Tag Archives: Information

Protect The Kids With Link

We are now in the digital age and one thing is for sure, there is no slowing it down. We are also so entrenched in our daily lives that we keep the young ones busy with digital content, be it on our phones, mobile tablets, TVs, or PCs. As we know, the internet is a plethora of information, but can also be very dangerous and perverted place.

From Teleraph.co.uk

Now there comes the question of how we keep these young inquisitive minds safe from the perverted information aplenty on the  internet, or how we manage what and when they consume. This is where apps like Google’s Family Link comes into play.

According to Google, Family Link at the time of this article, will only

  • Manage the apps your kid can use – Approve or block the apps your kid wants to download from the Google Play store.

  • Keep an eye on screen time – See how much time your kid spends on their favourite apps with weekly or monthly activity reports, and set daily screen time limits.

  • Set device bedtime – Remotely lock your kid’s device when it’s time for bed, or time to take a break.

Unfortunately, Family Link doesn’t filter or block content, but with these three features, you can control how the youngsters view and use the internet.

To use Family Link, the kid’s device has to be an android, but you can control the access of said android device from an IPhone or Android device. Please visit here to read more about this nifty tool.

We at thecomputerpotato think technology like this is very much needed as we go forward, and will be looking forward to seeing more and more tools like this to keep kids from the horror and perversion, until they are old enough that is.

Why Shoot For The Stars, When You Can Shoot Stars!

Many cultures have told kids to wish upon a shooting star, because if you do, it will most certainly come true! This elusive phenomenon, and it superstitious promise has got people looking to the skies since, forever! That is going to change now, if a project being touted as “The future of entertainment” gets its way.

Meet Sky Canvas. Please see video below!

Yup, you did just watch that!

The project aims to use satellites to shoot you stars at will! For entertainment! According to the brains of this idea “A natural shooting star occurs when a particle in space, with a size of a few millimetres, enters the atmosphere and burns brightly through a process called plasma emission. Our goal is to artificially recreate this process.”

We think it is a great lucrative idea, but one that also takes the magic out of a lifetime-old fable!

If you want to know more about this, you can read more about how it works here.

This Tiny Device Purifies Water By Harnessing Solar Energy

A joint research with the Nature Nanotechnology team at Stanford University in the USA claim to have created a tiny device that uses the sun’s power to purify water, in just 20 minutes! That is ground breaking technology!

A researcher holds a tiny device that uses sunlight to disinfect water.
The Tiny Miracle (Jin Xie/Stanford University)

When in water, this device absorbs sunlight in the way most solar devices do not, efficiently, and uses this to cause a reaction that kills bacteria. The test killed off 99.9% of the bacteria in 20 minutes! If you want to read more, please click here!

Boy is this good news for many parts of this blue globe we live in.  1.9 billion people, that is almost a third of the world, are said to drink water that is faecally contaminated according to WHO! Needless to say this technology will be seeing the light of day soon!

The Power Of Trillions In A Car: A Step Closer To Full Self Driving Automobiles

Unless you are disconnected from the entire earth due to some natural disaster that placed you on the moon itself, you would have heard cars are becoming autonomous, slowly but surely! Autonomous? That just means they can drive themselves in everyday language, nothing sinister.

How do they do this? They use cameras as eyes, sensors as skin to know if an object is near, GPS as direction, and a computer (processor) – that ties all these parts together – as brain. Now this is the tricky part. A car like that needs a computer fast enough to handle all the data it gets from all these different components in realtime, in other to be able to drive safely to its destination: a super computer with artificial intelligence!

The-Future

As always with new technology nowadays, tech giants are vying doggedly to get a piece of the action, and who is to blame them? Autonomous cars are looking, everyday, more like they are the future even if they don’t stick around for long.  So when Nvidia – a computer graphics processor giant- showcased their latest endeavour in Jan 2016, it sent a shock round the information technology world. Meet the Nvidia Drive PX 2!

Courtesy of www.engadget.com
Courtesy of www.engadget.com

Why is it news worthy you might say, it’s because of its speed. It can deal with 24 trillion computer instructions in a second. In everyday language, it is 150 times faster than your MACbook Pro or I7 Windows computer! So yeah, it is fast, for now! Not only is it a supercomputer in speed, it also runs on artificial intelligence, meaning it learns!

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Even though the Drive PX 2 is not the fastest processor in the world, it is one of those that are solely made for self driving cars, and within a year, we are sure to see faster processors for this very purpose. Another glimpse into our futures!

Get Your Essentials In A Dash – Amazon Dash In The UK

You might recall last year we talked about an “amazon” new product called the Dash, and its cousins the Dash buttons. You can click here to refresh your knowledge.

Having been out for months now in the USA, Amazon has started rolling out its brainchild to the rest of the world and UK has just been added on to its map. Click here to see more.

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From your baby nappies, to detergent, or for the careful; condoms. All these items can be ordered straight with the push of a button.

Dash your way into your partner’s heart by keeping the house stocked with the bare essentials!

Future of Transport?

China has brought the world many things for eons. A good example is paper money we all love now! Hence, when china comes out with something pioneering, we needn’t be surprised! You might have seen a video a while back of a concept bus that straddles traffic to beat the traffic hold up! We all thought it was a brilliant idea and went on to watch a surprised cat on youtube!

Well you might need to recollect that memory and even live it now, because it is a brilliant idea that has come to reality. If it works out, we all might have to adopt it everyday to commute. Why? Because it is quintessentially creative innovation. You don’t have to worry about traffic jams caused by cars. See below!

If that video hasn’t convinced you of the benefits of it, then no amount of words can. We at thecomputerpotato can’t wait to see these buses everywhere! Why? We know it will ease transport for both public transport users and private cars. If you want another reason, they are electric powered, which means no poisonous fumes from operating them, another step to save our earth.

EyeForcer Wants To Save Our Spine!

We all have that neck pain every now and then and we  know what caused it too, but do not want to admit to ourselves. Yes, our mobile devices do cause us neck pains. It is so bad that it is now known as a condition called Gameboy Disease, Gameboy Back, or also Tech Neck!

It was once a condition for the adults! But more and more kids are said to visit the doctors for this very condition. Who is to blame anyone, that candycrush game is captivating, both to adults and children alike, and we are all guilty of slouching to enjoy it better.

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Eyeforcer wants to change that. It has made a smart glasses frame without any lenses that  monitors the head’s position to make sure you or your kids are not slouching. If it detects the slouch multiple times, it quits whatever you are doing. See below

We need more of ideas like this to help us stay focused, and literally in shape in this world were gadgets are now part of everyday life!

The Landline Has Got A New “Home”!

Are you in love with your landline number? Or financially, it just makes sense for you to make and receive calls on your landline? Well, that is all reasonable, but you are never at home because you spend most of your time on the road or at work! You really need that landline and you can’t do without it!!! The landline is wired at home, that is why it is aptly called a fixed line. So how do you get those valuable landline calls when you are not in the house? Luckily, there is now a solution for you. Here comes voice bridge.

If you understand the video then you know what the nifty devices does, it diverts your landline calls to your mobile devices (tablet or phone) via the internet! Which means as long as you have internet on your phone and your WiFi at home is fine, you will be able to take the calls on your mobile device!

No more fixed line, your landline calls are now free to roam with you without wires! Handy!

Solar Power Is Moving Up!

Scientists have always researched into alternative ways to do away with “unclean” energy for cleaner ones. Clean energy or renewable energy, being energy derived from natural sources without destruction to the environment that comes with producing energy nowadays. Think the batteries in your smart devices that poison the earth if not disposed of carefully.

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The solar power panels have always been sought for an alternative way to harness energy. Why? The sun is abundant and will always be there, as long as there is life on earth. But the most efficiency we ever got from this form of power generation was 17%. This has changed now. Sol Voltaics, a Swedish start-up has seen a breakthrough that will help ensure change.

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They claim to have created a film that can boost solar power efficiency to 50%. This is good news for both us, the end users, and mother nature. One thing is certain, the more we look, the more we find. Soon, we might just have a renewable energy source that will make the “poisonous” batteries we have all around us now obsolete, amongst other things. We might never need to charge our mobile devices any longer, it will charge itself by fuelling on the sun. See video below!

We say well done to the researchers of this discovery and hope for an even better result on clean energy in the future!