Robots Are Coming to Your Home; Microsoft to Add Reverse Image Search to Photos App: A Mushroom Learns to Crawl; Microsoft Releases Major Update to Sticky Notes… and more!
Every day we scan the tech world for interesting news in the world of technology and sometimes from outside the world of technology. Every Wednesday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Wednesday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!
Humanoid Robots Head to Homes: Meet the NEO Beta
We break down everything we know about 1X’s new humanoid robot designed for homes, the NEO Beta.
Humanoid robots are heading for the home. OpenAI-backed robotics company 1X just dropped a short and sweet teaser video for their new humanoid robot, Neo Beta.
In the video, the robot hands a person a bag and poses with them for a picture. While this is the first video 1X has shared of Neo, a hologram of the robot could be seen behind Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as he announced Project GR00T, Nvidia’s platform for the development of humanoid robots.
1X’s decision to show Neo with its arm around a person indicates how 1X may be hoping to differentiate itself from the competition. Most other robotics companies tend to show interaction with humans primarily to test robustness or to show how humans and robots can work together. 1X seems to be selling a kind of close and casual encounter that we haven’t seen a lot in the humanoid robotics space…
Curious about what’s in your photos, Windows 11 users?
Soon you’ll be able to investigate with Bing reverse image search right from the Photos app
Microsoft’s Photos app in Windows 11 is getting a “Visual Search with Bing” feature, which will enable you to search for images similar to whatever pictures you’re viewing.
The updated version of the Photos app also brings improved navigation for your photo gallery, quick access to image editing capabilities, and some tweaks to make Photos a better user experience overall.
Photos is the default app for viewing and organizing pictures in Windows and this update brings some long-awaited features to it. While you’re looking at a picture and feel a tinge of curiosity about something in it, you can use Visual Search with Bing to perform an instant reverse image search, which will prompt Bing to scour the internet for similar images and any information that might be relevant to the image you’re looking up (similar to Google’s reverse image search).
A similar feature already exists in the Snipping Tool app, which enables you to do this after you take a screenshot…
Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body
Biohybrid machine ushers new era of robotics, scientists say
Engineers have created a new type of robot that places living fungi behind the controls.
The biohybrid robot uses electrical signals from an edible type of mushroom called a king trumpet in order to move around and sense its environment.
Developed by an interdisciplinary team from Cornell University in the US and Florence University in Italy, the machine could herald a new era of living robotics.
“Living systems respond to touch, they respond to light, they respond to heat, they respond to even some unknowns, like signals,” said Anand Mishra, a research associate in the Organic Robotics Lab at Cornell.
“That’s why we think, OK, if you wanted to build future robots, how can they work in an unexpected environment? We can leverage these living systems, and any unknown input comes in, the robot will respond to that.”
Different inputs, such as ultraviolet light, resulted in different outcomes for the way the robot moved. A video of one of the mushroom-controlled robots shows it moving slowly across a surface by pumping its robotic legs. Another biohybrid robot uses a wheeled system in order to move around.
Combining this mobility with the fungi’s ability to sense chemical and biological signals…
Microsoft updates new Sticky Notes with always-on-top and other features
Microsoft recently released the revamped Sticky Notes app for all users on the Stable Channel. Now, the company has announced a feature update with a bunch of quality-of-life improvements and new features, such as always-on-top support and more. Microsoft says the latest update is the result of the “incredible feedback” it has received from users since the launch.
New features in the latest version of Sticky Notes include the ability to launch the app from the Start menu or Windows Search. You can pin its icon to the taskbar or Start menu and open it like any other application on your computer.
Also, the new Sticky Notes app now supports always-on-top, which means you can pin a note and make it stay on top of any other application for a better multitasking and note-taking experience. To do so, click the pin icon next to the close and minimize buttons.
Finally, there is the “Copy Note” feature. As the name suggests, it allows you to copy the content of a particular note, including images and text…
I never knew I needed this Windows 11 feature until Microsoft snuck it into testing
Pinning apps to the Windows 11 Taskbar could soon be a bit easier.
Microsoft is working on a feature that allows you to drag an app from Windows Search into the Taskbar to pin that app. It’s already possible to drag an item to the Taskbar to pin that app, but doing so requires dragging the app from the Pinned section of Start or from the Start menu’s all apps list.
X (formerly Twitter) user phantomofearth discovered the change and shared a video of the feature in action. The most recent Canary build of Windows 11 includes the option. The feature is also rolling out to the Dev and Beta channels. The change is an undocumented one, so it may be a while before it ships to Windows 11. Microsoft could also decide against ever rolling it out.
Return of the Taskbar
If you aren’t a Windows Insider and can’t wait to try new Taskbar features, you’re still in luck. Windows 11 version 24H2, which is now available, includes several changes to the Taskbar and Start menu. For example, after using the “Windows key + T” keyboard shortcut, you can now type a letter on your keyboard to jump to an app that starts with that same letter…
Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope these articles were informative, interesting, fun, and helpful. Darcy & TC
