Monthly Archives: November 2014

General Information

Meet Raffi! The Camel With A View!

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Google never seizes to amaze us. They are willing to do almost anything to get their tech up to scratch.

Google wanted to give us a view of the Liwa Oasis—the largest oasis in the Arabian peninsula. The solution they chose was to place their famous Trekker (an all angle camera used to take images for the Google Maps) on a camel and get it to walk around the desert.

Google Said “To bring this stunning desert to Street View, we fashioned the Trekker to rest on a camel, which gathered imagery as it walked. Using camels for the collection allowed us to collect authentic imagery and minimize our disruption of this fragile environment.”

 

Conclusion: Google is a technology giant as of the date of this article. This tells us all why they are — they give everything they got to get  what they want. An advice to any business in this new age!

(You can click here to view the desert)

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Microsoft Joins The Wearable War!

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Remember the internet of things? Remember how everything is getting smarter? Well Microsoft has joined the bid to make us wear technology by introducing their own smartwatch, rightly named the Microsoft Band!

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Recently Microsoft has been trying itself in every technological race by making their own devices, they broke into the race with their own tablet the Surface! This announcement doesn’t come as a shock as it was only time they came up with theirs, after the announcement of the Apple Watch.

If you are looking for a difference between this and any other smartwatch then you are out of luck, asides that it can be used with the most common smart phones out now. The microsoft band, like any other smartwatch, needs your phone to enjoy the full features, has a GPS, mainly for healthy living and of course has Cortana (Microsoft Digital Personal Assistant).

Slick Design
Slick Design

Like most smart watches, it records your heart rate, your steps, and other health data and connects to your phone to tell you more on your activities and even suggest some for you. Microsoft even threw in some snazzy features like UV sensor, and calories counter.

With almost all big tech companies making their own type of watch/band, it is definite we will be seeing more and more of this around. Only if you have got $199 to spend on one!

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Meet Amazon Echo!

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Siri, Cortana, Google Now beware, for there is a new guy in town.

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Meet the Amazon Echo!

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been the subject of science fiction since its early days and with each second we are getting closer to something that can mimic AI. Thanks to the hard work and collection of internet information, we have been putting AI to use in systems such Siri, Cortana and Google Now.

Amazon Echo is another personal assistant like the ones we find on our smart phones. However, the Echo comes with a difference, it sits in a speaker and has its own phone App that gives you continuity if you are out of proximity of the Echo. Of course it is voice activated and can organise your diary, play music, tell you the weather and like the other PA systems answer your questions!

 

Echo Advanced Design
Echo Advanced Design

Amazon says “Echo has been fine-tuned to deliver crisp vocals with dynamic bass response. Its dual downward-firing speakers produce 360° omni-directional audio to fill the room with immersive sound. Echo provides hands-free voice control for Amazon Music, Prime Music, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. Plus, Echo is Bluetooth-enabled so you can stream other popular music services like Spotify, iTunes, and Pandora from your phone or tablet.”

If you are ready to shell $199 on this, it will serve as a good speaker and personal assistant to have in the home. The only thing left to say is Alexa!