3D Printable Solar Panels Coming Soon!

     We all know that 3D printers are evolving on a daily basis to print everything from small items to houses. Australian scientists have begun printing solar panels with 3D printers and although they are still in testing they claim that very soon we will see them in the mainstream marketplace.
     Why would we want to print something that we are already manufacturing though that work properly? Australian researches say that it will revolutionize what solar panels are able to be used for, from iPad covers to skyscrapers all over the world by printing solar panels not only is it quicker, but more cost effective and more customizable. With the ability to print a solar panel in any size it makes it so that taking the time to manufacture a panel this small isn't a waste of time.

     The best part about all of this is that the 3D printers can print these solar panels on to just about any surface from plastic to metal and they are so far equally effective. They have even come up with a solar panel that can be printed on the size of a coin without losing effectiveness.
     Before they release this to the public however they are researching ways to make solar panels even more effective at capturing sunlight.  Fiona Scholes, senior research scientist at Australia's national science agency CSIRO stated"We would like to improve the efficiency of solar panels - we need to develop solar inks to generate more energy from sunlight... We are confident we can push technology further in the years to come.

The potential for alternative uses is endless, she told Mashable. "They could potentially be used in a whole range of applications such as consumer product packaging, windows and window furnishings, temporary structures remote locations and developing communities."

5 Million Gmail Passwords Published, Cause for Worry?

 

     You may be getting prompted to update your Google password in the near future as they over 5 million were published to the web just the other day. A Russian Bitcoin forum member has been posting over 5 million passwords and up to 60% of them are still in use. Although there is not a clear answer as to how these passwords were obtained, Google stated to Cnews that it is coming from a long period of hacking and phishing. None of the Gmail servers were breached and most of the information that was posted was older which is a somewhat comforting feeling, but in the next few weeks it is advised that Google users be aware of any suspicious activity on their accounts and to change their password as a safety precaution.

New Exoskeleton Could Increase Work Productivity 20 Times

Lockheed Martin as developed anew exoskeleton designed to help individuals who perform demanding physical labor work not only faster but easier. Typically when people are working on ships, buildings or roads they are required to handle heavy equipment and perform physically tolling tasks. This new exoskeleton is designed with manual labor in mind by helping to support various machinery and tools taking a lot of the pressure off of the user.

 Currently most physical laborers have to take brief breaks between their work to not exhaust their body to quickly and this exoskeleton is supposed to help decrease the frequency of these breaks by taking stress off of the human body itself. The exoskeleton is able to support tools up to 36 pounds making it so that the load is transferred from the worker's hands and arms to the device which transports that weight to the ground through its design. The overall goal is to lighten the amount that workers have to carry while making them more productive and allow them to focus on quality more effectively.
     In the past there have been other exoskeletons such as TALOS (Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit) which essentially was a computer driven exoskeleton but it focused more on turning a normal individual into a sort of Iron Man. This on the other hand is purely hardware that has been designed optimally to help all sort of physcial laborers. The Navy has already purchased two exoskeletons and will begin testing them over the next several months.

     That being said this exoskeleton is a wearable technology with no computers or software involved. Simple equip the exoskeleton and attach the machine you want to use. The design takes pressure off your knees, arms, legs and even back to allow your stamina to raise greatly during physically exhausting tasks. It is also designed with everyday movements in mind. Allowing you to squat, bend and even walk stairs while hardly noticing you have it on.

     In a world where efficiency is valued among businesses it is important for the worker to get every benefit necessary to help improve speed and quality this exoskeleton solves both for the physical industries in the world. The question is with a device such as this will we start seeing construction workers and many other jobs take on this new exoskeleton or will it just be meant for our armed forces. Wait and see!

Sources: Wired

Apple Unveils 3 Big Devices

     Today in CUPERTINO, California Apple announced a trifecta of devices, which are certainly grabbing their competitors attention and showing their dominance in the tech world.
     In Flint Center for Performing Arts, Apple announced a new mobile payment platform, advanced touchscreen smartwatch and 2 large-screen iPhones. The audience was very impressed with standing ovations and many outbreaks of applause. The press, VIPs from the technology, fashion, entertainment industries and Apple employees all in attendance showing support.
   

The New iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus

    Photographer: Alex Washburn/Wired
     
     After an always gripping introductory video, Phil Schiller Apple's senior vice president announce two new iPhone models today, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Both getting a beautiful re-style with smooth, brushed aluminum rear curving gently into the front screen almost, resembling small iPads.
     The iPhone 6 includes a 1334x750 pixel resolution on a 4.7-inch display. iPhone6 Plus brings a 1920x1080 display on a 5.5-inch screen. The phones however are exactly the same except for the size.

 On the back side they placed an 8-megapixel shooter with an f/2.2 aperture 8-megapixel camera. Including a new sensor with speedier autofocus. The iPhone 6 comes with digital image stabilization, but the 6 Plus makes use of its gyroscope and the M8 coprocessor to cancel out any extra shakiness providing optical image stabilization.
     The new A8 processor is promised to be 87% more efficient than its predecessor, while offering 25% more power to the CPU and up to 50% faster GPU speeds than the iPhone 5s' A7 chip. With the M8 motion coprocessor working in addition to aiding image stabilization, you can now tell when you're walking, cycling or running and can track if you're traversing up and down stairs with a new barometer that detects changes in air pressure.
     These devices each feature Touch ID home buttons and NFC. The iPhone 6 will go on sale Friday, September 19th. The starting contract at $200 for 16GB, $300 for 64GB, and $400 for 128GB. The 6 Plus starts at $100 more.

The Apple Watch, Apple's Wearable Technology

    Photographer: Alex Washburn/Wired

      The must unknown topic of the day was if Apple was in fact going to unveil the long-rumored wearable tech product. The company did more than just unveil but amazed. The Apple Watch has arrived!
     Cook stated "Apple watch is the most personal device we've ever created," followed by a standing ovation and round of wild applause. Apple's CEO calls it "a new intimate way to connect and communicate direction from your wrist."
     This smartwatch which is accurate within 50 milliseconds is not only technologically impressive but also is quite styling. You have a fair amount of choices in both hardware and faces allowing you to customize and stylize your watch to meet you personal groove.

     Apple watch is offered in three editions: Apple Watch, Watch Sport, and Watch Edition. Apple Watch being the most basic, Watch Sport with increased durability and Watch Edition has a more exotic look and made of gold. You can then change the straps with a choice of 6 different bands allowing you to mix and match. The bands include a quilted leather strap with a magnetic clasping band, a stainless steel link bracelet with magnetic clasping band, a mesh chain loop and traditional leather buckle. The bands and watch faces come in two different sizes to suit not only all wrists but all body types.
     Cook stated "With every breakthrough, Apple has also had to have a breakthrough in user interface,". What they made sure we knew however was that they didn't simply take the iPhone interface and shrink it to a watch size, and believe that their new interface will make for a fantastic experience.
     With a menu composed of small bubble shaped app icons you can arrange wherever you like and may even group them together with other related apps. By twisting the crown you zoom in and out on the group of apps and then to open up an app you would simply tap it. They have a new feature called Glances which lets you swipe upwards from the bottom of the screen to cycle through customizable screens. Apple even decided to include Siri in the advice so now we will in fact see people talking with their smart watches, we are all the new James Bond.
      The Apple Watch will launch with a apps such as Maps, customizable watch faces and third-party apps. Third party apps from businesses like W Hotels and American Airlines. It also includes several health and fitness apps which use information gathered by both your iPhone and Apple Watch. The Apple sensors will even give you a view of your daily activities, essentially being both a smartwatch and fitness tracker in one.
     The Apple Watch certainly impressed but lets hope it can deliver. It will start at $350 and go on sale in early 2015.

Apple's Mobile Payment System: ApplePay

                                Photographer: Alex Washburn/Wired
   
     "Payments is a huge business. Every day between credit and debit, we spend $12 billion, and that's just in the United States," cook stated in his introduction to what a huge business payments is and a space that have yet to be digitally cracked.
     Apple has been working with MasterCard, American Express and Visa to design their new ApplePay system which is already working with over 220,000 merchants at launch. These merchants include Whole Foods, Macy's, Target and Walgreens. Using your NFC you simply tap your phone to the pay terminal and the security code is given. You start by adding a snapshot of the your card which then must receive verification from your bank. After that it's simply swipe your phone payments. Apple has stated that Apple will not collect your purchasing data in other words what you purchase is between you and the merchant.
      Another new technology that Apple is trying out and only time will tell whether it is user accepted or not. ApplePay will launch in the U.S. in October with an update to iOS8.

     Apple has yet again proven their ability to not only create new technologies but also shown that they are one of the best at doing it. With these three new products we will certainly see more Apple products on a daily basis and that's saying something.

   

Apple Live Stream Currently Available

     Time to learn all about what Apple is unveiling with the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch. Follow the link to view the live stream or simply follow its live tweet style blog.

Apple Live Stream

The New Apple Watch.

             iPhone 6 Unveiled.

New Apply iPay System.

Twitter Developing New 'Buy' Button, Turning Itself Into Online Shopping Mall

    Twitter recently has begun developing a new "Buy" button which would make Twitter an online marketplace that would allow its users to do business through tweeting. Creating a social networking site that also is conducting business, easy as clicking on a tweet and hitting the buy button.

     According to Twitter a "small percentage" of users will start to see the "Buy" button in their tweets and they will continue to release slowly to more and more users as time goes on. This will be the first large scale social networking site that convert into a sort of e-commerce engine. Although Facebook has begun development with a "Buy" button no public version of it has been seen yet. I wonder how effective  it will be or if it will turn these social networking sites into pure ad-agencies. Businesses will clearly flock to it and we will be getting flooding with ads not only on our side bars around the body of our page but now also in the body as well. Doesn't that sounds fun?
   
     However, there will be countless benefits if local businesses can effectively use the program and make it even easier to simply buy everything you see in just a few clicks. Twitter stated in a blog post "in our building functionality into Twitter to make shopping from mobile devices convenient and easy, hopefully even fun." so at least twitter has good intentions for the change but hopefully it is seen that way by its users.

When you click Twitter's Buy button, you are asked to enter your payment and shipping information. Once this is confirmed the merchant will start getting your purchase ready for mailing. The key is that you will be able to do this in a couple taps once you complete your first purchase as your information will be stored on Twitter servers making purchases extremely simple.
Now it's just time to see how the users view this change and that is all that will matter in the end.
  





Sources: Wired

Nike Helps Design a Swag New Plane for Traveling Sports Teams

     In our everyday lives we see jets that are designed to cram as many people in as possible, but when sports team travels there is usually only 20-40 players where as a normal plane usually holds between 100-400 passengers. So Nike designed a plane that looks amazing and has functionality to fit smaller amounts of people to provide more comfort and luxury.

     As you can see this plane is designed with style and space in mind. "Most airplane design projects are about packaging individuals as efficiently as possible," says Phillip Steiner the creative direction. "We're usually really concerned with the average traveler, but these athletes are far beyond average, and designing for extreme sports users provides a really interesting perspective." This plane even has dedicated seating areas for different actions: socialization, sleep and recovery/nutrition. Almost as if they simply have no wants while flying to their next away game. The rows are even separated enough to fit a 7 foot passenger fully reclined.
   
     Now of course this plane has cool lighting effects and is designed for professional athletes which means its loaded with new technology like wearable sensors in the seating keeping track on the player's physiology and then send it to an on-board computer. With intelligent lighting the team trainers can set the cabin atmosphere to relax or pump up the team . "It's a little bit shocking that the meal service hasn't changed very much to give passenger's more control," says Industrial designer Annaliese Chapa and went on to say "Self-serve meal zones allow for customized meal plans." this means that not only the plane itself is being re-designed here but the services that come with it as well.

 Innovations like this may help many sports teams perform better on the road with better rest, less stress and fewer needs when traveling everyone is going to feel as rested as if they just slept the whole night through on this jet. The design is attractive and fits the players multi-million dollar pay scales with styles that would make anyone want to hang out there almost like a flying night club/hotel in the sky with all the fixings.
     Although this may not be the most necessary plane as it won't be used on a public level I'm sure that athletes will be loving the new updates to this plane specifically designed with them in mind.

Sources: Wired

Garmin's New Fitness Tracker

     In an increasingly health-conscious world we are seeing more technology come out on a daily basis to help track our fitness goals, maintain our fitness levels and even track ourselves during daily exercise. These fitness trackers include products like Jawbone Up, Nike Fuelband and Garmin VivoFit which are small wearable gadgets that rack your fitness but have been limited to doing much more besides that. Until now where Garmin has combined the smart watch world with the fitness tracking world in their new product Garmin VivoSmart.

     Garmin has introduced a new general purpose wear smart band combined with the VivoFit to introduce the VivoSmart. This product will of course track your steps, heartrate (with a separate heartrate monitor), calories burned and share the time and date but now does even more. The new features include an activity reminder to remind you to get off your butt and move around from time to time and now pairs with your smartphone giving you vibration alerts for texts, calls, e-mails and even calendar events. Each of these even is paired with a preview of the notifications on the LED screen.

     Unlike their past design for VivoFit which had an always on display LED screen the VivoSmart has a hidden OLED that you wake up with a double finger tap and you can navigate your different customizable display pages by swiping the screen.

     The VivoSmart is water-proof up to 50-meters and is supposed to get up to 7 days of battery life per charge. It also includes a sleep tracker to give you daily reports on you're sleep quality such as tossing and turning vs. lying still. Garmin even has a Garmin Connect app that translates all this data into easy to read graphs and charts to more accurately track yourself overtime.

     After seeing all of the new additions Garmin has made to their fitness tracker it is clearly not just for fitness anymore but more of a smart-watch with fitness additions. With their new sleek design it is easy to see how wearing one of these would not be any real issue at all like clunkier alternatives. It is the perfect accessory for someone who is active in both fitness and work and wants to simplify life on a daily basis.

     VivoSmart is set to release in mid-September with 5 different colors (black, slate, berry, purple and blue) with a price point of $170 for just the band or $200 for the band paired with heartrate monitor.

Earbuds Designed to Be Worn All Day Like a Necklace

     We all have had that issue of trying to wear our earbuds while performing other everyday tasks and often times it ends in lost earbuds, constant tangling or trying to get them in and out of your pocket or fit them into a bulky carrying case. Steven Lamar's new earbuds are designed to change all of that with his new product Ropes from the new start-up audio company Roam.

These high-end ear buds are created for a more hands-free, comfortable and simpler listening experience compared to the average earbuds. The earbuds simply can be worn around your neck all day and to put them in your ears you simple just grab your necklace and boom you're in business. Ropes has a bluetooth transmitter located on it so that you simply pair to your smart device once and you never again have to shuffle to plug in your headset when you get a sudden phone call or you want to listen to music every thing will simply be around your neck for immediate use.

     Ropes are going to have a pre-order price point of $299 which is high for a pair of ear buds but Lamar states "We've been programmed to accept the audio quality in these earbuds we get with our phones," and that they tend to compete with the Shures of the world more than Apple's chintzy EarPods. There will also be a new app that is included with Ropes so that they can tune the ear buds to sound how they desire. "Whether it be on a phone call, or listening to music, or watching a movie, we all hear things differently," says Lamar and "We heard things differently out of each ear. We're going to give you a tool that communicates directly with the drivers in the earphones to adjust the sounds dynamics however you want."

     Suddenly these don't seem like your everyday earbuds that you can pick up for $20 and not care if you lose them, but I guess that's why you can keep them around your neck! Obviously this is not a product that everyone will appreciate but again it is technology in wearable form and this is meant to be worn as if it were part of your everyday wardrobe. These earbuds are definitely not meant to be worn to look cool, but rather are to be worn because its more practical than digging around in your pocket for your headphones or untangling them out of the carrying case. In a world where our lives are becoming more saturated with digital audio it may become more practical to have a pair of earbuds on your person at all times. Until you realize they need to be charged with a micro USB after six hours of use to keep the wireless working.
     Yet if we look forward wearable technology is becoming more common on a daily basis with new technologies or existing ones being re-formatted to fit into our daily lives products like Ropes are going to be in demand because they won't be just a set of headphones used to stream Pandora and Spotify but rather a needed daily accessory.

Sources: ROAM
               Engadget
               Wired

Toshiba Unveils $330 Chromebook2 That Will Make You Re-think That MacBook Air

     In today's world of computers we are used to thinking that a computer needs an Operating System (OS) like Windows, but the Chromebook 2 is changing this way of thinking with a fully browser reliant system that utilizes the Google Drive system and all of the web based applications that Google offers such as Google Docs for a fraction of the price of what you would pay for a full OS laptop of any other brand.

     As you can see the $330 Chromebook 2 sports a sleek, slim and familiar design with chiclet-style keyboard and silver matte finish is bears a remarkable resemblance to the MacBook Air. The Chromebook 2 comes with a 13-inch 1080p IPS display, Skullcandy-branded stereo speakers, 2.5GHz Intel Celeron Processor with 4GB of RAM and a 0.76-inch-thick chassis. Weighing less than 3 pounds and offering many I/O features  for it's price: USB 2.0 port, USB 3.0 port, HDMI out and and SD card reader. They even included a 720p webcam built in and all of this for $330 when fully loaded.
     The most high end configuration will come with a 16GB solid-state drive and 100GB of Google Drive storage, which you may utilize for 2 years for free. Also contains a 4.0 bluetooth connectivity system in addition to the 802.11ac Wi-Fi and 9+ hours of battery life per charge.
     If you are someone who is on the run needs their documents to always be accessible with ease this Toshiba Chromebook may be for you. The Chromebook with a light-weight sleek design combined with the Google Chrome Store and the many applications that come out for browsers on a daily basis points us to a new future for computers. The Toshiba Chromebook 2 is set to release October 5, 2014 with the fully loaded sporting a cost-effective $330 price tag or for a step down you can purchase one for $250. The future of computers is just beginning.

Sources: Wired
               Toshiba

Recording Athletes in a Whole New Way

     When we think of technology we think of computers, social networks, websites and essentially complications. However, when you combine technology with things like the environment, sports and everyday life you can do so much more than just create a new program or build a computer.
     Catapult Sports is one of the companies combining technology with the everyday of sports. With their newest product OPTIMEYE G5, S5 and X4 models a device used to track the movements, activity and overall workload of soccer players. These products are working to revolutionize the way professional soccer players train and the algorithms in these products are designed to track dives, leaps, sprints and quick recoveries tracking essentially every move of the individual wearing the device.

     To the left is an image of the G5 model and it is meant to work strictly with goal keepers as it is a bit larger than the other models because it has a lot more required of it. This tracks every motion of the goalie and allows for coaches, doctors and even players to review the statistics to see not only how they are performing but also let them see what they may need to practice more.
     As these products are still only in testing in Europe with various soccer teams they are still working out any problems that may arise however, they have already started to make various improvements and discoveries. For example they added a function that not only tracks when you jump or dive but also how high you jumped, what your air time was and even run speeds. This will help individuals compare themselves to one another but also allow teams to compare themselves to one another.
     Products like this are just small steps into what is to come and with this technology we are only going to see the world of sports improve as the training of individuals will improve as well. In my opinion we may even see future FIFA, Madden and NFL games utilize this device to get exact readings on players individual stats such as acceleration and speed. Just another form of wearable technology which we will see utilized in the years to come.

Sources: Wired