136 million. Movie studios have been concerned that people aren't purchasing digital movies because they are worried the files won't be easily transferable to various devices, a concern it hopes to ease with its UltraViolet view-anywhere standard, which Warner Bros. launched this month.

Most smartphone users want 4G but don’t have much info about it (Appolicious)

Posted: 31 Oct 2011 12:15 PM PDT

The man making Terminator vision real: Vuzix CEO Paul Travers talks future display tech (Digital Trends)

Posted: 31 Oct 2011 01:30 PM PDT

Andrew Couts Andrew Couts – Mon Oct 31, 4:30 pm ET

Last week, video eyewear maker Vuzix announced (pdf) that it has partnered with cell phone maker Nokia to produce the next generation of see-through near-eye display (NED) glasses. The glasses will use Exit Pupil Expanding (EPE) optics technology developed by both Vuzix and Nokia.

Vuzix, which has been developing display technologies for the military since 1997, credits itself with creating the consumer video eyewear market, which it did in 2005 with the release of the V920 glasses.

The V920s and other Vuzix products allow users to view media on a pair of glasses, which make it look as though they are watching a big-screen television. Unfortunately, the less-than-stylish look, high cost and relatively cumbersome feel of the Vuzix glasses have made a full-on breakthrough into the mainstream difficult.

After learning about the Vuzix-Nikon deal, which the company says will enable a "new era of innovation" for NEDs, we thought we'd get a bit more info about what remains a potentially game-changing technology. We asked Vuzix founder, president and CEO Paul Travers how the next generation of glasses will shift gears for the company.

Digital Trends: For starters, how would you describe Vuzix's products, and NED systems in general, to someone who has no idea what they are?

Travers: The technology's roots lay in the defense industry, where it is used to drive robots, in night-vision systems, remote video feed access, and wearable displays for laptops. Most of our current consumer customers use our products for mobile video viewing, watching 3D movies and gaming. For the latter, we offer head-tracking technology that literally allows the user to "look around" the game as if they stepped inside.

Recently, Vuzix started shipping a new line of video eyewear that enables augmented reality. These glasses are transparent and have cameras so the user can see computer graphics overlaid in the real world.

What exactly is Nokia's EPE technology, and how does it work?

The Nokia optics are thin plastic plates that have 300-micron gratings built into the surface that direct video from a small input grating through the plate to a large output grating that you look through to see the real world and the injected video. These optics are as thin as reading glasses, and when paired with a Vuzix display engine, will finally allow a form factor that truly looks like sunglasses. It is the culmination of years of technology development and finally close to becoming a reality.

How will the integration of Nokia's EPE technology change Vuzix's NED systems?

Our current technology is based on conventional refractive and reflective optics and micro-displays that were designed for camera view finders. This technology, both the EPE optics and the Vuzix display engine, changes everything. From form factors, to price to power consumption, to resolution — all the things needed to finally realize the consumer's vision.

How would you describe the potential users experience of a pair of Nokia-enhanced NED glasses?

Look at all the cool apps that do AR on a phone, and now imagine those experiences in your glasses connecting the web and the world like never before.

Will Nokia-powered Vuzix glasses be used with other Nokia products? If so, how? Will we be able to see our phone screens on our glasses?

One of the biggest applications will be around the mobile phone. All the major suppliers have GPS-enabled apps that are AR enabled just waiting for the right glasses to deliver the experience. The Nokia Vuzix relationship will deliver for these experiences in your sunglasses.

What are some of the challenges of breaking NED into the mainstream? And how do you expect the addition of Nokia's technology to make that breakthrough less difficult?

Current products are bulky, expensive, and lower resolution. This relationship changes all of that.

Where do you see NED systems going in the next 10 years? How "sci-fi" will it get in that time?

They will be part of every aspect of life. From a visit to the doctor, to interacting with game characters, to stepping into a meeting with people from three different continents right in your home office.

When will customers be able to purchase Nokia-enhanced NED glasses?

We will be shipping into the defense markets in Q1 of next year. Stay tuned for the consumer markets.

[Pictured: Vuzix Wrap]

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends