Showing posts with label links. Show all posts
Showing posts with label links. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

TechTalk June 28, 2016

There is, it would seem, an endless stream of tech news on a daily basis and Jatin and I see it as our goal to help you make sense of it.

Click to listen to the podcast.





The show notes and links!



Fun kids app for ipad to turn pics into speaking pics!

-more dropbox features but only from the iphone mobile app so far!

WhatsApp is pushing!
WhatsApp is keen to stand out amongst its rivals as more than just a messaging app. In an effort to promote its additional features, it has announced some impressive figures in regard to its voice-calling function, which was rolled out just over a year ago.
The app states that its users across iOS and Android now make 100 million calls a day. WhatsApp did the math and worked out that totals a whopping 1,100 calls a second.
The numbers are notable, but hardly surprising. After all, the app boasts 1 billion users, making it the biggest chat platform in the world. It only became a comprehensive communications platform by adding VoIP in April of last year, playing catch up with the likes of Skype, and Viber.

Since its acquisition by Facebook for a staggering $22 billion in 2014, WhatsApp has continued to operate independently under the leadership of co-founder and CE Jan Koum.
Despite dominating the overseas market — in particular India, Brazil, and Africa — WhatsApp is still struggling to gain a foothold in the U.S. where it faces stiff competition from apps including Facebook Messenger, and iMessage. America is high on Koum’s global domination agenda. In fact, he wants everyone who owns a smartphone to use WhatsApp.
“We’re nowhere near that,” Koum told USA Today. “But we hope that over a certain period of time we will get that critical mass.”
WhatsApp is no stranger to mass usage. At present, its users send 42 billion messages, 1.6 billion photos, and 250 million videos each day. So how exactly does Koum plan to overcome the U.S. stumbling block? As always, he’s relying on organic growth.
“As long as our user base continues to grow, at some point it will have critical mass, and at some point it will tip and at some point people will just have to use WhatsApp because their friends are using WhatsApp,” states Koum.


Cool Film editing app
Easy-to-use and High-quality

Use Filmora for Mac(Originally Wondershare Video Editor for Mac), the all-in-one powerful, fun and easy tool to create high-quality projects.


Watching stuff at 160 speed!
A chrome app to help!

Social Media at work still a time waster!

Happily for the rest of the world, unlike thought leaders, real human beings know that social media in the workplace is still basically a way to goof off. That’s according to a new survey by Pew Research Center, which polled 2,003 adults last September to find out how they use social media at work.
Overall, 34% of respondents said they use social media to “take a mental break” or goof off, while 27% said they use it to “connect with friends and family” or goof off. By contrast, just 24% said they use it to make professional connections, and 20% said they use it to build or strengthen personal relationships with coworkers.
Connecting with coworkers on social media isn’t necessarily an unalloyed positive: while 14% of respondents said they found information on social media that improved their opinion of a coworker, a slightly larger proportion, 16%, said they found information that lowered their opinion (finding out your cubicle neighbor is a Tila Tequila fan = grounds for mental health leave). Both proportions are higher among younger workers, with 23% of workers ages 18-29 saying they found positive information and 29% negative information.
So what do bosses think about all this? Screw ‘em! 77% of respondents said they use social media without regard to any official workplace policy, which may or may not exist, regarding social media. To the degree that social media policies are in place, they may actually have a chilling effect on social media for “enterprise” purposes: just 16% of employees at workplaces with social media policies say they use it for getting work-related information, compared to 25% at workplaces without social media policies.  
Now back to work, you!

  • Facial recognition in store creepy or cool?
  • http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/278775/consumers-say-in-store-facial-recognition-creepy.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline&utm_campaign=94070
  • Targeted messages in physical stores based on beacons and online data are becoming more prevalent and accurate. Consumers are a little creeped out at the prospect of retailers using technologies like facial recognition to identify them, but they don't mind if retailers link a search on their phone to a coupon or discount.
  • RichRelevance Wednesday released its second annual "Creepy or Cool" survey of U.S. consumers. The 2016 study of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers found shoppers expect to use their mobile phones as part of the store experience, but they are not ready to participate in a real-life Minority Report scenario.
  • Some 67% of American consumers use their mobile phone to shop, and the use skews higher for the younger shopping demographic, ages 18 to 29, with 79% shopping on their mobile phone.
  • Some 73% use their mobile phone to research and review products while they are shopping in the aisles, and 23% use it frequently while shopping. Here again, younger shoppers are more likely to turn to their mobile phones, with 84% using their mobile phone in the store.  
  • Age has become a major factor. Millennials express stronger opinions on both creepy and cool features. Facial recognition technology that identify the individual as a high-value shopper and relays this information to a salesperson is definitely creepy. In fact 67% call this tech creepy, with Millennials skewing higher at 71%.

Youtube and lava devouring food odd but can’t not watch!

Marty the connected couch and yes we need one!
The world of IoT and connected objects in the home continues to heat up with the all-in-one connected couch, Marty.
Created by Havas Group and just showcased at Cannes, Marty is the epitome of merging media devices into a single point of control, as well as collecting all of the associated use data.
Marty is the first prototype to come out of also newly announced Havas 18/35, which is a combination of an innovation and fabrication lab and will house the group’s other innovation initiatives Lab 18, Collab and Innovation Lab.
The goal of Marty is to collect mass amounts of rich data and analyze it in order to help brands better serve consumers in the future, according to Havas.
“Currently, 80% of media interactions take place on a couch,” said Raphael de Andreis, chairman and CEO of Havas Group France. “The couch is the nerve center of media use, a place of individual and family habits involving all kinds of behaviors centered on free time, communication and work. And that makes it a fantastic research lab covering all touchpoints.”
Included, or connected, to the couch are the various devices used to consume media today.
Devices included are Amazon Echo voice control, synchronized virtual reality headsets, Bluetooth peripherals (mouse, keyboard, gamepad), connected lighting and beacons.
It also has a built-in projector, mini-fridge and 3D printer.
For the cutting-edge media experiences, Marty also includes exclusive tactile sensations technology through the form of synchronized massage from startup Aurasens.
In total, Marty includes 15 connected devices and services.
Aggregating all of these connections and controls is a custom-designed app that acts as a media dashboard for the consumer.
The edge for marketers and advertisers, however, is in the data behind the app.
In collecting and analyzing behavioral data, Marty can custom tailor the content served to consumers based on contextual relevance of their behavior, mood and preferences. In doing so, Havas says Marty potentially could help companies achieve more accurate emotion-driven marketing.


4$ smart phone hits india


Google planning to make its own phones!

Emoji love!


The Dango app is named for a Japanese dessert consisting of sweet dumpling balls on a skewer (and yes, there’s an emoji for it). It sits atop other communication apps like Slack, Snapchat, or the built-in texting app on your phone. It suggests emoji that it thinks fit well with what you’re typing or in response to what someone just typed to you. You tap on the suggestion to add to the conversation.
Rather than simply coming up with word associations (such as a chicken emoji if you type “chicken”), Dango uses deep-learning techniques to try to figure out what whole sentences are expressing and then give you suggestions it thinks are related. For instance, if you type “She said yes!” Dango will show you the emoji for a ring and a bride with veil, among others.
Xavier Snelgrove, Whirlscape’s cofounder and chief technology officer, says Dango has been trained by scanning posts on Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter. The app only works on Android phones for now, since Apple doesn’t allow software developers to build such a tool, Snelgrove says; if it were on the iPhone, it would have to be part of a keyboard app. Separately, Whirlscape does sell a keyboard app called Minuumthat includes emoji prediction, but it’s doing simple word association.
Galaxy Note7 coming

Friday, May 13, 2016

TechTalk May 10, 2016

Jatin Mava join me from digitalnexa.com and we talk about the technology that matters.

The Podcast Link.











Meditation APP


Hi James,
Meditation is a life changing skill for adults but there is growing research showing how valuable it can be for children. It improves focus, reduces anxiety, improves sleep and enhances general wellbeing.  
Many people in the Calm Community have children and so we’re excited to launch Calm Kids, a growing collection of meditations and sleep stories designed with under 12 year olds in mind:



We’ve also heard from many teachers around the world who have been using Calm in their classrooms at the start of each of day.  We’d love to hear from you if you have similar stories to share or if we can help introduce Calm to your school or local community: hello@calm.com
Have a wonderful day!
- The Calm team

PS. Look out for our next program - 7 Days of Managing Stress - which we’ll be launching later this month


Nikon D5 WOW camera $6, 499
  • 20.8MP FX-Format CMOS Sensor
  • EXPEED 5 Image Processor
  • 3.2" 2.36m-Dot Touchscreen LCD Monitor
  • 4K UHD Video Recording at 30 fps
  • Multi-CAM 20K 153-Point AF System
  • Native ISO 102400, Extend to ISO 3280000
  • 12 fps Shooting for 200 Shots with AE/AF
  • 180k-Pixel RGB Sensor and Group Area AF
  • 14-Bit Raw Files and 12-Bit Raw S Format
  • Supplied With: EN-EL18a Rechargeable Li-ion Battery, MH-26a Battery Charger, USB Cable Clip, HDMI Cable Clip, UC-E22 USB Cable, AN-DC15 Strap, DK-27 Eyepiece Adapter, DK-17F Fluorine-Coated Finder Eyepiece, BF-1B Body Cap, BS-3 Accessory Shoe Cover, BL-6 Battery Chamber Cover, Warranty, Network Guide
  • Supplied With: EN-EL18a Rechargeable Li-ion Battery, MH-26a Battery Charger, USB Cable Clip, HDMI Cable Clip, UC-E22 USB Cable, AN-DC15 Strap, DK-27 Eyepiece Adapter, DK-17F Fluorine-Coated Finder Eyepiece, BF-1B Body Cap, BS-3 Accessory Shoe Cover, BL-6 Battery Chamber Cover, Warranty, Network Guide


The autonomous car race!

Apple might be eyeing up an 800,000 square foot land plot that will serve as an R&D base for Project Titan, the company’s autonomous car project.
Hudson Pacific Properties CEO Victor Coleman said in a quarterly earnings call on Thursday that auto and tech companies are looking for space in Silicon Valley to test autonomous cars, according to WSJ.
“We’re seeing the Toyotas of the world, the Teslas of the world, BMWs, Mercedes. Ford now is out in the marketplace looking for space,” Coleman said. “I haven’t even mentioned the 400,000 square feet that Google’s looking to take down and the 800,000 square feet that Apple’s looking to take down for their autonomous cars as well.”
The increase in investment comes as more automotive companies start to embrace some form of automation. Tesla has already added automatic lane switching and Ford plans to install auto-parking in all cars after 2018.
More R&D and testing might lead to faster approval from the government on autonomous vehicles. It also gives developers like Google and Apple a way to test their car systems in a controlled environment.


QR codes lead to smart packaging and better targeted ads

Siri inventors make a better tool!
The creators of Apple Siri say they have made something better. They're calling it Viv. Siri provides a voice virtual assistant for Apple iOS devices. Viv aims to further personalize the assistance through artificial intelligence.
The inventors -- Dag Kittlaus, and Adam Cheyer, two former Apple employees -- and Siri co-founders plan to release the AI next week.
Powered by artificial intelligence, Viv can reportedly process and answer more advanced queries than Siri, with multilayered questions such as "What's the weather near Disneyland."
It can reportedly process an unprecedented volumes of data, to become the portal through which billions of people connect to services and businesses on the Internet -- if the AI becomes the tool integrated into other tools.
In this world, users will have the ability to "order a taxi, make a restaurant reservation and buy movie tickets in one long unbroken conversation," according to The Washington Post.
Viv is one example of a slew of emerging technology that will take search into a variety of software and inanimate objects, removing the need for a keyboard, and in some instances, the need for an application.


Surprisingly long form stories get a boost from mobile devices we are reading more!
McDonalds turns placemats into recording studios in dutch restaurants
Gone are the days when a maze or dot-to-dot on your tray-liner placemat was enough to get you excited in a fast food joint. In the Netherlands, McDonald's has gone all high tech with its placemats -- it's using them to help customers record music.
The chain has adapted mats in some of its Dutch restaurants with conductive ink, a small battery and a thin circuit board with 26 digital touchpoints. Customers place their smartphone on the mat and download the accompanying McTrax app to create music, choosing from in-house produced audio loops, synths and musical effects. They can also record their own vocals over the top.
The campaign was created by TBWA/Neboko with This Page Amsterdam working on the app and tech development.
Radha Pleijsant, creative technologist and Jan Jesse Bakker, digital design lead at TBWA/Neboko said in a statement: "The paper of the placemat is what makes this technique so innovative. The phone merely acts as the speaker and screen, which is easily connected to the placemat via Bluetooth, making the sure you can hear the music on your speakers."

Google Analytics need a fix?
In the advertising world, Google is the default for almost everything: search, display, video, ad serving, analytics. The products we know as DoubleClick, YouTube, Google Search and Google Analytics are ubiquitous for a reason -- they're damn good. But over time, damn good can turn into average and eventually degrade into bad. For publishers and marketers relying on Google Analytics "time on page" metric, we've moved past bad toward just plain wrong.
Why does this matter? How could a single flawed metric be cause for alarm? There are two reasons why this is significant to every marketer and publisher right now.
First of all, it's due to the absolute dominance of Google Analytics on the internet. According to BuiltWith, over 70% of .com sites in the U.S. currently use Google Analytics. Google's closest competitor is Facebook Domain Insights at a paltry 3% market share.
Second, as marketing continues its shift from banner ads to content marketing, the metrics we use to quantify success are also shifting, from clicks to attention-based metrics. We trust that our content is performing well because Google is telling us that people are spending time with it.
As co-founder of Pressboard, a content marketplace, this topic hits close to home. Every day we report to brand managers and agencies on how well their sponsored stories are performing across a wide range of online publications. Our reporting data was initially built on top of the Google Analytics API, until we started to see some disturbing inconsistencies. A story about financial planning would be showing 17 minutes as time spent on page, while a very similar story, on a very similar site, would barely crack the 1-minute mark. To better understand these anomalies, we dug through millions of rows of data across hundreds of stories. We soon found out that everything we thought we knew about "time on page" was a myth.
Here's how it really works. Google Analytics is installed on this site, so when you landed on this article, Google marked down the time; let's call that time A. When you're finished reading this article you may head over to another Ad Age article. Google will mark down that time as well; let's call that time B. By subtracting time B from time A, Google knows how long you were on this page. This timestamping method is clearly outlined in itssupport pages. Sounds pretty simple, right?

Fortunately, there are a handful of companies trying to solve this problem. The secret is being able to continuously monitor the reader's attention signals -- mouse movements, touches, scrolling behavior, tab activity. The more you know about the reader between time B and time A, the better positioned you are to know if they are still active -- or if you've lost them for good.
Chartbeat has been a forerunner in providing editorial analytics for media publishers. Sites such as Gawker, Forbes and Time count on Chartbeat analytics to tell them which of their stories are most popular among their readers. Medium has long focused on total time reading as its metric that matters. My company rebuilt its entire analytics engine and weaned ourselves off of the Google API in order to properly measure native content partnerships. If content marketing is going to continue its growth, the way in which it is measured must grow as well.
Moving beyond Google isn't an easy decision but I believe that we've given them enough of our time. Although it seems doubtful they were able to measure it anyhow.


Microsoft buying into internet of things
Microsoft has acquired a young internet of things (IoT) company called Solair from Bologna, Italy, which it says will enable its Azure customers to analyse data and derive new intelligence from IoT.
The acquisition of Solair for an undisclosed sum will give Microsoft access to key IoT products, including a gateway for collecting data and an enterprise platform that has been deployed in various industries, including manufacturing, retail, food and beverage and transport.
“Solair shares our ambition for helping customers harness their untapped data and creating new intelligence with IoT, and this acquisition supports our strategy to deliver the most complete IoT offering for enterprises,” said Sam George, Microsoft’s partner director, Azure IoT.
‘From the very start, our mission has been to help customers quickly and easily gain access to the huge benefits of the internet of things’
– TOM DAVIS, SOLAIR
“We’re excited about their technology and talent – and delighted to welcome them to the Microsoft team.”

IBM and smart washrooms

BM announced recently that the professional division of Kimberly-Clark, maker of such household brands as Kleenex and Huggies, has adopted IBM Cloud to create a facilities management app that helps clients better monitor and manage restrooms remotely, lowering costs and improving consumer experiences.
Kimberly-Clark Professional’s new Intelligent Restroom app was built using IBM Bluemix development platform and through the use of the IBM Internet of Things Foundation service, facilities managers collect data and alerts from sensors integrated into restroom amenities, from soap dispensers to air fresheners, as well as non-amenities like entrance doors. All the data is managed and monitored through a central dashboard that can be viewed on desktops or mobile devices remotely.

IOS in fall will have home automation app!
There's no shortage of devices that support Apple's HomeKit platform. However, managing those devices is something of a mess -- you typically end up visiting separate apps to control your lighting, security and appliances. You might not have to worry about that when iOS 10 rolls around, though. MacRumors says it spotted an Amazon review from an Apple employee (verified after the fact) who claims that the next iOS release will have a "standalone" HomeKit app when it arrives in the fall. The staffer doesn't say how it'd work, but the implication is that it'd serve as a hub for all your HomeKit-compatible smart home gadgets.
There's no certainty that this HomeKit app will show up as promised, since there's always the chance that Apple will either delay it or scrap it entirely. There is evidence that this isn't just speculation, mind you. Apple used a shell company to file a trademark for a HomeKit icon late last year, so it's at least thinking about what a dedicated app would look like. As it is, Google isn't standing still between its OnHub networking and its internet of things platform, Brillo. A full-fledged HomeKit app might give Apple a competitive edge by taking some of the hassle out of automating your household.

Phones and Cancer

30 years of data shows no link between mobile phones and brain cancer

There is no causal link between mobile phone use and braincancer, a new epidemiological study by some of Australia's leading cancer specialists says.
Led by Simon Chapman, emeritus professor public health at the University of Sydney's School of Public Health, the study looked for an association between data on 19,858 men and 14,222 women diagnosed with brain cancer in Australia between 1982 and 2012 and national mobile phone usage between 1987, when cellular phones were introduced to the country, and 2012. Australia is a particularly useful source for data of this kind, as all cancer diagnoses are formally registered by law, provided an extremely comprehensive data of nationwide cancer incidence.

Chapman and his colleagues Lamiae Azizi, Qingwei Luo and Freddy Sitas modelled the age- and gender-specific rates of brain cancer incidence over the period. As mobile phone use grew, Chapman writes in The Conversation, "we found that age-adjusted brain cancer incidence rates (in those aged 20-84 years, per 100,000 people) had risen only slightly in males but were stable over 30 years in females."

Thursday, January 07, 2016

CarTalk January 4, 2016

This week, much as usual, we had an ongoing conversation about the merits of the new Corvette!

Honestly, James is not a fan but the other 2/3 of Cartalk www.motoringme.com are huge fans!

I think the 1963 Vette is the Vette of all Vettes!

http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/president-barack-obama-just-tell-him-you-re-the-president


We also had a great chat about the GMC Terrain! Seems this is a good surprise!

CarTalk is as entertaining as it is informative!





Have a question drop us a line, nightline@dubaieye1038.ae.

Here is a look at what we set out to speak about.

Loving the Volvo XC 90



Who likes a wagon? Volvo is still doing it!

LOVE THIS VETTE!
’63 Corvette Sting Ray.


This little SUV looks cool!

Mahindra has hit the local market with a tiny new crossover called the KUV100. It takes the Indian automaker into a new segment, and debuts a new engine line as well. Though more dynamically styled than its predecessors and stablemates, one look at the name – and those tiny wheels – is all you should need to know that it won't be coming to North America any time soon.

Standing for Kool Utility Vehicle, the KUV100 (the numbers pronounced 1-double-Oh, incidentally) is Mahindra's rival to the Renault Kwid. That's a size down from the Ford EcoSport, Chevy Trax, and Jeep Renegade – which is, to say, that it's tiny. Overall dimensions weren't released, but the engine lineup should tell you something about how small a vehicle we're dealing with.

The new KUV100 packs a new engine family for Mahindra, dubbed mFalcon available in two versions. Both displace just 1.2-liters, with the gasoline version producing 82 horsepower and the diesel just 77.

For those who don't recognize the name, Mahindra is one of the larger automakers in India, alongside the likes of Tata and Maruti Suzuki. And like Tata, it's been expanding. It acquired Korean automaker SsangYong just a few years ago, and is now subsuming Pininfarina as well. The company has been producing a largely aging array of SUVs, but is in the process of reinvigorating its lineup with newer machinery like the XUV500 introduced just a few years ago and the new KUV100 pictured here.
Chev Bolt is sweet looking!


CES! It is cartime

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