Bond Technologies

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2018-12-29T18:29:00.000+01:00

Good day everyone, its been a while, so much was missed in the third and fourth quarter of 2018. I'm very sorry i wasn't efficient as expected. Blogging is a passion and a hubby but at times the activities of life seem to overshadow your passions and cause a person to live just trying to do the necessary and not what makes him/her happy.
But thank God am back to fulfill my passion and fill you my great subscribers with lots of tech info as they come out in the technological world.
I also want to use this medium to appreciate everyone who read my post throughout the year 2018 and the previous year. Thanks a lot.
Merry Christmas and a Happy new years everyone.

For more technological trending news, research and informations click here

OnePlus 6 is official: Snapdragon 845, 6.28" notched display, and glass back - starts at $529

2018-05-16T19:50:00.001+01:00

OnePlus' livestreamed London event wrapped up earlier today, and at it the company revealed both its new Bullets Wireless headphones and the expected OnePlus 6. The latter sports the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC, up to 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage, packed into a notched glass sandwich, and starting at $529.

Specifications for the newly announced phone are as follows:

On paper, the OnePlus 6 sounds pretty much as we expected, given the leaks over the past few months. One interesting thing to note, although OnePlus is advertising the phone as "Water Resistant," there's no actual IPX certification associated with that statement on the product listing or "Tech Specs" pages.

Like OnePlus phones before it, the OnePlus 6 has the company's Dash charging, and battery capacity remains unchanged since the OnePlus 5T. Around back you'll notice a change in materials: The new model swaps the old anodized aluminum for vacuum molded Gorilla Glass 5, in both etched matte and glossy varieties. And, of course, the display on the front has been expanded to be nearly edge-to-edge—excluding a slight chin and the all-too-vogue notch.

Camera specs have also been bumped, with an increase in sensor size that may translate to improved low-light performance. Since the OnePlus 6 launches with Android Oreo, it should also support Treble. And, of course, the previously announced Android P beta will be available for the device, if mucking around in a potentially unstable OS is your jam.

For more details, check out our hands-on. Prices start at $529, and it will be available in three total color options, including white, but just two to start: matte and glossy black. Unfortunately, you can't actually buy one just yet. Sales open on Monday, May 21st.

PRESS RELEASE

Presenting the OnePlus 6 – The Speed You Need
6.28” Full Optic AMOLED Display with 19:9 aspect ratio, and Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 845 deliver immersive viewing experience and smooth performance in a sleek flagship smartphone

London – May 16, 2018 – OnePlus today announced its latest premium flagship device, the OnePlus 6
The OnePlus 6 – the first in OnePlus' line of flagships to feature an all-glass design – is the company's most sophisticated handset to date.

With a 6.28-inch Full Optic AMOLED 19:9 display – OnePlus' largest-ever screen – the OnePlus 6 offers an immersive viewing experience, while keeping a similar form factor to that of the OnePlus 5T.
Combining new technology from Qualcomm® with OnePlus' engineering, the OnePlus 6 is the fastest handset the company has ever produced.

"With the OnePlus 6, we challenged ourselves to deliver an external design as smooth and elegant as the work we've done inside the device," said OnePlus Founder and CEO Pete Lau. "We're proud of what we've accomplished, and we hope our users are too."

Fast and Smooth Experience

Addressing a common pain point among smartphone users, OnePlus is committed to ensuring its phones remain as fast and smooth as the day they came out of the box. OnePlus achieves this goal through a combination of powerful hardware and intelligent software which work seamlessly together.

The OnePlus 6 is powered by one of the most powerful processors on the market, the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 845, which improves performance by 30%, while being 10% more power efficient. Coupled with the Adreno 630, which is 30% faster than the previous generation, the OnePlus 6 is a powerhouse for everything from streaming HD video to playing graphically intense games.

With up to 8 GB of LPDDR4X RAM, the OnePlus 6 effortlessly switches between multiple apps running at the same time without a single second of lag, allowing users to multitask with ease. The OnePlus 6's dual-lane storage, based on UFS 2.1, ensures faster app loading and read/write speeds.

Bolder Design

As with any OnePlus device, the OnePlus 6 is beautiful and functional in equal measure – now, with more screen than ever before. To provide users with as much screen real estate as possible, OnePlus designed the navigation bar so that it can be replaced with gesture control, freeing up even more viewing space for a cleaner look.

OnePlus has experimented and innovated with glass to deliver its boldest design to date. Donning an all-glass design, the OnePlus 6 facilitates better transmission of radio waves, providing users with up to 1 gigabit of download speed. Due to its strength and malleability, OnePlus used Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on both the front and the back of the device, shaping it with slight curves to create an uninterrupted look and feel.

OnePlus' meticulous attention to detail is reflected in each of the OnePlus 6's color variants: Mirror Black, Midnight Black and a limited-edition Silk White. For the Mirror Black and Midnight Black variants, OnePlus embedded a thin layer of film underneath the glass to create a sense of depth as light and shadow move on the device. A jagged texture was etched onto the film of the Midnight Black to produce a subtle S-shaped line when the phone is reflected in light. The limited-edition Silk White uses pearl powder to create a subtle shimmering effect.

High-speed Dual Camera with Optical Image Stabilization

The OnePlus 6’s dual camera system features a 16MP main camera, supported by a 20MP secondary camera. With an f/1.7 aperture, the 16MP main camera has been bolstered by a 19 percent larger sensor and OIS for outstanding performance in a range of lighting conditions. With Advanced HDR, OnePlus' improved High Dynamic Range algorithm, the OnePlus 6 brings out shadows and enhances lighting in photos.

Portrait Mode will be available on the OnePlus 6's front camera as well as its rear. Using AI, the front camera is able to apply a depth of field effect to selfies. Newly added bokeh effects, including circles, hearts and stars offer new ways for users to customize their portraits.

The OnePlus 6 marks the introduction of OnePlus' Slow Motion mode, which can capture high-definition video frame-by-frame with astonishing detail, ensuring users never miss the action.

Android Refined – OxygenOS

OnePlus’ operating system, OxygenOS, offers a refined Android experience that is faster, cleaner and more customizable than other Android experiences.

Like its approach to hardware, OnePlus' approach to software is centered around an experience that is refined, efficient and minimalistic. New features are vetted by OnePlus users through channels like the OxygenOS Beta Program and only added once OnePlus is confident the features can improve the way users use their phone.

A Day’s Power in Half an Hour

The OnePlus 6's fast charge – a favorite feature amongst OnePlus users – offers one of the fastest charging solutions on the global market. A half-hour charge gives the OnePlus 6 enough power for the entire day.
Price and Availability
The OnePlus 6 in 64 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB storage options will be available on oneplus.com in North America and in Europe on May 22nd starting from USD 529 / EUR 519 / 469 GBP. The limited-edition Silk White with 128 GB of storage will be available for purchase on June 5th.

About OnePlus

OnePlus is a global mobile technology company challenging conventional concepts of technology. Created around the “Never Settle” mantra, OnePlus creates exquisitely designed devices with premium build quality and high-performance hardware. OnePlus thrives on cultivating strong bonds and growing together with its community of users and fans. For more information, please visit oneplus.com.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Coinbase’s first investment, Compound, earns you interest on crypto

2018-05-16T19:34:00.000+01:00

A money market so you can short-sell coins you hate

Compound wants to let you borrow cryptocurrency, or lend it and earn an interest rate. Most cryptocurrency is shoved in a wallet or metaphorically hidden under a mattress, failing to generate interest the way traditionally banked assets do. But Compound wants to create liquid money markets for cryptocurrency by algorithmically setting interest rates, and letting you gamble by borrowing and then short-selling coins you think will sink. It plans to launch its first five for Ether, a stable coin, and a few others, by October.

Today, Compound is announcing some ridiculously powerful allies for that quest. It’s just become the first-ever investment by crypto exchange juggernaut Coinbase’s new venture fund. It’s part of an $8.2 million seed round led by top-tier VC Andreessen Horowitz, crypto hedge fund Polychain Capital and Bain Capital Ventures — the startup arm of the big investment bank.

While right now Compound deals in cryptocurrency through the Ethereum blockchain, co-founder and CEO Robert Leshner says that eventually he wants to carry tokenized versions of real-world assets like the dollar, yen, euro or Google stock. That’s because Leshner tells me “My thesis is that almost every crypto asset is bullshit and not worth anything.”

How to get Compound interest on your crypto

Here’s how Compound tells me it’s going to work. It’s an “overnight” market that permits super-short-term lending. While it’s not a bank, it is centralized, so you loan to and borrow from it directly instead of through peers, alleviating you from negotiation. If you loan, you can earn interest. If you borrow, you have to put up 100 percent of the value of your borrow in an asset Compound supports. If prices fluctuate and your borrow becomes worth more than your collateral, some of your collateral is liquidated through a repo agreement so they’re equal.

To set the interest rate, Compound acts kind of like the Fed. It analyzes supply and demand for a particular crypto asset to set a fluctuating interest rate that adjusts as market conditions change. You’ll earn that on what you lend constantly, and can pull out your assets at any time with just a 15-second lag. You’ll pay that rate when you borrow. And Compound takes a 10 percent cut of what lenders earn in interest. For crypto-haters, it offers a way to short coins you’re convinced are doomed.

“Eventually our goal is to hand-off responsibility [for setting the interest rate] to the community. In the short-term we’re forced to be responsible. Long-term we want the community to elect the Fed,” says Leshner. If it gets the interest rate wrong, an influx of lenders or borrowers will drive it back to where it’s supposed to be. Compound already has a user interface prototyped internally, and it looked slick and solid to me.

“We think it’s a game changer. Ninety percent of assets are sitting in people’s cold storage, or wallets, or exchanges. They aren’t being used or traded,” says Leshner. Compound could let people interact with crypto in a whole new way.

The Compound creation story

Compound is actually the third company Leshner and his co-founder and CTO Geoff Hayes have started together. They’ve been teamed up for 11 years since going to college at UPenn. One of their last companies, Britches, created an index of CPG inventory at local stores and eventually got acquired by Postmates. But before that Leshner got into the banking and wealth management business, becoming a certified public accountant. A true economics nerd, he’s the chair of the SF bond oversight committee, and got into crypto five years ago.

Compound co-founder and CEO Robert Leshner

Sitting on coins, Leshner wondered, “Why can’t I realize the time value of the cryptocurrency I possess?” Compound was born in mid-2017, and came out of stealth in January.

Now with $8.2 million in funding that also came from Transmedia Capital, Compound Ventures, Abstract Ventures and Danhua Capital, Compound is pushing to build out its product and partnerships, and “hire like crazy” beyond its seven current team members based in San Francisco’s Mission District. Partners will be crucial to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of getting its first lenders and borrowers. “We are planning to launch with great partners — token projects, hedge funds and dedicated users,” says Leshner. Having hedge funds like Polychain should help.

“We shunned an ICO. We said, ‘let’s raise venture capital.’ I’m a very skeptical person and I think most ICOs are illegal,” Leshner notes. The round was just about to close when Coinbase announced Coinbase Ventures. So Leshner fired off an email asking if it wanted to join. “In 12 hours they researched us, met our team, diligenced it and evaluated it more than almost any investor had to date,” Leshner recalls. Asked if there’s any conflict of interest given Coinbase’s grand ambitions, he said, “They’re probably our favorite company in the world. I hope they survive for 100 years. It’s too early to tell they overlap.”

Conquering the money markets

There are other crypto lending platforms, but none quite like Compound. Centralized exchanges like Bitfinex and Poloniex let people trade on margin and speculate more aggressively. But they’re off-chain, while Leshner says Compound is on-chain, transparent and can be built on top of. That could make it a more critical piece of the blockchain finance stack. There’s also a risk of these exchanges getting hacked and your coins getting stolen.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of peer-to-peer crypto lending protocols on the Ethereum blockchain, like ETHLend and Dharma. But interest rates, no need for slow matching, flexibility for withdrawing money and dealing with a centralized party could attract users to Compound.

Still, the biggest looming threat for Compound is regulation. But to date, the SEC and regulators have focused on ICOs and how people fundraise, not on what people are building. People aren’t filing lawsuits against actual products. “All the operations have flown beneath the radar and I think that’s going to change in the next 12 months,” Leshner predicts. How exactly they’ll treat Compound is up in the air.

One source in the crypto hedge fund space told me about forthcoming regulation: “You’re either going to get annihilated and have to disgorge profits or dissolve. Or you pay a fine and you’re among the first legal funds in the space. This is the gamble you take before asset classes get baptized.” As Leshner confirmed, “That’s the number one risk, period.”

Money markets are just one piece of the financial infrastructure puzzle that still needs to emerge around blockchain. Custodians, auditors, administrators and banks are still largely missing. When those get hammered out to make the space safer, the big money hedge funds and investment banks could join in. For Compound, getting the logistics right will require some serious legal ballet.

Yet Leshner is happy to dream big despite all of the crypto world’s volatility. He concludes, “We want to be like Black Rock with a trillion under management, and we want to have 25 employees when we do that. They probably have [tens of thousands] of employees. Our goal is to be like them with a skeleton team.”

For more technological trending news, research and informations click here

With ChroMorphous technology, clothes may soon change color with a tap of a phone

2018-05-15T21:36:00.003+01:00

With a simple tap on our smartphone, you’re able to control a lot around us — whether it’s the music playing from your Bluetooth speaker, the Netflix show on your TV, or even your AC unit. But what if you could also use your phone to alter what your clothes looked like? That’s where ChroMorphous technology — an active, user-controlled color-changing fabric — comes in.

Developed by a team of research scientists at The College of Optics and Photonics(known as CREOL) at The University of Central Florida, the new technology allows users to control and switch up the pattern on fabric using a mobile app.

BEHIND THE TECH

CREOL claims the technology differs from “color-changing” fabrics currently on the market today. Rather than LED tricks emitting light, the fabric physically changes color because of the fiber itself. Produced in Melbourne, Florida, the fibers are created from raw materials using machines that spin fibers for textiles. After shipping the fibers to the mills, it’s weaved using regular industrial-scale weaving machines and then the fabric is shipped back to the CREOL team. While the fabric is produced with traditional machinery, the machine is hacked to run a micro-wire inside each thread so that running a current raises the local temperature a little bit — which is enough for a thermochromic pigment to switch color. Basically, the pigments embedded in the thread respond to a switch in temperature and then change color.

“When you think of anything you work with on a daily basis, whether it’s how you communicate with people [or] buy stuff, it’s infused with technology … The goal here is to now take fabrics and textiles and garments and say let’s infuse that with technology,” Dr. Ayman Abouraddy, professor of optics and photonics at UFC, told Digital Trends, “I want to be able to communicate with it, I want to tell it how to look, and nothing like that has happened yet. Color-changing is one thing, but our vision is to do much more than that as well.”

Upon first glance, the fabric doesn’t look any different than what you’d see on a regular canvas tote bag or even on shoes. Running our hand along the sample, we couldn’t tell that there was any special technology embedded throughout it other than the battery attached on the side. But we did notice it felt rougher in comparison to fabric such as cotton or polyester, which can play a huge role in whether or not a consumer chooses to buy an item they’ll be wearing. But the team explained it’s due to the larger thread, which makes it feel coarse. Currently, CREOL is working toward producing thinner fibers in order for the material to feel smoother and more flexible. The hope is that consumers eventually won’t be able to tell the difference between the technological fabric and regular fabric currently on the market.

“Even Google tried this, and they went the usual route of weaving a metal wire within clothing. Here, the reason it looks so natural is [because] the wire is inside the fiber, so you never touch it, you never come in contact with it,” Abouraddy explained. While Google may have yet to find a way to incorporate color-changing technology within clothing, the company did recently partner with Levi’s to create a wearable electronic jacket. Currently available for purchase, users can control things like music playback and navigation with simple gestures while wearing the denim jacket.

With a collective background in optical fiber manufacturing technology, the team at CREOL admitted this technology isn’t new but it hasn’t gone further than scientific publications. While CREOL claims ChroMorphous is the first of its kind, fashion designer Julianna Bass incorporated a similar concept into her clothing line in September. Even though it wasn’t controlled through an app, the technology includes thermochromic inks that allow for consumers to trigger a color change via a soft button. It has yet to hit the market.

SITTING DOWN WITH CHROMORPHOUS

After setting up the app on our iPhone, we were able to watch the fabric switch from a solid color to a pattern by simply tapping on a button. While the interface is still in its infancy, the ChroMorphous team is working to develop an app that gives the user full control over the patterns they can choose. As of right now, the app connects to your phone via Wi-Fi, but there are plans to add Bluetooth in the future. Once incorporated into designers’ products, the researchers hope for consumers to use it the same way they would use a Fitbit or Apple Watch — by purchasing the product, downloading the app, and taking advantage of it.

“We hope that in the future people will assume clothes can do more than just protect [you] from the environment. You assume it can do more – so you put on a garment and then look on your phone and see what is available for it do” Abouraddy said, “We are carrying phones anyway — what happened is they put extra stuff in the phone … a camera so now you don’t have to carry a camera. … We wear clothes anyway, so we’re adding functionality to it.”

After opening the app, we had the option adding solid, stripes, or random. We chose the option to add stripes on the fabric and watched every other strip go from dark green to a lightly colored green instead. But each strip is individually controllable depending on the programming — meaning the team can instead allow users to pick specific strips to change color via the app. With the random option, the colors of the strips will change over time.

Seeing as how the piece of fabric from the demonstration was larger than what you’d see on a handbag or backpack, it did take about 45 seconds to fully switch over to the new pattern. But the switch can be quicker or slower depending on how much juice you have in your battery. If you need the pattern or color to change quickly, then you’ll take more energy out of your battery than you would by allowing it to change at a slower pace.

When watching the tote bag switch from a solid color to stripes, our initial thought was the amount of money we’d save by no longer purchasing more than one of an item we love in multiple colors. While changing the design of the fabric or color doesn’t completely change the look of the bag, it does provide consumers the opportunity to get even more use out of it than they normally would — knowing they’ll be able to incorporate it into more outfits by customizing it. It can also help during those rare, but realistic, occurrences where you’re wearing the same outfit or item as someone else in the room.

The fabric is also washable — as long as you remove the detachable battery and connector, you’ll be good to go. But CREOL does recommend hanging it to dry rather than using the dryer. If there’s any wrinkles, you can iron it with a steam iron as well.

WEARING CHROMORPHOUS TECHNOLOGY

We were excited about the prospect of being able to switch up our wardrobe without having to buy more clothing, but it did leave us with one question — where do you place the battery while wearing the fabric? When it comes to a tote bag or backpack, the battery will sit in an inner pouch or pocket. The team wasn’t so sure when it came to a clothing items such as a dress, suggesting that it may sit on the bra strap but expressing that tests need to be done based on comfort. Then there’s also the possibility of wanting an even bigger battery to power a large item quickly. Questions such as these are what will most likely keep ChroMorphous technology from not hitting the consumer market until next year, as the team works to weed out consumer pain points.

“Somebody had to take that step and bridge that gap between these scientific demos and an actual large scale … it’s now a real technology, not a scientific achievement. And our goal … is to have the designers — the actual producers of textile-based products for the market — be aware of it, and [think] of incorporating it into their product” Abourdaddy said.

While the future of ChroMorphous technology is still unclear, CREOL knows one thing is for certain — it’s officially ready for designers to start using it to produce clothing, accessories, and more. The technology is currently scalable at mass-production levels and doesn’t stop at clothing and accessorie — it can also be used for interior design such as furniture and fixed installations.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Vesper’s new microphone technology attracts millions from the biggest names in sound technology

2018-05-15T21:26:00.000+01:00

Vesper Technologies, a new microphone technology developer, has raised $23 million from some of the biggest names in audio technology to finance the commercialization of its piezoelectric microphones.

As audio technology and voice controlled devices become more ubiquitous, manufacturers are hoping to turn to higher performance MEMS (micro-electro mechanical systems) microphones that use acoustic sensors made on semiconductor production lines using silicon wafers.

The technology allows for far smaller microphones that are incredibly sensitive, but the mics themselves typically don’t withstand the wear and tear of harsh environments all that well. Enter Vesper. It’s piezoelectric microphone technology received a full-throated endorsement from Amazon last year (after the company invested through its Alexa Fund).

Traditionally, manufacturers have used arrays of MEMS microphones to pick up sound, but as systems become more complex, they’re more susceptible to breaking down thanks to the sensitivity of the microphone technology. Amazon (and others) are betting that Vesper can solve the problem thanks to its novel approach to manufacturing MEMS using piezo-electric technologies.

The innovation from Vesper basically hinges on the company’s design for a MEMS microphone that doesn’t require a back plate, which lets flexible microphone plates bend and respond to stress without degrading, according to Amazon senior sound engineer, Dave Berol.

Piezoelectric MEMS design replaces the diaphragm and back plate with flexible alternatives that result in a waterproof, dustproof, particle-resistant, and shockproof microphone that requires no workarounds to be used in high-reliability arrays.

According to Yole Developpement, the MEMS and sensor market will reach $66 billion by 2021. Vesper Technologies chief executive Matt Crowley, thinks his company can command a huge share of that market.

“Our vision is for Alexa to be everywhere, and that means devices need to be built with durable, high-quality components that stand up to the demands of many different environments, especially on-the-go scenarios that require better power efficiency,” said Paul Bernard, director of the Amazon Alexa Fund, in a statement. “Vesper has become further embedded in the Alexa community through its integrations with various development kits and integrated solutions for Amazon AVS, and this follow-on investment is a testament to their continued momentum.”

Crowley was working at a company making MEMS with quartz crystals for clocking, but the clock market wasn’t so appealing back in 2012, so the serial entrepreneur began looking at other opportunities.

“We thought the microphone was going to be a growth market back in 2012,” Crowley recalled. So he began looking for technologies that could compliment the manufacturing work his company was doing.

Through hours of online research, Crowley came across the NASA-backed work of Bobby Littrell, who had come up with an entirely new way to build commercially viable piezoelectric microphones.

“I had these piezoelectric manufacturing expertise and i need to find a better product,” Crowley said. “I actually just started looking on the web for a piezoelectric microphone and it was like all roads led to [Littrell]… I read his doctoral thesis and then i actually read his patents and i actually contacted him through LinkedIn.”

Crowley also noted that the lower power demands of piezo electric sensors means that the microphones can enable a broader range of uses. From turning on television using nothing more than a voice command (without the need to touch a remote) to work with doorbells and security cameras and even augmented reality-based “hearables” like those designed by Bose.

Vesper raised its initial capital from Jeff Fagnan’s Accomplice fund, before getting its first strategic investment from AAC Technologies.

The most recent round was actually led by Madison, Wis.-based American Family Ventures, the investment arm of American Family Insurance, which has built quite an interesting portfolio of hardware and software services companies since its launch eight years ago. Additional institutional venture investors in the Vesper round include Hyperplane, ZZ Capital, and Accomplice.

“People have been trying to make piezoelectric microphones since the 70s,” said Crowley. “The breakthrough was making really thin layers of these piezoelectric technologies and it was Broadcom which was using this stuff… We couldn’t have started this company five years earlier. It had to be now, when the material science wasn’t right where it needs to be.”

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Target’s next-day delivery service, Target Restock, launches nationwide with lower fees

2018-05-15T15:18:00.015+01:00

Target is lowering the price of its next-day delivery service for household essentials, Target Restock, which will now be free for Target REDcard purchases and $2.99 for all other orders, as the service expands nationwide. Previously, the service cost $4.99 per order – a price meant to rival Amazon’s Prime Pantry, which today charges a flat shipping fee of $7.99 for orders if customers don’t have the $4.99 monthly subscription that makes orders over $40 ship free.

The price change comes only a year after Target began testing the Restock service in limited markets, and follows the retailer’s recent launch of a free Drive Up service for users of its mobile app. The company is also offering free, two-day shipping on hundreds of thousands of Target orders, and is expanding same-day grocery delivery through its Shipt service, as part of its further efforts in challenging the retail giants, Walmart and Amazon.

Unlike Amazon Prime, Target Restock doesn’t require a membership fee – that an angle Walmart adopted with its free shipping program, too.

With Restock, customers have the ability to shop from an assortment of 35,000 household essentials – think, things like baby food, diapers, paper towels, detergent, health and beauty products, and other packaged goods, like peanut butter or snacks.

To use Restock, customers shop online filling their box – up to 45 lbs, which is about the size of a shopping cart – with their selections. They have up until 7 PM Monday through Friday to place the order, then the box is delivered to their door the next day.

Alternately, customers can shop by voice using their Google Home smart speaker or a smartphone with the Google Assistant app installed, as enabled by Target’s partnership with Google on voice-activated shopping.

Target is able to fill orders quickly because it’s using its retail stores as the fulfillment centers – it stocks the boxes directly from its store shelves.

The company said in September that Restock then reached over 70 million customers across the U.S., or about one-fifth of the U.S. population. This morning, the retailer says Restock is broadly available coast to coast, reaching more than 75 percent of the U.S. population.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Fortnite is the biggest game on the planet right now because it’s a living, breathing world

2018-05-08T02:59:00.003+01:00

Epic Games is borrowing the best ideas from across the entire video game industry

Image: Epic Games

When Epic Games revealed the big surprise of Fortnite’s fourth season earlier this week, fans could both see it coming and retain that giddy kid-on-Christmas-morning feeling. The developer planned the reveal for months: a meteor in the sky hovered over the game’s map since January, and on Tuesday it crashed into the world of Fortnite to create a massive crater with gravity-defying extraterrestrial power-ups scattered about. In addition to the meteor crash, Epic transformed its map in subtle but powerful ways, adding new structures, secret underground lairs, and other goodies in service to its new superhero theme.

Most players expected something to this effect, and yet the Fortnite community has been effusive in its praise for how the build up and eventual execution was pulled off. It was a shared gaming experience like no other. And that’s what makes season four of Fortnite feel like a crucial turning point for the battle royale game, which remains fundamentally about sending 100 human players to a deserted island to loot, build, and shoot their way to victory. The experience still revolves around that same satisfying survival cycle. But the holistic Fortnite experience is fast resembling something closer to a massively multiplayer online game, with a constantly updated narrative, a persistent world that changes all at once for every player, and a fan base with the means to customize and outfit an avatar in increasingly sophisticated ways.

Image: Epic Games

Starting with season three and culminating with last Tuesday’s reveal, Epic began crafting a narrative for Fortnite that felt giant and ambitious in ways few other online games have ever pulled off. Players theorized about an incoming alien invasion, and whether Epic was planning on destroying the controversial in-game metropolis Tilted Towers as a way to tell a story and adjust the game’s competitive landscape at the same time. While it was Dusty Depot, and not Tilted Towers, that suffered deep impact, the effect remains the same. Epic crafted a narrative for an online multiplayer game exclusively out of contextual clues, in-game hints, and other forms of environmental storytelling. The end result is a game that feels richer, deeper, and more purposeful than its battle royale trappings would have you believe.

Epic didn’t stop with the comet landing. The new superhero theme is also an ingenious way to build another layer onto the ongoing story and give players even more ways to express themselves. There are new costumes to unlock and goofy emotes, one even culled from a popular internet meme. But this season, Epic included two superhero skins that can only be upgraded by playing the game, performing challenges, and leveling up using in-game experience points. You can’t buy your way to these upgrades; you have to earn them, just like in any hardcore role-playing game. The substantial upgrade paths, unlockable rewards, and the persistent but ever-changing game map make Fortnite a much meatier experience than Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, which has static, unchanging environments and otherwise boring customization options.

Image by Nick Statt / The Verge

In this way, Fortnite feels like a more realized version of Bungie’s Destiny, a game that ambitiously tried and never quite succeeded at blending the best of shooter and MMO game design. Like Destiny, Fortnite lets players engage in a shared world, customize characters, and, now, upgrade those customization options through in-game activities. But unlike Bungie, Epic puts its world-building and other update efforts toward the competitive multiplayer battle royale mode, without worrying too much about a traditional story or plot. Because Fortnite is free-to-play, players don’t expect anything outside the core experience, and they pay money only for cosmetic vanity items and nothing else.

Epic’s narrative and RPG-like focus isn’t a thematic side project or something the developer is doing just for fun. Focusing on world-building and giving players a communal story to rally around is a business imperative for a free-to-play game like Fortnite. The game can only stay relevant so long as players feel invested in what they’re doing. That doesn’t just mean playing the competitive multiplayer every day to unlock challenges or try and win a match. Being invested in Fortnite also means caring more deeply about what story Epic is trying to tell, where the game is headed, and how that interplay between narrative and gameplay will help the title evolve over time, like just the best of MMOs.

Also consider the Battle Pass, which urges players to log in every day and complete challenges to unlock better rewards that can only be earned and not bought. Every single core pillar of Fortnite, from its growing narrative to its in-game store to its seasonal competitive multiplayer approach, feeds into a cycle that helps the game stay relevant, popular, and lucrative. The players who are more invested then become more likely to spend real money.

So when people say the future of online gaming looks like Fortnite, they’re not just talking about the battle royale genre, which won’t feel so shiny and new a year from now. They’re talking about the blending of every good idea from the last decade of online gaming, from both the East and West. Like most MMOs, Fortnite is free-to-play, constantly updated, and massive multiplayer. And like the most successful games of the last few years regardless of genre, it’s free-to-play and cross-platform, makes money using vanity cosmetics, focuses on letting players tell their own stories, and incorporates community feedback on a regular basis.

All of these aspects will inform the way games are developed, marketed, and make money in the future. And Fortnite is leading the pack by illustrating just how to make this combination of genre elements, business model innovations, and raw fun factor have influential, industry-changing staying power.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Floating-nuclear-power-plant-Russia-academik-lomonosov-chernobyl-titanic

2018-05-08T02:55:00.001+01:00

This nuclear power plant has been called a ‘floating Chernobyl,’ but is that just hype?

Nuclear reactors have been powering submarines for more than 60 years

The Academik Lomonosov is being towed from St. Petersburg to Murmansk, Russia, where it will fuel up.

Critics are calling a floating nuclear power plant bound for a Russian town in the Arctic Circle “Chernobyl on ice.” While there isn’t really enough information to make a specific risk assessment, a floating nuclear reactor in and of itself isn’t necessarily a cause for alarm: nuclear reactors have been powering submarines for over 60 years.

The floating power station, called the Akademik Lomonosov, has been under construction since 2009. Russian state-run nuclear power company Rosatom launched it on its first voyage on Saturday. Right now, the Akademik Lomonosov is slowly being towed from St. Petersburg, Russia, to the town of Murmansk, where its two nuclear reactors will be fueled up this fall.

The plan is for the barge to leave for the town of Pevek sometime in summer 2019, where it’s supposed to provide enough electricity for 100,000 people, according to a Rosatom press release. The two nuclear reactors on the barge can produce up to 70 megawatts of electricity, Rosatom says. That’s about 7 percent of what a large commercial reactor in the US typically puts out, according to John Kotek, vice president of policy development and public affairs for the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Photo: Rosatom

Greenpeace, which coined the phrase “Chernobyl on Ice,” worries that the reactors will endanger the environment and that there isn’t enough oversight of the plant. We’ve certainly seen devastating accidents before, like in 1986, when a nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, exploded, spewing out so much radiation that children still aren’t allowed to live within an 18-mile radius of the plant. In Fukushima, Japan, the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused a nuclear accident that forced more than 100,000 people to evacuate — and many still haven’t returned.

But we’ve also seen nuclear reactors going to sea since 1955 when the submarine USS Nautilus took its first voyage. In fact, the US Navy has more than 80 nuclear-powered warships, including aircraft carriers and submarines, according to a 2015 report by an independent task force with the Federation of American Scientists. Russia also has a nuclear-powered fleet that includes icebreakers, which are designed to plow through ice with nuclear reactors on board.

The idea of using floating nuclear reactors to power an electrical grid on land isn’t that out there, either. The US Navy suggested running Kauai’s grid off of a nuclear submarine after a hurricane wiped out the Hawaiian island’s power system in 1982. Megan Geuss at Ars Technica discovered that a ship from World War II became a floating nuclear power station in Gatun Lake in Panama until 1976.

Photo: Rosatom

Still, designing a nuclear reactor that functions safely on open waters isn’t easy, says Dale Klein, who was the former head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under President George W. Bush and is now associate vice chancellor for research for the University of Texas system. In land-based nuclear power plants, for example, the nuclear core is usually contained in a dome made out of reinforced concrete that’s about four feet thick, Klein says. “So if you have a massive pipe break, all that material would be contained within that vessel, within that containment building,” he says.

That would be pretty heavy for a mobile nuclear power plant, which is something the designers would have to consider, he says: “What sort of scenarios are you planning for? What kinds of pipes might break, and how would you make sure the reactor shuts down and is cooled safely?”

The Verge spoke with Klein about safety, security, and scare tactics for floating nuclear power plants.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

In general, nuclear power works by using the heat from a nuclear reaction to generate steam, which drives a turbine to generate electricity. How do you have to adapt a nuclear reactor so that it can function at sea?

So on a land-based system, you know all the time where gravity is. Typically, when you’re heating something, hot water will rise and your steam will be generated in a manner that’s very predictable.

When you have a reactor that will not always be in the same vertical orientation [like on a submarine or aircraft carrier], then your fluid flow characteristics will be a little bit different. And you’ll just have to analyze that to make sure your systems are designed to handle the removal of the heat so that it’s always with margins of safety.

What are some of the challenges to making a nuclear reactor that can be mobile — especially at sea?

The real challenge, from my perspective, is how much containment do you have on that reactor core. [Stationary] reactors that we have in the US have huge containments so that the radiation will be contained in the unlikely event of an accident. Like in the case of Three Mile Island, very little radiation escaped because of that massive containment structure.

So, when you have a containment structure, that typically means that’s going to be heavy. And so for the Russian reactor — I have not seen their designs, so I don’t know if it’s a single wall or a double wall — if you just think about it, it’s going to be very heavy. So that means you’ll probably have to have a very big ship. The alternative is if you have a not-very-robust containment, then it would certainly be lighter. I don’t know the design, but that’s going to be one of the challenges.

The other challenge is unusual events — if you have any kind of massive wave motion, any kind of hurricanes, adverse weather — you’ll have to analyze how you keep the ship stable, and how you keep all the components running when the ship might be bouncing. The other big issue would be security. How can you secure a situation where you have a fairly large target but you have people who could access it out of the water and you might not see it coming?

No, not at all. It’s just a scare tactic. It’s just to make people think about an accident of some kind. So it has no basis in science, and it’s really just meant to scare people when you use those kinds of statements.I’ve been seeing people calling it a “floating Chernobyl.” Is that name reasonable?

What does the science say about the risks here?

Just like on aircraft carriers and submarines, you do a very detailed analysis so that the reactor core is always covered [with water], you have margins of safety in all the systems, you have backup pumps, you have backup systems, you have well-trained operators, and then you’re able to operate our aircraft carriers and our submarines in a mode where the reactor is not always vertical, because the ships will go up and down and side to side. So when you do all of your analyses, you just have to say how far is it likely that the ship will rock, and how much will it go up and down as you’re going across waves.

If you were running this barge, what sort of safety and security operations would you want to have in place?

A lot of backup systems — so that you just have a lot of options, basically. If a piece of equipment fails, you have another one ready to start up. For pumps, batteries, your own electrical supplies, water, cooling, thermal capacity — all of those things that typically tend to go into a safety analysis study.

Security is going to be a challenge because if you look at, say, for your aircraft carriers and your submarines, when they come into dock, they’re usually in highly secure facilities. There’s a lot of military security, and a lot of other kinds of detection systems so you can know if anybody is trying to do mischief. So if you go into just a normal civilian area, then how do you prevent a terrorist, for example, trying to come in to do damage to that facility? So the security would be a challenge, as well as how do you handle storms and hurricanes and typhoons and that sort of thing?

If there were a radioactive spill in the ocean, would it get diluted? How much of a problem would it be?

If there were a problem out in the middle of the ocean, you would probably never see it on land. Or, you might be able to measure it, but it would be such a minimal impact [on land] because the ocean is so big. But if you have this barge that’s anchored providing electricity 24 hours, seven days a week, and you had a spill, then it could get into the environment locally onshore. And so you’d have to make sure that that never happens.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Ticketmaster could replace tickets with facial recognition

2018-05-08T02:43:00.001+01:00

Someday in the not-so-distant future, you might be able to walk into a concert venue without waiting in line for your ticket to be scanned — because instead, the venue will automatically scan and identify your face.

That’s the experience that Live Nation and Ticketmaster suggested they’ll try to develop last week, when announcing an investment in Blink Identity. Blink is a brand new company that claims to be able to identify people walking by in “half a second,” even if they aren’t looking straight at a camera.

“We will continue investing in new technologies to further differentiate Ticketmaster from others in the ticketing business,” Live Nation wrote in a note to investors last week. It added that Blink’s technology could let you “ associate your digital ticket with your image, then just walk into the show.”

While that sounds convenient, it also means that concert venues would have to be outfitted with surveillance equipment. And on perhaps an even worse note, it means that Ticketmaster — a company everyone hates more with each new convenience fee tacked onto their bill — would need to develop a database of all its concertgoers’ faces, which a lot of people aren’t going to be comfortable with.

For now, there don’t appear to be actual plans to put this tech into place. It’s not even clear that Blink’s tech works as effectively as the company describes. But it’s clearly something Ticketmaster is thinking about.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Best iOS app deals of the day! 6 paid iPhone apps are free for a limited time

2018-05-08T02:39:00.001+01:00

Everyone likes Apple’s apps, but sometimes the best ones are a bit expensive. Now and then, developers put paid apps on sale for free for a limited time, but you have to snatch them up while you have the chance. Here are the latest and greatest iOS app deals available from the iOS App Store.

These apps normally cost money and this sale lasts for a limited time. If you go to the App Store and it says the app costs money, that means the deal has expired and you will be charged.

Vocre

Have you ever wanted or needed to communicate with someone who didn’t speak your language? Vocre is a fun and easy way to have a conversation with people from other parts of the world. Today’s world is more connected than ever before; however, language still divides us. Vocre breaks down the language barrier, and brings us all closer.

Available on:
IOS

Fireworks Tap

Want to run your own fireworks show? Tap the screen and watch the fireworks explode. Beautiful 3D graphics with realistic sounds and lighting effects. Enjoy the scenery as the camera slowly rotates 360 degrees around the valley. The app will make you feel as though you’re in a fireworks show.

Available on:
IOS

AI Search

AI Search is a personalized searching solution. With it, you can narrow down your searching scope, for example: [youtube] [work out], or using a more natural tag while searching, for example: [buy] [gift]. How much more simple can you get? Better still, you can use your own personalized style to search and improve the searching accuracy and efficiency.

Available on:
IOS

Resume Builder

Resume Builder transforms your iPhone and iPad into a portable CV designer. It allows you to create unique resumes in minutes. Simply enter the information and Resume Builder creates the CV for you with the selected template. Then you can email or print your beautifully designed resume with the press of a button, within the app.

Available on:
IOS

Blockr

Ads are among the most annoying parts of our web-browsing experience. They take up space, make web pages load slower, and cost us extra data. The Blockr app aims to change all this. Just go to Settings on your iOS device, find the Safari settings, then go to Content Blockers, and enable Blockr.

Available on:
IOS

Browser and Documents Manager

Download and browse files and documents on your iPhone, iPod, or iPad just as you would if you were working on your computer. No limits on storage or downloads. This app allows you to edit files, organize files in folders, extract zip archives, and work with a variety of file formats for your convenience.

Available on:

IOS

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Google reportedly wants people to spend less time on their phone

2018-05-08T02:33:00.000+01:00

It looks like Google wants to make it a little easier for users and families to manage how much time they spend on their phone. According to a recent report from The Washington Post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s keynote at Google I/O, its annual developer conference, will put a heavy emphasis on the theme of responsibility in technology.

The news makes sense. The tech industry as a whole is grappling with how to better manage people’s data in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and Google has been central to its own controversy, too. Google products are used by literally billions of people around the world, so it’s undeniable that the company has to play a role in the social aspect of technology.

Some of the skepticism surrounding tech relates to how addictive it can be to some people. Apple shareholders have even asked the company to design products that help combat tech addiction among children, and Facebook has admitted in the past that passively consuming content on Facebook can lower the mood of the user.

So what does it mean to take responsibility in technology? Well, according to The Washington Post’s anonymous source, Google will unveil new features to Android that will help both individuals and families manage how much time they spend on Android devices. It’s currently unclear exactly what those features will look like. It’s also unclear if they will be unveiled as part of the upcoming Android P update, or if they will be launched as a separate entity.

Google already dipped its toe into helping families manage screen time, through its Family Link suite of apps. Specifically, the tools are targeted at parents who want to ensure that their kids aren’t spending too much time on their phones. Google also added features in apps like YouTube Kids, which allows parents to set how much time their kids can spend using the app, as well as the types of content that kids can watch.

It’s likely Apple and Facebook will follow suit and will launch more tools aimed at combatting tech addiction, especially when it comes to kids. We will update this article when we hear more about Google’s new tools.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Hasselblad expands the X1D mirrorless family with its widest lens yet

2018-05-08T02:29:00.001+01:00

Hasselblad

The lens options for the Hasselblad mirrorless camera system just got a little wider — in two senses of the word. On Monday, May 7, Hasselblad announced the availability of the XCD 21mm f/4, the company’s widest lens yet designed for the X1D mirrorless body. The launch brings the company’s available lenses for the X1D medium-format mirrorless to five, with the line expected to continue to grow to nine before the end of 2018.

The lens, Hasselblad says, is compact both in size and viewing angle. The lens captures a 17mm equivalent on a full-frame camera with a 105-degree angle of view. The lens build is designed to mesh with the size of the X1D body, the company says, with the lens weighing in at about 21 ounces (600 grams).

Tailored for genres with an appreciation of wide views including landscapes and architecture, the lens can also shoot as close as 32 cm from the subject, which creates a 1:10 scale. Created in Sweeden, the lens is designed with 13 elements in nine groups, which includes two aspherical elements.

Like other XCD lenses, the new 21mm uses a shutter that allows for speeds between 60 minutes and 1/2000 of a second, with flash synchronization to the top of that range. The aperture range reaches from f/4 to f/32.

Hasselblad says that the company’s software allows the lens to work with the extreme wide angle without angle distortion. “The automatic Lens Correction Tool in Phocus will generate images from the XCD 21mm f/4 that are completely free from any distortion, rendering all lines perfectly straight,” Ove Bengtson, Hasselblad product manager, said in a statement.

The lens was among the roadmap Hasselblad shared last year to give photographers insight into upcoming lens options for the company’s medium format mirrorless. Once the lenses in that roadmap are available, the camera system will have nine options from the Hasselblad brand; the current lens lineup includes five lenses for the XCD family. The lenses now stretch from 21mm to 120mm.

The Hasselblad XCD 4/21mm is available for orders now from the manufacturer’s website, with shipping expected for midway through this month. The lens lists for $3,750. For more technological trending news, research and information click here

From evil empire to role model, Microsoft builds its claim to the high ground

2018-05-08T02:23:00.001+01:00

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The year was 1998. Bill Clinton was president, “Getting’ Jiggy Wit It” was a hot new beat, and Microsoft – or, should I say, Micro$oft – was embroiled in an anti-trust battle. Though the company would eventually win on appeal, the lawsuit manifest what many people already felt. Microsoft was a bully, ready to use any means necessary to squash even the smallest challenger.

Fast forward to 2018, though, and the script has flipped. While Google and Facebook wallow through scandals, Microsoft has kept itself wide of trouble. The company is a champion of open-source software, and a defender of customer data. It’s a dramatic reversal of fortune, but it’s one Microsoft has worked hard to deserve.

Open-source, open arms

Microsoft has long approached developers with open arms. The dominance of Windows was built on developers, who designed a wide variety of apps for the operating system and, in doing so, cemented it as the go-to OS everyone wanted to use.

In recent years, however, Microsoft has doubled-down on open source projects. Build 2018 saw the launch of an open-source Azure IoT Edge platform and a partnership with Github that brings multiple Azure features to that popular development platform. Those announcements came on the heels of Build 2017, where the company brought Linux to the Windows Store, and Build 2016, which announced support for Linux’s Bash command line in Windows. The path forward is a clear, eight-lane highway, stretching to the horizon without interruption.

None of that means much if you’re not a developer. But if you are, it means Microsoft’s platforms and services are easy to use and understand, you’re given a lot of insight into how they work, and you have a lot of freedom when deciding the software, programming language, and equipment you prefer. This isn’t a new path, either – at this point, it’s the status quo. Everyone knows the company supports open-source projects and will continue to do so in the future. The path forward is a clear, eight-lane highway, stretching to the horizon without interruption.

This stands in stark contrast to Facebook, which is aggressively backpedaling in wake of Cambridge Analytica and other scandals. The company’s F8 developer conference, held a week before Build, was held in an environment of fundamental distrust. A developer had just stolen data from Facebook users, forcing the company to tighten up its policies at breakneck pace. Yet, despite that, Facebook had little of importance to say on the topic. Where is Facebook going with its policies? How will that impact developers? How will that protect users? No one knows for sure.

That’s why a recent poll found Facebook was by the least trusted tech company operating today. Microsoft, meanwhile, was third best, sitting just behind Lyft and Tesla.

A refreshing selflessness

Transparency is part of Microsoft’s redemption, but that’s not where the tale ends. The company has also benefited from its extensive charitable work. That continued at Build 2018 with the announcement of a $25 million dollar ‘AI for accessibility’ program that seeks to help people with disabilities.

It’s just the latest in a long line of such programs. Microsoft last year boasted of Project Emma, a haptic wristband designed by Microsoft researcher Haiyan Zhang to help Emma Lawton, a 33 year old with Parkinson’s, overcome its effect on her handwriting. Alphabet, parent company of Google, is Microsoft’s only serious competition in charitable donations.

Aside from the volume of its work, Microsoft’s charity is delivered with a refreshing sense of selflessness. Google’s Project Loom has brought internet to places crippled by disaster, and Facebook’s Safety Check makes it possible to connect with friends and loved ones during emergencies, but it’s easy to see what each company gets out of the deal. You’re the product, so anything that makes you more likely to sign up is worthwhile.

Microsoft’s entire strategy is different. You’re not the product. In fact, Microsoft isn’t particularly interested in the average, everyday consumer. The company’s instead targeting corporations, governments, and other large organizations. That makes its charitable projects feel more like, well, charity.

You’re only as good as your last scandal

There’s another important piece of the puzzle, too – perhaps the most important part. It’s not about what Satya Nadella, or any other speaker at Build 2018, said. It’s about what they didn’t say. Microsoft’s entire strategy is different. You’re not the product.

They didn’t apologize.

They didn’t have to, because Microsoft has little to apologize for. The company isn’t perfect, but it hasn’t suffered any major data breaches or privacy scandals in recent years. It offers a wide range of tools that helps you manage your data, has significantly tightened Windows security, and aggressively pursues lawsuits against the United States governments over privacy issues.

It’s a pristine record, at least compared to the company’s peers. That’s something Apple has long understood, but Facebook and Google still fail to understand. You’re only as good as your last scandal. Microsoft has suffered few. Actions, not words, are what ultimately foster trust – and Microsoft’s actions have set it apart.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

'Fortnite' is bringing Thanos to its cartoony battle royale

2018-05-08T02:16:00.003+01:00

Find the Infinity Gauntlet and you'll transform into the aubergine giant.

If you thought Avengers: Infinity War was the ultimate pop-culture mashup, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has another cameo up its sleeve. Franchise villain Thanos will make a limited appearance in Fortnite: Battle Royale starting May 8th, according to EntertainmeWeekly.

From the sounds of it, matches will play out like normal. And because average game length is around 20 minutes, it should take considerably less time to see Thanos in-game than it did catching up on the MCU ahead of your first Infinity War viewing. A hundred ~~heroes each with their own movie series~~ players battle it out to be the last one standing, but the difference during this event is that the Infinity Gauntlet resides somewhere on the map. Should you find it, you'll transform into Thanos and "wield all the power that comes with him."

So, the ability to reduce adults to tears after killing off characters they've adored for almost a decade, spawn multiple memes and rake in huge box office grosses. Got it. Has anyone heard from PlayerUnkown's Battlegrounds creator Brendan Greene in awhile? If not, there's a chance he's searching for the Infinity Gauntlet to transport himself into a reality where PUBG is still king of battle royale.

Source: Entertainment Weekly

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Multitouch 'skin' makes your body the controller

2018-05-08T01:52:00.000+01:00

A simple bit of plastic might change how we interact with our gadgets in the near future.

Saarland University

Having a sophisticated computer interface on your body might seem like the stuff of science fiction, but a group of scientists at Germany's Saarland University have announced exactly that. Called Multi-Touch Skin, the material can be inkjet printed onto a plastic sticker and register a touch from multiple points at once, much like your phone or tablet does.

The sticker is made of two stacked layers of electrodes that are arranged in a grid. The current iteration of the material still needs to be hardwired to a touch-controller microchip, which is then connected to a small Raspberry Pi Zero. So far, the researchers have been able to create four different interfaces with the tech, including a bracelet that can manage an LED lamp, a behind-the-ear sticker that controls a music player, a forearm sticker that can send text messages and a palm sticker that can let you take a phone call. While the technology is in the early stages, it's not hard to imagine a future where you don't need hardware devices like headphones and smart watches to interact with your smart gadgets.

Outlook will pay bills directly through your inbox

2018-05-08T01:39:00.001+01:00

You won't have to launch your browser or an app.

Microsoft

If you manually pay the bills that pour into your email inbox, you know it can get tiring: you typically have to launch your browser or an app and wade through any number of screens to send your money. Microsoft might have a better way. It's developing a framework that uses Microsoft Pay to handle bill and invoice payments directly inside Outlook. Companies will need to use a supported service (such as Braintree, Stripe, FreshBooks and Intuit), but this could reduce payments to just a few clicks.

The feature won't be available right away. Microsoft plans to introduce it "in phases," starting with a small number of Outlook.com users in the next few weeks and others in the months ahead.

This isn't just a convenience. Microsoft won't make money from these bill payments, but hooks like this would give you a specific reason to use Outlook instead of another email app or your browser. It's also a lure for third parties, whether or not they're handling money. If they see people lining up to use Outlook payments, they may decide that it's worth integrating their own services.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from Microsoft Build 2018!

For more technological trending news, research and informations click here

The first principles of programming

2018-05-08T01:23:00.001+01:00

I recently wrote a 80-page guide to how to get a programming job without a degree, curated from my experience helping students do just that at Springboard. This excerpt is a part where I focus on getting all the way to the first principles of programming, a skeleton that will help you learn more effectively. This is the approach to learning that Elon Musk favors — and it’s something that can help you get back to the foundation of learning programming effectively.

1- Programming is about manipulating data

At its core, programming is about moving data and playing with it. When you send login credentials to a web server, or when you get your profile picture loaded, that’s code sending data back and forth. If you can recognize that moving data is the foundation of programming, you can understand the basement from where you will build your house.

2- Programming is like writing — you want to be as clear as possible

When you’re writing code, you may think of it as an individual activity. Nothing could be further from the truth, despite every stereotype Hollywood has thrown at the programming archetype. When you’re programming, you’ll want to imagine that you’re writing for an audience. Programming is a collaborative activity, one that often involves working with close teammates or other collaborators.

3- Know the different types of programming

Do you think of programming as one generic blob or can you differentiate it into specialized parts? Saying that you want to be a programmer is a bit like saying you want to be an engineer — the devil can be in the details.

We’ll go into more details about the broad technical paths you can take as a programmer in different paths later on, but for now, we can distinguish some broad differences.

The largest difference in types of programming can be thought of as the difference between “front-end” and “back-end” programming. Front-end involves manipulating what a user sees directly: think of the interface you see when you log in to any web interface. The back-end is all of the magic that happens sight unseen — the way servers process your password and grant you access to all of your data.

The different paradigms of programming

There are also different types of programming paradigms: different ways to express logic, and different functionalities for each programming language that at an aggregate level, can be summed up into categorical differences.

Here is an overview of the major paradigms in programming:

Declarative. Declarative programming is very simple and plain. It expresses the logic of a particular computation without specifying its flow. The easiest way to think about it is a programming language that declares what task is being done rather than how it should be done. Examples of this include programming languages like SQL, whose syntax is focused on explicitly specifying exactly what you want as opposed to specifying how it’s done (ex: the SELECT command which selects data). The underlying steps behind the SELECT query do not have to be explicitly defined for the machine to act upon its underlying logic.
Imperative. Imperative programming focuses on how a task is being done rather than what is being done, unlike the declarative model. Much like how in the imperative mode of language where commands are given, the imperative programming paradigm describes to machines how they should carry out a task. Imperative languages include languages such as Java, JavaScript, and Ruby, though all of them also have object-oriented logic as well — and most of them are multi-paradigm languages that are compatible with a variety of programming paradigms.
Functional. Functional programming is based on mathematical functions. While here too, commands are meant to specify how routines are carried out rather than what routines are carried out, unlike in the imperative paradigm, the state of a current program cannot be affected incidentally: what this means in practice is that you can have functions without return calls, since the program state will remain constant. Functional programming is emphasized in academia with languages such as Lisp and Clojure prominently supporting functional programming as a paradigm.
Object-oriented. The dominant programming paradigm since the 1980s, object-oriented programming involves building objects with data attributes and programming subroutines known as methods which can then, in turn, be invoked or modified. Languages such as Java, Python, C, C++, PHP, and Ruby are all principally object-oriented. Critically, unlike imperative or functional programming, the concept of inheritance and code reusability are firmly entrenched in programming objects which can persist either as classes (the definition of how a set of objects is defined, and what data they can carry) or objects themselves (which often correspond to real-world objects and a collection of attributes associated with them).

There are also programming paradigms, mostly a bit outdated or a bit theoretical, that revolve around procedural programming, logic programming, and symbolic programming. Research those if you have the time, and compare and contrast!

4- Programming is about forced simplicity

Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.

-The Zen of Python

One of the founding principles of effective programming is a sort of forced simplicity that becomes natural with time and iteration. Perhaps perfectly summarized in the Zen of Python, simple is better than complex — and complex is better than complicated. Much like good writing, which sometimes requires focusing on the right ideas and cutting out as many unnecessary words as possible, good programming means keeping the underlying logic expressed simply so that it can be readable to others and perhaps most importantly, your future self!

5- Small efficiencies lead to large gains

When you’re dealing with a machine that can perform complex operations in a matter of seconds or sometimes microseconds, it can be hard to comprehend from a human perspective exactly how to manage the efficiency of such a system. Humans are notoriously bad at exponential thinking and programming depends upon that very strand of thought. A few microseconds of difference in one operation can mean a difference of thousands of hours when extended to a chain of operations that extends past the trillions.

There are three concepts here that can help you manage that complexity.

Time complexity

Become familiar with the concept of time complexity in programming and specifically big O notation. Put simply, Big O notation maps out a pattern of how an algorithm will respond to a given set of inputs.

O(1) algorithms react the same regardless of what input size they’re fed. You could input one value or a trillion: — it doesn’t matter, the algorithm will process at the same time. A common example of this is the return or print algorithm in most programming languages.

O(N) algorithms react linearly to the inputs they’re given. A million data points? Expect it to run a million times slower than with just one.

O(N2) algorithms react exponentially to the inputs they’re given. Every input gets squared as it’s processed. Think of an algorithm that has to look over data twice on each iteration. With a dataset that’s twice as large as another, you’ll quickly see an exponential burst of time when it comes to how slowly that algorithm is going to deal with different sized datasets.

This goes on in a variety of configurations: this tutorial has a fuller list and a more comprehensive explanation. The takeaway is that you should always strive to use algorithms that scale as linearly as possible, otherwise large datasets will become unmanageable.

Modularity

One of the greatest things about programming is the ability to extend logic that has been saved before. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time: if you’ve built a component that works, you can call upon it at any time.

This simple concept of having pieces of code saved that can be called upon like a mix of components is called modularity, and it is an essential time-saving device for individual projects. Modularity also allows you to save time in collaboration. You can work with different people on a complex problem and work on a single piece then have your module interact with those built by others to form a larger solution.

Grasping the nuances of how to make your programs modular will not only save you time, it will make your programs stronger and more readable, and less dependent on large blocks of code that can prove to be riddled with bugs.

Shortcuts

Use shortcuts whenever you can! Programming efficiently involves putting your thoughts and logic into machine form as quickly as possible. This table of keyboard shortcuts will help you speed yourself up. Games such as TypeRacer will help you improve your words per minute count when it comes to typing, allowing you to transfer your thoughts more quickly into code.

Mastery of shortcuts will allow you to build things quicker and see results sooner rather than later.

6- Practice makes perfect

It’s often said that there are two ways the human mind views growth: either the fixed mentality or the growth mentality. In the fixed mentality, human growth is a function of destiny: no matter how hard you try, you can never grow beyond what innate factors have prescribed for you. The growth mentality is the total opposite of the fixed mentality: here, your growth is only limited by time and your will to do something great.

Nobody is naturally born a better programmer than somebody else. You have to work hard and put in the hours if you want to improve your programming skills.

This extends to programming interviews, a necessary evil. The bar is much higher in those than the normal conditions you’ll have gotten used to: ample time and plenty of resources such as StackOverflow to help you along the way (more on that later). A programming interview is designed to stress test you. You’ll have to get used to practicing a form of programming under constraints, both natural and artificial: do timed sets of problem-solving, and rely on nothing more than paper to sketch out a few algorithms.

7- Create programs that are flexible to different needs.

One of the largest difficulties in programming is the need to create things that can flex and which don’t break even under what are called “corner cases”: different uses of your software that may challenge the extreme limits of the variables you’ve set. The easiest corner case to think of is an app that has gotten very popular and must support thousands of users at once. Even the most elegantly crafted code will begin to strain as that happens.

8- Build useful things. Have empathy and understand the problems of your users.

Most people forget that technology isn’t just a skill to use for fun. Technology is a means to an end. Don’t forget that you’re not building for the sake of building: you’re building for an end user or to solve a meaningful problem that cannot be addressed without technology. Know when to build something with code, and know when you don’t have to.

If somebody has already built the wheel, there’s no need to reinvent it. Plenty of people have built solutions to address how to store sales contacts — but are there problems out there that remain unseen? Tons! And each could be the foundation for a successful project.

Build useful things with your programming skills. It’s the best way to use your skills for good and to highlight them to others.

Now, what does useful mean? That’s the crux of the problem. In a world filled with apps for every possible luxury and consumer need, it can be hard to see exactly what useful means. In this context, it is important to practice empathy and to diagnose real problems that can be helped with technological solutions. This, notably, does not have to be confined to problems that can be solved for profit. There is much room for technology for social good initiatives or for technologists to solve social problems. This case study of data science work for international development/basic income charity GiveDirectly provides a great example.

In order to become the most impactful technologist possible, it’s important to understand what problems people have — it’s important to know when and how to ask the right questions, how to listen and to uncover the underlying problems everyday people face. With the right amount of empathy and perspective, you can build maximally useful things that help solve problems for others.

9– Take advantage of as many resources as possible, and give back when you can

Go onto communities such as Hacker News and Quora. Look up questions on StackOverflow — and even ask a few yourself if you’re stuck on anything! Look up awesome Github repositories that contain all of the resources you’d need to learn one particular topic: see, for example, Awesome Python for a list of curated resources in the Python space.

And don’t be afraid of failure. You’ll be learning along the way, practicing your skills and becoming better with every passing day regardless of the outcome.

By: ROGER HUANG

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

This device warns you if your smart home has been hacked

2018-05-08T00:48:00.004+01:00

People increasingly are substituting ordinary household tools with Internet-connected alternatives. Where once you’d find an ordinary thermostat, you might now encounter the futuristic-looking Nest. Instead of an ordinary CCTV camera that records to tape, you might have one that allows you to monitor your household from your phone.

The convenience this offers has a pretty sizable downside, as in recent years, internet of things (IoT) devices have proven to be somewhat of a security achilles heel.

Many don’t receive security updates, and have troublingly insecure default settings. This has allowed adversaries to use malware like Mirai to bundle them into giant botnets, which are potent enough to attack the underlying foundations of the Internet.

In recent years, we’ve seen a lot of attempts to fix this sorry state of affairs. Some, like Google, have attempted to address the underlying software used by these IoT devices. Others, like the LA-based Cujo , are more interested in stopping threats at the network perimeter, and have built an IoT-oriented firewall.

One of the more interesting IoT security devices I’ve stumbled across is Akita, from Tel Aviv’s HighIoT. This is essentially a consumer-oriented intrusion protection system (IPS), which focuses primarily on IoT threats.

So, it’ll plug into an LAN port on your home router, and it’ll quietly sit in the background, listening in for compromised devices. When it detects one, it leaps into action and promptly kicks it off the network.

“HighIoT is a network layer agnostic,” explained HighIoT CTO Igor Rabinovich. This means it can monitor and protect devices running on a variety of protocols. This includes standalone devices floating about on your home WiFi connection, as well as others using Z-Wave, ZigBee, and ULE Dect.

In the case of devices that don’t adhere to one of the aforementioned popular IoT standards, Akita can still disconnect it by sending an instruction to the network router, which then steps in. If you’ve got a subscription with a managed services provider, it can also warn them, and let them know that they’ve got something to fix.

What’s especially interesting about Akita is how it addresses the problem of building solutions for the legion of IoT devices out there. For this, it’s employing the two of the most popular tech buzzwords du jour: blockchain and the gig economy.

For each device the company has identified and profiled, there exists a record on a blockchain database, using the IPFS protocol. Rabinovich explained that this is important, as the blockchain is an almost immutable storage medium, and therefore there’s less chance that an adversary could compromise the database by deleting or modifying records.

But this says nothing about how the profiles are created in the first place; just how they’re stored.

HighIoT hopes to create a legion of security experts and developers (which it calls “HighIoT Guardians”), who will dedicate their time and resources for building these profiles.

These workers are paid with a digital token. The more times a profile is used to protect an end user, the more tokens they’ll receive.

“By building the profiles, HighIoT is able to protect IoT devices using their service, and monitor for suspicious behavior,” said Rabinovich. He talked a little bit more about how these “Guardians” would be reimbursed for their services and expertise.

The HighIoT Guardians are rewarded with HIT tokens for every profile they build, and can continuously earn additional income every time HighIoT AI uses the IoT profile for the malware detection. Therefore, the more profiles a HighIoT Guardian can build, the more income they will receive. Blockchain smart contracts are used to ensure proper payment is being made for each income generating activity that occurs. The HighIoT Guardians can work remotely and in their own time and ensure that the payment will be made for their effort.

HighIoT raised over $900,000 on IndieGogo and Kickstarter to build the Akita device, and devices will soon be on their way to its 12,000 backers. The company also plans to flog its home-grown IPS system to punters through Amazon.

It’s worth stressing that IPS systems are nothing new, especially when it comes to physical computing. What makes Akita especially interesting is how it plans to go about this task. As far as I know, no company has used the gig economy business model in the highly sensitive world of information security.

Regardless of whether Akita takes off, it’s comforting to know that there’s a lot of interest in fixing IoT security once and for all.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Instagram may soon let you add music to your Stories

2018-05-08T00:41:00.002+01:00

The latest feature Instagram’s testing will let you add music to your Stories, though exactly what form that music will take isn’t yet clear.

First spotted by Ishan Agarwal in Instagram’s code, the feature, called “Music Stickers,” apparently allows users to search for music clips to play over their Stories as followers view them. You’d search for appropriate tunes under different tabs labelled “Trending,” “Genres,” and “Moods.”

It’s not yet certain where the music will come from, or what form it’ll take. Will it play a clip from the song’s chorus, or the whole song? If it does play a clip, will you be able to select which clip? We’ll have to wait until the feature rolls out to know for sure.

If Music Stickers do give users the unfettered access their name implies, it’d likely be from parent company Facebook’s licensing deals with UMG, Sony , and Warner Bros. The deal with UMG specified its music could be used in “video and other social experiences across Facebook, Instagram and Oculus.” At the time, I wondered what “other social experiences” could be. Looks like this might be the answer.

Instagram’s added several features in the last few months, so many that it’s almost hard to keep up. To Stories specifically, it’s added Type for text updates, as well as sharing screenshots from third-party apps directly to your Stories. It’s also experimenting with restaurant bookings, group video calls, a special portrait mode called Focus, and followable hashtags. Music would be the proverbial cherry on top.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Review: Logitech’s G560 gaming speakers sound great and look even better

2018-05-05T12:00:00.002+01:00

Logitech’s G560 are the company’s first set of gaming-specific speakers, with custom RGB lighting that syncs with your games to increase your immersion. When you can get the features to work, you have a set of speakers that both look and sound fantastic.

The G560 set comes with two satellite speakers and a subwoofer. They work in both wired and Bluetooth configuration, and the satellite speakers have manual controls.

If used purely as speakers, the G560 measures up. The sound is clean and the bass isn’t overwhelming. I’m not as much of an audiophile as my colleague Napier Lopez, but I found the speakers more than satisfactory for blasting the Black Panther soundtrack.

But since the G560 is a set of gaming speakers, then it stands to reason one would test them while gaming. So for the last month, I’ve done just that. I’ve been in a first-person shooter mood during that time, so the primary games I’ve tested it with are Overwatch and Far Cry 5, with a bit of Battlefield One and Assassin’s Creed Origins thrown in there for good measure.

As far as the sound in-game goes, the G560 does a fantastic job of communicating space and distance. Overwatch is a good example: playing the game with these speakers positioned properly on your desk — which took a bit of trial and error, admittedly — you can tell when a Tracer is trying to flank you, and where Torbjörn is setting up his turret around the corner. I was even able to catch an eagle swooping down on my head in Far Cry 5 thanks to these speakers.

But the speakers have a more obvious aesthetic appeal: the customizable RBG lighting, separated into four zones on the front and back. The lights are bright enough to fill any gaming space, with the back-facing speakers filling a whole wall with colors.

The RGB lighting isn’t just another piece of gaming flashiness, either. It’s intended to be used in conjunction with Logitech’s Lightsync, which lets you sync the effects with certain games. This isn’t immediately apparent, as the software doesn’t come with the speakers — or at least, it didn’t for me. You have to download it from Logitech’s website.

When it works, and if you’re playing one of the games which works with Lightsync and has game-driven lighting — which, admittedly, is a short list, but includes GTA V, Fortnite, and Battlefield One — your gaming center will light up with colors that compliment what your in-game character is doing.

If you’re not playing one of those games, you can still customize your lighting with Logitech’s gaming software, either by customizing specific zones, or by syncing each zone with certain parts of your screen so they match the most active color in that zone. The latter works best with a symmetrical setup where you speakers are far enough removed from the sides of the screen that the color can fill your space properly.

Still, for something that’s supposedly so integral to the speakers in question, it’s unintuitive and difficult to make work properly. I had to fiddle with the gaming software for a long time to find the colors that worked for me. In fact, if you don’t have one of the games that uses game-driven lighting, I’d say Lightsync is much more useful for those with Logitech keyboards, like the G513 Tristan reviewed a few weeks ago.

Also, while this isn’t a big problem per se, the subwoofer is a little on the large side for my tastes. If you have a small gaming setup, as I do, then the subwoofer is either an ottoman or one heckuva paperweight.

But these are relatively minor complaints compared with the overall quality of the speakers. If you’re a gamer and can afford the $199 price point, they make a fantastic addition to a PC gaming rig.

We like some products. We don’t like others. Either way, if you buy something through our affiliate links, we get a small cut of the revenue. This isn’t a sponsored post, but for the sake of transparency, you deserve to know what’s up.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

The best ultrawide monitors you can buy

2018-05-05T12:00:00.001+01:00

Turn your desk into a command center with the best ultrawide monitors

Sometimes you need a little extra screen real-estate, and the typical 16:9 monitor won’t do. Whether you’re a creative professional who needs a massive curved display, or a gamer looking for the most immersive experience you can possibly get outside of VR, there’s probably an ultrawide monitor for you. Be careful though, ultrawides are dangerous – once you try one, you’ll be spoiled for all other monitors. Even the sharpest, clearest 16:9 monitor will seem insubstantial and inadequate by comparison. So, who makes the best ultrawide monitors on the market? Well, let’s have a look.

We’ve gathered the best of the best in the ultrawide monitor market and run them through a barrage of tests to determine their fitness to display your games, your movies, or even your workspace.

OUR PICK

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Why should you buy this: You want a monitor with the sensibility and size of a small luxury yacht.

Our Score

The best

Samsung CF791

With a reasonable price, stunning display, and understated, premium design, the Samsung CF791 is easily the best ultrawide monitor on the ma...

$799.99 from Samsung $717.86 from Amazon.com

Who’s it for: Gamers, professionals, and everyone in between.

How much will it cost: From $740

Why we picked the Samsung CF791:

First and foremost, this monitor is a striking piece of hardware. The design is understated, effortless and professional. The frame and stand all seem to melt away when you’re seated before that massive curved display. Colors saturate your vision from all angles, and the monitor is all-encompassing.

The CF791 offers stunning picture quality, with rich inky blacks, vivid and lifelike colors — right out of the box. Without any tinkering, it hits a stellar 940:1 contrast ratio, which puts it well ahead of similarly priced competitors.

This level of quality on a standard 16:9 display would be outstanding. The fact that it’s on a massive 21:9 display with a deep curve makes it truly a sight to behold. Video content is rich and fluid thanks to the monitor’s 100Hz refresh rate, and AMD’s FreeSync. For a look at the difference between FreeSync and Nvidia’s G-Sync, check out our guide.

In addition to the stunning display, it has a simple and professional exterior design which makes it a bit of a chameleon. It would be just as comfortable beside a flashy gaming PC decked out in LEDs as it would in an office beside a dusty old workstation.

The Samsung CF791 doesn’t need a flashy exterior design because its size, clarity, and resolution make it a showstopper all on its own and recent price drops make it all the more affordable.

Our full review

THE BEST GAMING ULTRAWIDE

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Why should you buy this: This monitor’s 200Hz refresh rate is wonderfully excessive.

Our Score

The best gaming ultrawide

Acer Predator Z35

The Acer Predator Z35’s 200Hz refresh rate and massive curved display deliver an unparalleled gaming experience.

$735.99 from Walmart $729.99 from Amazon.com

Who’s it for: Gamers, or anyone else who needs a monitor that can render 200 frames per second without breaking a sweat.

How much will it cost: Around $700

Why we picked the Acer Predator Z35:

Ultrawide monitors look great, and they can provide an immersive gaming experience, but there’s more to a gaming monitor than size and curvature. No matter how big and gorgeous they are, no matter how bright and vivid, there’s one specific that must be up to par. Refresh rate.

So how does Acer’s ultrawide measure up to other gaming monitors in a more traditional form factor? Well, it doesn’t. It obliterates them. The Acer Predator brings a massive 200Hz refresh rate to bear on an equally massive 35-inch 1080p display, and the result couldn’t be more satisfying. By allowing games to hit 200FPS without screen tearing, the Predator’s refresh rate delivers best-in-class performance. The result is buttery-smooth gameplay.

That said, the display’s 2,560 x 1,080 resolution is a little low by today’s standards. It translates about 80 pixels per inch, which is a little less than a 1080p, 24-inch monitor. However, the resolution does mesh well with the refresh rate. High framerates are less likely at high resolutions.

Despite its high price tag, the Predator is a very good choice for a long-term investment. The Acer Predator Z35 is compatible with Nvidia’s G-Sync, which makes the most of the monitor’s impressive refresh rate, serving up frames as quick as your PC can render them.

Our full review

THE BEST PROFESSIONAL ULTRAWIDE

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Why should you buy this: You need a massive workspace and pitch-perfect color accuracy.

Our Score

The best professional ultrawide

Dell UltraSharp U3415W

A stellar contrast ratio, deep blacks, vivid colors, and a massive viewing area make the Dell U3415W a superb choice for creative profession

$602.00 from Amazon $629.99 from Newegg

Who’s it for: Professionals looking for extra space, without sacrificing color accuracy.

How much will it cost: Starts at $620

Why we picked the Dell U3415W:

As you can probably gather from our coverage so far, ultrawide monitors look spectacular. The technology has matured over the last couple years as resolution and pixel density have gone up, while prices have gone down. Sometimes, though, you need more than a great looking monitor. Sometimes you need a monitor that looks, well, perfect.

Creative professionals like photographers, graphic artists, and film editors need near-perfect color accuracy. Professional monitors need to resolve colors with a degree of precision that might go unnoticed in movies or games. They need to replicate real-world tones and hues with as little variation as possible.

That’s where the Dell U3415W comes in. With near-perfect color accuracy, 3,440 x 1,440 resolution, a best-in-class contrast ratio of 730:1 at 75 percent brightness, and a display panel capable of reproducing 100 percent of the sRGB spectrum, this ultrawide monitor delivers a unique viewing experience that is well suited to professional graphic design or photo editing.

Dell has also thrown in a few extras, like a versatile on-screen menu system, multiple USB ports, and an highly adjustable stand – something that’s not always guaranteed, even on expensive ultrawide monitors. Taken together, these traits make it a clear pick for creative professionals.

Our full review

THE BEST BUDGET ULTRAWIDE

Why should you buy this: You need that extra real estate, and you don’t mind a few eccentricities.

The best budget ultrawide

LG 29UM68-P

If you need a 21:9 workspace, without the usual bells and whistles, the LG 29UM68-P is the best you can get under $300.

$231.99 from Amazon.com

Who’s it for: Students, or professionals on a budget.

How much will it cost: $250

Why we picked the LG 29UM68-P:

As stunning as gaming on an ultrawide monitor can be, one of the best uses for all that extra space is, unsurprisingly, work. A monitor with a 21:9 aspect ratio makes for an excellent, luxuriant workspace, offering up enough screen real-estate for three or more windows to co-exist side-by-side. Games will look great, but so will spreadsheets.

If you’re shopping for your home office or your office-office, you probably don’t want to go all-out for an $800 ultrawide that’s just going to spend most of its time rendering word processors and spreadsheets. The LG 29UM68-P is probably not the best choice if you want an ultrahigh-fidelity movie watching experience, but if you need a reliable, well-rounded ultrawide for less than $300, look no further.

As with any budget option, the LG 29UM68-P is not without its drawbacks. It only supports a 60Hz to 75Hz refresh rate range, and its 2,560 x 1,080 resolution can look a little stretched on such a big screen. But those downsides are easily excused by the price.

It’s even decent to look at when turned off, as this humble LG offers thin display bezels and an attractive curved stand. This is the budget model in the ultrawide world, but most people won’t know that unless you tell them.

THE BEST ULTRAWIDE FOR SHOWING OFF

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Why should you buy this: You have deep pockets and a penchant for extravagant tech.

Our Score

The best ultrawide for showing off

Dell Ultrasharp U3818DW

It doesn't come cheap, but Dell's spectacular U3818W is the final word in super-sized monitors.

$858.80 from Amazon.com

Who’s it for: Monster battlestation owners and media moguls.

How much will it cost: $1,170

Why we picked the Dell Ultrasharp U3818DW:

Most of the ultrauwide screens we spend time with are 34 inches, but the Dell Ultrasharp U3818W is almost in a class of its own, with a 38 inch diagonal and 3,840 x 1,600 resolution. It’s massively expensive, with a $1,000 suggested retail price, but makes up for it with, well, sheer size.

It’s one of the biggest monitors we’ve reviewed in the Digital Trends office by a fair margin, and tied for the absolute largest — with the equally enormous LG 38UC99. During our testing, it drew the attention of every coworker who walked by the test lab. Many even stopped in for a quick game of Overwatch, or to check out a 4K trailer.

The U3818W doesn’t compromise where it counts, either. Designed for professional use, the U3818W features absolutely impeccable color accuracy, hitting an average color error of 0.97 after calibration. That means colors are perfectly reproduced, as far as the naked eye is concerned.

If you can afford it, the Ultrasharp U3818W is one of the most impressive monitors you’ll ever set eyes on, and it’s sure to give your gaming rig or media machine an extra pop that even a 4K monitor can’t provide.

HOW WE TEST

Reviewing monitors can be tricky. Unlike other types of hardware, it’s hard to convey how well a monitor performs with raw statistics alone. Everyone’s going to see a monitor a little differently, so we do our best to conduct objective testing to bring out the best in each monitor that comes through the Digital Trends offices.

When we test monitors, we leave no stone unturned. From physical stability to color reproduction, we run these monitors through a battery of tests to make sure they live up to manufacturer promises and customer expectations. Right out of the box, we test color accuracy, contrast ratio, and brightness with a professional-grade colorimeter, and follow that up with a run through some very dark and very bright games to get a look at how things look in motion.

To find out more, check out our guide to calibrating your monitor. The tools and techniques we use in that guide or the basis for what we use to test and calibrate monitors that we receive.

IS NOW A GOOD TIME TO BUY?

If you’d have asked that question last year, the answer would have been a resounding negative. Ultrawide monitors are more expensive than their traditional 16:9 cousins, as they’re bigger, and less common. But if you compare last year’s prices to those you can find today, you’ll see that some of the best, most impressive ultrawide monitors are currently available for a fraction of their original asking prices.

In fact, if you look through the reviews we have on file for the monitors in this list you’ll notice that the MSRP for each of them is well more than current asking prices. Some are available online for about half what they were just a year ago.

Market pressure and cheaper components have made for an incredibly inviting buyers’ market when it comes to ultrawide monitors. So, yes, now is a great time to buy an ultrawide 21:9 monitor, particularly considering we’re nearing the end of the year, and as we all know there are a couple high-profile nationwide-sales just on the horizon. You might see these already-low prices plunge even lower by the holiday season.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Watch the SureFly two-person hybrid-electric copter make its maiden hover

2018-05-05T12:00:00.000+01:00

While it just missed its goal of making its maiden manned voyage at January’s CES event, Ohio-based company Workhorse’s SureFly hybrid-electric helicopter has finally lifted off for its first untethered flight. Well, it got a few feet off the ground, at least.

“A five-foot hover might not seem like a big deal, but what it does is to answer the question: Will it fly, yes or no?” CEO Steve Burns told Digital Trends.

The answer, as Burns is quick to point out, is a resounding yes. That’s exciting because the SureFly octocopter is a new kind of vehicle. It’s essentially a human-sized vertical-take-off-and-landing (VTOL) drone designed for up to two people. Its creators hope that it will both broaden and corner the market when it comes to personal flying machines.

The futuristic-looking SureFly vehicle is driven by eight separate propellers, and powered by a hybrid system that combines a gas combustion engine with a parallel battery pack. It can carry up to 400 pounds, too, which should make this a useful runaround vehicle for transporting a couple of ordinary-sized folks and their belongings. We can’t wait to turn up to the office in one!

SureFly

“It’s designed to be less expensive, safer, and easier to fly than a helicopter,” Burns said. “The reason that everyone doesn’t currently have a helicopter in their garage is because of those three issues. We think that if you can have something moderately priced, easy enough that anyone can fly, and that people will feel safe in, there are tons of applications. It could be a farmer checking on his cattle; it could be an emergency responder able to get to the scene of an accident faster than a road ambulance; it could be military, an air taxi, or just someone wanting to avoid traffic in the city. There are a lot of uses for a short-hop electric flying machine.”

The all-important liftoff demo takes SureFly one step closer to hitting the market. While there’s still work to be done on both the technical and regulatory side of things (how much training will you need to fly one, for instance?), it’s definitely an exciting milestone. The finished model will retail for around $200,000. That doesn’t make it cheap, by any means, but it’s certainly a whole lot more affordable than the private helicopters that it’s competing with.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Wrapping a robot around a human

2018-05-05T11:39:00.001+01:00

After a quarter of a century, Richmond, Calif.’s 500,000-square-foot Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant stopped making cars around the mid-1950s. These days, the space is home to a broad range of companies, including Mountain Hardwear and solar panel manufacturer, SunPower. But there is, perhaps, no tenant more suited for the space than Ekso Bionics.

Founded in 2005 as a spin-off of UC Berkeley’s Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory, the company creates soft exoskeletons, designed to aid factory workers in tedious, repetitive and taxing tasks.

Late last year, the startup fittingly partnered with Ford, bringing its wearable robotic suits to Michigan factory workers. The deal, paid for by the United Auto Workers union, will lead to the EksoVest’s deployment in factories all over the world. But Ekso’s focus moves beyond the factory walls. As with so many other robotics companies, it began life in pursuit of military funding.

“Originally the company was about helping soldiers carry heavy equipment in the field. One of the founder’s brother was a Navy Seal,” explains Ekso CFO Max Scheder-Bieschin. “He was injured and became a quadriplegic. It pivoted from ‘how do I build things to help my brother serve our country’ to ‘how do I help my brother and other quadriplegics get up and walking again’ with that same technology.”

The company’s Ekso Health line focuses on rehabilitation. Ekso’s suits offer lightweight, wearable assistance to patients suffering mobility setbacks from things like strokes.

But Scheder-Bieschin says the company envisions a world in the not so distant future when the technology is a ubiquitous part of our lives. “In 10 years, exoskeletons are going to be analogous to the smartphone today,” the executive explains. “One of the things that distinguishes Ekso is that we know how to wrap a robot around a human, and we do it better than anybody else.”

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

Blockchain can lead to less greedy companies — seriously

2018-05-05T11:30:00.001+01:00

Credit: Robert Overweg

A new wave of companies is coming which will view the sharing of revenue with their users as natural part of doing buisness. This vision is fixed in code, written down in smart contracts on a blockchain protocol. These contracts automatically secure and execute the vision, and the operation of the company. I believe that in due time, these companies could sprout new economic models, empowered by its tech and a vision for a more fairer world.

Although the dominant platforms Facebook, Youtube, Google, and Instagram keep increasing in size, a clear negative shift in sentiment is unfolding towards them. Rightly fueled by scandals and new expectations.

The way I see it, if consumers want change — and companies with the right vision and the right technology tap into this — we could be seeing a new wave of companies having success with a more open and fairer model.

Uneven distribution of wealth and the changing zeitgeist

Currently large tech platforms like Facebook, Youtube, Google, and Instagram take the lion’s share from the market when it comes to revenue generated from advertising, search, and content. Most of the users from these services, receive little to no value in return for their addition. You could say content in return for likes, views, and dopamine hits.

Based on estimates, Youtube generated $12 billion in revenue in 2016. Only the really large Youtube stars get a tiny fraction of this amount. Recently Youtube raised the limit for the amount of views you need before you get to share in the advertising revenue. One can’t help but to wonder if this is an honest model.

Besides an unbalanced reward system, I also see a seismic shift happening in the sentiment people have towards the big tech platforms. They are experiencing a push-back from governments. Multiple former Facebook executives have publicly stated that they created a tool that is “ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”

Recently the #DeleteFacebook became trending after several call-outs of influential people. This does not have a immediate effect on the companies, but will change the public’s perception of the companies. Which in return creates room for new companies with a different mindset.

Besides, there is a growing demand from consumers, especially millennials, who would like large corporates to contribute to society. 91 percent of millennials would even switch brands for those who are associated with a good cause. This sounds like music to my ears. Could this also mean that there is room for companies who do good for their own users as well? Is it finally time for new models?

New platforms and new models

First steps have been taken by several new video platforms like Flixxo and View.ly to try out new models. I’m not here to endorse them or to tell you that they’re the absolute right way to go — but what they have done is they’ve shown a possible way from the greed of current tech giants. They reward users tokens for watching, sharing, or uploading content. You are being payed to use and participate in the platform.

Flixxo goes even further by leveraging their users bandwidth for the distribution of the video content by means of BitTorrent technology. Which you get paid for of course.

Advertisers can buy tokens directly from specific channels they want to advertise on. Users who have no tokens can consume content by watching these ads.

Smart contracts for an automated distribution of wealth

As a contributor to the service you can decide how many tokens you want to earn for your content. All of this is automatically handled by smart contracts. Thanks to this setup, it’s even possible to decide how to split revenue between your production partners — after checking for copyright issues, the network validates the payout within 7 days.

No intermediary party is needed anymore. The rules in the smart contract operate the company, after agreement these rules are no longer adjustable. This automates the operation of the company and reduces costs. Leaving more to share with the users.

It’s imaginable that people would prefer a platform where they get paid for their attribution. The idea that blockchain and smart contracts can facilitate a new generation of companies is completely feasible, technically it’s already possible.

That this can create new economic models is besides a beautiful thought, maybe also something that can become a reality. To investigate and validate, if I was not alone in this thinking.

I was fortunate enough to have chat about this with Joseph Lubin, the co-founder of the second largest cryptocurrency and largest smart contract platform Ethereum. During a roundtable discussion at SXSW, he shared my views of new companies arising which are wired differently from the ground up where sharing is in their core.

Will this really work?

Companies like Flixxo and View.ly are currently in an alpha phase and still have to prove themselves. If you look at a platform like Steemit you can see the first signs of new models starting to work. Users pay each other for posting, sharing, and commenting on its message board. Payments are done through their own token model the Steem dollar. Steemit has already been running for several years and is gaining in size.

The challenges of companies like Flixxo and View.ly could lie in the fact that they use ERC20 style tokens. They currently take around 10 minutes to transfer and consume some gas for the transaction. Millions of transactions could clog the system, like what happened with Cryptokitties.

To counter this, Flixxo is starting out with combining centralized and distributed methods for the usage of tokens. In the beginning blockchain will only be used for deposits and withdrawals of tokens. As blockchain becomes more scalable and the technology improves, the entire process can be moved to the blockchain. They are working with RSK to set up such technology.

In the case of View.ly publishers need tokens to publish and token holders can vote on quality content similar to Steemit. Votes will be broadcasted on a p2p network through the Whisper protocol, so everybody can validate them — this is all off chain communication. At the end of a distribution period, which is currently seven days, votes are aggregated and tokens are issued as rewards for participation, this is done on-chain.

When speaking to the developers it seems to be an ongoing process of improvement while at the same time, many smart developers are working on improving the Ethereum blockchain through sharding and state channels.

For these new companies it’s of course really difficult to win from the large platforms. Due to their lack of scale and lack of money. But the current platforms are built on different business models based most of the time on advertising revenue. For them it’s difficult to switch to new more open business models.

If fairer models will become a reality, when can we expect these?

The evolution of two open networks (the internet and digital currency).

You do have to be patient. If you look at the above phases you can envision a time-frame. Currently we are only in phase 3, where companies try to build somewhat usable consumer facing wallets where people can store their digital currencies. But it’s still early days.

However, the technology, the vision, the companies, and the timing seem to be getting more and more aligned for companies to run an open and transparent system where they share with their users. If I’d have to make an estimation, maybe this new wave of tech and corresponding companies will be common in the next 5-10 years.

It’s also up to us. The ones building, envisioning, and pushing technology forward. Let’s try to use technology to empower visions for a better world instead of just more greedy.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

New blow for ZTE and Huawei: Devices pulled from military base stores

2018-05-05T11:30:00.000+01:00

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

The U.S. government and its agencies are warning against using devices made by Huawei and ZTE, claiming they may represent a security threat. Here’s what you need to know about the developing story.

Sales stopped at military bases

Devices made by Huawei and ZTE are no longer being sold at stores on U.S. military bases, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, which claims the phones and modems may present a security risk. The decision came on April 25. Pentagon spokesman Major Dave Eastburn said the hardware “may pose an unacceptable risk to the department’s personnel, and mission,” in a statement to Reuters.

The sales stoppage comes after warnings over security from U.S. intelligence agencies, which resulted in Huawei further distancing itself from the United States, and a ban on U.S. companies selling equipment to ZTE. The U.K. has also said it will not use ZTE equipment, due to added work pressure on the department monitoring Huawei equipment used in the country.

Security risks

While Huawei has faced similar perception problems in the U.S. before, the Senate Intelligence Committee in February brought considerable attention to the firm. Top officials from major U.S. intelligence agencies including the CIA, the FBI, and the National Security Agency (NSA) suggested people should not use devices made by Chinese manufacturers Huawei or ZTE. The agency chiefs said they had “deep concerns,” over potential security risks claimed to come from using telecoms devices made by companies “beholden to foreign governments.”

The annual hearing is where threats to the United States from around the world are discussed. Cybersecurity and the use of technology in espionage repeatedly permeated the discussion. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats made the opening remarks. He said the United States is under attack from “entities using cyber to penetrate virtually every major action that takes place in the United States,” and called cyber threats one of his greatest concerns and top priorities. Coats singled out Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea as posing the greatest threats.

Play by the rules

The Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Republican senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, said, “The focus of my concern today is China, and specifically Chinese telecoms companies like Huawei and ZTE that are widely understood to have extraordinary ties to the Chinese government.” Burr has been a longtime opponent of Huawei and other Chinese telecoms companies in the United States, dating back to at least 2010 when he and other senators advocated blocking Sprint from using Huawei infrastructure in its network.

Burr asked numerous officials to share their thoughts. CNBC reports that six individuals said they would not recommend private citizens use products from Huawei or ZTE. Reuters reported that when questioned, the intelligence officials said they personally would not use a Huawei or ZTE product. In the South China Morning Post, it’s stated that Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas asked officials if they would recommend purchasing a Huawei or ZTE product, and none raised their hand.

Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia identified Huawei and ZTE as “leading market players globally,” and added: “Most Americans have not heard of all of these companies. But as they enter Western economic markets, we want to ensure they play by the rules. We need to makes sure that this is not a new way for China to gain access to sensitive technology.” Concern over the possible security implications of Chinese smartphones and telecoms equipment is not new, and debate previously raged in 2012.

No risk

In a statement given to CNBC, Huawei said: “Huawei is aware of a range of U.S. government activities seemingly aimed at inhibiting Huawei’s business in the U.S. market. Huawei is trusted by governments and customers in 170 countries worldwide and poses no greater cybersecurity risk than any ICT vendor, sharing as we do common global supply chains and production capabilities.”

ZTE USA told Digital Trends in an official statement: “ZTE is proud of the innovation and security of our products in the U.S. market. As a publicly traded company, we are committed to adhering to all applicable laws and regulations of the United States, working with carriers to pass strict testing protocols, and adhering to the highest business standards. Our mobile phones and other devices incorporate U.S.-made chipsets, U.S.-made operating systems and other components. ZTE takes cybersecurity and privacy seriously and remains a trusted partner to our U.S. suppliers, U.S. customers, and the people who use our high quality and affordable products for their communications needs.”

Both Huawei and ZTE sell smartphones and other connected devices in the United States, but neither are widely known. Huawei attempted to change this with the Mate 10 Pro smartphone and a deal with AT&T and Verizon, where the device would be sold through the carriers. However, the AT&T deal fell through before it could be announced, and Verizon is also rumored to have pulled out, each potentially due to political pressure.

For more technological trending news, research and information click here

SoC	Snapdragon 845
RAM	6-8GB
Storage	64-128GB
Display	6.28-inch OLED @ 2280x1080 (19:9 ratio)
Battery	3,300mAh
Camera	16MP+20MP rear, 16MP front
Headphone jack	Yes
Software	Oxygen OS (Android 8.1)
Measurements	155.7x75.4x7.75mm, 177g
Misc	"Water Resistant"
Colors	Mirror Black, Midnight (matte) Black, Silk White
Pricing	6GB/64GB $529, 8GB/ 128GB $579, 8GB/256GB $629