Wearable Technology

What is Wearable Technology? What are Wearable Devices?

The terms “wearable technology“, “wearable devices“, and “wearables” all refer to electronic technologies or computers that are incorporated into items of clothing and accessories which can comfortably be worn on the body. These wearable devices can perform many of the same computing tasks as mobile phones and laptop computers; however, in some cases, wearable technology can outperform these hand-held devices entirely. Wearable technology tends to be more sophisticated than hand-held technology on the market today because it can provide sensory and scanning features not typically seen in mobile and laptop devices, such as biofeedback and tracking of physiological function.

Generally, wearable technology will have some form of communications capability and will allow the wearer access to information in real time. Data-input capabilities are also a feature of such devices, as is local storage. Examples of wearable devices include watches, glasses, contact lenses, e-textiles and smart fabrics, headbands, beanies and caps, jewelry such as rings, bracelets, and hearing aid-like devices that are designed to look like earrings.

While wearable technology tends to refer to items which can be put on and taken off with ease, there are more invasive versions of the concept as in the case of implanted devices such as micro-chips or even smart tattoos. Ultimately, whether a device is worn on or incorporated into the body, the purpose of wearable technology is to create constant, convenient, seamless, portable, and mostly hands-free access to electronics and computers.

The implications and uses of wearable technology are far reaching and can influence the fields of health and medicine, fitness, aging, disabilities, education, transportation, enterprise, finance, gaming and music. The goal of wearable technologies in each of these fields will be to smoothly incorporate functional, portable electronics and computers into individuals’ daily lives. Prior to their presence in the consumer market, wearable devices were primarily used in the field of military technology and had the biggest implications for healthcare and medicine. In fact, just 10 years ago, medical engineers were talking about wearable devices which could unobtrusively monitor the health and well being of patients in the form of a “Wearable Motherboard™” or the “Smart Shirt,” aimed at monitoring vital signs and sending that biofeedback information to a hub station in real time (Park and Jayaraman, 2003).

Even though wearable technology could potentially have the most impact in the fields of health and fitness, the technology also promises great influence on gaming and entertainment. Augmented reality and wearable technology can combine to create a much more realistic and immersive environment in real time. The concept is not necessarily new, as augmented reality through the use of wearable devices has been discussed since the late 1990s; however, the prototypes are moving away from bulky technology such as large goggles and backpacks, to smaller, lightweight and more mobile systems. If the more polished designs of mobile phones and digital cameras currently on the market are any indication for the future of wearable devices, then fashion, practicality, function and design will all be taken into account as these products advance. This consideration for both technology and aesthetics is already evident in devices such as Google Glass, which has a very sleek, lightweight, unobtrusive design.

As the potential uses in various fields continues to grow, the sociological and cultural impact wearable technology will have in the future should not be minimized. Already, the current hand-held devices available to consumers, such as Smart Phones, iPods and tablets, have changed the technological and social landscapes on a global scale, such that, walking out in public and seeing an individual engaging with a hand-held device is commonplace. Such an image was nonexistent only 20 years ago. With that in mind, developers and analysts predict that wearable technology will very quickly change the technological and cultural landscapes once again, and may even change the nature of mobile phones and other hand-held devices entirely.

Google Keep: Getting Started

Whether you’re still using sticky notes or you’re a bit intimidated by Evernote, Google Keep may be just what you need to get organized. Keep is a super simple Web service and Android app, and it can be used to store a wide variety of text or audio notes, check lists, pictures and URLs.

Keep duplicates much of the essential functionality of "Evernote" in a simplified fashion, but it does have some tricks up its sleeve. Automatic and intelligent audio transcription and shareable notes in the free Android app are particularly helpful. We also appreciate the graphically appealing interface, and the fact that you can add a widget to your phone’s home screen.

To get started:

1. Download the app from the Google Play store on your Android smartphone, or visit your drive.google.com/keep.

2. Create a note in the Android app. You have four options to do this. You can simply start typing in the text bar that says Add Quick Note, and your keyboard will appear. Alternatively, you can select the text, check mark, microphone or camera icons to add different types of notes.

The check mark indicates a bulleted to-do list where items can be checked off. The microphone opens a blank note that immediately begins recording your voice. When you’re done Keep transcribes what you’ve said for the body of the note, but you can also play it back. The camera icon opens your phone’s camera app. 

3. Title your note. For audio and picture notes, after the media has been added to the app you’ll want to add a headline and some brief explanatory text to the note to help jog your memory. 

4. Color your note by tapping the artists paint palette icon on the top right. From here you can select plain or from among seven vibrant hues, including blue, grey, neon green, orange, red, teal and yellow. This is the only organizational system currently available within the Keep app.

5. Share your notes. From your Google Keep desktop in the Android app, tap and hold a note to bring up options along the top bar to delete, archive or share.  Tapping the sideways triangle share icon opens a pop-up window with whatever sharing services you might have loaded on your phone, such as email, Facebook, Dropbox, and even Evernote. Note: This feature is not accessible from the Web version of Keep. 

6. Save links to read later. From within Chrome browser on our Android phone, we made notes out of websites by tapping the menu button on the phone > Share > and selecting Keep from within the drop down. Note: The same process worked from within Evernote to share a note between the two scrapbooking services. 

Generally speaking, Google Keep can be a useful repository for quick notes. If you own an Android phone it’s definitely worth a spin.

Refresh Windows 8 PC or Reset Windows 8 PC

There are two kind of capabilities available in Windows 8 that perform different kinds of cleanup: one refreshes the system while keeping all of your photos, music, and personal files. The other actually starts you over, returning your computer or tablet to its mint condition. The latter, resetting, is also an excellent choice for when you're selling, recycling, or gifting your PC.

Resetting a Windows PC prior to Windows 8 had been a bit of a chore, so these new Windows 8 tools offer long-term benefits. And if you're not giving away your PC, the refresh tool is a much simpler alternative to reinstalling the operating system in the traditional way.

Refresh Both of the new Windows 8 options clean out the operating system itself, but the "Refresh" choice leaves intact your data—photos, music, videos, and documents, your new-style Windows 8 apps, and your system settings. You'll find this choice by clicking or touching the Settings charm (you display the charms with a swipe in from the left on a touch screen, or by moving the mouse pointer to either of the right corners and moving it down or up). Then choose "Change PC Settings" at the bottom.

 

To get started with the refreshing process, click or tap the "Get started" button below the Refresh description. You'll then see a screen like this:

This provides more detail about what the operation does. A key thing to know is that the process will remove any desktop apps—only apps obtained from the Windows Store will remain. This message states that you'll be presented with a list of the removed apps on your desktop after the process. This removal makes sense, since desktop programs are the likeliest suspects for clogging your system and haven't passed through the Windows Store vetting process. For a (somewhat geeky and time-consuming) way to perform the refresh without losing desktop applications, see ExtremeTech's article, How to reinstall Windows 8 without losing your files and programs, but only if you're not afraid of command lines.

Hitting Next launches a process that displays a Please wait message and a spinning timer below the word "Preparing." After getting to this point, I next received an "Insert media" message, requesting that I insert Windows installation or recovery media. This is a little bit of a drag, since it would be nice for the refresh to be a self-contained process. I plugged in a USB stick with the Windows 8 installer, and got the message Please wait…Verifying.

 



 Now my tablet was ready to be refreshed. I knew this because the bar across the screen read "Ready to refresh your PC." And the more detailed text below that told me that it would take a few minutes, and that I should keep the PC plugged into a power outlet. The button to press now simply read "Refresh." I pressed it.

The computer restarted, and acted like it was installing updates. (I had just previously installed actual Windows Updates). I then saw the new Windows logo and the words (again) "Preparing to refresh your PC." After this it said "Refreshing your PC" with a percent amount displayed. (It stayed on 5% for quite a while.). This process took 8 and a half minutes, after which I saw getting devices ready, another timer.

Then saw my lock screen and had to sign in with my Microsoft Account password—even though I'd set up a quicker four-digit PIN sign-in. So that's one setting that apparently isn't saved. The process then showed the same mini-tutorials on how to use Windows 8—swipe in from the sides on tablets and move the mouse point to the corners—as I'd seen on first installing Windows 8.

Shutting down and starting up again, I could switch sign-in options back to my PIN, which actually was remembered. Also my mail, Wi-Fi, and location settings were remembered, so right away I could see how many new emails awaited me, local weather, and Wi-Fi bars all on the lock screen. And sure enough, all my Metro apps were still on the Start screen. Moving to the desktop, there was a new icon called "Removed Apps." As it turns out, I only had Firefox installed, and that was on this "Apps removed while refreshing your PC" list.

Resetting Your PC This is the option to use when you're giving away or otherwise disposing of the PC. As with Refresh, you get started by choosing the Settings charm, then "Change PC Settings" at the bottom, select General, and scroll down to "Remove everything and reinstall Windows." Click on or touch "Get started." You'll see a band across the screen entitled "Reset your PC."

 

Hit "Next." You'll see "Please Wait…Preparing." As with the Refresh process, I was then asked to insert Windows 8 installation media. And again, I think this should not be a prerequisite for the Reset option. This time, a different pair of choices presented themselves: "Just remove my files," and "Fully clean the drive." The first just takes a few moments, while the latter takes "much more time," according to the info on the button.

First I tried the "Just remove my files" option. The resulting note told me that all apps and files would be removed, and that settings would be restored to default. There was also a note about making sure your File History drive is up to date; this is Windows 8's new backup solution. 

Next, hit the Reset button. A restart is triggered. The same Preparing message appeared with the new Windows logo. This time, after eight and a half minutes, I was presented with the Windows license terms to accept. Then the first-run setup began—choosing color themes, naming the computer, connecting to Wi-Fi, Microsoft account login (a Hotmail account works). It was exactly what you get when you first set up a Windows 8 system. Next, you see the tips on how to navigate Windows 8. After a psychedelic color-rotating "We're Getting Your PC Ready" screen, the Start screen pops up.

There was nothing on my desktop this time, save the Recycle Bin, Internet Explorer's icon, and the Windows Explorer folder icon. But since I signed in with my Hotmail account, my new-style apps and email notifications were all restored. The takeaway from that is, even if you completely wipe your PC, you can still save yourself from having to set everything up, by signing into a Microsoft Account.

Finally, I tried the full reset. Since my system had just been cleaned, I didn't expect it to take a whole lot longer or reduce the disk footprint significantly. The initial Resetting process did take much longer, at just under 38 minutes, and I arrived at the initial Windows 8 setup screen (the license agreement) after one more minute. This is because, unlike Refresh, resetting actually erases and formats the hard drive partitions and writes random data to erase yours before reinstalling.

PDF Guide – Do Anything with PDF

As we all are aware that PDF is the best format for preserve the documents as they can not allow to change the formatting, All PDF documents are read-only and can be accessed in  most computers, mobile phones.

Here I would like to give you some technics which can be used in routine work to work around PDF formats.

How to Create PDF without any Software Installed on PC? - The tool called Nitro Reader available for download and install a virtual PDF printer. You can create PDF files from any Windows application using the regular Print command where you need to select "Nitro" from available Printer list.

Save any Webpage in PDF format - As stated above, opened webpage can be convert in PDF format by print command where you need to select "Nitro" from printer list. Alternatively, you can send URL of that webpage to mypdf@joliprint.com and they'll send you the full page as a PDF. There are many more tools available like CleanPrint for converting webpage to PDFs.

PDF to other format like HTML, Image, Word, etc. - Just upload your any PDF document to zamsar.com and convert it to other formats like doc, html, text, and more. By using your gmail account you can convert any doc,pdf,etc. to HTML format and the steps are as:
 1. Compose a new message in GMail.

 

2. Attach any PDF or Word document that you want to convert to HTML You can attach multiple files in this step by clicking Attach another File.

 

3. Enter your own email address in the To: box and click send.

 

4. You instantly receive a message in your GMail Inbox folder. Open the message and click the "View as HTML" link next to your attachment.

 

5. The contents of your attachment appear as HTML in a new browser window without having to download the file. When you're finished reading the attached file, close the new browser window to return to Gmail or Save the file to your harddrive.

 

GMail will show the following types of files as HTML: .pdf, .doc, .xls, .ppt, .rtf, .sxw, .sxc, .sxi, .sdw, .sdc, .sdd, and .wml. You can extend this trick to extract text from PDF documents (PDF to Txt) or Convert Adobe PDF documents to Word (PDF to Doc conversion). First convert the Document to HTML with Gmail and then open the HTML file in Microsoft Word and choose Save as .doc.
Convert PDF document from any other language to English version - By using Google Translate, you can convert any language to English and vice a versa.

Merge multiple PDF file into single - You can use PDF Fill, a versatile PDF editing tool that lets you combine multiple PDF files into one. PDF Fill can also be used to rearrange pages of a PDF file or for rotating pages (useful for scanned PDFs).

Extract text from Scanned PDF Document -  "Google Docs OCR" is the tool for the same. Upload the scanned PDF document to Google Docs, select the option that says “Convert text from PDF and image files to Google documents” and then choose File – > Download as Word to save the extracted text.

Fill PDF forms online - Just go to PDF Filler, upload the PDF form and start typing. It converts the PDF form into images and the user can type right on top of these images. When you have filled the form and ready to print, the images and user text are combined into a single image. The other good option is FillanyPDF.com that is again free.

Add watermarks or Signature in PDF document - First draw your signature in Paint (or other photo editing tool) and save it as an image. Now open Adobe Reader and choose Tools – > Place Signature. Copy-paste that signature image anywhere on the PDF page. You can use the same technique to insert watermarks inside the PDF.

Extract selected pages from PDF document and save into new PDF document - There is a free tool called  PDF SAM (split and merge) available to extract one or more pages from a PDF document and save them as separate PDFs. The same tool can be used to merge multiple PDFs into one file.

Next-generation business intelligence systems

Next-generation BI is not just about technology. It's a new way of thinking about your data -- picking and choosing what data has value and what's worthless. So some experts say the first step is turning to master data management -- and, in turn, a data governance program. Others say the first step is establishing a corporate performance management strategy.

Above all, next-generation BI is about putting the right data in the hands of the right users across an organization. This involves a new way of approaching information worker involvement and controlling how workers gain access to critical information.

Why are MDM, data governance and CPM considered next-generation BI approaches?

Because they are key areas that organizations are failing to pull together. Many organizations grab data from various sources with the only common link being spreadsheet reports.

There are plenty of vendors playing in the master data management space, including SAP AG, IBM, Oracle Corp., Microsoft, TIBCO Software Inc. and Informatica Corp., and smaller companies like Purisma Inc., Siperian Inc. and Initiate Systems Inc. But establishing a data governance program first is key, and it is not that difficult to do.

"All you have to do is get the individuals who own the data sources to actually take ownership of them," said Joe Bugajski, an analyst at Burton Group Inc. in Midvale, Utah. "They don't have to know the nitty-gritty about the technology; IT will back them up on that. Just acknowledging who owns what data sources and what they should be paying attention to can be an enormous step forward that results in positive changes."

Gartner's Rayner recommends creating a corporate performance management (CPM) strategy first. This involves the following four steps:

Monitoring performance using historical data.
Implementing an enterprise management framework to choose the financial or performance metrics that will help move the organization toward more predictive BI.
Using predictive planning and modeling systems for forecasting to predict and identify the "what-ifs" and facilitate scenario planning.
Developing a strategy to identify patterns and make changes based on them.

What will next-generation BI dashboards and interfaceslook like?

Envision a video wall in which employees can point to a particular object, maybe a map that covers a customer region, touch the screen and drill down to see sales performance in that region at that moment.

It's not as far off as you may think. Customer-facing business intelligence dashboard displays are popping up in airports and retail chains. It is not inconceivable to think that they will become the business intelligence dashboards of the future.

"The world of old-line business intelligence software in which 10% or less of the employees slice and dice and shrink-wrap reports for other users will be replaced by multimedia presentation dashboards," Bugajski said. In this world, anyone in the company can see what's going on, whether it's a news feed about a competitor, internal profitability information or a fraud alert displaying ATM activity.

And BI tool vendors are stepping up as everyday employees reject the traditional interfaces for business intelligence systems. Users are instead favoring visualization mashup capabilities similar to those they use when searching for information on the Internet.

Is anyone actually doing next-generation BI yet?

Some CIOs are starting to lay foundations for predictive analytics and real-time business activity monitoring, or BAM.

For example, The Hillman Group Inc., a distributor of fasteners and maker of engraving systems and signs for large retailers such as Home Depot and smaller hardware outfits, has integrated its multimillion-dollar application for planning and scheduling orders into its BI portal. Dashboards refresh order status in real time. (The portal is built on IBM WebSphere, which is fed data from Information Builders WebFocus, which in turn lies on top of disparate data sources such as Excel, SQL Server and ERP applications.)

Next up at Hillman Group will be predictive analytics to identify the company's leading and lagging indicators and the relationship between those indicators. For example, a leading indicator would be the cost of zinc or other raw material; a lagging indicator would be margins.

Doesn't next-gen BI involve search technology?

Some cite search as the business intelligence reporting tool of the future. And the thought of being able to use search-like functionality to gather data across your organization, or even unstructured data across the Internet from news feeds, blogs and even tweets, is appealing to both business users and the CIOs in charge of business intelligence projects.

But the debate on how search and BI will interact, and whether mingling the two technologies is a good idea, will continue for years to come.

Forrester Research Inc. analyst Boris Evelson describes a BI utopia in which an appliance crawls both structured and unstructured data and places all information in optimized storage, where it becomes instantly available.

Not all elements of this are fantasy. Business Intelligence vendors are working on technologies to integrate unstructured data such as email seamlessly with BI. For example, Panorama Software Ltd. integrates Microsoft Outlook with BI tools.

Search technology that does more than spit back relevant links is also not so far off. Information Builders has Magnify and Microsoft has Bing, both of which promise to make users' search experiences more intuitive. Taking it a step further, why not just marry BI and search and call it guided search?

Other experts aren't embracing search technology as a business intelligence tool quite as much. Gartner's Rayner argues that the worst thing a business can do when it comes to business intelligence systems is to throw another tool at users. The problem, he says, is users already have too much access to information and too many BI tools that they don't use.