Smart phones have become a necessary element of our daily life. They are replacing every other gadget by providing access to do everything; previously done be different other devices. Apart from the advancement in technology of smart phones, more and more human interactions are increasing. Moreover taking use of voice detection to finger print detection previously, eye tracking is a new feature to control activities in your smart phones.
Eye tracking technology is a new idea for smart phones. Previously it was used in retail research, ad placement research during website development and also in the health sector to provide help to the people suffering with paralysis. But it does work accurately in specialized settings; with the use of powerful computers and sophisticated eye tracking software which makes it a costly technology.
There is research going in this field to make eye tracking economical, precise, and accurate to be introduced in the smart phones. It first emphasise on the gaze information from different people and then training the mobile software to interpret it on the run time accurately. This is the difficult task as smart phones come in different sizes; it becomes hard to identify where a person is looking approximately. Researchers at MIT, the University of Georgia, and Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Informatics are working on the project, and they say that they have almost solved this problem. The software designed by their team so far identify the user’s eye movement with an accuracy of about a centimetre on a mobile phone and 1.7 centimetres on a tablet. But they are trying to improve this further. They are training their software with more eye movement data of smart phone users by launching an iPhone app called GazeCapture. This software captures the data of how people usually look at their phones while using their phones.
GazeCapture information is used for another software named iTracker to train further. This application is also available for iPhones. It captures the user information through front camera and takes into account the factors like the position and direction of the user’s head and eyes to determine where the user is looking exactly. Researchers believe that the more the eye movement data they will get; the precision rate for iTracker will be improved eventually.
It is a hopeful path to take mobile phones in; because we use our eyes all the time effortlessly and this fact will make it more useful than typical voice control. This precise eye tracking will change the typical navigation and gaming concept in smart phones. The next generation of eye tracking for smart phones will be the pixel-level accuracy. But this new feature will come up with high battery usage.
Recognition methods have long been in use to connect elements of physical world with the digital realm. We often see instances of recognition in the form of Facebook’s tagging option, Apple’s Siri and Google’s image recognition in its Reverse Image Search etc.
You can search for a relevant item or its multiple presence over the internet by searching it via Google’s image search. Your friend’s tag recommendations also come up as soon as Facebook recognizes your friend’s face in an image. Moreover, other forms of recognition by a digital platform has revolutionized the we share information and react with our machines.
Image recognition helps us identify physical objects or its instances in the digital realm. Such recognition solutions help bridge gaps and aim to achieve some form of synchronization between digital and physical realm. Such solutions also help those who are in need of finding or identifying an object with the help of ginormous archive of digital data over the internet.
Google being forerunner of innovations in the digital field is leaving no stones unturned. Other than IBM & Amazon, Google is also among the leading ones to extensively work on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. In light of that, Google has recently acquired Moodstocks, an instant smartphone image recognition startup to enhance their machine learning capabilities.
Moodstocks is “on-device image recognition” software for smartphones which will be phased out as it joins Google. Moodstocks’ statement reveals their purpose and objective behind development of an on-device image recognition smartphone application.
“Ever since we started Moodstocks, our dream has been to give eyes to machines by turning cameras into smart sensors able to make sense of their surroundings” – Moodstocks
Checkout the image-recognition technology in action below:
By joining Google, Moodstocks will be highly resourceful for android users to accurately find objects via smartphones and make use of that information with ease. We can’t wait to get our hands on to it in near future.
How often do you find yourself in a state of dilemma when signing your child’s permission slip for a school trip or allowing them to spend the night at a friend’s place? May it be your daughter going out at night, a date with your partner, a ski trip or a business meeting, at many times during the day we find ourselves wondering where our loved ones are at the moment? Where today’s world seems to have shrunk; playgrounds have evolved, children have become more independent and are ready to explore their horizons and travel far and wide- a parent’s heart is never at ease. But worry no more, because finally an app is here that promises to keep you and yours connected wherever you are!
What Is Wave?
An answer to all your prayers and available for free on the iOS App Store as well as Android’s Google Play Store, Wave is a location app that allows you to locate your contacts in real-time on a private map for a limited period of time. It is dubbed as the easiest way to locate your friends and family and is a must-have app for everyone who owns a smartphone.
How Does It Work?
What makes Wave a go-to location app is perhaps its remarkable simplicity and ease of use. What you need to get Waving, is a compatible smartphone with enabled location services/GPS and an internet connection. And this is all that you really need to do to set up the Wave app:
Launch the Wave app, pick a contact and request to see each other position for as long as you wish.
Your contact will receive a push notification indicating that you wish to open a wave with them for a particular amount of time.
Once your contact accepts your request, you will be able to see each other on a dynamic, live and private map as your pin on the map follows your movements in real-time.
You can also set a Meeting Point, leave a message on a board, create Group Waves with up to 10 people and chat with every member of active wave.
How many times a day do you look at your wrist? Well that is about to change, because Wave has a full fledged Apple Watch companion App to take your Wave experience to the next level
Who Is It For?
The creators of the app believe that every open Wave brings people together in real life. And joining people always mean the beginning of something new and beautiful. The app can prove to be more than useful at many times during the day. For instance, you can open a wave with your mother when you go out at night, Keep track of your friends on your way to a group hangout or outdoor sports like a hike through the woods, and know where everybody is. You can even set up your client’s addresses as meeting points and check everyone’s on their way, or show you care by opening a wave with your date and letting them know that you’re on your way.
So Wave is for everyone; everyone who owns a smartphone and cares about their loved ones!
What makes Wave so Amazing?
Although the application doesn’t bring anything too phenomenal in term concept, but tucked away under Wave’s seamless and beautiful user interface is a masterwork of software engineering and ingenious Multi-OS optimization that plays in synchrony to present an experience like no other. Moreover, every single push notification and all movement data registered into the Wave app is encrypted and never saved on its servers. Wave seems to have achieved what no other location app could- Simplicity and uncompromised privacy! And this is perhaps what has earned Wave testimonials putting it much ahead of apps like Apple’s Find My Friend and Google Latitude. It has appeared in more than 100 specialized media and has been selected for some of the world’s most renowned technology and creativity summits, including Dublin’s Web Summit and the 4YFN Congress where Wave earned its place as an official Alpha Startup.
So get Wave app right now and show your loved ones that you care!
Chatbots are the new black in the tech world. From social-media giants like Facebook to popular messaging apps like KIK, every tech company is head over heels to hop on this raving bandwagon.
But what exactly are Chatbots and why are they all the rage?
Chatbots are simple artificial intelligence systems that one can interact with via texts. The Raison d’êtreis to simulate mano a mano human conversations and interactions with them can range from executing simple tasks like asking the bot to book you an Uber cab, or a more complex one, like having it troubleshoot a problem with your internet connection. According to a TechCrunch article, Chatbots provide “Some advanced type functionality in a fairly easy fashion.” And this is perhaps what makes them so popular; Popular enough to give apps a run for their money and potentially replace many of them in the near future.
Massively.ai takes Chatbots to the next level
Massively.ai is an exceptional bot developer platform which aims to empower anyone to begin developing and instantly deploying chat bot solutions anywhere that messages can be sent and received- SMS, Kik, Wechat, Messenger, Twitter, you name it! The best part is that you don’t have to be a computer coding prodigy or burn a hole in your pocket, to create your own Chatbot. The ready-to-use Massively bot-developing toolkit is open to all users for free and doesn’t require any programming experience to be accessed. It encourages developers to experiment with its resources and let their creativity run wild. And that’s what makes creating bots with Massively.ai fun but as easy as ABC.
What’s Massively’s secret sauce?
One-to-One at Massive Scale, Massively.ai gives its developers the ability to create high-engagement DIY bots for any messaging platform. But the secret sauce to Massively’s commendable success is its robust data analytics program, which uses information collected from user responses and choices to fine tune campaigns and furnish insight to clients. Which is to say that it tracks campaigns, optimizes in a heartbeat and measures growth in real-time.
Give your brand the push it needs with Massively.ai Chatbots!
Chatbots are not only a probable replacement for apps, but also a great way of marketing your brand. From its launch in 2014, Massively.ai has executed many successful campaigns for brands like Insidious Chapter 3, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trails, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Degrassi: Next Class and Indianapolis Colts, amongst others. In the case of Degrassi: Next Class for instance, the Chatbot integrated into Kik messenger allowed the shows young fans to take a Degrassi based personality quiz and get exclusive sneak peeks at the characters and plot points from the show. Furthermore, supporting the launch of Insidious Chapter 3, Massively’s interactive story telling Chatbot reached 16 million interactions and sent some serious chills down Insidious fans’ spines. Inspired by the idea that the fans want to chat with the characters they love, these campaigns created quite a stir and their success is a glistening example of just how interesting and human like interactions with Massively.ai Chatbots can be.
Are bots taking over the world?
Although Chatbots are still in the infancy of their revolution, given the tremendous potential they hold, they are likely to take over the world. May it be promoting emerging businesses, marketing a big movie franchise, ordering pizza, or having a lighthearted conversation with, there’s a Massively.ai bot for everything. So maybe you should give it a shot and become a Massively bot creator, let your creativity run wild and create and deploy your very own Chatbots!
A picture is worth a thousand memories behind them which are far from forgotten. Looking back the old family photos is actually a “feel-good” way to live back in the past again.
As technology evolves, all these albums are replaced by folders in photo apps on our computer’s hard disk. Accidentally deleting these photos results in a huge loss. But nowadays, various operating systems provide different ways to retrieve these pictures within their specific predefined time and space constraints. Actually, all the photo apps provide numerous features which need to be overlooked in detail, but mostly ignored by the user.
These techniques for recovery of files increase with the advancement in iOS. In windows, there is a Recycle Bin option to retrieve those pictures, but it fails when these files are deleted directly from the flash drives.
iOS 8, provides an easy way to restore deleted photos on your iPhone or iPad while keeping the condition of predefined time constraint. The procedure is very simple:
Open the photo application on your phone.
In the main menu, you will find all the different albums saved.
By scrolling down, you will find a folder with the name of ‘Recently Deleted’ which will be containing all the pictures you have deleted in the last 30 days.
Select the picture and tap on the Recover button on the bottom navigation. For multiple photos, there is the option to recover all photos back too.
Do keep in mind the time constraint, all the pictures deleted a month ago will no longer be retrieved.
Summer is a great time of the year to pack your bags and set off on an adventure; explore new parts of the world, meet new people and go to places you’ve never been to before. But where the benefits are umpteen, traveling can at times seem rather overwhelming. We often find ourselves enthusiastically flipping through the pages of a tourism magazine only to shrug at the very thought of the hassles of planning a travel. However, contrary to popular belief, traveling has never been easier. And given the advent of the digital age and the plethora of mobile travel guide applications available, planning a trip today accounts for little more than a press of a button!
Available in the IOS App Store for a competitive price-tag of $0.99, Modern Atlas is one such application that brings trip planning within the palm of your hand. The application features travel guides and maps to over 21,000 cities and has information on more than 1.5 million landmarks and hidden gems. The guides are written by independent travelers from Wikivoyage and Wikitravel and thus provide you with recommendations for the best places to see, eat, and sleep while on your trip.
When it comes to visual interface, Modern Atlas offers a clean and minimalist aesthetic that seamlessly fuses with the overall IOS design. The user interface is well organized and easy to maneuver through, as various businesses and spots of interest at your destination appear colour-coded and the Avenir typeface makes text legible and easy to read. The application also features subtle animations that make the user experience more interactive; as one moves from one part of the app to another. Furthermore, the application also puts great emphasis on visuals, and exhibits beautiful snaps of selected destinations that are photographed by actual travelers. This gives the users a taste of what they are likely to experience in their travel and inspires them to pursue their travel dreams. And even if you aren’t traveling anytime soon, it’s always nice to learn about different places around the world, and if you like what you see, it’s never too late to add a destination to your bucket-list!
When launched, Modern Atlas welcomes the users with a few introductory screens that acquaint them with the application’s features and walks them through the process of getting started with the first map guide. Which is as easy as typing a city or a landmark in the search bar. Once a point of interest is selected, Modern Atlas, then takes you to that spot using Apple maps, which are well integrated with the application and the whole process is rather seamless. Modern Atlas quickly pulls up all relevant data from sources like Wikivoyage and Wikitravel, and as spots on the map start to populate, you can access pop-up detail boxes with a single touch and read up about the spot. And if you like the spot, you can quickly save it by tapping on the ‘star’ icon. The map also allows users to use multi-touch gestures for ease of access and enable 3D Flyover mode to take a virtual tour of the destination. Modern Atlas’ functionality, allow it to not only be used to find out about the destination before visiting it, but it can also prove to be very handy at the moment. Either way, the application provides a lot of information, including how to get to a particular spot, to its historical significance and tips on how to make the stay safe and comfortable.
They say that the world is a book, and those who don’t travel read only one page. And now that you have the world within the palm of your hands, now is a better time than ever to fire up Modern Atlas, pick a destination and pack your bags for an adventure of a life-time.
A best aspect regarding owning an iPhone is that you get a considerable measure of the most up to date applications first before they land on Android.
It may not be reasonable, but rather it’s an incredible advantage for iPhone clients.
You can appreciate the best travel applications, exclusives from Instagram and Adobe, and effective photograph applications.
In these 11 Free iPhone only apps, you are ensured to discover something new — simply don’t boast a lot to your buddy with Android phones.
Hitlist curates the best travel deals for you.
Hitlist is a trek booking application that spares you cash by letting you know when the best time is to travel while giving you distinctive destination alternatives.
However, the issue with numerous applications is that they constrain you to invest a particular effort and spot. Hitlist works by giving you a cluster of better places and times, expanded to spare you cash.
Fresh Air is a beautiful weather app.
Outside Air is a flawless climate application that underlines visuals with its moderate climate diagram. You can look forward so as to perceive how the climate will be later on, and it additionally interfaces with your timetable application to give you figures on up and coming arrangements.
NYT Now is a brilliant and free news app.
The New York Times has made one of the best news applications with NYT Now. There’s a whole group at The Times that is in charge of ensuring that it is always redesigned with not simply breaking news — and highlights — from the distribution, additionally with highlights from different news outlets. What’s more, the good to beat all is its effectively edible breakdowns of the day’s news highlights.
Overcast magically erases the pauses in podcasts so you can listen faster.
Cloudy is the best application for listening to podcasts and, because of a major new redesign, it’s free. This implies you can access “keen rate” — which takes away delays to accelerate the podcast — voice help, and downloading on the cell system.
Photoshop Fix brings powerful photo-editing tools to your phone for free.
Photoshop Fix is another standalone application from Adobe that severs a number of Photoshop’s modifying abilities and offers them to you for nothing. You can do things like smooth or hone “objects” — think skin — or utilize the “condense” instrument to reshape any region as though it were fluid.
Paper is the best sketching app for iPhone.
Paper for iPhone is an application that extends the thought of what “taking notes” implies on your phone.
You can utilize it to make everything from records to presentations that incorporate outlines and diagrams. It essentially interprets the experience you have composing on “paper” to your phone — bringing back all the assignments that more customary note-taking applications need.
Giphy Cam helps you make insane GIFs out of everyday moments.
Giphy Cam is another application that resemble Photo Booth, on Mac PCs, for making GIFs.
You pick channels and foundations — like flying tacos or hallucinogenic twirls — and afterward hit the record catch to make your own GIF. You can then spare it to your phone or post it to online networking so your companions can respect your GIF diversion.
“Mr Jump” is the new “Flappy Bird.”
“Mr Jump” is an enchanting platformer that strolls the almost negligible difference amongst addictive and troublesome. You control Mr Jump as he bounces his way crosswise over gulch gaps and jumps over spikes, and the most recent extension presents new levels and another plane pack capacity.
Hyperlapse from Instagram transforms your shaky footage into a stunning time-lapse.
As of not long ago, to make smooth time-slip recordings, you required costly tripods and adjustment gear. Fortunately, Hyperlapse from Instagram utilizes its picture adjustment strategies to smooth out unsteady footage, and the outcomes are great. It’s incredible for catching games minutes, auto rides, climate, swarms, and adventures by walking.
Litely is great for adding subtle filters.
Litely is an effective photograph application for adding unobtrusive channels to your photographs, giving them a film-like tone. You can tap the screen with two fingers to see what your photograph looked like before including any presets, and the application’s nondestructive altering highlights imply that you never need to stress over losing your unique.
Pedometer++ is a great way to keep track of your daily fitness.
Pedometer++ is ideal for monitoring your day by day action and wellness objectives with a speedy look. There’s two brisk approaches to check your day by day progress. You can swipe down and see the Pedometer++ gadget in your iPhone’s Notification Center, or you can check the small red identification on the application symbol, which shows your present strides.
“Afterpulse” is a gorgeous new shooter for iOS.
“Afterpulse” is a third-individual shooter that keeps on obscuring the line among portable and console-amusement illustrations. In case you’re an aficionado of recreations like “Honorable obligation” and “Riggings of War,” then you’ll adoration “Afterpulse’s” quick pace and online multiplayer matches.
The amusement additionally takes a shot at Apple TV, so on the off chance that you like to diversion with a physical controller rather than touch-screen controls, then you can utilize one of Apple’s affirmed Bluetooth controllers for a slight high ground.
Even though we have many apps like Evernote, Pocket, Diigo & Xmarks however it is a hassle to find the one that suits your style & satisfies your needs. I have been a loyal user of Diigo to bookmark, annotate, share & collaborate. However I always yearned for a tool that allows me to share my bookmarks with others & see what others have been learning.
I recently stumbled upon a service called Kifi which has so far managed to figure out the right recipe for bookmarking and collective learning.
Bookmarking
We have been bookmarking webpages with the click on a star button & saving webpage links in our browsers to later revisit when we need them.
With Kifi’s chrome extension, I now bookmark effectively because of its new seamless options to keep, share, annotate & collaborate in libraries.
You can ‘keep’ (bookmark) this article by clicking the heart that says ‘Keep it’. You can also send this to a friend via email or share this with a connection on Kifi. While ‘keeping’ articles, you can add notes for your reference as well as add tags to later find out this particular piece.
Collaboration
What’s missing from Pocket is the ability to learn from what others have bookmarked or share your bookmarks so that other can benefit from them.
With Kifi, you can share your favourite articles in a library with public so that anyone can see what amazing material you have been reading on that particular topic.
You may also invite a collaborator. Be it your friend, coworker or a pen pal who shares similar interests; together you can keep valuable finds in one place.
Collective Learning
Collaboration and learning from resources shared by others gave a new way of bookmarking web pages for information relevant to a group of people.
Kifi has a beautiful user interface, the ability to share bookmarks in respective libraries & see what others have bookmarked on different topics. It also enables a user to find a ‘keep’ in his own library as well as relevant keeps in others public libraries.
By typing “writing” I was able to see matching ‘keeps’ as well as relevant public libraries of other users.
Private Libraries
Kifi’s most beloved feature is the ability to have libraries private to yourself. You are working on a project and during research and you find valuable material but it is not something you want to share with public. You can simply create a private library & keep your project bookmarks in it, for your eyes only.
Interests & Recommendations
When you join Kifi, you are asked to specify your interests. You get to choose from a range of interests so that relevant articles are recommended on your feed or timeline.
When you open up your Kifi. You are welcomed by a feed of recommendations based on your keeps and searches. This feed may also contain items made by Kifi curators which you can choose to continue seeing or block.
Although Kifi has a lot to improve on its recommendation algorithm but this bookmarking powered collective knowledge base is helping me learn new things everyday. Kifi will reshape the way you bookmark and it will add more value to the whole process by allowing each other to share the amazing keeps.
On the average, a person uses more than 25 websites – let the smartphone applications alone. Remembering all the passwords for these applications is bothering task, but you may wonder why not keep a single password for all of the websites? Yes, you can, but that’s ultra-risky. Many hackers are aware that most of the people are too lazy to change the passwords and keep a single password for all of their sign ups, and they exploit this fact to the max.
There are many ways you can boost up your password strength:
Using Capitals and symbols
Using Capitals and symbols (&^ %$#) can highly strengthen your passwords and make them extremely difficult to hack.
e.g. Password: silverspoon
Strong version: S!lV3rsp00n
Using the site name as a prefix or suffix
You can avoid using the same password for every site by simply using the first three or four letters as a suffix or a prefix with your password.
General Password: S!lV3rsp00n
Yahoo Password: yahoS!lV3rsp00n (space registers as a character)
These are some basic ways of increasing the difficulty of your password, but if you are too lazy to the above, you will most probably shift to the password manager like most of the people.
Password managers remember your passwords for you; they can generate complex passwords for you; and they can also save the sites you love as bookmarks.
LastPass
LastPass is the leading name in the password managers (Even I use it). It’s a very handy service when it comes to passwords. You don’t have to do anything. It does it all for you. Whenever you sign up for a new site, a prompt will appear asking you to save the site in LastPass, and you have to click on the yes – that’s all.
LastPass has both: the free and the paid version.
Smartlock
SmartLock is a password manager by Google. Google is a very big name in the internet and many people rely on Google applications for their household, business and personal management.
How’s SmartLock different than other passwords managers?
SmartLock helps you manage your online passwords like all the other password managers. But there are some features that make it a little different.
App password management:
Unlike other password managers, SmartLock offer application password management for most of the android applications.
Sign in Bypass:
Another feature that is very appealing is the sign in bypass. It lets you completely skip the Sign in page, and takes you directly to the web or the applications – which we think is very nice.
What Smartlock lacks
No password generation:
Most of the other password managers have built in password creators that create strong passwords. SmartLock doesn’t have any built in feature for password generation.
Chrome only!
Chrome is a very reliable browser, but having this application only available for chrome is a very big negative in our view. We, however, are hopeful that it will be soon made available to other platforms like Google Keep.
SmartLock or LastPass?
At this phase, we think it is far behind the other password managers, because even though it has introduced some features, it hasn’t offered anything game-changing. It also lacks some of the features that are already available in the other password managers.
Despite of all these things, we must not oversee that it is the Google way to start small and develop according to the feedback. Moreover, unlike others SmartLock is completely free – no paid versions. SmartLock appeals with its simplicity and convenience. If you want something simple, you should definitely give it a try.
Today we can’t live without internet, but one thing that every user dreads is the variety of social networks we must be connected to. Managing all the network has always been a pain; many people have turned towards RSS Feed readers and other social network managers like hoot suite. Many leading names have introduced applications to help us manage social networks. The latest name in these giants is Sony.
Sony has introduced the social life management system with the name of Social life. It is not another social network! It helps you get feed from all the social networks you are connected to and any website feed you subscribe to. Sony aims at providing a centralized application where you can manage your digital world in a more organized way with this latest application.
Trends and News:
Sony keeps an eye on the trends and provides you the latest news and feeds that it thinks you might be interested in. The app covers all the categories i.e. sports, food, entertainment etc.
Interface:
One of the biggest reasons to try this Sony app is its interface. It has a very simple and elegant interface that isn’t heavy on your eyes and makes going through the feeds a light experience.
Bookmarking and favorites:
Sony allows the user to bookmark any feed for a later use. It also offers view later option where you can select what is important and can get back to it when you have sufficient time.
Content management:
You can manage news, feeds from the web, and feeds from the social networks via social life news. You can also categorize them into definite categories like food, entertainment, self-development, health etc. Like all other applications, it also has an option that allows to share your favorite content with your friends and family with some decent privacy limitations.
Overall, it’s a very nice addition to android applications. If you’re an organized person who wishes to have a leash on everything around in his life, this is a must try for you. Sony will help you have a smooth social life with this application.
