Google tech exhibits augmented vision

Google has applied with the US Patent and Trademark Office for a new technology that will allow users wearing Google Glass-like device get information about objects within their line of vision, International Business Times reported.

Titled “Self-Describing 3D Object Recognition and Control Descriptors for Augmented Reality Interfaces,” the technology will “provide for the detection and recognition of target devices by a mobile computing device”, the patent description said.

According to the patent, the technology can only work for objects “within a pre-defined local environment”. It means that it will work in locations where Google Glass already has the information for every object that is there.



According to media reports, Google may also be testing the next version of the Google Glass called GG1. Google has a new eye wearable device in the works under the latest US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filing, which “might just be a new Google Glass”, Droid Life reported.

The FCC tests electronic products to ensure that they are safe for human contact. Google withdrew the eye-wearable device from the market in January this year but reports said that the US tech giant was planning to come up with a different version of the wearable headset.
IANS

Read More

Amazon is offering - wearables fitbit leader on july 1st--- lets see the exciting offers

 

Earlier this month, IDC said second portable device Xiaomi is shipped worldwide over the world. Given that Xiaomi is a relatively new product with significant scope and remembrance in markets such as India, the world leader in wearable, Fitbit has been evaluating its entry into India since last year.



In an interview to Indian Express, Steve Morley, vice president and general manager - Asia Pacific Fitbit confirmed that Amazon will store Fitbit full from 1 July Fitbit specializes in wearable catering to a wide range of consumers - amateur professional athletes.

Late last month, Fitbit was accused by his rival of trying to steal confidential data core businesses of the jawbone Jawbone.



The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges Fitbit engaged in a clandestine effort to steal talent, trade secrets and intellectual property. A number of recently deceased employees use USB flash drives and other tactics to take information about the supply chain of the jaw, gross margins, product line and market forecasts, the lawsuit said
.

Fitbit, which makes two bracelets and clippable devices that monitor a user's physical activity, filed for an initial public offering earlier this month. The company revenues nearly tripled to $ 745.4 million in 2014 and a gain of $ 131.8 million was recorded.

Read More

see a latest news, that don't install any beta software your primary devices

Also an  experienced developers sometimes can use reminding not to install beta software on their most required devices.



Now that the WWDC keynote is a fading memory, Apple has released new beta versions of OS X and iOS 9 to registered developers. And the first reaction of many of us, even those of us really experienced with these things, is to get immersed in the new technology as fast as possible. So please remember, even if you know what you're doing, do not install beta software on your primary devices.





"But I'm at WWDC and I won't be back to the office until next week, and I have to get a leg up on coding with the new stuff this week!"



"But I don't have a secondary system to install the new betas on."
The reasons for not listening to what I'm saying are long, and I'll be the first to admit that I don't always practice what I preach.
So don't take this as me telling you unequivocally not to install the beta. I'd never presume to know anyone's reason for installing beta software. Just please use caution and look before you leap.




Make sure that  your device is backed up, make sure that backup is good, and make sure it's something you can live with being a brick in the event of a major catastrophe, at least until you have a chance to restore it.



WWDC 2015
WWDC 2015
WWDC 2015 hub
iOS 9 hub
OS X 10.11 hub
Apple Watch hub
Swift hub

Read More

Wear Android Vs Apple Watch: A Sensibility Analysis

Before Apple declared its first SmartWatch Tuesday, some technology experts were convinced that Apple could reimagine a way that no other smartwatches have portable technology. Some speculate if the end product would feature a clock at all, or even have a screen.

In fact, Apple recently announced Track is not a major exit from current smartwatches especially those running the Google Android platform Wear. It's more of a clarification, with some clever ideas that will help Apple stand out. Instead back to the competition, Apple has shown them the way to go.

With this in mind, let's break down exactly what the watch Apple and Android Wear what will compete.

Layout

Give credit to Apple for this: Their watches look sharp, at least given the condition of current technology, with lots of styles of the watch and web materials. Apple also did the smart thing and large and small sizes of watches declared, recognizing that not all dolls are the same.

Can Android Wear come back? In theory, Google should have no trouble matching Apple in front of customiz. Android Wear is available for a wide range of device manufacturers and fashion brands. (Fossils, for example, is expected to release a device Android Wear later this year.) But so far, the options are limited, and no one has managed to make Android Wear a watch that looks great on smaller wrists.

Mobile Premium And Passage

23

With a clock Apple, users can pay in certain stores without taking anything out of pocket, rather touching her wrists against the terminals of payment accepted. The watch also provide quick approach to Passbook for tickets, boarding passes and fidelity cards. If it works as advertised, it could be one of the best appearance of Apple Watch.

Can Android Wear respond? Google has a crucial problem here in that wireless providers have conspired against competing payment service Google Wallet for his own solution. may be Apple's presence will drive approval of tap-to-pay terminals lower, but there is no guarantee you will get Google Wallet broad support you need. Moreover, it is a moot point unless Use Android watches begin shipping with support NFC.

Strength

Accelerometer and heart rate monitor Apple Watch is not very different from what is available in Android Wear devices, but Apple plans to combine these data together in a more coherent way. Instead of just counting steps and check your pulse, the clock must difference between the movement and vigorous exercise by factoring in heart rate data, and let you know when you've been sitting for too long.

22

Can Android Wear respond? In theory, there is nothing to prevent Google or third-party designers to create similar applications for Android Wear and upcoming GPS support will at least allow users to track their race distance without having a phone with them. But so far, no wear applications that constantly monitor your overall fitness at the same level as Apple View assurance.

Communications

Watch Apple will have a speaker and a microphone, so that users can answer calls from a nearby phone and use the clock as a walkie-talkie wrist wheels. See Apple users can also draw little pictures for each other, and answer text messages with voice, emoji, or predefined answers that change depending on what you've written in the past.

Can Android Wear respond? Currently, Android Wear admits no speakers, so phone calls are out of the question. And evaluated to Apple's approach, responses rigid Android Wear text seems impersonal. While Android Wear is useful to shoot fast text messages and emails voice has much work to do on the front communication.

Reports

Like Android Wear, clock Apple will give actionable reports, allowing you to respond to messages, calendar appointments and mentions of your wrist social communication media quickly. Application designers can customize the appearance of these notifications too.

Can Android Wear respond? Actionable reports are a important feature of Android Wear, and some popular applications like Twitter and WhatsApp are already taking full benifit of the software. Google has a solid support to build on, but could give users more control over the frequency and importance of reports.

Battery

Apple is not talking details about the battery life, but says the clock Apple should last all day and is easy to carry a wireless dock included. To preserve battery life, the screen remains off until the wrist nancy.

25Can Android Wear respond? It already has. While all current Android Use clocks require a charge for the night, the Moto 360 makes it easier with wireless support.

Where Stands Android Wear

Clearly, the capacity and the design of the Apple Watch go ahead what Google has done with Android Wear. But in a way, that's an advantage that Google may explode. While the clock Apple has a lot of ideas and layered interface to dig through, Android Wear is designed to need very little interaction, providing useful information at the right time.

If Google can refine the product to match their vision, Android Wear will remain a probable Apple Guard response. With Apple first unusable due to launch until next year, there is plenty of time for Google and its hardware partners for to get it right.

Read More

NHS embraces wearable health devices such as the Apple Watch to improve care

Wearable devices to monitor our health and vital signs are being enthusiastically embraced by the top brass of the NHS. There is not a trace of old-fashioned fustiness or scepticism in their attitude to new gadgetry. NHS England’s chief executive Simon Stevens and its medical director Sir Bruce Keogh are both keen to explore what technology can do for us and for those who take care of us when we are sick. No surprise there – the truth is the NHS needs all the help it can get.





What will help most is if patients take better care of their own health and avoid getting ill in the first place. That’s where the Apple Watch comes in. Like a number of other devices on the market, it monitors a user’s activity levels, counts calorie expenditure, and registers heart rate – a personal trainer strapped to your wrist. The built-in incentives and the shame factor of knowing you have hardly moved from your chair all day will undoubtedly work for some, but it is those most motivated to be fit and healthy who are likely to be the ones who will buy it. If you don’t really want to take more exercise, it’s fairly unlikely you will fork out the cash.

Apple Watch: available 24 April for between $349 and $17,000





 Read more
But the NHS is targeting new health technology on those who already have health issues. NHS Choices already has a page on health and fitness trackers that suggests free downloadable apps to help those who want to quit smoking or lose weight. It mentions MyFitnessPal, meal planners and the Couch to 5K running podcasts.




By the end of this month, there are plans to have a mental health apps library on Choices, a response to the growing evidence that people with depression and anxiety find online therapies helpful. And the National Information Board has set up a taskforce to review and then kite-mark health apps of all kinds, which by the end of the year – it is hoped – will be listed in the NHS Choices apps library.

Advertisement



Some of those apps will collect data that should enable NHS doctors to know more about a patient’s health without calling him or her in for an appointment. The future envisaged by Keogh and Stevens has sufferers of conditions such as heart disease, liver failure, diabetes or asthma remaining in their own home without the need for a sudden ambulance dash to hospital when their condition deteriorates. They would wear sensors, devices around their wrists or other parts of their body or even clothes with built-in sensor capacity that can detect worrying symptoms and then transmit a message to hospital, perhaps via a mobile phone. It would alert nursing staff and doctors, who would then visit and aim to sort things out in the home.





The Apple Watch may have an element of status or fun to it, but for hard-pressed health services all over the world, devices that work on the same principle – able to monitor our health (and sound the alarm if necessary) – offer a potential life-raft.

Read More

Apple Watch Vs. Swiss-Made Smartwatches: 5 Classy Alternatives To Apple’s Timepiece

At Baselworld 2015, an annual exhibition in Basel, Switzerland, there are plenty of watches to see from traditional watchmakers. But, this year, some are turning their attention toward smartwatches, a market the Apple Watch is expected to spur to a significant degree when it launches in April.




Watchmakers last year played down the impact of smartwatches as mostly a gimmick that wouldn’t replace classic timepieces. “This watch has no sex appeal,” Jean-Claude Biver, CEO of Tag Heuer, said of the Apple Watch in an interview with Die Welt. “It’s too feminine and looks too much like the smartwatches already on the market.”



Since then, Tag Heuer and several other companies have changed course, looking to get a piece of a global market that is expected explode to $8.7 billion in 2015, compared with $1.3 billion in 2014, according to the research firm Smartwatch Group.

Although some watchmakers initially scoffed at the notion of smartwatches, their remarks may indicate fears that history could be about to repeat itself. The so-called Quartz Crisis of the 1970s and ’80s saw Switzerland’s mechanical-watch industry devastated by the rise of quartz watches made by Japan’s Seiko Epson Corp. and others. During that time, Swiss watchmaker employment fell to 28,000 from a high of 90,000, according to WatchTime. But the industry eventually rebounded as the watch became more of a luxury item.



Smartwatches such as the Apple Watch aren’t expected to affect the business of luxury mechanical watchmakers whose products cost $5,000-plus apiece. But for those below that price point, there could be some concerns, especially because watches priced under 3,000 Swiss francs ($3,076) accounted for 94 percent of the 28.6 million units exported from Switzerland in 2014, according to the data of Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry. However, the lower-price watches  accounted for only 34 percent of the value of total Swiss watch exports last year, 21 billion Swiss francs ($21.53 billion).



“For companies that have more mass-market appeal, they’re afraid of losing out on their market share,” said Kelly Jasper, associate editor of Hodinkee, a watch-focused online magazine. “And [they’re trying] to reposition themselves to take advantage of this new opportunity.”

While it’s likely this isn’t the last of what Switzerland will have to offer in smartwatches, here is a closer look at some of the big names launching devices in 2015.

Tag Heuer



Tag Heuer announced Thursday its plans to develop its own smartwatch in partnership with the Intel Corp. and Google Inc. Intel is expected to help on the hardware side, while Google will provide software through Android Wear. Officially, Tag Heuer hasn’t said much beyond that. But the smartwatch could wind up as a digital version of its popular line of Carrera watches, according to Reuters. Prices and specific features remain under wraps, but the company expects to launch a product in the fourth quarter.



Instead of ditching the analog movement of a mechanical timepiece, Breitling took a balanced approach with the B55, which it calls a connected watch. Built of black carbon-coated titanium, the watch with a diameter of 46 millimeters sports a blue rubber strap on the outside. And rather than replace the face with a touch screen, it has two backlit liquid-crystal displays that can show a number of functions and measurements. When not in use, its lithium-ion battery can be juiced up with its magnetic charger.

Unlike other watches made by Breitling, the B55 connects to a smartphone via Bluetooth, which can be used to adjust the watch’s settings and upload various measurements. While official pricing has yet to be announced, it’s expected to be somewhere in the area of $8,000.

Frederique Constant Horological Smartwatch

Also taking the traditional look coupled with smartwatch features is Frederique Constant, which unveiled its Horological Smartwatch Thursday. Sporting an analog watch face, the handmade smartwatch can also measure activity and track sleep, which can be transmitted to a companion application on either an Android or an iOS device.

Sales of the smartwatch will begin in June, with prices starting at 950 euros ($1,028) -- and 1,250 euros ($1,353) for the Rose Gold model -- according to CNet

The Swatch Touch Zero One, unveiled ahead of Baselworld, isn’t an attempt to match the likes of Apple and Motorola with a fully featured smartwatch. Instead, it’s more of an update to its predecessor -- the Swatch Touch. While it retains all the features of its predecessor, including a curved screen and fitness tracking, it also has a number of functions for beach volleyball, such as power hits and power claps.

All that information can be downloaded to a companion smartphone app. And like many Swatch watches, it can last multiple months without a battery replacement. The company is also preparing to launch another watch in coming months with near-field-communication technology, which can be used for contactless payments and opening doors.

The fashion house Gucci is also getting into the smartwatch market with its own smartband, currently in development with the Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am. Unlike most smartwatches, however, the Gucci band will be able to work independently of a smartphone. Some of its functions include taking calls, sending messages and fitness tracking, according to Vogue.

It’s another take on the Puls cuff-style smartwatch launched by Will.i.am in October. The launch date and pricing of the Gucci smartband have yet to be announced.

Baselworld began Thursday and continues through March 26.

Read More

About 40 percent proprietor interested in Apple Watch: poll

Apple Watch

(Reuters) - About 40 percent of adult Apple iPhone owners in the United States are interested in buying the company's new Apple Watch, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The high-tech smartwatch, which will range in price from $350 to $17,000 for an 18-karat gold model, is Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) first major new product in five years and consumer demand for the device is being closely watched by competitors and investors.

Apple iPhone owners 

Owners of the iPhone are the  important market for Apple as it launches the new watch, which goes on sale April 24. Because the watch needs an iPhone to work fully, analysts say the most likely pool of initial buyers will already have an Apple smartphone in their pockets.

BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk said that with more than 100 million active iPhone users in the United States and closer to half a billion globally, the survey was "pretty encouraging" for a product that has not been seen in shops, even if was unclear how much of the interest would translate into purchases.

Pacific Crest Securities analyst Andrew Hargreaves said it was not clear how many people wanted or needed a smartwatch. But he expected Apple's cache and marketing might to deliver strong initial sales of the Apple Watch.

proprietor interested in Apple Watch“Winning Apple customers is more realistic at this point,” said Hargreaves.

The watch allows users to check email, listen to music and make phone calls.

Ipsos surveyed 2,469 Americans aged 18 and older online between March 9 and March 17 and found that 24 percent expressed an interest in purchasing the Apple Watch, including 10 percent of those describing themselves as “very interested.” The data was weighted to reflect the U.S. population and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

Among the iPhone owners, 39 percent were interested in

buying  the Apple watch, including 17 percent describing themselves as very interested. There were 788 iPhone owners in the survey with a credibility interval of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Discussions about the watch have flooded online social media channels such as Twitter andFacebook since Apple held a splashy event in San Francisco on March 9 to showcase the watch.

Social media chatter about the Apple watch was 15 percent positive and 5 percent negative in the week following Apple’s event, according to an analysis that the firm Networked Insights conducted for Reuters. The remaining 80 percent was neutral. By contrast, the social conversation for Apple’s iPhone 6 during the same week was 5 percent positive and 0 percent negative, according to the analysis.

Among the conversations relating to the Apple watch during the one-week period, 5.8 percent of the comments showed an intent to purchase, according to Networked Insights, which analyzes tweets, public Facebook posts and other sources. Social comments about the iPhone 6, which has been on sale since September, showed a 2.9 percent purchase intent during the same week.

Apple is among several large tech companies looking to jumpstart a new market for “wearable” electronic devices. Samsung Electronics(005930.KS), Sony Corp(6758.T) and LG Electronics (066570.KS) have all released their own smartwatches, many of them powered by software developed by Internet company Google Inc (GOOGL.O).

More than half of iPhone users in the Reuters/Ipsos survey believe that a smartwatch in the near future will be an essential gadget that’s as common as the smartphone, whereas 44 percent a broader poll of U.S. adults felt that way.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic, editing by Peter Henderson and Bernard Orr)

Read More