A gadget to change the way we sleep

Technologygeeks

British entrepreneur James Proud, presents a white sphere the size of a tennis ball covered in a criss-cross pattern. “It is beautiful, he says, when asked to describe it. “It doesn’t look like a piece of technology. We wanted to make something people actually want to put on their bedside table.” The device,  Sense called, and the first made by Proud’s San Francisco startup company, Hello, is the latest in the world of sleep tracking devices claimed to help improve the quality of an activity we spend about third of our lives engaged in. It will be available in the UK early in the new year.

Until now, such devices have only tracked movement during sleep – giving an insight into when you toss and turn – but Sense takes things further by connecting that to the environment. Inside are sensors that record sudden noise and measure light, temperature and humidity in the room as well as the levels of particulates like dust and pollen that can affect sleep. Just telling people how they slept doesn’t fix poor sleep, says Proud. “They need to understand why they slept that way.” Sense also records a sleeper’s movement, but not by requiring that they wear any device to bed, as most sleep trackers including Jawbone and Fitbit do. A small round plastic “sleep pill” clips onto the pillow. It contains an accelerometer and gyroscope and communicates with the system wirelessly.

The information that Sense gathers while you are asleep can be reviewed in an app. It includes a rating of sleep quality and a log of the disturbances experienced. If you slept poorly around 2am, Sense can tell you whether that was because of light, outside noise or snoring, for example. Sense allows you to play back the noise disturbances – you can hear whether it was a car alarm or a barking dog that woke you. It automatically identifies snoring. Proud’s team trained the system to recognise the periodic sound by playing YouTube videos of people snoring – though Sense can’t yet distinguish whether it is you or your partner. Over time the device also learns which conditions give you the best night’s rest. It might suggest that you lower the temperature by a few degrees, for example. Waving a hand over the device makes it glow a certain colour, indicating how conducive the room is to sleep.
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Sense also has a “smart alarm”. It tries to rouse sleepers at a point in their sleep cycle that makes waking easier. The sleep pill detects when they begin to naturally stir and assumes they are entering a light sleep stage where they can be woken without that groggy feeling. Sense doesn’t wake you more than about 30 minutes prior to the alarm, says Proud, and it won’t let you sleep past it. Proud, who began coding at nine years old, was born in south London but came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2011 after receiving a fellowship from Silicon Valley billionaire and Facebook’s first investor, Peter Thiel. Each year Thiel pays a small group of teenagers to forgo or quit university and start their own business.

Hello, founded in 2012,is Prouds second company. The first – GigLocator, which he started at school to alert people to live music listings  was sold for an undisclosed sum the same year.

While Sense is not a device of medical , it can give access to information that can help to understand sleep in ways that we are not easily possible before, says Proud. “It’s up to people to use that information as they wish for medical reasons.”

Derk-Jan Dijk, a sleep expert at the University of Surrey, says he is not aware of any sleep trackers that have been scientifically tested against their claims but he believes they can be positive in that they help promote an awareness of the importance of sleep. Though he also warns they may lead some people to worry unnecessarily about their sleep patterns. “People may become too obsessed with the data,” he says.

Hello, which has raised $10.5m in investment, has more than 30,000 pre-orders for Sense from a Kickstarter campaign. The orders will ship in February. Sales, through the company’s website, will also begin in the US in February and in the UK early next year (pre-orders are currently being accepted from the US only). It is priced at $129.

Google reveals sharp rise in requests for removal of political content

Google revealed a sharp rise in requests from governments asking for political content to be removed from the web in its latest transparency report published on Thursday.

From January to June the search giant received 3,846 government requests to remove content from its services – a 68% increase over the second half of 2012.

“Over the past four years, one worrying trend has remained consistent: governments continue to ask us to remove political content. Judges have asked us to remove information that’s critical of them, police departments want us to take down videos or blogs that shine a light on their conduct, and local institutions like town councils don’t want people to be able to find information about their decision-making processes,” Susan Infantino, legal director, said in a blogpost.

“These officials often cite defamation, privacy and even copyright laws in attempts to remove political speech from our services. In this particular reporting period, we received 93 requests to take down government criticism and removed content in response to less than one third of them. Four of the requests were submitted as copyright claims,” she said.

Google reported a large increase in requests from Turkey where it received 1,673 requests from the authorities to remove content, nearly a ten-fold increase over the second half of last year. About two-thirds of the total requests – 1,126 – called for the removal of content related to alleged violations of internet law 5651, which censors online speech.

In Russia Google reported a rise in requests after the introduction of a blacklist law last year. The law aimed to crackdown on criminal websites, paedophilia and suicide promotion. But critics charge it has been used to censor political speech online. Google received 257 removal requests during this reporting period, more than double the total number of requests it received in 2012.

In the US Google and its peers are fighting to be allowed to disclose how often they receive legal demands for information from the National Security Agency (NSA). Those requests are made through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) court and the companies are legally barred from disclosing them.

On Wednesday a presidential review panel, looking into the NSA in the wake of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations, suggested tech companies should be allowed to disclose Fisa requests.

“While the information we present in our transparency report is certainly not a comprehensive view of censorship online, it does demonstrate a worrying upward trend in the number of government requests, and underscores the importance of transparency around the processes governing such requests. As we continue to add data, we hope it will become increasingly useful and informative in policy debates and decisions around the world,” said Infantino, the legal director.

From January to June 2013, the following countries made the most requests to remove content:

    Turkey (1,673 requests for 12,162 items)

    United States (545 requests for 3,887 items)

    Brazil (321 requests for 1,635 items)

    Russia (257 requests for 277 items)

    India (163 requests for 714 items)

In the US Google received 545 requests for the removal of 3,887 items. Among those requests was one from a local law enforcement official to remove a search result linking to a news article about his record as an officer. Google did not remove the search result.

In the UK Google received 117 requests for 556 items to be removed. One request came from a law firm representing a former member of parliament to remove a preview from Google Books that allegedly defamed the MP by suggesting he was engaged in illegal activity. The preview was removed. Another came from a local government council to remove a blogpost that allegedly defamed the council. Google did not remove the blogpost.