British YouTuber Colin Furze has created a REAL LIFE replica of Star Wars’ AT-ACT’s as a playhouse. It stands at 18 feet tall and even includes a retractable stair case and a moving head! All just in time for next week’s release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story of course!
Check out the video below to see Colin’s creation!
Click here to hear the guys talking about it on the show!
Are you too lazy to make the bed in the morning?
Well a new invention has been created to solve just that problem! (was it a problem in the first place?)
A company called Smart Duvet from Montreal Canada have created a fairly simple device that is described as a “Self Tidying Device” that rely’s on air, an air pump and tubes that can go into your existing duvet, to create a device that effectively makes the bed for you.
Don’t believe us? Check out the video below and see the magic for yourselves!
To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!
VR may be fully in the gaming industry at the moment but it may well be in your hospital bed, should you ever be needing medical treatment or therapy.
A VR experience called Joy is being tested for its ability to make long staying hospital patients feel less lonely during their stay at the hospital. It is the baby of Australian VR company ‘Liminal’ and has been commissioned by a health insurance company called Medibank. Linda Swan of Medibank told Mashable that she believes that loneliness is linked to slower recovery times and an increased risk of further disease.
Joy utilises Google Daydream view and it’s controller to sit in an experience which shows users in a circle around a campfire surrounded by cartoon figures, users can then select a story form a book which then a character will read aloud to you.
Even though this experience sounds quite childlike and is at risk of alienating a lot of patients, Linda Swan stated that they are trying to appeal to as many people as possible with their VR experience. The experience is limited to those who are bed bound which is why the experience has very minimal levels of interactivity with the world that patients are transported to. This is because of the environment of where they are located and being mindful of the patients that would be using this product. This is also the reason to why the team decided to go with mobile VR technology rather than room scale technology VR.
After a trial at Brunswick Private Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, Medibank will decide if the program should be rolled out more broadly as part of its range of health services.
According to Bloomberg, Apple are making their maps service better by creating a drone team that uses drones to better map your area (alongside the regular camera-equipped minivans) It is rumoured that the company plan to use drones from big players such as DJI and Aibotix to keep the maps up to date with construction of new roads and other information such as better traffic information or roadworks, to show that they mean business Apple hired someone away from Amazon’s highly publicised Amazon Prime Air service to run the team.
Alongside this, Apple is going even deeper into navigation, via indoors, they recently purchased an indoor company called Indoor.io and back in 2013 purchased WiFiSlam in 2013. Apple even quietly released an app called Indoor Survey which let you figure out your location from an indoor venue, even if it wasn’t mapped.
Although Google Maps is used far more widely than it’s own Map service, Apple are investing heavily in it, alongside using drones to improve it’s service, the technology company recently opened up its service to developers and incorporated third party extensions from services such as Uber and Open table directly into iOS10, which, reportedly, is the reason as to why Maps is now used three times as much as Google Maps on iOS.
To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!
It’s technologies worst kept secret – Apple are planning to get into the world of driverless cars – this week it became concrete. Apple have sent a letter to the United States ‘National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’ and put forward in detail how excited they are about automation in the transportation field amongst others.
They want to address any ethical issues that they may encounter alongside any regulatory issues, to help the car industry further Apple are calling for companies to share crash data to improve safety but not at the risk or cost of privacy.
While it seems Apple are going to be investing heavily in the autonomous/driverless car industry it is not clear if the company are planning to make their own vehicles or they’re sticking to the software side, either way we’re very excited about an Apple car.
Listen to the guys chatting about this here!
Electrolux, the BIG washing machine company are testing a crazy new way of getting your clothes washed — by someone else.
CEO Jonas Samuelson has told the Financial Times that they are testing an Uber like service where you would pay to get your clothes washed at someone’s house. While you would need to change up your washing machine for it to have wi-fi and it to be connected to the app itself, it would help save money in the long term from washing equipment (Washer/Dryer) that for most of the week is idle.
While this sounds quite weird (people stealing your underwear!) there are other hurdles that need to be addressed too. For example, what if your clothes shrink or clothes colour runs? Who pays for that? There is also the potential for people to buy houses and turn them into laundromats? or If someone forgets to wash your clothes? Gives you somebody else’s clothes?
Jonas Samuelson doesn’t say when this will go live to the public if at all. But if this goes ahead it will be interesting to see what problems they face from it being used day in day out.
Listen to the guys chatting about this here!
Amazon are testing a radical new concept for the supermarket.
Amazon’s crazy idea eliminates any requirement for any cashiers (say goodbye to those annoying self service checkouts!) simply tap in (similar to how you would tap in to the train station in London via an Oyster card) grab whatever food you need and then walk out. You are then billed to your Amazon account on your departure.
Available only in Seattle at the moment and you can only try it if you’re an Amazon employee or beta tester, public trials are scheduled to start sometime in 2017.
Amazon said in a press release:
“Our Just Walk Out technology automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves and keeps track of them in a virtual cart.”
View the video below to see what Amazon Go is all about!
Click here to hear the guys chatting about this radical new scheme!
Ever wanted to fly your paper airplane that much better?
Bored of flying it once and then having to get up out of your chair to go and get it and throw it back?
Well that is a thing of the past thank to the PowerUp 3.0!
To buy your own PowerUp 3.0 please click here!
To listen to Marcus’ experience with the PowerUp 3.0 please click here!
To see what the PowerUp 3.0 is please view the video below!
US regulators want to limit what people can do with their phones whilst driving. Sounds good to us! The US’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have published their first safety guidleines regarding driver distraction which specifically target things that you connect to your car such as music players or better yet, smartphones.
The guidelines, which are part of a second phase of NHTSA proposals are for the cars console. These were back in 2013 and they suggested that you got to touch a button to call someone rather than dialling a number. Which sounds really safe to us!
At the heart of it it is all about making things ‘dumber’ and ‘easier’ to use while behind the wheel to reduce the amount of distractions that we have while driving. The NHTSA suggest a thing called “Driver Mode” which are like Apple’s CarPlay and the Android Auto. Where a selection of apps or tasks are easily attainable through easy to use big button interface. For example Drivers could see maps that are on their smartphone in short chunks of texts that can be easily read from a quick single eye glance from the road, but with more reliance on voice activated commands than physical touch.
Sounds good right. But the NHTSA’s “Drive Mode” system, wants to go one step futher and prevent certain features being used whilst driving. Which makes sense as you shouldn’t be manually entering text whilst driving or adjusting maps to see where you are. The NHTSA suggests that it would be better with their “Driver Mode” to do things through “Driver Mode” where the user wouldn’t have to turn it on and it is automatically switched on once you enter the car and it the car is in motion.
However all this sounds really cool and safe and would go a long way to prevent accidents, these guidelines are exactly that guidelines. Car makers don’t have to implement the technology into their cars. Not only that some tech doesn’t play well with others like Google Maps doesn’t work with CarPlay so a driver has to mount thier phone on the dash.
While it is important to make our drives safer, it still requires users to use self will not to get distracted and it does seem quite nanny state like to control what we can and can’t do with the stuff we own when in certain situations.
Will there be ways to prevent us from having more and more accidents, only time will tell, but this seems like a cool way to do it.
To hear the guys chatting about this please click here!
Electric cars are becoming more and more popular the past several years especially with the introduction of the Tesla. Now there are several huge car firms that are prepping for the future of car travel and are creating high powered charging networks across Europe. 400 Charging Sites to be exact.
The firms are BMW, Daimler, Ford and Volkswagen Group, including Audi and Porsche.
The charging stations (sounds like a massive dock for your car!) provides really quick charging for your electronic cars, along many major roads across Europe. (However we think 400 is a little small for such a large area of land) Tesla’s can’t use these charge points as their cars use different electronic systems, so if you have a Tesla, you’re out of luck. Sorry!
Reason being as the network will use combined charging system standard technology, while Drivers of electric cars can plug in and charge at speeds of 350kw which is a lot lot faster than you can get today!
To hear the guys chatting about this please click here!