Lost Something? Pixie Will Find It

February 12, 2017 by Doug MacFaddin Filed Under: Apple, Augmented Reality, Doug MacFaddin, Gadgets & Devices, iPhone & Android Apps

We’ve all been there: We’re just about to head out to work or dinner or a social gathering of some sort only to realize that we’ve lost our keys. Then we waste a good four or five minutes trying to find them. It’s an infuriating process that nobody wants any part of. And technology, as it usually does, has come to the rescue. Pixie is an application that uses your smartphone’s geolocation and bluetooth features to locate virtually anything you frequently lose. And while there are several “finder” applications out on the market today, Pixie is a bit different from the rest.

Similar to the incredibly popular Pokemon Go mobile game, Pixie uses Augmented Reality to direct you to your lost item. Augmented Reality (AR), which has become rather popular as of late, essentially superimposes a computer generated image over the user’s view of any real world object or landscape. For example, Pokemon Go uses AR to simulate the appearance of actual Pokemon in the real world by superimposing their character models on any landscape using the user’s smartphone camera.

Pixie uses AR by providing visual cues and clues as to the location of your lost item. The purpose of this is to make the searching process easier and more bearable. Pixie works by creating a micro-mesh of networks that all connected points use to constantly signal and communicate their proximity to make a map. Simply tack on one of the “Pixie Points” (the geotags used to send out signals) to your prized possessions, download the iOS app, create and account and sync your tags with your phone. It’s an incredibly easy process.

The application turns the frustrating search for your items into a scavenger hunt. Your phone’s camera scans the area in order to get its bearings, and once your phone locates the lost item, the app gives you turn by turn instructions on how to get to the item. It even uses the phone’s speakers to provide audio cues.

Currently the application only supports iOS. However an Android version is in the works, slated to release later this year. The Pixie Points will run you $50 for a 2-pack or $99 for a 4-pack. Whether or not the application will catch on remains to be seen.

Goodbye, Note7. We Hardly Knew Ya.

October 13, 2016 by Doug MacFaddin Filed Under: Android Vs. Apple, Blog, Tech Market

The Samsung Galaxy Note7 fiasco has seemingly come to a head, with the Korean electronics company temporarily ceasing production of the phone. Since it’s release in August, there have been numerous reported incidents of the mobile device catching fire. It’s literally an explosive issue.

Courtesy of Gadget 360

The Note7 problem came hard and fast. In September, millions of devices were recalled after Samsung announced they had identified the issue causing the potentially dangerous battery fires. Customers were encouraged to trade in their old phones for a new, safer version. But with this latest announcement— coming just a few weeks later— customers were urged to power down their devices immediately… and not turn them back on.

Luckily, Samsung has announced some good news for customers who bought their ill-fated phone. Customers who now turn in the phone will receive a $100 credit to put towards a new device. As CNET points out, the gesture “softens the blow”, encourages customers who haven’t given up the phone to do so immediately, and attempts to keep loyal customers using a Samsung device.

A product disaster like this couldn’t have come at a worse time. The Note7 is Samsung’s premier phone. It’s meant to compete with the ever-present iPhone, and the fact that Apple’s latest mobile product launched a little more than a month ago means that it’s a pretty attractive alternative. And then there’s the holiday question. How will Samsung perform during gift giving season? While Apple has long held smartphone sales titles, their lead has begun to shrink in part due to feisty competitors like Samsung. But with their most valuable phone out of the question, and their reputation shot (some estimates have the firm losing $10 billion in revenue), we have yet to see how it will all shake out.

If you have a Note7, just turn it in. You don’t want your carelessness to be the cause of a grounded flight.

The Rise of the Infrastructure Age

July 10, 2015 by Doug MacFaddin Filed Under: Blog, Infrastructure Age, Tech Market

We have reached a plateau in consumer technology as far as information devices are concerned. Smartwatches suck, tablets haven’t changed profoundly since their conception, portable music players and digital cameras (at least for the amateur) have become obsolete thanks to the consolidation of media into our phones, and new generations of smartphones and computers no longer offer groundbreaking features but mostly upgrades on existing features (better cameras, faster processors, more storage, higher resolution screens, etc.) We’re left wondering what, if anything, will be the next big thing, but there just aren’t any huge gaps left to fill with these gadgets. A major shift is taking place in tech, and the future isn’t in information devices. The future is in infrastructure.

What Tesla is doing with home battery is far more important than what Apple is doing with watches. Tesla is changing the way we think of owning and providing power in our homes, a utility once run entirely on a grid owned by the county. It’s not that these small iterations and upgrades to our devices are bad or unnecessary, but we’ve gotten to a point where all we need as a consumer is a better version of what we already have. The next real revolution of gadgets isn’t going to to be about your phone, it’s going to be about the world around us and how we live within it.

Technology is constantly transforming and permeating into every part of our lives. It no longer exists in just our phones and computers. It has moved into our homes, our transportation, and our public spaces. You can control and interact with your air conditioner, refrigerator, or security system right from your phone, no matter where you are. Large IT companies like IBM and Cisco are developing new technology to manage and improve public safety, city planning, and government agency administration. NASA is using satellites to measure soil moisture to study weather and climate cycles. Technology is now responsible for connecting us to and informing us more deeply about our physical world.

Google has shown a huge interest in this new age of infrastructure that we are entering. They’ve expanded broadly beyond their internet search and advertising origins, getting involved in self-driving cars, Internet glasses, smart thermostats, and even research on the biology of aging to find ways to extend our lifespans.

Google is now looking to get involved in the smart city space alongside the aforementioned IBM and Cisco, and they’re doing it in the form of their latest start-up: Sidewalk Labs. Sidewalk Labs will be headed by Daniel L. Doctoroff, former deputy mayor of New York City for economic development and former chief executive of Bloomberg L.P. It will be based in New York with a team at Google, of course, and led by its chief executive, Larry Page.

Sidewalk Labs claims that their mission “is to improve life in cities for everyone through the application of technology to solve urban problems.” Some of the problems they aim to tackle include cutting pollution, curbing energy use, streamlining transportation, and reducing the cost of city living. Doctoroff says Sidewalk Labs plans to work in “the huge space between civic hackers and traditional big technology companies.” Bike-sharing programs, like New York City’s Citi Bike, is an early example of the kind of technology-assisted innovation they want to pursue.

Large companies aren’t the only one’s interested in innovating our cities technology. Academia has also had it’s eye on this prize. New York University established the Center for the Urban Science and Progress in 2013 to research and unite The Digital Revolution with Global Urbanization. They’ve recently been analyzing large sets of data around the city including using the city’s 311 data, wireless sensors, noise meters on traffic lights and street corners, and more in order to inform policy choices. By looking at things like noise limits for vehicles and muffler costs, they can create computer simulations that could predict the effectiveness of enforcement steps, charges, or incentives to buy properly working mufflers. Their goal above all is to make urban living less severe.

As the physical and virtual world meld ever more intricately, we’ve seen a new threat arise that becomes increasingly dangerous: hacking. As new devices emerge that hold more data and more power, the risks of hacking rise exponentially. We’ve already seen huge breaches in security with our own government at the hands hackers. Security is going to become increasingly important as more complex developments are made.

The internet has brought us together, but infrastructure is what’s going to make this ever growing connectedness feasible, bearable, and efficient. The globalized world needs innovation if human beings are going to survive. Populations are multiplying, urbanization is on the rise, and the world needs proper infrastructure that is going to support the aggressively growing demands of a physically and virtually connected world. To me, that is far more exciting than anything Apple is going to come out with for your next iPhone release.

How Xiaomi Keeps Prices So Low?

January 20, 2015 by Doug MacFaddin Filed Under: Blog, Gadgets & Devices

If you haven’t heard of Xiaomi in any of the latest tech market reports, you’ll probably hear about them some time soon. Xiaomi has been making cheap smartphones in China for years now, and after several good years, they’re looking to globalize. One of the biggest sticking points to Xiaomi in the market, though, is how do they keep producing such high-end smartphones so cheaply? It’s their strong combination of well spec’d phones and low prices that drove them to over 60 million sales last year, which resulted in Xiaomi replacing Samsung as China’s top-selling smartphone company as well as becoming the world’s third top selling phone maker at the same time.

The Chinese company’s flagship Mi devices typically retail for around $300 – it’s new Mi Note Pro will be $500+, their first phone to break the $500 barrier – while the more affordable Redmi family is sub-$150. These are all insanely cheap phones when you compare them to Apple or Android devices, where Apple’s top-of-the-line iPhone sells for over $1,000 off contract, while the Samsung Galaxy and Note devices are also priced similarly. So why can Xiaomi be so aggressive with its pricing?

Many theories have been put forward, including that Xiaomi prices phones at cost and makes money on other services. Hugo Barra, the company’s VP of international, gave Techcrunch a peak at their special operations in an interview in Beijing last week. Apparently, according to Barra, Xiaomi is able to make price concessions thanks to a smaller portfolio and longer average selling time per device. Additionally, Xiaomi continues to sell older devices (and tweaked versions of them) at reduced prices, even after it releases newer models.

“A product that stays on the shelf for 18-24 months — which is most of our products — goes through three or four price cuts. The Mi2 and Mi2s are essentially the same device, for example,” Barra explained. “The Mi2/Mi2s were on sale for 26 months. The Redmi 1 was first launched in September 2013, and we just announced the Redmi 2 this month, that’s 16 months later.”

That’s a big deal, mainly because the longer runway for devices allows Xiaomi to leverage its suppliers to get better component deals.

“The vast majority of the components [in our devices] are still the same, so in terms of supply chain and component sourcing, we’re on the same supply contracts as Redmi 1, which means we’re still getting the same discounts on components,” he explained. “We can continue to ride the cost curve, so the importance of having a very small portfolio is significant — the fact that we only launch a few products each year, and (the fact that) we only have two product families.”

These dynamics requires a great deal of dedication to devices for two to three years, and it isn’t just about making price cuts. Xiaomi maintains software updates, spare parts and other services that customers require, longer than most companies normally do. There are additionally other factors that go in to the cost structure, including Xiaomi’s lean, online-only marketing focus and it’s close proximity to manufacturing plants in China. But of greatest importance is the management of components and supply chain partnerships.

Xiaomi has big plans for expanding their market share outside of Asia this year, which will make its pricing model and supply chain management more important than ever. The company sells its phones using an online-only model in most markets, though it’s recently been testing operator partnerships outside of China. It is currently running a limited trial in India, and has found partners in Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore.

11 Things the Andriod Phones Can Do That The iPhone Can’t

October 1, 2014 by Doug MacFaddin Filed Under: Android Vs. Apple, Blog

Upon the launch of it’s latest generation of iPhone (the iPhone 6 Series) and it’s latest iOS 8 software update, Apple has introduced a host of new features that once were not available to iPhone users. And though these updates are very substantial in the context of what the iPhone is capable, that being said, they are all features that have been standard for Android platform phones for quite some time. For example, the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will be Apple’s first generation of smartphones that will come standard with NFC (near field communication) – a technology that allows phones to talk to each other via short-range radio. This essentially means that you can share data and make payments simply by tapping your iPhone against a compatible device. This has been something standard on the Android platform for some time – however, it is now something available on the iPhone platform. But there are still plenty of things Android phones can do that iPhones cannot.

11. Battery Swapping

Many Android phones, such as the Droid Razr and the Samsung Galaxy series, allow you to remove the battery from the back of the phone by removing the back cover of the phone. This opens up the availability to swap a low-charge or failing battery with either a new one, or a higher capacity battery. This is an immensely helpful feature for many reasons. Sometimes the battery is well secured with micro screws, but there are plenty that allow you to simply just pop the battery out like a flip phone. The iPhone on the other hand still doesn’t allow you to access the interior of the phone. The iPhone still relies on a single lithium-ion battery pack that can only be removed or replaced by Apple technicians.

10. Opening Multiple Applications

Software layering is an immensely useful feature; many manufacturers will layer their own software over the plain version of Android, which often includes them adding their own features. For example, on Samsung and LG phones you can open more than one application up and run it side-by-side simultaneously as another application. On LG phones, you can even move the apps around and reposition them in such a way to make some applications more transparent or opaque than others, resize them, and do much much more. When you’re doing GoToMeeting on your phone and need to reference a presentation without losing the window, you can open that presentation and view it simultaneously – something that can really come in handy.

9. Unchanged Charging Port

With each major overhaul of the iPhone, from the 3 to the 4 to the 5, and now to the 6, you have had a changed charging port-type, requiring a completely new charging chord. The Lightning port is a great charging mechanism, however, with just about any Droid, regardless of manufacturer, all you really need is a micro-USB port, which has served as the charging mechanism for several years now. There’s no change that’s on the books for the charging mechanism, and every single manufacturer seems content to keep it that way.

8. Micro HDMI Connection

Some Android phones come with micro HDMI ports, which allow you to hook your smartphone directly up to your television. This isn’t all that common in most flagship products, but many Motorola phones come with this capability. The only ports that you have on your iPhone are your headphone jack and your Lightning jack. Not to say that this is a huge deal; when you think about it, in all smart televisions, you can wirelessly impose your screen on to your television through an Airport type of mechanism – which eliminates the need for this type of port in the first place completely. But, if, say, you don’t have a smart television, then maybe having a micro HDMI port to show your favorite Youtube video on a large screen could come in handy.

7. “Touchless Voice Controls”

The Moto X, one of the more superior Android phones in my opinion, is a feature called “Touchless Voice Controls”. In the device’s settings, you can configure them so that Google listens for your voice to perform search queries, set reminders, get directions, and so much more. On most other phones, you would likely need to hold down some kind of button, such as on the iPhone with Siri, or a microphone voice controls application would need to be opened. With the Moto X, you can train your phone to answer to your voice specifically, when it hears some kind of trigger phrase.

6. Additional Storage Capacity

Androids allow you the ability to replace existing SD cards for ones with greater capacity. Generally phones, when they are first issued out with SD cards that don’t have a great deal of capacity – and generally the amount of storage capacity is directly related to the price of the smartphone. So, you can get away with getting a cheaper Android that has limited space, and then bulk it up with a larger SD card separately. Androids will generally come with a separate SD card slot to add a larger card, but with the iPhone, you’re limited to the amount of local storage you have based on the type of iPhone you purchased. You can always store files in iCloud and upgrade once that’s full, but there’s no expandable storage option for the iPhone’s hardware.

5. Shortcuts to Settings

Most Android phones, specifically those made by Samsung and LG come with a ton of “quick settings”, similar to on most Mac-type of devices, that are accessible when you swipe down from the top of the screen. The Galaxy S5 comes with 20 quick settings, including power saving mode, Bluetooth/Wi-Fi Buttons, and controls for proprietary features such as Stay and Smart Pause. By comparison, the iPhone comes with roughly 10 shortcuts when you swipe from the bottom-up, and none of them are customizable.

4. More room for Customization in General

If you’ve ever used both platforms before, then you know that the Android is basically just a much more customizable smartphone on the whole. Essentially, if you’re somebody that likes to customize their phone, then Android is just simply a better option for you. Apps like Aviate and Buzz Launcher, you can actually change your Andriod’s interface entirely. In Aviate, for example, apps are arranged alphabetically in a more list-like format rather than the standard grid layout. With Buzz Launcher, you can decorate your smartphone in such a way so that your design capabilities are boundless.

3. Widgets, Widgets, and Widgets

This is huge. The fact that the iPhone cannot support widgets yet is ridiculous. Embedding widgets directly into your phone’s home screen, and then being able to move them and shape them as you please is a pretty fantastic feature. It allows you to get the information you need, without even having to open an application – which is sort of where everything is going at this point. Embedding a widget in your home screen also allows you to give your phone a little more personality. With iOS 8, there are some widget functionalities, such as with the calendar and notification drawer, but you can’t move them around or put them on your home screen.

2. You Can Use Your Droid as a Remote Control

The HTC One, Galaxy S5, LG G3 and other flagship Android products come with an infrared blaster – which is exactly what your remote control is, essentially. This means that you can set it up as a remote control to control your television, instead of using a regular remote, which are big and not nearly as much fun. But the fun doesn’t stop there, you can also use it to replace the remote for your air conditioner, speaker, and nearly any other household device.

1. Swap Out the Back Cover

Like I said earlier, you can’t remove the back of your iPhone. How are you supposed to put on an awesome back cover for your phone, while also keeping it naked without a case? You can’t. But, if you want a transparent back to your phone, you can do that with your Android product pretty easily.

6 Superior iOS 8 Keyboards To What You Get From Apple

September 17, 2014 by Doug MacFaddin Filed Under: Blog, iPhone & Android Apps

iOS 8 has a host of brand new features that are going to really make the iPhone a much more superior device. However, one of the most important features that comes with the new operating system is finally – finally! – the ability to use custom keyboards. Your liberation from Apple’s terrible keyboard is here everyone; rejoice! Apple’s tepid keyboard is made elementary by some of the more easy to use, and better functioning keyboards listed below. But, first, let’s go over how to add a new keyboard to your device.

In order to add a new keyboard, you’re going to have to download and install the individual keyboard application. Once you’ve done that, navigate to your keyboard preferences inside of your iPhone’s Settings application and add the keyboard to your list of available input methods. It’ll be added right next to the list that shows your keyboard language as English (US) and Emoji. Then, when you’re typing pretty much anything on your iPhone – email, text message, tweet, status update, etc. – you’ll be able to access the new alternative input method by tapping on the little globe icon next to the spacebar on the left.

SwiftKey and Swype

SwiftKey and Swype are adding iOS compatible platforms for the highly popular Android keyboards (free, $1). The two keyboard styles are similar at their core, but frankly their difference is really a matter of taste. They’re both based on a swiping input method; all you have to do is put your finger down on the keyboard and drag from letter to letter until the keyboard’s input algorithm figures out what word you’re trying to spell. As one who uses this keyboard regularly on my Droid, I have to say that I really enjoy it, and it pretty accurately (about 90%) inputs the word that I’m trying to type. Even if you slide sloppily, it generally works with around the same success rate.

The predictive tech is supplemented by a learning algorithm that analyzes your style from your inputs on the keyboard over time, as well as from what you type in to Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, etc. The keyboard also functionally allows you to type your words out as well, if that’s more your thing, and it also records your habits in the same manner.

Fleksy

Fleksy is a keyboard that I don’t have much experience with. However, if you are a terrible speller, Fleksy is apparently a God-send. For any time that you’re in a hurry or typing on the move, the autocorrect feature is incredibly accurate, and can translate even the most haphazardly typed words. The application also responds to gestures, and you can make the application run faster that way. If you don’t like the first autocorrect suggestions Fleksy provides, you can swipe through other suggestions until you find the right one. If you don’t like any of the suggestions provided to you, you can actually swipe from left to right across the screen, which acts essentially as a giant delete button. The application costs $1.

TextExpander

TextExpander will be introducing a keyboard application that makes typing out all of those long and tedious things you type all the time that much easier. TextExpander already exists as a popular desktop utility that is able to turn shortcut phrases into more long-form writing.

TextExpander already exists as an iPhone application, but because of Apple’s sandbox, you couldn’t use it to expand snippets in other apps unless you implemented the SDK. Thanks to iOS 8’s Extensions feature, your snippets can finally be used anywhere on your phone. The keyboard just went live with the latest TextExpander update ($5).

PopKey

Before PopKey, the only way to text a reaction GIF to a friend or a group chat was to hunt for one in your image library. That, or go into your browser and save a GIF image into your library, and then go into your library, and share it into your chat. That takes a lot of time! Luckily, you don’t have to do that anymore…assuming sending reaction GIFs to your friends is one of your more primary concerns. PopKey comes with a library of thousands of GIFs that express just about any type of reaction that you might need. Though PopKey isn’t live yet, it will be in the near future.