The age old question whether Artificial Intelligence will one day take over the world has perhaps been answered. If you’ve been following the internet past few days, you will have heard that Google’s AI AlphaGo has been going one-on-one with 18-time world Go champion Lee Se-dol in a five match DeepMind Challenge Series. Today, in what is a historic victory for AI, AlphaGo beat Lee Se-dol 3-0 to clinch the series. Lee conceded the game after 176 moves.
AlphaGo is a program that was developed by DeepMind, a British AI company acquired by Google two years ago. Go is an ancient Chinese game that has been considered one of the toughest ever for an AI to beat at a world-class level. Go has been one of the most sought after AI challenges for its simplicity and elaborate possibilities.
Lee Se-dol’s loss to the AI three times in a row proved what many had felt unimaginable. Google has proved that AlphaGo is the next level of artificial intelligence. The third game further established the AI’s superiority. It was able to navigate tricky situations known as ko that didn’t come up in the prior two matches.
Now that AlphaGo has beaten Lee in three games, we wait to see if Lee can manage one win in the two games still left to play. If AlphaGo bases its moves on how Lee plays, then this means that the AI has been improving in each game, which would make the next one even harder for Lee to beat.
“I don’t know what to say and I would like to say sorry because I couldn’t show you my better results,” he said. “I think even if I go back I probably cannot defeat AlphaGo, and I think the competition was already settled in the second match.”
He said, “Humans have psychological issues while AlphaGo does not. Nevertheless, I think I will be able to discover AlphaGo’s weak points in the fourth and fifth match.
Last year, Popslate brought put its first E-Ink iPhone case that allowed the iPhone to sport a secondary E-ink display on the back. Users could use the secondary display for notifications. While the first Popslate iPhone case didn’t meet expectations, the Popslate 2 very much does. The company is at the forefront of pioneering e-paper screen on phone case, and Popslate 2 is what that case is.
The second iteration comes with a bigger 4.7-inch display at 200dpi, up from 4 inches and 115dpi. While the original Popslate case needed to be charged via Micro USB, the new one can be charged via the lightning cable, the same used to charge the iPhone. This means you’ll now be able to charge both the case and the iPhone simultaneously. Apart from this, the case has a backup battery that gives up to 9 hours talk time for your iPhone.
Popslate 2 was the answer to the question “What should the smart second screen really be?”. The Popslate 2 comes with new, always-on features like configurable Dashboards, richer news and information feeds. Other features include phone-sized clocks, a clutter-saving e-reader, a quick list maker, faster access to the digital wallet, and more.
Popslate’s smart iPhone case can be seen as a great piece of innovation in recent times. With smartphone makers looking to make slimmer phones with bigger and bigger display, the ideas seem to end there. There are some brands who have managed to feature small strips of secondary screens on the front like LG, but a secondary display as big as the main something new indeed. And this is all thanks to the use of E-ink technology (the same used in Kindles and other E-readers).
Currently, the company is only focusing on cases for iPhones but also states that with the right partner, they will move to cases for Android devices as well. The company also said that until it understands the state of emerging markets before making any adjustments to pricing and will only then be able to bring these cases to countries like India.
The Popslate 2 is available for pre-order on Indiegogo today starting at $69, and $129 and $149 for the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus, respectively. Shipping of orders will begin from July.
Founders of Snapchat are known for taking risks and implementing bold ideas. The company has constantly added new features to Snapchat to reinvent and help it grow from just another photo sharing app to now what it has become a fun supplement to our social media lives. The addition of features such as Discover, Stories, and usage of filters have helped itself set apart in the market. But now, the company is looking at things even more groundbreaking.
Reports suggest that the company is looking at making Google-Glass like smart eyewear which it could use to make a renewed push for the social media industry. Details have emerged of a number of hirings relating to augmented reality. The company has recently hired (formerly Qualcomm’s) Vuforia and eye-tracking tech maker Eyefluence amongst a dozen other high-profile hirings of designers and industry experts that point to Snapchat’s possible development of a pair of smart glasses.
Snapchat had earlier acquired Vergence Labs, which produced a pair of glasses equipped with an embedded camera, was acquired by Snapchat for $15 million in March of 2014. The acquisition accompanied a larger $50 million acquisition of Scan.me, a QR code-scanning/creating technology that would later manifest itself it the company’s Snaptags feature.
Though it’s all speculation for now, another report has also suggests that Snapchat’s hiring of individuals from the Augmented Reality field might just be less exciting as it only plans to develop an app for the upcoming VR and AR hardware that will soon hit the market.
Oppo is set to unveil the R9 and R9 Plus smartphones on March 17. The company has been teasing the device a lo in the recent weeks and while information about the R9 have been in plenty, very little was known about the R9 Plus. Today, we have details on both the handsets.
Both the Oppo R9 and R9 Plus will be powered by the mighty Snapdragon 820 SoC. The R9 is said to sport a 5.5-inch 1080p display while the R9 Plus will have a bigger 6-inch display. The phones are expected to come with 4GB RAM and 64GB of expandable internal memory.
The camera which is to be the centerpiece of the Oppo R9 and R9 Plus will feature 21MP rear unit and a 13MP front shooter. Meanwhile, the 5.5-inch model will pack a 3,700 mAh battery while the 6-inch model will carry a 4120mAh battery. Both the devices will be supported by VOOC flash charge. The VOOC Flash Charge promises 10 hours of talk time with only five minutes of charging and filling a 2500 mAh battery in only 15 minutes.
Another feature that Oppo was proud to reveal ahead of the launch is that the devices come with a front-facing fingerprint sensor that is capable of unlocking the phone in just 0.2 seconds. Pricing of the devices have also been leaked with the R9 Plus priced at 3499 yuan (approx Rs 36,000) and the smaller R9 at 2999 yuan (approx. Rs 31,000).
In what is a clear indication that the HTC 10 launch is right around the corner, more images of the beautiful looking device have leaked online. After the previously leaked images which gave us a glimpse into what the back of the phone would like, the latest batch from today, courtesy a tweet from Steve Hemmerstoffer, reveals the phone’s back and the front in all its glory.
Today’s leak reveals a very interesting development in the HTC 10’s design scheme. The front of the phone carries a home button below the display of the phone which, by the looks of it, also houses a fingerprint scanner. This is an important development as this move will see HTC move away from its usual three capacitative button system.
Other than this, previous renders, and leaked benchmark scores peg the phone to come with a 5.15-inch Quad HD display with a top of the line Snapdragon 820 SoC paired with 4GB RAM running the show. The phone’s camera is also being touted to be something of a breakthrough, and HTC will be seen fitting a 12UP (Ultra Pixel) camera sensor with proprietary tech which will enable the phone to click amazing photos.
Xiaomi had announced the Redmi 3 a couple of months ago but it seems that the device was not the only variant in the works. According to the Chinese certification site TENAA, a new variant of the Redmi 3 is soon to come out, and this one will feature a fingerprint scanner whereas the original one did not.
Fingerprint scanners on smartphones have become an important feature and one wonders why Xiaomi did not add it in the Redmi 3. However, a $100 price tag justifies no fingerprint scanner. The new Redmi 3 is rumoured to feature a 5-inch display with 720p resolution, 1.5 GHz octa-core CPU and 2GB of RAM with 16GB of storage. The new variant, however, might come with a smaller 3000mAh battery pack as compared to the 4100mAh battery in the original.
With a fingerprint scanner, the device is likely to be priced at RMB 799 ($122), an RMB 100 more than the original Redmi 3. It is still unknown when Xiaomi plans to launch the new variant but it could happen some time this month.
Artificial Intelligence, as many analysts predict, is the next frontier for the tech industry. As it stands today, scientists and researchers are putting in long hours to make the dream of machines with “human-like intelligence” a reality rather than just a possibility.
Intelligent machines and softwares which possess deep human-like knowledge are growing in numbers leading to them being employed for use in a number of tasks. From hospitality to defence, use of artificial intelligence has been explored in various fields, latest of which will now be health-care.
Babylon, a U.K.-based subscription health service will soon launch an AI-based app designed to provide medical diagnosis to patients just like a real life doctor would. The idea behind Babylon is to create an artificially intelligent ‘doctor’ which will help humans stay away from illnesses.
For this, Babylon will walk the extra step that your family doctor won’t, and track your daily habits, collect data about heart rate, diet and medical records and then cross reference them with the symptoms that the patient reports to Babylon. Upon doing all this, Babylon will scan through its vast database and diagnose the illness and offer an appropriate course of action.
The idea of Babylon is comparable to IBM’s Watson Smart A.I tech, which is already employed at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Watson Smart assist’s doctors in their work by going through a database of 600,000 medical evidence reports, 1.5 million patient records and clinical trials, and two million pages of text from medical journals to help doctors develop treatment plans tailored to patients’ individual symptoms, genetics, and histories.
The founder of Babylon, Parsa reveals that the A.I will not look to replace human doctors by acting as a substitute, but would rather work by keeping a close eye on the users health and help users prevent illnesses before they happen.
Talking about the A.I driven app, Parsa said, “For example, if your heart rate is faster than normal and your physical activity hasn’t increased, it’s a sign you’re either stressed or dehydrated or you’re fighting something. The platform can bring this to your attention and suggest the best course of action to fight the illness before it surfaces.” The app will also remind patients to take their medication, and follow up to find out how they’re feeling.
It was only yesterday that eager “Superfans” of LeEco were treated to leaked images of the Le 2, and today pictures and specifications of the Le 2 Pro have found their way to the Internet. The new leak suggests that the Le 2 Pro could be shown off to the world as soon as April, which in all honesty sounds like a bit of a stretch.
The phone looks to have carried forward the design scheme followed by LeEco for its first generation of mobile devices. The body seems to be made completely out of metal, possibly even the same aluminium unibody design from the Le1s which won’t be too surprising considering the positive response it got from customers across the board.
The leaked images which were earlier posted on Chinese Social Networking site, Sina-Weibo reveal the phone to come packing a Snapdragon 820 SoC paired with 4GB RAM along with 64GB of inbuilt flash storage. Leaked specifications further show the phone to bear a beautiful 5.7-inch Quad HD display and a 20-Megapixel rear camera. The Le 2 Pro will get the juice it needs from a 3100mAh battery pack.
The device will be equipped with Dolby Atmos tech, three microphones for noise cancellation, ultrasonic fingerprint scanner along with a USB Type-C port. The source indicates the pricing of the device could be set around the $380 mark(Approx Rs 25,673) putting it firmly in competition with Xiaomi’s Mi5.
Facebook has always tried to reach out to the most, if not all, of the human population on earth. Facebook currently has around 1.6 billion monthly active users. Seeing as how Facebook also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, it is evident that the company doesn’t want to leave out a single human being. However, despite a world hungry for social media sites, there are still millions who are unable to jump in due to slow internet speed or limited amount of data. To solve this problem, a team of Facebook engineers worked on ways to make the site accessible to those who were left out.
What came out of it was Facebook Lite, a tiny Android-only app that is lighter and less cluttered compared to the original. The app was launched in June 2015 and recently crossed a 100 million mark. That is the magic number that tells us how fast users have accepted the lighter app in just a few months. The app is less than 1MB in size and practically takes no time at all to download.
There are certain design changes with the ‘Lite’ version but the core functionality is uniform in both the Facebook app and its lighter version. Features like News Feed, status updates, photos and notifications on Facebook Lite are almost identical to the original version.
Facebook Lite is the company’s push to make basic Facebook services available in developing countries at the lowest price possible. There are places in the world where buying internet data isn’t the easiest as it is expensive. The app works fast with any device, and is data efficient, providing the same features as you would find on the original app only with less data consumption. It’s like Facebook with an in-built Data Saver mode.
As it works even on slow mobile networks, the page loads comparatively faster. Users can upload, download and check photos instantly, for which users had to wait for more than a couple of minutes on 2G networks. Users can have a real-time conversation with friends – either one-on-one or in group – on the slimmer Facebook edition.
One of the best features about Facebook Lite is that the app helps conserve battery life. Facebook has been recently in the news for being one of the most battery draining apps out there, especially for iOS users. As is the case, we could be seeing a Facebook Lite for iOS in the near future, unless Facebook does something to reduce battery consumption in its original app.
Vijay Shankar, Product Head, Facebook Lite said that the app was made for developing countries like India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and Philippines where slow internet speeds is still a major issue. One of the biggest chuggers of mobile data is videos. To solve this, the team behind Facebook Lite offered users the option to see how large a video so that they may decide whether to view the video or not. There is also the option to view a video later so that you may continue to browse the News Feed and come back to the video once it has been downloaded. Both the features are extremely helpful for users on 2G speeds as it means not having to wait around for a video to load.
It is still unknown as to when Facebook Lite will be available for iOS and Window phone users. As of now, Shankar and his team want to get the Android experience right before moving on to the next step. It is still early in the day but the fact that 9 months on the app has reached a 100 million users means that the app does what it was intended to do – provide a social media experience at an affordable price.
VR technology which has gained traction amongst users in the last couple of months looks set to be breaking barriers and becoming a truly social hub for activities in the coming days. Facebook-owned Oculus has decided to shift its focus towards making our VR experience in the coming days more social with the addition of a number of features such as the addition of social games and social elements to viewing videos while using the Gear VR.
The Gear VR, which was launched on 21st January here in India and is available for free with all S7 and S7 edge Pre-Orders, is Samsung’s VR offering that was developed in partnership with Oculus. Owners of the VR headset which is regarded as one of the best available offerings in the market, starting tomorrow, will be able to create accounts on the Oculus servers, and then get in touch with other users of the Gear VR, and also leave reviews for all apps in the Oculus Store.
Oculus wants its users to enjoy the immersive world of Virtual Reality with friends, and to help make this possible it has announced two new social heavy VR games that will allow users to go up against their friends.
First up is Social Trivia, a game that lets you and up to four friends compete in a battle of knowledge in an artificial VR environment. The second game is Herobound: Gladiators which is a multiplayer adventure game. The game lets you take the VR gaming experience to another level and sees the user Band together with up to four people to conquer goblins and demons in arena battlefields. The game also allows for integrated voice chat to talk and strategize in real time for an unmatched co-op experience.
For users who would rather stay away from games, Facebook’s Oculus has announced host of other features that sees it bring to the platform with the help of Oculus Video the functionality to personalize your 360-degree video feed based on the pages and people you follow on Facebook. It has revealed that in the coming weeks, users will be able to connect and react to their favorite Facebook 360 videos directly in virtual reality.
And, if that’s still not good enough to get you excited, Oculus is adding the functionality to create private VR chat rooms with friends which let you watch Vimeo and Twich streams with them in a Virtual Reality environment.
Oculus’ efforts to push for social VR does not end there as it has also communicated to developers that it wants to “drive deeper social connections” and hence later this month “will release new tools for developers that make it even easier to create more incredible social VR games and apps.
Virtual Reality is the next big thing to happen to technology and every big name out there is getting into the game. Samsung, Apple, Google and many more are all working on VR technology as we speak. When it comes to virtual reality, Oculus is the name that first comes to mind. While the Oculus Rift is one of the more premium VR headsets out there, there is also the Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR for the general masses that stands as a stepping stone into the realm of virtual reality. Here’s everything you need to know about the Samsung Gear VR.
Design, Features, and Compatibility
Samsung launched the Gear VR headset in India last month at a price of Rs 8,200. The headset is currently being offered for free on pre-orders for the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. The headset features a large touchpad for control. It weighs about 318 grams and measures 201.9×116.4×92.6mm. The Gear VR comes with an impressive field of view of 96 degrees and houses back, volume, and focus adjustment wheel button for controls.
The Gear VR also packs sensors such as gyro, accelerometer, and proximity, and the device will support Micro-USB charging. The Gear VR comes with soft, flexible cushioning material, and also features adjustable straps for ease use of use.The Gear VR Headset will also support 360-degree videos.
The Gear VR Headset features a wide interface, ergonomic design, and a large touchpad. Gear VR promises convenient and accurate control to enjoy games and videos. At the launch, the company stressed that Gear VR Headset works seamlessly with high-end Galaxy smartphones including the Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge and the new Galaxy S7 series.
Applications
The Gear VR got a major media boost few months ago with Netflix, Hulu and Twitch among the few new services made available for the headset. The Netflix app, for example, creates a virtual living room for the viewer to watch in. The virtual television in front of you will have the Netflix UI on the screen. You simply look to move the cursor and tap the touchpad on the side of the Gear VR to make your selection. And since Netflix is now in India, streaming movies never sounded this good!
The Netflix Experience
As the Gear VR is still a work in progress, applications and uses are still limited. As of February 2016, here are 185 Apps available for the Gear VR on the Oculus Store. Apart from media entertainment, the Gear VR also offers an entirely new gaming experience. After all, virtual reality is all about immersing the user completely in a virtual world for a 360-degree experience.
Notable games include Herobound: First Steps, Ikarus, Dreadhalls, Esper and Proton Pulse. “The new games include “Social Trivia” and “Herobound: Gladiators,” Oculus says. Social Trivia pits you against friends or strangers in a battle of knowledge while Herobound: Gladiators lets you band together in groups of four to battle goblins and demons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4vhtpa8JRA
Furthermore, Oculus is ready to get Gear VR owners a lot more social. Starting today, Gear VR owners will get to set up their own social profiles and connect with other Gear VR friends by searching their Oculus username or real name. You will then be able to kick back and watch movies together and engage with each other in social games.
You also may be aware that Facebook started 360-degree videos a while ago that lets users navigate the video for a complete 360-degree view. With the Samsung Gear VR, you’ll now be able to connect your Facebook account to “Like” and share 360-degree videos from inside it. From next week, Oculus will let users sign into Facebook and get a personalised news feed based on people and pages they follow.
With this, Facebook-owned Oculus is taking the first big step in bringing virtual reality and social media together.
Is There a Downside?
Perhaps the few main problems about a VR headset is that it can make you look silly, which is why users usually prefer to wear it in the confines of their homes, away from the eyes of passersby. VR headsets tend to cause headaches or nausea if worn for too long. But the Gear VR, being on the lighter side, hasn’t caused these symptoms as much as the heavier Oculus Rift has.
Nevertheless, the Gear VR is a great new product from Samsung that promises a good virtual reality experience at an affordable cost.
Samsung is looking to expand its consumer base and is looking to make the Gear VR not just a device for niche audience. It may take a while before people take to the virtual reality experience, but the future of media and gaming technology looks pretty clear. So, for those who want to experience the next season of Daredevil (which begins March 18) in virtual reality can get their hands on the Gear VR today.
There is very little left to know about HTC’s upcoming flagship smartphone, HTC 10. Courtesy popular leakster Evan Blass, we now what the device is going to look like as well as the fact that it will drop the ‘One M’ from the title for a simpler ‘HTC 10’. We’re still not sure about what the new name signifies, but what we do know is the various colors the device will be offered in.
Blass today tweeted four colour options for the HTC 10: carbon gray, glacier silver (white face), glacier silver (black face), topaz gold. Apart from showing us the colours, the image also confirms that this is what the HTC 10 will look like and much like the One A9 and the One M9, the HTC 10 looks rather underwhelming. The most obvious disappointment comes from the disappearance of BoomSound front speakers and from the (still) large bezels on he top and bottom.
The HTC 10 will instead have a single speaker grille at the bottom and a USB Type-C port. Over at the back we see the camera placed at the center and chamfered edges. Another popular leakster, @onleaks, started a leaking spree of the actual handset and Antutu benchmark scores that pin the device at 109,936 points on the famous benchmark app.
This all leaked along with the following information : 5.15? QHD / SD820 / Adreno 530 / 4GB RAM / 12MP / USB Type-C. Which means that HTC might finally be on the right track as far as specs are concerned, and we also see a home button fingerprint scanner like last year.
HTC has also stated that it’s working hard to bring a “very compelling camera experience” with the HTC 10. HTC’s Chief Financial Officer Chialin Chang is confident about the HTC 10’s camera “after seeing what’s going on in the market.”
The rear camera is rumoured to sport a 12UP (Ultra Pixel) module with OIS and autofocus while the front still is unknown. If HTC wants to be a contender in the camera department, knowing that Samsung has upped its camera specs in the Galaxy S7, then nothing short of 5UP for the front and some absolutely spectacular images that compliment a Quad HD AMOLED display will be accepted by fans. HTC needs to get the pricing right if it wants to compete in a market that has already seen the new Samsung Galaxy S7 series, LG G5, and Xiaomi Mi 5 flagships.
Samsung launched its flagship Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge in India yesterday. The devices are priced at Rs 48, 900 and 56, 900, respectively. The Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge successors come packed with top-of-the-line specifications and next-gen technology, along with a beautifully crafted design that is carried forward from the S6. We take a look at some of the best new features the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge have to offer and whether the devices are worth your money.
Powerful Hardware
The new flagship devices have improved on specifications wherever it could. The pair is powered by newly powerful Exynos 8890 Octa, Mali-T880 MP12 and 4GB of RAM. Check out the detailed spec table below.
Among the bumped up specs inside the new Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, one new technology that grabbed everyone’s attention at the MWC last month was the new Dual Pixel technology employed in the rear camera.
The Dual Pixel, essentially, is an improvement or a natural evolution from the Phase-Detection Auto-Focus technology used by many other smartphones. Firstly, Samsung downgraded from 16MP found in the S6 to 12MP in the S7. The decision to do this was to focus more on quality rather than quantity. The 12MP sensor brings 56% bigger individual pixels with1.4um pixels as compared to the S6.
The S7 comes with a wider f/1.7 aperture (the S6 had a f/1.9 aperture) that allows for a lot more light to come in, 25% more to be more accurate. This results in great low-light captures that are sharp and colourful. Much like the human eye, the Dual Pixel technology sends light from the lens to two image sensors separately to adjust the focus.
Water Cooled Systems to Rival Desktop Machines
Phones running high-end multi-core CPUs are notorious for running a bit too hot under stress, and as we know, heat is the ultimate enemy of any gaming machine. No matter the exalted processing capabilities of a phone, or beefy battery packs that they come with, if it runs hot, you game not.
Samsung in its bid to fight this menace has come up with a system that’s not new to bigger desktop machines but is groundbreaking for mobile devices. The Galaxy S7 and S7 edge are equipped with a very thin sealed copper liquid based cooling system, enabling these phones to run cool and fast without facing any CPU or GPU throttling. The system keeping the internals of the phone cool will also result in better battery life.
Vulkan API
Mobile phones benefiting from the great advancements in silicon technology over the years have become smaller, thinner and at the same time grown more powerful. The latest generation of mobile phones bring with them specs which boast of computing power at times even surpassing that of the last generation consoles such as the Xbox 360 and PS3.
MicroSD is Back
Samsung heard the cries of thousands of fans who were disappointed that the Galaxy S6 did not come with a MicroSD card slot. The Galaxy S7 series brings the slot back that allows up to 200GB of expandable storage. With read and write speeds having improved over the years, Samsung felt it was the right time to bring back the option.
It’s Dust and Waterproof
The Galaxy S7 series come with IP68 rating which means the devices are dust proof and can handle a rainy day as well. The devices can be submerged underwater up to 3 meters. With premium devices such as these, an IP68 rating is what consumers would love to hear.
Design
We keep design at the end as it is the one thing that isn’t all that new with the new Galaxy S7 devices. And that is not a bad thing at all. Last year’s Galaxy S6 series were praised for its brilliant design language that brought together glass and metal to form a beautiful piece of machinery.
It’s not surprising, then, that Samsung decided to stick to the same design language with the successor, Galaxy S7. The new flagship retains the looks, adds a MicroSD card slot, and packs next-gen specifications. But what the S7 also adds is a curved edge at the back that exquisitely blends into the metal frame and gives a great looking shape as well as improves the grip.
Meanwhile, The S7 Edge features the same dual edge design as its S6 counterpart but on a bigger 5.5-inch form factor and comes with a QHD Super AMOLED display with a pixel density of 534 ppi compared to the 5.1-inch QHD 577 ppi screen that we saw on the S6 Edge.
Artificial Intelligence over the past couple of years has progressed at a rapid pace. Be it Robots like Pepper which possess the capability to understand human emotions or simple pieces of intelligent code such as Siri which can based on your past behaviour patterns assist you in your day to day tasks, artificial intelligence is slowly but surely taking center stage in our lives today.
In a continuation of this trend, robots with artificial intelligence are now making way to hotels near you. Hilton, the famous hotel chain, has partnered with IBM to create a robotic concierge that it will fondly call “Connie” in memory of its founder, Conrad Hilton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC0I08qt5VU
Connie is a Nao robot, a French 58cm-tall bot which is powered by IBM’s AI tech, Watson Smart. IBM claims that this Robo Concierge can understand speech, and the tech giant further claims that it enables the ‘bot to greet guests, answer questions about the hotel, and provide details about local services, sights and restaurants.”
Talking about the move, Rob High, chief technology officer of Watson said in a statement,
“This project with Hilton and WayBlazer represents an important shift in human-machine interaction, enabled by the embodiment of Watson’s cognitive computing. Watson helps Connie understand and respond naturally to the needs and interests of Hilton’s guests—which is an experience that’s particularly powerful in a hospitality setting, where it can lead to deeper guest engagement.”
Just in case you were wondering, Hilton’s friendly Robo Concierge, Connie, is not the first robot to to be employed by a hotel. Japanese hotel, the Hen-na in Nagasaki has a staff which is majorly manned by robots, speaking both Japanese and English.
Dell India at a press event in Delhi launched the 7000 Series Latitude range of ultrabooks. This new 7000 series of ultrabooks are targetted towards users looking to maximise business and productivity, and as Dell says these “provide the perfect blend of industry-leading security, manageability and reliability features.” Dell has done an excellent job with the 7000 series ultrabooks as this new range of ultrabooks is beautiful to look at with stunning design and InfinityEdge display.
Dell Latitude 13 (7370) 7000 Series Ultrabook
It is the world’s smallest business-class Ultrabook and 33 cm(13) and is an ideal device for users looking for a machine to take care of their business needs on the go. It is built using layers of unidirectional 40-ton carbon fiber and as such Dell claims it is ready for the rigors of heavy business use.
The Dell Latitude 13 is also the world’s only business-class Ultrabook with InfinityEdge display which is great or watching videos, surfing the web, and making documents and presentation on the go. In keeping up with the times, the ultrabook comes equipped with a USB Type-C port. It also includes Thunderbolt 3 for 8x faster data transfer than USB 3.0. It also brings with it a smartcard reader, fingerprint reader, RFID reader, and security and encryption software.
Dell Latitude 12 (7275) 7000 Series 2-in-1
Dell claims the Latitude 12 to be one of the lightest 31.8 cm (12.5) 2-in-1 devices in the world. It provides a good blend between the functionality of a laptop and the sleek, lightweight profile of a tablet. The unique design is free of cumbersome latches, locks or alignment pins, and instead uses magnets, easily transitioning from various use modes for maximum flexibility and productivity.
This offering from Dell comes with two keyboard options. The first being the Dell Latitude 12 Slim Keyboard, which is a full-sized, lightweight, well-spaced keyboard with backlit chiclet keys. The second alternative that the company brings to its users is the Dell Latitude 12 Premium Keyboard, which single-handedly connects to the tablet, and features backlit keys and mouse cursor control with high precision, gesture touchpad.
The Dell Latitude 12 2-in-1 comes with a very sleek 8mm screen which is the only business 2-in-1 device with a 4K UltraSharp UHD touch display. This display is covered by Corning Gorilla Glass, and the body of this device features a magnesium unibody build.
Dell has revealed that the Latitude 13 7000 Series Ultrabooks will be available starting next month at a price of INR 79,999. Dell Latitude 12 7000 Series 2-in-1 will find its way to the markets a bit late, and will be available by available March end at a starting price of INR 87,999.
