The Better Sleep Council reports that 79 percent of women would rather get a good night’s sleep than have sex. Why is this? One reason may be that it’s not so much that women are looking to avoid intimacy, they’re just not seeing it as valuable as sleep.
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WhatsApp is one of the most popular cross platform messaging services out there. It recently announced that the service has over 250 million monthly active users, not to mention the fact that WhatsApp handles more than 27 billion messages every […]
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Japan’s Kyoto Aquarium makes no bones about their limited-time-only “Grilled Dog Ayu,” giving brave buyers the fish, the whole fish and nothing but the fish accompanied by lotus root chips and Perilla leaves on a crusty bun. Bonus goodness? It only costs a fin.
Streaming online television services appears to be the next big thing in the Valley — at least, if you ask Google, Apple, Intel and other tech giants that are considering making a move in that direction. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google has approached several media companies about licensing TV channels for such a service, which involves offering cable TV-like channel packages over broadband. This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen the folks at Mountain View putting feelers out, as the company opened up discussions with media companies two years ago. Nothing came of them, of course, but it’s hard to say if the current conversations will meet the same fate — a couple years is a long time in the industry, and things may be different enough to merit a more appealing offer on either side, especially given the rise of Netflix, Roku, Amazon Instant and others. A report from the New York Times indicates that these talks are still likely preliminary and not anywhere close to a deal, so we shouldn’t anticipate watching new TV shows live on our Google TV anytime soon.
Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment, HD, Google
Source: Wall Street Journal
Have you ever been out and about, and realized that you left the lights, or maybe even something a little dangerous like an iron, on? If there’s no one else home, and you’re more than a few minutes from home, you’re going to be stuck waiting until later to take care of it. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just pull out your phone, and with a few taps, turn of whatever you need? Well, you can.
A group of people from Toronto, Canada have designed the next generation of home automation, dubbed the Valta. This system is actually broken up into four parts. First, you’ve got the smart sockets. You’ll plug these into your wall, and plug your electronics into them. Next is the v-hub base station, which talks to each of the sockets and transmits the data to the Valta cloud servers. The other two pieces are the smartphone and web apps, which are used to control the sockets.
Now Valta does more than allows you to remotely turn on and off the devices attached to it. It will actually monitor the power consumption of these devices, and let you know when they’re not actually being used, so that you can shut them off. You’ll also be able to track how much energy is being wasted by idle devices. You will even be able to tell it to turn off certain devices when you leave the house, and when it detects that your phone is no longer in range, it will cut power to those devices.
Saving energy doesn’t come cheap, unfortunately. If you pledge to the Kickstarter campaign, you can get the v-hub and three sockets for $139. You can get more sockets by pledging $40 for each additional one.
[ Valta adds some virtual automation to your home copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
It used to be if you were 16 and pregnant you would get in trouble. Now you get a reality show. You get arrested on TV after a drunken binge and become an instant millionaire.
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Allan Tweddle wants to build a manufacturing facility. He would prefer to build it in West Virginia — where he lives. But he’s going to build it in Ontario, Canada — where he was born.
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Quick: which sport do the most Americans play? If you guessed football or baseball, guess again. It’s bowling. More than 70 million Americans bowled last year, according to the Bowling Proprietors’ Association of America.
“People of all ages can do it, from three to 103,” says Bart Burger of the BPAA. “It’s the only activity in which nobody rides the bench–everybody gets to play.”
Bowling has become trendy, thanks in part to pioneering chains like Bowlmor Lanes, Lucky Strike, and Splitsville that have kept the nostalgia alive by combining retro-chic details with hip music, flashy lights, and gourmet food and cocktails. As a result, not all customers come to bowl–some gather with friends for drinks or dinner and end up trying it out. (Splitsville calls its mission: “Permission to have fun.”)
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“OK, Glass.” It’s a phrase that’s become synonymous with Google’s trailblazing wearable tech, and with good reason. As the headset’s hotword, it must be uttered by the user (with varying levels of self-consciousness) to activate Glass’ menu. Amanda Rosenberg, the Product Marketing Manager for Project Glass, took to her Google+ page today to share both the phrase’s history and a few scrapped ideas. During dinner with Mat Balez, the Glass Project Manager, Rosenberg learned that the product required a simple, culturally resonant term that would let Glass know that it was go-time. Accompanied by what we can only assume was a choir of angels singing, Rosenberg realized that “OK, Glass” would be both functional and subtle enough to not embarrass users in public. It’s an interesting anecdote, which you can read in full at the source link, but we have to admit . . . we’re kind of sad “Go go, Glass” was never given a chance.
Filed under: Wearables, Google
Source: Amanda Rosenberg (Google+)
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