Category: Tools and Information

Five Reasons Why HomeKit in iOS 14 Has Huge Rewards | Digital Trends

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With the release of iOS14 on iPhone and iPad, Apple’s HomeKit and the Home app have seen several changes that make the user experience better. None of the changes resulted in a significant change to HomeKit’s functionality or compatibility with more products — its most limiting factor at the moment — but rather focused on appearance and ease of access. We spent considerable time experiencing the new HomeKit experience with iOS 14 and here’s why it’s a small update with huge rewards.

Control Center access

The most apparent change is that HomeKit controls are now accessible through the Control Center. Just swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen to access the controls and turn devices on and off with a tap.

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9 Ways To Use Shipping Containers | The Startup Magazine

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Several years ago, people began using shipping containers as the foundation for building their homes to save money and pursue a low-maintenance lifestyle. They serve as an eco-friendly alternative to traditional homes. But it doesn’t stop there. Depending on one’s creativity or imagination, shipping containers offer endless opportunities.

If you’re interested in using shipping containers in the future, below are some of their most popular applications:

Restaurants Or Café

Do you want to launch a restaurant or a café near you without shelling out so much money to rent an expensive commercial property? If yes, consider going with a shipping container cafe or restaurant. The good thing about using shipping containers for your business is that it’s time- and cost-effective. It can also make a huge splash in your community, especially if you’ve transformed it into a must-see local attraction.

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These Robots Use AI to Learn How to Clean Your House | WIRED

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INSIDE AN ORDINARY-LOOKING home, a robot suspended from the ceiling slowly expands arms holding a sponge, before carefully wiping a kitchen surface clean. Nearby, another robot gently cleans a flat-screen television, causing it to wobble slightly.

The cleaning robots live inside a mock home located at the Toyota Research Institute in Los Altos, California. The institute’s researchers are testing a range of robot technologies designed to help finally realize the dream of a home robot.

After looking at homes in Japan, which were often small and cluttered, the researchers realized they needed a creative solution. “We thought, you know, how can we use the ceiling?” says Max Bajracharya, VP of Robotics at TRI.

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How to Manage (and Monitor) Your Reputation on Social Media | Entrepreneur

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Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube; it’s tough to do business these days without having at least a fledgling presence on these and other social media sites. Although the purest definition of social media is “a technology platform that connects people,” it can also be a valuable advertising platform that gives a company a way to directly engage its fans on a wide scale.

Social media from a marketing and PR perspective should be used to hold a conversation with the public, and brands should be leveraging their experts to engage, pursue and control that conversation. This is how the most successful brands engage, listen and interact with their customers across a variety of platforms. The unsuccessful ones forget this, which makes them appear stale or distant at times — and sometimes even the source of anger as “greedy corporate giants,” because mismanaged social media is the perfect recipe for a bad reputation

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12 Marketing Automation Providers and 5 Best Practices to Follow | Getentrepreneurial.com

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When done right, marketing automation can be your secret weapon. It can help you do more with the limited time you have and take your brand’s customer experience to the next level through improved insights and campaign management.

But getting started can be a daunting process. Knowing what content to automate, how to connect and manage all of your campaigns, and finding the right provider are just a few of things you’ll need to consider.

One of the most challenging parts is finding the right platform for your business needs.

Choosing the right marketing automation provider can make a big difference when it comes to the success of your automation journey, When looking for a partner, you need to understand what capabilities each contestant has and how they can help you grow as a business.

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Spinning String Picker Gives Guitar Sound Of Its Own | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

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Anthony Dickens had an idea for a new kind of guitar for more than 10 years, but work on a prototype only started two years ago. Now with the help of engineers from London’s Makerversity, the Circle Guitar is ready to rock.

What makes the Circle Guitar different to other electric six strings is that it’s essentially home to a mechanical step sequencer for sounds, textures and rhythms that Dickens says would be impossible on a conventional electric guitar. The motor-driven spinning disc in the ash body of the guitar rotates at up to 250 beats-per-minute under the strings. This disc has 128 slots for guitar picks to be placed in, and these strike the strings instead of a player’s pick hand. The force that the picks strike the strings can be set by the user.

Once the picks are placed in the desired strike pattern and the disc motor engaged, the player uses the picking hand to either mute strings for some heavy riffing or plays the six buttons below the strings like a piano to sound notes or chords. Each string has its own output captured by a hexaphonic pickup, which can then be amplified, recorded or processed through music production software. And six switches determine whether the signal passes freely to an amp, mixer or computer interface, or to the buttons that will release it only when pressed.

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Smartphone cameras can now detect diabetes with 80 percent accuracy | New Atlas

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A team from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has demonstrated promising potential in using a smartphone camera to diagnose type 2 diabetes. The innovative research demonstrates a technique that needs no additional hardware other than a functional smartphone camera, and currently is more than 80 percent accurate in detecting diabetes.

“Diabetes can be asymptomatic for a long period of time, making it much harder to diagnose,” says lead author on the new study, Robert Avram. “To date, noninvasive and widely-scalable tools to detect diabetes have been lacking, motivating us to develop this algorithm.”

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Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Fold is finally ready to pre-order for $2,499 | Mashable

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It feels like a lifetime ago that Lenovo first announced its ThinkPad X1 Fold at CES back in January. Now, seven months later, the world’s first PC with a foldable display is available for pre-order starting at $2,499.

The X1 Fold’s specs haven’t changed since that early reveal. It still features a 13.3-inch flexible OLED touchscreen display (2,048 x 1,536 pixel resolution) that can be split into two 9.6-inch screens when folded, with a 5-megapixel HD infrared camera on top.

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Too Much On Your Plate? 7 Ways to Tackle It | Life Hack

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Do you ever feel like you’re crossing off tasks from your never-ending “to-do” list and yet get to the end of your day feeling like you didn’t make significant progress?

Your new marketing plan takes a backseat. The much needed “you time” is put off until next week. The exciting new idea you’ve been working on can wait until life gets less hectic.

You have too much on your plate but unsure of what to do. In a world where we value the pursuit of more—ideas, tasks, actions—what if you were able to shift to valuing less, putting your energy towards what really matters?

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