This Smartwatch Runs On Your Body Heat

While a watch running on your body heat isn’t something new, a smartwatch doing so is unheard of.

Smartwatches of this generation do a lot more than just act like glorified Fitbits of the first generation, but they also use a lot of power to do it.

For that matter you will need to design a smartwatch that uses less power and is capable enough to be deemed a smartwatch. Nowadays people forget to charge their smartwatches and thus in the morning they end up with a dead battery.

Enter the Matrix PowerWatch:

Powerwatch remedies this problem by using your body heat to work. Made by Matrix industries (appropriately named after The Matrix series which had machines use humans as their power source) the Powerwatch was designed from the ground up with power efficiency in mind.

It works with a thermoelectric generator which requires one side of it to be warm while the other needs to be cold. The more difference there is in the temperature on the two sides the more power it generates. Matrix industries have incorporated this piece of tech into their watch. The back of the watch actively absorbs heat while the front of the watch is made with a metal crown and heat sinks to remain cool.

Lowest Power Processor in the World:

The processor used in the watch, AMBI Q,  was specially designed and is claimed by its makers to be the least power hungry processor in the world. Aside from that the watch is so power efficient that once fully charged the watch can remain on standby for 2 years.

Not Many Features:

In terms of features it offers pretty basic ones. It can sync with your smartphone via bluetooth to set the time. It cannot show notifications or allow you to call or send and receive texts. Fitness tracking is where this smartwatch excels and it does it better than other smartwatches. Powerwatch records changes in your body heat to determine the calories burned during exercise. Other watches use heart rate monitoring and other shenanigans to do the same thing.

You can head over to Powerwatch’s Indiegogo page here. It is available for preorder for $99 while the cost will go up to $160 once it comes out.

Skype calls without an account

Using Skype for a quick chat or video call just got a whole lot easier. Microsoft has announced that anyone can now use Skype as a guest user without the need of registering a new account. Guest users don’t even need to download the Skype application. The real purpose of the move is to increase new users and stay step ahead of other competitors.

Microsoft says “Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve made it easier than ever for you to connect with anyone on Skype, without needing to register or even download it. By joining Skype as a Guest, you can quickly chat, voice or video call without any hassle. Perfect if you’re new to Skype and want to quickly chat with someone, anywhere in the world, for free.”

From now on, web-based guest interface that lets you make and receive calls. To make a call, all you need to do is go to skype.com and mention a temporary username (handle) for yourself. Once done, you get a link which can be shared with anyone and the guest user can start a voice call, video call, group chat or share files. In other words, guest users can allowed all actions a normal user with a desktop application can and all they need is a web browser.

The idea is actually not to different from what Google implemented with Hangouts. While Hangouts may be going through an existential crisis and might be phased out, Skype has taken a cue from its book. Hangouts users could be a part of the call by accessing a link. Skype upgrades it so that users can make calls with mere links. Conversations last for 24 hours, after that, these are wiped.

Microsoft might be a bit too late here as WhatsApp and others are already killing it and have nearly forced it out of the race. While Skype was the same old bulky and slow application, others made a move and gathered enough users to overtake Skype. Today, WhatsApp announced support for video calls, nearly matching Skype in basic features as far as smartphone apps go. The only route out for Skype and Microsoft is to somehow maintain its importance in the desktop realm once the competitors take on Skype in that battle.

Google’s ‘DeepMind’ AI platform can now learn without human input

DeepMind is now capable of teaching itself based on information it already possesses.

In a significant step forward for artificial intelligence, Alphabet’s hybrid system — called a Differential Neural Computer (DNC) — uses the existing data storage capacity of conventional computers while pairing it with smart AI and a neural net capable of quickly parsing it.

“These models can learn from examples like neural networks, but they can also store complex data like computers,” wrote DeepMind researchers Alexander Graves and Greg Wayne.

Much like the brain, the neural network uses an interconnected series of nodes to stimulate specific centers needed to complete a task. In this case, the AI is optimizing the nodes to find the quickest solution to deliver the desired outcome. Over time, it’ll use the acquired data to get more efficient at finding the correct answer.

The two examples given by the DeepMind team further clear up the process:

1. After being told about relationships in a family tree, the DNC was able to figure out additional connections on its own all while optimizing its memory to find the information more quickly in future searches.
2. The system was given the basics of the London Underground public transportation system and immediately went to work finding additional routes and the complicated relationship between routes on its own.

Instead of having to learn every possible outcome to find a solution, DeepMind can derive an answer from prior experience, unearthing the answer from its internal memory rather than from outside conditioning and programming. This process is exactly how DeepMind was able to beat a human champion at ‘Go’ — a game with millions of potential moves and an infinite number of combinations.

Depending on the point of view, this could be a serious turn of events for ever-smarter AI that might one day be capable of thinking and learning as humans do.

Or, it might be time to start making plans for survival post-Skynet.

via ScienceAlert

This Tiny Computer Runs on Radio Waves Powered wirelessly & hasn't battery

No matter how smart and fast your devices would be, the biggest issue is always with the battery technology.

Whenever you go to buy any electronic gadget — smartphone, laptop, or any wearable — the most important specification isn’t its processor speed or its camera quality but its Battery Backup, which is not getting better any time soon.

What if you could eliminate the very thing entirely?

Well, that's exactly what the electrical engineers from the University of Washington has developed.

A team of researchers from the University of Washington’s Sensor Lab and the Delft University of Technology has developed a new gadget that doesn’t need a battery or any external power source to keep it powered; rather it works on radio waves.

So, this means you have to turn on your radio every time to keep this device charged. Right?

No, you don’t need to do this at all, because the device sucks radio waves out of the air and then converts them into electricity.

Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform

Dubbed Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform (WISP), the device is a combination sensor and computing chip that uses a standard off-the-shelf RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) reader to suck in radio waves and convert them into electricity.

Though the WISP is not designed to compete with the chips in your computer or even your smartphone, it has as much processing power as the Fitbit, which is enough to run sensors and transmit data.

The discovery could highly transform the Internet of Things (IoT) world as the WISP is even more low maintenance compared to Bluetooth Low Energy sensor chips being used today.

The next step in making the WISP usability even more convenient and easy is to create Wisent that would allow for wireless programming of the WISP. For this, the team has recently collaborated with the Delft University of Technology.

With the help of Wisent, the WISP can be programmed wirelessly and uses the very same radio waves to communicate.

"So far WISP required cables to reprogramme it, nullifying the advantage of battery-less-ness. Therefore, we present Wisent, a protocol that allows WISP to be reprogrammed wirelessly," said Przemysław Pawełczak, assistant professor at the TU Delft’s Embedded Software group.

"Our vision is to have truly wirelessly reprogrammable software-defined battery-less computers wherever and whenever we want."

For more details, you can head on to the research paper [PDF].

Though the ultimate aim of WISP is in fully realizing the Internet of Things and giving "dumb" objects some smartness, it might even find its way into smartphones as a sort of emergency backup calling module that works even when your phone’s battery is dead.

However, there is no detail on when the WISP will be made available for purchase, or how much it will cost.

Google is testing a new way to login -without password

Passwords seem to be so yesterday. There’s a growing chorus of voices that want a painless yet secure alternate way of logging into your accounts that eschews the use of passwords altogether. Google is testing out a suitable replacement to attain this objective; using a smartphone as a key for logging into the company’s services online. However, in a region like Pakistan, where mobile theft is rampant, could it actually be used as a better alternative?

Can Google’s New Security Alternative Provide a More Secure Alternative?

Online security happens to be a very important aspect of our digital lives, and while keeping a track of passwords might be difficult, it is still considered a better approach compared to just using your entire smartphone to bypass the security wall. After all, in case the smartphone happens to be misplaced, or worst case scenario, stolen, then all those authentication processes will be gone with it as well.

However, it looks like Google has a trick up its sleeve in order to make passwords a thing of the past.

As you can see from the above image, it is possible to sign into Google services on a computer by using an Android smartphone as the primary authentication device. Details of the image state that the login process commences from the user logging into his/her Google account using their Gmail address, but instead of receiving a password prompt, the Android smartphone or tablet that is associated with that account will be contacted and asked whether the account login is to be authorized or not.

The smartphone or tablet will also need to be secured itself, through a password, a PIN, or even more secure features such as a fingerprint scanner. Google has not stated why it is attempting to make passwords a thing of the past, and neither has the company stated that when is the new security feature going to appear in mobile devices but we do know this. Google is not the only company working on getting rid of passwords, but it looks like some users will prefer to stick with the old, traditional ways.