World’s First Hyperloop System - 12 Minutes Rides will take You From Abu Dhabi to Dubai - Amazingly Wow !

Elon Musk's grand vision of a Hyperloop system that can transport people and cargo through high-speed vacuum tubes is coming to life in the United Arab Emirates.

The near-supersonic railway would connect the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi with Dubai, the area's most populous city, in only 12 short minutes. This journey normally requires about two hours of travel by car or train.

Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One and Dubai's Road and Transport Authority announced their new partnership Tuesday atop Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building.

"We are here today to sign a historic agreement with our partners from (the Dubai) Road and Transport Authority ... and we begin to evaluate the delivery of the world's first hyperloop system across the country," Hyperloop One CEO, Rob Lloyd, told reporters.

The Roads and Transport Authority and Hyperloop One have agreed to develop a prototype of the hyperloop and the feasibility of building a hyperloop system that can link the two cities.

Hyperloop One's vision consists of combining autonomous vehicles with Hyperloop technology, according to a company press release:

"Individuals can commute for limited distances within the city in small self-driving vehicles. These vehicles can then board the Hyperloop train to travel for longer distances—including between cities—with speeds that can reach 1,200 kilometers per hour, exceeding aircraft speed. Hyperloop stations will be spread all around the city, providing easy and convenient access. This would effectively reduce travel time between Dubai and Abu Dhabi to less than 12 minutes, and between Dubai and Riyadh to less than 48 minutes.

"The new technology is set to have positive implications on urban planning; it will economize parking spaces as it changes the way individuals commute within the city, as well as to and from logistical centers such as airports and ports—not to mention the impact it will have on shipping."

The deal is also meant to help city-state move forward with the "Dubai Autonomous Transportation Strategy," which aims to render 25 percent of all transportations in the emirate driverless by 2030.

Although Tesla CEO Elon Musk came up with the futuristic transport idea back in 2013, he is not affiliated with any hyperloop companies. He has, however, encouraged other private companies to turn his vision into reality. Besides Hyperloop One, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies is another firm trying to bring the technology to life.

When asked about the project's cost, Hyperloop co-founder Josh Giegel told the Associated Press it would be "somewhere between the cost of putting a road in and a high-speed rail."

The Associated Press reported that at Tuesday's event, Hyperloop officials showed several circular station models for Dubai, including one at Emirates Towers on Dubai's main artery, Sheikh Zayed Road. Dubai's Jebel Ali port is also exploring the possibility of using the technology.

Hyperloop One is currently testing the transport system in the Nevada desert.

The 'life-changing' glasses - OrCam

A pair of glasses that is able to 'read' text and convert it into speech allowing blind and visually impaired people has been tested by scientists.

The device looks like a small camera attached to the side of a pair of glasses.

Using OCR - optical character reading - technology, the camera and tiny computer it contains can read printed materials.

A pair of glasses (pictured) that is able to 'read' text and convert it into speech allowing blind and visually impaired people has been tested by scientists. The device looks like a small camera attached to the side of a pair of glasses and uses OCR - optical character reading - technology to read printed materials

It is activated by pointing it at an object and pressing a trigger button. The speech output is then fed into the earpiece of the person wearing the glasses.

Many people with partial sight have to carry around a heavy magnifying glass to read text.

This is the Surface Studio, Microsoft’s new all-in-one PC

Microsoft unveiled the Surface Studio Yesterday, an all-in-one PC with a 28-inch PixelSense display, with the thinnest display ever built according to Microsoft and a 3:2 display ratio. It also has an Intel Core processor, with a 2TB hybrid hard drive and an NVIDIA GPU, as well as integrated 2.1 speakers and a haptic feedback controller puck device.

The computer has a unique hinge on the back designed to make it more flexible for creative pursuits, and Microsoft’s Panay Panos said onstage it’s designed to “fundamentally change” the way people create.

The Studio has a touchscreen, 32GB RAM, a 2TB hybrid drive that combines HD and SD storage, four USB 3.0 ports, Ethernet, Audio, SD and Mini DisplayPort (no Thunderbolt) and the new radial input Surface Dial with haptic feedback. The speakers, ports and drive are contained in the base, which is a short, square box that lies between the chrome supports under the display.

Surface Studio’s display is designed to immerse the user as much as possible, according to Panay, which includes using 13.5 million pixels to make for a 192 PPI density that doesn’t reveal individual pixels no matter where you’re viewing from, according to Microsoft. The display also includes a feature Microsoft is calling TrueColor, which Panay says allows creators to “render the world… as he or she believes it needs to be rendered.”

What this means is that you can change your color space on the fly, meaning a filmmaker working in DCI-P3 can easily switch to sRGB to see how their content will look on TVs that don’t support the wider P3 color specification.

The display also features something called “True Scale,” which allows it to display print products at actual scale on the screen. “One inch on the screen is one inch in real life,” Panay said onstage at Microsoft’s product reveal on Wednesday.

Surface Studio’s hinge, which consists of two chrome arms attached to the base, is also designed to be reflective on purpose to further help it “fade to background,” according to Panay. It’s an interesting tactic for trying to reduce the user’s awareness of the actual hardware itself, and one that sounds a bit more like marketing hype than effective measure.

The Studio’s display includes a “linear mic array” that’s able to pic up a user’s voice from across the room, making it essentially an integrated Echo-like speaker thanks to the inclusion of Cortana in Windows 10.

Surface Studio also supports Surface Pen, making it an amazing option for graphics professionals. The Surface Dial works with the screen intelligently, giving you software tools like color sliders in various apps.

The hinge is designed to easily let you go from upright to flat working device without resistance, and the Surface Pen support really helps make that True Scale feature very appealing. It basically means you can write in full speed (the latency looks incredibly low) on a 1:1 8.5×11 piece of virtual paper on the screen.

Onstage, Panay also introduced and demonstrated the Surface Dial. It’s designed a new input device, in line with but different from things like mice and keyboards. Dial has global controls built-in, meaning they work throughout Windows at the system level. The Dial can work either laid out on the desk like a keyboard, or placed directly on the display, as in the image above. It’ll have different functions depending on which way you’re using it. Surface Dial also works with Surface Book, Surface Pro 3 and Surface Pro 4 for off-screen functions.

 demo of the Surface Studio’s creative prowess included a demo from Madefire founder Ben Wolstenholme, who used it to create a thumbnail for an animated comic for his app. Wolstenholme explained how he used to do the same workflow on paper and in multiple steps, but he can now do it entirely digitally right on the Surface Studio, complete with assigning handy shortcuts like zooming for detailed inking to the Dial.

“It’s amazing to me that Surface Studio makes it possible for me to have my entire creative workflow in one place,” Wolstenholme said.

Surface Dial is open to developers, letting them create on-screen use cases that make it possible to use it to do things like change color while you’re actually in the act of digital painting, or adjusting scale and switching between tools on the fly.

The Surface Studio is available for pre-order now, and will arrive in Microsoft Stores for hands-on demos starting October 27. It’s going to ship in limited numbers by this holiday season, and is priced starting at $2,999.

Google Jamboard - A big 55-inch 4K whiteboard

Google wants more businesses to use its cloud-based collaboration apps like Gmail, Google Drive and Google Docs, and it believes that a new hardware device will help introduce those apps into more offices. The company has just announced the Google Jamboard, a big 55-inch 4K touchscreen whiteboard that it plans to officially launch in early 2017.

Google, which recently combined its cloud-based collaboration apps under the G Suite branding, says that the Jamboard will allow businesses to show any files stored in Docs, Sheets and Slides. It will also be able to add any images stored on a Google Drive account. The Jamboard itself will have its own tools, such as sticky notes and stencils, to help enhance any business presentation. It will also be able to recognize  handwriting and hand-drawn shapes on its big display. Of course, any changes to the files made on the whiteboard can also be saved on the cloud, and check out later by employees on their own smartphones and tablets.

While Google has yet to offer much information on what’s inside the Jamboard, it does say it comes with two crayon-looking passive styluses, along with a passive large eraser for when you want to wipe the whiteboard clean of content. While it can be mounted on a wall like any flat-screen TV, the Google Jamboard will also be designed so it can be mounted on wheels so it can be moved easily to any room in an office.

Google has not yet revealed the specific price of the Jamboard, but it promises that it will cost somewhere under $6,000. It is already test-driving the whiteboard at businesses like Netflix and Spotify so it can make some final refinements to its hardware and software. Interested businesses can apply to check out an early version of the Jamboard before it is officially released.

Whatsapp introduces Video Calls for Android- Beta Version

Some users are reportedly getting the video call feature for WhatsApp.The world’s most used instant messaging service has been getting new features recently. The updated GIF support, document sharing and different emoji for example.

These quality of life changes were not in a particularly high demand, unlike video calling.

The Most Demanded Feature: 

WhatsApp users have demanded video calling ever since the option to call other WhatsApp users has become available. It had some issues at the beginning but they were eventually resolved or diminished to some extent.

The small changes mentioned earlier have been coming to the instant messaging app over the past few weeks. However these changes didn’t warrant as much attention as video calling is getting now.

Available for Beta Users:

The video calling feature is becoming available for users at random. It is limited to the recent beta version of the app only. This requires that both of the people have video calling enabled on their version of WhatsApp. If they do not have video calling enabled they just get a regular call instead.

The video calling UI shows up even if the other person does not have the video calling enabled for them. They will also see a video calling option in their call logs but tapping it would just get you an error.

If you have video calling option available, when you tap the call icon on top of a chat, both video call and regular call option are available. Only a few lucky users seem to have access to this new feature however there is a way to get it running on your WhatsApp as well.

How to enable video calling:

According to Android Police,

We’ve had success forcing video calling to activate by wiping app data and logging in again. You can try this, but make sure you back up your chats first.

Remember this only works for the beta version of the app. We do not recommend trying this on the regular Google PlayStore version of WhatsApp.

For those who want to try out the beta, here’s the Android APK for sideloading.