Hardware that tracks your head, eyes and hands will make the follow up to Second Life very different to the pioneering virtual world.
The founder of once-popular virtual world Second Life, Philip Rosedale, is working on a new 3D digital world that looks like it will be operated using gestures and body-tracking hardware. Rosedale declined to talk about his new company, called High Fidelity, just yet. But videos and other material posted online by the company suggest it is working on an impressively immersive virtual reality experience where you control an avatar using head and hand movements.
Calling all hardware hackers: the Raspberry Pi camera module has gone on sale online via Pi suppliers including RS Components and Premier Farnell/Element14, providing the eye required for all those computer vision projects you had in mind for Pi. The module actually went on sale yesterday and is currently temporarily out of stock on RS’ website. The module costs between £17 & £19 or around $ 25.
At an event in San Francisco at Blue Bottle Coffee, Square debuted a stand built specifically for the iPad, which turns the device into a card-swiping register. 
We often give short shrift to hardware at Disrupt mostly because investors are afraid to look at companies that can’t pivot without trashing 30 days of inventory. No longer. 
With PC laptop shipments projected to decline by 7.3% this year, Windows 8 machines desperately need a shot multiple shots of adrenaline. The Toshiba Kirabook may be just that. The Kirabook is Toshiba’s first entrant in their newly fashioned “Kira” line of luxury ultrabooks. At first glance, you can see that the Kirabook is meticulously designed, and it radiates a Cupertino-esque level of fit and finish. We haven’t seen this kind of quality from Toshiba for a very long time (if ever). That doesn’t mean the Kirabook offers anything new in terms of design. There are still shades of the Macbook Air to be found here and there, as is the case with all top of the line Windows ultrabooks. The Kirabook has a smaller profile than the Macbook Air, but somehow manages to include a retina-quality 2560×1440 WQHD touchscreen display. Although I didn’t get an opportunity to compare it side by side with the retina Macbook Pro, or for that matter the Chromebook Pixel, but it’ll definitely be one of the best laptop displays out in the market once it’s released. The display is most certainly the Kirabook’s marquee feature and Toshiba’s primary justification for its slightly onerous pricing, which I’ll get to in just a moment. Inside the Kirabook, you’ll find an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. The Kirabook is also bundled with full versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, as well as a complimentary two year service and support package that Toshiba claims to be on par with Applecare. At least on a spec level, the Kirabook lives up to its “luxury” label. But that also means it’s saddled with a luxuriously high price. The non-touch Kirabook with Core i5 starts at $ 1,599. It gets a little crazy from there. The touchscreen Kirabook with Core i5 goes for $ 1,789, while the top of the line touchscreen Kirabook, with Core i7 and Windows Pro, goes for a whopping $ 1,999. That kind of pricing blows its PC and Apple counterparts out of the water. For comparison’s sake, the 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro starts at $ 1,499, albeit with a smaller 128GB SSD. The Lenovo Thinkpad x1 Carbon starts at $ 1,187, while the touchscreen equipped model starts at $ 1,319. The Asus Zenbook Prime, with a touchscreen and a nearly retina quality display, is currently retailing for $ 1,253 on Amazon. Toshiba representatives told
Amazon just announced the launch of CloudHSM, a new service that provides Amazon Web Services users who need to meet corporate, contractual and regulatory compliance requirements for data security a way to do so by using a dedicated Hardware Security Module (the ‘HSM’ in CloudHSM) within the Amazon cloud. Until now, Amazon argues, the only option for many companies that use its cloud services was to store their most sensitive data – or the encryption keys to it – in their own on-premise data centers. This, of course, made it hard for these companies to fully migrate their applications to the cloud. The new service, Amazon writes, can be used to support “a variety of use cases and applications, such as database encryption, Digital Rights Management (DRM), and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) including authentication and authorization, document signing, and transaction processing.” The actual appliances are Luna SA modules from SafeNet, Inc. The new CloudHSM service uses Amazon’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and the appliances are provisioned inside the user’s VPC with an IP address the user specifies. The service, Amazon says, provides businesses with secure key storage and protects these keys with “tamper-resistant HSM appliances that are designed to comply with international (Common Criteria EAL4+) and U.S. Government (NIST FIPS 140-2) regulatory standards for cryptographic modules.” Because the HSMs are located close to the user’s EC2 cloud computing instances, network latency should be very low. All of this, however, doesn’t come cheap. The upfront cost to provision a CloudHSM is $ 5,000 and the hourly cost are $ 1.88 per hour, which comes out to $ 1,373 on average per month. For businesses that need this kind of security, that’s probably a small price to pay, but this is clearly not a service that’s geared toward startups that just want to ensure their encryption keys and data are stored safely. The HSM client software can load balance requests across two or more CloudHSMs, though Amazon notes that it can take “several weeks” to provision more than two HSMs.
I love hardware. That’s why I want you guys to bring some of the coolest hardware projects imaginable to 
The Galaxy S IV leaks are coming fast, from a number of sources including the company itself, and this morning brings two in rapid succession. First, as Matt reported earlier, shots depicting the addition of new Smart screen settings from a version of Android 4.2.1 for the Galaxy S III surfaced, and now another source is claiming to have received images of the same thing from a U.S. model Galaxy S IV.
I like to use my SLR, but there are many times when I leave it behind because I’m not sure whether it’ll be able to handle the conditions I plan to be using it in. LA-based hardware startup Outex is trying to make sure that photographers can use their cameras anywhere, without having to fork over north of $ 1,000 for environmental protection gear, and it’s taking to Kickstater to fund the latest piece in its product puzzle.
Master Lock has acquired Toronto-based software-as-a-service enterprise security solution provider Field ID in a deal the terms of which weren’t disclosed. We’ve heard the deal involving the five year-old startup was in the tens of millions, however, and that the company’s angel investors were very pleased with the arrangement. The purchase nets Master Lock an entry into the software market, something it’s been looking for according to Field ID CEO Somen Mondal.
Google’s conference call regarding its quarterly earnings were mostly rehashing of themes we’ve heard before – cross-platform remains a priority. But Google CEO Larry Page had a few words to share about hardware in his own kick-off spiel. Page reiterated what we’ve heard recently about hardware supply levels from the Google Play store, and dropped (it’s a pun, you’ll see why later) a hint around what Motorola is doing at Google in terms of hardware.
HTC had a disappointing year last year, despite early success with the One X and solid hardware releases in general. This year, it looks like it will be kicking things off in style with the launch of a new flagship device, called the HTC M7, a phone rumored for likely launch at MWC in Barcelona next month. The phone was supposedly depicted in a render leaked last week, but no, very different-looking hardware has turned up in photos obtained by Android Police.
True Ventures’ partners 
As work on BlackBerry 10 continues behind closed doors, Waterloo-based RIM is gearing up to make yet another attempt to woo would-be BlackBerry 10 developers to its cause. 
Move over software, the London and Cambridge, U.K.-based accelerator, Springboard, is launching a dedicated program for hardware startups, focusing on the Internet of Things. The new three-month accelerator bootcamp — called Springboard Internet of Things — is backed by program partners ARM, Unilever, Neul and Raspberry Pi.
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