technology

The Apple Watch 4 is making me Drool

By Paul B. Kaiser on September 22, 2018

The new Apple Watch 4 is making me drool. I work on Apple platforms, but I also work on a Android phone and use Google for all my productivity needs. I wont change my Google preference, but I may convert to the Apple Watch 4. Here’s why – the watch just looks cool. And it holds an incredible amount of technology in its small form.

The Apple Watch 4 comes running watchOS 5 software out of the box and those with Apple Watch 3’s will be able to upgrade to it later in September, so you’ll soon have the latest version of the software no matter what watch you opt for.

The Apple Watch 4 has a faster processor than the Watch 3 called the S4 which the company claims will be twice as fast as the last generation. Whether you’ll notice that performance bump in real-life usage is unclear, but if you want the fastest Apple Watch, you’ll need the newer version.

The speaker on the newer watch is also 50% louder than the Apple Watch 3, which the company says is better for the new Walkie-Talkie feature as well as phone calls from your wrist.

Overall the Apple Watch 4 was the best announcement this year. The Verge said,

“This year’s Apple Watch is incredibly good. If you use it just for notifications and step counting, it’s probably overkill, but it’s able to handle more advanced features better than any other smartwatch I’ve tested. Mapping, music, workouts, calls, texting, podcasts… most of the stuff I could imagine wanting from a smartwatch works better than ever before.”

Apple Watch Health

The optical heart sensor has been part of Apple Watch from the beginning, allowing you to quickly check your heart rate. Thanks to a new electrical heart sensor (made up of an electrode in the Digital Crown and electrodes on the back crystal), you can use the ECG app to generate an ECG, or electrocardiogram, at any time to share with your doctor.

Electrodes built into the Digital Crown and the back crystal work together with the ECG app to read your heart’s electrical signals. Simply touch the Digital Crown to generate an ECG waveform in just 30 seconds. The ECG app can indicate whether your heart rhythm shows signs of atrial fibrillation — a serious form of irregular heart rhythm — or sinus rhythm, which means your heart is beating in a normal pattern

Buy Apple Watch

The Apple Watch 4 is available in four variants: 40mm and 44mm sizes, and with or without LTE. In terms of the Apple Watch 4 release date, you can buy it now – it came out on September 21 – so you can now get this onto your wrist. H

The GPS-only version starts at $399 / £399 / AU$599 for the smallest version, and $429 / £429 / AU$649 for the larger one 44mm one.
The cellular option starts at $499 / £499 / AU$749 for the 40mm and $529 / £529 / AU$799 for the larger watch.

This version from Hermes is very cool, and very expensive.

The Nike sport edition is a cool look as well.

And the standard versions are still exquisite looking.

Here are the some exciting and useful things you can do with the Apple Watch 4

Answer Calls
Use the Apple Watch as a Walkie Talkie
Listen to Podcasts on the Apple Watch
Use the Apple Watch as a Flashlight
Use the Apple Watch in Water
Monitor Your Heart Rate
Track Your Fitness
Send Apple Watch Emoji
Share Your Heartbeat
Pay with Apple Pay
Get Directions On Your Apple Watch
Send Drawings from the Apple Watch
Use Siri on the Apple Watch
Look at Photos on Your Apple Watch
Connect to Your Car
Send Facebook Messages
Listen to Music on Your Apple Watch
Share Your Location
Check Your Email
Control Your Apple TV & Music

Apple Watch in Motion

3 Reasons why SXSW 2018 is Magical

By Paul B. Kaiser on March 12, 2018

SXSW 2018 is in full swing in Austin, and from what I can tell the “experiential” factor tops the interactive cake. I mean they have built sets, taken over houses, and created mind-blowing events before, but these three interactive promotions below are incredible. They have taken the 5 senses and added a sixth – “mind melt”. The event truly looks informative and magical.

If you’re a fan of HBO’s Westworld, than this SXSW event will make you wish you were in Austin. It might be one of the best publicity stunts of the 21st century.

The new movie Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg, is coming out this month. But in Austin it has already arrived. This movie and SXSW stunt elevates VR to the next level. Not just with special effects but weaving it into life.

The tech giant is showing off about a dozen interactive demos at an air-conditioned warehouse here in Austin, and the event sounded like it would be really chill.

Sony wanted to make its visitors feel connected to its technology, and what better way to engage than through physical exertion.

They focused less on explaining the tech or convincing people why you’re here — just wow your audience with magical experiences.

The Gigafactory is Elon Musk’s Sonnet to the Future

By Paul B. Kaiser on December 24, 2016

Elon Musk’s Gigafactory is taking shape as seen in the new drone video below. When it opened this year the mode of production was far below expectations. But 6 months later, it is a different story.

Why build this huge factory? The firm foresees it will drive down the per kilowatt hour (kWh) costs of their battery pack by more than 30 percent. And keeping with Tesla’s green theme, the plant will also be powered by renewable resources, ‘with the goal of achieving net zero energy,’ Tesla says.

CEO Elon Musk said “the factory could easily employ 10,000 people in the next three to four years.”

The name Gigafactory comes from the factory’s planned annual battery production capacity of 35 gigawatt-hours (GWh). “Giga'”is a unit of measurement that represents ‘billions’.

Drone footage reveals world’s biggest building has added 2.4 MILLION square feet in just six months

Factoids:

$5 billion structure in Sparks, Nevada will produce 500,000 lithium ion batteries annually to meet demand
New drone footage of Tesla’s Gigafactory shows that it is now 30 percent complete
The north end of the massive building has been finished, adding another 4.5 million square feet of space
The factory will be used to produce batteries for products including Tesla Model 3 car

It’s deemed the biggest factory in the world – but when Tesla opened the doors to its ‘Gigafactory’ earlier this year, only 14 percent was complete. Fast forward six months later and new drone footage reveals that the electric carmaker has more than doubled the size by adding an additional 2.4 million square feet of space to the campus.

By the end of 2017, the company aims to begin production of its more affordable Model 3. And by 2020 it plans to ramp up production to build as many as one million vehicles per year, an ambitious goal considering the company expects to produce about 80,000 to 90,000 vehicles in 2016. Regardless where the numbers end up, there is no doubt that Elon Musk will change the mode of production.

Technology in the Trump Era

By Paul B. Kaiser on November 10, 2016

As we head out of Obamaville and into the Trump 100 days soon, what is the future of the technology industry? Knowing Trump it could go either way but here is what I know. Please note that I’m more than willing to give Trump time to prove himself, but the signs and things he has said have not been promising.

During the Obama years, Silicon Valley has been an economic and social engine for the digital community. Smartphones and social networks have become as necessity to many and are as important to world business as oil is to the automobile. The big four (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google) have become some of the most prosperous and valuable companies on the planet and have given the USA new hope for generating $$ in the USA.

Obama, has undeniably been a active supporter of these digital tools and his administration deferred to the tech industry for advice and consultation. Baring the recent Apple iPhone privacy debate, the tech industry and big government have worked well together. So how will Mr. Trump carry the baton?. “Mr. Trump had few kind words for tech giants during the campaign.”

He promised to “initiate antitrust actions against Amazon, repeatedly vowed to force Apple to make its products in the United States, and then called for a boycott of the company when it challenged the government’s order to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone.” And his immigration plans are dislike by about every company in tech.

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have not commented about Trump’s win, or how the new administration’s stated policy goals would affect their businesses, but it seems clear that a shift is in the wind. For instance, last year, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, wrote a rebuke to Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from immigrating to the United States. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, told an audience of developers in April that “instead of building walls, we can help people build bridges.”

Behind closed doors, during the campaign, many tech leaders were positive that their vision would prevail over Trump’s. But when asked about whether they were preparing a strategy to deal with a Trump victory, they did not have an answer. They like many other thought it would never happen.

Among the tech community, there is concern that social media giants, Facebook and Twitter, have helped advance the decline of good and accurate news media. Social media seems to have contributed into the rise of trolling, racism and misogyny that seemed to follow so much of Trump’s campaign.

At the end of the day, I have to imagine that a “mover and shaker” like Trump would want these businesses to succeed and prosper in America. It seems that Trumps business side would rise and squash his inner negativity. Nobody really knows his internet privacy, security positions or technology plans. He barely touched on the issues during the campaign. Privacy and cyber-security aren’t mentioned at all on his website’s positions pages. Everyone buckle up for the ride.

President Obama Stresses Importance of Science and Technology to the Nations Future

Google is in deep with Artificial Intelligence

By Paul B. Kaiser on October 18, 2016

DeepMind is a Google owned company dedicated to making computers that think and act like humans. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expanding and evolving at a fast pace, much do to big investments.

Google is serious about AI as can be seen by its show of big announcements in recent weeks — the improved Google Translate machine learning tricks, its voice-controlled speaker system Home, and their new smartphone line Pixel (which is equipped with the virtual Assistant). All this is evidence of their dedication to the science of artificial intelligence. But now Google has ramped up its investments in what’s known as “deep learning”. In 2012, Google had two deep-learning projects underway. Today, Google has more than 1,000 deep-learning projects in every major product category, including search, maps, translation, and self-driving cars.

Digital Trends says that deep learning refers to a kind of AI that enables software to train itself to perform tasks, like speech and image recognition. The algorithms behind this kind of AI have been around since the 1980s and 1990s, Fortune reports, but it’s only in recent years that technology companies have been able to harness its true potential thanks to the explosion of easily accessible big data. Google launched its deep-learning project Google Brain in 2011, and in 2014 it bought DeepMind, a pioneering reinforcement learning program that’s been shattering AI landmarks in gameplay this year.

“Deepmind has also invested in healthcare and now has up to 40 employees.”

The expansion of DeepMind Health comes as the company looks to do increasing amounts of work with the NHS. The company has announced three NHS partnerships so far, including an eyecare project, a kidney monitoring project and a cancer detection project. None of the projects hold any commercial value for DeepMind but the company eventually plans to start charging the NHS and others for access to its products and services.

The Idea Factory – The Reinvention of Tech at Bell Works Holmdel NJ

By Paul B. Kaiser on August 14, 2016

The Bell Labs building has been quiet for 10 years, but in 2016 there is a re-found desire, to make this part of NJ the new tech hub. Companies like ICIMS are getting on board to fill the halls of old Bell Labs – now called Bell Works.

So why is Bell Works seeking tech companies? The 2 million-square-foot building where Bell Labs scientists helped launch cellular networks is luring companies to work at a complex surrounded by technological history. Bell Labs was home to ingenious minds that contributed to some of the greatest technological advancements of the twentieth century.

This is a place that honors 8 Nobel Prize Winners
Physics – 1937, 1956, 1978, 1997, 1998, 2009
Chemistry – 2014

The two scientists who shared a Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering evidence supporting the Big Bang Theory 50 years ago reunited in Holmdel, at a friendly outdoor celebration attended by past and present colleagues of Bell Labs.

Arno Penzias and Robert A. Wilson stood together beneath the hulking horn-reflector antenna on Crawford Hill, which they famously employed to detect cosmic microwave background radiation that could help explain the origin of the universe. It is now a national landmark.

When you come up on the building on Bell Laboratory Road, standing in a field is a 60-foot water tower in the shape of a transistor, an invention born at Bell Labs that launched a computer revolution. Computer software developers are envious if their inventions since this is where UNIX and the C programming language were products of Bell Labs scientists. The halls of Bell works will soon be filled with new scientists and new inventions.