Another smartwatch? You mean the big square device that a few people wear that links to their phone and lets you do a few tic tac stuffs? You seriously don’t mean those awkward looking space-age watches? Do You?

No we Don’t. Bring in Kairos Mechanical Smartwatches, Confused eh? Mechanical and smart? Well that’s where classy smart comes in. This is Not just another smartwatch. The Kairos is a traditional mechanical watch - you know, the type with actual moving gears and a 46 hour self-winding movement - merged with a transparent colour OLED display.

So simply put, that means it serves the best of both worlds – a handsome design and also useful functions and notifications.

 As a watch fan, I’ve seen them all in their full glory, the Fossils, The Rolexes, The Omegas, Tissots (PS: I haven’t necessarily owned them all if you’re wondering) down to the uber modern GShocks but I’ve never made up my mind on a Smartwatch. Maybe because it just seems to out of the way to have a big square black slab on my wrist that well, looks anything but a watch.  So Now I see the Kairosii, this is where the watch and the smartphone start mating!

Created by a team of Engineers, designers and entrepreneurs these watches feature a standard automatic mechanical watch behind a tinted crystal that can show notifications right on the surface.

So how does it work? How well does it work? 

 The mechanical portion is a standard Miyota Japan 82S7 movement, a manual-wind/automatic mechanism that you can find in many non-Swiss mechanicals. The crystal, however, uses a semi-transparent TOLED QVGA screen to display notifications and icons right on the crystal. Another simpler display system will show dot matrix letters along the bottom and light up bright icons that will help maintain battery life.

One of the founders, Sam Yang said, “The functions are very similar to Samsung’s smartwatches or Pebble’s. You can see notifications, remote control functions, fitness tracker info etc. The major difference is that it comes with a transparent display.” 

  

Yang started his first company at 17 building remote starters for cars and then built a fashion brand management business in Korea. This is his latest venture and marries his love of hardware for his passion for fashion.

“As a watch enthusiast, I wanted to create a smartwatch that other watch enthusiasts would want to wear proudly,” he said. The other three founders include Ken Yoon who worked at Renault, Kyo Young Jin, late of Samsung and LG, and Gabriel Gonzales, a firmware programmer. Frederic Weber built the mechanical parts of the watch. Weber is a Patek Philippe trained watchmaker and marketer with roots in the Swiss watch industry. 

Thankfully Yang and team decided to go mechanical with this watch, thereby shattering the single complaint I have about most analog smart watches: a ticking seconds hand isn’t very cool, and most watch fans prefer the smooth sweep of an automatic.

But why put a mechanical movement into a smartwatch? Because Yang can.
“So we actually started out by saying ‘Ok, we’ve got this fancy Swiss Watch. How can we make this into a smartwatch?’ That’s how it started,” he said.
“In terms of numbers, last year alone, it was reported that 1.9 million smart watches were sold. In contrast, 1.2 Billion units of regular watches were sold worldwide. 77% of them were mechanical movements, and 29 million of them were Swiss Made,” he said. By connecting the old and the new world, Yang and team hope to change the way people think about wearables.
The company raised a seed round with investors from the banking industry and are doing a Series A with companies based in Singapore and Hong Kong. They’ve pre-sold 500 watches and they start at $499 for preorders.

Transparent OLED? What is this, 2029?

We've actually seen quite a few examples of transparent OLED screens in the past. Samsung unveiled a smart window at CES, and Microsoft's shown off an impressive transparent 3D display too.
Transparent OLED displays have clear components (namely substrates, cathodes and anodes) which, when turned off, provide up to 85% transparency.
When a transparent OLED screen is turned on, light is able to pass through it in both directions, overlaying the on-screen information over whatever is behind it. In this case, that'll be the watch face.

Specs Sheet:

Smart watch components: Connection: Bluetooth BLE (4.0) Display: TOLED RGB Full color (36mm x 1mm) 40% transparency OR ICON Type Transparent Display (Static icons, Numbers & English text only) 60% transparency Sensors: Touch sensor, 3 axis accelerometer w/ gesture detection, Gyroscope Processor: Arm Cortex M4 / Intel (TBD) Battery: 180mAh (5-7 days) Battery power is expected to perform better than competitors due to the fact that power is not consumed in order to "display time". Power is only consumed when alerts are pushed through to the watch. Charging: USB charging cable with magnetic connector Operating System: Kairos OS (Compatible with IOS + Android) Optional: Android Wear OS

Mechanical watch components: Dimensions: Case: 46mm diameter x 16.5mm height Band: 22mm wide (replaceable) Movement: MSW 115: Miyota 82S7, 42 hour power reserve, 21600 bph, 21 Jewels. Automatic movement. SSW 158: Soprod A10BV-2 Swiss Automatic Movement, 28800 bph, 25 Jewels, 42 hour power reserve Materials: 316L Stainless steel, Genuine leather band, Crystal Sapphire Glass Water Resistant 3 ATM

Most of these projects fizzle out, but given the experience of the team and the simplistic design, this thing might just come to where Smartphones meet Watches. We'll be keeping a close eye on Kairos, hoping that it'll live up to the hype it's rightfully earned itself.

NVIDIA is moving on from the market to focus its efforts elsewhere after their Tegra 4i failed to catch on in the main-stream market, admitted CEO Jen-Hsun Huang in an interview with CNET. Huang said that they have realized that the company would rather spend time in adding value to certain areas of the tech world, like in cars or gaming specific devices, set top boxes and even televisions.

But that doesn’t mean that NVIDIA is going to exit altogether, we might see a Tegra Superphone at some time as mentioned the “Porsche of tablets or phones.”

Most of the interview is cantered around the failings of the Tegra 4i, a slimmed down variant of the Tegra 4 that finally included 4G LTE and was supposed to be a game-changer in the mainstream entry-level smartphone market, which ultimately didn’t happen thanks to Qualcomm, who make similar chips that are more affordable. Also mentioned are MediaTek, an up and coming chipset maker that has somewhat been successful in its attempts to undercut Qualcomm to cater the market.

No worries though as NVIDIA isn’t leaving the mobile platform altogether and it will continue to invest in SHIELD as a platform. NVIDIA is also trying to enter and dominate the Set-top box marker, the smart TV market, and cars, something their CEO loves on a ‘deep, personal level.’ We should see a new SHIELD device in the near future.

It’s going to be a long time till the next magical Tegra phone comes, unless a partner comes to NVIDIA to build the ultimate gaming phone or tablet where the company can add value, like Xiaomi has tried with their slate, just not in current plans. 

So people what are your thoughts on NVIDIA exiting the smartphone and tablet game. Though we won’t miss them since we haven’t seen much of Tegra Chips in recent times.

Homo sapiens. 
We are the most advanced race on the planet, and it is us, who have led innovation over the millennia. We invented technology. From discovering fire, inventing the wheel, harnessing electricity, building robots, venturing into space, to being able to access the entire world’s information by simply tapping on a screen. We made it possible.

After the Industrial revolution, the pace at which our technology has evolved is staggering! The time span between new, breathtaking innovations has been reduced to a fraction of what it was earlier. Every sunrise sees something new taking shape, ready to take the world by storm.

All of the components of modern-day technology, be it electricity, the Internet, or transportation, function like a machine. Modern technology is in itself one huge machine encompassing everything. A machine powered by electricity. This machine runs the world. From cars, airplanes, computers, tablets, to smartphones, technology has become so much more accessible. Robots have replaced humans in factories, making production quicker, more efficient, and cheaper. Automation is the new fad. From phones that automatically power up, text, and sync your friends’ Facebook profiles, to computers that control nations’ militaries. Computers are in control of things ranging from shuffling songs playing on your iTunes, to controlling nuclear warheads!

Electricity.  A form of energy we cannot imagine life without. Electricity is an integral part of the technological machine. Our generation was born in bulb-lit rooms, with TV’s and fans, and air-conditioning. We take it for granted. For us, it’s always been there. And we think, it’ll continue to exist for all eternity.

 Now, imagine it just shuts down. No electricity. Power failure. Our nuclear plants fall out, and we have no oil. The entire country is in total darkness, barring those who possess generators and inverters. Those too will run out in a couple of hours. There is no light, no fan, no TV, no internet, cell-phone connectivity will be lost as generators run out of fuel, and phone batteries die. The food in your refrigerator starts to spoil. We lose connectivity to our satellites. Airplanes are grounded. Trains halt to a stop. Financial systems collapse. The government loses data, and control over our defence forces. We are vulnerable. We are isolated.  (This did happen in a part of India once, on a much smaller scale, in 2012, when 60 million people were left without power due to a cascading power failure.)

The above is just the scenario for our country, where we still are fairly used to power cuts. Imagine this happening in USA, or in some European nation. Imagine this happening to the whole world. The whole world in a black-out!  When Tesla and Edison first harnessed electricity, I doubt they would’ve even imagined that’d we be so dependent on it!

And that is only electricity. One cog in the technological machine. Imagine the whole machine collapsing. The world as we know it will grind to a halt. How do we recover from something like that? Do we individually reboot every machine on the planet to get back to normalcy? Can we somehow prevent this?

 There is nothing we can really do to stop this. It will happen. Someday. Petroleum reserves will run dry. Coal will run out. What we can do, is reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. We can begin switching to alternate sources of energy. Solar energy is one of the best options we have. In a sunny nation like India, we can easily meet our individual electricity needs through photovoltaic panels. Wind farms, and geothermal power units are options the government should start considering seriously. We have to start being judicious with our use of resources. Using more efficient devices, consumer lesser power, and making sure we’re not wasting power, will help us a long way in going green. We can indulge in developing sustainably. The three Rs’ importance is more now, more than ever. Recycling one tonne of paper saves 17 trees, 310l of oil, 4,000 kWh of energy, 2.4 cubic metres of landfill space, and 27.2 kilograms of air pollutants. Another thing we ought to do is reduce the amount of e-waste we’re producing, which currently stands between 20-60 million metric tonnes, worldwide.  We can stop being slaves, slaving to electricity.

 As Tesla once wrote, “Invention is the most important product of man's creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs." Let us be masters.

Apple since long has ruled the Tech-World as a brand that is both leading in terms of value and customer loyalty. 

But seems the reign has seen its demise.

Global Market research agency Millward Brown stated in its 2014 Top 100 BrandZ report that Google’s brand value has shot up 40% in a year to $US 158.84 Billion.

"Google has been extremely innovative this year with Google Glass, investments in artificial intelligence and a range of partnerships," said Benoit Tranzer, the head of Millward Brown France.

Recently Google tied up with Luxottica, a glasses giant behind Ray-Ban and Oakley, to sell their new product Google Glass in the United States. The glasses shall be according to a customer’s preference and no more make one look like some space age being. (Though that’s cool enough)

Also propelling Google’s brand value was the takeover and selling off of Motorola Mobility from which it acquired some 8000 patents all from Moto’s Kit. 

Google’s policy of targeting all of the market with their well-priced products and almost lifeline services has definitely paid of well.

 Apple on the other hand, has maintained their tradition in every front with similar devices and policies, the only new being their OS update. The new Mac Pro too hasn’t yet made that much of an impact as expected though it is a brilliant workstation.

Apple, which dominated the top position for 3 straight years, saw its brand value fall by 20 percent to $US147.88 billion. 

The top 10 of the 100 slots were dominated by US companies. IBM was in third place at $US107.54 billion ($116.35 billion), a fall of 4 per cent, followed by Microsoft at $US90.19 billion ($97.58 billion) – a 29 per cent rise.

The good news on the block being that Google and Apple declared a cease-fire in their intellectual-property wars, saying they will work together in some areas of patent reform. This makes us expect lot more great products from the two Technology giants.

Hey guys. So you thought the T-Rex was large right?? Then you probably don't know about Sauropods... This class of dinosaurs includes the likes of Apatosaurus, Diplodocus and other massive heavyweights. But now researchers have found the biggest one yet...

Three years ago, a family of rural farmers stumbled across an incredible archaeological site on their land in the Patagonia region of Argentina. The family notified nearby Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio (MEF), and now researchers at the site have unearthed what they believe is the largest dinosaur ever. It's estimated that the massive beast weighed almost 80 tons (80,000 kg) and stood 65 feet tall (20 meters) when it walked the earth some 95 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period. Measurements suggest it was over 130 feet (40 meters) from its head to the tip of its tail. That means it was roughly as long as a 13-story building.

But this truly gigantic dinosaur was a herbivore. The specimens found in Argentina's Chubut province (which is part of the Patagonia region) belong to the sauropod group of dinosaurs, which are noted by their small heads, thick, pillar-like legs, and long necks and tails. Perhaps the most well-known sauropod is the Apatosaurus, which often goes by the name "Brontosaurus" in pop culture. But this latest sauropod is twice as long and up to four times as heavy, and researchers are classifying it as a new species of Titanosaur, which is a group of extremely large sauropods.

Paleontologists led by Dr. José Luis Carballido and Dr. Diego Pol of MEF found seven adult specimens in the same spot, and the roughly 200 fossils discovered so far are in wonderful condition. Among the cache of fossils they've found significant pieces of the neck, back, and legs, as well as "most of the vertebrae of the tail," according to a press release from MEF. "It's a real paleontological treasure," says Dr. Carballido. He suggests that the adult individuals likely died in the same spot, perhaps huddling around a dwindling water source.

By measuring the diameter of load-bearing bones like the femur and humerus, the team was able to estimate the size and weight of the dinosaurs. Their findings just beat out another very similar Titanosaur, Argentinosaurus (pictured above), which has long been considered the largest dinosaur ever. Argentinosaurus is estimated to have weighed roughly 73 tons. It, too, was discovered in the Patagonia region of Argentina, which is a hot spot for dinosaur fossils.

Seven of the massive dinosaurs were found in the same spot in Argentina's Patagonia region. Image credit: Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio.

If initial estimates hold up, this latest find will not only take the title of largest dinosaur ever — it will be the biggest animal ever known to have walked the earth. But it doesn't have a name yet. Researchers tell BBC News that "it will be named describing its magnificence and in honor to both the region and the farm owners who alerted us about the discovery."

Another discovery at a different site in Argentina this week proved that a much smaller member of the sarupod family, a group known as the diplodocids, lived not just in North America, but also in South
America. Numerous media reports have conflated the two finds, but this second discovery is of a herbivore just 30 feet (9 meters) in length.

Nevertheless, there may be much more to find at the site in Chubut province. Dr. Carballido says that they are "still working on this extraordinary site." He adds: "We estimate that one fifth of excavation process [is complete], so there is still much work to do and probably much to discover."

So, until next time guys, cheers!

The story begins, as many do on the high seas, with a party.

A painting of Christopher Columbus by Sebastiano del Piombo is seen, Sept. 19, 1943 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. No portrait of Columbus from real life is known to exist but there are five standard types of which this is one. (AP Photo)

It was Christmas Eve, 1492. The setting: Christopher Columbus’s Santa María, the flagship vessel that he had commandeered to visit the New World. One by one, the crew fell asleep until only a cabin boy was left steering the ship in the Caribbean Sea.

Soon, the boy crashed the ship into a coral reef off of the northern coast of Hispaniola, or near Cap Haitien in Haiti. The ship sank to the bottom of the sea, and the crew spent that Christmas saving Santa María‘s cargo. Afterward, Columbus boarded one of his other ships, the Nina, and the explorers sailed back to Spain, leaving behind the wreckage of the Santa María – fueling a 500-year-old mystery over its remains.

That mystery has likely been solved.

Archaeologist Barry Clifford says he’s discovered the remains off Haiti’s coast. ”All the geographical, underwater topography and archaeological evidence strongly suggests that this wreck is Columbus’s famous flagship, the Santa María,” he told the Independent in an article published Tuesday. “The Haitian government has been extremely helpful – and we now need to continue working with them to carry out a detailed archaeological excavation of the wreck.”

Diver Barry Clifford holds a cannon ball on Nov. 1, 1998, that came from a fleet of pirate and French warships that sank off Venezuela’s coast about three centuries ago. An expedition led by Clifford found what are believed to be only the second and third pirate ships ever discovered in the world. (AP/Margot Nicol-Hathaway)

This wouldn’t be Clifford’s first major discovery. In 1984, the renowned underwater archaeologist discovered the Whydah — possibly the only verified pirate shipwreck ever discovered — after years of searching. It was under just 14 feet of water and 5 feet of sand and contained, among other treasures, 10,000 coins and 400 pieces of gold jewelry.

But in some ways, this recent discovery, if true, is more valuable, and brings greater understanding to perhaps the most pivotal sea voyage in human history. “I am confident that a full excavation of the wreck will yield the first ever detailed marine archaeological evidence of Columbus’ discovery of America,” says Clifford, whose team hasn’t excavated the vessel yet, but merely photographed and measured it.

Graphic: Tobey – The Washington Post.

There is reason for such confidence. The discovery, the Independent reports, was prompted by a batch of 2003 discoveries that suggested the probable location of Columbus’s fort nearby. Clifford cross-referenced that work with data in Columbus’s diary to pinpoint the location of the shipwreck.

Sounds pretty easy. Why wasn’t the vessel discovered before?

It actually was. Clifford’s team photographed the wreck more than a decade ago, but didn’t then realize what it was. Only after reexamining those photographs and newer images captured this month has Clifford figured out the wreck’s probable origin.

The evidence: According to photographs, the vessel’s design is consistent with Columbus’s era, and it had a cannon like the one on the Santa María. Also, the wreck’s location and topography match Columbus’s description. “The local currents are also consistent with what is known historically about the way the vessel drifted immediately prior to its demise,” the Independent said.

More striking, the wreck’s footprint appears to coincide with what would remain of a vessel the size of the Santa María.

“There is some very compelling evidence from the 2003 photographs of the site and from the recent reconnaissance dives that this wreck may well be the Santa Maria,” Indiana University’s Charles Beeker agreed. ”But an excavation will be necessary in order to find more evidence and confirm that.”

Clifford says the discovery could mean big things for Haiti’s tourism industry. “Treated in this way,” he said, “the wreck has the potential to play a major role in helping to further develop Haiti’s tourism industry in the future.”