Mintcode

26/05/2015

Thinking about smart watch? See this!

The Apple Watch is a high-tech timepiece from a powerhouse company, but what do you call a smartwatch designed by some of the brightest alum from companies like Google, Pixar, HP, NASA, Movado and, of course, Apple?Let's start with the name: the Olio. The sleek smartwatch has a promising advantage of standing out in an increasingly saturated market if it's all-star team of founders, designers and developers is any indication.Co-founded by Steven Jacobs, Evan Wilson and AJ Cooper, the San Francisco-based startup is taking on the smartwatch industry with a clear objection: It wants to save you from a notifications nightmare.Rather than it acting like another smartphone for the wrist, it's purpose is to filter out distractions and only notify you on important matters (i.e., it won't distract you).The Olio's built-in assistant keeps track of things that matter to you, like your calendar, location and the weather. It also learns your preferences and habits, so it can make better suggestions over time.And rather than pushing out every notification and update coming your way, Olio packages everything in a series of streams that let you look at what you've missed and what's on your plate for the rest of the day. Like competitors, it'll let you take phone calls or reply to texts with swipes but also remind you to respond later too.Building on the "smart home" trend bubbling up across the industry, the Olio can also work as a hub for products like thermostats, lights, garage doors and speakersBuilding on the "smart home" trend bubbling up across the industry, the Olio can also work as a hub for products like thermostats, lights, garage doors and speakers, so you can tap the watch's display to control these products. While a lot smartwatches promise this type of functionality is coming, Olio said it will ship with the capabilities when it launches this summer.Among the other things its doing differently: Olio hasn't jumped on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to gain visibility, nor has it embraced Google's Android Wear platform like most smartwatches out there (it runs on its own OS).While the circular look is easy on the eyes and looks more like jewelry than a mini computer, it's also rugged — it promises to handle soaks in the pool and dust like a champion. It comes with a stainless steel casing, rear crystals and a full color display. The watch starts at $595 for the Olio Steel Collection and the Black Collection version costs $745. Watches can …

11/05/2015

Inspiring

Ever been curious to see what famous tech CEOs and founders looked like before they were famous, back when they were still in high school?From Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to Microsoft's Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, we've collected some of the most hilarious, awkward, and (sometimes) suave yearbook photos of some of the world's most famous leaders in tech.

30/04/2015

Good morning! Here's the tech news you need to know this Thursday.1. Microsoft is vowing to have $20 billion in cloud revenue in 2018. The company will need to triple cloud revenue over the next 3 years to meet this goal.2. Someone is looking to buy Salesforce. The company is worth $47 billion, meaning the deal — if it goes through — would be the largest software acquisition deal in history. Potential buyers include Oracle, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and SAP.3. We now know why there have been delays with orders of the Apple Watch — there was a significant hardware fault. The taptic engine was found to be defective prior to launch, the Wall Street Journal is reporting, forcing Apple to switch suppliers.4. Microsoft is going to let Android and iOS developers offer their apps on Windows 10 devices, including future Windows Mobile phones. It's a move aimed to combat Windows' relatively poor app ecosystem.5. Viewing figures on Snapchat's Discover feature have dropped by as much as 50%. Early viewership of the mobile app's new content portal was huge, but it has since declined significantly.6. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo says he's not worried about his job. The company posted poor earnings this week, prompting a 20% drop in stock price.7. Anonymous gossip app Secret is closing down. It raised $35 million after launching to great fanfare in early 2014, but has since run into difficulties.8. Microsoft has shown off a new demo of its holographic headset HoloLens. It demonstrated how potential apps might work, including ones intended for design and medical education. Developers are extremely excited by it.9. Apple has hired four producers from British radio station Radio 1. The hires were orchestrated by former presenter Zane Lowe, who Apple hired in February to work on its new streaming service.10. An unreleased iPad 'test model' has been stolen during a robbery-kidnapping. The owner — who may have been an Apple employee — was attacked after responding to an online advert.

23/04/2015

Story highlightsTechnology is changing the way we shop and bank• Checks, cards, pin numbers and card readers will seem antiquated soon• Biometrics, social media and peer-to-peer lending will gain popularityThe checkbook is dead. While we're at it, let's write an obit for card readers too.And if you've ever worried about who might be looking over your shoulder at the ATM machine, or the exorbitant fee that money transfer will cost you, don't fret.In years to come -- not even that many -- these problems won't even exist as the way we bank and control our finances will change vastly. It already has in many ways."We're in this unprecedented space where technology is moving so quickly it's starting to scare everyone," said Gi Fernando, founder and investor of Free:Formers, a company which helps businesses and unemployed young adults with digital training.JUST WATCHEDCan this make regular banks obsolete?ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHCan this make regular banks obsolete? 03:16PLAY VIDEO"It's sooner than you think," said Fernando, who claims in five years from now the technology behind how we manage our banking and finances will be unrecognizable.Here are five things you most likely won't need in five years to keep your finances ticking along.Pin numbers and card readersAs biometrics become the choice of more companies, outdated PIN numbers and clumsy card readers will be a thing of the past, said Fernando.Fingerprints, retina readers, belt buckles, watches and even contact lenses will replace good old-fashioned pin numbers and card readers in our modern day transactions."We will see much more use of biometric data," agrees Steven Lewis, global lead banking analyst at Ernst & Young. "Fingerprints and eye scanners will replace signatures and become more prevalent," he said."For buying stuff it's going to be pretty frictionless and seamless," said Fernando, who described a scenario whereby shoppers walk into a store, pick up what they're after, pay via their device or wearable, and walk out.Banks -- as you know themThough there will continue to be physical banks, many of them won't exist as we know them today. Some of them will appear in supermarkets, cafes and coffee shops, and in pop-up stores and concessions, says Fernando.Like 14th-century coffee houses in Venetian society where business deals were done, these new banking environments will serve a similar purpose. "People have a need to meet face-to-face," added Fernando.So while there still will be bank branches, …

16/04/2015

Would you pre order an apple watch?

Apple is keeping quiet about official sales figures for the Apple Watch, but this isn't stopping independent researchers from offering their own estimates. The most recent figures come from Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst with as a strong a track record as you're likely to see in the Apple guessing game. In a note to investors from his employer KGI Securities, Kuo estimates that the Apple Watch clocked in global pre-orders of over 2.3 million units.We estimate production of Apple Watch around 2.3mn units in March-May. Mass production of Apple Watch began in March and will likely reach 2.3mn by end of May. Considering that most consumers who preordered will not get the device until June, we estimate global preorders of over 2.3mn units, with Apple Watch Sport, Apple Watch and Apple Watch Edition representing a respective order allocation of 85%, 15% and less than 1%.second-guessing Apple is never an exact scienceThese estimates, as published by MacRumors, can be compared with figures publicized earlier this week by a company named Slice Intelligence, which estimated US-only Apple Watch pre-orders of 1.2 million units. Slice's information, however, comes from rather a biased source. The company relies on enthusiastic shoppers signing up for their app to collect data (the app helps customers by keeping track of purchases and stores receipts), which they then turn into country-wide estimates. In this case their sample size was around 9,080 — a little on the small side, especially considering their sign-ups are skewed towards hardcore shoppers.Kuo, by comparison, is Taiwan-based analyst with proven supply chain sources. His predictions aren't perfect (he claimed that the iPad mini 2 would come with an 8-megapixel camera, for example), but he's had an impressive number of hits over the years. These including correctly predicting the screen size and resolution on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the two sizes for the Apple Watch (though his measurements were out), and the inclusion of Touch ID on the iPad Air 2. It's easy to carp over the details, but it's fair to say that Kuo has a better track record than most. As well as 2.3 million pre-orders, he also claims that Apple is aiming to produce 2 to 3 million Watches a month.one million pebble smartwatches have been sold and 720,000 android wear devicesIf either Kuo or Slice's estimates are right, Apple has already become the biggest player in the smartwatch industry. Solid sales figures for the rest of the market aren't easy to …

11/04/2015

Go pro is really every where!

Unless you’re an astronaut on board the International Space Station or in the the Chinese space program, your opportunities to go on a spacewalk are pretty much non-existent. But if you want to know what it’s like, you can now experience the next best thing. Earlier today, NASA released GoPro footage of two real spacewalks, taken by astronauts Terry Virts and Bruce McCandless.The first video comes from EVA 30, which happened on February 25 of this year. During that spacewalk, the astronauts serviced the space stations robotic arm. They also made preparations to the exterior of the station for future commercial space missions to the station. This was the second in a series of spacewalks for those preparations.The second video comes from EVA 31, marking the final spacewalk in NASA’s series to prepare the station for commercial spaceflight. That spacewalk took place on March 1 and involved installing new communications systems for commercial spacecraft.You can watch both spacewalks in the video player below, or you can download it here.

06/04/2015

How many of these have you got?

With every new smartphone, computer and chip, we get closer to what will become the standard in the future.Wireless high-speed Internet everywhere? We're getting close thanks to LTE.Cars that drive themselves? Google is working on it. Appliances that sync with your smartphone? Thanks, Nest.We put together what we think are the best examples of gadgets that brought us into the future or are now showing us the way forward.

04/04/2015

Google Docs have got competition.

An apparent leak shows that the online file storage company is building a word processing service to challenge Google’s.File-sharing company Dropbox plans to take on Google Docs and Evernote with a new online word processing service. Or at least, it appears so.The new product, Composer, surfaced today on Product Hunt, an online bulletin board for tech products, before Dropbox shut down access. Composer is an online notepad similar to Google Docs for creating documents, including the ability for group editing, according to one of several people who said they were able to access the service and who posted a screen shot.Dropbox declined to comment about Composer, which may have leaked out accidentally before it was ready for a public premiere.In developing the service, Dropbox appears to be challenging Google, whose online file-storage product Drive lets users create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations that are saved on its own servers rather than on the author’s computer. Group editing is one of Google Drive’s most useful and popular features. Rival online storage company Box already has an app called Notes for collaborating on documents while note-taking service Evernote offers a similar capability.Dropbox has been battling on multiple fronts against competing online file storage providers like Box, Google Drive, Evernote and even Apple’s iCloud for quite some time. In the past year, the companies have all slashed prices, increased storage limits, and released new products like photo sharing from mobile phones and services that help third-party developers share data.Dropbox had already signaled its interest in getting into online documents and editing tools. Nearly a year ago, it acquired Hackpad, a startup building a service for collaborating on documents, and which may have been the basis for Composer. Dropbox also recently acquired CloudOn, a startup whose apps originally made Microsoft Office documents accessible from mobile devices, but eventually shifted into building its own tools that let mobile users create documents.Last year, Dropbox also unveiled Project Harmony, an ambitious initiative aimed at making it possible to collaborate in real-time on Microsoft Office documents that are saved in Dropbox. This past December, Dropbox made Project Harmony available for its enterprise customers.Composer could be targeted to a number of audiences including education. Google has already been pushing its word processing service to students and …

04/04/2015

Would you use Dropbox 's productive apps?

It looks like Dropbox has a new app up its sleeve.The company appears to be beta testing a new note-taking app called "Project Composer," which combines notes, to-do lists, Dropbox files and calendar information.First spotted by Product Hunt, the service currently appears to be in a private beta, as not everyone with a Dropbox account is able to access it. Project Composer syncs with your calendar and combines collaborative notes, to-do lists and Dropbox files, which can all be added to individual notes, according to Maggie Bignell, a Product Hunt user, who was able to sign into the productivity-focused app."Really nice so far — some beautiful (beginnings of, it's a bit of a mashup at the moment) typography and very clean interface (reminiscent of Evernote's web experience)," Bignell wrote. "It allows multiple people to work on a note. You can add tasks, images, dropbox files, tables all in line with your notes. It also prompts you to create a note for a meeting based on what's on your calendar."Project Composer also integrates with notes taken in previous Hackpad accounts, a startup acquired by Dropbox last year. It seems the former Hackpad team may be behind Project Composer, as some of those who have early access to the new app (including Bignell) were previously Hackpad users.When I tried to sign in with my Dropbox credentials, I was redirected to a page that said the app was "not quite ready for prime time yet," although there is an email to request an invitation to the service.However, a look at my Dropbox account confirms that Project Composer is, in fact, an "official Dropbox app." Indeed, it's listed alongside Mailbox and Carousel as "also from Dropbox" apps in my main Dropbox account. However, it's unclear when we'll see Project Composer's official debut, but the fact that some users are able to access the service suggests Dropbox may be getting close to launch.A Dropbox spokesperson declined to comment on the record.

31/03/2015

Time to develop an apple watch app?

On April 24, the Apple Watch will go on sale for the first time. Apple's debut smartwatch will have a stable of apps available to download upon launch — and this has created a bizarre challenge for developers.They are being expected to build products from scratch for a platform they've never used or seen before, without even fully knowing how it works. Many people still aren't certain what consumers will actually use the Apple Watch for.This situation is almost unique. When companies began building apps for the iPhone, for example, it had already been on the market for a year. Desktop developers have decades of decades of experience and design philosophy to fall back on. Console game developers may build for new platforms, but the basic principles always remain the same.I spoke to Tick CEO Alban Brooke and his team about the challenges of developing for the Apple Watch for the first time. Tick is a time-tracking software that helps teams track time and hit budgets. The Tick Apple Watch app is "designed to quickly start and stop timers that will then be logged into your Tick account," Alban explains. "It is part of a suite of apps that we've built for Tick to make time tracking quick, easy and delightful."After months of development, the team is going to visit Apple's labs in Sunnyvale for their first ever hands-on time with the Apple Watch this week. Due to the NDAs they've signed, they're not allowed to discuss what goes on inside. (We know that Apple is intensively secretive however. The company even taped over developers' iPhone cameras to prevent leaks.)But they're hoping that the much-needed hands-on time with the Apple Watch will help solve some of the unusual problems they've encountered while developing for the new device.When Tim Cook announced the Apple Watch, he placed great emphasis on the digital crown — the dial on the side — as a way of controlling the device. "As it turns out with every revolutionary product that Apple has created, a breakthrough in user interface was required," he proclaimed. The digital crown is to the Apple Watch what the scroll wheel was to the iPod or multi-touch was to the iPhone: "It's a very simple and amazing and elegant input and navigation device."But designer Kevin suggests there's a disparty between this and the access they currently have to the mechanism. "Apple spent a considerable amount of time featuring the digital crown as a revolutionary UI element, but again the SDK provides no methods for interacting …

31/03/2015

It's gonna most likely be taken out by U.S. Missile. Good luck Amazon.

Amazon is testing its drone delivery service at a "secret site" in British Columbia, Canada. That's according to a report from The Guardian.Although Amazon is keeping the location of the test site under wraps, it's reportedly just 2,000 feet from the U.S. border — less than half a mile.The company has acquired a plot of land lined by oak trees and firs, where it is conducting frequent experimental flights with the blessing of the Canadian government, the report says.The move to test in Canada comes after the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) put strict rules in place for commercial drone activity.Amazon has been lobbying the FAA to allow it to start testing drone usage so that it can roll out its Prime Air delivery service. The idea behind Prime Air is to have packages dropped at a customer's doorstep within 30 minutes of ordering online.But the approval process for commercial drone activity is taking enough time to make Amazon antsy.Last week the FAA said Amazon could operate unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), but only under strict conditions and for a specific model of drone. Frustratingly for Amazon, the certification came after the drone unit Amazon wanted to test had become obsolete.As a result of these delays, the company threatened to take its technology outside the U.S."We're limited [in Seattle] to flying indoors and have been now for a very long time. So we do what's necessary – we go to places where we can test outside, in this case Canada," Gur Kimchi, the architect and lead on Prime Air, told The Guardian.It took Canada just three weeks to approve Amazon's drone system, the report says. In exchange, Amazon has "virtual carte blanche regarding its entire fleet of drones within its designated airspace."Amazon may be able to take advantage of Canada's drone rules and regulations to develop and test what will become Prime Air. Once the service is ready to launch in Canada, U.S. regulators may be more willing to start looking at the project for approval.By that point, much of the testing will already be done.

30/03/2015

Would you switch from Mac to Pc for more hardware choices?

Would you switch from Mac to Windows to get access to “better” hardware?I resolved that dilemma long ago by becoming, more or less, operating system agnostic.There is one stubborn, undeniable fact in favor of being agnostic: One side offers more choice. That would be Windows, of course. And that means that there are sometimes better hardware options. And with Windows 10 on the horizon, that becomes even more enticing.Lots of businesses are already agnostic, i.e., either Macs or PCs are allowed. Though that doesn’t necessarily favor Windows PCs (BYOD — Bring Your Own Device — policies are trending to non-Windows platforms), I’ve been moving in the other direction.Barring job-specific platform requirements, the experience on Macs and PCs is increasingly the same for me. Particularly, if you spend much of your time inside Google's Chrome browser, which I do.(And the virus or malware argument against Windows isn’t that convincing anymore after both my MacBook and a friend’s recently got slammed with nasty malware.)Let’s look briefly at laptops: On the Mac side, you’ve essentially got the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and the new 2-pound MacBook. Good choices but limited. While on Windows it’s almost limitless, if you throw in third-tier suppliers and the white box crowd.But that’s stating a well-known fact, which is not my point. What I’m getting at are unique products from top-tier suppliers that, because of the design, pull you off the Mac and over to Windows.Some quick examples: Microsoft's Surface Pro 3, an MSI gaming rig, Dell's new XPS 13, and Hewlett-Packard's EliteBook Folio 1040.(I’ve used two of those products extensively: the Surface Pro 3 and XPS 13.)Surface Pro 3: The Surface Pro 3 is a pretty obvious design that’s conspicuously absent in the Mac world. And it meets a market need. A tablet that has the power of a PC but is relatively lightweight and can transform into a laptop (almost) when needed. And it’s been successful for a product that’s pricey, starting at $799. Market researcher Canalys estimated that Microsoft shipped north of 2 million Surface products in the fourth quarter, with the bulk of those Surface Pro 3.MSI GT80 Titan SLI: You may have seen those gigantic 17-inch laptops that squatters seem inexplicably bonded to at a local Starbucks. That size is pretty standard in the gaming world. Size aside, in a MacBook, you won’t find the kind of silicon (particularly graphics) a top-of-the-line MSI rig is packing. Other specifications like a …