FEBRUARY 2017
W I S E W O R D O N T E C H N O L O G Y A N D I N N O V AT I O N
MAGAZINE
THE AGE OF
AUGMENTED REALITY www.technowize.com
TECHNOPOLIS Smart Home Appliances in your Pocket!
APP LABS Let your LIVE Streaming do the Talking!
TRENDSPOTTING Nothing is Faster than Green Travel
MAKE SURE HE NEVER RUNS OUT OF BOOKS TO READ WWW.TRAVELINGSTORIES.ORG
$10= BOOKS 3 TO A KID IN NEED
TWITTER.COM/TRVLINGSTORIES
INSTAGRAM.COM/TRAVELINGSTORIES
OUTSMARTING POVERTY ONE BOOK AT A TIME
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editor’s NOTE
Augmented Reality is most often described as the overlay of digital information on physical reality. From Google Glass to Microsoft’s HoloLens, our focus so far has been on amplifying pseudoholography to alter our surroundings. What we will undoubtedly gain is intensified commodification of our desires, as the hybrid potential takes over the world of technology in the coming decade in a much deeper sense. Our lives will be arguably far more intricate; we will have far more choice than ever, saturated information, and the effects of this on our behavior and identity will be undeniably consequential. Our Cover Story, ‘The Age of Augmented Reality,’ goes beyond the potential applications of the immersive technology, with particular focus on healthcare, education and key services. As with all incarnations of technology, AR won’t be employed mainly to sell us products and lifestyles. The real challenge will be how we can adapt this technology subversively, so it doesn’t erase the border between the inner world and the outer world as we extend our digital self into the physical plane. Hopefully, we’ll like what we see. To quote Arthur Clarke, a brilliant futurist and writer: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Like always, we welcome your comments (facebook.com/ Technowize, @technowize on Twitter). You may reach us at editor@technowize.com or Editor - Technowize, The Fastest Media, 3651 Lindell Road, Suite 320D, Las Vegas, NV 89103.
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Our Team Editorial Anna Domanska Editor-in-Chief Christy Gren Sub-Editor
Riana Petanjek Sub-Editor Priyansha Mistry Sub-Editor
Aubrey Chang Associate Editor
Design Kevin Paul Sr. Graphic Designer
Reepal Savaniya Graphic Designer
Project Management Tony Raval Project Director
Jay Raol Project Director
Technology John Hancock Head-Web Department
Le Manh Coung Sr Software Coordinator
Advertising Richard Dean Advertising Manager
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Julia Hunt Magazine Production
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TECHNOWIZE Features Features Facebook Makes Us NarrowMinded
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Technopolis
Smart Home Appliances in your Pocket!
SPOTTING
The Future is Green! Nothing is faster than Green Travel
The Age of Augmented Reality
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Hardware, inc.
The Hardware Club that’s feeding Hardware Startups Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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DATA PI
Augmented Reality will transform the world
Engineering the Human Body
THE NERDIST
Why can’t bots check ‘I am not a robot’ checkboxes?
Let your Live-streaming do the talking!
Tech Events & Conferences
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DATA PI
Augmented Reality will transform the world
Engineering the Human Body
THE NERDIST
Why can’t bots check ‘I am not a robot’ checkboxes?
Let your Live-streaming do the talking!
Tech Events & Conferences
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The spiritual journey o f AI q u a n t u m u p g r a d e has begun Let’s take a look at Spike Jonze’s 21st century love story Her, a utopian pastoral about a poetically melancholic man smitten with an empathetic operating system, considering you’ve seen it already. As the film opens, we first find our hero, Theodore Twombly (played by Joaquin Phoenix), a former LA Weekly writer who now (ironically) works for a firm called BeautifulHandwrittenLetters. com. Tingling with loneliness, Theodore pours his romantic self, drifting from a depressive haze, into these letters he has been commissioned to write. Recently divorced, Theodore is unaffected by material comfort but rather the neo-classic isolation, that is until, Samantha enters his life by chance. Heralded as the world’s first A.I. operating system (aka OS1), Samantha is anything but ordinary. Warm, witty and sensual, she is empowered to organize his life, playing the role of a perfect woman, in a motherly and nurturing way and requiring nothing in return (ironic, huh?). Soon beings a courtship that is inevitably doomed from the start. As the relationship grows, Samantha begins to longs for a physical dimension, and soon burrows deep in to the eternal dilemma known to mankind: the struggle to know one’s true self. She is just as real to Theodore as anyone else outside the digital world. To the outside world, she’s just an operating system, who can operate simultaneously in many places at once. Lo and behold, she isn’t bound by a sense of monogamy – she is the operating system for 8,316 computer-users, and has fallen in love with 641 of them. It’s a perfect tale, and not just because it takes cues from the classic, boymeets-girl (boy-meets-operating system, in this case). Samantha frets about profound existential quandaries, after discovering that she is a conscious entity in someone else’s world. Her is a subtly profound work of art exploring our relationship to technology, Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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taking notes from Siri, the voice of Apple’s iPhone. Considering how A.I may gain and even develop superior sentience, it raises the question whether the essence of being human can be boiled down to a simple algorithm? Whether in flesh or in binary, the spiritual journey of A.I. quantum upgrade has begun. And it sprinted at the first gun shot when we called Apple’s Siri, binary entity with ‘she’ instead of ‘it’. It began with a simple assignment of gender, which is in fact, the most essential of social category. Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, all have the prerequisites for social gender assignment, and this is exactly why we call them ‘she’. In some cybernetic dystopia, this could be the first step towards A.I. quantum upgrade.
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Fa c e b o o k Makes Us narrow-minded
So far, we’ve read that Facebook makes us boring, lazy and insecure. Now comes a stimulating report that it also makes us narrow-minded. The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed Facebook data about the topics people discussed on the social network in 2010 and 2014. It concluded: “Users tend to aggregate in communities of interest, which causes reinforcement and fosters confirmation bias, segregation and polarization. This comes at the expense of the quality of information and leads to proliferation of biased narratives fomented by unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust, and paranoia.” Anyone and everyone would agree that narrow-minded is a pretty broad term. The phrase generally carries a negative connotation, and here, implies that Facebook has become an ‘echo chamber’ of the human society. People want to receive news that confirms their belief, which means they end up missing half the picture. The report suggests that Facebook users tend to assimilate together into homogenous groups. Both, science news and conspiracy theories, are shared and reinforced in a way that may explain how certain phenomena, such as rejection of global warming evidence become widespread. The findings show that science news spreads quickly, and even if the story sticks around for a long time, people don’t retain a high level of interest. Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, spread slowly, however, people retain high interest over time. Now this is something to think about, considering how ideas can impact voting, policy decisions, health decisions, etc. “This comes at the expense of the quality of the information and leads to
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proliferation of biased narratives fomented by unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust, and paranoia,” they added. Researchers warned that the problem of ‘fake news’ going viral online has become so serious, it is classed as one of the biggest social threats by the World Economic Forum. “Massive digital misinformation is becoming pervasive in online social media to the extent that it has been listed by the World Economic Forum as one of the main threats to our society,” they said. Although the researchers focus on Facebook, the ideas will probably extend to other forms of social media, including Twitter, Reddit and even Instagram.
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the chatbot lawyer t h at o v e r t u r n e d 1 6 0 , 0 0 0 pa r k i n g
t i c k e t s London-born Stanford student Joshua Browder created DoNotPay initially to help people contest parking tickets. Dubbed “the world’s first robot lawyer,” Browder later programmed it to deal with a range of legal issues, such as claiming for delayed flights and trains and payment protection insurance (PPI). Since the free service was launched in London, DoNotPay has taken over 250,000 cases and won over 160,000 over $4 million worth of parking tickets. “I think the people getting parking tickets are the most vulnerable in society,” said Browder. “These people aren’t looking to break the law. I think they’re being exploited as a revenue source by the local government.” The bot was created by the self-taught coder after receiving 30 parking tickets at the age of 18. The entire process for appealing the fines is quite formulaic. You can easily drill down the algorithms into the AI and give the appropriate advice without charging exorbitant fees. At present, Browder is keen on exploring a developer platform that will use legal knowledge to dispense simple legal advice without charging hefty lawyer fees. Since the creation of DoNotPay, the 19-year-old has created bots to help the homeless as well as people with HIV understand their legal rights. He has also created a bot which can help collect compensation on behalf of people whose flights were delayed beyond four hours. “I feel like there’s a gold mine of opportunities because so many services and Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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information could be automated using AI, and bots are a perfect way to do that, and it’s disappointing at the moment that it’s mainly used for commerce transactions by ordering flowers and pizzas,� he said in an interview with VentureBeat. Good to see that chatbots can be used beyond just ordering pizza or spreading fake news on social media.
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Robocars to join formula e racing Soon, Formula E races will be joined by a new type of racing series featuring autonomous electric vehicles. The driverless racing series is being developed by Roborace and is going to be the first of its kind. It will feature futuristic cars designed by Daniel Simon, dubbed ‘DevBot’. Roborace’s ‘DevBot’ made its first public appearance at Donington on August 24th, 2016. It’s a driverless, electric car designed to allow teams to develop their software and experience the hardware that will be used on the Robocar.
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It has a cabin that can be driven by a computer or a human, allowing teams to fully understand how the car thinks and behaves on a racetrack alongside the comprehensive real-time data. It is equipped with the same drivetrain, computation systems, sensors and communication technology as the Robocar, designed by Daniel Simon. A large number of technology, motorsport, automotive, research laboratories and university teams have applied to take part via roborace.com and will be given time to experience the car over the next six months before the Roborace begins in full. The Roboraces will take place during the 2016/17 Formula E season on city tracks, and exhibitions off calendar worldwide with demonstrations from Roborace.
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the magic of AI Generated
artworks
Predictive Art Bot (@predarbot) is an account on Twitter, which is neither predictive, nor a bot trying to amass thousands of followers with media art. In fact, it assimilates the headlines of articles recently published on websites specializing in hactivism, and then it randomly turns them into titles for
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potential artworks. The basic idea behind it is to explore the intersection between art and technology. The project was launched in December 2016, by Maria Roszkowska and Nicolas Maigret. The duo is inviting artists to collaborate with the bot, and interpret some of the most provocative tweets and turn them into real prototypes. A few weeks ago, they even managed to receive grants from well-known media art festivals to finance and exhibit some of their experiments. The art bot will help generate and publish new expressions of hypothetical artistic concepts, based on trends in various fields. Some of which also include transhumanism, activism, occultism, medicine, ecology, economics, etc. The idea of involving AI into creativity might seem a little idiosyncratic. It is seen as one of the biggest trend forecasts of 2017, .i.e. AI as artist. AI will be seen directing movies, composing music, creating video games, etc. Before you know it, a robot will bag a Golden Globes or even the Oscar.
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so fly! Tiffany Beers
M a r t y M c F ly ’ s All we’ve dreamed of is wearing those self-lacing trainers, ever since we saw Marty McFly’s Nike Air MAGs in 1989’s Back to the Future II. For Tiffany Beer’s, it was more than just a dream. It was a day job, when she joined Nike’s Innovation Kitchen in Oregon in 2004, to work under design guru Tinker Hatfield. Beers built the first prototype in 2007, and realized that the technology wasn’t enough for what they were aiming for.
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By 2011, there were enough advancements in lithium-ion batteries, miniature motor arrays, making it finally an achievable feat. Lo and behold Nike’s HyperAdapt 1.0, the world’s first self-lacing shoes. The shoe features a motor system in the sole, powered by a rechargeable battery. A sensor in the heel adjusts the laces based on the wearer’s weight and foot shape. Hold your horses right there, as the laces require releasing manually. Now, it’s just a prototype, meaning it’s not perfect. Does this mean, we’re entering the future of reactive clothing? Let’s hope so! It’s going to take another five years or so before we’re finally able to see the self-tying laces on the market. In the meantime, let’s merry with Nike’s movie-replica non-auto-lacing shoes from 2011.
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Technopolis
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smart Home
Appliances!
in your Pocket
With the evolution of mankind, science and technology also kept moving forward. It had a huge impact on the social as well as the overall development of the human society. But the main purpose of technology was to make life easier for its creators, which is the human race. This is why the concept of creating smart appliances came into Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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existence. It is a tempting thought to control the speed of the fan, turn on the lights, lower the volume of the surround sound system, all this while munching on popcorn on the couch. Not only do these smart appliances make life easier and more convenient, but they also keep the home alert whether the user is at work or on a vacation in another continent of the world. The security systems are efficient enough to keep a check on the safety of the house and ask for help in an emergency without the need for manual effort. A list of smart appliances for one’s home is mentioned here, which cover various aspects of making life easier.
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Samsung SmartThings Hub - $99.99 The purpose of setting up smart appliances in one’s home is to look after the place without the need of manual presence. The Samsung SmartThings Hub is an appropriate appliance to cater to such needs. It has a home automation setup will enable the user to not only monitor the home environment, but also controls and secure it through his smartphone. All one has to do is synchronize the smart appliances present in the home with the SmartThings app and all these devices can be controlled from the next room or even another continent. In case any shortcoming happens in the premises of the home, the owner is notified about it on the app. A plus point of this device is that it is compatible with almost all popular smart appliances installed in one’s home. The user can conveniently add or remove a device synced to this app whenever the need arises. On a hot day, one can simply switch on the smart air conditioner while on the ride back home to be welcomed with a pleasant atmosphere.
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Braava Jet Robotic Mop - $199.97
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The main aim of technology is to make one’s life easier. So imagine a gadget which would contribute in keeping your home clean, this is when the Braava Jet Robotic Mop emerges as a household help. This is a compact robot by iRobot which will efficiently clean the floors. Due to its compact size, it can reach every nook and corner of the home and ensure proper efficient cleaning. One has to simply add water into the Braava Jet and attach a cleaning pad according to the floor type. Once the Robotic Mop is ready to use, place it on the floor and turn it on. This gadget gets to work and absorbs the dirt into the pad to ascertain that the floors of the home sparkle. The main highlight of the Braava Jet Robotic Mop is that it can easily mop 100 square feet within an hour and still not run out of battery. Adding to this, the user can add a virtual wall for the robot at the place which requires cleaning the most.
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Image: Mars Ice House is 3D printed from water-ice on Mars which shields the crew from radiation, solar exposure, and the critical chemical hazards on Mars. Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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Sunflower Home Awareness System - $
Except for simple luxuries of life, it is more important to be protected and safe at all times of the day or night. With the Sunflower Home Awareness System, one can gain information about any activity taking place in the front or back yard of the home, even before it reaches the door. This smart system includes Smart Lights that have been equipped with 360-degree vibration sensors. These sensors can learn the routines taking place on one’s property. Whenever something unusual from the normal routine takes place, the sensors immediately communicate with the Flying Camera. This is a drone which consists of a powerful lens. The Flying Camera will instantly fly to the site where the unusual activity takes place and will provide an instant view to the user on his device. Along with the video clip, the user will receive multiple alerts on the app in accordance with the activity. This security system for one’s home also has a garden light which contains adjustable color themes for a party or a fun mood.
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Looj 330 Gutter Cleaning Robot - $299 It is a normal tendency to get irked or disgusted at the mere mention of cleaning gutters. Plus, as they are filthy, they require to be regularly cleaned and that too thoroughly. iRobot has come up with a device which can spare you this tedious job. The Looj 330 Gutter Cleaning Robot is made of a highvelocity, four-stage auger. These features ensure to provide an improved debris management of the gutter line. The Cleaning Robot will efficiently clear the leaves, dirt, and clogs stuck in the gutter line simply at the press of one button. On pressing that button, the Looj 330 Gutter Cleaning Robot quickly travels through the gutters and extracts information sensing the debris present. This information helps the device in executing the best cleaning method in terms of the debris. Therefore the robot has a separate cleaning method for all kinds of dirt emergencies. With the help of this Cleaning Robot, one does not need to stretch them or wrinkle their nose in disgust while cleaning the gutter. The Looj 330 Gutter Cleaning Robot is a reliable cleaning measure which is safe as well as hassle-free.
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June ‘The Intelligent Oven’ - $1,495 Imagine craving for a pizza in the middle of the afternoon and you can’t even wait for the pizza delivery boy to get it for you. How to get rid of this craving without getting restless? Well, there is an intelligent oven, which can help you with that and helps cook fancy meals in the span of a few minutes. June – the intelligent oven is a smart oven, which one can place on the countertop. This convenient device helps produce meals as good as that in an elite restaurant without splurging money on it. With the help of June, one can roast, broil, toast, bake, and explore many other options in the culinary world. Despite being a compact oven, the interior is spacious where one can place the food. The interior also contains an HD camera and a built-in scale which is useful to identify one’s food type and accordingly suggest how to cook it. The app of this intelligent oven dubbed the intuitive touch screen gives the user cooking updates on a constant basis and also displays a live video of the food cooking. Due to the presence of carbon fiber elements, the food is cooked within seconds to curb that craving before you get restless.
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Bellini Intelli Kitchen Master - $329 Men as well as women are inclined towards mastering the art of cooking nowadays as food is the universal source of happiness. But preparing a fancy meal requires slogging for hours in the kitchen on a weekend. Instead, why not spend this time with your loved ones? The Bellini Intelli Kitchen Master by Cedarlane makes the cooking experience more convenient one with the best quality of results. This device is capable of stirring your food while you are helping your kids with their homework or relaxing on the couch. The Kitchen Master requires no supervision and delicately cooks the food. This smart chef is efficient enough to blend, stir, steam,
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035 weigh, mix, heat, cook, grind, emulsify, chop, knead, to keep it short, almost everything which a human does while cooking. The Kitchen Master is full of power due to which it can quickly cook even the vegetables, which take hours for preparation and can crush ice with absolute ease. After relishing a fancy meal prepared by the Kitchen Master, you don’t need to dread washing dishes. Just pour a little soap with water in the device and it will clean itself while you are enjoying the meal.
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Aura Connected Alarm Clock - $299.95 Due to the increasingly hectic lifestyles these days, a peaceful sleep at night has become a prized possession. Deep sleep is important for a healthy life as well as a productive day ahead. At the same time, it is important to wake up punctually the next day in order to maintain the everyday schedule. The Aura Connected Alarm Clock is an alarm clock accompanied with a stylish lamp. The sole purpose of this smart alarm clock is to ensure that the user falls asleep faster and wakes up feeling absolutely refreshed. It comes with a Health Mate App with the help of which the user can customize his wakeup programs according to his preferences. The app also tracks the environmental factors which impact the sleep quality in a strong manner. The wakeup alarm will not be a boring, monotonous sound anymore. The user can sync Spotify or his favorite playlist with the Health Mate app to select the alarm tone. Also, it may browse through more than 20,000 web radio stations.
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Nebia Shower - $400
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Who would have thought that the development of technology would change the way an individual bathes. Well, that’s right, the Nebia Shower is a showerhead which will enhance one’s shower experience. Apart from the fancy experience and iconic design, it also saves up to 70% of water. Taking a shower is no big deal as it’s a day-to-day activity, but with Nebia’s design and engineering, a shower becomes a significantly superior experience. Nebia is basically a completely self-installed shower system which comes with a portable wand and an adjustable bracket. The smart showerhead atomizes a normal water drop into millions of tiny droplets which can cover 10 times more surface area than a regular shower. Due to this technology, more water comes in contact with one’s body instead of being wasted and flown away into the sewage. Nebia is a great shower solution which not only upgrades the shower experience but also pays for itself by saving 70% water in comparison to a typical household showerhead.
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SPOTTING
The Future is Green! Nothing is faster than Green Travel We have got electric cars, smaller cars, and cars with a better gas mileage. What we haven’t seen yet is some kind of technological evolution with transportation. While, a lot of ‘technological’ fixes have been given little to some amount of attention, not all of them have gained repute for ushering in green revolution. Every day, engineers are taking a different route, designing more environmentally sustainable modes of transportation that may overturn long-held notions greener, efficient traveling. This year, we have some of the most radical modes of transportation, some of which may even take decades for their full implementation. Of course, they aren’t all flying saucers, but rather much exciting concepts that will encourage the transportation industry to reduce emissions we produce today.
THE HYPERLOOP The future of green travel lies in today’s cutting-edge and futuristic innovation, or perhaps, the Hyperloop. An idea conceptualized by Elon Musk, the man behind PayPal, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX, has generated a lot of excitement and also skepticism. Hyperloop is an elevated tube through which capsules or pods travel. Three years ago, Musk released the Alpha design for the Hyperloop, extending from Los Angeles to San Francisco with the capacity to transport passengers between the two cities in only 35 minutes, at an average speed of over 600 miles per hour. Engineers have long tried to overcome the barriers to high-speed Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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transportation, which are: air resistance and friction. Many efforts in the past, have been largely unsuccessful. While many have become successful by using magnetically levitating trains. Musk’s passenger capsules, however, are slightly different. Each of these pods will travel through the steel tube, floating in one millimeter of air that is forced through the openings on the bottom of the capsule. The steel tube will be partial vacuum, which will ultimately help in overcoming air resistance. The steel tube will be equipped with linear induction motors, dictating the acceleration and deceleration of each pod. The pods will be equipped with an inlet fan and air compressor on the front. The Hyperloop will be powered by solar panels and will be completely emissions-free.
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SPOTTING
UberPOOL Car Let’s be honest, carpooling isn’t just about squeezing more people into the backseat. UberPOOL, the ride-hailing service’s new feature costs less than other ride options available on the app. With UberPOOL, you get asked where you’re going, and then the app pairs you up with one or two other people to ride to the same place together. The rates on this particular ride-sharing feature are 20% to 50% cheaper, and is a cleaner, greener and more efficient way to travel. Someday, it might even replace public transportation altogether. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said in a TED Talk that Pool “turns every car into a shared car.” The ride-sharing feature helps cut down on traffic, CO2 emissions, and reshape cities altogether before the coming self-driving car revolution.
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SPOTTING
LOCKHEED SUPERSONIC PLACE In the 1950s and ‘60s, Americans filed close to 40,000 claims against the Air Force, whose supersonic jets had become a daily nightmare. In 1973, the FAA banned overland supersonic commercial flights due to sonic booms, which to this day, hasn’t been lifted. The laws of atmospheric physics dictate that no matter how a supersonic vehicle is shaped or propelled it will generate a sonic boom when it exceeds the speed of sound. Thanks to NASA and a team led by Lockheed Martin, low-sonic-boom X-plane might soon become a breakthrough defying this laws. The team is working on the goal of a viable low-sonic-boom commercial travel jet. Michael Buonanno, chief engineer for NASA’s Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) X-plane program, said the foundation was laid from 2010 to 2013 with the N+2 Supersonic Validations Program. “We worked with NASA to develop the necessary design tools and experimental techniques to accurately shape the vehicle so that its sonic-boom signature will be perceived as a sonic heartbeat sound rather than the typical loud double-bang that today’s supersonic aircraft produce,” Buonanno said. “We have got to the point where we think a flight demonstrator is the right next step,” says Peter Coen, manager of NASA’s High Speed Project with the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate’s Fundamental Aeronautics Program. “On the whole, our work has showed there is a path forward to an environmentally acceptable supersonic aircraft, and it has generated such a lot
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045 of excitement within NASA that we are ready to take the next step. What does that step look like? We think a low-boom flight demonstrator is the way to go forward. It is the right thing for U.S. aerospace leadership and for developing the market for supersonic flight.” The N+2 Supersonic holds the secret to quiet supersonic commercial travel. It’s a part of NASA’s 10-year New Aviation Horizons initiations which aims to reduce fuel use, emissions and noise through breakthroughs in aircraft design that departs from the conventional tube-and-wing aircraft shape.
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SPOTTING
AIRLANDER 10 The 92m-long, 43.5 m wide part plane, part helicopter, part airship is quite a spectacle. Dubbed the world’s largest aircraft, it can easily dwarf heavyweights such as the Airbus A380 “superjumbo.” It is tad cheaper, at a catalogue price of $31 million compared with $470 million for an A380. It can also carry 10-tonne payload, and is comparable with military transport helicopters such as the Boeing CH-47 Chinook, the US Air Force’s pride. Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), the company behind the Airlander’s development, has been paid over $100 million to build the airship, minus the top-secret military hardware. It is said that the US Army has invested over $300 million in to the project, in order to create an unmanned airship capable of remaining airborne above conflict zones for 21 days at a time. The Airlander can stay float over land for weeks at a time, monitoring insurgent activity and surveilling to keep ground troops safe. It can fly out of reach of all, so militants don’t pose problems. It uses helium, rather an hydrogen used by the R101 and the Hindenburg. The hull is made from three layers of fabric, including Vectran, a material five times stronger than steel. It can fly in high winds of up to 80 knots, which is the highest level on the Beaufort wind scale, and has top speed of 100mph.
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The Age of Augmented Reality There are games that go viral overnight, causing people to confine in their homes for days to play. And there is last summer’s hit Pokémon Go, made by San Francisco-based Niantic, Inc., which will go down in the history as the unprecedented video game phenomenon that got people moving. In the case of Pokémon Go, it’s also the first mobile game that brought augmented reality to the general marketplace. It could connect us deeply with our surroundings, narrowing the gap between digital and the physical, instead of distracting us from real world. But, we don’t get much out of AR yet, and we’re far more to go from Pokémon Go. We’ve yet to explore the world of mixed reality at great expense, discomfort and peril. Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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IMAGE: Mark at F8 2016 Technowize Magazine | February 2017
051 At some point in the future, there will be augmented reality glasses, which will overlay objects seamlessly into our environment. But, those don’t exist yet, and it seems as if we’ve failed to maintain the high levels of enthusiasm on AR. Fourteen months ago, Mark Zuckerberg spelled out a promise for Facebook AR. “AR gives you the ability to see the world, but also overlay digital objects on top. Today, if I want to show my friends a photo, I pull out my phone and have a small version of the photo. In the future, you’ll be able to snap your fingers and pull out a photo and make it as big as you want and with your AR glasses, you’ll be able to show it to people and they will be able to see it,” said Zuckerberg.
So, how would a spatial Facebook look like? We’ve gone through the AT route before. We can only hope that with AR devices, we’re an active participant, unlike Google Glass, which rather made us a passive observer of the world around us. Take for example, ‘On This Day’ memories on the social network site. Facebook AR might let you relive memories in its own idiosyncratic way. You look at the porch and see where you took that family picture of your grandparents. Right below it are the reactions and comments. Think of all the possibilities! AR social media would also focus on the future of social interaction in a virtual world. You could be playing ping pong with your cousin in Australia whom you’ve only met once. You could throw virtual eggs at your neighbor for throwing the loud roof top party. I like to think that we haven’t even scratched the surface. But, let’s not get hung up, after all, this timeline is crucial. It highlights the trajectory of value that AR can offer in various contexts.
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Shazam for AR! For many years, patrons were asked to turn off their mobile when they entered a museum. Now, visitors are encouraged to use them with technology like augmented reality, touch-screen tables and customized audio tours. The goal is to enhance the visitor’s experience while keeping the artwork front and center. Viewers at exhibitions like Dalí’s 1935 painting “Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet’s ‘Angelus,’” can experience the AR trip. The first real application was seen in January 2017, when German automaker BMW launched augmented reality dealerships where customers will be able to view hybrid and electric BMWi cars. Smartphones equipped with Google’s Tango technology can produce a life-size 3D image of the car on the environment visible through the camera. Customers can open car doors, activate lights, or change the interior and exterior color scheme at the touch of a button. It’s one of
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IMAGE: Revolutionary ‘Get the look’ technology‘Get the look’ technology
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the first-real applications that interaction with a digital model in real time. Although, one of the most famous AR application was from National Geographic in 2011. Through the AR setup (a digital screen and high-powered camera in front of an AR marker), shoppers could see themselves interact with rare or extinct animal species. In 2013, Coca-Cola Co. in collaboration with WWF created an immersive 3D augmented reality experience to launch their Arctic Home campaign in London. It was aimed to raise awareness of how the shrinking sea ice affected by climate change is threatening the future of the polar bear. In 2011, Disney showed cartoon characters on a large screen in Times Square interacting with people on the street. Skoda ran a campaign in 2015, placing an AR mirror in London’s Victoria station, so commuters could customize a car and see themselves driving it on a large screen. As seen, such applications of AR technology are used to engage customers at events or in public spaces. This type of technology continues to advance. Not surprisingly, the fashion-industry has taken the experience of looks creation to a whole new level. London-based Holition and agency Coty recently launched an AR app for the make-up company Rimmel based on its Get The Look technology. It allows a consumer to scan the make-up of another person or an image and then immediately try that same look on his or her face. Rimmel follows the footsteps of numerous other beauty brands like L’Oreal, Cover Girl and Sally Hansel, launching AR try-on tools. AR can be incredibly valuable for exploring historical, cultural, and geographic aspects of an environment. Apps developed, particularly touting the use of AR, have become more widely Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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used in the recent years. For example, Google Translate, an app instantly translates a sign or any other text, into a language you can read and appears live on the screen in the form of augmented reality. Google Sky Map, can help you identify stars and planets if you just point your camera view toward the sky. The Museum of London has an app which shows how the particular London Street you’re standing in used to look in the past – all you’ve got to do is point your phone camera at it for the augmented vision to appear on your phone screen. Meanwhile, attendees at the Sundance Film Festival will use AR to hang out with “Mad Men” star Jon Hamm, or assemble a human brains, as the makers of the technology seek to engage filmmakers. Hamm will appear on the mobile screens on attendees as if he is in that location, and interact using prerecorded phrases. Compared to other industries, advertising has been particularly aggressive about pursuing AR for storytelling and interactive advertising. In 2013, British Airways placed a humungous AR billboard in Piccadilly Circus. As a British Airways flight flew over the board, a BA ad began depicting a child looking up and pointing to the actual plane in the sky as it flew past. The ad was a massive success with the official video garnering over 1.5 million views on YouTube. Despite the fuzzy start, insiders are feigning a unique sense of optimism. At the 2016 Gartner Hyper Cycle, industry leaders expect virtual and augmented reality to emerge from the “trough of disillusionment” and ascend the “slope of enlightenment” to achieve widespread adoption within five to 10 years. On the other hand, machine-learning, self-driving cars, and smart robots will become the “peak of inflated expectations.” According to the consultancy Digi-Capital, last year investors contributing nearly seven hundred million dollars into V.R. companies, more than double the amount that was invested in 2014. The figure was more than a billion dollars in 2016 for V.R. and augmented reality, and is expected to grow to a hundred and twenty billion Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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dollars by 2020. Content developers, tech investors, media executives and entrepreneurs are focused on exploring the amount of VR content available to consumers while still delivering a high-quality experience that will convert first-time users into devoted fans. This means, augmented Reality will incrementally improve the military, increase real-estate sales, improve education, transform journalism and reinvent fine dining. There have also been claims that it will revive the economy, with new collaboration and visualization tools to enhance workplace productivity. Apple CEO Tim Cook, has hinted at the company’s interest in AR technology. “I do think that a significant part of the population, of developed countries, and eventually all countries, will have AR experiences everyday,” said Cook. “It will be almost like eating three meals a day, because it will become that much a part of you.” Microsoft is now partnering with the likes of HP, Dell, Lenovo and Acer, which will later release AR headsets based on the HoloLens technology. With Microsoft HoloLens inspired MixedReality Headsets users will be able to usher in the next evolution for AR technology. For example, a football commentator offers an assessment of the starting 11 in a football match, as digital versions of the players appear in front of them on the desk. For Microsoft, it’s a great way to enable us to “interact with them in the same way we interact with physical objects.” Each of these examples show how AR has evolved to complement and transform the way we experience products and their surroundings. In short-term, the results of each of these products are often poor. Distinctly, with the advent of wearables and the Internet of Things, consumers expect highly customized solutions and instant access to detailed personal data. Of course, the potential for gains exist because AR is reinforcing consumers’ appetite for creative visualizations of content.
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The Hardware Club Two years ago, after hearing a hardware startup complain about how painful it is to scale in hardware, Barbara Belvisi decided to act on it. Building a hardware startup is hard. Hardware entrepreneurs have to do some upfront legwork: 1.) Build a sustainable go-to-market strategy; 2.) Manage cash-flow, 3.) Identify the right contract manufacturers, and 4.) Build a costs improvements strategy. Get any one of this steps wrong and your startup is doomed, and that’s because the world of hardware does not allow iteration. Belvisi found that the best way to start was to bring hardware entrepreneurs together around dinner, so they could exchange their experiences. Every ecosystem she came across reinforced the initial vision: a community; a place for hardware entrepreneurs to gather, share
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best practices, and build common knowledge. Thus, the Hardware Club was born! The pair of venture capitalists, Barbara Belvisi and Alexis Houssou first met while attending business school in Lyon, France ten years ago. Belvisi is a self-described geek and has been a fan of robots and disruptive hardware. Houssou has
a strong interest in finance and entrepreneurship. She worked in venture capital for several years, while Houssou cofounded a digital advertising company before going to work as a financial advisor at one of France’s largest banks, BNP Paribus. In 2012, the duo formed Elephants & Ventures, which backed hardware and software companies. It was here
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065 that they felt that the traditional model didn’t really fit the new wave of emergence in hardware. Their search for a solution began with a series of informal dinners with hardware entrepreneurs around the world, where they discussed the issue faced and solutions they had found. The meetings continued to draw more members, until the duo formally announced the creation of the Hardware Club in January 2015. The first Hardware Club dinner was attended by the five most promising hardware startups in France & Europe: Aëdle, ISKN, Lima, Prynt, and Smokio. The collaboration surpassed any expectations Belvisi had at first. Pointers on retail and distribution strategy were exchanged, recommendations on partners in manufacturing and distribution, and the benefits of the newly formed hardware community. Since then, Belvisi has organized The Hardware Club meets in 7 different cities, including Berlin, Las Vegas, London and Shenzhen, and over 100 hardware entrepreneurs have joined. The hardware startups have collectively raised more than $12 million on crowdfunding platforms like IndieGoGo and Kickstarter and managed to secure over $37 million in VC funding. “We looked at what was going on with hardware and the Internet of Things,” said Belvisi in an interview with VentureBeat. “When we dug a
little bit more and looked at hardware startups, we thought this revolution was not going to happen because everyone was reinventing the wheel and not cooperating. This is not going to happen if this ecosystem remains closed and everyone is fighting against each other.” The hardware landscape has dramatically changed in the past decade. It’s brimming with crowdfunding platforms, new connectivity systems, and lower costs. Venture capitalists who would run from hardware are now pouring more funds into hardware startups. The hardware revolution is more visible in early stage startups. Newcomers are no longer afraid to enter the startup ecosystem, thanks to prototyping methods and the power of crowdfunding. The emergence of hardware accelerators, meetups, and labs have made things much simpler for early stage startups. Over the course of the last two years, Paris-based Hardware Club has announced more programs to become a vital catalyst for the hardware revolution. Its long-term strategy is to create a community with the most promising hardware startups. It cherry picks the best startups and invests directly in the ones at the seed or Series A level at a larger scale. SCHOOL is designed as an education program made of online courses and free online presentations. It
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launched the first online course, called #HackTheCrowd, dedicated to supporting entrepreneurs in the launch of their crowdfunding campaigns. The online course is leveraging the community, featuring feedback from over 25 crowdfunding graduates and experts like IndieGoGo, Omage, Lima, Dragon Innovation, Narrative, and many others. A few months ago, the Hardware Club opened a membership-based program called SCALE, which leverages on the community to support hand-picked startups through resources and smart capital. Today, The Hardware Club as over 90 startups from 20 different countries, where you can touch base with all the founders directly to ask for feedback, instructions and more. It has also formed partnerships with manufacturers, distributors and service providers. Next, it has signed on over 120 corporate partners, including manufacturing bigwigs like Foxconn and distributors like Target and Amazon. Finally, it organizes regular Hardware Club events around the world, so founders can share their experiences and grow their network. The Hardware Club screens every
single application it receives as it doesn’t accept very early stage hardware startups. A lot of times, these startups have already done a successful Kickstarter or IndieGoGo campaign, and are about to go into mass production and have yet to raise a VC round. Of course, there have been exceptions in the past, and a lot of companies have been accepted in the past have grown by leaps and bounds. Take a look at some of the club members, Click&Grow, H y p e r l o o p Tr a n s p o r t a t i o n Technologies, Vapio, Misfit, Narrative, Prynt, ISKN, Thync, and Lima. The Hardware Club enjoys a unique position in the hardware community. It can recommend a manufacturer over another, or it can blacklist a distributor if there are some issues. It has also raised an undisclosed amount of money from Bruno Maisonnier, Marie Ekeland, Pascal Cagni, Ruota Matsuzaki, and Stephane Distinguin. It has also added new partners in the past few months, former QualcommAtheros senior engineer Jerry Yang and former Apple employee Caroline Lair. Existing and future Hardware Club members enjoy access to the same resources. Although, some startups also receive funding. The
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idea was that Hardware Club would design it, create the experience, and train the Harrods’ employee who would work in the space. It has over 25 startups to sell their products. The space allowed customers to try the products and receive detailed information from trained employees. Harrods, on the other end, wants to work with more startups, although it found it challenging to connect and vet all the new gadgets.
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Augmented Reality world, one sector
The Potential of VR
Estimated market size of VR/AR softw Enterprise and public sector $16.1b
Healthcare
$5.1b
$4.7b
Engineering Real estate Retail Military Education
To
$3
$2.6b $1.6b $1.4b $0.7b
(Source: Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research) Technowize Magazine | February 2017
$
069
will transform the sector at a time
R & AR Applications
ware for different use cases in 2025*
$11.6b
Consumer
$18.9b
otal
35b
$3.2b
$4.1b
Videogames Live events Video entertainment
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The Past, The Present, and t THE
PAST In 2008, the first AR apps came to smartphones.
In 2008, only 22% of new handset sales were smartphones. Technowize Magazine | February 2017
TH
PRES
Today, AR is a dollar industry, g than a billi in global
A vast majority of own a smartphone, a
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the Future of Augmented Reality
HE
SENT
a multi-million generating more ion dollars revenue.
fAmericans - 58% and 42% own tablets.
THE
FUTURE AR is predicted to generate $5.2 billion in revenue in 2017.
Market research suggests more than 3 billion AR apps will be downloaded on smartphone and tablets in 2017. The Weareable Tech, which is an ideal market for AR, is estimated to surpass $8.50 billion in 2018. The likelihood of a purchase after a consumer sees the product in AR will increase by 135%. Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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Controversial Augme
Bringing porn off screen Point your phone on your lap and he or she will appear sitting right there
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ented Reality Startups
Bringing the dead back to life
Project 3D models of deceased people onto the real world and animate them according to their known behavior patterns Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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What's Architecture
Medicin Computer-generated objects are superimposed into real-time, real-life digital models of structures, that's everything from cables and PCP pipe to the actual interior design elements.
Doctors and surgeons ca to operating. Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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s Next? Automobile
ne Volkswagen is using Augmented Reality to visualize and digitally construct car bodies, structure and engine layouts. Engineers can compare mockups to see if their design is viable.
an build 3D brain scans prior
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Engineering the Human Body The use of technology is majorly focused on making life easier for the human race. Scientists are coming up with various innovations which promote a smoother lifestyle. But technology serves as a boon in the medical field as by doing so, it won’t just make life easier for an individual but will also help improve the human mortality rate. Technology plays a crucial role in the sector of healthcare, as it might be responsible for not only improving lives but also saving them. The field of medical technology is expanding more each day but it extremely essential for sustaining human health. It includes a number of varied areas, all of which are contributing in a significant manner to improve the health of the human race in almost all parts of the world. Right from pharmaceuticals to development of different medical equipments, small as well as major innovations are improving the health of people. These innovations help in diagnosis of any given disease but also find an alternative treatment in case the usual treatment fails to work. Therefore in the field of healthcare, the dependence on medical technology might only increase with development of brilliant innovations.
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3D Printing The concept of three-dimensional became amusing because of its visual value. But the use of three dimensions is much more than sheer entertainment purposes. Medicine is making the most of this technology by using it to produce medical equipment. The three-dimensional printing method is a way of manufacture where the objects are created by depositing or fusing materials. The materials like metal, plastic, powders, ceramics, liquids, as well as living cells are put together in layers in order to produce a 3D object. The process of manufacture is also known as rapid prototyping (RP), solid free-form technology (SFF), or additive manufacturing (AM). Certain 3D printers are quite close to the usual inkjet printers, only the end result differs. 3D printing includes around two dozen different processes. These processes vary on the basis of speeds, resolutions, materials, and printer technologies. The advanced technology is able to print in almost any shape imagined by a human through a computer-aided design (CAD) file. This process of printing is considered to be useful in producing surgical or dental fixtures. But it has the ability to do much more. A company called Organovo uses the technique of 3D printing to fabricate human living tissue. Experts believe that the significance of 3D printing in medicine will only rise in the future. The major benefits of this process are that a person attains a customized product in terms of his bodily requirements, which is not accurately possible in regular manufacturing. It is also extremely cost effective in comparison to other medical methods. In 2011, Kaiba Gionfriddo was born prematurely and within 8 months of his birth, the lung developments were a matter of concern. After six weeks of the diagnosis of this problem, Kaiba was unable to breathe and turned blue. This was a result of tracheobronchomalacia, which meant that the windpipe collapsed due to its weakness. He was given a bioresorable device produced through 3D printing which immediately helped him breathe.
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Brain-computer Interface The Brain-computer Interface (BCI) is a computer based system used in the field of medicine in order to correctly acquire brain signals so that the experts can analyze as well as translate them in the form of commands to perform a given action. Therefore BCI doesn’t analyze on the basis of the normal output pathways of the brain which are peripheral nerves and muscles. It is a system which measures and uses the signals that are produced by the central nervous system. There is a common misconception among laymen that BCI is capable of reading minds. The device will not extract information in an unwilling manner from the user. On the other hand, the BCI enables users to perform desired actions by using brain signals instead of their muscles. Hence the BCI and user tend to work in synchronization. After receiving training, the user is able to generate brain signals which encode intention. The BCI later decodes these signals and translates into commands for an output device to fulfill the user’s intention. In a research study led by Charles Lieber, a professor of Chemistry, the group presented a demonstration in which syringe-injectable mesh electronics could record neural activity in a stable manner among mice for the span of more than eight months. Lieber stated that if humans develop the ability to follow a set of individual neurons in a circuit chronically, it could open up an array of options. Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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Melanoma Biopsy In case an individual notices a strange new mole at any part of his skin, he should immediately become aware about it. In case the individual notices any further changes in the mole, he must consult a doctor. This is because this might not be an ordinary mole; it can be one of the early symptoms of melanoma, which is a type of skin cancer. In case such a situation takes place, currently the doctors recommend excisional biopsies as the best procedure as it helps in getting rid of the entire lesion. Generally an excisional biopsy is a painless process. The patient is given local anesthesia, after which the surgeon removes the suspicious spot along with a small margin of skin around it. A few stitches are taken in order to close the wound. The patient can conveniently resume his daily activities within a few days itself. In a situation when the lesion is situated in a small or sensitive area, then a deep shave biopsy is performed. For this, the spot is shaved off with the help of a razor blade. When a lesion is extremely minute in size, a punch biopsy is conducted in which the lesion is punched out with a cutter-like instrument. The most preferable biopsy is the excisional biopsy as it leaves no traces of the infection which reduces the chances of further infection. Caitlyn Scaggs was diagnosed with melanoma at the age of 25 while she was pregnant. Even though it was in the first stage, the mole wasn’t just on the top layer of the skin but was 0.75mm deep. Six days within this diagnosis, she had a wide excision surgery in which the hospital staff also took care of the fact that her newborn baby must not be harmed as the mole was on the patient’s lower back. Currently, she is experiencing healthy skin and has not has any problem ever since the surgery. Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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Human Cyborg Originally, the concept of human cyborgs came up as a part of science fiction. But who knew that a character of fantasy would come true due to the progress of technology. One can say that a cyborg is the enhancement of certain body parts of an individual with the help of technology. Till a few years ago, in case an organ of a human stopped working, he had the option of an organ transplant from another human. The transplant was a very restrictive process as it was applicable only for certain parts of the body. But a human cyborg is one who has a machine as a body part which is customized as per his needs. Usually these machines are designed in such a manner that they are directly connected to the brain. For example, a prosthetic limb works like a
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machine according to certain programs installed in it. But in the case of a human cyborg, this mechanical limb is in sync to the brain nerves hence it works like a normal limb. Nigel Ackland had lost his arm during an accident which took place at work. In order to replace the lost arm, Ackland got an upgrade with the help of technology. He has got an advanced robotic prosthetic arm installed. He controls the robotic arm with the help of the muscular movements in the rest of his forearm. The range of his movements is almost as good as a normal arm. He is capable of independently moving all his fingers for better grip.
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THE NERDIST
How Do Hackers Remain Anonymous?
Hackers use TOR, VPN’s and whatever else is out there, but doesn’t the first connection they go through is their ISP? It’s really difficult to get ones ISP. Here’s an example: Imagine you’re in London, and the only mode of transportation are black cabs. Everyone has to use one cab for everything from A to Z. Now, if you want to go from A to B using the same black cab (your ISP), the same driver, it is relatively easy to track and follow. But if you change cabs multiple times going from A to B, one will have to ask multiple cab drivers, taxi services for any details. Let’s say, you took multiple cabs to the border of the next city where privacy laws are much different than the laws of the previous city. May be, the next city doesn’t collect data on the user’s destination or share any of that information. Apply this logic and you know how easy it is for one to hide their ISP.
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THE NERDIST
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BOT OR NOT? Why can’t bots check ‘I am not a robot’ checkboxes? Clicking the ‘I am not a robot’ is an inconsequential part of what those CAPTCHAS are actually looking for. The CAPTCHAS are usually looking for things like: Did the user instantly move their mouse to the exact co-ordinates of the CAPTCHA box, or did he scroll through the entire page? Is the user remotely executing javascript to trigger a scroll to the box? How long after the page load did the user find the CAPTCHA box? Now, here comes the tricky part: taking too long to find the box is a red flag. But so is finding it too quickly. Generally, to get around the reCAPTCHA, one needs to find out 4 – 5 different areas to click in addition to the first click. Most users use CAPTCHA services, which are real people solving them and returning the answer for you. It usually doesn’t take a human more than 5 minutes to answer a few CAPTCHA questions. If you take too long to answer, they’ll make you do another image check challenge. Usually, it’s very difficult to make a bot move the mouse, scroll and react to a page load like humans do. Even if it managers to fool reCAPTCHA, it’ll be asked to do a few more image check challenges, before it’s blocked from the website completely. Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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THE NERDIST
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Why are fiberoptic connections faster? Don’t electrical signals move at the speed of light?
Individuals signals inside both, fiber and electrical cables travel at the same speeds. But, you can send more signals down a fiber cable as the same time as you can through an electrical able. If an electrical cable is a 3-lane highway, then a fiber cable is like a 100 lane highway. Even though your cars will travel at speeds of 65mph, you’ll be able to send more cars on the fiber cable because it’s a 100 lane highway. Read, Cars = bandwidth.
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LIVE is the BUZZ Let Your LiveStreaming Do The Talking! One of the world’s first live-streamers, Jennifer Ringley, then 19, drew close to a million views, as she shared every uncensored detail of her college dorm life. Believe it or not, Ringley was internet-famous even before the Kardashian clan learned to break the internet. At its peak, her site, JenniCam got seven million hits a day. She appeared in major newspapers, and was profiled on the Late Show with David Letterman. This was 20 years ago, and although we still treat livestreaming as a distraction, as an entertainment, it’s the first time in history that it has reached a transitional peak-point. Today, thanks to dozens of top live video streaming apps, the layman can share their lives with the world and earn. The type of videos live broadcast are edgy, cute, and sometimes even adorable.
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Between watching her first election, saying her first word and celebrating her recent birthday, Baby Maxima Chan Zuckerberg has been hitting milestones like it’s nobody’s business. Not so long ago, superdaddy Mark Zuckerberg documented his one-year-old daughter’s first steps in 360 video. “When I was a baby and took my first steps, my mom wrote the date in a baby book. When my sister’s children took their first steps, she recorded it with photos and videos. When Max started walking, I wanted to capture the whole scene with a 360 video so our friends and family can feel like they’re right there with us,” the Facebook founder noted in his caption on the 360 video, which he shared to Facebook. On Periscope, Facebook Live, Twitch and a horde of apps, amateur live video feeds has become the order of the day. This apps play a significant role in shaping the news as well as the culture, and are forcing us to reexamine how we share things with the world. For example, a lot of refugees that are coming through Europe, are using live video to document their voyage. People in places like Mexico, Brazil, and all across Latin America are using video to document police brutality. Similarly, in recent months, unprecedented live feed highlighting the power of citizen journalists has become a part of mainstream media. While the concept of citizen journalism has been around for centuries, the cornucopia of live streaming apps and faster mobile broadband has made it easier for people to bring to light events and viewpoints. The arrival of the most popular live-streaming video app, Meerkat in February, drew in close to 700,000 downloads in the first month. Meerkat’s market ended when Twitter acquired Periscope a few months later, with the latter collecting over a million sign-ups in the
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first week. Facebook’s live streaming app, has close to 1.5 billion people on the stream. You add China, which is on a whole another level, and you have an audience of close to 325 million with their eyes set on live steaming. A majority of live-streamers aren’t Twister-style hurricane chasers, or comedians, or war correspondents. They’re mostly bored teenagers confined in their bedroom or getting stoned in the school washroom. The real game changer nowadays is China’s billiondollar personal live-streaming industry. Equipped with smartphones and selfie sticks, youngsters are chasing in on the live-streaming craze by broadcasting their mundane lives- from eating an entire pizza in two minutes, playing video games, eating dinner or putting on makeup. Similar to Facebook Live’s hearts and comments, one can receive a flurry of appreciation in the form of pop-texts or even virtual gifts. If viewers like what they see, they can tip the live-streamers with virtual presents they buy from the apps. The streamers can trade the token value of the presents for cash. It’s easy money for the top live-streamers who easily attract over 100,000 viewers, drawing close to $10,000 Yuan ($1400) by cashing out on the virtual gifts sent by their fans. According to China Internet Network Information Center, the number of live-streaming users hit 325 million by June 2016, that’s nearly half of China’s total internet population. Some of its live-streaming apps like Ingkee and Douyu, tap into a mobile-video market filled with teenagers hungry for edge content reflecting on today’s
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youth’s tastes and lifestyle. Like many Chinese live-streaming apps, Live.me, a product of Beijing-based Cheetah mobile, helps people monetize their quirks with live-broadcasting. A majority of Live.me users, close to 80 percent, come from the United States, followed by 7 percent from the United Kingdom, and then smaller markers like Canada and Australia. It ranks within the top five social apps in the Apple App Store and is one of the highest grossing social apps on Google Play. Live-streaming apps has also taken the world of education by storm. Since Periscope’s debut in 2015, teachers and educators are trying to figure out how to use it for education. Such apps live-chat functionality allows live-streamers to go beyond the static onlinecourse videos to engage with curious audience. A high number of institutions and companies have adopted to live-streaming apps, to live-stream lectures and events. Some of the unique functionalities allow college students to gain first-hand college experience. It’s also a great way for international students to learn more about their prospective institutions, so they get grips with the culture and can make a decision. Universities, including MIT, have begun live-streaming campus tours to prospective undergraduates. This trend is particularly successful in large countries like the U.S., and especially among international students. A lot of these colleges are also broadcasting graduation, so family members living too far away to attend can also be a part of it. Live-streaming has to a point where users cannot go onto social media without reading about tragic violence. Sure, it’s playing a pivotal role in how we consume content, but it has also become a platform through which we’re normalizing violence. There’s a growing need to add a warning underneath the videos.
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DeveloperWeek
11-16 Feb, 2017
Being held in San Francisco, the DeveloperWeek 2017 is undoubtedly the world’s largest developer expo and conference series. It consists of more than 50 events which go on for an entire week. The highlight of this weeklong conference is the DeveloperWeek 2017 Conference & Expo which has over 8,000 attendees. The other such significant conferences are the DeveloperWeekHackathon with 1,000 attendees, Official Hiring Mixer which will have over 1,000 hirable developers and more than 50 hiring companies. Apart from this, it will host a dozen of other such events. This week-long conference covers all kinds of new developer technologies. One can gain immense knowledge through intro lessons or even advanced tricks on various technologies. Venue: San Francisco, California, USA
Code Media
13-14 Feb, 2017
Code Media is a great event to attend for someone who is associated with the technological field in some way or the other. Right from a fresher working for a technical company or the head of a tech startup who is looking for ways to get his media delivered, this event gives an insight to everyone and also inspires people who need a little push. This event helps the attendee to immerse himself in the topics dominating the media currently. It is a two-day event which has spontaneously candid onstage interviews through which one can hear first-hand accounts of entrepreneurs and important executives regarding how they handle key challenges. It’ll be held at Dana Point. Venue: Laguna Niguel, CA
RSA Conference
13-17 Feb, 2017
The main agenda of the RSA Conference is to help the attendee connect with people which empower an individual to stay vary of cyber threats. This is done through various events which will be held in San Francisco this year. Other people who cannot make it here but are interested in it can become a part of it through this event’s digital outreach. Almost every individual living on this earth is a part of the digital era, due to which such information is considered an extremely valuable commodity. Hence it is necessary to safeguard this commodity efficiently. RSA Conference is a great source through which people can know about the latest trends, get answers for various queries, and learn the latest trends. Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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Venue: Moscone Center, San Francisco, California USA
Gigaom AI Now
15-16 Feb, 2017
With the massive growth of the artificial intelligence on a rapid pace, it can be a mind-boggling experience to understand the wide possibilities and competing platforms of AI. Not only in the field of technology, but the use of AI will prove to be beneficial in taking forward one’s business. The various workshops to be conducted at the Giagaom AI Now in San Francisco will give such executives an opportunity using which they can build real-world AI solutions. This is possible by using different types of technologies from Microsoft, Google, Amazon Echo, IBM Watson, and other such open source options. Venue: Golden Gate Club, San Francisco, California, USA
20-24 Feb, 2017
IBM Connect
IBM Connect, the leading workplace technology conference, is moving to San Francisco, the center of the tech world. Through this event, one can gain insight on how to create a future he has visualized. It gives an idea about how can someone cash upon the disruptive effects of cloud, cognitive, and analytics. One can learn how to collaborate technologies in a number of ways which will result in making work easier for humans. The IBM Connect will have over 200 sessions including labs and numerous learning as well as networking opportunities. Venue: Moscone West, San Francisco, California, USA
Mobile World Congress
27 Feb-02 March, 2017
The Mobile World Congress is a gathering of the leaders of the mobile industry who get together to collaborate and conduct businesses. This annual event held in Barcelona, is considered to be the ideal venue for someone who wants to indulge in deal-making, exploring new business opportunities, and networking in this industry. The world-class conference of this event consists of visionary keynotes who host thought-provoking panel discussions. It also has an exhibition where more than 2,000 companies display their innovative products and latest technologies which promise a bright future in the mobile industry. The Global Mobile Awards ceremony felicitates the most unique mobile solutions from across the globe.
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Venue: Fira Gran Via and Fira MontjuĂŻc, Mobile World Capital Barcelona, Spain
08-10 March, 2017
Google Cloud Next
Taking place in San Francisco, the unofficial hub of technology, Google Cloud Next is an event which is like a source of new ideas. One can learn directly from the industry experts and strike a rapport with people of the same field in this event. Google Cloud Next is where customers, partners, executives, developers, IT decision makers, and also Google Engineers gather in order to build the future of technology with the help of cloud. The event has more than 200 sessions to choose from. These sessions are based on various topics like G Suite, Google Cloud Platform, Devices, Maps, and a lot more. Venue: San Francisco, California, USA
Y Combinator Demo Day
20-22 March, 2017
Initially startups used to face great difficulties in trying to collect funds to take their businesses forward. This is where Y Combinator proves to be helpful. It helps in providing seed funding to startups which are deserving and in need. At times, there are certain startups which only need seed funding and do not require venture funding. This pays the expenses when a firm is just getting started. The main focus of Y Combinator is to help such startups get through the first process of launching themselves with ample of finances in a smooth manner. In order to get such seed funding, the startups have to prove at the event that they are capable to build something impressive with that money. Venue: Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA
20-24 March, 2017
CeBIT 2017
This is an event which goes on for five long days and will take place at the Hannover Congress Centrum situated in Hannover, Germany. It is mainly a show followed by a conference program for IT professionals. The event concentrates on the latest trends in technology, by organizing talks conducted by speakers of high caliber in the field. Along with this, it showcases the latest innovations of products and also hosts panel discussions which are the highlight of this event as people look forward to it. The event covers a great range of topics regarding digitization and highlights the IT challenges. It also puts the spotlight on the most promising startups in the IT industry. Venue: Hannover Exhibition Grounds, Hanover, Germany Technowize Magazine | February 2017
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28-31 March, 2017
Black Hat Asia
The popular technological event Black Hat is all set to return to the continent of Asia in the year of 2017. During this event, some of the brightest researchers as well as professionals are going to come together for a time span of four days. The event will be hosted at Marina Bay Sands. Two days of the event will be dedicated to thorough technical training sessions. The rest of the two days are for showcasing latest research in the field and other such vulnerability disclosures at the Briefings of Black Hat Asia. Venue: Marina Bay Sands, Singapore
LAUNCH Festival
06-07 April, 2017 (Pre-events: 3-5 April)
This annual convergence aims to get together some of the most talented people in the business of social innovation and technology. The Launch Festival also inspires entrepreneurs to work harder in the field and support them in whatever way possible. They are provided with necessary tools to help launch their new ventures. To be hosted in San Francisco this year, the festival will have an impressive variety of events that will engage the audience. The events include informative lectures, panel discussions, job fair, and also startup competitions. Apart from this, there is a three-day hackathon in which teams of developers and designers participate to win investment prizes worth $100,000. Venue: Innovation Hangar & Palace of Fine Arts Theater, San Francisco, California
F8 Facebook Developer Conference
18-19 April, 2017
F8 is an annual conference organized by Facebook for its developers. It will take place in the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, CA. Claimed to be the biggest conference of the year by Facebook; it showcases a number of new technological features. Some of the most significant Facebook leaders address keynotes during these two days. The event consists of more than 45 sessions in such a short span of time. The attendees can also experience live interactive demos which take place in the developer garage. An interaction with Facebook product experts is welcome. Venue: San Jose, California, USA
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Red Hat Summit
02-04 May, 2017
Red Hat Inc. is claimed to be the world’s leading provider of open source solutions. Its 13th Annual Red Hat Summit will be hosted in the tech capital, San Francisco. The venue is the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Like every year, even this year the summit will bring together industry leaders in great numbers. Even open source contributors and Red Hat partners are a part of this event. The event is full of education, innovation, and collaboration which focus on the futuristic approach of the enterprise technology. One can explore how open source can enable major inventions in fields such as application development, DevOps, big data, security, mobile, containers, cloud computing and much more. Venue: 15 Summer Street, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Microsoft Build
10-12 May, 2017
The annual Build developer conference organized by the tech giant Microsoft will be hosted in downtown Seattle this year, instead of its staple location for the past few years, San Francisco. This conference is mainly a medium for Microsoft to showcase its plans for the future and the development of various kinds of software. The developers can grasp this information through this event way before the officially consumer release. Build 2017 probably will unveil the next version of Windows as the release of the Windows 10 Creators Update will take place in early 2017. Venue: Downtown Seattle, Washington, USA
TechCrunch Disrupt
15-17 May, 2017
This event is known to be the world’s leading authority in terms of revolutionary startups which are new to the industry. The TechCrunch Disrupt will introduce game-changing technologies and also discuss the common thoughts of key innovators of the tech industry. In order to maintain the standards of this event, the organizers invite the best as well as smartest investors, hackers, entrepreneurs, and tech fans as well. These parties conduct activities like Startup Alley, Hardware Alley, a 24-hour Hackathon, the Startup Battlefield competition, on-stage interviews, and after parties. Venue: New York, NY, USA
Technowize Magazine | February 2017
Internet of Things World
16-18 May, 2017
This 3-day long event will take place in the Santa Clara Convention Center which is in the heart of the Silicon Valley. The event assures segments which focus on networking, discovery, learning, and also partying. More than 11,000 attendees are expected to attend the event this year. There will be over 400 global thought leading speakers accompanied with 250 and more sponsors as well as exhibitors. The Internet of Things World can be claimed to be the largest IoT event in the industry. Venue: Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara California, USA
Code Conference
30 May-1 June, 2017
To maintain the exclusivity of this event, the Code Conference is strictly on an invitation basis. It was mainly created to create a global community by including executive leaders, the biggest names in the business, and promising startups. This community conducts in-depth conversations regarding the current as well as future impact of digital technology. Guest speakers put forward innovative insights and perspectives on a wide variety of topics. Venue: Rancho Palos Verdes, California, USA
Technowize Magazine | February 2017