techearly

Kinsa Health Gains FDA Approval for Smartphone Connected Thermometer

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 5 Jan 2014 10:59:00 -0800

The Kinsa app displays fun and relaxing animations on the smartphone screen during a temperature measurement, making the entire process less stressful for parents. The app alerts the user when the measurement is completed or if the thermometer moves out of place before the process is over. Family members can create individual profiles in the app, and each person’s temperature can be tracked over the entire course of an illness. The individualized temperature history in the app can then be shared with the family physician during an office visit to determine when the symptoms first showed up. Once Kinsa is able to develop a large enough user base, the next version of the app will be able to inform users of any health trends in their neighborhoods along with the capability to inform parents about potential viral outbreaks at their kids’ schools.

Kinsa Health, a start-up based in New York, has received FDA 510(k) clearance for its Kinsa smartphone connected thermometer. The Kinsa can be used like a regular thermometer to measure the temperature under the tongue, in the rectum, or under the arm. It connects to a smartphone through the headphone jack and uses the processing capabilities of the phone to record and display the temperature, allowing for a leaner thermometer design with minimal components.
The Kinsa thermometer, which is compatible with iPhone 4s, 5, 5c, 5s and iPod touch 5, can now be pre-ordered for $14.99 and will be shipped in April 2014.

Best 10 Touch Apps For Windows 8 Tablets

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 14:35:00 -0800

So you’ve got yourself a shiny new Windows tablet? Good on you! I bet it’s great. You’re going to need some apps on that soon, so why not try the best touch apps out there?

Fresh Paint

Much as Paper is to iOS, Fresh Paint is the best drawing, painting and artistry app currently available for Windows.

Blend and mix colours to get your palette just right, before using oil, watercolour, pencil and brushes together the help you make beautiful digital art.

MetroTwit

Australian-developed MetroTwit brings Twitter fully into the Windows 8 world. Support for multiple Twitter accounts and easily customised views make it a breeze to keep track of your favourites.

Facebook

Windows 8.1 finally has its own bespoke Facebook app! Don’t waste time on the imitators, use the real deal, uncut from the secret stash of Zuckerberg.

Halo Spartan Assault

Grab your weapon, Spartan! Spartan Assault allows you to command your elite soldier through 30 different missions against the Covenant.

Xbox SmartGlass

SmartGlass makes sharing content between your Windows 8 device and your Xbox 360 easy, whether that’s to switch a movie from one device to the other or use your tablet or laptop as a second screen for gaming.

Comics

Want to gorge on some comics? The Comics app from comiXology offers 300,000 titles from 75 publishers. There’s a healthy selection of free titles so you can get a feel for the app, and a touch screen is a natural way to read comments.

Skitch

Another obvious use for a touch screen: annotating documents and photographs. Skitch handles the task well, and the Evernote integration (it also comes from the Evernote team) is an added bonus.

OneNote

OneNote is the first Office app to jump fully into the Windows 8 environment, using an innovative pop-up scroll wheel to select options. It syncs easily with existing OneNote notebooks so you can access them on a range of devices.

Social Dribble

It’s a Metro-era take on the screensaver. Pick a hashtag and Social Dribble will display tweets that match in big-screen format.

FL Studio Groove

The FL Studio music production software family hits windows 8 touchscreens! This version — specifically optimised for touch-based control — lets you program drum samples using a 10 pad drum machine. You also get 5 polyphonic synth channels and all the tools you need to create, arrange and sketch out musical ideas on your Windows 8 tablet or touchscreen Ultrabook.

Eyes-On Glasses Help See Veins

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 12:58:00 -0800

Evena Medical (Los Altos, CA) has unveiled its new Eyes-On Glasses System that helps clinicians see vasculature below the skin and deliver needles safely and hopefully on the first try every time. The glasses are based on Epson‘s Moverio technology that, similarly toGoogle Glass, can display graphics for the wearer to see, but goes further with a pair of forward facing cameras for 3D imaging and illumination to brighten the scene.

Though it uses multi-spectral lighting, we suppose that it’s the infrared and near-infrared frequencies that the cameras are tuned to when looking for vasculature. To help document procedures, the glasses allow nurses or doctors to record what they’re doing for upload to a PACS/EMR system, and so can be used in any situation when clinicians would like to film an interesting case.

Japanese PM climbs aboard autonomous Nissan Leaf

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 7 Nov 2013 12:25:00 -0800

Autonomous cars took to the roads of Tokyo for the first time on Saturday with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as a passenger. The Prime Minister rode on the public roads in the National Diet Front Garden in a Nissan Leaf and autonomous carsbuilt by Honda and Toyota. According to Nissan, Saturday’s drive was meant to show the Japanese government’s support for the development of autonomous cars, as was symbolized by the venue located between Japan's parliament and the Imperial Palace.

Seeing autonomous vehicles as a potential source for the country’s future economic growth, the government has been working closely with the three major Japanese car manufacturers on creating the technology, developing the necessary infrastructure, and addressing legislation to make such cars road legal.

Nissan Vice Chairman Toshiyuki Shiga says, “With the public road demonstration for the Autonomous Drive held in the presence of the Prime Minister, I believe that a great step has been taken towards the realization of Autonomous Drive. Nissan will pursue a safer, more comfortable and environmentally-friendly mobility by further fortifying our cooperative relations with the many government agencies and people involved.”

Having recently unveiled the Autonomous Drive prototype technology at “Nissan 360” in California, Nissan says it expects to have a commercially-viable Autonomous Drive vehicle on the road by 2020 with the technology expected to be available across its model range within two vehicle generations.

The all-electric LEAF, which Nissan says is serving as a base vehicle for the development of its Automated Drive technology and is the first vehicle packing such technology to be granted a license plate in Japan, is equipped with cameras, laser scanners and radar to detect road conditions and identify nearby pedestrians, traffic lights, traffic signs and other objects. The data collected by these various sensors is processed by an on-board computer that controls the automated acceleration, handling and brakes.

To ensure the safety of the technology, a purpose-built proving ground designed to put autonomous vehicles through their paces in extreme situations is being constructed at a Nissan facility in Japan.

Autonomous driving technology will be featured by a number of automakers at the upcoming Tokyo Motor Show that kicks off on November 23. Gizmag will be there to check out the latest developments.

The video below shows Prime Minister Abe being driven in a Nissan Leaf.

Source: Nissan

Tay Allyn Mass Text video could make her the next Rebecca Black

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 10:18:00 -0700

But 'a new breed of Pop that's like Ke$ha without the sex, and Gaga without the avant garde' has the ring of a comedy project or viral marketing stunt

US teenager Rebecca Black's Friday so-bad-it's-still-bad video made her a laughing stock in 2011, until it went viral. 55m YouTube views later, Black has arguably had the last laugh.

Now a singer named Tay Allyn is seemingly trying to repeat the feat with a song and video called Mass Text. But is she for real?
Published on YouTube last night, the song takes the formula that made Friday and runs with it, complete with an oh-so-2013 "Why didn't I get your mass-text? I'm in your contacts!" hookline. It is, frankly, horrifying.

GOCE mission comes to a fiery end

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 7 Jul 2013 10:03:00 -0700

This morning, at about 1:00 am CET, ESA’s Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite reentered the atmosphere and burned up somewhere along its orbital path extending from Siberia, across the western Pacific Ocean, the
eastern Indian Ocean, and to Antarctica. According to the space agency, it disintegrated in the upper atmosphere and though some debris may have reached the surface, no damage was reported.
Launched in March 2009 from Russian’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome, GOCE’s mission was to carry out the most detailed survey yet of the Earth’s gravitational field, within one-millionth of a gravity. The octagonal 1,100-kg (2,425-lb) satellite, nicknamed the "Ferrari of space," provided new insights into the Earth’s structure and the ocean’s circulation, as well as the creation of a map of the "geoid," which is the shape of an ideal global ocean as it would appear under only the influence of rotation and gravity, and not tides and wind.
In order to carry out these measurements, GOCE was placed in an orbit of 255 km (158 miles) to 224 km (139 miles). At this altitude, there is enough of the Earth’s atmosphere present to cause considerable drag, so the unmanned spacecraft was somewhat streamlined, and equipped with winglets and an ion engine to help it maintain orbit.

On October 2, GOCE’s engine ran out of xenon fuel, its orbit began to naturally decay, and it lost about 1.5 km (1 mile) of altitude per day. ESA’s Space Debris Office and the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee monitored the spacecraft’s progress and continued to update its estimated time of reentry. On November 10 at about 11:50 pm, it was tracked by the Antarctic Troll station at an altitude of 120 km (75 miles) and ESA reported that the craft was, to the agency’s surprise, still functional. Then, at about 1:00 am, communications were lost as it made its final plunge into the atmosphere.
"The one-tonne GOCE satellite is only a small fraction of the 100 – 150 tonnes of man-made space objects that reenter Earth’s atmosphere annually," says Heiner Klinkrad, Head of ESA’s Space Debris Office. "In the 56 years of spaceflight, some 15,000 tonnes of man-made space objects have reentered the atmosphere without causing a single human injury to date."
Source: ESA

Earth views from ISS

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 7 Jul 2013 09:58:00 -0700

UrtheCast is poised to offer free, near-real-time views of our big blue marble from the point of view of the International Space Station.

Most of us will never have the chance to float about in the International Space Station and look down on the blue globe and swirling clouds of the Earth below. We mostly settle for stunning photographs. Soon, we'll be able to settle for near-real-time streaming video online.Canadian company UrtheCast is installing two cameras on the ISS today. Once in operation, they will live-stream high-def footage of the Earth through UrtheCast's Web platform. Basic accounts for taking a peek at the views will be free. Users will also be able to access time-lapse compilations.UrtheCast plans to broadcast satellite imagery and video for major Earth events and important locations. Account holders can even subscribe to favorite locations. For example, I could get a notice every time new shots of my home state, New Mexico, are logged.

The ISS circles around the planet 16 times each day. The cameras will constantly be on the job, generating up to 150 videos every day, each one about 90 seconds long.

While most people will be content as virtual sightseers, UrtheCast will also offer premium services. Those customers will have the opportunity to order footage from specific areas, request custom mosaic images, or even monitor remote locations.

UrtheCast's videos could quickly become one of the most mesmerizing ways to waste time on the Internet. Think of it as Earth TV, the greatest reality show ever created.