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The App That Predicts Incoming Earthquakes

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The App That Predicts Incoming Earthquakes

Coming from the Seismological Laboratory at Berkeley, MyShake is the app that predicts incoming earthquakes and it was released just last Friday. Along with it, there was also a video posted via YouTube that features Richard Allen, the director of the laboratory that developed the app, explaining how the app works and individuals can make best use of it.

The application is merely in its incipient phase, and at the current time only works as a study tool for the researchers at the Seismological Laboratory at Berkeley, by attempting to use as many signals from smartphones that have downloaded it. Thanks to the fact that most, if not all newer smartphones these days have an accelerometer sensor built into them, scientists thought of using this fact to the advantage of the people living in particular areas that are prone to seismic activity.

The app has very low storage and battery life requirements and merely keeps track of any motion registered when the phone is left in standby, preferably on a flat surface. While it will continue to function when it senses you in motion, which may result in a false earthquake alarm, this is a grand scale app that will detect false positives according to the zone they are being registered in. The app was designed with the idea that it shouldn’t use more power than your phone would if it were hibernating in mind.

The MyShake app was developed as a citizens’ science experiment with the sole motive of building a global seismic network. Considering that most of the occurrences of earthquakes are too slow to be detected, and it’s mostly done via unreliable channels such as social media, MyShake aims to – hopefully in the near future – become a useful tool in detecting and preventing or at least limiting the casualties following an earthquake.

Scientists working on this project hope to be able to start implementing this the sooner it’s possible, but they do require as many users to pick up the app in the first place. Once a fair number of individuals have it running in the background, people could be notified of incoming earthquakes as soon as 40 seconds before it actually kicks in.

The project hopes to one day be able to help regions with a high risk level of earthquakes such as Nepal. Because there are over 6 million smartphones in the country, if the app ran on at least a portion of them disasters in places such as Kathmandu could be averted.

The app is currently only available on the Google Play Store, as well as the Berkeley website.

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A New Google VR Headset Is Imminent

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A New Google VR Headset Is Imminent

Because virtual reality is one of the hottest topics right now, and one that most technology giants are turning their gaze upon, it shouldn’t be a surprise that a new Google VR headset is imminent. With the long awaited for Oculus Rift right around the corner and less than 2 months away from its release date, news of Apple starting its own VR research and development department and Google only having its Google Cardboard headset to offer to its own public, things are probably soon to change.

Even if the original idea behind Google Cardboard was undoubtedly cheap genius, it probably won’t be able to stand up against its competitors. As a result, Google seems to be developing a new smartphone-assisted VR headset that has improved specifications. While these are only rumors, it is said that the new headset has better sensors and lenses and that it has ditched the hilarious and cheap cardboard build for a more solid plastic casing.

But that is no guarantee that the new Google virtual reality headset will be able to compete directly with gadgets the likes of Oculus Rift. The latter is a device that has been thoroughly designed with the idea that it should be a standalone – even though you do need to connect it to a rather capable computer in order to play anything in VR.

However, thinking that VR only limits itself to gaming would be an unfair understatement. Developers envision more and more utility for virtual reality on a daily basis – starting with design, art, health, education and even psychology. While so far virtual experience has limited itself to giving its users a mere glimpse of literally experiencing virtual reality such as gaming or ‘visiting’ places in virtual space – such as Mount Everest – VR is destined for much more.

But for example, Dom Barnard, cofounder of the VirtualSpeech app said that one of the best applications they could have thought of for the Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR headsets was their own application that helps the user get over their fear of public speaking. He also mentioned that he imagines a world where kids in school put on VR headsets to learn about the human body or historic sites.

Virtual reality is still in its very early stages and we’ve already heard of some stunningly beautiful and clever applications of it. Time will only tell just how far it can truly go.

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Say Goodbye to Smartphone Mozilla Firefox OS

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Say Goodbye to Smartphone Mozilla Firefox OS

While things haven’t been great for the operating system for a fairly long time, it is now officially the time to say goodbye to smartphone Mozilla Firefox OS. While the original first hint that Mozilla wasn’t particularly bent on capturing a portion of the smartphone market came back in December last year, there hasn’t been any official statement since.

According to the company itself, the Mozilla Firefox operating system did not come up to the expectations that neither Mozilla nor the users had for the software and ended up not being able to “offer the best user experience possible” and instead decided to focus its efforts somewhere else.

However, this time, Mozilla has made a clear statement in which they confirmed the fact that the operating system for smartphones will be discontinued; in that sense, the OS will continue to function on devices but it will no longer be receiving support or updates. The Mozilla Firefox OS development will end for good once version 2.6 is released in May 2016.

According to the official statement, the company made this decision due to the feeling that the company was playing ‘catch up’ more than managing to establish itself as a viable alternative on a market where circumstances were not favorable for a newcomer such as themselves. As a result, Mozilla will return to focusing its efforts on other markets, most likely not phone-related.

Considering the operating system itself is not literally going away, the Mozilla Firefox OS will be considered a Tier 3 project by the company from now on. In essence that means that any issue you may have with it you will either have to solve yourself or rely on forums and community rather than the company itself. That shouldn’t necessarily be regarded as a major change as the OS has been an open-source system, so it’s not unlikely that there are individuals out there that could share a fair amount of knowledge about it.

Mozilla claims they have given up on this particular project in favor of ‘connected devices’ and that they will be focusing on developing software – most likely also open source – for the ‘Internet of things’. In other words, programming for linked and synced devices and household items.

As a side note, the company also said that it will stop accepting submissions from Android, desktop and tablet apps to its Marketplace starting Marth 29th this year, and that it will also remove apps that don’t support Firefox OS after that date.

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Mice Experiment Could Lead to Prolonging Human Lifespans

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Mice Experiment Could Lead to Prolonging Human Lifespans

Researchers have been at work with trying to do something relatively strange but this mice experiment could lead to prolonging human lifespans. For the past several months, scientists have been attempting to run a series of experiments on mice that involve clearing dead and retired cells from the animals’ bodies.

Because the same way as computer registries gather errors and corrupted sections the more you use a PC, the same way living bodies seem to be working. The cells in our body seem to slowly accumulate damage through the process of living itself. Because of the damage in their DNA, they could also develop into cancerous cells. While some cells manage to repair themselves, others self-destruct and lastly, some retire.

The process of cellular retirement involves a state where cells do not divide nor grow anymore and remain in a state known as senescence. As human beings age, the number of retired cells also accumulates and creates a great number of the changes that we see in the bodies of the elderly.

The scientists attempted to see just what impact these retired cells really do have on living animals by running an experiment on mice. For a few months-long period of time, they cleared the retired cells from the mice’s bodies repeatedly, then stopped to compare the results.

Two mice of the same genetic information and the exact same age – out of which only one had undergone the retired cell cleaning experiment – were thus compared and the results were astonishing. While the one that had not received the treatment has graying and deteriorating fur and developing cataracts in an eye, the other one looks as normal and as healthy as it had long before reaching old age.

By zapping the retired cells from the mice’s bodies, scientists were able to not only increase their lifespan by between 18 and 35 percent, but also keep them healthier and prevent a great number of diseases. Researchers stated that 18 months into their lives – and after having received 6 months of treatment – the mice that had been subjected to the experiment were a lot more active, seemed to maintain their kidney and heart functions a lot better and overall felt lively regardless of species or sexes of the mice.

The next step of the experiment is to see if starting such a treatment later could still earn beneficial effects and ‘undo’ age-related decline. If this technique will be applicable in human being, it could lead to being one of the biggest discovery in the past decade at least. However, humans are a lot trickier than rodents and applying the same kind of purging retired cell treatment could come with numerous side effects. So it’ll be a while until scientists manage to find a way to make it work for human beings.

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NASA Releases Photos of Charon Taken by New Horizons

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NASA Releases Photos of Charon Taken by New Horizons

NASA releases photos of Charon taken by New Horizons space shuttle and they depict the very dark and yet very beautiful nature of Pluto’s largest moon. The images were captures on July 17th during the 3 day long flyby of the probe as it was moving past Pluto. A total of 16 one-second exposure photos were taken using the shuttle’s Long Range Reconnaissance Orbiter from a whopping distance of 1.9 million miles even though New Horizons came as close as 7,800 miles from the surface of Pluto.

The images captured depict the night side of Charon, only distinguishable as it’s dimly lit by the light reflected off of the surface of Pluto and yet still shows just how battered and scarred the surface of the moon is. Graced by cryogeysers and cryovolcanoes, Charon is the largest and probably harshest of Pluto’s total of 5 moons.

The pictures that were taken have actually witnessed the south pole of Charon. This zone entered polar night all the way back in 1989 and is expected to last until 2107, when sunlight will be shed again on that side of the moon. Charon’s harsh ‘winter’ conditions makes up for temperatures nearly as low as absolute zero – minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit, which is believed to be the point where atoms stop moving.

The images taken this way are extremely rare and valuable as the New Horizons probe continues its trek past the far edges of our solar system and hoping to do a flyby of a small object dubbed KBO 2014 MU69 which can be found nearly 1 billion miles beyond Pluto. This is nearly a quarter of the distance between Earth and Pluto. The shuttle is expected to fly past it by January 1st of 2019.

For many years, Pluto and its moons have remained covered in mystery until the probe that was launched in 2006 made the entire trek all the way to the far end of the solar system to reveal a huge amount of information about the dwarf planet’s surface and composition as well as its tiny moons. Charon has a diameter of around 753 miles, exceeding by far the size of all of the other four – Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx. For example Hydra is 27 miles in its longest direction.

However, this may not be the last thing we see until the shuttle reaches its next destination as data is constantly being fed to the surface of the Earth by the probe, and images depicting the edge of the solar system will continue coming in until October this year.

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Facebook Is Making Changes to What It Shows You

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Facebook Is Making Changes to What It Shows You

In the continues battle to optimize and personalize each user’s experience, Facebook is making changes to what it shows you on its news feed. This has been a linear process over the past years, where the social media website has tried to find the most suitable method of making sure it delivers you the kind of information you truly are looking for.

If you recall the platform the way it was 6-7 years ago, you should also remember how it used to show you pretty much everything all your friends would post. Subtly, however, Facebook started changing and filtering out more and more of the posts that it detected as being less relevant for you. That happened for a good purpose – placing the content that the platform detected you were most interested in in the spotlight for you.

Nowadays, Facebook has decided to tweak the way preferred content is detected and displayed in order to improve the experience for its users. The company said that it now uses several factors – named signals by Facebook – that are meant to help detect the type of content you are interested in. Things such as pressing the like button, commenting, sharing and even clicking on posts will help determine your level of interest towards a person or topic.

These factors are split into two groups: firstly, the platform will try to determine what is the probability that you would like to see a particular story and afterwards attempt to detect what is the probability that you would also take action in regards to the story in question.

But while this cannot be any less than a great addition for casual users, it may imply radical changes for the other type of presence on Facebook – advertisers and the likes. Facebook Software Engineers Cheng Zhang and Si Chen have recently mentioned in an official post that as a result, some Pages may see some increase in referral traffic while others may find their traffic to plummet.

Usually, this may be the result of discrepancy between the clicks actually done on the particular page and the willingness that users actually have to see the posts and stories at the top of their list. Overall, however, this change should help balance the two types of factors that are taken into consideration when deciding what kind of information is being pushed to the top of individuals’ news feed.

This change comes after a rather long series of attempts done by the company to improve the user experience based on the type of content they are exposed to and the likeliness that they will spend more time on the website as a result.

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Xiaomi Mi 4C Review – The Android That Feels Like An iPhone

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Xiaomi Mi 4C Overview

It’s mere weeks until the release of the next in the Xiaomi Mi line – more specifically Xiaomi Mi 5 – and what better time to spare a glance to its predecessor, the Xiaomi Mi 4C? Every time a new device is released, the previous one in the hierarchy is more likely to receive a reduction in price, making it more affordable and a decent option, even if it’s not the hippest or newest.

The Xiaomi Mi 4C is yet another production that comes from China and hopes to breach into the western market by employing decent mid-range builds and particularly low prices. But like so many other smartphones that attempt to do the same, it comes with its own ups and downs. Being easily comparable to the Nexus 5X in terms of power and capability, but at about half that unit’s price, it would be highly understandable why the Xiaomi Mi 4C would appeal to anyone.

However, given the fact that it is, after all, a Chinese production, getting yourself one of the Xiaomi Mi 4C phones may prove to be difficult via your usual stores. There’s no way to find it in stores, leaving you with the only option to order it online. But seeing as most of the reliable sources will not be a place where you can find this particular smartphone, you may have to rely on a Chinese website that can deliver to the US.

That will, however, mean you should expect quite the shipping fees and a bit of hassle to get your hands on it so let’s see if what the Xiaomi Mi 4C has to offer is worth the wait.

Pros:

  • Affordable
  • Great display
  • Upgradeable to Android 6.0 Lollipop
  • Sleek design
  • USB Type C Charging

Cons:

  • Not stock Android OS
  • No microSD slot
  • Difficult to get
  • Missing some useful features you may not realize you need until you use this phone

Xiaomi Mi 4C Design

Xiaomi Mi 4C Design

While the Xiaomi Mi 4C is not the first successor of the original Mi 4 that was launched in July 2014, it could very well be considered so. Even though the Mi 4i was the first official upgrade that was brought to this particular line of smartphones, the 4c ended up as the true successor to the original Mi model, featuring a lot more capability.

Even though the Xiaomi Mi 4C isn’t that far off from being called a brand new release – it was first launched on the market in September 2015 – it fares very well from a design perspective. And I find that a difficult feat to achieve when you use polycarbonate plastic to build the entire exterior of the phone. Still, the Mi 4C manages to look very much like a well rounded and polished device.

Even though the manufacturer didn’t opt for metal in its build, Xiaomi Mi 4c’s design is defined by a matte finish. That comes with a great grip whenever you hold the phone, preventing it from slipping and making it feel extremely comfortable to the touch. Overall, the build feels sturdy and surprisingly, premium, while not skimping at all on compactness and reliability.

In terms of size, the Xiaomi Mi 4C measures 5.44 x 2.74 x 0.31 inches (138.1 x 69.6 x 7.8 mm). To give you an example that you can scale it with, it is very similar to the LG Nexus 5X. Alternatively, it’s considerably larger than the iPhone 5S for example, but has about the same thickness. The Mi 4C also weighs 132 grams, which is near identical to its LG counterpart, making is quite light and easy to hold.

There are a few questionable downsides for it – for example the non-removable back cover and the lack of a microSD slot. But other than that, the minimal design choices of the Xiaomi Mi 4C offer you great accessibility. The back of the device is where you’ll find the rear camera, with 3 rows of punctured speaker holes all the way at the bottom, right below the Mi logo.

Xiaomi Mi 4C Speaker

The right hand side of the smartphone hosts the power button and the one-piece volume rocker. The latter seems to have also gained the ability to be used to snap photos which is slightly unusual for what one would normally be accustomed to. Meanwhile, the left hand side is where you’ll find a dual-SIM card tray which can prove to be particularly useful for anyone who finds themselves always having to run around with multiple phones.

Xiaomi Mi 4C Side Buttons

Xiaomi Mi 4C Dual Sim

The dual-sim feature is one area where the western market doesn’t manage to do a great job, whereas for the Chinese manufacturers it’s quite common and often heard of. The top is where you’ll find a regular 3.5 mm headphone jack, as well as an IR blaster in case you ever need it. The bottom is home to the Type C USB port, which is still something yet to be adopted in all of the new mobile devices, so it’s a good reason to look forward to it.

Xiaomi Mi 4C Type C USB Charging

Still, the Xiaomi Mi 4C seems to lack many of the other newer features that are becoming standard for smartphones in the eyes of the customer. Things such as near field communication, fingerprint scanners or support for contactless Android Pay. This is very likely to be caused by the fact that while these features may be popular in the western market, in China individuals barely make use of them so manufacturers don’t bother to put them in their phones as a result.

The Xiaomi Mi 4C comes in 5 different color variations, which strongly resemble the color palette that was used in the iPhone 5C line of phones. While the plain black and white variants will most likely be to anyone’s liking, it’s safe to know that it also comes in pink, turquoise and yellow shades.

Xiaomi Mi 4C Color Variations

Xiaomi Mi 4C Display

The great design of the Xiaomi Mi 4C is complimented by an ISP LCD display that doesn’t skimp on size or quality. At 5 inches, the screen is marginally smaller than the one incorporated in the LG Nexus 5X. regardless, the display stretches nicely from edge to edge, giving the phone a 71.7% screen to body ratio.

Considering it has a maximum resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, that accounts for a 441 ppi pixel density value, once again offering a slight edge over its LG counterpart. Covered in a layer of oleophobic coating on top of the classic protection that the Corning Gorilla Glass 3 offers makes for a great backup against fingerprints and other types of smudges. However, it would appear that all that protection does not do an amazingly great job at preventing screen scratches so you may want to consider investing in screen protectors or cases if you are to purchase the Xiaomi Mi 4C.

Xiaomi Mi 4C Display

Some users may find that the display is a little shinier and reflective than they would wish for; certainly, it doesn’t do an amazing job at staying clear and crisp when trying to view content in broad daylight (and worse, direct sunlight) but the phone has a sunlight mode that can ease viewing things in brightly lit conditions. Even so, the experience won’t be amazing unless you crank up your brightness levels to the maximum.

The Xiaomi Mi 4C display scores 450 nits on the brightness scale and a 1609:1 contrast ratio, accounting for satisfyingly deep blacks. At an average deltaE for primary colors of 6.6, the Xiaomi Mi 4C has been called on not producing the most accurate colors out there. While the natural tendency of the colors on this phone is to go towards bluish hues, the Mi 4C offers a slider option that will allow you to change the colors to warmer if you like to do so.

Xiaomi Mi 4C Specifications & Performance

Xiaomi Mi 4C Specifications & Performance

In comparison to the previous iteration of the Xiaomi Mi 4, the Mi 4C is a huge upgrade to say the least.  With pieces of hardware at least a few generations ahead than the ones found on its predecessor, the latter offers great performance and capability. Even so, however, the Xiaomi Mi 4C should not be considered more than a mid-range device as it won’t come very close to the flagship devices companies such as Samsung or Apple make.

Still, this is the short list of what you can find inside the Xiaomi Mi 4C: Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 MSM8992 chipset, a hex-core CPU, Adreno 418 graphics processing unit, 16/32 GB of hard drive space and 2/3 GB of RAM. There seems to be a slight difference between the specifications you’ll get on the 16GB version than the ones you get on the 32; a bit odd but the differences are far from major.

The hex-core processing unit consists of a quad-core 1.44 GHz Cortex-A53, along with a dual-core 1.82 Ghz Cortex-A57. The Adreno 418 GPU that comes with it is what I would call a little old but still loyal piece of technology. There will be a very clear limit to what games you can and cannot play, and the limit is set somewhere around the late 2014 mark. The games that came out up until then should run on high quality with no problem. Take it up a notch with later releases and your experience may not be equally great.

The storage options on the Xiaomi Mi 4C are sadly limited, only offering you either a 16 GB or a 32 GB version. In the absence of micro-SD based storage expansion, things don’t look very well if you’re looking for more. While you do get 1 extra gigabyte of RAM on the 32 GB version, you should take into account the fact that it only really comes into action when you stress the capabilities of your phone.

Unless you’re running an unfeasible amount of apps at a given moment, the 2 GB phone will perform decently throughout the day no matter what you choose to do.

Xiaomi Mi 4C Software & Features

Xiaomi Mi 4C Software

The Xiaomi Mi 4C unfortunately doesn’t use a stock Android operating system, but then again that’s the case with most devices manufactured by Chinese phone makers. While the phone comes with the Android 5.1 Lollipop base OS, Xiaomi uses a custom designed user interface known as MIUI 7. Before we delve into the custom interface in detail, you should know that the Xiaomi Mi 4C can be updated to the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow now, so you should be able to enjoy what that has to offer.

If there’s anything turns out to be a bit of a hindrance on the Mi 4C, it’s the fact that you won’t immediately have access to the standard Google apps such as the Play Store as soon as you take the phone out of the box. However, it’s no end of the world as you can easily download them right away and start setting up your new smartphone home just as easily.

MIUI 7 is a relatively clean user interface that changes the way things look a fair amount, resorting to icons that highly resemble the Apple iOS design. Not only that but the mere way things look when you interact with the operating system also feels a lot like navigating around an iPhone. Not only that everything runs smoothly, but the way the phone responds is very fluid (think about scrolling down through menus on an iPhone).

Xiaomi Mi 4C MIUI 7

The MIUI 7 doesn’t employ the use of app drawers like regular Android phones do, and instead chooses to arrange your apps and shortcuts on your homescreen. Once again highly resembling the iOS model, the user interface will display tiny badges to let you know certain apps have unchecked notifications on them – such as unread messages, missed calls and so on.

But while the entire operating system may feel like it’s downright copied after what makes iOS what it is, it still adds a great amount of Android user favorite features. To name a couple, that would be a high degree of customization and the entire notification system.

But MIUI 7 has its own say in the matter as well, bringing a few neat tricks for you to make use of and transform your experience using this phone into an easy to use and comfortable one. What Xiaomi calls ‘Edge Controls’ is the particular feature that allows you to perform different action by tapping on the side of your phone a certain number of times. The phone also allows you to change the default application of the edge controls the way you like it, opting out of using them for things such as moving back through the interface or snapping photos when the camera app is open.

Last but not least, you should know that MIUI 7 allows you to unroot the phone. If you choose to flash the global stable ROM, all you need to do is download the file to the phone’s storage and then run the MIUI 7 Updater. This will remove your previously installed non-core apps along with the original bloatware that comes with the system, but you can easily get them back afterwards via a program that you can find on the Mi Market.

Xiaomi Mi 4C Camera

Xiaomi Mi 4C Camera

Although I realize it’s purely biased of me to say that the presence of cameras on phones has become purely trivial and not something that people still give too much credit to. It’s common knowledge that good photos will never be the result of a phone camera, and yet – seeing that it’s more likely that wherever you go, you’ll have your phone on you and not your professional DSLR, chances are you’ll use the Xiaomi Mi 4C camera at least several times.

And that is one aspect where you should feel relieved at least. The way that Chinese manufacturers manage to reduce the price on their units so much is by cutting corners on particular pieces in their builds; sometimes it’s the display, other times it’s the chipset or even the materials used in its construction. More often than not however, it’s the camera that gets the brunt of that. Well, not in Xiaomi Mi 4C’s case.

The quality of the photos taken with the 13 megapixel rear camera was surprising to say the least, featuring rich colors, a great amount of detail and sharpness. To compare it to its western brother, the LG Nexus 5X, the camera on the Mi 4C is greatly superior in almost every perspective. Starting with the time it takes for the autofocus to kick in, even in harsher light conditions and ending with the fact that it can shoot in 1080p, its performance is top notch given the price class of the phone.

There’s a whole lot of editing and control packed in the camera software that the Xiaomi Mi 4C offers. On top of the regular shooting modes and filters, you also get to adjust white balance, ISO and much more.

Xiaomi Mi 4C Battery Life

Although it’s non-removable, the battery pack that comes with the Xiaomi Mi 4C is surprisingly powerful. The 3,080 mAh battery will keep your phone going for outstanding periods of time if you’re a light user. If you just use it to reply to texts, make an occasional call, check your email and maybe look something up on the internet, the phone could easily last almost 2 days on a single, full charge.

Video playback can last you up to 6 hours on default screen brightness. There is a number of software features that allow you to reduce your battery usage; while reducing the brightness of the display is your easiest, go-to option to save up some battery, you can also set the phone to cut down a little on performance in order to also consume less.

And of course, because the Xiaomi Mi 4C uses a Type-C USB cable that is capable of fast charging, you can actually get a full charge going in 1.5 – 2 hours.

Xiaomi Mi 4C Verdict

So far and by all means, almost everything contained in this phone is definitely a good reason for you to purchase it, especially if you’re not looking for the high end flagships and the state of the art devices on the market. The manufacturer seems to have managed to pull off creating a great device without cutting too many corners, that is both responsive and quite sleek.

The problem with the Xiaomi Mi 4C is, however, the fact that it is after all a device designed for the Chinese market. That being said, it may have some features that you’re not very accustomed to and at the same time lack some things that you feel like you can’t live without in 2016 anymore. Not to mention that in order to get things as comfortable as you can, you will need to do some manual tweaking.

You can purchase the Xiaomi Mi 4C for roughly $229 from select retailers in both the United States (when in stock) or, alternatively, from Chinese online stores.

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WhatsApp Is Finally Free to Use

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WhatsApp is finally free to use, and the company has big plans for further updates.

After many years during which we had to pay $0.99 every twelve months, WhatsApp is finally free to use. The announcement was made by Jan Koum, CEO and one of the co-founders of the company during the DLD 2016 conference held in Munich. As a result, WhatsApp will search for new ways of getting in contact with the users.

Even though the cheap annual subscription fee was more symbolic, users will be relieved when they will find out they no longer need to pay it. However, in its place, the company might place adverts and sponsored messages, which might prove even more annoying. Fortunately, this is not the case as WhatsApp has reassured us. Not only would the application be a useless place for such ads, but there is no way the company could make them valuable. Since their communications are encrypted end-to-end, WhatsApp cannot scan for keywords which are used in adverts.

Furthermore, as the company was bought by Facebook in February 2014 for $19.3 billion, there are plans of integration between both platforms. However, data sharing is excluded and thus there will be no way advertisers can use Facebook likes to serve ads.

So what does WhatsApp plan? It seems the company will focus on the communication between users and certain businesses and organizations, for instance banks or airlines. You might soon be able to talk to your bank about a fraudulent transaction or with an airline about cancelling your flight. This is not the first time someone thought about this idea. Facebook is already testing this feature for its new app Facebook M, and Google is currently developing a similar application. We can expect Facebook M to be somehow integrated into WhatsApp.

Jan Koum had also made some references to the fact that the company is working on several improvements, such as video-calling. As a result, the application is expected to become a fierce contender against other services like Skype, iMessage, Google Hangouts and FaceTime.

WhatsApp is a communication platform working as part of a certain subscription business model. Its users can send various messages, images, videos, recordings and locations from their smartphones. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, WhatsApp has been growing the number of its users, thus reaching about 900 million in September 2015, and becoming the most popular messaging application worldwide.

While WhatsApp is finally free to use, it might take quite some time for other features to be released. Both WhatsApp and Facebook have a history of slow updates, but it will surely be worth the wait.

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Impressive Machine Learning Dataset Released by Yahoo

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The impressive machine learning dataset released by Yahoo will lead researchers to new discoveries in the field.

As the competition between technology corporations becomes fiercer with each passing day, companies are trying to get the support of the research community. The impressive machine learning dataset released by Yahoo can surely prove this point. The announcement was made this morning through a blog post of the company.

So what does the 13.5 TB dataset contain? The information is focused on the interaction between Yahoo users over the course of four months, from February 2015 to May 2015. It seems 20 million users have accessed the Yahoo websites, including its homepage, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Real Estate, Yahoo Sports and more. Researchers will be able to conduct studies using the new data that refers to device information, key phrases and the age, gender and summary of users. Thus they will be able to find certain patterns in the field of machine learning.

The director of personalization science of Yahoo Labs, Suju Rajan, stated that such data is crucial in research projects of machine learning. Unfortunately, this type of information was only provided to data scientists and machine learning researchers who work at big companies. This will change with the impressive machine learning dataset released by Yahoo, which will be available to academic researchers as well. Furthermore, freelancers will also have access to the it. This will truly continue with important discoveries, as scientists can finally test the theories they have known for so long.

For the moment, we know that some of those who will use this data are from the San Diego based University of California, the Data Science Center of UMass Amherst and the Carnegie Mellon University. Their knowledge areas such as information retrieval, machine learning and artificial intelligence will surely be improved. On Yahoo’s part, the company wants to better understand processes like computational advertising and search ranking, apart from the ones listed above.

Yahoo is not the first corporation to attempt to help the research field. Google, Amazon Machine Learning, IBM Watson and Azure Machine Learning are all working hard to improve their services as well as increase their profits. The announcement of Yahoo also made reference to the purpose of their release: inspiring scientists and researchers to prove their previous theories by testing them in a practical environment.

The impressive machine learning dataset released by Yahoo can be accessed at the Yahoo Webscope website here: https://webscope.sandbox.yahoo.com. It seems technology advancement never takes a break, as every day we receive new information on its progress. With this particular new tool, researchers will surely stay busy for the next period.

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Segway and Intel Built a Cute Robot that You can Ride

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Segway and Intel Built a Cute Robot that You can Ride

It looks like Plank from Ed, Edd n Eddy.

Segway and Intel built a cute robot that you can ride – it was unveiled at CES, just moments ago.

Segway has been often ridiculed for their products. The personal transportation device is mostly seen used by somewhat overweight tourists that don’t really like to put walking in the walking tour.

Segway doesn’t like that, and this cute ridable robot might just change everybody’s perception of the company. The two-wheeled scooter turns into a mini-butler when not used for riding around the city.

Looking like something out of hipster-heaven, the Ninebot Segway was built in collaboration with Intel and Xiaomi and can reach speeds of up to 18km/h and travel a distance of 30km on a single charge.

When the user arrives at the destination, the Ninebot Segway turns into this little cute robot that has a screen for a head, and, get this, arms!

Yet, its arms come separately, and they have to be slapped onto the critter’s back. Its hands are Lego-like, and they’re not much of use besides picking up cups or holding groceries. Yet, the latter would require some placement skill on behalf of the owner.

Ninebot is backed by Xiaomi and Intel. The robotics startup, which acquired Segway in April of 2015, developed the little robot to sense its surroundings, recognise people, voices and objects. It can also perform a variety of tasks via a dev kit.

It’s not just awesome to ride on, but it can help with menial tasks. It has been seen taking photos and videos of its owners, carrying shopping bags from the market to its home, as well as observing the world with its two sparkling circles that it uses for eyes.

The Segway Robot speaks in the usual monotone robotic voice and it can recognize voice commands. We don’t know for sure, but we think that the internet-connected camera on its face will be able to share all of your pics and videos to social media platforms as well as perform other tasks.

A developer kit will be released in the second half of 2016, while the commercial version of the product will launch at the end of 2016, with rumours noting that a possible early 2017 date not out of the question.

Ninebot, which has announced that will adopt the Segway name and become part of the Segway covenant, has also announced that this isn’t the last venture with Intel and Middle Kingdom smartphone behemoth Xiaomi.

With cute little robots swarming our homes in 2016, and early 2017, we are just super curious to find out when a better A.I. will be implemented so we actually feel like we’re talking to a faux human being.

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