My Science School

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of online retail giant Amazon, has become the first $100 billion businessman to top Forbes magazine's annual rankings of the world's richest people. Bezos' worth stood at $112 billion (roughly Rs 7.27 lakh crores); after the Forbes announcement, it rocketed to $127 billion in line with a spike in Amazon stock, widening the gap between him and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates ($90 billion). Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg ($71 billion) was fifth on the list.

When Bezos had the idea for his e-commerce company, his well-intentioned boss tried to talk him out of quitting his stable job with D. E. Shaw & Co. Yet Bezos, raised by his teen mom and later his Cuban immigrant stepfather, always dreamed of creating something different, once telling his schoolteachers that “the future of mankind is not on this planet.”

Bezos even has a website, BezosExpeditions.com, that provides a rundown of more than 30 of his major investments, projects, and philanthropic endeavors. The name “expeditions” is appropriate since Bezos’ investments are not concentrated in just one or two industries or even market sectors; rather, they represent a far-flung exploration of many different business areas and ideas, including cloud computing, robotics, biotechnology, and even home-blown glass.

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The AVA Byte is the first indoor smart garden to combine hydroponics (growing plants without soil) with artificial intelligence. It comes with five soil-free, transplantable and compostable pre-seeded plant pods. Simply place your pods into the unit and fill the reservoir with water, then sync with your smart device. The Byte depends on LED lights that emit a mixture of red, white and blue light to encourage growth, fruiting and flowering regardless of your home environment. Using technology inspired by NASA's growing systems, Ava Byte automatically adjusts lighting and self-waters your plants making them grow upto three times faster. Its companion iOS and Android app helps you monitor water and light levels, optimize plant growth and set alerts for refilling the reservoir and harvesting the plants. The Byte is also compatible with Amazon Alexa, Google Home and other connected home devices. An HD camera allows users to make time-lapse videos of their plants.

The indoor garden comes with ready-to-grow compostable pods that are soil-free and totally self-sufficient. With seeds, plant food, and plant-based spongy growing material all in one neat little package, this is probably the least work gardening has ever been. Each garden comes with a five-pack of pods.

“Growing your own food is a vote against the way the food system is today. Being food-lovers, we wanted to start a food revolution,” said Valerie Song, co-founder and CEO of AVA Technologies. “Unfortunately, unlike houses with large backyards, a condo-dweller like myself is restricted by lack of space and access to sunlight.” But that obviously isn’t a problem with the Byte.

Available in white, space grey, or a carbon black finish, the garden ought to complement any decor, and can also be mounted to the wall, creating a vertical farm. The Byte is also compatible with Alexa, Google Home, and other connected home devices.

“The world is undergoing a massive transition into a new future of food and agricultural systems” added Mike Nasseri, Urban Futurist, AVA Technologies. “AVA Byte will help push the awareness curve that is required to advance the adoption curve of the new technologies being used at scale to address our current issues in agricultural production and consumption.”

Credit : Digital Trends 

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Lasso "makes it easy for anyone to create and share short videos with fun effects" and is Facebook's latest bid to win over teens. Users can create short-form, entertaining videos from dancing to comedy to beauty to fitness. Make use of the app's "massive music library" to add more to your videos. Scroll through short videos that autoplay as you pass by them, or filter content using the hashtags at the bottom. Use the in-app camera to create your own spin on a video hashtag that's trending, with special effects, music text on video and editing tools to modify your videos. Lasso videos can be shared as Facebook Stories, with the feature to share them as Instagram Stories to come later. User profiles remain public. Free for iOS and Android.

As of February, Lasso was available in Colombia, Mexico, the U.S., Argentina, Chile, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ecuador and Uruguay, research firm Sensor Tower told TechCrunch.

Lasso added support for Hindi language earlier this year, prompting speculation that Facebook may eventually bring the new app to India, the American tech firm’s biggest market by user accounts.

Lasso’s demise comes ahead of the launch of Instagram Reels — the new horse Facebook is counting on to steal TikTok’s lunch, said Josh Constine, who first spotted Lasso’s announcement.

Credit : Tech Crunch

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Smishing is short for 'SMS phishing', a type of attack in which mobile phone users receive text / Multimedia (MMS) messages containing a website hyperlink, which if clicked will download a Trojan horse (malicious computer program) or other malware onto the device. Don't click on links you receive on your phone unless you know the person they're coming from. Even if you get a text message with a link from a friend, consider verifying they meant to send the link before clicking on it. Never install apps from text messages. Any apps you install on your device should come straight from the official app store.

With a text message, the hackers might try to accomplish many different things. This includes stealing personal details from you by posing as a representative from your bank. They could try to get you to click on a link in the text message to connect to your bank’s webpage and verify a recent suspicious charge. They may ask you to call their customer service number, conveniently included within the text message, to talk to them about a recent suspicious charge or a compromised account.

Hackers also attempt to use sympathetic measures to gather sensitive information. An example includes messages regarding hurricane relief where the threat actor asks you for a charitable donation. The hacker asks you to click the included link and enter your credit card information, address, and often, your social insurance number. Once the hacker obtains your credit card number, the criminal can even charge your credit card on a monthly basis to avoid alarming you.

Credit : Trend Micro 

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Instagram's 'Close Friends' feature makes it easier to restrict your Stories to a select group of people, for when you don't want all your followers to see them. Go to your profile and tap on 'Close Friends' in the side menu o create a list of people you'd like to share Stories with. Your list of close friends can be viewed only by you. When you create a Story you'll see an option to share it with just your 'Close Friends' who will see a green ring ard re never notified that you added them to or removed them from your list. your story at the top of the feed.friends are never notified that you added them to or removed them from your list .

You can also prevent people from sharing your story:

• Go to that same page (“Settings” > “Privacy” > “Story”). Scroll down to the bottom where there’s a section labeled “Sharing.”
• You’ll see an option that says “Allow Sharing.” Turning this off will prevent people from messaging your stories to others.
• You can also turn off “Allow Resharing to Stories” to prevent people from adding your posts to their stories.
• To stop your stories from being shared to Facebook, disable “Share Your Story to Facebook.” This means they’ll only post to Instagram.

Finally, you can use Instagram’s Close Friends feature to limit the reach of your stories to specific people.

• To set who’s in that group of people, go to “Settings” > “Privacy” > “Story”
• Tap under Close Friends and start adding people. People won’t be notified when they’re added (or removed) from this group.

Credit : The Verge

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Pix's "first smart animative backpack" features a matrix of colour LEDs that lets you display pixelated images like video game characters, cartoons, sports team logos, music bands or funny pics uploaded from a free companion app on your phone via Bluetooth. You can also create your own images and animations in the app and upload them. Classic games like Tetris and Snake can be played on the backpack via the app. The bag can also display the time, weather and social media notifications. A cycling remote (available in a 'Cyclers Pack') can be used by bikers to communicate with drivers while riding on the road. The backpack lights up continuously for 12 hours, after which its 20,000 mAH battery needs to be charged with a power bank via a USB Type-A port. Weighing 1 kg, the water and shock resistant Pix has three outside zippered compartments and one inside main compartment, with space for a tablet, 15" laptop and more.

PIX is compatible with any 2A output & USB Type-A powerbank. A 20,000mAh powerbank, which will power PIX for about 12 hours, is also available for purchase through the Kickstarter campaign. With several separate compartments for ample storage space, PIX has plenty of room for a laptop, tablet and other belongings.

The Pix Inc. team is comprised of a group of innovators who focus on creating products that help consumers express their personality and customize their appearance on the go. The company brings an animative backpack to the market for energetic, creative people to emphasize their individuality. In addition to creating fun, functional and durable gear, Pix Inc. believes in inspiring others to communicate freely and continue to share their style and uniqueness. 

Credit : Market Insider 

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We all have things we want to do, places we want to go to, movies we want to watch, books we want to read. Soon arranges your want-to-do's in beautiful lists, one for each category. The app pulls in additional information you'll need about that item, whether it's a movie's plot, photos, poster, or the phone number and address for a location, and more. Its 'City' function allows users to plan trips with friends. If you're looking for something to do, see what other users are adding to their lists. Free for iOS.

The app also offers a social element, allowing you to follow your friends on the service in order to see what they’re planning on seeing, reading or doing, for further inspiration. And in the case that you don’t have enough friends on Soon to make the social element compelling at first launch, a “trending” section will show the hottest items in your own neighborhood or city – a feature that could be useful when traveling, as well.

Ancher says he and his co-founder, Henrik Evrell, came up with the idea for Soon because they both felt that there isn’t a good way to track all the things you hear about on a daily basis that you want to try. “We started asking around and saw that the most common solution actually was the note app, which looked really messy,” he says.

Soon began as a passion project, as the two Stockholm-based founders currently work in the agency world. Ancher founded Most Studios, which is focused on digital design and communication for up-and-coming tech companies like Tinitell, Qapital and Flic. Henrik, meanwhile, is a co-founder of Seventy, a brand agency doing strategy, design, and film for bigger companies like H&M, Universal Music and OnePlus.

But now Ancher says the two of them, along with a couple of other developers who round out Soon’s team of four, will be focusing on Soon and moving away from agency work. They’ve even pulled in a small amount of angel funding – mostly a “friends and family”-type of round – in order to get Soon off the ground.

Credit : Tech Crunch 

Picture Credit : Google

Streaming giant, Netflix, has developed its own custom font, Netflix Sans. This brings Netflix into a league of big technology companies with their own custom fonts Apple (San Francisco), Samsung (SamsungOne), Google (Roboto and Product Sans) and Microsoft (Segoe). Netflix previously used Gotham font, but chose to create its own font to create a unique identity, and because licensing Gotham for all Netflix's international marketing campaigns was getting expensive. The font will save the company "millions of dollars a year".

According to Netflix brand design lead Noah Nathan, the move away from Gotham and to creating a bespoke font was driven by escalating costs and the ability to make the identity more “ownable”.

“With the global nature of Netflix’s business, font licensing can get quite expensive,” Noah says. "Developing this typeface [also] created an ownable and unique element for the brand’s aesthetic.”

The typeface was created with both display aesthetics and more pragmatic functionality in mind, the uppercase proportions designed to appear “cinematic” and the lowercase proportions “compact and efficient”. Noah describes the letterforms as clean and neutral, “an approachable geometric grotesque”, eliminating excess and “favouring art over distraction”. The arched cut on the lowercase “t” is apparently inspired by the “cinemascopic curve” of the brand’s wordmark. Netflix Sans comes in different weights including regular, light, thin, medium, bold and black.

Credit : It’s Nice That

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If you’re tired of seeing all your previous searches pop up every time you search the Play Store, it may be time to clear your history. Not clearing your searches periodically may also impact the way the Play app performs. 

If you've searched for/downloaded tons of apps, you probably have plenty of entries in your download history. To remove search history, slide out the left menu and choose Settings > Clear local search history. To remove individual apps (that are uninstalled) from your history, open the left menu and choose My apps & games. Tap the Library tab, and you'll see a list of every app you've ever installed. Touch the X icon to remove an app from the list.

Did you know that Google Play saves every app you’ve ever downloaded, even if you deleted it from your device? The record of your downloads is kept in your Play account. While it may be convenient if you want to re-download an app you liked, why would you want to keep ones that you didn’t?

First, access the Play Store from your device. Tap on its icon from your Home screen or app drawer. Next, it’s time to go to your settings menu again. Tap your profile icon located at the upper right-hand corner of your screen. From your Play Settings menu, tap on My apps & device. Instead of staying on the Overview screen, tap on the Manage tab instead. Tap on the Installed tab then select Not installed from the pop-up menu. You will see a record of all the apps you’ve downloaded across all devices. If you use multiple devices, this may be a long list. To declutter this list, you may want to remove the apps that you don’t want to download again. To do this, select the app you want to remove and tap on the trash icon at the upper right corner of the screen. You can also make this process faster by sorting by recently added and/or alphabetically. Change the sorting style by tapping on the icon with three horizontal lines of varying lengths above the first app entry.

Furthermore, the Play Store helps streamline this process by letting you know which apps are not installed on the device you are currently on. To see this, sort by Recent.

Managing your apps may also be convenient if you use one Google account for a shared device like a tablet. Because it keeps a record of every single app you download, you may see all the apps your family members have ever tried. This may make it difficult to find apps to put on a new device. Since you have to sift through every app that’s ever been downloaded to your account, it may be frustrating to figure out which ones you actually need.

Credit : Tech Junkie 

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Messaging application, Snapchat, will roll out group video chat soon on iOS and Android. Enter an existing group chat or create a new group with users you wish to chat with. Tap the video icon to start a group video call. Each group member will be notified that they are invited to a call and, when they open the call, their name bubble will show up above the keyboard of the user who initiated the call. Upto 16 users can participate in group video chats simultaneously. Face lenses are available during group video chats.

Meanwhile, group audio chatting can support 32 friends at once.

Friends have the option to join a Group call just with voice too, or toggle between video and voice, if they aren't camera ready, the blogpost added.

With another new feature "Mentions", users can tag friends in the Snaps they add to their own Story.

"Group Video Chat" and "Mentions" will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks.

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 With the CLIK, Mymanu is trying to break down linguistic barriers. These Bluetooth-enabled earbuds can live-translate up to 37 languages, helping you interact with people speaking different languages in real time. When paired to the smartphone app Mymanu Translate, the earbuds automatically detect the language being spoken and provide a spoken translation. A charge on these earbuds lasts for upto 6 hours and can be easily amped up using the accompanying case. CLIK handles more than just translation. Its "unified music player" is a smartphone app that consolidates music from streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. The touch-control panel on both earbuds lets you access Google Assistant on Android and Siri on iOS, as well as adjust volume, music and answer calls and other notifications.

Incorporating APTX, Mymanu CLIK also enable users to listen to their favourite music. The earbuds are compatible with Apple and Android-based mobile devices, allowing users to make and receive phone calls and text at the touch of a finger and receive aural alerts.

Company founder, Danny Manu, said, “We’re incredibly proud to be the first and only company in the world to develop and demonstrate language recognising and translating in-ear earphones. When we first started developing this incredible product, back in 2012, our dream was to make language barriers a thing of the past - we’re now well on the way to achieving that goal.”

Credit : Deccan Chronicle 

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The latest version of Facebook's Android app adds a button below the text field when you're typing a post. Tap it to launch the Hindi editor and type your message using the English keyboard; Facebook will automatically transliterate the Roman characters to Hindi script. There's also a visual keyboard with Devanagari characters so you can correct mistakes and spell out proper nouns that aren't recognized. The tool will also remember the phrases a person uses the most.

The company says it built the feature in response to feedback from users who wanted an easier way to write in their native Hindi script on the social network.

It adds that it’s not yet perfect and you might encounter the ocassional error. That’s why there’s also there’s also a visual keyboard with Devanagari characters so you can correct mistakes and spell out proper nouns that aren’t recognized.

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LinkedIn allows students to apply for a range of positions with a single online standardized test that they can take through its 'Placements' program. The assessment test will help them qualify for openings at major companies, including HCL, Samsung, Airtel, Amazon and Cognizant. You can sign up for Placements with an existing LinkedIn profile or create a new one and take the test. Placements also hosts practice and learning material, so candidates are better prepared to take it. LinkedIn hopes that it will allow students in smaller towns and cities to apply for jobs in prominent companies just as easily as if they lived in major metros.

LinkedIn allows members (both workers and employers) to create profiles and "connect" with each other in an online social network which may represent real-world professional relationships. Members can invite anyone (whether an existing member or not) to become a "connection". LinkedIn can also be used to organize offline events, join groups, write articles, publish job postings, post photos and videos, and more.

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Mozilla's new browser, Firefox Focus, hopes to be iPhone users' go-to tool for private web surfing. Mozilla describes Focus as "for the times when you don't want to leave a record on your phone". The app opens straight into a search bar; with no tabs or menus, it aims to give you a super simple, super fast web experience. At the same time as searching, it strips out as much as it possibly can that could track you or your browsing: no cookies, no ad trackers, no analytics trackers, no social trackers. Since many of the trackers it blocks are advertising related, it might just speed up your browsing experience while cutting your data usage. Its one-click Erase button in the top right corner enables you to clear all the info from any given session in one tap.

“Private browsing” on most browsers isn’t really all that private. Firefox Focus offers next-level privacy by default and it’s backed by Mozilla, the non-profit that fights for your rights on the web. Firefox Focus blocks a wide range of common trackers by default including social trackers and those sticky ones that come from things like Facebook ads. Focus blocks ads that try to track you across web pages — no extra add-ons or extensions necessary. With fewer ads, you get better page load speed, which means you get to the stuff you want a lot faster. Focus removes trackers and enables adblockers so the pages you’re viewing require less data and load much faster. Also, pin up to four shortcuts on your home screen and get to your favorite site even quicker without typing anything.

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Ditch that selfie stick and give your arm a rest! AirSelfie has launched a high quality pocket-sized flying camera for your smartphone. With four propellers and 5MP camera, AirSelfie boasts the ability to fly upto 66 feet above ground, allowing users to take aerial shots or videos of themselves and the world around them. Shaky videos or blurry photos are eliminated with its vibration absorber and in-flight stability system. AirSelfie produces its own 2.4GHz WiFi network to which smartphones can connect. Users control the drone using an iOS or Android mobile app, both of which include a 'selfie delay timer with a range up to 10 seconds. A maximum of 8 consecutive photos can be taken. Content is saved to an included 4GB microSD card. Flight duration is just 3 minutes per charge; however, when returned to its case, AirSelfie will recharge in just 30 minutes.

One of the key differentiating—and appealing—features of AirSelfie is its ease of use. To activate AirSelfie, the user simply removes it from its case and turns it on. The device connects automatically to smartphones via WiFi—the flying camera creates the WiFi (2.4GHz) network itself and it is immediately ready for take-off.

AirSelfie users must simply download the free iOS and Android app in order to control the device’s movements through three different flight modes. AirSelfie can be returned to its departure point either manually or automatically. When users are finished using the device, it’s easy to return it to its landing spot—simply press the button labelled “slide to land” and AirSelfie descends and turns off. Users can also directly reposition the device by hand with no risk whatsoever of damaging it or themselves.

Using the “selfie delay timer” function, users can take timed photos, giving them up to 10 seconds to get into position and hide their smartphone so that it doesn’t appear in photos. Users can also take up to eight consecutive shots. AirSelfie’s technology integrates directly with social media, making it easy to post photos and videos directly to users’ accounts.

AirSelfie comes equipped with a 4 GB micro SD memory card and a 260mAh 7.4v battery that enables three minutes of flight time.

Credit : Business Wire 

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