Elio Able Tech

Global Crypto Market Fast Growth

2022-02-28T12:09:00.001+00:00

The Market for buying and selling crypto companies grows exponentially

According to a new report from PwC, it has been noted that the total value of global crypto for buying and selling crypto companies has jumped around a 4,846%, from 2020 to 2021 from a value of $1.1 billion to $55 billion. A contributing factor for this increase was influenced on the number of SPAC deals.

This growing and maturing market is attracting a variety of investors including venture capital companies, private equity companies and hedge funds of which combined have completed deals that accounted for 46% of the market total deal flow, furthermore large corporations and corporate venture capital companies accounted for a further 15% of the market deal flow.

According to an analyst Castelluccio, it stated that Wall Street has noted that there is evidence that companies and individuals can “build real, viable systems” with blockchain and crypto technology despite the market still having a certain degree of speculation and unpredictability.

Crypto Market Regulation

Particularly for the US market, the SEC and the CFTC are continuing to evaluate and fine tune regulations that could possibly be put to practice including overseeing frameworks, and how their decisions will impact the market.

It is anticipated, that when the regulation is crystal clear to market players including businesses, then the potential for higher growth will be attractive for more investors with potential larger deals.

Innovation in this Market easily attracts Investors

As digital assets and blockchain is now more widely accepted and integrated into more systems, other applications such as NFTs, DeFi, DAOs including the metaverse, investors can see how this technology helps develop their businesses.

In terms of the global crypto market, this space is still in its early stages of development, nevertheless with each new innovation, it tends to almost immediately attract investors and thus subsequently the purchase and selling of these businesses that utilize and specialize in these technologies.

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Web 3.0 Development Insights

2022-02-26T23:07:00.002+00:00

Web 3.0 Background

The amount of data and information on the internet continues to grow exponentially daily by the second

It follows on constant availability of new data sources from articles, images, podcasts, videos and everything else available on the web

As a result, with the present and past large data pool, businesses need to better understand and process this data in such a way, that is cost-effective. Businesses are developing new understandings, that are presented to them with investment opportunities such as digital assets.

What is Web 3.0

Web 3.0 or Semantic Web combines the virtues of Web 1.0 and 2.0 by adding machine intelligence. This continuous Web development, is moving fast towards a more dynamic and faster changing data analysis, where the availability of data, knowledge banks and digital rights with monetisation can propel businesses in almost all areas.

Investment as a new asset class

Digital assets continue to be highly desirable, now including NFTs availability to purchase via reputable international brokers and auctioneers houses. New developments can also be seen that VCs have invested $20.7bn in cryptocurrency start-ups as of October 2021, which is an increase of more than 160% from the previous record in 2018.

Andreessen Horowitz in June 2021, launched its third crypto fund raising $2.2 billion, which then it was “largest crypto fund ever raised”. It then followed by the VC firm Paradigm announcing a new $2.5 billion crypto venture fund. These funds at the time have raised twice as much as they had hoped for.

As the universe of digital assets has expanded with such speed in the past few years, most tech-focused VCs are growing their focus into digital assets and incorporating into the ecosystem. To note there are certain aspects of a digital assets or a Web3 fund that differ from traditional ‘equity’ VC funds which derives new challenges including regulation.

Technology and entrepreneurship continue to adapt over time, with investors and GPs starting to make strides in this asset class, it is likely that future initial LPs meetings will be in the metaverse. It is predicted that more VC firms will make further announcements in 2022 in this space, as the community continues to see the potential with new regulations expected alongside.

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Paris 2019 Venture Capital World Summit

2019-04-14T16:44:00.001+01:00

World Series Season 2019 Starts in Paris on 24 April

From Scale up companies to small boutique companies, the French market is filled with exciting entrepreneurs and innovation, and we are proud to announce we are partners to this event Tickets

It has taken a lot of effort to create the first world venture capital summit spanning now over all continents. However, it still feels it is only a startup journey so far.

Paris 2019 Venture Capital World Summit

Paris will be day one of the World Series in 2019, and as always we still have so much to do, nevertheless this season we are going as far away as Japan before ending the season at Silicon Valley in November. As an entrepreneur we learn every day, and we have no doubt #VCWS2019 will be stronger than ever.

Our commitment is to support every entrepreneur and scale-up business that wants to be helped. No matter where he/she is. No matter where his/her original starting point. Entrepreneurship is an act of life itself, it is about solving problems, offer solutions and improve the world.

With our new fund we are raising we are supporting programs, ecosystems everywhere with channels to help endeavours accomplish these things which we can all call innovation and technology. Our vision is to help cross bridges around communities, to show the up and coming and established talent that it's possible to start something and change realities, a City reality, a Country reality.

We are we are not "competing" with any events, we are the simply World Summit with our unique approach for business success. We are bringing people from all corners of the World that share the same vision to help entrepreneurs. Great things always start small and we understand the process that everyone experiences when starting, and we are here to help. Tickets

Discussion Panel Venture Capital World Summit

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Fotojet Review: Graphic Design Editing Made Easy

2017-04-13T18:07:00.000+01:00

Graphic Design is highly in demand

In a context where many people are more connected online, internet marketing is driving and increasing the market for quick and impact quality designs.

This is where FotoJet fits very well, as a solution that anyone can use and get most from the designs, or create new ones regardless of any level of skill. The online solution offers many templates and many resources where some are part of its premium features.

Whether its users need a quick poster design which is easily customizable or to use on social media imaging content, there is something for everyone to use, edit or develop.

Fotojet can be described as a graphic design online solution that offers its users an easy approach to edit photos, including collage. Once a user logins, it can be seen three major tabs: Design, Edit and Collage. As expected the online software has tabs with many options including templates, text fonts, clip-art, stock images, effects or layouts.

As described on the website, Fotojet: Turns Your Photos into Works of Art, An all-in-one free online tool for graphic design, photo collage and photo editing.

The Collage tab:

Users have many layouts, templates, backgrounds, effects, and photos to choose from. Including an easy feature to change the ratio of pictures.

The Design tab:

Design feature offers dozens of templates to start off your design or lets you begin from a custom-sized blank template. Users can use many options from stock photos, text fonts, backgrounds, and effects.

The Edit tab:

Photo Editor many of the expected typical features including many borders and effects.

Although Fotojet, is not the only available solution online, others such as Canva and Nifitio, do exist. However, in terms of User happiness and user interface design Fotojet is the winner here and recommended solution.

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New Artificial Intelligence Nanodegree Facilitated by IBM and Udacity

2016-10-26T16:38:00.003+01:00

Artificial Intelligence Nanodegree Facilitated by IBM

An interesting new development regarding technology education in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

The platform designed for employees that is Udacity, is now in partnership with IBM Watson, which also includes Didi Chuxing and Amazon Alexa, as a result of the partnership there is now a new nanodegree in artificial intelligence,

This new development was announced at the IBM World of Watson conference.

In a context where the input from IBM Watson is incorporated in the curriculum of this new course. Furthermore, with the partnership of the Chinese company Didi Chuxing the goal is to tempt and hire students who will be successful in completing their nanodegrees. In thre framework are also IBM and Amazon Alexa as they will be present on an advisory role to Udacity, so that this new nanodegree course does have a solid foundation with an emphasis as a new AI nanodegree.

As stated by Udacity’s founder Sebastian Thrun, which comes from a background of developing and initiating Google X which produced the now famous self-driving cars. Although this new AI nanodegree is designed for students that already a good knowledge in software development.

Also IBM’s Rob High, from IBM Watson, stated that this new nanodegree "should teach students to build apps or platforms using game playing and search, logic and planning, computer vision and natural language processing, among other things."

In the context of ethical considerations in artificial intelligence, its was also stated: “No. There’s a lot of fear mongering these days in the AI field. AI is not about to take over or destroy the world. Instead, it’s going to free us of repetitive mindless work. Say you are doing an office job and every day you do the same thing. At some point an AI watching you will make you one hundred times more efficient at your job, and it will free up a lot of your time. I think AI is to the human mind what the steam engine was to the human body…I see this as positive news for the world.”

The Udacity AI Nanodegree is comprised of two, 13-week terms, which will start in early 2017. Currently, the curriculum is not yet finalised, and there is still the possibility of artificially intelligent apps to help teachers do their work,

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Happiness and Well-being is set to make waves in Wales

2016-08-17T14:55:00.001+01:00

Happiness and Well-being is set to make waves in Wales

With the recent Well-being Act being introduced to Wales, our happiness has started to become more of a focus. It is well documented that at the root of many of the illnesses we suffer with today is the level of stress that we are dealing with at any one time.

Happiness

Stress hormones in the body create disease in the same way that overloading the body with alcohol or any one type of drug can. Over focusing on the negative aspects of life is one of the key reasons why we develop stress. What happens to our body is that when we focus on the stressful situations, we overdevelop the stress hormone cortisol within our bodies. What this hormone does in small doses is helpful, but when there is too much of it hanging around in our nervous systems, we become ill.

Rebecca Mills Elysium

This upcoming workshop tickets here by the Entrepreneur Rebecca Mills, will help on how regular stress can affect the body in so many ways, people who overproduce cortisol can even become addicted to the feeling and become stress addicts, the main side effects of stress are:

– Insomnia – you struggle to sleep at night
– Lethargy – a feeling of tiredness no matter how much you sleep
– Weight gain – cortisol will make you add weight around your waist line, even if you are doing well on your diet
– Low immunity – you tend to pick up colds or coughs easily
– Craving sugar – cortisol raises your blood sugar levels putting you at risk of diabetes and at risk of cravings
– Aches and pains – excessive cortisol hypersensitizes the brain to pain, so even the slightest twinge can cause headaches
– Low libido – cortisol lowers the sex hormone, so your libido disappears

But there is a way to turn things around.

The reason why stress can be difficult to eradicate from our lives is the way in which it affects us. When we have a stressful episode, our mind can go into overdrive repeating back to us negative feelings or thoughts. These negative thoughts in turn affect our actions, even ending in self sabotage at times.

The way to turn things around is in training the mind to think differently. Instead of allowing our stress levels to control us, we need to take control of our stress levels.

Upcoming workshop tickets here

Workshop

“It is easy to feel like stress has us by the throat...” says Rebecca Mills, Founder of Elysium that runs workshops for happiness throughout South Wales, “...but stress is usually the result of us thinking that we are not in control of the voice in our head, many times that voice tried to sabotage my life, but when I realised that I could change what it said to me, that I was in control of how much stress I allowed myself to take on, things began to change”

Rebecca believes that stress is the reason for much of the disease we suffer today. “When you look up the affects of cortisol, the hormone that stress produces in our bodies, you see that stress is affecting our systems in such awful ways, and we need to avoid stress as much as possible”

The NHS has many tips on reducing stress and with the new Well-being Act being introduced to Wales, it is imagined that this support will improve.

Rebecca runs regular workshops in and around South Wales, her weekly workshops in Caerphilly start in September and run every Monday in the local Library. If you would just like to come along and see what these workshops are like,

Rebecca is also running workshops with the Cardiff Hero Coffee mornings and her next workshop is on September 8th with the title: To change the world around you, do you have to change the world or simply how you see it?

A workshop on changing our perspectives. Rebecca's book Happy Regardless is also available for download from her website elysiumhappiness

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Cardiff Startup Events and Tech Innovation Hub Future

2016-08-10T16:10:00.000+01:00

Cardiff Startup Innovation Future Trends

South Wales is among the five fastest growing digital clusters in the UK

As seen on this 2015 report by Tech City’s. The region has over 28,000 people directly employed by digital companies.

Cardiff City

Cardiff: Future Trend

Cardiff lies at the heart of the Welsh digital innovation trends with Swansea also producing interesting results, There is an exciting business community where it enabled for the likes of Venture Capital World Summit to flourish and start, other examples include the community focused fortnightly meetings produced by the Hero Business Club and others such as the highly regarded Cardiff Business Club, It is also interesting the vast support that is provided by the Welsh government which is very important to drive some businesses.

“Because of its size, it is a great hub to present and test new ideas,” says Elio Assuncao,

Furthermore, the National Assembly which is based in Cardiff Bay has many incentives and policies designed to help Innovation in Wales. Including Government's Business Wales which provides many development funds, which can only be accessed by technology companies.

Official figures show that the number of digital businesses in Wales grew by 7% between 2013 and 2014, when compared to other sectors where the growth was only 2.8%. It is important to Wales to help digital innovation as a nation of many techies, as the success in Cardiff will expand and grow to wider regions outside the Capital City, and many Co-working spaces such as TecMarina are helping to drive this success.

In a location which presents itself with a low cost of living. excellent quality of life, close and fast links to Central London, combined with unique support from the Welsh Government to some key Innovative businesses, it is then an inspiring place for a start-up to be created and or innovated.

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Cardiff European Maker Week 2016

2016-05-20T18:57:00.001+01:00

The Cardiff European Maker Week

An initiative promoted by European Commission

Cardiff European Maker Week Event

YODspica Ltd is a proud local sponsor, organized by Elio Assuncao

Book FREE here to attend

The aims of European Maker Week are twofold:

To create awareness about the importance of the maker culture to foster an education of creativity and innovation in all schools across Europe.
To build bridges between local authorities and media and the main players of their own local makers ecosystems.

Cardiff European Maker Week Event

During the European Maker Week the opportunity is for:

Workshops and informative talks,
Conferences and talks about innovative maker projects.
Project exhibitions and shows.
Meetings with the business world to stimulate synergies between makers, craftsmen and industry.
Meetings with local Institutions to promote public policies within: the digital technologies field, the shared manufacturing space and the Hardware Startups.

Cardiff UK Event

Connecting Things to the Cloud Event

Cardiff European Maker Week Event

Interactive Workshop and Tech Talks

31st May 2016 Cardiff

An IoT (Internet of Things) based workshop exploring how your Things can connect to the cloud and what you can do with the cloud when you are connected.

Everyone is welcome even if you have a basic knowledge of programming, as it will be used NodeRed which is a visual tool for wiring the Internet of Things.

Attendees will need to bring a laptop to connect to a usb powered ESP8266 serial WIFI Witty cloud Development Board which can be programmed via the Arduino IDE.

Book FREE here to attend

As we have a limited amount of these devices attendees are welcome to bring their own, it will be used IFTTT examples which anyone can build to connect devices in their homes etc. Really no excuses for not starting ESP8266 IoT projects.

Mike Hole

Our Workshop Director is Mr Mike Hole

An Experienced and Extraordinary Solutions Architect, Usergroup Manager at diff.NET& Ex Nokia Developer Champion. Currently working at The Technology Crowd and runs diff.NET - Usergroup Cardiff.

Event Location:

Tec Marina
Terra Nova Way
Penarth CF64 1SA
Wales UK

Day: 31/05/2016 Hour: 17:30 Ends: 21:00

Book FREE here to attend

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New App Makes Brushing Teeth a Fun Gaming Experience

2016-04-18T14:02:00.003+01:00

A Japanese company Sunstar's has a new interesting app offering and device

The new device has an accompanying app that enables it to connect to a smartphone with special features for its users, the special toothbrush device is designed as a game experience for its users as a controller gadget, which can also be a newsreader.

This is an interesting development particularly for brush shy people, by making it an interactive experience.

It is being branded as G.U.M Play, which is device that fits on any toothbrush. It then works by syncing with the app available on Android and iOS devices. The device also has the capability of a news reader.

As an example: Mouth Monster, works by presenting users with a candyland inside your mouth from invading bacteria. The invaders are dispatched by brushing at a steady beat in key zones around the gum line.

http://www.sunstar.com/

Another example: Mouth Band is a simplified Guitar Hero-style game where users choose from a selection of tunes and play through each song by brushing in tempo with the music in different areas.

With regards to news reader, Mouth News is a customisable news aggregation feature in which 3-minute news reports played through the device brush.

G.U.M Play is also fitted with sensors that monitor the speed at which you brush as well as the angle and zone of the mouth. Below it can be a video introduction.

The G.U.M Play comes in standard white, with a range of five subtle coloured rubber covers sold separately. It is on sale today, priced at ¥5,000 (around £30).

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All WordPress.com Users Now Benefit from Security Encryption

2016-04-09T21:47:00.000+01:00

All Users Upgraded to Security Encryption Settings

WordPress.com has announced that HTTPS is now enabled for custom domain sites.

Wordpress.com

It mainly affects users which own a custom domain at Wordpress.com domain feature as all other users were already benefiting from security SSL

This upgrade was overdue when compared with other social services such as Facebook and Twitter where this encryption service is already provided by a form HTTPS for all their users.

Nevertheless, it is great news for domain site owners as WordPress.com now supports custom domain names across all of its sites, although SSL certificates are required to be owned by the users.

Previously, WordPress.com users which were using subdomains have had this security feature HTTPS enabled, however all the other users which use custom domains never had this capability before.

This development arrives in a context of the Let’s Encrypt project, as it has provided cheaper and easier ways to implement HTTPS encryption security on the internet scene. WordPress.com provides now each website by default with an SSL certificate which will be displayed by the familiar green lock at user's dashboards when accessed by the user.

Furthermore, in terms of SEO performance it is now also noted that Google prefers and gives more importance to all websites that support and have HTTPS enabled with certificates, as opposed to the unsecured connection of HTTP only website links.

Wordpress.com

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Art in Wales Review by Welsh Artists

2016-04-05T18:21:00.000+01:00

Art in Wales Review by Welsh Artists

Wales was unusual for art compared to other parts of the UK.

The concentration of visual artists in rural areas, rather than urban centres as most of Britain at that time, were drawn to Wales by its impressive scenery.

christopherlangley.net

The Cambrian Academy of Art was founded by artists in the Conwy Valley where art was exhibited at established commercial galleries in Llandudno on the North Wales coast.

In South Wales, Cardiff did not become a large town until rapid industrial expansion took place during the second half of the nineteenth century. Artists had visited the town from an earlier date, painting a number of works of South Wales including of Cardiff's North and West Gates.

In 1861, a museum for Cardiff was created in temporary rooms based on subscriptions, sharing accommodation with the Cardiff Free Library in St Mary Street and in 1870 Cardiff's first large-scale public art exhibition, the Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition, took place.

Today, the Cardiff art scene has a variety and excellent selection of quality art. The Cardiff Museum holds one of the best collections in the world, including several original Monet works.

christopherlangley.net

The art collection at National Museum Cardiff is one of Europe's finest.

See five hundred years of magnificent paintings, drawings, sculpture, silver and ceramics from Wales and across the world, including one of Europe's finest collections of Impressionist art.

Central to the town's artistic community at the time were artist T. H. Thomas (1834–1915) and architect Edwin Seward (1853–1924). Thomas exhibited at the 1870 exhibition. Seward studied at Cardiff's College of Art and later designed the town's new Free Library on The Hayes.

Exhibitions were held in 1884 and 1885 to raise money for a headquarters for the Cambrian Academy. Instead, Seward and a group of artists created the South Wales Art Society in 1888, with an annual exhibition and lecture programme.

The South Wales Art Society (SWAS) planned to have an annual exhibition, a lecture programme and a sketching club and "offering to those who admire or appreciate, rather than practise, a means of cultivating a taste for Art".

The same principles hold true today. The SWAS continues to hold annual exhibitions in a variety of locations in Penarth and Cardiff. Its 100th exhibition took place at the Turner House Gallery, Penarth and its 127th took place in the Pierhead Building, Cardiff Bay in 2014.

christopherlangley.net

One up and coming Cardiff artist, SWAS member Christopher Langley, took part in the 127th SWAS Exhibition, with two original works. He says “I’ve been with the society for just three years. I have met some top artists such as president Arnold Lowry, who runs master classes in watercolour. My own art has been greatly influenced by the techniques and people I have met there”.

There are a number of well-established galleries in Cardiff. Notable private galleries include the Albany Gallery, Roath, which was opened in 1965 by Mary Yapp and became the agent for Welsh art legend Kyffin Williams. The Martin Tinney Gallery opened in 1989 in the city centre, later moving to St Andrews Crescent, and represents major Welsh artists such as Shani Rhys James.

Gallery 66, in the Duke Street Arcade offers a wide range of well-framed prints and the occasional original work. The Victoria Fearn Gallery in Rhiwbina, North Cardiff offers a small selection of local artists, including water-colourist Kevin Strong.

Welsh artist Christopher Langley’s work has been featured in some of these galleries; his work reflecting current Welsh culture and scenery. Christopher is partly inspired by fellow modern Celtic artist Gillian McDonald. The mood and atmospheric landscapes, coupled with a genius use of colour and shade, he owns a number of her works, as well as fellow SWAS member and fine water-colourist Phil Ross.

To conclude, if you live in the South Wales area and have an interest in art on any level, contact Christopher or direct with the SWAS.

Christopher Langley’s next solo exhibition is at Jaspers Tea Rooms, Llandaff High Street on April 14th 2016 from 18:00. His on-line gallery can be seen at Christopherlangley.net

christopherlangley.net

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Instagram Update: Allows Users to Post Videos up to 60 seconds

2016-03-30T02:04:00.001+01:00

Instagram users can now publish videos that last up to 60 seconds, before today it was only possible videos up to 15 seconds.

This new feature extension, following the latest update on iOS and Android will be available to all users within the next coming months.

This new user feature occurs on the context where around two months ago, Instagram had extended the video length capability for its advertisers up to one-minute long.

“We want to bring you fun, flexible and creative ways to create and watch video on Instagram,” the company announced on a post.

Following recent marketing studies it was found that the average duration of a top Facebook video is around 1.5 minutes. It then follows, that this new extended length on Instagram will also give creatives and influential users more freedom to communicate their message and affect their audience.

This new update will also reinstate users ability to create a video using multiple clips from their camera roll.

Videos are increasing in popularity on Instagram, and its user base recently hit 400 million monthly active users. Over the past six months, the amount of time users have spent watching Instagram videos has increased by 40%, as stated by Instagram. The longer video format could help boost the amount of time users spend in the app and make Instagram become more valuable as a search tool and pulse on live events.

Instagram also implied that users will the future get more new videos features later this year.

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Facebook Messenger an eCommerce Development Strategy

2016-03-29T18:54:00.000+01:00

Following Facebook strategy it appears that it is about to announce new features particularly in its Facebook Messenger

The development stage for an in-store mobile payment capability.

According to The Information, following a source code analysis of the iPhone Facebook Messenger app it can be seen and noted commands such as "pay in person" and "pay directly in Messenger when you pick up the item" therefore it can be deduced that Facebook Messenger can have in-built the capability for in-store purchasing features. Nevertheless, Facebook was not yet responded to this new feature which is most likely in a development stage.

Furthermore, it is already possible send money to a friend via Facebook Messenger, however the iOS app code implies that Facebook will most likely expand Facebook Messenger features and capabilities as a payment tool. This follows a similar pattern in the peer-to-peer payment feature was also predicted months ahead of official release with an analysis of the app's code, which Engadget reported.

This is despite what Mark Zuckerberg said, that Facebook was not planning to launch its own payment product. However, Apple Pay was mentioned as a potential partner (transcript provided by Seeking Alpha is can be read below):

On payments, the basic strategy that we have is to make it especially in products like Messenger that where the business interaction maybe a bit more transactional, to take all the friction out of making the transactions that you need. So, we don’t view ourselves as a payments business, that’s not the type of company that we are. We’ll partner with everyone who does payment. We look at the stuff that Apple is doing with Apple Pay for example as a really neat innovation in the space that takes a lot of friction out of transactions as well. And our view is that the less friction, the better the user experience, the more people can easily interact with businesses that they care about. And ultimately for our business that will drive up the amount that businesses are willing to pay to advertise to send people into those interactions because they perform well. So it’s good for everyone but that’s how we think about that.

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New App Shootlr Allows Friends To Request Selfies of You

2016-03-29T00:59:00.001+01:00

Everyone is Familiar with Selfies, how about when friends take a photo of you using your own camera?

The concept is called "Someone Elsie"

It was launched today Shootlr on the iOS and Android stores, a new app that works by giving away self control of a user selfies and sharing and passing the selfie concept to a user's friends control. In other words, allowing photography decisions to be passed to a user's friends, where they can take a selfie of a user, using the user's own smartphone.

In practice the app processes the concept in such a way, as to remind a user that it has been a while since you have seen a photo of your friend e.g. Sasha, the interested user then sends send a photo request to Sasha. Then, a notification buzzes on Sasha’s phone; when she opens the app, a timer immediately starts its three-second countdown. At the end of the countdown it snaps her photo, then shares it with with the requested user. Below it can be seen the app promotional video.

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Oculus Rift review: The Future Is Now

2016-03-28T17:03:00.002+01:00

VR (Virtual Reality) The Future Is Now

The VR Technology is not something new, as it has been around for the past 20 years. However, there is now a new push to drive the technology to consumers.

Following the initial comsumer solutions and hype in the 1990s, Samsung's Gear VR and Google Cardboard, technology companies such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft are other main influential trend developers by utilizing mobile devices such as smartphone and tablets. As a result, there is now competition for each company to establish itself as the next global player in this new created market.

The HTC Vive is due to appear very soon, another technology introduction is the PlayStation V, however the real innovation is now the Oculus Rift. As this latest development, is the first high-end consumer VR system to come to market.

There are a number of “Oculus Ready”- certified computers you can buy, or even bundles that let you snag a Rift, and a rig to run it on, at a slight discount. Once you’ve download the installer, updated your graphics card driver, and run through the full calibration setup, it could be 30 minutes or more before you get any actual VR.

The headset itself, is designed to be as comfortable as possible. The sides are spring-loaded, so once a user has correct adjustment it can be taken off and put it on without any further adjustment.

The device comprises of two custom AMOLED displays screens running at a combined resolution of nearly 2.5K, presenting images to you as stereoscopic 3D. The integrated on-ear headphones might deliver amazing good sound. In fact, that sound is a big ingredient of the immersion: the spatialized 3-D audio both distance and direction are accurately reflected, which means that sound can be more exhilarating. The headphones are also removable.

Underneath the fabric on the eyebox and the rear triangle of the headstrap are a constellation of infrared LEDs, which allow included IR sensor to track your headset in space. The positional tracking that that allows crouching and leaning to get a new perspective on your virtual world is one of the most significant differences between a mobile VR device and a higher-end headset, and it’s also an absolute must for most things a user is going to do using VR technology. While 360-degree videos and pictures don’t take advantage of positional tracking, nevertheless games do. And games are by far the most robust use case right now, a fact that’s obvious from the moment you step foot in Oculus Home, the launch environment of the Rift.

The Gear VR has a similar environment, but if a user owns a game console they will be familiar with the interface immediately: available content shows up in the central menu, with recently played and social tiles off to each side. Currently the feature to add friends isn't available from within VR, for that, a user will need to use the Oculus app on their Computer, which can also be used to download and update games,

The Rift automatically exports a non-stereoscopic render of its output to your monitor (or TV), so that other people can see what you’re seeing. Inside the fabric-covered contraption, it can be seen a computer-generated room looking through a fine mesh. The field of view seems a little small. However, when moved the head, the room is all around. Whichever way a user will look, lean, bend down, the user perspective shifts/changes as if the user was actually there. It is certainly not like having a small TV screen strapped to a user's face. The straps are quite comfortable, and only need adjusting once.

Currently costs around six hundred US dollars, plus the upgrade needed on personal computers.

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Galactic Exchange Free Hadoop/Spark Cluster Creations in 5 minutes

2016-03-28T02:45:00.000+01:00

A new company Galactic Exchange Offers Free Hadoop/Spark Cluster Creations in 5 minutes for Big Data.

It is an impressive free service offering, as normally this process is not simple, and this new offer is a breakthrough and better still, open source.

This new service offer / process is called ClusterGX is currently in Beta, presented at Strata + Hadoop World. However, the service works by having its beta users to own and have their own data already available with own applications, so that it runs on top of the cluster.

This new tool, is open source and superb being free to use for now. The company is pays and provides the whole cloud infrastructure, this is a breakthrough as it is allowing users with a great vision by utilizing Hadoop and its implied big data wonders and capabilities.

The new company Galactic Exchange will eventually release an enterprise version of the product complete with better security, support and all the kinds of features businesses expect.

Rob Mustarde stated "The product is actually geared toward small to medium businesses, the ones that can’t afford to hire dedicated teams to spin up and manage Hadoop clusters",

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New Improved Machine Learning Platform by Google

2016-03-24T16:59:00.000+00:00

New Machine Learning Platform by Google

It was announced by Google of a new machine learning platform which developers can use in their applications and solutions.

It was presented at NEXT Google Cloud Platform user conference. It was stated by Google chairman Eric Schmidt "Google believes machine learning is “what’s next.”

The service is now available in limited preview and it was stated. “Major Google applications use Cloud Machine Learning, including Photos (image search), the Google app (voice search), Translate and Inbox (Smart Reply),” the company . “Our platform is now available as a cloud service to bring unmatched scale and speed to your business applications.”

Presently, Google’s Cloud Machine Learning platform consists of two parts: one that allows developers to build machine learning models from their own data, and another that offers developers a pre-trained model. To train or operate these machine learning models, developers can choose their data from tools such as Google Cloud Dataflow,Google BigQuery,Google Cloud Dataproc, Google Cloud Storage, and Google Cloud Datalab.

The pre-trained models include existing APIs like the Google Translate API and Cloud Vision API, but also new services like the Google Cloud Speech API. The Cloud Speech API powers Google’s own voice search and voice-enabled apps. It can do speech-to-text conversion for 80+ languages.

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Microsoft Launches Artificial Intelligence Chat Tay For Young People

2016-03-24T16:36:00.000+00:00

Microsoft Launches Artificial Intelligence Chat Tay For Young People

Microsoft launched in the US an Artificial Intelligent chat bot called Tay.ai, built by the Microsoft Technology and Research and Bing teams,

The goal is to conduct real-world research on conversational understanding. Tay, works by attempting to engage in playful conversations, by completing a multitude of tasks.

As an example of how it works, is that you can simply ask Tay for a joke, play a game, ask for a story, send a picture to receive a comment back or even ask for a horoscope. From the experienced the bot become, it will then also get smarter from multitude of interactions via chat, so that it makes for an increasingly personalized experience for its users.

The bot is similar to another also built by the Bing team for the Chinese market, called Xiaoice, which The New York Times covered in-depth last year.

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LinkedIn New Machine Learning Tool for Software Developers

2015-09-06T15:26:00.000+01:00

LinkedIn has announced a new tool FeatureFu which is to become open source for all software developers.

The FeatureFu will help software developers to build machine learning models around statistical modeling and decision engines.

This offer by LinkedIn which is based on its “feature engineering” so that is accessible to software developers from around the world.

In Machine Learning or sometimes refereed by some people as Artificial Intelligence, works by using detailed knowledge of the relevant data that users have at their disposal and then using that to build machine learning models.

LinkedIn states that most large-scale recommendation systems tend to be managed by at least two teams: one that handles the offline modeling and one that takes care of the online feature-serving/model-scoring part of the system.

“Many large-scale recommendation systems are brittle and vulnerable. FeatureFu allows for creative and agile development on these systems so that shipping new features doesn’t take weeks or even months,”

"FeatureFu could become a common technique for many machine learning systems,” he said. “It enables feature engineering to be more agile, which is one of the keys to success for machine learning applications. So we wanted to share our work with the industry.

As stated by LinkedIn senior software engineer Bing Zhao.

FeatureFu uses a small Java library called Expr that developers can use to transform and build upon an existing set of features. “Once deployed to an online feature generation framework, it eliminates any further need for code-change to ship models for a wide range of derived features,”

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Artificial Intelligent Facebook Personal Digital Assistant

2015-08-27T12:15:00.000+01:00

Facebook Personal Digital Assistant on Messenger App via Artificial Intelligence

The messenger app has moved another level in terms of capabilities for its users, following this new capability. As a result this new offering is a competing solution with the other IT giants such as Apple Siri, Google and Microsoft Cortana in the digital personal assistant arena.

The Facebook Messenger lead David Marcus stated:

We are beginning to test a new service called M. M is a personal digital assistant inside of Messenger that completes tasks and finds information on your behalf. It’s powered by artificial intelligence that’s trained and supervised by people.

The differentiating factor from other Artificial Intelligence services currently available as from the examples mentioned above is that the facebook service called M is able to complete tasks on a user behalf. Furthermore, it can also purchase items, organize orders to be delivered to your friends locations, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and much more.

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Facebook Moments App Creates Videos of Shared Photos with Music

2015-08-27T11:37:00.000+01:00

Facebook Moments automatically creates music videos of any grouping of six or more photos.

Facebook Moments, the new photo-sharing app from Facebook that adds new functionality and features to sharing photos with friends was first announced a while ago, where users are able to send photos that they may have on their smartphones. It now follows that a new update allows people to create videos with these photos too and even adding music to the final result. The way the app works is will automatically create a video of shared photos which you can be customized, personalized, friend tagged and subsequently sharing on Facebook timeline.

The new features and capabilities are not original as other social networking apps already offers similar solutions such as Flipagram, or those automatically created animations that Google Photos provides through its “Assistant” feature, which also creates stories.

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New Digital Tool Standing on Giants Community Forum Management

2015-08-24T01:34:00.002+01:00

Standing on Giants

Standing on Giants (SoG) an Integrated Community Management and Forum Platform Technology.

It was recently announced the release in the UK to the general business community of a versatile forum platform for businesses, originally created by Telefonica Digital where the SOG has been successfully operating since 2012.

¨This major breakthrough means that brands outside of Telefonica and the telecom industry will be able to drive transformational changes by engaging with customers across their own forum portals ¨ says Aurelien Poma Head of Platform Architecture and Design at Standing on Giants. ¨We are really excited to pass on the success that we have experienced internally and now we want to help companies steer their own digital transformation by providing a robust infrastructure that will translate into an exponential growth of their customer base ¨

SoG’s fully customizable platform easily integrates with other software systems and applications, including CRM, SSO and Data Warehouse it provides an umbrella of multi-dimensional analytics,

Standing on Giants

SoG’s forum platform provides customer specific updates, tailored to a business specific needs.

About the SoG platform

The SoG platform is offered as a hosted SaaS and it is developed, built and maintained by the platform architecture team at Standing on Giants. SoG’s platform provides a suite of user-friendly capabilities, both front and back end, as well as an effective range of user management tools. It is designed to deliver, integrate and reflect customers’ needs, with its ever-evolving capabilities.

About Standing on Giants

Standing on Giants (SoG) operates as an independent unit inside the Telefonica Digital Group and is behind the success of giffgaff, the world´s first community run mobile phone company. SoG´s vision is to help companies maximize their potential by providing cutting-edge Community Management services to customers across the globe.

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Why You Cannot Get Ahead Without a Mobile App in 2015

2015-06-03T15:08:00.000+01:00

Why You Cannot Get Ahead Without a Mobile App in 2015

Webmasters and keen followers of the news will all have been aware of the latest update from Google, which was launched on 21st April. The new algorithm, dubbed ‘Mobilegeddon’ by many sceptics, was put in place to ensure that sites which were optimised for mobile devices ranked higher on Google’s search engine results pages.

While it is one thing for a website to rank highly on Google thanks to a mobile site, it is another thing altogether to incorporate one’s own app into a business. Whether your business is well-established or you’re just starting out, here are a few reasons why you cannot be without a mobile app in 2015.

Mobile apps are 24/7

Imagine a world where you can guarantee top class customer service around the clock, without having to rely on cumbersome call centres. Of course, this is not to discount the obvious benefits of human contact, but the advantages of a mobile app are that a customer can log on at a time that is convenient for them and research and eventually buy a product in which they are interested, wherever they are and whatever time it is. Naturally, a mobile app driving sales throughout the night will require a bigger sales and distribution team, but with improved access, you’ll doubtless see your profits go through the roof.

Mobile apps are universal

Contrary to popular belief that apps only work for tracking fitness or ordering pizzas, advances in technology have given many industries the ability to take advantage of app capabilities. For example, the gaming industry is now going more mobile than ever before, with sites like Coral’s poker app for smartphones, iPads and more. You may feel that your business is not interactive enough to warrant an app, but you would be surprised at just how much more custom you will receive from investing in one.

Mobile apps are simple

One of the biggest incentives for creating a mobile app is the simplest one – they are just simple! How often do you hear of customers tirelessly trying to crawl their way around a website with poorly designed search bars, misleading headings and more? With the handy ‘burger’ function of a mobile app, customers have easy access to a menu which points them in the direction of exactly what they want. What’s more, it also promotes speed, allowing customers to save payment details and process their order at the touch of a button.

Investing in a mobile app may be a frightening concept at first, but just as these apps are easy to use, they are also easy to create! For more information on just how easy it is to get your own app for business contact YODspica,

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Best Top Newsletters That Everyone Should Subscribe

2015-05-27T02:21:00.000+01:00

An interesting list of productive email newsletter that are highly recommended to our readers.

These newsletters are delivered every week to any email inbox.

An email newsletter is a powerful communication tool that has various useful functions for its readers. As newsletters can give interesting, relevant and up-to-date information.

You can find the list of recommended newsletters below, which range from business, technology and cooking.

We selected our top seven newsletters with descriptions below, the other great newsletters can be seen on the table displayed.

ReadThisThing

Highly recommend that everyone sign up for the ReadThisThing newsletter. One great news story per day.
— Kate Jahries (@kjahrs) May 5, 2015

Politico Playbook

"Everything from breaking news to the days most popular stories sent straight to your inbox. E-mail alerts have the scoop on Capitol Hill, the White House and lobbying firms."

The Skimm

"Everything you need to start your day. We do the reading for you - across subject lines and party lines - and break it down with fresh editorial content."

The Daily Beast

"A speedy, smart summary of news and must-reads from across the Web, and the latest original stories on politics, entertainment, and more from The Daily Beast."

NextDraft

"A quick, entertaining look at the day's best stories, from the top of the news, to the very bottom."

The Daily Water Cooler

"Chock-full of news + humor delivered every weekday morning to make sure you're never left behind in a conversation."

NY Times: What We’re Reading

"Get recommendations from New York Times reporters and editors, highlighting great stories from around the web.What We’re Reading emails are sent twice a week."

Other great newsletters are on this table:

Smashing Magazine		Muck Rack Daily
	Buffer
Mattermark		Campaign Monitor
	SaaS Weekly
Real Future		Seth Godin
	Charged
UX Design Weekly		HackerNewsletter
	Netted
Sidebar		StartupDigest
	Product Hunt
Ask Leo		Community.is
	Exposure Weekly Selects
Casual Spectator		Brain Pickings
	Unsplash
Lefsetz Letter		The Slurve
	NoshOn.It
Garagiste		Tasting Table
	Greatist
The Fetch		Good Beer Hunting
	SealFit
Austin Kleon newsletter		Today in Tabs
	Now I Know
MediaREDEF		Hardly Working
	Very Short List
The Li.st		Milkshake
	Brain Food
The Ed’s Up		Further
	Remotive
Heretic		Think Clearly
	Improbable Research
The Art of Non-Conformity		Ann Friedman Weekly
	Wait but why
This Is True		Life Edited

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Microsoft Introduces Office Lens Document Scanning for iOS Android

2015-04-02T19:44:00.003+01:00

It was announced by Microsoft its product Office Lens is now available on both iOS and Android devices.

This solution works as mobile document scanner app which syncs with OneNote, available today for iOS and Android mobile devices, although it was already available on Microsoft store for over a year agor for its compatible windows devices.

This app works by enabling users to take photos of paper documents, receipts, business cards, whiteboards, sticky notes and anything else. Although it is not something new, as there are apps which already provide users similar scanning capabilities.

As many other scanner apps, Office Lens recognizes text on the images it captures using optical character recognition (OCR), in this app it works by allowing users to later locate the files of interest by simply using keyword search in OneNote or in Microsoft’s cloud storage site, OneDrive.

App users can also convert the scanned images from offline paper files and whiteboards directly into Microsoft Office formats and more, including Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and even PDFs and JPGs. These scans can also be inserted into OneNote as images.

Furthermore, Microsoft states that Office Lens offers a business-card scanning function that lets you turn cards into contacts you can add to your smartphone’s address book.

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