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Tuesday, July 2, 2013

KeyMe Stores Keys In The Cloud, cuts them when you forget yours

KeyMe Locksmith In The Cloud
KeyMe is an innovative, New York City based startup that is revolutionizing the way people manage their keys. KeyMe, a new service launched this week in New York, seems to have found a solution by storing your keys in the cloud and making them accessible via a kiosk 24/7.

KeyMe allows you to store a digital version of your house key in the cloud from which a duplicate key can be cut on demand so that you do not get frustrated whenever you locked out of the house and you’ve forgotten the “safe” place where you hid the spare key or when the keys are stolen.

The KeyMe kiosk operation is very simple. After creating an account, the kiosk scans your key and stores the pattern in the cloud for later access. When you want to cut a new key from the pattern, you can visit any KeyMe kiosk, which will retrieve the pattern after you identify yourself by a fingerprint scan. 

KeyMe stores a copy of your house key in the cloud, prints at kiosks


You then select from a choice of keys, including decorative keys and a combination key and bottle opener option, and the kiosk does the rest. Very little of your own personal information is stored, like your address, and accounts can only be accessed with a fingerprint scan. A few other security measures are also said to be in place. And in the event that there is some activity going on with your account, KeyMe will send you an email letting you know that your account has been accessed.


The company claims that it is more accurate than hardware store or locksmith key-cutting machines. However, though it cuts home and office keys, it won’t do car keys or Mul-T-Lock key. This isn't surprising, since most modern cars use a key with a programmed microchip to prevent theft – if they have keys at all. KeyMe should only be used for keys that you have the full rights to duplicate.

Digital copies of your keys are stored for free and you're only charged when you actually need to get a key printed, which costs $20. To create a duplicate key on the spot, you'll have to fork over $3.50 for a basic brass key. Novelty keys, like a bottle opener key or sports team themed ones, will cost $6. There are currently two locations in Manhattan with three more on the way. No word on when they plan to expand outside of New York.

SUMMARY:

  • Store your key - Scan and store your keys securely in the cloud. Access your digital keychain from anywhere.

  • Locked out? - Login to your digital keychain with a fingerprint scan and get a spare in 30 seconds. Lockouts are a thing of the past!

  • Make a perfect copy - Duplicate your key in 30 seconds. Choose from a huge selection of key designs...including our very own bottle-opening key!

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Qardio Unveils Portable, Wireless Cardiovascular Devices For Continuous Health Monitoring

QardioCore provide continuous electrocardiogram (EKG) monitoring, heart rate, physical activity and skin temperature monitoring. 
Qardio, a healthcare technology company, today unveils two revolutionary, cardiovascular monitoring devices so that detailed cardiovascular monitoring no longer requires a visit to the doctor's clinic or a hospital. A new wave of cardiovascular monitoring devices can be carried or worn by patients as they go about their daily routine, with the collected data able to be transmitted wirelessly to healthcare professionals and family members.

These two devices are :-


  • QardioCore - It takes the form of a strap worn around the torso to provide continuous electrocardiogram (EKG) monitoring, heart rate, physical activity and skin temperature monitoring. QardioCore's small and practical design provides a simple solution for users: It clips on underneath clothing in seconds, automatically turns itself on and connects to a smartphone.

  • QardioArm -  It monitors blood pressure – both systolic (during heart beats) and diastolic (between heart beats) – as well as heart rate. Designed to fit around the upper arm when in use, the QardioArm is more noticeable than the QardioCore.
QardioArm monitors blood pressure

Qardio intends to transform the way people monitor their hearts and blood pressure by capturing daily-life data that can be automatically and selectively shared with their physicians and their families. By replacing snapshot readings at scheduled appointments with a steady flow of vital information gathered during daily activities, Qardio provides a more personalized, convenient and cost-effective solution for monitoring cardiovascular conditions than traditional technologies.

"Instead of having to adapt your life to sensors and medical devices, you now have a medical tracking system that fits effortlessly into your life. We have created technologies and solutions that make healthcare personal, the way it should be, and we are very excited by the impact that this can have on the lives of many people," said Marco Peluso, CEO of Qardio.

QardioArm and QardioCore connect wirelessly to your iOS device and the Qardio secure, integrated digital platform. Data is uploaded automatically and enabled for sharing with doctors and loved ones. It's accessible on Qardio's consumer iOS app and a doctor's dashboard, both of which automatically translate it into engaging and understandable charts for an in-depth picture of the wearer's cardiovascular health.
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Monday, July 1, 2013

SunnyBot Tracks The Sun To Reflect Sunlight And Heat Your Home

Solar-Powered SunnyBot Directs 7000 Lumens of Daylight Into Your Home
SunnyBot is a microcomputer-powered robot that continually tracks the position of the sun, angling its on-board mirror so that it keeps reflecting the sun’s rays onto a fixed point of your choice. The basic idea being to harness solar energy for use as an indoor light-source when rooms might otherwise be in shade, or to target the sun’s heat where it’s needed — for warming a room or heating a swimming pool or nurturing indoor plants, and so on.

This neat little robot, now gathering funding on Kickstarter, is designed to focus the sun’s rays on a particular spot, casting a bright glow that’s very similar to a lamp…only you don’t have to plug it in. In addition to lowering your energy bills, SunnyBot’s creators claim it can provide free heat, kill bacteria, and even boost indoor plant growth.

SUNNYBOT brings you natural light
Sunny is an autonomous robot, trained to redirect the sun into places it otherwise might not be able to reach. “As the sun moves across the sky, SunnyBot will know to rotate its mirror, drenching the target with the warm glow of sunlight,” explain the designers.  A single SunnyBot redirects 7,000 lumens to the location of your choice (equivalent to a single 500W halogen lamp). The reflective range of the device is up to 200 metres away, with an accuracy error margin of as little as 0.1 meter over 30 meters.

SUNNYBOT DIRECTS THE SUN TO WHERE YOU WANT IT
Inside the sun-tracking mirror-wielding bot, itself powered by a row of solar cells, is a dual-axis, integrated microcomputer with an optical feedback system. The current SunnyBot design is a prototype, so its technical specifications will be tweaked as the startup moves to industrial production, with additional elements intended to be added to the design to improve durability, such as a custom enclosure for the mirror to support and contain it, and also the use of injection moulding for high quality body and mechanical parts.

SunnyBot will be assembled in Italy, with macro components produced in different locations, including the electronic boards in Cambridge, U.K.; microcontrollers in Arizona, U.S.; and mechanical parts in Modena, Italy. The consumer cost per bot looks likely to be several hundred pounds. There are a limited number of Kickstarter pledges costing £199 ($310) which include one device.


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Apple Files For 'iWatch' Trademark In Japan

Apple's iWatch Will Look Like
Apple Inc. has filed a trademark application for an iWatch in Japan, adding to speculation that the company is preparing to introduce a watchlike product.

The news comes from Bloomberg, which says Apple filed for the trademark on June 3 with the Japan Patent Office, suggesting, once again, that the fabled product may actually be a real thing. Earlier other companies have filed for the same trademark in the past, although this particular one was specifically applied for by Apple Inc. of Cupertino. The filing categorized the iWatch as a "handheld computer or watch device," which puts it right in line with previous expectations.

Apple comes out with an iWatch, it likely won't replace the iPhone, but rather serve as a complement to it.


Earlier this month, it’s been rumored that Apple may have filed for the iWatch mark in Russia.

In the past, Apple is believed to have a team of 100 people working on the development of its iWatch smartwatch. It’s still unclear if the iWatch could replace an iPhone and handle calls, data, and web, though it will be able to handle at least some of the tasks that smartphone owners use their phones for.

The trademark application follows a recent Apple patent for a flexible AMOLED display intended to be worn around the wrist, in addition to reports that the so-called iWatch will run a full version of iOS and could be available as early as later this year.




The competition to create the first commercially successful smartwatch is well underway, with large companies like Samsung and Microsoft being mentioned in rumors a number of times. Sony, on the other hand, is preparing to launch its latest smartwatch while Pebble continues to deliver its successful Kickstarter project to customers.

The device, which could launch as early as late this year or as far off as late 2014, is expected to duplicate select iPhone and iPad functions. It could run a modified version of iOS, and could potentially combine native processing with notifications and select information transmitted from an iPhone. It could also rely heavily on Siri's voice control, and use some kind of biometric sensors for both security and health and fitness monitoring. Apple bought biometric sensor company Authentec last year.




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15-Year-Old Canadian Schoolgirl Creates Flashlight Powered By Body Heat

15-year-old Canadian girl invents flashlight powered only by body heat and earns spot in Google Science Fair finals
At the tender age of 15, Canadian high school student Ann Makosinski has designed and built a flashlight powered by body heat. Her creation had assisted her in capturing the position of a finalist in the 15-16 age group of the Google Science Fair. She had made it to one of the finalist position in the massive group of a total of thousands of entries from more than around 100 Nations. She recalled her past experiences and said that her science project in tenth grade was a volcano. Unfortunate enough (or indeed fortunate for her) that her volcano works only half of the time, which inspired her for doing something better and bigger.

Makosinski
The LED flashlight relies on the thermoelectric effect, with tiles that generate electricity from the differences in temperature to generate electricity. She was trying to think of a way of harvesting untapped energy when she was inspired to make the flashlight.

She realized that the warmth generated by the human body was an overlooked energy source. Her project objective was to create a flashlight that ran solely off the heat of the hand. That objective was accomplished when she discovered Peltier tiles, which produce electricity when one side of the tile is heated and the other is cooled.

Makosinski realized she could use these tiles to create energy for her flashlight if she left the device hollow. Holding the flashlight on the outside would cause the tiles to heat  up on one side while the ambient
air would cool down the tile on the inside of the flashlight. 

The power created by the tiles was enough to power an LED light, but it did not create enough voltage. 

To troubleshoot that issue she created a circuit that would allow for transformers, upping the voltage. It worked! The flashlight does have one issue: it works better in colder temperatures since the inside is 
better able to cool down comparative to the person's body heat.

Makosinski built two different flashlights. The first was made using a tube of aluminum, which is a good heat sink material thanks to its high thermal conductivity, while the second was built using a PVC tube.

Both models work better when the difference between the ambient temperature and body temperature is greater, which is to say, when it's colder. So while the flashlights worked with an air temperature of 10° C (50° F), they emitted more light with the air temperature at 5° C (41° F). Still, she claims that both were able to maintain a steady beam of light for 20 minutes, even in the warmer temperature.

Makosinski with  Flashlight Powered By Body Heat
The final cost of each flashlight came to only just over CA$26 (US$25), but if mass-produced, the cost would obviously be substantially lower.

Makosinski along with 14 other Google Science Fair finalists will be travelling to Google's Mountain View, California campus in the month of September. The venue will witness the prize distribution of the winner in each of the three age groups.

A grand prize winner will be banging a $50,000 scholarship from Google and a trip to the Galapagos Islands.

EXPLANATION OF MAKOSINSKI'S FLASHLIGHT:


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MIT Researchers Create A Way To See Through Walls: Wi-Vi



Using WiFi to “see through walls” and track people when they’re moving could be a new feature on your next smartphone, if MIT researchers have their way, with a low-cost method of tracking relying on the wireless connectivity.  Researchers at MIT felt that a stranger having access to your wireless network wasn't scary enough, so they developed a way for someone to use Wi-Fi signals as a sort of x-ray vision to track a person's movements in another room. This project is known as Wi-Vi.

Borrowing similar techniques as used with radar and sonar, the Wi-Vi system—as the researchers have called it—sends out a pair of inverse wireless signals as pings. When they hit something stationary, they cancel each other out, but when an object is in motion it creates an offset between the signals that can be processed to determine where and how fast it's moving.


A person’s movement is tracked based on changes in distance from the receiver. The longer it takes for the reflected signal to make it back to the receiver, the farther away the person is. The system then generates a graph of their position over time. It is not a literal image of the person, but it can be used to infer if they are walking, running or something else. Zero movement registers as a flat line, but minor movements are easily picked up.

Low-power WiFi signal tracks movement, even behind walls
Although sonar and radar are nowhere near new, they’re also expensive to add to a mobile device. In contrast, Wi-Vi relies on off-the-shelf hardware, simply 2.4GHz WiFi radios. That opens the door to integrating it into regular smartphones, which invariably already feature wireless support.

The MIT team behind the project have some big ambitions for Wi-Vi. The scanning technology could be used by law enforcement and emergency services personnel, to identify hiding suspects, potential hazards, and people trapped in wreckage or rubble. It could also have a role in smart homes, being used to track movement and activity to control lighting, heating, and other environmental features, or perhaps move A/V content around to follow the listener.


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Gaia Space Telescope will unravel Milky Way

The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. This name derives from its appearance as a dim "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky, in which the naked eye cannot distinguish individual stars. The term "Milky Way" is a translation of the Classical Latin via lactea, from the Greek γαλαξίας κύκλος (pr. galaxías kýklos, "milky circle"). The Milky Way appears like a band because it is a disk-shaped structure being viewed from inside. The fact that this faint band of light is made up of stars was proven in 1610 when Galileo Galilei used his telescope to resolve it into individual stars. In the 1920s, observations by astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies.
To pinpoint our location in the galaxy for the first time, the £630-million Gaia Space Telescope will take three-dimensional pictures of more than a billion stars in the Milky Way in an attempt to help astronomers.
Scientists claim the spacecraft, which is due to be launched in October, will allow them to study the stars around us in more detail than ever before, and will reveal just how far these distant suns are from our own solar system.
The telescope will help astronomers determine the age, size and movement of the stars, while also providing details of what they are made of.
They also hope to discover more than 5000 new planets outside our own solar system along with other objects that lie outside our galaxy.
"Gaia is an astronomer's dream," said Alvaro Gimenez, director of science at the European Space Agency, which has funded the mission.
"It is designed to answer many of the questions we have about the stars. We know little about exactly how far away they are, and how they move. Gaia will tell us this."

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