Smart sports equipment turns phones into coaches

CNN

What if you have just won the match and walking proudly out of the court and meet the other person, who has just lost the match. You think he will also storm out of the court in anger and grab his water bottle but, instead you find him picking up his phone and checking in the mistakes that he had made during the match.

New discovery

Now we have new range of tools available in market which will allow you to check on the speed of a pitch, the arch of a basketball toss, the quality of a serve and the speed of a pitch, the strength of a putt. These tools are not meant for professional players or even touring golfers. These professional level tools are meant for using as part of the casual sports, starting from a beginner’s level to league level. So what makes this gadget so unique? It is the technology behind these tools which is mainly the amalgamation of increasingly affordable and small sensors such as gyroscopes and accelerometers. Every smartphone is loaded with these sensors giving boost to the developing fitness tracker industry. These sensors have already the total experience biking and running by coming up with different apps like Strava and other wearable apps like Fitbit. Now, companies are installing these unique sensors in different kinds of existing sports equipments like running shoes, tennis rackets, golf clubs and basketballs.

Similar technology is being used by Babolat, which has been making tennis rackets for nearly 20 years. Year 2013 saw a completely new kind of racket being launched, which was priced at $ 399 called Pure play drive. This was the very first kind of connected racker having a trio of sensors hidden in the hollow handle of the racket which has the ability of tracking down the vibrations and the movements of the user. The sensors have the unique ability to track the exact spot where the ball touched the racket, the spin was given by the players and the force it hit the racket.

All these statistics are sent to smart phone app that will reflect this through easy diagrams. The app has been equipped to track even the length of the game and even the total shots, misses and hits. Similar types of tools are coming up for different range of sports. Another example will be the 94Fifty Basketball even though looks like real ball, it has the ability to measure the intensity of dribble, the arch of each shot, and the speed as well. Adidas has also developed football which has the ability to collect information about every kick. But the main point to remember is that these sensors are meant for practice matches are not for the team games.

Professional athletes have always relied on the phone camera and now even the beginners are starting to depend on the smart phone cameras for a quick slow motion replay. One of the biggest challenges is that these sensors need to turn the raw data into understandable information. Well now people can expect every action of their sports activities to be tracked with the increasing usage of sensors.

How Are You Planning To Save Money in 2020 with out Checkbooks and PIN Number

Image credit:FNB

I don't think anyone of gives much importance to the checkbook and its mere existence. Frankly speaking, the checkbook can be clearly called out dead. We have practically moved over to cards and no longer depend on carrying out checkbook for any banking or monetary transactions.

If you are among the people who are always worried about someone following you in the ATM or peeping over your shoulder to get a glimpse, then the days of getting worried are coming to an end. You will no longer have to pay high fees to carry out transfers between the banks. As if now, we can see how the banking has improvised over the years.

But in the coming years, we can actually forget about all these problems. We can expect our finance and banking control to take change drastically. According to Gi Fernando, founder and investor of Free Formers, the continuous growth and increasing space in the technological world has started scaring everyone. The company currently works on digital training to unemployed adults and businesses. As per Gi, the technology will take over the banking and finance in such a way that it would be out of the recognizable limits.

So, going by the predictions what are the things that we might not require in the coming 5 years:

Card readers and PIN numbers: 

With increasing number of companies opting for biometrics, clumsy card readers and outdated PIN numbers will become history. So we can certainly expect retinal scan, belt buckles, fingerprints, contact lenses and watches to completely replace our traditional card readers and pin numbers. According to global lead banking analyst at Ernst & Young, Steven Lewis, biometric usage will increase over the years. We can certainly expect eye scanners and fingerprints will become more prevalent. A simple example would be a buyer entering a store and picking up what they want and simply paying through their wearable device.

Banks: 

According to Fernando, even though physical banks will be available in the future but many of them will exist in the coffee shops, cafe and supermarkets and even pop-up stalls. This new banking environment will serve the purpose of making people meet face to face. So, in simple, although there will be bank branches, they will start to look more or less like Apple store.

Checks and Cash: 

It doesn't matter how advanced we get in terms of technology, cash will always have it's place. Even though it will be a long time for cash to fade out, but shopping for clothes and groceries over smartphones and other contactless payment method will gain lot of importance. But the same can't be said for checks as the use of checks have declined over the past couple of years. With the advancement in technology, people might find it hard to completely switch over the financial usage methods.

Wire transfer: 

There have been an increasing number of private companies venturing into the money transferring and the trends can be expected to grow in future as well.

Corning Taking over the Fiber Optics Division of Samsung

According to the recent reports, Corning, which is the U.S. specialty glass maker, will be taking over the fiber optics operations of Samsung. Samsung electronics have agreed to sell over their fiber optics division to Corning. After this deal, Samsung will be exiting another non-core business as they want to focus on enhancing the poorly performing key areas like smartphones. Terms of the sales deal and also the plants in South Korea and China are completely confidential. So this might be a good reason to get disappointed by this development. Due to the increasing competition in the market this news was declared by both the parties involved in this sale. South Korea firm's (Samsung electronics) exiting there for the second time from a business line has not come to shock anybody in the market including the market experts. The company is expected to be hitting the lowest annual profit in past 3 years and this approach has been attributed to the stiff competition in the market. This deal has happened as part of the company's recent management changes.

What made the difference? 

One of the top makers of the smartphones around the world, Samsung has been facing quite a competition from market rivals and stuck between the Apple’s iPhones at the top and Chinese rivals like Xiaomi at the lower end. If we see the performance of Samsung Electronics in the last 3 quarters, then we can clearly see that the company's share in the global smartphone industry has declined every year and consistently in every quarter. The company has recently sold out a large amount of shares in the defense as well as chemical divisions.

According to the spokeswoman of Samsung Electronics, they are selling out their fiber optics business as they want to increase their focus on our core business areas. When contacted, Samsung Electronics denied passing any comment regarding the revenue generated by this division. According to the statement generated by the company in October, they are also looking towards putting an end to their light emitting diode lighting business mainly outside the home country. They stated that this business was always considered as  a non-core business.

According to Corning, which supplies glass for Apple Inc smartphones and Samsung, they are considering this deal to further empower their optics business especially in the Asian market. Through this deal Corning is looking forward towards strengthening their position in the Asian market. The company is world known for making the Gorilla Glass.

There has been an increasing use and growth in the technological industry in the Asia Pacific market, and every company is looking forward to encase on this opportunity. While coming to this the perfect time for them is to expand their business and functions. If the reports have to be believed, then this deal is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2015, simple reason being that the deal is being carried out on a high magnitude.

NASA Wants To Launch Tiny Moon Satellites on Its Next-Generation Rocket

NASA is keen on launching tiny moon satellites on its Next Generation Rocket and December 4th unscrewed the launch of the Orion spacecraft. The vehicle was proposed to bring the astronauts in the solar system in the next decade and NASA is thinking ahead to the next space test somewhere in 2017 or 2018.

The Cube Quest Competition which was sponsored by NASA’s Space Technology Mission directorate Centennial Challenge Program has been offering around $5million to those who meet the challenge objective of designing, building as well as delivering flight qualified small satellite which would be capable of advanced operations anywhere near and beyond the moon.

The team members of Cube Quest would have the opportunities of competing for a secondary payload spot on the first mission of NASA’s Orion spacecraft that would be launched atop the agency’s Space Launch System – SLS rocket.

There are three stages to the competition namely: Ground Tournaments, Deep Space Derby and Lunar Derby wherein all the teams could compete in any one of the Ground Tournaments. The team which rates high on mission safety as well as probability of success would be receiving incremental awards. The Ground Tournaments would be held every four to six months providing opportunities to earn a spot on the first integrated flight of SLS and Orion.

Innovative Solution to Deep Space Communication

Focus of Deep Space Derby would be on finding innovative solution to deep space communication with the use of small spacecraft while the Lunar Derby would be focusing mainly on propulsion for small spacecraft and near Earth communications.

With the combinations of these challenges, it is expected in making a contribution to the opening of deep space exploration to non-government spacecraft for the first time. Small spacecraft capabilities in advancements may not only provide benefits to the future missions but also make it possible for new mission scenarios and the Cube Quest Challenge seems to establish priority for all subsystems in need of performing deep space exploration with the use of small spacecraft.

If all goes well, riding atop of the new Space Launch System rocket, it will be a suite of CubeSats which will explore the Moon as Orion journeys out to our largest nearest celestial planet.CubeStats, tiny satellites are so small that they are within the reach of universities as well as other similar institutions which may desire to perform science in space without the help of cost on operating a huge mission.

NASA – CubeStats Challenge

The concept has been of great success resulting in some companies using it as a base for their entire business model like the Planet Labs which is a company that is performing Earth observation with the small machines.

The competition would be divided in several sections inclusive of ground tournament in order to see if the CubeSats could fly on the SLS, s lunar derby ensuring that they could communicate at a distance of about 10 times the Earth moon distance with a deep space derby to put the CubeStats in stable lunar orbit and function well there.

NASA states that `the Cube Quest Challenge seeks to develop and test subsystems necessary to perform deep space exploration using small spacecraft and advancements in small spacecraft capabilities will provide benefits to future mission and also enable entirely new mission scenarios including future investigations of near-Earth asteroids’.

EFF and Mozilla Join Forces- Encrypting the Entire Web and Giving Free HTTPS Certificates

The year 2015 will see HTTPS being finally enables in every part of the world, every person will be able to acquire free, and most of all officially approved SSL/TLS certificate for the enabling process. This new service which is also called Let’s Encrypt (a certificate authority (CA)), have been led by EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), the University of Michigan, and the Mozilla apart from their major joining partners Akamai and Cisco. This can be considered as one of major offering for the people who actually know the importance of HTTPS, TLS, and SSL. But, if you among you don’t have much knowledge about this, then just go by the word that this is a very big deal.

Importance of HTTPS: 

If you have noticed, every time you try and surf the net, the email url will show HTTPS or HTTP. It is not easy to explain the content and the process by which they work, but the simple difference is in the letter “S”, which primarily means secure. If your browser gives HTTP in the url, then be aware that it becomes easy for any hacker, Verizon or even the NSA to track down and observe as to what you might be doing. With an additional S, you get the security and confidence that you two people are aware about what you are doing; this includes you and your web browser.

TLS or SSL is used by a web browser to enable the HTTPS in your system, which provides a strong encryption. Usually this process of enabling is not hard for any website administrator, as they just need to generate an encryption key that takes less than a few seconds. The major obstacle comes in, when the key needs to be signed by the CA (certificate authority).

At the end it is the job of the certificate authorities to get all these things added up. Certificate authority mainly prevents random numbers of servers to be created by people, who claim to have websites, have their own certifying signature, and claim to be enacting like any big company. In simple, when you see a simple symbol depicting a lock, it clearly indicates that you are fairly visiting the secured website and not some hacking website in another country itself.

It is not easy to get certificates authorized as there are very few authorities around the world and they charge heavy on your pocket. Symantec, VeriSign and Comodo are major names in these authorities. If someone is not able to pay for these, they go by HTTP.

Let’s Encrypt (CA) 

Let’s Encrypt is expected to launch in 2015, which will be providing completely free and authorized certificates to anyone. The complete process is supposed to be completely automated. The service is expected to be free as the signing and renewal process is fully automated.

The corporate world can be expected to create a sense of resistance as using the Https in their system will now allow them to monitor anyone in the organization. As far open web is concerned, this services comes as the biggest boon ever.