PR Newswire's Business Technology Round-up, 28 December 2012

LONDON, December 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Toshiba Sponsoring Times Square NYE Countdown, G-cluster to Unveil new Game Machine Platform for Cloud Gaming and new Gesture Recognition Technology Ready to be Showcased

The official countdown for this year's New Year's Eve Celebration in Times Square, New York will be exclusively sponsored by technology industry giants Toshiba, it has been announced. On 31 December 2012, more than one million revellers will fill the streets below One Times Square, where they and more than one billion viewers worldwide will watch the live 60-second countdown on the giant TOSHIBA VISION LED screen above them.

In the run-up to the big moment at 23:59, the TOSHIBA VISION screen will display the Toshiba Hourly Countdown as well as special animations, live performances by music act as well as a number of other events.

In addition to enjoying the event live in person or on television, smartphone users can join in by downloading the Times Square Ball App, which will not only stream the countdown live but will allow users to upload photos. A selection of the photos will be shown on the TOSHIBA VISION screen during the celebrations.

The forthcoming International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2013 will see the future of home cloud gaming, exhibited by industry leaders G-cluster Global.

G-cluster, the world's first and largest cloud gaming platform, will debut its new Game Machine platform allowing players to access both premium and casual games on their HD televisions, without the need for a specific game console.

G-cluster's device will plug straight into the HDMI port of televisions and utilising a home Wi-Fi network, give players the ability to play games using smartphones, tablets or special wireless control pads either on their own or with friends and family.

Elsewhere at the 2013 CES, a collaboration between Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) and SoftKinetic will see a new development in gesture recognition technology exhibited to visitors to the annual show in Las Vegas.

SoftKinetic, who are a leading provider of end-to-end 3D sensor and gesture recognition middleware solutions, are providing their own DepthSense pixel technology and iisu middleware for TI's new 3D time-of-flight (ToF) image sensor chipset.

The chipset, which sits inside a 3D camera, allows a user to control laptops and a smart TV to browse and select multimedia content including movies and games with a simple gesture such as the wave of a hand.

It is the hope of both companies that together they will be able to introduce motion control and gesture recognition technology into the mass market, and change the way consumers access and navigate media content at home. Follow PR Newswire on Twitter Keep up-to-date with the latest sector-specific news headlines by following PR Newswire's Twitter accounts:

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