Monthly Archives: August 2014

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Must Have Handy Apps On Everyone’s Phone

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Thank goodness for the smart phones as they have changed the way we do things on the move. There are thousands of apps that can be downloaded on your mobile devices and they all promise to do something useful. Depending on what you are trying to achieve with your phone, you can about download apps to do them for you. As a tech lover, I have tried many apps and sometimes been gobsmacked and other times disappointed. And apps do give your phone a new feature each time. Asides the games and numerous promising apps, I think there are some apps your phone must have. These types of apps I have chosen as must haves. Enjoy

Flashlight;

Yes, for me this has to be one of the most useful app categories on any mobile. This app turns your phone into a flashlight using the flash next to your camera. So when you are looking for something under the chair, or simply walking a dark path, you can trust your phone to shine a light!

Shazam;

This is more for music lovers. Ever been out and about and you hear a song play and you just wished you knew the title so you can go buy it. Well Shazam does that for you, as long as you have got internet connection you can ask it to listen to a piece of music and it can tell you the artist, song title and album

Fitness App;

As more and more people want to get fit anyway they can. There are apps that turn your phone into a fitness trainer or tracker. They can tell you how much you walked, slept, or ran on your morning jogging. Some do come with additional hardware you have to wear on your wrist so please check to make sure.

And lastly any chatting app. This is a way to keep in touch with friends and family. The chances you already have one on your phone now. If you don’t, make sure you get one most of your friends and families have so you can chat with them and share moments for free.

 

 

 

 

 

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Microsoft Office On iPad

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There are many thousands of Apps on the App Store on the “I-family” series. Long have students, professionals and workers using the Microsoft Office Suite been looking for means to create, view and edit their Microsoft Office documents on their beloved iPad. In the past, the only way to achieve this was to download apps that are compatible with your Microsoft Office documents to edit and create them.

Excel On Ipad

In March 2014 Microsoft has announced it will now be offering its Office suite on the Ipad. As of now, you can get Excel, Powerpoint, Word, OneNote and Lync for free on the App Store. Sadly it is not all free, as you will still need to purchase the Office 365 if you want to edit and create documents on the iPad. For now, you can only view on it.

PowerPoint On iPad

Conclusion: Now you can take your work with you on your iPad, a step closer to seamless creativity and professionalism.

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Is Paying By Waving Your Palm The Future?

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You have heard of many ways to pay for what you buy without using cash. From debit and credit cards, to paypal to contactless cards. Now there is another way we might be paying in the future. Sometime soon, you might walk into the supermarket and pay by waving your hands at a scanner. You don’t need to have a computer chip under your skin either. Swedish engineer Fredrik Leifland invented a system that scans your vein patterns and recognises it as a payment method. This unique system called Quixter uses sensors that are used to read the configuration of blood vessels and correspond with the linked bank account.

The Quixter Box

Conclusion: This is a very unique system that has been tried by many students in Sweden and has become popular. As a security enthusiast, I consider this to be a very secure payment system that can and will become very popular in the future.

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Real Life Iron Man?

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We might be seeing an Iron Man in real life soon? Well not quite. Many companies are working on suits that will make the human body stronger and capable of doing what it won’t normally be strong enough to do! DARPA’s exoskelton program said that units enabling soldiers to “run faster, leap further and carry more will be delivered for Army testing in 2008 coincidentally the year the first Iron Man movie was released. That was 6 years ago!

 

Things have gone far beyond that now, with many exoskeleton systems being tested to enhance humans to do more.  Companies like Daewoo, eksobionics  and university researchers have been testing and trying out the feasibility of these devices

 

Conclusion; This doesn’t mean we will all be in iron suits and flying to work soon. One thing I am glad for is that physically challenged people can do more with the help of these artificial skeletal structures and depend less on helpers.

A worker wearing an exoskeleton suit at the Daewoo plant in South Korea Photo: Daewoo
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Are You Stressed Out? Your Phone May Be The Cause!

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Stress is everywhere and anything can cause stress! We are animals that do everything using our brains. If the brain focuses too much on an issue or problem, it leads to stress. Our electronic devices have been linked to add more stress to our lives, especially our mobile phones. The reason why mobile phones do more than other devices will be because we take them around with us everywhere we go and if you are like someone I know you check it every hour even when you are sleeping! Sorry babe!

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According to researchers, the amount of information we consume now is three times more than humans did in 1960. You can always agree with this, having in mind there was no twitter, facebook and such in those years. Now anything happens, and anyone with a social media account gets an update of it within seconds anywhere in the world.

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Forbes magazine conducted a survey of over 1000 people to find out what impact screen time is having on people’s lives. The results are shown above.

The main issue is we cannot say no to checking our phones, we even stop while talking, while eating, or while on a date to check our phones. And this translates to us spending more time with our screens than real people!

Paar im Restaurant schaut auf ihre Handys

The odds are if you are really stressed now there is a fat chance your devices really add to it. To curb this, try and spend less time with the devices. Call your family and friends instead of chatting or sending texts. Even better, Skype Video calling is free for up to 10 people, so you can do video calls with friends and family without worrying about price. Plan more outdoor fun with friends and family that doesn’t involve checking your phone or tablet, if you can afford it, turn off your device till you are back at home or you need it to make a call.

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Reading On The Screen Without Your Glasses Is Slowly Becoming Reality!!!

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Do you need glasses to read? Do you use tablets and phones? Is it annoying that you have to pick up your glasses each time to read your text messages or read your favourite book on your tablet? If you answered yes to the three questions, then soon you will not need to reach for your glasses to read your mobile devices. No, I am not going to heal your sight with these texts you are reading, neither will you need to go for laser surgery for this!

Your mobile devices will adjust to your eyes! Yeah, you read that correctly! Your tablet or phone will adjust to your eyes in the nearest future so that you would not need your glasses.

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Some UC Berkeley researchers teamed up with other researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to develop their latest prototype of a vision-correcting display. Like always the Computer Potatoe is here to simply how it works for you!

How it works; it uses light and some other technologies to present the images on the screen to the reader following their glasses prescription.

 

A prototype has been built and will be presented to the world soon. This doesn’t mean it will be available on all devices in months. We can only be assured that this will be very useful to many people and it will get into the markets as soon as possible.

For: It will help any visually impaired reader to use their devices without glasses or squinting.

 Against: This will mean that two people can share at the same time with the prescription on because to one person, it will look sharp but to the other it will look distorted.

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Skype Group Video Call Is Free

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Fancy video chatting with your friends or family? Well, Skype group video chat is now free on Windows desktop, OS X and the Xbox One. If you have non of these platforms, not to worry because In a blog post, Skype said group video calling will be added to more platforms in the future “at no cost.” At the moment you can only skype with up to 10 people with video on all but Xbox One. For the mobile devices users, Skype has assured us it will be coming to Windows Phone, Android and IOS soon.

 

Why is this news? Skype started group video calling as a premium service in January 2011 for about £4.99 per month.

Skype Group Video Calling
Skype Group Video Calling

Why this sudden change of heart then? We can only come to the conclusion that Microsoft (the owner of Skype) is trying to compete with Google’s communication platform (Google Hangout) which was always free and does the same thing and more.

Only one thing is left to say. Get your skype on here!!!

 

 

 

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Robot Transformers Are Becoming Reality!

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If you thought the movie Transformers was mere science fiction, you might have been correct last year. It has turned out team of researchers from Harvard and MIT have developed a new kind of robot – one that is capable of folding and unfolding itself, much like origami.

 

“Getting a robot to assemble itself autonomously and actually perform a function has been a milestone we’ve been chasing for many years,” researcher Robert J. Wood said in a press release

 

 

Even though they don’t look like much, this is actually a great achievement and first of its kind.

 

What is the use for this? Well, first thing to come to mind is that they will make great toys. But in a world where space is becoming less and less, we can build machines that can fold up to smaller bits and tuck themselves away when not in use. For me, I still think it is cool to see a real life Transformer. Autobots!

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Mobile Chargers

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Have you been on the road and your phone ran out of battery? There is no charging point around and you really need to use your phone? Well do not worry, there are chargers that you can take around with you called power banks that will boost your phone’s battery without actually connecting it to a power point. You will need to charge these mobile power banks though.

How do they work? They simply have batteries inside that are capable of charging your mobile devices, some are so powerful they can even charge your laptop. 

See below some of the acclaimed mobile power banks

http://www.portablepowerbankcharger.com/

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3D Printing Simplified!

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Have you ever wondered what 3D printing is? The Computer Potatoe is here, as always to simplify this for you. If you are reading this, the chances are you have used a printer before or have had someone help you print your documents. You simply select the page you want printed and the printer does all the work of turning the document on the computer into ink on paper. Inside the printer, ink is sprayed layer by layer on the paper until all your text appears exactly as it is the computer be it coloured or black and white.

3D printing is exactly the same, only more detailed and it is not just on paper. 3D printing can use several materials including plastic and metals instead of just ink. It gradually binds layers and layers of granular material together from bottom to top until it has produced a full 3 dimensional object (hence the name). Even though it sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, this technology has been out for more than a decade but is just starting to gain commercialisation.

3D printing in action!

The benefits of this technology are many. Imagine you wanted a new spoon in the house and all you do is go to your computer and send a template to print to your 3D printer. In minutes you have a spoon that you can use to eat immediately. This goes for all objects you want to print. Simply pop the template on your computer and send it to print on the 3D printer, and you get it in minutes no matter how intricate the object design is.

3D Printer

As of now to get one of these printers still cost an arm and a leg and the materials even more but many technology companies are working hard on getting these into our homes for cheaper.

For your enjoyment, see this 3D printed real ice cream