This is TechTalk with Jatin Mava from www.digitalnexa.com.
This week we had a review of a robot vacuum and a cool set of laser light headphones.
Of course we also had bunch of other cool apps and tech news to go through as well.
The PODCAST link.
The show notes.
Jan 18
Jatin has reviewed the irobot - roomba 980 ( top of the range: http://store.irobot.com/irobot-roomba-980/product.jsp?productId=68167956
jatin has recieved: http://www.glowheadphones.com/
from Kickstarter - lets go clubbin’
Next week Samsung Gear S2 review!
SevenHugs smart remote!
WOW
Sevenhug's smart remote is the world's first remote that gives you the ability to control absolutely ALL your home devices with just one touch. Control your Philips Hue, Sonos speakers, Nest thermostat... And so much more thanks to our open SDK and API.
16.99$
DESCRIPTION
Let there be light in the bathroom. Now you can add any color of LED light to your toilet bowl and see it glow. That means no more stumbling around when you have to go at night. Simply snap it onto the rim and let it shine: it will automatically turn on when someone walks into the bathroom. There are eight color possibilities and patterned illuminations, making quite the show.
- Turns on & off automatically via motion sensors
- Sets to the color of your choice or a color-rotate light mode
- Easy to clean by wiping with a cloth
- Snaps on in the perfect, splash-proof location
- Fits any toilet
- Battery powered
- Perfect for potty training children
Strava! This is a great program to collect all my fitness app data and yours andrew!
We spoke to Mark Gainey, CEO and cofounder of Strava, a social network for athletes that makes use of GPS devices and other wearables to create what they call a "social fitness" experience. Strava uses the vast amounts of data being collected by various connected devices to provide motivation, track stats, record maintenance, and status of gear and equipment, and encourage camaraderie among its members.
In this interview, Gainey explained why he thinks wearables will continue to make fitness a more enjoyable and seamless part of our everyday lives.
Courtney Dickson: How was Strava founded? What were your inspirations?
Mark Gainey: Michael Horvath and I started Strava in 2009. We both rowed crew at Harvard in the late ’80s and thrived on the camaraderie and motivation of training with teammates. The idea for Strava came simply from our desire to recreate the positive forces of our crew experience when we no longer had the structure and support of a team.
In its simplest form, Strava was a "virtual locker room" where we could share workouts among friends. We started Strava with a focus on cycling, and added running in 2011. Since its founding in 2009, Strava has grown from a handful of users to millions of athletes around the world. Our mission is simple—to motivate and inspire our members in ways that unlock their potential.
CD: Strava is known for being more than just a way to log workouts. It's a social fitness app that encourages users to connect with each other. As more and more people are buying and using wearable devices to track their fitness, what changes have you seen in how users are interacting in the Strava community?
MG: Millions of cyclists and runners around the world not only track and analyze their training with Strava but also use it as their social channel to connect with other athletes and stay motivated. Almost 90% of all Strava athletes follow another athlete on Strava, and the average Strava member engages with Strava 5-7 times a day. According to our members, "If it’s not on Strava, it did not happen."
Strava is growing rapidly and is truly global. We add over 100,000 new members every week, and almost 80% of our athletes live outside the US. We have activities on all seven continents and in over 180 countries.
We see our members interact with Strava in a number of different ways. We are now compatible with over 150 different GPS devices. So our athletes can track their activities in whatever way they find most convenient. And then they can seamlessly upload to Strava via our mobile apps and website.
ADOBE Post! APP
Description
Adobe Post is a fun and fast way for anyone to create beautiful social graphics. Get started in seconds with professionally designed, eye-catching templates you can tweak in simple steps. Pick a photo, add some text and apply design filters to instantly create stunning designs. Each tap gives you completely new layouts, color palettes, typography styles and photo filters—no design experience required.
It’s a new way to design - on your iPhone - with Adobe magic, brought to you by the makers of Photoshop and Illustrator. You can now stand out from the crowd and engage your followers with eye-catching Posts. Oh, and did we say it’s free?
WHY YOU’LL LOVE POST:
◆ Professionally Designed Templates — Get started in seconds with handcrafted templates made for social sharing
◆ Design Filters — Transform your text and photo into professional-looking graphics with a single tap
◆ Magic Text — Resize your text—beautiful typography will be automatically applied on-the-fly
◆ Premium Fonts & Shapes — Curated by graphic designers to fit every occasion
◆ Free High Quality Photos — Free access to half a million gorgeous, high quality photo directly inside the app
◆ Auto Recolor — One tap to change the entire color combination of your design to make it pop
◆ Saved Projects — Designs are saved automatically so you can tweak and reuse them with new photo and text
◆ Instant Sharing — Share your Post directly via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, email, text message, and more. Or save it to your Camera Roll for later
◆ iPhone 6s 3D Touch — Use Peek and Pop to quickly preview and remix a template
HERE'S WHAT PEOPLE ARE MAKING:
• Social media posts
• Inspirational quotes
• Event invites
• Album covers
• Email newsletter graphics
• Announcement posters
• Blog banners
• Business graphics
• Photo captions
• Text on photos
Changes at FourSquare, I don’t use it anymore, 7 years old!
While it's no shock that Foursquare made changes—investors are reportedly anxious to see more growth—it's at least slightly surprising to see Crowley relinquish the chief leadership role. He co-founded Foursquare in 2009 with Naveen Selvadurai, and the company said late last year that it had 55 million monthly users.
We spoke about the Peach APP, well appears that there is a user!
Jesse DeWitt is the digital director of language learning products at Merriam-Webster. And as you may surmise from his title, he does not devote the lion's share of his time to social marketing. He actually shares social media responsibilities with a few other colleagues who themselves have full-time jobs at the dictionary publisher, each one contributing a tweet here and a post there.
So why is Merriam-Webster cranking out so many posts—40 so far—on Peach, the social app that debuted last Friday and that is quickly becoming the talk of the Twittersphere? (Some praise it while others say it's a techie flash in the pan.)
For starters, Peach is easy to create content with, said DeWitt, whose team has a dearth of visual images at its fingertips and little to no time to create them. For that reason, Merriam-Webster doesn't even have an account on Instagram or Snapchat.
"Visual storytelling is a real problem for us," DeWitt explained. "Obviously, we are so heavily associated with words. It's not like we have this great library of assets we can draw from like a magazine might have. It's been an impediment in using Instagram or Snapchat. Peach has nice built-in commands that give you a quick and easy way to post something visual."
Here's what he's talking about. Peach, created by Vine founder Dom Hofmann, lets users find their friends through their phone contacts and then upload GIFs, pictures and status updates into the app. What's more, it lets people use commands—or "magic words," as the app calls them—to summon content for their updates. For instance, typing "GIF" calls up a Giphy search tool. Typing "here" adds the user's current location, and entering "draw" lets folks draw images on their phone screens.
Among its dozens of posts, Merriam-Webster has "Peached" in real-time while reacting to the passing of David Bowie on Monday as well as President Barack Obama's State of the Union address last night. The posts have generally gotten a couple dozen hearts and likes apiece along with a smattering of comments.
Since then, DeWitt and his team have posted more than 40 times on Peach while garnering roughly 2,000 followers on the app. So, it appears his crib-side content creation last weekend was time well spent.
DeWitt understands the skepticism around Peach—he immediately established an Elloaccount last year for Merriam before that social network quickly faded into the background. Many are now predicting Peach will suffer the same fate.
Merriam-Webster's digital executive doesn't see it that way. (Peach didn't respond to an emailed inquiry about its users number.)
"I honestly think this one has a chance," DeWitt said. "But we didn't see the same kind of community [on Ello] that we're already seeing on Peach. The people who are following us, they seem to be forging a more emotional connection than what we saw on Ello and maybe even more than on Facebook or Twitter. I am not saying it's going to replace anything, but they've done some nice things with the product."
David Deal, an independent digital marketing consultant, concurs, stating that Peach has the tools to be a breakthrough app this year. "It's immersive, playful and perfectly suited for millennials and digital natives," he said.
In today's social media world, those attributes may as well be the definition of success.
The power of the Selfie!
A high-profile far-right politician in France has blamed an unflattering selfie for his party’s failure at recent elections in the country.
And to show he’s serious, Jean-Marie Le Pen is suing the person that took the snap.
Dancer Brahim Zaibat, who happens to be an ex-boyfriend of Madonna, took the shot (above) of a slumbering Le Pen during a flight last December, one day before the French public went to the polls in regional elections.
“Knockout the [National Front] tomorrow by going to vote,” Zaibat wrote in an accompanying caption before posting the image on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. As Le Pen dozed, the image started doing the rounds on the social sites, eventually picking up hundreds of thousands of likes, comments, and shares.
Google wants to kill passwords as we know them!
passwords suck! great video!
In the grab bag of Google/Alphabet's big projects for 2016 is Project Abacus. It's basically the company's plot to kill the password in cold blood, by replacing it with smartphone user authentication via an uncrackable collection of biometric readings.
Abacus would lock or unlock devices and apps based on a cumulative "trust score" -- as your phone continually monitors and recognizes your location patterns, voice and speech patterns, how you walk and type, and your face (among other things).
Like many things Google, it sounds miraculous. Your phone will just know it's you. And infosec pundits who believe we're stuck in password-hell Groundhog Day because "regular" people won't do security if it's inconvenient, will rejoice.
Former Googler Chris Messina sounded ecstatic about it on Twitter, saying that Abacus would beat the current gold standard, two-factor authentication, since losing access to SMS wouldn't break the whole system.
Cisco engineer Shawn Cooley countered him saying, "very cool until I break my leg or hand & can't auth to any services to get healthcare info since my behavior is diff." Messina said, "you presume that your health records aren't being managed by Verily. You would be wrong."
During its first public demo at Google's I/O conference, Regina Dugan claimed that with its "trust score" method, Project Abacus "may prove to be ten-fold more secure than just a fingerprint sensor." And it's easy to believe this could be true.
Diebold and contactless checkout
Diebold expands omni-channel enablement, debuts new concept at NRF "BIG" Show
NORTH CANTON, Ohio, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Diebold, Incorporated (NYSE: DBD), a leading provider of innovative self-service solutions to top retailers, is introducing a new mobile-enabled self-checkout concept. Building on Diebold's omni-channel expertise in the financial services industry, the new concept combines the core capabilities of the automated teller machine (ATM) with the convenience of contactless mobile payments and self-checkout. With in-store mobile payments expected to reach$118 billion by 2018, consumer acceptance of digital wallets and mobile payments continues to blur the line between the banking and retail consumer experience.
Introducing simplicity to the in-store shopping experience, the new concept enables consumers to scan items they want to purchase while shopping in-store via their mobile device. Once a consumer is ready to pay, they simply tap their phone at the self-checkout unit to pay for the items when exiting. Payment is made via preloaded card information found in the consumers' mobile wallet within the retailer's mobile app or cash inserted into the terminal. Cash-back can also be offered through the checkout terminal, which can function as an ATM. This process eliminates traditional checkout lines and increases consumer loyalty through the use of stored-value cards, mobile marketing campaigns and membership rewards programs.
About Diebold
Diebold, Incorporated (NYSE: DBD) provides the technology, software and services that connect people around the world with their money - bridging the physical and digital worlds of cash conveniently, securely and efficiently. Since its founding in 1859, Diebold has evolved to become a leading provider of exceptional self-service innovation, security and services to financial, commercial, retail and other markets.
Diebold has approximately 16,000 employees worldwide and is headquartered nearCanton, Ohio, USA. Visit Diebold at www.diebold.com or on Twitter:http://twitter.com/DieboldInc.
Twitter Polls anyone using them?
twitter is making an update to its recently released polling feature; instead of a default 24-hour timeframe, poll lengths can range from five minutes to seven days.
Launched in October, the company also touted the success of polls, announcing that 1.7 billion votes have been cast so far.
The revelation comes as Twitter shares sink to a record low, with investors expressing concern about user growth. The company has steadily increased its revenue, but Wall Street initially valued Twitter on the expectation that it was becoming a much larger company. (The social media service boasts a massive 320 million monthly active users, but this pales in comparison to Facebook’s 1.55 billion).
While Twitter polls increase engagement, it’s unclear whether this will ultimately get new users to sign up. But recently returned CEO Jack Dorsey has been tasked with improving the product, and is experimenting with various tweaks including “likes” instead of “favorites,” a 10,000 charactertweet length, and integration of its livestream app, Periscope.
Snapchat and the over 35 target market!
yellow billboard. No text. Just a small, faceless ghost at the center.
For months, people have encountered this sight along roads nationwide, leaving those not in the know curious or confused.
In Los Angeles, you might've caught it heading toward Los Angeles International Airport on Century Boulevard. Is it unfinished? Some Halloween prank?
Turn to a kid, and no doubt, you'll get filled in: It's the logo for Snapchat, the smartphone app that teens and young adults use to share millions of photos and videos each day.
Snapchat's explanation for the mysterious billboards is as vague as the ads: "Fun and awareness."
The awareness part might be crucial to the growth prospects for Snapchat, based in Venice. The kids already know Snapchat. Young adults, too: Six in 10 people ages 13 to 35 in the U.S. use Snapchat.
It's nowhere close to popular among the over-35 crowd. But there are signs that's changing. The raw numbers are small so far, but Snapchat use among older adults is growing fast.
Over the last year in the U.S., Snapchat added 25-to-34-year-old users (103%) and older-than-35 users (84%) faster than 18-to-24-year-old users (56%), according to measurement firm Comscore. Snapchat's own data now peg 12% of its nearly 50 million daily users in the U.S. as 35 to 54.
Almost everyone I talk to, it's their niece that shows them Snapchat.- Kevin Del Rosario, associate director of social at Huge Inc.
The growth is led by parents and siblings looking to stay in touch with younger family members, experts said. Snapchat investor Jeremy Liew also noted at a fall conference that he's seen pickup among parents of Snapchat users.
Netflix and VPN’s!
Netflix announced earlier this week that any subscribers using a virtual private network (VPN), proxy, or "unblocker" service to access a version of Netflix that is not the one based in their country of location will be bounced over to their local service in the next few weeks.
The move comes just after Netflix announced it was launching service in 130 new countries—a response to the massive international demand for the service fulfilled, so far, through the very services Netflix is now seeking to shut down.
It's a decision that will be felt keenly by those who wish to watch television shows and films outside of their region. Netflix may be an international brand, now, but most films and TV shows remain subject to regional licensing. That means, for example, that people living in the UK will not be able to watch The Walking Dead and people in Australia cannot watch How To Get Away With Murder.
Netflix’s terms of service haven’t changed. The company has long explicitly forbidden the use of mechanisms to bypass its software that detects a user's location, but it's never been strongly enforced up until now. Netflix admits:
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