AllThingsD » Philippe Kahn

Philippe Kahn's First Camera Phone Set to Star in Best Buy Super Bowl Ad

Ina Fried — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:43:57 +0000

If you want to learn more about the first camera phone, the Super Bowl could be your chance.

Inventor Philippe Kahn talks about it in a Best Buy ad running in the first quarter. In a promotional video that ties in to the ad, Kahn shows his first photo, of his newborn daughter, and talks about how the technology came to be.

While not the first time a camera had been attached to a phone, Kahn notes his camera phone allowed the modern notion of instant sharing. A video of the ad is publicly posted on YouTube (though unlisted).

These days Kahn is running Fullpower Technologies, which does some motion control stuff demoed back at our D7 conference. Their MotionX software is a popular iPhone navigation app and their technology is also used in devices like Jawbone’s UP and Nike+ GPS.

Since you might be refilling the snack bowl or taking a bio break when the ad airs Sunday, here you go:

Update: Best Buy wrote me to note that this video is not the ad itself, but rather a longer video expanding upon the ad itself. And the ad will appear in the first quarter, not in the third or fourth, as I originally wrote.

Full Video: Fullpower D7 Demo

Beth Callaghan — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:15:44 +0000

In the full demo below, Fullpower CEO Philippe Kahn shows Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher a technology that studies how the body moves as opposed to reacting to it.

The company is developing accelerometer-based hardware and software intended to do for motion and gesture what speech recognition did for speech.

There is also some jogging around the D7 audience–thankfully, not by Kahn, Walt or lazy, lazy BoomTown.

Here is the full video of the Fullpower demo:

[ See post to watch video ]

Fullpower: The Full D7 Demo

Kara Swisher — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:15:30 +0000

Did we have demos of new products at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference?

Oh, yes we did!

First up, legendary entrepreneur Philippe Kahn’s new company, Fullpower, which has developed the innovative MotionX Recognition Engine.

In the full demo below, Kahn shows Walt Mossberg and me a technology that studies how the body moves, as opposed to reacting to it.

The company is developing accelerometer-based hardware and software intended to do for motion and gesture what speech recognition did for speech.

There is also some jogging around the D7 audience–thankfully, not by Kahn, Walt or lazy, lazy BoomTown.

Here is the full video of the Fullpower demo:

[ See post to watch video ]

D7 Video: Fullpower Demo

Beth Callaghan — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:22:13 +0000

Legendary entrepreneur Philippe Kahn’s new company Fullpower has developed the MotionX Recognition Engine, a technology that studies how the body moves as opposed to reacting to it. The company is developing accelerometer-based hardware and software intended to do for motion and gesture what speech recognition did for speech.

[ See post to watch video ]

D7 Tech Demo: Fullpower

John Paczkowski — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:05:51 +0000

Philippe Kahn’s history of entrepreneurship is nearly as old as the PC itself. He developed software for the Micral N, one of the earliest commercial personal computers, back in 1973. As CEO of Borland Software (BORL), he touted himself the “barbarian” of the software industry and embraced that identity by holding one of the first press conferences for his company in a McDonald’s (MCD) in Las Vegas during Comdex. Ousted from Borland in 1995, Kahn went on to found wireless synchronization outfit Starfish Software, which he sold to Motorola (MOT). He followed that up with LightSurf Technologies, a picture-messaging company acquired by Verisign (VRSN) in 2005. Today Philippe Kahn is at D7 as CEO of Fullpower, a company developing accelerometer-based hardware and software.

Session Highlights

[ See post to watch video ]

Live Blog

Walt and Kara welcome Kahn to the stage.
Fullpower, says Kahn, has developed the MotionX Recognition Engine, a technology intended to do for motion and gesture what speech recognition did for speech. “We’ve created a system that studies how you move, as opposed to reacting to it.”
The first demo involves a headset with onboard motion sensing, the MotionX-Headset. “Basically what we’ve done is build a motion-sensing headset,” says Kahn. The headset will differentiate between the sources of motion of its user–if the user is walking or running for example.
Kahn calls a colleague wearing the headset onstage. The colleague demonstrates how calls can be answered by tapping the headset, without using any buttons. Then the colleague begins walking and running around the stage — the technology is able to differentiate between actual user taps and all the other motion.
The device also notices whether its user is walking or running, using the MotionX Recognition Engine and accelerometer to obtain an accurate measurement of distance and speed traveled. The headset tracks the user’s speed and distance, and the user can tap it for spoken updates about his or her progress. The headset automatically turns off when set down, thus saving power, and turns back on when the user picks it up again. Kahn: The same technology used in the headset can be embedded in phones and other devices.
Moving on to the next demo, MotionX-Imaging, the technology demonstrated was full image stabilization using the MotionX Recognition engine and an accelerometer. These were built in to the smartphone. In order to demonstrate this for presentations, every time a picture is taken, the MotionX image stabilization is either applied (“stabilized”) or not applied (“unstabilized”) at random. The pictures are then sorted so you can compare all the regular pictures with the stabilized ones and see the benefit of the technology.