All posts by tp2000ng@yahoo.com

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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!

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New Battery Charges In 2 Minutes, Last 20 Years!

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Computer Potatoe thrives in bringing you the latest innovation and technology and again we have got one that caught our eyes. A group of researchers -obviously- have managed to develop a Lithium battery that takes 2 minutes to charge and could last up to 20 years.

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This is an exciting and great achievement as the current Lithium batteries can be charged and drained about 500 times and usually last about 2 years of continual use. This is the reason why after 2 years, your battery operated devices seem to last a little less after a full charge. The newly developed generation of batteries by scientists in Nanyang Technology University in Singapore could go 10,000 times and last 20 years.

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As always, Computer Potato brings you the latest technology in its simplest form so we won’t be discussing the technical details. However, the materials inside the newly developed batteries are different and cheaper compared to the current generation of batteries. This could mean we will be seeing these batteries in the market soon.

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Don’t get your hopes up too soon though, as this research is much more for batteries in electric vehicles than your smart phones. If history is to repeat itself – like it always does- mobile devices will be getting it a shortly after!

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Video Chat With A Doctor? Google Trials!

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We are all aware Google is a giant in internet technologies, but not many know that google is looking into many other technologies to make life easy in the future. We have seen Google funding researches into driverless cars, robotics e.t.c

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Now the technology giant has said it will be venturing into providing video chat services between doctors and people searching for diagnosis on the internet. This service – already being tested – will help thousands avoid misdiagnosing themselves. Google has said it will pay for the video chat services during the trial, but when it does go live patients, will have to pay for their appointments.

This can be a very important and beneficial service, as many people panic themselves by searching for symptoms on the internet, sometimes misdiagnosing and even self prescribing the wrong medicine.  Not to mention it might turn out cheaper for the patients than actually going to a clinic.

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Microsoft Showcases Windows 10; A Step Ahead

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After the release of windows 8 we heard Microsoft was working on the next windows. We all thought it would be windows 9 (click to read post on windows 9).

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Microsoft has finally unleashed its new windows system and it is not called window 9 but windows 10. As Computer Potatoe only brings you information in its simplest form, we can only say the decision to skip the number 9 is rumoured to be due to some technical issues with software confusing it for windows 95/98 without going into technical details.

There are many features in the new windows that will bring you back to the windows 7 days and even better, it still has all the windows 8 good features. See video below

 

 

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The Phone With The Edge “A-side” The Rest!!!

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It is always a battle with smart phones coming out almost every month from different manufacturers, each vying to be the best coming out with new innovations and classic features to attract loyal customers.

Time to time, a phone pioneers an idea and most others follow. We saw this with the birth of the iPhone in 2007, every manufacturer went crazy after the success of the iPhone and the race has been even hotter ever since.

In a saturated market, there still comes a time when a manufacturer does something that helps revolutionise smartphones. We at Computer Potatoe think Samsung has done this. We introduce to you the Samsung Note Edge.

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Meet The Robot Delivery Guy!

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Robots might soon be delivering your mail in minutes in the future. DHL is trialling a service where drones deliver mail in Juist, a German island in the North Sea.

The trial is the first of its kind in Europe. Partnered with the German government, the flight plan for this robot vehicles have been drawn just for a few weeks. They are set to fly 12km from a harbor in Norddeich to the island at a height of about 50m (164 feet) and up to 18 m/s (about 40mph). These drones will fly to deliver drugs and other urgent medical supplies to a pharmacy on a remote island off the North coast.

The “parcel-copter” will automatically fly from source to destination while being monitored and not controlled. DHL isn’t the only one eyeing this type of service. Google and Amazon are also working on their drone delivery systems.

Not to get too excited however, before any of these services can knock at your door, it will still be a while. But I find it a very useful delivery service so much that it made our list of good innovation.

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Looking For A Way To Save Your Files Securely?

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Are you looking for a safe and easy backup solution for your work files, or just looking to store some of your confidential and unlosable files somewhere? The Cloud is the solution (Read more here about Cloud). And almost everywhere you look there are many solutions from Apple, Dopbox and less popular companies. However, you might already have a large Cloud space to store your files for free if you have a Gmail or Hotmail account.

GoogleDrive

Google and Microsoft the owners of Gmail and Hotmail respectively have graced there loyal users with 15GB of online storage (aka Cloud) linked to their accounts.

There are apps for your phone, programs for your PC or just login to access your files from a web browser. Google called its Google drive and Microsoft, Onedrive. You can search your App market to find them. Microsoft has also added a bonus for people that have it on their mobile devices and have auto photos backup turned on, by doubling the size which gives you 30GB.

What is best about this type of storage is you can easily access your files anywhere in the world and share it with whomever you might decide to.

To give you an idea of how much data the online drives can hold see below a break down of common files

If you have the camera set to normal capture like we normal folks, the 15GB can store 9000 or more.

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A 22 page Word document is 64kb on the new Microsoft Word 2010. The 15GB drive can store almost 2,500,000 of these files

A song can be 6mb on almost best quality. With the 15GB you can store almost 2500 of your favourite songs

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Video files are always larger and the size depends on the length of the video. But the 15GB can store a lot of it, having in mind your phone without additional memory is usually 16GB

Conclusion: Even though you will need to sign up for a Gmail or Hotmail account to use these drives, we can’t help but think this is a handy and cheap way of saving some of your most usable files, photos or video.

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Chopsticks To Die For!

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I never believed one day I would pick up my pen, or my computer to write an article like this. But here we are in 2014, and the world is changing faster than we all imagined. Some say it is for the better, some say it is for the worse. Whatever your opinion you have to agree with me that chopsticks that can actually save your life by testing your food is definitely new.

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I previously wrote about some unusual things that have been given the smart prefix (click here to read). A Chinese company (obviously) Baidu have designed what is now known as smart chopsticks. These chopsticks check the food for anything toxic when it touches it. As the world is trying to save money, restaurants reuse cooking oils and add cheap, badly made or sometimes artificial food condiments to food to make it as cheap and as delicious as possible. This has led to seeing more dangerous and toxic ingredients in our eat out food. These chopsticks will also check for things like the salinity and acidity. It can do this because it has indicators on it that will tell you if the food is bad (red) or good enough to eat (blue). It can also connect to your smart mobile phone and give you a detailed information about the results of the test.

Conclusion: This is a very using and lifesaving tool that can gain ground if more companies get hold of the technology and research into it. It is said in the future there will be more devices that will be able to instantly test food for calories and even more. I for one am looking forward to the common use of these devices, as I have been sick from eating out a too many times.

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Some Features On The Upcoming Windows 9!

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The upcoming Windows 9 operating system comes with many features, some are new, some are old and some are from other windows platforms. But according to pictures that have surfaced on the internet, the windows 9 still has the metro feel of the windows 8 & 8.1. I have put together some of the features that you can expect from Microsoft when this system is finally released at the end of this year or early next year.

Cortana On Windows Phone

Cortana is an artificial intelligent personal assistant, more like the acclaimed Siri on apple devices. It can help you organise your calendar, send your emails while you dictate or even answer questions you ask it. Windows phones were the first to have this feature and Microsoft is looking to bring this feature to their new windows computer system.

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Windows 9 will be so versatile it will seat on all platforms; from your windows phone to your tablet and computer. This means the same apps on your phone will be able to run on your computer too. This can be useful in the sense that you can work seamlessly on all your windows 9 devices.

Windows 9 Start Menu

The Start Menu is back. Remember the good old “windows 7 and below” days, where you click on a start button and you can easily browse your programs and folder? Well you will be surprised to find it coming back in the new windows 9. Microsoft finally gave in to all the pleas and there is even a rumour that windows 8 might be getting this update!

There are many more features that will make windows 9 a system to buy if Microsoft gets it right. We sure hope they do win us back as windows 8 didn’t do much of that yet!