QTOOTH

Mickey Mouse Part of the ‘Internet of Things’ – Goes Wireless with MagicBand

2013-06-02

Walt Disney to go Wireless with the MagicBand News from the All Things D Conference, otherwise known as D11: Walt Disney reveals the MagicBand, a wrist band that will wirelessly tailor a visitor’s experience as they move through their theme parks. It is basically a re-working of the growing field of proximity marketing.

Tom Staggs, the chairman of Walt Disney theme parks and resorts division, said Wednesday his company is working on technology that would let costumed Mickey Mouse speak for the first time ever. The talking Mickeys, and other Disney characters, may even be able to greet little Jimmy by name, thanks to Disney’s MagicBand, a new Internet-connected wristband that will serve as tickets and data repository for Disney park visitors.

“The more their visit can seem personalized, the better,” Staggs said at the D: All Things Digital technology conference.

The MagicBand technology is part of a growing wave of wearable wristwatches, eyeglasses and other emerging Internet-connected that are the talk of the tech world.

But Staggs was quick to say the technology allowing Mickey and other characters to know children’s names will be entirely optional.

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Body Monitors Help Drive Healthy Behavior Change

2013-06-01

Body tracking systems are demonstrating their value in successful interventions for weight management and other potential health applications, according to many studies being presented at the American University of Sports Medicine’s 60th Yearly Meeting and Fourth World Congress on Exercise and Medicine, opening today in Indianapolis. The studies, using the BodyMedia armband body monitoring system. recommend that technology can be utilized to help urge healthy and balanced habits and achieve successful health outcomes while also reducing the necessity for in-person consultations for therapy support.

One study, Effect of a Lifestyle Intervention Prior to Bariatric Surgery on Objectively Measured Physical Activity in Severely Obese Adults, demonstrated a six-month weight-loss amongst people in the intervention team participating in enhanced light and moderate-to-vigorous strength exercising verses those in common treatment. The research featured a pre-surgery diet plan and exercising program accompanied by a mix of in-person sessions, phone consults and using physical body monitors to gauge the changes in levels of activity.

In another study, The Comparison of a Technology-based System and In-person Behavioral Weight Loss Intervention in the Severely Obese, researchers looked at methods of weight-loss interventions that can be provided either by face-to-face meetings or through tech-based procedures, including Bluetooth-enabled activity monitors. The research team enlisted Class II and Class III obese people, and found that a three-month program utilizing the BodyMedia armbands and its web-based system to track dietary consumption and physical body weight, both with or without using a smartphone, in addition to one 10-minute intervention phone conversation each month resulted in weight loss similar to typical in-person behavioral interventions. The findings suggest that considerable short-term weight-loss in the significantly obese can be attained with less in-person interaction than today’s traditional support programs.

BodyMedia spearheaded the development of wearable body monitors that gather physical information for use in enhancing fitness, health and wellness. The data captured by BodyMedia’s tools is used by customers as well as health and wellness experts to lead behavior modifications to aid in regulating weight and promote an energetic lifestyle, two aspects that are consistently mentioned as tricks to combat and manage severe health care problems. The BodyMedia innovation has been made use of in hundreds of medical research studies covering health and wellness issues such as weight problems, diabetes, COPD, cancer, cystic fibrosis, bariatrics, intensive care, and sleep.

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Nest Thermostat: The Heating and Cooling System That Just Keeps Getting Smarter.

2013-05-30

Nest - The Learning Themostat A longstanding questions has ben whether technology can eliminate the planned obsolescence that seems built in to so many electronic devices. Many people have tried to change this situation with devices that can expand and add to their original functionality by updating software and firmware. so far that goal has proved very elusive to the point of seeming impossible. However, here’s a hopeful story about the Nest Thermostat that is making a bold attempt at just that.

The Nest thermostat has made recent improvement that suggests that the story of built in obsolescence may be very different for home devices. As thermostats, refrigerators, stoves, washing machines, coffee machines, dishwashers, sprinkler systems, and just about every other traditional system in the house starts to communicate with the web, something odd might start to happen: Instead than getting older and becoming less capable every year, these devices will keep getting better.

There are some technical explanations for this. “One of the reasons that Apple doesn’t do releases on old devices is that they’re bound by the CPU, the horsepower, or memory, or the battery—but we’re not constrained by that,” Nest’s Rogers says. (Like many others at Nest, Rogers is a former employee of Apple.) Nest has its own onboard processor, but if it ever gets outdated or overwhelmed, it can offload processing tasks to the cloud. At its core a thermostat is “just a switch,” Rogers observes, and “we’re applying intelligence to how we use that switch.”

Beyond the fact that a Nest you install today won’t necessarily become obsolete, it is important to note that the proliferation of new Nests works to keep improving current Nests. Now that these thermostats have been operating in homes across the country for a year, their sensors have recorded large amounts of information about how people adjust temperatures. After stripping any identifying details from the data recorded by your Nest, the company compiles it with information recorded by other Nests. Then it analyzes the data to look for ways to improve the device’s algorithms. “We can see temperature history, away history, and then we test to see how well our algorithm performed,” says Rogers.

For example: Auto Away is a built-in system for turning off your heating or cooling by noticing when you’re gone. In the original version the algorithm was very set. “We’d always wait two hours without seeing people in the house and then turn it down, and if they came home we’d turn it back up,” Rogers says. But by analyzing the user data, Nest detected some important subtleties. “We found that morning patterns are very regular—when people leave in the morning, they’re gone,” Rogers says. So now, after an update, the Nest turns off your heating or cooling much sooner in the morning than it would at any other time of the day. Rogers points out that, “The morning is the coldest time of the day, and electricity is also expensive then, so turning on Auto Away sooner can make a big difference—now the Nest won’t waste energy heating your home when nobody’s there.”

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Plantronics – Legendary Dad Sweepstakes on Facebook

2013-05-29

Plantronics is holding a sweepstakes on Facebook honoring Legendary Dads. Sign up is easy, no purchase necessary, and the giveaway is for 2 of their Voyager 2 Legend headsets. You know we here at QTOOTH are all about it! Click below for more info.

Plantronics – Sweepstakes | Facebook.

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BRCK – Your Backup Generator for the Internet.

2013-05-26

Found this story through GOOD Magazine and their excellent daily email newsletter.

BRCK – the easiest, most reliable way to connect to the internet, anywhere in the world, even when you don’t have electricity.

Here is Their Story

Anyone who has worked in the field — or anyplace far from the world’s most wired urban areas — knows how hard it can be to get connected and stay online. And yet the equipment used to connect in Kenya, or India, or the rest of the developing world is the same as that used in New York and London, even though the conditions are completely different.

At Ushahidi, we face this problem all the time. We realized that what we really needed was a smart, rugged device that could connect to the internet any way it could, hop from one network to another, create a hotspot for multiple devices, while plugged in or running on battery power.

The idea behind BRCK is that all kinds of jobs require steady connectivity, even when infrastructure is spotty due to wireless connections that come and go, intermittent power, or devices that can’t share connections. Seeing this, we set out to redesign connectivity for the world we live in – Africa. As we laid out what such a device would look like — physically robust, able to connect to multiple networks, a hub for all local devices, enough backup power to survive a blackout — We realized that the way the entire world is connecting to the web is changing. We no longer only get online via desktops in our office, we have multiple devices, and we are all constantly on the move. So we designed the BRCK for the changing way we connect to the web around the world, from cafe-hoppers in San Francisco to struggling coders in Nairobi .

The BRCK is like a backup generator for the internet.

It works when the electricity goes out and it works when the internet goes down.

Portable and easy to set up,
It supports up to 20 devices,
WiFi powerful enough to cover multiple rooms,
8 Hour battery backup,
16 GB harddrive,
8 GPIO pins to connect sensors,
Software infused allows for apps, remote management, and data collection,
Documented API.

Our motto has always been “if it works in Africa, it will work anywhere.” Our aim is to move the BRCK from its current prototype phase into a field-ready product. We need your help to achieve this goal of taking the prototype to production.

Check them out on Kick Starter:

via BRCK – your backup generator for the internet by Ushahidi — Kickstarter.

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Canon Includes Apple AirPrint Compatibility For New PIXMA Wireless Office All-In-One Printers

2013-05-23

Canon has decided to take the opportunity at CES to announce that they will be including Apple AirPrint compatibility for their spanking new collection of Pixma wireless office all-in-one printers. This is a step in the right direction, especially for those who are still dreaming about living up a wireless lifestyle which has been nigh impossible, as the power of wireless power being transferred from one place to another device in an accurate manner has yet to be solved. In fact, going paperless would be far more realistic in the long run.

Well, at least we are getting somewhere with this wireless effort, where compatible models that will feature Apple AirPrint compatibility will include the Canon PIXMA MX922, PIXMA MX522 and PIXMA MX452 Wireless Office All-In-One Printers. Just what does AirPrint do? For starters, users are able to wirelessly print photos, email, web pages and documents without having to go through the hassle of installing device drivers. AirPrint is compatible with all iPad models, the iPhone (3GS and later), and iPod touch devices (3rd generation and later), with a minimum operating system requirement of iOS 4.2 (or later). [Press Release]

via Canon Includes Apple AirPrint Compatibility For New PIXMA Wireless Office All-In-One Printers | Ubergizmo.

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