Microsoft Launches Surface Pro 4

Microsoft Surface is a series of Windows-based personal computing devices designed and manufactured by Microsoft under its hardware division, a part of the Windows and Devices group. It comprises of tablet computers, laplets, laptops, and an interactive whiteboard called the Surface Hub.
The first generation of tablet devices were introduced on June 18, 2012, while the most recent models currently available are the Surface Pro 3 and the Surface 3, released on June 20, 2014, and May 5, 2015, respectively. The newest devices, the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, will be available for sale on October 26, 2015.
The Surface family consists of three major lines of PCs: the Surface tablets, designed for budget-oriented consumers and educational users, the Surface Pro tablets, designed for professional users, and the Surface Book laptop/tablet hybrid. Surface Hub, an interactive whiteboard, is an offshoot of the Surface tablet. The tablets are notable for their sliding out kickstand, which supports the tablet while it stands at an angle, and optional detachable magnetic keyboards which also double as a protective screen cover.

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World's Largest Solar Park Pakistan

Some 400,000 solar panels, spread over 200 hectares of flat desert, glare defiantly at the sun at what is known as the Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power Park (QASP) in Cholistan Desert, Punjab, named after Pakistans founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

Foot Powered Washing Machine

Foot powered washing machine could change the world at just $40.

There are hundreds of millions of people who dont have the convenience of just tossing their dirty clothes into a washer and dryer when they get dirty. These people still wash by hand using a bucket, or in some cases a local stream. Washing clothes can take many hours this way, but this could all be about to change as Ji A You and Alex Cabunoc have created the GiraDora- a foot powered washing machine and dryer, with a price tag of just $40.

High-Tech Floating Tsunami Shelter

The horrific tsunamis of 2004 and 2011 affected all of us in some way, but the majority of us not directly affected could do nothing about the disasters other than sit back and watch them unfold. Two engineers from Seattle were inspired to put their expertise to good use so that future tsunamis need not take such a dramatic human toll.

Scott Hill and Julian Sharp have been working on their tsunami shelter design since 2011. The Survival Capsule is meant for children, the elderly, the disabled, and anyone else who would find evacuation difficult or impossible. The designers stress that evacuation is always the safest course of action.

Outside, the capsule is wrapped in aircraft-grade aluminum that can withstand impacts with objects traveling up to 75 MPH. Inside, a ceramic thermal blanket protects occupants from any exterior fires, while the aluminum casing prevents the pod from melting. The designers point out that the shelters could also be used in case of other natural disasters like floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes.

The Survival Capsules, available in two- to 10-person models, can be allowed to float freely or be tethered in place. In the event that the tether would cause the capsule to be trapped underwater, the tether can easily be released. If the capsule does somehow become submerged, on-board oxygen tanks would keep occupants supplied with air for up to one hour.

Storage space allows for a stash of enough water and supplies for up to five days, keeping occupants alive until they can be rescued. Of course, with a starting price of $10,000 for a two-person shelter, the capsules will be out of the price range of many of the people they could help the most. We hope to see government programs to fund the supply of high-tech tsunami disaster shelters like these to be used by the public in especially high-risk areas.

Getting Water From Air

Excited about our first product sponsor, Ecoloblue! With the drought here in California, we will be able to get purified water directly from the atmosphere. I cannot wait to show this product off. It would be excellent for anyone who lives near the beach, as the humidity often ruins the electronics.

Windowless Private Jet

The $60 Million Windowless Private Jet concept.

Every seat on this private jet is the ultimate window seat, but theres just one catch there are no windows.
A global design company has come up with an innovative concept for a windowless private jet that uses external cameras to capture a real-time, 360-degree panoramic view of the space around the plane.
The images are beamed on to display panels on the cabin walls and ceiling, giving passengers the feeling that theyre flying in a transparent fuselage.

Xbox One Bundle

New Xbox One Bundle Comes With 1TB Hybrid Drive, New Elite Controller For $499

Microsoft just announced a new bundle for the Xbox One. The Xbox One Elite Bundle is the first bundle to come with Microsoft’s new Elite controller. But that’s not all, as the company also switched to a hybrid 1TB SSD and HDD drive for the first time. This bundle costs $499.

Using a hybrid drive makes sense for a few reasons. Consoles now require you to install games on your hard drive before you can play. Most of the time, it means copying files from a Blu-ray to a hard drive and then loading the game from the hard drive. The 5400 RPM hard drive is the bottleneck when you install a game.

Moreover, having a faster hard drive means that games can load faster. Booting the console should be 20 percent faster as well. While, the PlayStation 4 has a replaceable hard drive, you can’t replace the Xbox hard drive without voiding the warranty.

Yet, switching to an SSD would be hard for Microsoft as the company needs to provide a big drive to store a few games and keep a low price tag. Now that games generally require between 30GB and 50GB, a 256GB SSD wouldn’t make sense. That’s why the company opted for a hybrid drive.


When it comes to the new wireless controller, Microsoft announced it at E3 in June. It comes with hair-trigger locks, a textured rolling pad instead of the good old D-pad and bumpers. Components are swappable, meaning that you can replace the joystick with the D-pad for example.

You can also remap all the controls and customize the sensitivity of the sticks and triggers. While this controller works with any Xbox One and PC, it costs $150. So today’s new bundle could be a good deal if you want a new Xbox One and want to pay less for the controller. The Elite controller as well as the new bundle will ship in October.

Android Wear Watches Now Work On iOS

More than a year after the launch of the first Android Wear watches, Google is now finally bringing iOS support to its smartwatch platform with the launch of its Android Wear mobile app in Apple’s App Store today.

This probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise, given that Huawei spoiled this launch by announcing iOS support for its upcoming Android Wear watch last week, but it’s a long-overdue step for Google.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, though. Android Wear for iOS will only officially support theLG Watch Urbane and all future Android Wear watches (including upcoming watches from Huawei, Asus and Motorola). (Update: it looks like you may be able to pair the Moto 360 andother older Android Wear watches with an iPhone, assuming the watch already runs Android Wear 1.3. Older watches won’t come with version1.3 pre-loaded, so they won’t connect to the iPhone and hence can’t get the update. It’s unclear for how long Google will unofficially support these older watches, though).

Given that all of these older watches work just fine with Android, it’s a bit of a puzzle why Google made this decision. When we asked the company about this, a spokesperson told us the following:

“We wanted to make sure that iOS users would have a great experience with Android Wear out of the box. We’ve worked with manufacturers to ensure that the newest watches work really well with modern iPhones, but last year’s watches aren’t technically supported.”

The company also argues that in order to have a “streamlined setup pairing an iOS phone and Android watch, the watch needs to be running the latest Android Wear release out of the box.”

That’s probably a disappointment for some, but there are probably not all that many iOS users out there who have an older Android Wear watch, so this may not be as big of a deal as it seems.

Once you’ve paired your watch with your iPhone (the app is compatible with the iPhone 5 and all newer iPhones as long as they run iOS 8.2 and up), the actual on-watch experience is pretty much the same as always. The app supports rich notifications from Gmail, Google Calendar and Apple Calendar, Google Now Cards, voice queries, Google Fit support, alarms, and everything else you’d expect.

The app, of course, will also display notifications from all third-party iPhone apps. For now, however, users won’t be able to install any third-party watch apps from Google Play. This means you will see notifications from those apps but won’t be able to directly interact with your fitness tracker on the watch, for example. Google says it’s working on bringing third-party app support to iOS users, too, but it’s unclear when this will happen. WiFi support is also currently absent.

“Not everyone wants the same kind of smartwatch, so offering people choice is important,” Google says. That comment is clearly aimed at the Apple Watch and there is probably some truth in that. Smartwatches are, after all, at least partly fashion accessories and even though Apple offers a number of different variations of its smartwatch, they all look pretty similar in the end.

Google also notes that Android Wear supports always-on watch faces, “so you’ll never have to move your wrist to wake up your watch.” Another thinly veiled swipe at the Apple Watch.

The new app is now making its way into the App Store, so if you can’t find it just yet, give it another try in an hour or so.

Samsung Gear S2 Watch

Samsung Announces The Samsung Gear S2, Now More Round

Samsung has just announced their new smartwatch, the Samsung Gear S2. The watch is unique in that it has a round rotating bezel – the thing on the edge of the crystal – in addition to two buttons on the side for home and back. It runs Samsung’s Tizen OS, a system used by Samsung in their original Gear models. Samsung, however, isn’t announcing compatibility today which suggests some changes in the Gear lineup. The new watch includes NFC for payments and other wireless connectivity and it even includes an e-SIM – a method to make calls and perform some tasks without a phone nearby.

Speeds and feeds are fairly standard – 360 x 360 resolution, a nice dual core 1.0 GHz processor, 4GB internal memory – but the styling is nice and at 11.4mm thin it’s quite svelte. No pricing or shipping info right now but we’ll update this post as we hear more.

LG Gold Plated Smart Watch

LG Is Selling A Gold-Plated Version Of Its Watch Urbane Smartwatch For $1,200

Android fans wanting a touch of gold with their smartwatch — a la the Apple Watch — may be interested to learn of a fancy pants version of LG’s Watch Urbane.

Priced at just $1,200, the LG Watch Urbane Luxe is a limited edition timepiece produced by LG and jeweler Reeds. It will be showcased at the IFA electronics show in Berlin this week and isavailable for pre-order on Reeds’ site now, though the actual product — the 500 of them being made — won’t ship until October.

Beyond the standard LG Urbane, which is probably one of the nicest looking Android smartwatches to date, Reeds has added 23-karat gold plating and an alligator leather strap. If that didn’t get your fancy, there’s a bespoke deployment clasp and “each LG Watch Urbane Luxe is individually numbered and presented in a piano gloss lacquered case with a signed certificate of authenticity.”


We can think of plenty of things more deserving of our $1,200, but maybe there are 500 people who will go for this. I’m personally a much bigger fan of LG’s new rollable keyboard, which is also being unveiled this week in Germany this week and will be a lot, lot cheaper.

Apple Watch Is No. 2 Wearable

According to a new report out this morning from IDC, Apple is now the number two wearable maker, thanks to its Apple Watch, coming in just behind market leader Fitbit during the second quarter of 2015. And it’s a close race, the analyst firm found. Apple shipped 3.6 million units in Q2 2015, just 0.8 million units shy of Fitbit’s total 4.4 million units, the report states. Those figures mean that Apple now has nearly 20 percent of the wearables market, while Fitbit has just over 24 percent.

Across the industry, 18.1 million wearables shipped in the quarter, a huge 223.2 percent increase from the 5.6 million units shipped during the same quarter last year.

Even though Apple could be benefitting from early buzz around the Apple Watch, IDC still sees strong potential for the device to continue to increase its marketshare in the months ahead. The firm noted that Apple is just getting started with the Watch, having only reached 16 geographic markets to date with, and only now beginning to forge agreements with third-party retailers.

Those retailers have also benefited from Apple Watch sales, as it turns out. News from earlier this week indicated that Apple’s wearable has been a “smash hit” at Best Buy, for example. The retailer, which was the first in the U.S. to carry the device outside Apple Stores, started selling Apple Watch in 100 locations in August. But demand turned out to be so high that Best Buy says it will roll out Apple Watch to all 1,050 locations by the end of September, while also deepening its relationship with Apple to expand and improve its in-store Apple displays, begin selling AppleCare, and it will begin testing as an authorized service provider in 50 stores.

This announcement was made following the release of the company’s better-than-expected earnings which included a 3.8 percent rise in same-store sales and a 12 percent increase in profits. Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly credited Apple Watch as contributing to those numbers, saying “Demand for Apple Watch has been so strong in the stores and online.”

In addition, IDC’s new report noted that the Apple is continuing to develop its watchOS platform, which could also play a role in increasing the device’s market share in the months ahead. The next version of watchOS will allow for native applications, Apple announced at WWDC in June, and that could have a similar effect that iPhones enjoyed when native apps became available, IDC believes.

Despite being early days for the device, Apple Watch has proven to be a worthy competitor to Fitbit and other established wearables, as it accounted for about two out of every three smart wearables shipped in the quarter.


“Apple has clearly garnered an impressive lead in this space and its dominance is expected to continue,” said Jitesh Ubrani, Senior Research Analyst for IDC Mobile Device Trackers. “And, although Fitbit outshipped Apple, it’s worth noting that Fitbit only sells basic wearables – a category that is expected to lose share over the next few years, leaving Apple poised to become the next market leader for all wearables.”

The report also noted that with Apple’s entry into the wearables market, the gap between smart wearables and basic wearables (e.g. basic fitness trackers) will begin to widen. Fitbit is clearly leading in that latter category today, however, with triple-digit year-over-year worldwide volume growth and double-digit year-over-year worldwide revenue and profit growth, says IDC.

Rather than trying to compete with smart watches and their many applications, the Fitbit resonates with its customers because of its simple value proposition around health tracking.

LG Portable keyboard for Mobiles

Mobiles That Folds Into A Stick To Fit In Your Bag

If you ever wanted to stuff a full-size keyboard inside your (big) pockets or bag, then LG’s got your back with its newest product.

That’s right, the Korean company has just unveiled a full-sized QWERTY keyboard for smartphones and tablets that rolls up into a stick for storage and portability.

‘Rolly Keyboard’ — yup, that’s the name LG that has given it — is a little smaller than a regular size keyboard; each key is 17mm, as opposed to the standard 18mm. Powered by a single AAA battery, it uses Bluetooth to connect with a device. LG claims it can last for around three months before running out of juice.

The keyboard, which is made from “durable” polycarbonate and ABS plastic, will be unveiled at the IFA Electronics event in Berlin next week, alongside the G Pad II tablet. LG isn’t revealing the cost for now, but it said that the gizmo will go on sale in the U.S. in September, before making its way to other parts of the world during the final quarter of this year.

LG Portable keyboard for Mobiles