Although we are far from developing the Blade Runner type of flying car, we are getting closer to mass production of different vehicles. A few days ago, “Air Car” (that was previously mentioned on this blog), designed by Štefan Klein, was certified to fly after passing tests in Slovakia.
The vehicle was awarded its certificate after completing the tests regarding European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) standards. Within 70 hours of rigorous flight testing, the tests included the full range of flight and performance manoeuvres and more than 200 take-offs and landings. AirCar’s developers said its take-off and landing procedures were achieved even without the pilot’s need to touch the flight controls.
Although the product is planned to be mass-produced, not everyone will be able to drive it. Obviously, a pilot license will be required to fly the hybrid vehicle, and you will be able to fly only from airport to airport.
CNN states that Kyriakos Kourousis, chair of the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Airworthiness & Maintenance Specialist Group, told them that “this is not the first time that similar types of vehicles have been certified.”. Therefore, I am curious if this product will appeal to potential customers. Personally, I do not see AirCar as a revolutionary vehicle, but certainly, this technology is a significant step into the next generation of transportation. And I would not be surprised if Elon Musk would abandon digging tunnels to avoid traffic to instead pursue this kind of hybrid air and land solution.
We all probably encountered the idea of smart homes in science fiction movies before. And, for some time now, Samsung has been making this dream a reality. They have been introducing intelligent objects that you can control via your smartphone like smart lights, smart fridges or multifunctional products that just make sense and enable new possibilities like Freestyle. However, they have presented something a bit controversial at recent CES – a smart home dashboard.
The Samsung Home Hub is designed to be a central place for a household to control Samsung devices and monitor the home through smart devices. The portable touchscreen tablet has Samsung’s Bixby assistant and will use AI to anticipate what you might need. It has two microphones and two speakers for hearing notifications and giving voice commands. Based on the company’s information so far, it appears to run Android. There is no pricing available or Europ release date, but it is scheduled to launch in Korea in March and globally after that.
“The problem with shoehorning existing tablets like the iPad into the role of a smart home dashboard is they’re designed as personal devices. A dedicated tablet for the home needs different software and a different approach.” – Article from the Verge states. I personally can’t entirely agree that using a personal device is a problem and think that using a separate device as a controller would be less convenient than using a smartphone. The SmartThings app, for example, allows you to set and check every device from your smartphone, which I think is the best option for controlling your smart home for now. Nevertheless, this Samsung dashboard seems like a cool gadget for Samsung’s intelligent devices users.
It is hardly possible to plan a successful marketing strategy without considering promotion through social media as a small business owner. As social media platforms are becoming more and more popular, the demand for digital content grows. Therefore, many people find themselves in a situation where they have to create digital content but do not necessarily know how to use tools meant for doing it. Of course, you can find plenty of free resources on the internet to learn tools like Photoshop or video editing programs, but who has time for that? And is it even worth it to spend several hours learning to edit a few photos properly?
Having recognized that more and more people need a tool to make digital content without very complex functions, Adobe, a company behind programs like Photoshop or Premiere Pro, created Adobe Cloud Express. This app provides users with a highly intuitive user experience and all the functions they need to develop and edit basic content like illustrations, photos or even a video.
What you can do in Adobe cloud express?
Within the app, you can choose from pre-designed templates for different purposes like a Facebook post, an Instagram story, a YouTube thumbnail, a restaurant menu and many more. After selecting a template, you can adjust all the features within it with various fonts you can use, adding layers, many pre-designed illustration elements to choose from or more complex editing functions simplified to easy procedures.
What are the costs?
You can use Creative Cloud Express for free with: Basic editing and photo effects. Access to a limited collection of design assets. 2 GB of cloud storage. However, for $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year, users can get access to: the entire collection of design assets premium “Quick Actions” like Refine Cutout and Resize the ability to convert and export to and from PDFs and other file types 100GB of cloud storage and more.
My opinion
As a user of Adobe products, I had to try this weird but yet how interesting new tool. Of course, You have the option to start your own project, but after logging in with my account, I’ve begun exploring the templates they supposedly offer, and I have to tell you there is plenty of them. However, to use most of them, You have to have a premium subscription. The first con I’ve noticed was the lack of precise filters while looking for a suitable template, besides the type of graphic ( youtube thumbnail, Instagram story etc.). I think this type of filters boost efficiency significantly while searching, at least they do when you look for a specific font or plugins for other Adobe products in their cloud. I’ve chosen the template, and the work after was a piece of cake. Everything was so intuitional, from selecting the colour to adjusting the sizes, that my 8-year-old sister would probably meet the challenge. I did not even have to look on the internet for the most optimal file sizes for a specific platform before saving the file because it was already adjusted in the type of the template. Nevertheless, one thing bothered me while working in this program. There is no function to hide layers, which, in my opinion, is crucial to trying new things while editing a digital file. Maybe it is because people who have not worked in this type of tool would not recognize the need for it, but from the perspective of a frequent user of photoshop and Indesign, I have to say that it gives the user a lot of freedom.
In conclusion
Adobe Creative Cloud Express is a straightforward and intuitive tool, which offers a great variety of templates and pre-design elements to choose from. The templates allow you to not worry about all the technical aspects of a particular file like resolution, width or length and focus only on the esthetical part of your work without many skills in graphic design, photo or video editing. I think this tool is a game-changer for content creators on social media and the internet and will surely make it easier for anyone to get into this topic with no skills making it relatively affordable.
In the end, I present you the graphic I did while testing this program (it took me about 3min).
Nike has been pursuing a goal of turning sports and play into a lifestyle for quite a while, especially with all the initiatives aimed at children like the youtube series “Nikee playlist”. “We wanted to show kids that sport, at its core, is all about play,” says Jessa Moon, Global Brand Director for Nike Kids. “It doesn’t have to be soccer or football or traditional sports — it can be a mash-up or something totally wild and different. We wanted to inspire kids to think about moving their bodies in all kinds of ways and having it be about joy as opposed to winning or competition.”
On the 18th of November, Nike revealed their new step towards influencing the younger audience, launching a virtual world “Nikeland” on video games platform Roblox Corp. In this digital space, visitors can outfit their avatars with unique Nike products, play, compete, and even create their own games/competitions.
WHAT CAN YOU DO IN NIKELAND
In “Nikeland”, you can currently compete in games like “Tag”, “the floor is lava”, “Dodgeball”, and also create their mini-games from interactive sports materials. But the part of this whole initiative that is the most related to sport is tracking real-life movement. Using accelerometers in mobile devices, people can “transfer” their activity into their online play, like jumping, which would lead to adequate movement of their avatar.
FUTURE POTENTIAL
Not only is this an excellent strategy for introducing the brand to kids at a young age, but also a great environment to test their products, according to Sam Poser, an analyst who covers Nike at Williams Trading. He predicts Nike will use it to try out new products to see what sticks. It could also host competitions tied to global sporting events, integrating in-play moments that would emulate them in virtual reality.
Above all, it seems like a great form of encouraging kids to move while making it exciting. Therefore, it probably will have some positive impact on our society if only it will gain popularity.
You have probably heard about digital illustrations selling for enormous prices. They are called NFT’s, which stands for non-fungible token and differs from traditional digital creation by undeniable proof of authenticity. You may wonder why anyone would buy an “authentic” digital creation? Or even how can we know it is authentic? I will try to answer those questions below, briefly explain what NFT is and discuss its potential.
This Cryptopunk NFT pixel art sold for $11,7 million
What exactly is NFT
NFT is a piece of data stored virtually on a blockchain like a cryptocurrency. However, unlike Bitcoin, for example, it can not be exchanged for other pice of the same currency, as all NFT’s may represent different assets with a different value. The data stored as NFT can be pretty much anything digital, for example, video, photo, illustration or audio file. The authenticity of each piece is preserved through blockchain technology. In brief, it means that once it is established, it becomes irreversible and can be verified on behalf of many proofs worldwide. Therefore verification of ownership is safe and effective.
Why would anyone pay for such a thing?
It might be to show one’s social status in a digital world. This concerns NFT art used as profile pictures on different social media platforms and will probably become more popular with the evolvement of virtual reality, which is becoming more rapid, especially after the latest investment announcement by Meta. In this case, the possibilities for creating different NFT’s will be endless, as people will presumably want to have a substitute for showing their belonging to a social group through a certain piece of clothing, for example. This need will probably have to be fulfiled through one’s appearance or belongings in the virtual world.
Another possibility is an investment both long and short-term. As trading volumes of NFT hit billions of dollars, you can see a lot of day traders on social media bragging about their profits on this kind of investment. There are also other kinds of investments where we can see a striking resemblance to old school value storage like buying land. Decentraland is a perfect example of a world where you can buy a parcel of land as an NFT. Later on, you can use it to build three-dimensional spaces and applications or hold until its value goes up.
A Decentraland scene
Potential of NFT’s
One of the examples of this technology being very useful is representing intellectual property. Something that is considered invaluable, like an idea, could be represented as an NFT. This would provide digital proof of ownership, which would come with its own set of benefits. Another would be previously mentioned digital goods available in the future virtual reality world “Metaverse”. From land and commodities to art, it would be possible to buy something not existing in the real world and be sure that it is authentic. There are already some luxury brands like Burberry or Gucci creating their NFT’s and only time will tell how significant impact on the future of virtual market this technology will have.
