The Apple watch had been on the news for a while now and since then, a lot of companies have begun their development of smart watch technology. The upcoming Huawei smart watch for their Android Wear tech have been hitting the news lately. The tech company’s strategy to adapt designs for their female audience proved largely well received. In addition, there is now plans for interesting new modifications for their second release in the pipeline. Looking at what Apple is doing, Huawei provides similar options for people to select the type of accessories that comes with the watch. With plans to allow customisation to watch faces and colour palettes, there is diversity for buyers. This emerging competition inevitably benefits buyers after all.
To move with ease and freedom
Technology, innovation and creativity are potentially the main ingredients to the solution of our future. With these elements, we are able to provide better solutions for those who are less fortunate. As able people, we do not see the possible difficulties that people on wheelchairs would feel. Unfortunately, to travel around in New York City, it could prove to be a daunting task for wheel chair users. Wheel NY, a new Kickstarter project, aims to bring on a less time consuming experience and easier transport solution for wheel chair users by collating all accessibility information together from various sources.
It will help users to plan much easier and earlier in order to forecast possible obstacles that may come. With the maps section, one could not only plan, they can also check to see if there are broken lifts, damaged pathways or cracked sidewalks that would deem unfit for wheelchairs along the way. Now, with the ability to get real-time updates on these accessibility statuses, the disabled would now be able to open up to more places. It opens up many possibilities for the disabled. They can now feel more than just the joy of having a nice movie or a great meal, but also a taste of transport freedom. It is a dream come true.
The current Kickstarter project status requires $50,000 to fund the app and web development. Currently running $40,000 short with approximately two weeks more to go, it hopes to have more people contributing as the bulk of these funds would go to a team of 4-5 responsible to bring this idea to live from ideation to design and eventually the development and launch. Definitely a great app with the ability to make a change to the world. It also has one of the key characteristics of a well planned mobile app – Scalability. One of the key considerations was the adaptation of this app onto other cities, helping the rest of world’s disabled people to regain their mobility freedom.
Robot fun
Feeling left out not being able to attend summer camp? Would you resort to having a robot to represent you being there at the party itself? I’m sure most people might not do so. The Social Robot was created to allow teenagers to be a part of the summer camp in the event that they could not take part in the activity. They now control robots navigating it around the school, using it to communicate with their friends, watching shows or even join competitions. I loved the idea of being part of the experience and bringing it home. However, the idea of this robot being you and you being not there instead of a robot, is just not so cool in my opinion. I highly doubt the success of this innovative effort. Then, I must admit it is a very good effort to bring joy for everyone regardless of any situation. The robots were made to be stars of the shows and publicity was thrown on the media for them. As I have mentioned earlier on, I have my reservations on Coca-Cola’s marketing efforts this time round.
Show me only what I want
Pinterest being one of the most popular social platforms around has gotten quite a huge following over the last couple of years. Apparently, as they grew in size, the amount of information on the space expands and tend to overload users with too much content. Some of which are relevant while the rest might be just spam content for others. In order to deliver a much more personalized experience, Pinterest is now seeking new ways to do content filtration through some experiments in the coming weeks. Pinterest will now track your web history and then display pins that would interest you while filtering those you might not be interested in. As much as Pinterest is aware that not everyone is cool with the idea of having someone looking at their browsing activity, they respect your privacy by allowing you to skip that with the “Do Not Track” option. While these are functions that social sites like Twitter already has, do you think this is an ideal way to filter content to get users interested?
Geek chic
Who do you mix with during your college years? Is it the craziest bunch of wild after school party goers or the studios bunch of geeks in school? Well, you would probably also see a big difference in terms of fashion between these two extreme groups of people. You wouldn’t expect the geeky bunch to have that ‘wild’ dress sense and pretty much also explains why tech geeks are motivated in producing great gadgets but lacking that eye for making it ‘cool’ looking. Google has a knack for making awesome new inventions but it’s Google Glass design is lacking that appeal for a truly fashionable design. The headset is arguably so ugly that no one would bother wearing it. Now, thats where the crazy wild party goers, the designers decided to make it look like a stylish pair of glasses. One that Colin Firth would wear. Software development startup Sourcebits has came up with a nice designer concept for Glass. Check them out below.
Creative director Benjamin George explains: “Google Glass right now has an uneven weight distribution because all the tech is packed on one side whereas we have split it to both frame handles which logically made sense to reduce the thickness. Dual touch pads are an added benefit to cater to both right and left handed users.”
Zack Chia 