Hasta La Gadget!

Ottawa-based BlackSumac may not be the first startup to try and revamp the home security system, nor is it the first to use a crowdfunding platform like Indiegogo to make it happen. What this batch of Canadians did do however is create one of the sleekest-looking bits of security hardware I’ve seen. The Piper is to security hubs what the Nest is to thermostats.

But what does it do?

The Piper unit itself is about the size of your average desktop computer speaker, and it’s hard not to look at it without being drawn to the user-controllable camera pod (complete with fish-eye lens) right smack in the middle of the thing. More importantly though, the Piper itself is loaded up with temperature, humidity, and motion sensors, and can also act as a base station that communicates with different external sensors thanks to its included Z-Wave support.

It’s also got a bit of an IFTTT streak, as users can tap into those sensors to create custom rules based on what they detect from the Piper iOS and Android app. Did something just make a loud sound in your apartment? You can create a rule that automatically kicks on the lights (assuming you’ve got some Z-Wave friendly controllers installed). Is something (other than Fido) moving around the bedroom? Piper can automatically start recording video, and if you spring for the cellular model, it can also fire off a text message to let you know what’s going on. Of course, different situations require different sets of rules, so the Piper app allows users to be lumped into categories for when you’re at home, at work, or on vacation.

Now is this thing going to replace a more traditional, professionally installed security system? No way. If anything, Piper is likely to find its niche among renters and tech-savvy home owners who want some level of security without having to shell out for a full-blown home monitoring scheme. BlackSumac has at least one notable competitor to do battle with in that space — Canary is yet another Indiegogo darling that wants to simplify home monitoring, but its lack of Z-Wave support means the system isn’t nearly as extensible as Piper.

And the Piper already seems to have to struck a chord — it’s only been two days since the Canadian startup behind it launched an Indiegogo campaign and the project has already made it a third of the way to its $100k funding goal. Just be warned if you decide to take a plunge on this thing: the cheapo early backer spots have all been filled, so you’ll have to shell out at least $209 to trick out your flat.

Just how do you know that your mobile platform has made it big time? For starters, many developers would want to jump aboard the bandwagon and are willing to work on apps for your mobile operating system. Apart from that, when big companies come up with apps of their own, that will work just fine, too. For instance, The Times newspaper from UK has revealed that they are currently working on an app which will be specially written for the Windows Phone 8 platform. Of course, one ought to take into consideration that The Times did have an official app for older versions of Windows Phone, but said app was subsequently removed and could not be downloaded anymore.

We are more than glad to hear this bit about The Times newspaper making a reappearance on the Windows Phone 8 platform with its own app, but unfortunately, we have come up short on an official release date or estimated time of arrival, and hope that other publications, too, might want to offer a similar kind of support for the Windows Phone 8 platform. Which particular publication that does not yet have an official app on Windows Phone 8 that you would like to see the most? Would it be a sports daily or a business pullout?

The Times Newspaper Getting Official Windows Phone 8 App original content from Ubergizmo.

Folks living in Brazil were not too happy upon hearing that Brazil happened to be a top target of the US National Security Agency’s overseas spying operation, where data from the numerous calls and emails could have been eavesdropped by in Washington’s top secret surveillance program. Well, they might want to pay more attention to what’s happening in their own backyard, at least for the tens of thousands of Brazilians who have already downloaded the “Boyfriend Tracker” app onto their Android-powered device. If you want to do so now because of curiosity, we’re sorry to tell you that the “Boyfriend Tracker” app has already been removed from the Google Play Store sometime last week after Google received plenty of complaints concerning privacy abuses and its potential to be used for extortion purposes, or even worse, for stalking.

Marcia Almeida shared, “Brazilians are a jealous people, what can I say? Of course it’s going to be popular.” The app is known as “Rastreador de Namorados” (Portuguese for Boyfriend Tracker), where it is meant to function like a private detective of your own, except that this “detective” resides in your partner’s pocket. What can this app do? It will be able to send the person doing the tracking updates on their partner’s location, as well as forward duplicates of text message traffic from the targeted handset. Heck, you can even force the target handset to call your own silently so that you can eavesdrop on what the other party is saying.

‘Boyfriend Tracker’ App Dumped In Brazil original content from Ubergizmo.

The story of scientific advancement is rarely one of leaps and bounds. More often than not it’s evolution over revolution, and the story of the so-called ytterbium atomic clock fits that bill perfectly. You may remember that in July researchers improved upon the standard, cesium-powered atomic clock model by using a network of lasers to trap and excite strontium; instead of losing a second every few years, the Optical Lattice Clock only lost a second every three centuries. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology made a pretty simple tweak to that model: replace the strontium with ytterbium and, voilà, another ten-fold increase in stability. Ten thousand of the rare-earth atoms are held in place, cooled to 10 microKelvin (just a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero) and excited by a laser “tick” 518 trillion times per second. Whereas the average cesium atomic clock must run for roughly five days to achieve its comparatively paltry level of consistency, the ytterbium clock reaches peak stability in just a single second.

That stability doesn’t necessarily translate into accuracy, but chances are good that it will. That could could mean more accurate measurements of how gravity effects time and lead to improvements in accuracy for GPS or its future equivalents. The next steps are pretty clear, though hardly simple: to see how much farther the accuracy and stability can be pushed, then shrink the clock down to a size that could fit on a satellite or space ship. The one currently in use at the NIST is roughly the size of a large dining room table.

Filed under: Science, Alt

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Via: AFP

How is your grasp with languages? What if we were to tell you that an Illinois Department of Employment Security professional is capable of appealing your denied claim in Klingon? For those of you who have never had anything to do with Star Trek before, it would do you well to know that Klingon is an unofficial language which was created for humanoid characters in the “Star Trek” TV series as well as movies, where this can be done on the IDES website. The site does offer translations to other languages too, using Microsoft Translator, and apart from Klingon, the other options are Spanish, Polish, Simplified Chinese, and Russian. (more…)

Government Website Has Klingon Translation On Offer original content from Ubergizmo.