How developers are humanizing their virtual personal assistants.
The virtual personal assistant is romanticized in utopian portrayals of the future from The Jetsons to Star Trek. It’s the cultured, disembodied voice at humanity’s beck and call, eager and willing to do any number of menial tasks.
Home security camera maker EZVIZ announced its first product for smart entry security at CES 2018 today, with the debut of the Lookout Smart Door Viewer. The system is designed to work with the company’s new ezGuard security camera, as well as with other EZVIZ products and Amazon Alexa.
Continue reading… “EZVIZ’s ‘Lookout Smart Door Viewer’ turns a peephole into a smart video doorbell”
Drones that put selfie sticks to shame, pollution zapping air filters, 3D printable airless tires and a malware detecting router for your smart home.
Continue reading… “Top 25 inventions of 2017: Selfie drones, 3d printed tires and more”
SmileDirectClub offers to straighten your teeth at a fraction of the cost of braces, without a visit to the dentist. But orthodontists claim the company has endangered the oral health of tens of thousands of people.
By 2020, 45 million Americans will be caring for 117 million seniors. The retailer offers a $29 monthly monitoring service using internet-connected gear.
Continue reading… “Best Buy bets on adults remotely monitoring their aging parents”
Researchers at MIT have developed deep-learning algorithm that can compile a list of ingredients and even recommend recipes after looking at photos of food. The artificially intelligent system still needs some fine tuning, but this tool could eventually help us learn to cook, count calories, and track our eating habits.
Continue reading… “Ingenious AI converts images of food into a list of ingredients”
Building a home or temporary shelter by hand can be both time-consuming and expensive.
Ten Fold Engineering, a housing startup based in the UK, has created self-deploying buildings that can pop up in a matter of eight minutes. Owners push a button, and the rooms fold out like an accordion using a counterbalance system.
Continue reading… “This $130,000 self-deploying building can unfold in just eight minutes”
Starting as a niche technology, 3D printing has been around for a long time. And talk of how this technology could transform the construction industry, largely theoretical, has long circulated, too. But now, thanks to young entrepreneurs Chris Kelsey and Fernando De los Rios, we can expect to see 3D printing robots on building sites rather than hundred of masons in Dubai, and around the world.
The Silicon Valley-based duo has joined forces with the Dubai government, which has set a target for 25% of buildings to be 3D-printed by 2030 in the emirate.
Continue reading… “Dubai sets its sights on 3D printing 25% of its new construction by 2030”
:format(webp)/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54317373/Honda_Miimo_lifestyle_1.0.jpg)
From smart TVs to a modular sofa that can be controlled by an app, home tech isn’t just something for the future, it’s in our homes now. New technologies aim to make our lives easier, safer, and—sometimes—a little bit cooler. It was only a matter of time before innovators tackled the next great frontier of irritating domestic chores: the yard.
Cordless electric robot mowers are like a Roomba for your yard, traveling around the grass with a set of sharp spinning blades. They run automatically on whatever schedule you’d like, day or night, and the clippings are left on the grass as extra fertilizer.
There’s a new, dystopian risk to using internet-connected gadgets: If you complain, the company that made it might remotely kill your product.
This is what happened to one customer who bought Garadget — an internet-connected garage door opener. It lets you remotely lock or unlock your garage with an app, or see if it’s open.
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, now wants to save it.
The computer scientist who wrote the blueprint for what would become the World Wide Web 28 years ago today is alarmed at what has happened to it in the past year.
“Over the past 12 months, I’ve become increasingly worried about three new trends, which I believe we must tackle in order for the web to fulfill its true potential as a tool which serves all of humanity,” he said in a statement issued from London. He cited compromised personal data; fake news that he says has “spread like wildfire”; and the lack of regulation in political advertising, which he says threatens democracy.
Continue reading… “The World Wide Web’s inventor warns it’s in peril on 28th anniversary”
As we start to 3D-print everything — including houses, of all things — it’s pretty impressive that a company built one in just 24 hours.
Located in Russia, this 400-square-foot home (37 square meters) was built in just a day, at a cost of just over $10,000.
Continue reading… “First 3D printed house in Russia for $10,000”