cross pond high tech

A Twitter user’s claim to have tweeted from a kitchen appliance went viral but experts have cast doubt

Earlier this week, I sat down with the company’s co-founders Gisèle Belliot and José Alonso Ybanez Zepeda, along with Uber co-founder-turned-investor Oscar Salazar, to discuss the product. The company’s ramping up for a formal announcement at CES, in tandem with the launch of an Indiegogo campaign, and it’s still working out some of the kinks around contextualizing its product.

We met up at a shared workspace in Manhattan, in a meeting room made up to resemble a living room — except for the big construction paper cutouts of buttons like Play and Pause adhered to different surfaces (another shorthand visualization of the product’s functionality).

By way of shortening this elevator ride, I’d describe the startup thusly: It’s Amazon Echo with a Kinect camera built in. In place of voice commands, you’ve got gestures.

In some ways Hayo is designed to fulfill similar functionality as Amazon’s hardware — a sort of connected home hub that ties together various smart devices — lights, music, thermostat, etc. When you get down to it, the possibilities are really endless when it comes to gesture controls in a three-dimensional space.

The company is, understandably, starting off simply with regards to functionality. At launch, the system will allow the user to designate 10 “buttons” per device. A button here is a point in space — a surface on, say, a wall or table. Each button can be assigned two different functions, which can adjust based on variables like time of day and user.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before Twitter actually started working with real, live birds.

The company with a bird logo that gave us the “tweet” has partnered with Plume Labs of Paris and DigitasLBi to launch a flock of Internet-connected pigeons to monitor air pollution in London.

Plume Labs is an IOT company that uses a network of sensors around the world to deliver targeted pollution reports to people’s smartphones. DigitasLBi is a global marketing and technology agency.

Yesterday was the first of three days during which the group plans to launch a team of 10 pigeons wearing small pollution-monitoring backpacks. The sensors were specially designed by Plume Labs and are stuffed in small vests that are placed on the pigeons.

The sensors are able to monitor levels of nitrogen dioxide and ozone, the two main ingredients in urban air pollution, according to a press release from Plume.

The results of the “Pigeon Air Patrol” are posted directly onto the project’s Twitter account. Residents can also follow the birds on the Pigeon Patrol website, which will also show their location.

IBM is hard at work on the problem of ubiquitous computing, and its approach, understandably enough, is to make a computer small enough that you might mistake it for a grain of sand. Eventually these omnipresent tiny computers could help authenticate products, track medications and more.

It’s an evolution of IBM’s “crypto anchor” program, which uses a variety of methods to create what amounts to high-tech watermarks for products that verify they’re, for example, from the factory the distributor claims they are, and not counterfeits mixed in with genuine items.

The “world’s smallest computer,” as IBM continually refers to it, is meant to bring blockchain capability into this; the security advantages of blockchain-based logistics and tracking could be brought to something as benign as a bottle of wine or box of cereal.

Introducing the Omega2, the $5 IoT computer.

What the heck is an IoT computer? It is a Linux computer designed specifically for building connected hardware applications. It combines the tiny form factor and power-efficiency of the Arduino, with the power and flexibilities of the Raspberry Pi.

• The Omega2 is simple, even for people who are just getting started with building hardware.
• The Omega2 is affordable, starting at just $5.

With the Omega2, we want to lower the barrier of entry, and allow everyone to take the leap into hardware development.

We made the Omega2 tiny so that it can easily fit into your DIY project or commercial product. It is less than 1/4 the size of the Raspberry Pi, and less than 1/3 the size of the Arduino Uno.

The Omega2 has integrated Wi-Fi and on-board flash storage. This means that it springs to life the moment you power it on. You don't have to worry about buying Wi-Fi dongles or installing operating system images onto external SD cards.

Using the Omega2 is just like using a desktop computer. We've built simple and intuitive apps for you to interact with the Omega2. We also have an App Store where you can discover even more apps!For the more adventurous, you can even build apps with our SDK and publish them on the Onion App Store to share with the world :)

Don't be fooled by its size, the Omega2 is a full computer running Linux, the same operating system that powers some of the world's most mission-critical infrastructure. You can think of the Omega2 as a tiny Linux server with Wi-Fi. (Yes, it even runs Apache!)

For the BSD fans out there, the Omega2 also runs FreeBSD!

An important benefit of running Linux is that the Omega2 can be programmed with whatever language you want. Save time by using languages and libraries you are already familiar with.

The Omega2 is designed for connectivity. It has Wi-Fi built in, and we have built expansions so that you can easily add Bluetooth, Cellular, and GPS to your projects.

Imagine there was a device that could help make your car run quicker, cheaper and help you save the environment? Well that’s what OOCar is offering with its latest service.

The startup claims it can save you as much as 30 percent on fuel costs and 40 percent on insurance premiums. Not bad.

When the dreaded engine warning light comes on, it can give you a breakdown of the damage and also a rough cost of repairs, so you can tell if a mechanic is trying to pull a fast one. The app is only available in France right now, but the team hopes to start expanding across Europe soon.