AIVAnet

Aug

Mophie Unveils New Wireless Charging Options

Mophie today announced the launch of four new wireless charging products designed for the iPhone and other Qi-based smartphones, debuting the Charge Stream Vent Mount, the Charge Stream Desk Stand, and the Charge Stream Powerstation Wireless in standard and XL configurations.

The Charge Stream Vent Mount ($69.95) is designed to fit in most vehicles with a four-prong mount that slips over the air vent. It’s meant to accommodate one-handed smartphone insertion and removal, and should work with most smartphones regardless of size. Rubberized arms hold a device in place while charging, and for iPhones, it supports faster 7.5W charging speeds.

Mophie’s new Charge Stream Desk Stand ($69.95) , which is coming this fall, looks similar to its existing charging pad for iPhones. It offers 7.5W charging speeds while holding an iPhone or other smartphone upright in portrait or landscape mode. The charging pad can be removed from its steel frame and used as a traditional wireless charging pad if desired.

The Charge Stream Powerstation Wireless ($79.95) and the Charge Stream Powerstation Wireless XL ($99.95) work as a traditional wireless charging pad when near a wall outlet and as a 5W wireless charging battery pack when on the go. The Powerstation Wireless features a 6,040mAh capacity, while the Powerstation Wireless XL features a 10,000mAh capacity. An included USB-A port can also charge a second device.

With the exception of the Desk Stand, which is not yet available, all of the new wireless charging options can be purchased from the Mophie website starting today.
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Aug

Google Assistant goes bilingual, lets you speak two languages interchangeably

Whether you’ve come to say “Hola!” or “Bienvenue” or “Auf Wiedersehen,” Google Assistant is ready to answer you right back as the smart assistant becomes the first of its kind to go fully bilingual. Users can now speak two languages interchangeably with the Google Assistant on smart speakers and phones and the Assistant will respond in kind.

As of right now, the Assistant can understand any pair of languages with English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese, with more languages to come in the coming months.

Although it’s an advancement for the worldwide market, there have been hints of the new ability coming since the beginning of the year as Google rolled out new features and analysts reverse-engineered the launch of new routines and integrations for Assistant. Google announced at the beginning of the year that it anticipated offering support for up to 30 languages by the end of 2018. In February, it announced a breakthrough feature by which Google Assistant could automatically detect which language a user’s commands were in and respond in kind. Google also published a technical blog post explaining how the speech research team at Google tackled the multilingual problem.

Bilingualism is also likely to lead to multilingualism, a natural progression of Google’s direction. But even the ability to detect and speak two languages simultaneously is a huge win for bilingual communities like Quebec, where most people speak French and English, and India, where demand for bilingual services in Hindi and English is so high that Google recently developed bilingual support for its Feed service (previously known as Google Now), and expects to roll out support for Hindi very soon.

The new bilingual feature will also be particularly helpful for Google Assistant users who speak their native language in their home, but may speak a different language at work or while out with friends.

Previously, Google Assistant was capable of understanding different languages but users had to physically designate a primary and a secondary language in the app’s settings. The new feature goes a long way toward reducing that friction and giving users the organic engagement that is high on Google’s list of goals.

By year’s end, Google’s language support services are expected to allow the company to reach 95 percent of Android smartphones worldwide that are capable of running Google Assistant.

The development is a big leg up for Google and an indication of the strength of its language support and artificial intelligence development. The company has struggled since the launch of the Google Home smart speaker line to compete with Amazon, which launched Alexa earlier but, like Siri, has much more limited language support than Google does.

The announcement included the fact that Google Home Max will launch on Thursday, August 30, in the U.K., France, and Germany. Google Home Max has been available in the U.S., Canada, and Australia for nearly a year.

The mega version of Google’s smart speaker features “Smart Sound,” enabling it to automatically adapt itself based on where it’s placed in the room. The high-end smart speaker also works with more than 150 home automation brands and more than 1,000 smart home devices.

Google also announced that its “ecosystem partners” will be introducing new phones and a range of smart home devices and appliances that support the Google Assistant in Europe in the near future.

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Aug

Your keyboard could predict if you have early-onset Parkinson’s disease

Keyboards are smart things these days. Some use machine learning to speed up our typing by predicting which letter or word we’ll want next. Others look at our typing habits and try to use this to guess our emotional state. Now, researchers from Australia’s Charles Sturt University have a new idea: Using the subtle clues in a person’s typing to look for early signs of Parkinson’s disease.

Parkinson’s is a progressive neurodegenerative brain disorder, which causes a range of physical and psychological symptoms. More advanced Parkinson’s is noticeable through physical traits, such as involuntary tremors and the distinctive shuffling walk known as Parkinsonian gait. However, it can be tough to spot early on before such symptoms have manifested.

That’s a problem because this period before diagnosis is a crucial time for patients. By the point of diagnosis, 70 percent of the brain’s dopaminergic neurons — the neurons which synthesize the neurotransmitter dopamine — may have already been irreversibly lost. While there is currently no cure for Parkinson’s, there is plenty of active research into finding drugs that will slow or halt its progression. For these drugs to be effective, early intervention is of the utmost importance.

The Charles Sturt researchers have developed software that monitors the time between key presses on a keyboard and uses this as a measure of hand tremor frequency. In tests, the system was able to correctly identify patients with mild Parkinson’s with 78 percent accuracy. While that’s not perfect accuracy by any means, it’s still enough that a person might want to get themselves examined more closely.

“Around 75 percent of PD sufferers have hand tremor as one of their symptoms, so being able to detect that tremor from keystroke characteristics can provide a second cardinal feature to satisfy the clinical diagnosis of the disease,” lead author Warwick Adams told Digital Trends. “What makes this finding so exciting is that it can lead to development of a widely available screening test for early PD: One that will be able to be used by first-level clinicians, as well as by individuals themselves.”

In addition to aiding with diagnosis, the technology could also help monitor the effectiveness of individual medication. Even without a Parkinson’s cure, this could be useful right now, since the required dosage of dopamine replacement medication changes over time.

“The reason for focusing on typing is that it is something that nearly everyone does, and it can be monitored as people use their own computer in their own home, without needing any specialized equipment,” Adams continued. “There is already a patent pending and, over the next couple years, the plan is to commercialize this research — ideally in partnership with a drug company or diagnostic services provider.”

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