Nowadays we are using different online modes of communication significantly more often. The software providing these solutions for collaboration is constantly improving and introducing new features.

Different companies and tools

There are many different tools for online meetings organization available on the market. They are used by various organizations like companies or universities. One of the solutions is Skype. It is owned by Microsoft. Skype offers a variety of possibilities for users. Its features include: online meetings with audio and video, recording the meetings, live subtitles, screen sharing, and messaging options. What is more, it can be used on different devices like mobile phones, tablets, or computers. The solution provided by Google is called Google Meet. It is one of the applications in the package of Google account. This solution offers the possibility to organize online meetings. Interesting features include the possibility to share the link to the meeting and integration with Google Calendar. Another provider of online meeting software is Zoom. It has a range of specific solutions for different situations and events. They can be for example for regular meetings, webinars, events, or creating whiteboards. These proposed options can be used in various industries like finance, education, and government.

Microsoft Teams

Another solution owned by Microsoft is Microsoft Teams. It is also offering the possibility of making online meetings. It includes many features like chats, meetings recording, and sharing files. Microsoft recently announced an incoming new feature. It is called Live Share. It will enable participants of the meeting to edit things together during the meeting, inside the Microsoft Teams app. Until now it was only possible to share the screen and present it to other users. Live Share feature brings more interactive collaboration to meetings. This feature is being built with Microsoft Fluid Framework. Lastly, the developers from different companies are also trying to help to create Live Share. The supporting companies include Accenture, Hexagon, Frame.io, and more.

A new feature like this, is the next step in enhancing efficient work online with the team. It is a chance to make work easier and more enjoyable.

References

https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/24/23137619/microsoft-teams-live-share-developers-apps-build-2022

https://www.fastcompany.com/90754644/microsoft-teams-live-share-build

https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-teams-live-share-collaboration-155436857.html

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/microsoft-teams-live-share-will-let-you-collaborate-in-real-time-across-apps

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/produce-a-live-event-using-teams-591bd694-121d-405c-b26d-730315e45a22

https://zoom.us

https://www.skype.com/pl/

https://meet.google.com

https://www.microsoft.com/pl-pl/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software

Photos:

https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/zoom-cloud-meetings/id546505307?l=pl

https://www.microsoft.com/pl-pl/microsoft-teams/teams-for-work

Fitness is the industry in which technology becomes more visible. However, it can be useful not only in the form of wearables.

Fiture

There are many fitness devices available now. Smartwatches, different types of bands and measuring equipment are present in the stores. On the other hand there is also another category of products – smart mirrors. They combine the mirror with technology. Users can not only see theirs movements but also get smart suggestions or help of trainer.

Company Fiture recently released a new fitness mirror screen. It comes to the market of other similar devices including Echelon, Vaha, or Mirror.

The device costs 1495 dollars and needs a monthly subscription of 39 dollars. It can track the movements of the body, react to gestures, or count reps. It also includes tracking the performance and the possibility to correct the form. Lastly, it can support users with real-time feedback. The software of this product offers prepared workouts, training programs, interactive classes, and options for individualization. Moreover, there are many types of different classes and trainers to choose from. Users can download the dedicated mobile app and connect the mirror to other devices like heart rate monitors or smartwatches.

The device looks similar to a classic mirror. However, it includes many special features like an AR display, speakers, sensors, and buttons. What is interesting there is no touch screen and there is a special cover for the camera. Furthermore, it can be set against the wall or wall mounted.

Mirror

Mirror is an example of other company with similar product. However it has been longer on the market. It offers few different sets of equipment with prices ranging from 1295 to 1845 dollars. Mirror also sell many accessories for the workouts. In terms of design it is very similar to Fiture. However there are differences in software of these devices. For example Mirror includes option to communicate with other users.

References

https://www.mirror.co

https://www.fiture.com

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/26/23041184/fiture-fitness-tech-mirror-price-specs-announcement

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61092317

https://www.pcmag.com/news/fiture-interactive-fitness-mirror-features-ai-movement-tracking

Robotics are often used in different industries around the world. They usually help with various tasks. Healthcare is one of the interesting examples where robots can be useful.

The Diligent Robotics

An example of a company working in the field of robotics in healthcare can be Diligent Robotics. The company was started in 2017 by two founders: Andrea Thomaz and Vivian Chu. The core product is the robot assistant to support nurses. The robot is called Moxi and is especially designed to perform routine and simple tasks. It can be for example delivering needed medications or supplies. Furthermore, Moxi can also open various types of doors by itself. The company is working closely with hospitals and nurses to provide the best value. The main goal is to enable nurses to focus more on the patients and have more time with them. The robot has a special arm to better operate. Also, it is equipped with AI that helps it learn how to move around and do the tasks. Robot implementation takes about 12 weeks due to company information. One of the first hospitals that started to use it full-time is in Dallas. What is interesting company describes that it offers the robots in a model called “robot-as-a-service”.

Raising funds

In 2016 Diligent Robotics managed to win the National Science Foundation with the reward of 750 thousand dollars. This money helped in the creation of the robot prototype. In 2020 the company received 10 million dollars in funding. With these funds further development and work were possible. Recently, Diligent Robotics raised 30 million dollars. It will be especially used in deployment, issues solving, and further scaling. Now the company has several investors including Ubiquity Ventures, Grit Ventures, DNX Ventures, True Ventures, and more.

References

https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/12/nurse-assisting-robotics-firm-diligent-raises-30m/

https://www.diligentrobots.com

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/20/robot-nurse/

https://time.com/collection/best-inventions-2019/5733102/diligent-robotics-moxi/

The self driving cars are slowly becoming a raising topic. From time to time some of the major car manufacturers are making big decisions regarding future of autonomous cars. What is it all about?

General perspective

In most cases when we think about autonomous cars the first thing that comes to our mind is Tesla. There are many videos presenting how it is performing and how drivers use the feature of autonomous driving. What also can be one of the first associations is Waymo. The company operates partially in Phoenix and San Francisco, offering rides with its cars. However, there are many more interesting projects going on in this industry. Recently, the not-so-popular brands also had big news.

Recent activities

The Cruise company is an interesting example. They build their technology on the Chevy Bolt car. With all equipment, it should have even more than 40 sensors. They should be able to allow the car to see the surroundings in detail. Combined with high-performing algorithms it helps the car to decide what to do. In the future Cruise wants to build “The Cruise Origin” which will be closer to the bus without any steering wheel. Recently, General Motors decided to also focus more on autonomous vehicles so-called “race”. It bought a bigger stake in Cruise. The 2,1 billion dollars investment is generally acquiring Softbank’s stake in Cruise. It seems that General Motors wants to have bigger control and influence over the Cruise future. Following the trade, GM states that it holds 80% ownership over Cruise. What is interesting six weeks earlier Cruise started to offer its services in San Francisco. It is possible that the technology is getting more and more promising and big companies do not want to lose any opportunity. On the other side of the self-driving cars market, a new player tries to start in the US. The Whale Dynamic company from China develops technology, especially for autonomous deliveries. What is uncommon, originally the company wanted to develop software for managing traffic. In the long term future Whale Dynamic wants to shift from deliveries to passenger cars. Now it managed to get 2,5 million dollars in a seed round of funding. Lastly company has also a unique idea to propose a bi-directional possibility of movement of the car.

References

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-18/gm-buys-2-1-billion-softbank-stake-in-cruise-self-driving-unit?srnd=technology-vp

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/19/whale-dynamics-autonomous-delivery-2-5-million/

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/18/gm-buys-softbank-stake-in-self-driving-car-unit-cruise/?cx_testId=6&cx_testVariant=cx_undefined&cx_artPos=1#cxrecs_s

https://www.autofutures.tv/2021/10/18/from-robotaxis-to-autonomous-deliveries-chinas-whale-dynamic-has-all-sectors-covered/

https://www.getcruise.com

https://www.tesla.com

https://waymo.com

Deep neural networks are increasingly used among different industries. However, apart from popular domains like finance or marketing, the usage of artificial intelligence can also greatly help for example historians. And now they do have their own tool.

Ithaca

In general we do not think that ancient Greek inscriptions would be in any kind of interesting area of artificial intelligence usage. On contrary, the field of epigraphy seems to be the domain of historians and other scholars. Now there seems to be a complete change of situation in this industry. The tool, which is called “Ithaca”, is made by Google DeepMind. It can successfully perform a range of activities. The main task of the system is text restoration. What is more, identifying the geographic location and time with the date of the construction are definitely game-changing for historians. The number of possibilities to gain new knowledge from this tool is extraordinary. Ithaca is based on a previous tool which was called Pythia. The new system accuracy is 62 percent compared to 25 percent for people working alone. The accuracy ranges even up to 72 percent when the tool and scholars work together. Finally, it is said that Ithaca can be easily modified to work with different ancient scripts, making it a versatile system.

The process of making

The first tool – Pythia, was trained on an enormous dataset of 35 000 inscriptions. In addition, there were used 3 million words from that period of history. Pythia in general was suggesting the possible option of text understanding and filling. It was very much relying on cooperation with the historians. The Ithaca presents higher accuracy and additional features of the suggested time and place from which the text comes. It was trained on more than 78 000 inscriptions combined with descriptions about origin date and location.

Implications

Overall potential of Ithaca in ancient text restoration is very high. This process done only by human is time and effort consuming, now it can be changed. Furthermore, the information about when and where the text was written is crucial to expand the current state of knowledge rapidly. For now, it is not clear how fast it will be adopted and used across different teams of scholars, but the tool is promising. It could greatly speed up the research about the ancient periods of history. What is more, if it would be truly versatile many regions of the world could also learn more about their history. The system is available online for everyone to try. In the current state, the best usage of Ithaca is the close cooperation with professional historians. Lastly Ithaca should continue to be developed for higher accuracy and new features. It seems that even not obvious industries can benefit a lot from the artificial intelligence tools offered by today’s technology.

References

https://www.wired.com/story/deepmind-ai-restore-ancient-texts/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04448-z?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_campaign=CONR_PF018_ECOM_GL_PHSS_ALWYS_PRODUCT&utm_content=productdatafeed&utm_term=PID100095187&CJEVENT=507e9fe6a31011ec836304990a18050c

https://ithaca.deepmind.com

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/9/22968773/ai-machine-learning-ancient-inscriptions-texts-deepmind-ithaca-model

https://www.techradar.com/news/the-latest-deepmind-ai-breakthrough-could-be-perfect-for-indiana-jones

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/restoring-ancient-greek-inscriptions-using-ai-deep-learning

Reading Time: 2 minutes

This fall new Martin Scorsese’s film came out. “The Irishman” is said to be a great comeback to the most loved genre of Scorsese – dark, crime, mob story. Stars from movies like “Good fellas” including De Niro, Al Pacino or Pesci are also playing now. However one thing has drastically changed, they are really old.

Three main actors are now almost 80 years old. This is a huge problem because in a story they play characters that are much younger. That is why Scorsese needed the help of the artificial de-aging system.

Regular de-aging methods

There are several ways to make actors look younger or older. The most popular include makeup or stuntman. Also, there is a method of de-aging in post-production. However, it comes with many drawbacks. First of all, actors are supposed to wear big helmets or many small objects on their heads. It completely enables them to perform high-quality acting or to be in any way natural. Secondly, actors mostly don’t like working with this equipment and simply don’t agree to take part in a film. Main actors and Martin Scorsese didn’t want to work this way.

New approach

Pablo Helman from Industrial Light and Magic decided to help with “The Irishman” de-aging process. The goal was to come up with a new approach without helmets or tracking dots. After many attempts, they finally created a completely new method. Instead of one camera, they were using additional two to capture all possible data about the facial expressions of actors. This way the could create artificial image of an actor in various scenarios and including different lighting or camera movement. Next, they designed a special gear to use it in a practical way, due to enormous weight it was rather difficult. The whole structure was only 2 inches smaller than a regular width of a door. After that, each scene was recreated in special post-production program and this program de-aged actors. Most of the work was done with De Niro as the main character. Also, the program included AI algorithms to recognize the demanded age of an actor and character. Surprisingly not only was changed in actors. Second most import part of the body were hands. There are many scenes were we main characters smoking or showing something in a close-up. That is way hands needed to be de-aged too. In this way, actors almost didn’t feel any change at all and the effects were far better. However to proceed with this method it took much more time and effort than regular ones.

References:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-irishman-netflix-ilm-de-aging/#

Netflix’s ‘The Irishman’ gets its first trailer starring a digitally de-aged De Niro

De-aging the Irishman (updated)

https://nofilmschool.com/the-irishman-de-aging-behind-the-scenes

https://collider.com/the-irishman-de-aging-explained/

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Streetwear is recently a big part of the culture in media. We all know brands like Supreme or Yeezy and have some friends that buy super expensive sneakers. However how fashion industry can be connected to technology or even programming?

The answer is pretty easy. Limited clothes or sneakers have their premiere data and hour on a website. From that time you can buy them online. The problem is even if you can afford them there are plenty of people that are willing to buy them too. Most often in seconds or a minute everything is sold out. Here comes a bot.

What is a bot?

Bot is a program or even small software that is made to behave as a human. It can create accounts, log and buy what we want. It smartly passes through all securities like CAPTCHA. The best part is that it works in seconds and is much faster and accurate than any person. What is more he can create numerous accounts and buy many more limited products than people can manually. Sometimes websites with really good anti-bot systems try to prevent from fake customers. Then bot is only available to add some products to your “shopping card” and you must finish your purchase on your own. Even then it enables to buy some really rare clothing.

From the streetwear brands perspective

Big brands with really hyped sneakers or other pieces of clothing have big problem with sneaker bots. Bots often lead to website crashes or errors. Most important they create inequality among customers. Very often sneakerheads and true customers can’t buy their “grails”, because of bots. Now when people realized that in resell market it is easy to make money they completely ignore any other aspect. In result old fans of brands are hurt and customers focused on reselling clothes are getting rich. This leads to a big discussion and many people are upset about it, because whole streetwear culture suffers.

How it works in practice?

Getting a bot is relatively easy. There are numerous sites like Aiobot where you just purchase your bot online legally. Then you need to describe what brand and specific items you want to purchase. You also specify the date of a release. When you finish completing all details like your address and card number, bot will be ready to work. It will wait to estimated date and buy what you described.

References:

https://www.aiobot.com

https://smartproxy.com/blog/what-is-a-sneaker-bot

Home

https://www.distilnetworks.com/glossary/term/sneaker-bot/

https://www.netacea.com/blog/what-are-sneaker-bots

Nike Shoe Bot

Reading Time: 2 minutes

When we think about farms and big fields of plants, probably we imagine the countryside and enormous land. It’s a natural image of agriculture. We became sure about how growing plants look like and barely changed anything for hundreds of years. People only added new ways of taking care of plants but didn’t ever rethink the whole concept. However, it is possible that it will soon be history, due to completely new ways of farming.

Aerofarms is a completely modern approach to agriculture. It can change the way people develop and will be using space. No more big fields of plants, now we can grow them in buildings.

The main concept

How is it possible? Science and technology found a way to develop almost the same conditions as nature, but in an artificial way. Aerofarms are huge buildings with many levels. It’s like a big warehouse of IKEA, with many shelves, corridors and storage is from ground to the roof. It can be hard to imagine but there many layers of “ground” and special lamps that provide necessary conditions for plants. There is no soil and no natural sunlight, only substitutes. In this way, plants can be grown not only on one ground level but in many many more.
Furthermore, they can be stored inside buildings. However, it is not the best part. It is claimed that Aerofarms use 95% less water than classic field farms.

A mix of science and technology

This is all possible, because of the smart use of special led lamps and a new approach to the nutrition of plants. Scientists discovered new ways how to improve it and implemented it with technology. Also, special scientists monitor and collect data about all plants grown in Aerofarms to advance it even more. The special cloth used instead of soil is made of fully recycled materials. Lastly controlling every condition lead to almost none risk of any pests. In this way, we have an environmentally friendly and highly more efficient approach to farming.

Current situation

Now there are about four farms using this method. They are being controlled and tested. Many scientific surveys and tests are made in topics of health or taste of these plants. There are no negative sides of using this method of growing plants scientifically proved. If Aerofarms will replace classic way of farming we are going to have a big revolution. In a quick summary, it means less wasted water, more efficient agriculture, less usage of pesticides and much more land for nature not fields of plants.

References:

https://aerofarms.co

https://www.ft.com/content/cac48190-9d8a-11e9-9c06-a4640c9feebb