Hasta La Gadget!

Smartwatches might be able to make you more efficient, but this does not mean that the ordinary watch industry is going to die a slow and painful death. On the contrary, it seems that analog timepieces are back in vogue, and while certain high street labels such as Armani have come up with their own range of smartwatches, there is still a huge market for traditional watches. LG has released smartwatches of their own in the past, but this time around the South Korean conglomerate has decided to try something different in the form of the LG Watch W7. The LG Watch W7 would be a hybrid timepiece, hoping to bring together the best of both worlds on your wrist.

The LG Watch W7 is a piece of wearable technology that merges the traditional elegance of mechanical hands alongside digital functionalities. This is also the very first LG wearable to run the new wearable platform Wear OS by Google, where it has been specially designed for consumers who value the look of a traditional timepiece, while being more than capable of delivering the convenient functionalities of a connected smartwatch.

You will find high precision movement integrated into the LG Watch W7, where its physical watch hands are wrapped in a stainless steel body. Apart from making sure that it is capable of keeping the time accurately, the mechanical hands will also display additional information such as altimeter, barometer, stopwatch, timer and compass directions. A single charge will be able to power the LG Watch W7 for two days on paper, but chances are in real life use, you will probably get slightly more than a day’s work on it before it requires a trip to the nearest power outlet. This is particularly true for the first few days as you play around with your brand new toy.

If it is in watch-only mode, a single charge will tentatively allow it to run for three months without missing a beat. As it is powered by Google’s Wear OS, it can be customized thousands of different ways with unique watch faces and complications available online. Expect the LG Watch W7 to be accompanied by a $449.99 price tag for those who are interested.

Press Release
[ LG Watch W7 takes the hybrid route copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Cowboy, the Belgian startup that designed and sells a smarter electronic bicycle, has raised €10 million in Series A funding.

Leading the round is Tiger Global Management, with participation from previous backers Index Ventures and Hardware Club. The new capital will be used to scale operations and expand beyond Belgium into Germany, U.K., Netherlands and France.

Founded in January 2017 by Adrien Roose and Karim Slaoui, who both previously co-founded Take Eat Easy (an early Deliveroo competitor), and Tanguy Goretti, who previously co-founded ridesharing startup Djump, Cowboy set out to build and sell direct a better designed e-bike.

This included making the Cowboy bike lighter in weight and more stylish than models from incumbents, and adding automatic motor assistance. The latter utilizes built-in sensor technology that measures speed and torque, and adjusts to pedaling style and force to deliver an added boost of motor-assisted speed at key moments, e.g. when you start pedaling, accelerate or go uphill.

In addition, Cowboy’s “smart” features powered by the Cowboy app enables the device to be switched on and off, track location, provide “ride stats” and support remote troubleshooting and software updates. A theft detection feature is also promised soon.

“We designed the Cowboy bike to appeal specifically to people who are yet to be convinced that electric bikes are a practical and mainstream mode of transport,” says Adrien Roose, Cowboy’s CEO, in a statement.

“We focused our attention on the three main reasons people are reluctant to purchase electric bikes: high cost, poor design and redundant technology — or a combination of the above — and we set about fixing them all.”

NASA’s Office of Inspector General has released a new report detailing shortcomings in how the agency manages its historical items, The Verge reports. Over the years, NASA has apparently lost a number of assets, including a lunar soil collection bag,…

Cowboy, the Belgian startup that designed and sells a smarter electronic bicycle, has raised €10 million in Series A funding.

Leading the round is Tiger Global Management, with participation from previous backers Index Ventures and Hardware Club. The new capital will be used to scale operations and expand beyond Belgium into Germany, U.K., Netherlands and France.

Founded in January 2017 by Adrien Roose and Karim Slaoui, who both previously co-founded Take Eat Easy (an early Deliveroo competitor), and Tanguy Goretti, who previously co-founded ridesharing startup Djump, Cowboy set out to build and sell direct a better designed e-bike.

This included making the Cowboy bike lighter in weight and more stylish than models from incumbents, and adding automatic motor assistance. The latter utilizes built-in sensor technology that measures speed and torque, and adjusts to pedaling style and force to deliver an added boost of motor-assisted speed at key moments, e.g. when you start pedaling, accelerate or go uphill.

In addition, Cowboy’s “smart” features powered by the Cowboy app enables the device to be switched on and off, track location, provide “ride stats” and support remote troubleshooting and software updates. A theft detection feature is also promised soon.

“We designed the Cowboy bike to appeal specifically to people who are yet to be convinced that electric bikes are a practical and mainstream mode of transport,” says Adrien Roose, Cowboy’s CEO, in a statement.

“We focused our attention on the three main reasons people are reluctant to purchase electric bikes: high cost, poor design and redundant technology — or a combination of the above — and we set about fixing them all.”

Facebook’s multiple data lapses this year have affected millions of people across the globe and this hasn’t gone down well with Japan. The country’s government today called on the world’s largest social network to do more in order to protect the personal data of its users. It also wants Facebook to inform regulators of any future changes in security measures.

Japan’s government has called on Facebook to fully communicate any and all security issues with users and also increase the oversight of app providers on its platform. Japan is urging Facebook following a recent hack which revealed personal information of nearly 30 million users.

While it was initially reported that the reason of this hack could have been influencing voters ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, it later emerged that the hackers only wanted to use the data to sell shoddy adverts. This emerged merely months after it was revealed back in April this year that the personal data of almost 87 million users was accessed by Cambridge Analytica improperly.

Facebook is seemingly in damage control mode following this incidents and is reportedly thinking about acquiring a major cybersecurity company. This would not only improve the security of its platform but will also be a good PR move to showcase that its serious about tackling these security challenges.

Japan Calls On Facebook To Improve User Data Protection , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.