Bluetooth Speakers
Tuesday 3 June 2014
Apple announces iCloud Drive,one location to store and sync all documents between Mac,iOS and Windows
An iOS document picker will enable you to access these files from within iOS apps, seamlessly.
This should allow much better project management, which spans multiple filetypes and applications. Documents appear in the Finder, with folders representing app sandbox’s as well as a freeform area to drop any other documents that users want to sync between their devices. This seems to makeup part of Apple’s new focus on “continuity”.
Monday 2 June 2014
Lytro cameras
The newly announced Lytro Illum is the first high-end camera to use
light field technology, and it's the second camera from the company.
Unlike traditional photos, light field images can be refocused after you
take them - so if you'd rather look at the background than the
foreground, you can change the focus with a click.It's
enormously clever and has the potential to revolutionise photography.
But Lytro is a real underdog here: its images require a plugin to view
and it's taking on a massive and well established market. Fans hope it
will become the Dyson of digital photography.
Tablet buying guide
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Five key elements for buying a tablet
Resolution-
The higher the resolution, the sharper your screen will be. The amount of time you'll spend staring at that screen justifies the extra expense.
If you're not really used to HD screens then economizing with a low resolution might be tempting. Just remember that it will impact on everything. Reading, watching movies and gaming, are all significantly nicer on higher resolutions screens.
Storage-
Aim for at least 16GB of internal storage to be safe, even if you don't think you'll be downloading a lot of content. You'll thank us later.
If you can find a model with a microSD slot, all the better, as this is a great silo for photos, movies and other media that won't take up valuable space for apps.
Platform-
In the tablet world the iPad claims the most tablet-optimized, quality apps. Android has an extensive choice with a high proportion of free apps, but many are designed for phones, so they can't boast the same level of polish.
Microsoft offers full-fat Windows 8.1, which brings a consistency across devices and should appeal to business users, or the cut down Windows RT, which looks weak in terms of function next to Android and iOS, although neither have a particularly comprehensive apps library.
Processor and RAM-
This will have a big impact on the speed of your tablet and its ability to handle multiple tasks. Generally speaking, the higher the processor speed and RAM the better. Quad core tablets perform better, dual core options are kinder to the battery.
New microchip 9,000 times faster than a typical computer
A new microchip modelled on the human brain is 9,000 times faster and more efficient than a typical computer.
The
development offers greater possibilities for advances in robotics and
computing and a new way of understanding the brain, researchers said.
For all their sophistication, computers pale in comparison to the
brain. The modest cortex of the mouse, for instance, operates 9,000
times faster than a personal computer simulation of its functions.
Not
only is the PC slower, it takes 40,000 times more power to run, said
Kwabena Boahen, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford
University.
Boahen and his team developed
Neurogrid, a circuit board consisting of 16 custom-designed "Neurocore"
chips that can simulate 1 million neurons and billions of synaptic
connections.
The team designed these chips with
power efficiency in mind. Their strategy was to enable certain synapses
to share hardware circuits.
By switching to modern manufacturing processes and fabricating the
chips in large volumes, he could cut a Neurocore's cost 100-fold -
suggesting a million-neuron board for $ 400 a copy.
With
that cheaper hardware and compiler software to make it easy to
configure, these neuromorphic systems could find numerous applications,
researchers said.
For instance, a chip as fast
and efficient as the human brain could drive prosthetic limbs with the
speed and complexity of our own actions - but without being tethered to a
power source.
New application turns smartphone into health monitor
Researchers have developed a new smartphone app that monitors how heart and lung patients walk and can alert doctors when their symptoms worsen.
GaitTrack, an app developed by researchers at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the U of I at Chicago, turns a
smartphone into a sophisticated medical device.
Unlike
other apps that merely count steps, GaitTrack uses eight motion
parameters to perform a detailed analysis of a person's gait, or walking
pattern, which can tell physicians much about a patient's
cardiopulmonary, muscular and neurological health.
According to Schatz, gait is sometimes called the "sixth vital
sign" - after temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate
and blood oxygen level.
Gait speed involves
several systems of the body working together in coordination, so changes
in gait can be a sign of trouble in one or more systems.
Doctors often use an assessment called the six-minute walk test for
patients with heart and lung disease, such as congestive heart failure,
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma.
The Illinois team used GaitTrack to administer six-minute walk tests to
30 patients with chronic lung disease and found that it monitored more
accurately - and more cheaply - than the medical accelerometers.
The phone would periodically collect data, analyse it and keep tabs on
the patient's status, alerting the patient or patient's doctor when it
detects changes in gait that would indicate a decline in health so that
treatment could be adjusted responsively.
Few websites for music lovers
The internet has changed the way we acquire our music. You don't even have to visit your neighbourhood record store any more. Simply sign-up for an account, pay by card, and download the tunes you want. But did you know there's more on offer for music lovers on the web? Here are some amazing sites that every aficionado should know and bookmark...
Free downloads
www.myspoonful.com
This site is backed by a team of curators that sift through a bunch of fresh artists every week to recommend the best of what's new.
www.rollingstone.com/music/daily-download
If you love music, you might have at least heard of Rolling Stone magazine. But did you know that its website has a 'Daily Download' section? Okay, so you don't get a song a day, every day, but RS regularly updates this section with tunes every couple of days.
www.1classical.com
This resource is an aggregator of classical music. You can browse its tunes by composers such as Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Handel, Mozart, and Wagner - or you can choose to download compositions based on the instrument it was written for.
www.gaana.com
If you're looking for tunes closer to home, you might want to consider Gaana. It boasts of a huge collection of songs in practically every regional language - from Hindi to Kannada and Marathi to Bengali. A free account lets you create your own playlists, and you can even 'like', comment on, and share songs with friends through Twitter and Facebook.
www.stereomood.com
Right at the top of the main page on Stereomood, you will find a
text box that asks you to describe your mood. And you can type
practically anything: angry, aggressive, loved, beautiful, sad,
sleepy...
Stereomood accordingly creates a playlist for you.
neverendingplaylist.com and www.jiggyape.com
In the old days, if you wanted to listen to a song, you needed to
own the vinyl, cassette, CD, or request the track on the radio. Now,
simply head to Never Ending Playlist or JiggyApe, enter the name of the
artist you want to hear, and hit enter.
The site trawls through YouTube and automatically creates a playlist for you.
www.musicovery.com
Each song listed on Musicovery has been curated and categorized
using 40 parameters. The site's algorithm then plots the song - in the
form of coloured dots - on a 'mood map'.
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