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LATEST IN WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY

Wear a Fin

You don't need to fear losing your credit cards as you may soon be wearing them as wristbands and swipe them to pay for everything you purchase credit card on wrist.

Barclays, a London-based multinational banking and financial services company, has developed a wearable device that can act as your virtual wallet and give cashless transactions a boost.

Called bPay bands, they can be just swiped by the wearer over a terminal at a shop or pay point on the bus or station platform to make a purchase.The waterproof bands, that can be worn all day long, contain a computer chip and micro-aerial to communicate with terminals.They can also replace conventional plastic cards by allowing people to make purchases much more quickly than normal because users do not need to use a four-digit PIN.“The money or information you need during the day will be integrated into a single device like bPay band — from your travel card to your gym membership to the money for your coffee and lunch,” a Barclays spokesman was quoted as saying in media reports.According to Valerie Soranno Keating, chief executive officer of Barclaycard, the firm is working with retailers and consumers to win acceptance of the technology.

Agencies

Now, wear your credit card on your wrist

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Last year when he was appointed the product head for key Google products like Android, Search, Maps, etc, Bloomberg called Sundar Pichai "the most powerful man in mobile." On August 11, 2015, the title has become official as Larry Page has handed over the title of Google CEO to the Chennai-born engineer with an eye for product development.

Pichai's story seems straight out of a Bollywood flick, a tale of a boy born without a silver spoon in the mouth going to achieve one of the most coveted positions in the world through sheer hard work.

Pichai was born in Chennai, a city of 4 million in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. His mother worked as a stenographer before she had children; his father was an electrical engineer for the British conglomerate GEC and managed a factory that made electrical components.
The family of four lived in a two-room apartment, with Sundar and his younger brother sleeping in the living room. During much of his childhood, the Pichais didn't have a television or a car. For transportation, the choice was either one of the crowded, stifling city buses or the family's blue Lambretta scooter. All four would pile on — Regunatha driving, Sundar standing at the front, and his younger brother perched on the back of the seat with their mother.
The Pichais got their first telephone, a rotary, when Sundar was 12. The phone revealed to him the magical conveniences of technology, as well as an unusual gift: He could remember every number he ever dialed. "My uncle would call up and say, 'Hey, I lost this phone number, but you once helped me dial it,' and I would be able to tell him," Pichai says. "I wasn't so sure that was useful.

It is now: Google executives marvel at Pichai's powers of numerical recall. Alan Eustace, vice president for engineering, says that during a recent meeting, Pichai produced a statistic related to the increase of voice-activated searches. "That's my area," Eustace says, "and he knew a number I did not know."

Pichai excelled at school and won a coveted spot at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, where he studied engineering. After graduating, he won an additional scholarship to Stanford University to study materials science and semiconductor physics.

Pichai's father tried to take out a loan to cover the cost of the plane ticket and other expenses. When it didn't come through in time, he withdrew $1,000 from the family's savings — more than his annual salary. "My dad and mom did what a lot of parents did at the time," Pichai says. "They sacrificed a lot of their life and used a lot of their disposable income to make sure their children were educated."

Upon arriving at Stanford in 1993, he tried to buy a new backpack and "was in an absolute state of shock" to learn it cost $60. He later bought a used one on an online bulletin board. Pichai lived with a host family during his first year and spent much of the time miserably lamenting the absence of his girlfriend, Anjali, who later joined him in the US and is now his wife.
Pichai planned to get a PhD at Stanford and pursue an academic career, but he briefly panicked his parents by dropping out to work as an engineer and product manager at Applied Materials, a Silicon Valley semiconductor maker. After getting an MBA from the Wharton School of Business in 2002 and spending a stint as a consultant at McKinsey, Pichai arrived at the Googleplex on April 1, 2004. On the day of his job interview, Google launched Gmail, the free email service. Pichai says he thought it was one of the company's famous April Fools' pranks.

Google's CEO Sundar Pichai didn't have television or car while growing up

Household robots aren't as expensive as you think!

April 2, 2014

A 23-year-old Indian techie gives us the surprising new gadget in wearable technology, for the world to sit up and take notice.

It's a tiny ring you can wear on your thumb and control pretty much every smart device you own including your phone, music player, camera and gaming systems. This really is the closest thing to the technology you see on Ironman or any other Hollywood flick.

And it's called Fin.

Fin is a real life buddy for every individual to do their digital interactions as natural as possible. It is a trendy gadget you can wear on the thumb and make your whole palm as a digital touch interface.

The 23-year-old founder of the robotic company, RHL Vision, Rohildev Nattukallingal (who usually just goes by his first name), a techie from Kerala, developed this new product which is a smart ring that can literally convert your fingers into a TV remote control or a dialling pad for your phone.

He created this device during his 3rd year of engineering. This month they are among the top 15 companies at TechCrunch CES Hardware Battlefield in Las Vegas. RHL Vision received the Top Startup award at Pioneers festival, Vienna and they were the second runners up in Microsoft Bizspark Challenge 2013.

April 2, 2014

All this while you’ve been thinking technology is getting our lives more and more complicated. It’s not doing anything to make your lives easier. Well, here it is now. Robots to clean your house! They do the most tedious housework, indoors and outdoors. Mopping, vacuuming, cleaning gutters and swimming pools and reaching to the hardest-to-reach places. And they couldn’t have come with a lower price tag!

Floor mopping robot (Bravaa) | Price $199-$299

This floor mopping robot, known as Braava, introduced by iRobots.com, dry and damp mops your floors, featuring a longer-lasting battery and cube-to-cube navigation. It makes a map of the floor with the aid of a GPS-like navigation system and damp mops clean the floors, with a back-and-forth action, while you are away at work. It’s whisper quiet too, and gets underneath sofas and tight places.

Vacuum cleaning robot (Roomba)|Price: $399 - $699

The Roomba, made by iRobots.com, is a small disc, which roams on the floor all day long and washes clean the floors for you. Designed to operate on large areas, this robots cleans hardwood, tiles and linoleum tiles more efficiently than you can do with a mop. You can set a timing and it will do the housework, while you are at office. Not only that, the robot has sensors to watch out for walls, and stairs, and will go back to a wall-chargers when it's battery is down. Charge itself and start working. When it decides your home is spic and span, will it stop.

Floor scrubbing robot (Scooba) | Price:$499-$699

This is the robot that started the cleaning revolution and is known as Scooba, manufactured by iRobots.com. This robot brings robotic technology to the everyday household chores of sweeping and vacuuming. With the touch of one button, it collects dirt, pet hair and other debris from all areas of the floor, including under and around the furniture and along wall edges.

Gutter cleaning robot (Looj) | Price: $299

Fall is wonderful, as long as you don’t have to clean all the fallen leaves on the gutter. With Looj, this gutter cleaning robot brought to you by iRobots.com, no more are your Sundays wasted on top of the roof or behind the house cleaning fallen leaves and debris. Looj blasts away leaves, dirt and clogs while brushing gutters clean. Featuring a high-velocity, four-stage auger and the new clean mode, the robot travels down your gutter on its own, sensing and adapting to debris in order to provide the most effective cleaning.

Pool cleaning robot (Mirra) |Price $1299

Designed for any type of in-ground pool, the new pool cleaning robot, Mirra, deep cleans pool's surfaces and water for you, without using the pool's filtration system, hoses or booster pumps. You can let the robot loose in the pool while it swims down, picks up fallen leaves and debris, even mops clean the stairs and the walls of any swamp.

Source: www.irobot.com