Could you stare at a Galaxy S4 for one hour to win it ?

Swiss telecom company Swisscom set up a challenge for people at Zurich to stare at the Galaxy S4 for an hour.

As the new Galaxy S4 has eye tracking capability the company used this feature for advertising in a public place.

Many may think this is a piece of cake for them, but the hardest part is they are using epic distractions to get your eyes off the phone, like barking dogs, motor cycle crash, arguing couple and other.

All eyes on the S4 from iGAMIFY on Vimeo.

Google forbids Glass apps with facial recognition for now

Google on its ProjectGlass Google+ page made it clear that the company wont accept Glass apps with facial recognition technology.

“we won’t add facial recognition features to our products without having strong privacy protections in place. With that in mind, we won’t be approving any facial recognition Glassware at this time.”

Apart from a huge hit as a consumer product, there are no strong privacy principles towards the usage if it.

One of the possible scenario of privacy is, Consider you’re at a restaurant or a mall, attending a visit to unknown place and your photo is captured, identified and matched against the facial database. All this is being done with out your knowledge.

So, Google not taking risk without a strong privacy protection system.

Here is the Google+ post of Project glass..

Glass and Facial Recognition
When we started the Explorer Program nearly a year ago our goal was simple: we wanted to make people active participants in shaping the future of this technology ahead of a broader consumer launch.  We've been listening closely to you, and many have expressed both interest and concern around the possibilities of facial recognition in Glass. As Google has said for several years, we won’t add facial recognition features to our products without having strong privacy protections in place. With that in mind, we won’t be approving any facial recognition Glassware at this time.
We’ve learned a lot from you in just a few weeks and we’ll continue to learn more as we update the software and evolve our policies in the weeks and months ahead.

Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wearables. "Glass is difficult, Wrist is interesting" [Video]

Speaking at the All things Digital D11 conference, Apple chief Tim Cook spoke his interests on wearable gadgets. He said "Glass form-factor may be difficult". And when Walt mossberg asked about other form-factors like wrist and other, he spontaneously said "Wrist is interesting".

By this way he talked we can understand the speculation on iWatch may be true.

Here is the footage of Mr.Cook on wearables.

August smart lock system uses iPhone to unlock your door

From intelligent personal assistant navigator (Siri) to self-driving cars, Internet of Things are getting huge traction and no doubt in recent years we will be surrounded with different devices sharing information to assist us in our daily life.

At the D11 Conference today a company called August unveiled a smart digital lock systems for home doors. The designer of this locking system, Yves Behar is well known for his work with One Laptop Per Child, OUYA and Jawbone products. Yves Behar along with Jason Johnson founder of InterQuest Communications announced this product.

For now this system works with an iPhone app which allows sharing the virtual keys with other users having the app. You may give access to your friends for a specific period of time.

The system keeps logs of people who access the door and also sends info like photos and status to your phone.

New tabbed Gmail inbox gives you relief from flooded mail

Google today introduced a new way to manage your Gmail inbox with different customization options. This change will occur in both desktop and mobile platforms.
Generally, How organised you may be but your inbox may contain lot of clutter, flooded with different kinds of stuff. Even though you may label your mails, new subscriptions and mails have a chance to clutter.
Today Google released new inbox which helps you organise your inbox with simple customization.

Desktop
The new inbox groups your mail into categories which appear as different tabs on top of your Gmail’s inbox column. You see Primary tab on opening Gmail then you can simply choose which categories you want and your inbox is organized in a way that lets you see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when.

Google automatically organises mails into tabs. You can also customize by dragging and dropping messages among the tabs, set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they also appear in the Primary tab.

Mobile
Android 4.0 and above and iPhone and iPad users can enjoy this feature. Users can also switch off this feature if they dont like and switch to other styles.

This feature will be rolled out to every one within few weeks. If you'd like to try out the new inbox on Desktop sooner, keep an eye on the gear menu and select Configure inbox when it appears in the Settings options.

Americans spend roughly an hour a day on their smartphones :Study says

Experian Marketing Services’ Simmons Connect mobile and digital panel uncovered some facts on how people in US spend time on their smartphones.
This study exposed some info .. An average adult expend 58 minutes daily on their device.
And they also discovered that 'on what activity people are using their smartphone for most of the time'.

On average, smartphone owners devote 26% of the time they spend on their phone talking and another 20% texting. Social networking eats up 16% of smartphone time while browsing the mobile web accounts for 14% of time spent. Emailing and playing games account for roughly 9% and 8% of daily smartphone time, respectively, while use of the phone’s camera and GPS each take up another 2% of our smartphone day.

This study also disclosed a very important statement that iPone users spend more time than Android users

ReadMore at Experian.com

YouTube adds slow-motion Enhancement tool to video editor

Slomo (Slow motion) videos are always interesting because we can enjoy every detail of the frame. Like in fight scene of Sherlock Holmes movie. Creating a slomo video would require a high-speed camera and some good editing software which allows us to control how fast or slow playback should be.

Google on Tuesday announced a new slow motion enhancement tool to the YouTube video editor. Now users can use this feature to their new and existing videos.

To create a slomo video, users have to open video manager, select a video, then click the Enhancement tools tab and now you can see a tortoise icon top right. From there you can set the intensity of your slow motion.

This video footage was reduced to 1/8th of its actuall playback speed using youtube slow motion tool.