Robots and Drones

This is an area that will surely see major shifts in 2015. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration started allowing some companies to use drones for commercial purposes this year, including certain Hollywood movie studios. There will likely be even more leeway in terms of drone regulation in 2015, even as Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -0.43%   threatens to take its drone testing elsewhere.

Better rules should entice drone manufacturers to build more capable machines and developers to build apps that make drones multifunctional across a wide range of applications.

“There will be more drones in the market, more consumers trying drones, more industries trying to get clearance to use drones, but there will also continue to be a struggle around them,” Kay said.

Meanwhile, Amazon, which is seeking approval to test its drone delivery services in the U.S., put to work tens of thousands of rolling robots in its distribution centers this year, which it said has greatly improved production. More automation in the workplace is inevitable.

And on a far creepier level, robots will continue to become more humanlike. SoftBank Corp. 9984, +0.41%   has unveiled a humanlike robot named “Pepper” that can seemingly sense, read and react to human emotions. This is seen as just the tip of the iceberg as research money pours into how to make machines more cognitive, like humans.

“There will be more [robots] that are more humanoid,” Kay said. “They’re already a little there. I think in 2015 they’ll be a little more there.”

Android 6.0 Marshmallow: The best Features it Offers

Google finally has a name for the next generation in Android OS, and it’s Marshmallow. While the update itself made its debut at Google’s I/O conference back in May, as reported by The Verge, it was then known as Android M. The new name follows Google’s pattern of naming individual releases after sweets alphabetically, something it has done for year

Marshmallow is still in beta, and a final preview release was released to developers this week. Google expects to release a final version in the fall, although it may be a little longer before manufacturers ship the update to compatible phones.

Android users will not notice much of a difference on the surface between Marshmallow and Android 5.0 Lollipop. Lollipop introduced a new user interface, which Marshmallow does not change much. Many of the improvements are underneath the hood, and are aimed at improving performance and stability.

There are a few notable new features however, focused around six core areas. The first three focus on the user experience and security.

A new permissions system gives users full control over what portions of the device an app can access. The system works much like iOS, in that apps will be required to ask for permission on a case-by-case basis. Previously users were required to grant all permissions at once. This made it difficult for Android users to control what information they wanted to share.

Another useful upgrade is to what’s called “app linking,” where one app can directly call up another app by clicking a button or link. In older versions, Android would pop up a dialog box asking if the user wanted to open that app. That will no longer happen with Marshmallow.

Battery usage in Android is also improved with a new feature called “Doze.” Doze works by using the phones built in motion sensors to detect whether a device has been used or not. After a set period of idle time, Android cuts down on background activity, which can significantly reduce battery life if left unchecked.

How effective is this new feature? Engineering vice president David Burke told the Verge at the Google I/O conference in May that Doze was able to nearly double the standby time of a Nexus 9 tablet in tests, reports The Verge.

The last three areas focus on new functionality. The biggest new feature is the debut of Android Pay, Google’s new mobile payments system. Like Apple Pay, Android Pay uses NFC for contactless payments. The new service takes the place of Google Wallet, but that app will not disappear. According to CNETs, Wallet now becomes a PayPal-like service, allowing users to transfer small amounts of money.

Google functionality gets a reboot within Android with Google Now on Tap, which will work much like Siri. Users hold down their home buttons to to access the service and ask for help. For example, if a friend texts you about getting dinner, Now on Tap can use the context of that text to help you book a reservation or get directions to the restaurant, and so forth.

Finally, Chrome is also getting a reboot in Marshmallow. The web browser can now be fully integrated into apps, allowing developers to build the browser seamlessly into the app itself without forcing the user to switch to the Chrome browser. Other features like automatic sign-in, saved passwords, autofill, and security are also available to developers, the company says.

Besides the core areas that Google is focusing on there are some small enhancements elsewhere across Android OS. Better copy and paste, volume control, and USB-C support for faster charging are also included.

Despite the new functionality, getting users to actually upgrade will still be a challenge. There’s always the issue of device compatibility, and the slowness of device manufacturers themselves to release updates to their customers. It’s for this reason that only 18 percent of Android devices were running Android 5.0 Lollipop as of the beginning of August, according to Google statistics.

Neural Network World's Record which is 10 times bigger than the previous

The results of Digital Reasoning’s research with deep learning and neural networks were published in the Journal of Machine Learning and Arxiv alongside other notable companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. They were presented at the prestigious 32nd International Conference on Machine Learning in Lille, France, earlier this month.

Neural Networks are computer systems that are modelled after the human brain. Like the human brain, these networks can gather new data, process it, and react to it. Digital Reasoning’s paper, titled “Modelling Order in Neural Word Embeddings at Scale,” details both the impressive scope of their neural network as well as the exponential improvement in quality.

In their research, Matthew Russell, Digital Reasoning’s Chief Technology Officer, and his team evaluated neural word embeddings on “word analogy” accuracy. Neural networks generate a vector of numbers for each word in a vocabulary. This allowed the research team to do “word math.” For instance, “king” minus “man” plus “woman” would yield a result of “queen.” There is an industry standard dataset of around 20,000 word analogies. Google's previous accuracy on this metric was a 76.2% accuracy rate. In other words, Google was able to get 76.2% of the word analogies "correct" in their system. Stanford's best score is a 75.0% accuracy. Digital Reasoning’s model achieves a score of 85.8% accuracy, which is a near 40% reduction in error over both Google and Stanford, a massive advancement in the state of the art.

PicPal launched to take joint selfies regardless of location

Picpal makes it possible by bringing together everyone at the same time to form a selfie collage no matter where in the world you are.
Picpal users can invite up to three friends to take their selfies along with you. They will have up to 15 minutes to respond to your Picpal request and send across their selfies to you.
The selfies can be retaken or edited using the in-built tools and text can be added also.
"PicPal combines social media, real-time collages, and the ever important selfie into one App," Myndbee said.
"Social networking has revolutionised the way we document our lives. Picpal expands the horizon of these social documentation possibilities," Rajagopalan said.
He said that Picpal takes the user away from passive interactions such as sharing, liking and commenting and makes a more engaging experience.
"With Picpal, we've created an authentic experience, connecting friends and families more intimately in real-time, no matter where they are," he added.
 The app will compile all the selfies together into a single collage that will appear in your Picpal gallery.
Each collage is jointly created with your friends, which can be shared within the app or on Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp.
Users begin by connecting to their Facebook account, and can invite friends via Facebook or text message.
Once these friends also download Picpal, the original user can invite them to one or more collage projects.
The initial user takes a selfie and the invited contacts have one day to respond with their own.
Once finished, it can be shared in the Picpal app with all the friends who can "heart" and comment on it, then upload it to either Facebook or Instagram.

Android Versions Comparability Among Users

Let if you own an Android device, find four similarly outfitted friends and line up, shoulder-to-shoulder. Look to your left. Look to your right. Chances are, one of you has Lollipop, the latest Android mobile operating system. Twenty-one percent of Android devices use Lollipop, according to the company's own breakdown. This figure is up significantly from May, when Android reported just nine percent of its devices used the new OS. The largest share of the Android OS pie goes to Kit Kat, with 39 percent, followed by Jelly Bean with 32 percent.

Android's next update is called "Marshmallow" and while it doesn't yet have a release date, it should hit devices soon. Marshmallow's focus is "polish and quality," according to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. We checked out the M Preview version in June and found that "when M works well, it works really well."

A few notes regarding today's numbers: The Nexus 9, Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge all come with Lollipop right out of the box. Also, Android's figures reflect "devices running the latest Google Play Store app, which is compatible with Android 2.2 and higher." That means older devices, or those without Google Play, aren't counted in this particular survey.

How To Take Screenshots On GalaxyNote5

Taking a screenshot on your phone is one of its most basic functions, but the Galaxy Note 5 has a trick up its sleeve that helps it go well beyond a standard one-screen capture. Though you still have two simple ways to take a regular full-screen screenshot to share or keep for yourself, there's also a new option called "scrolling capture" that lets you automatically stitch together multiple screenshots into a full scrollable and editable image. Here's how it works.

There's no shortage of situations where taking a simple screenshot is useful, whether you're showing something to a friend, saving a quick piece of information or troubleshooting an issue. There are two ways on the Note 5 to take a standard screenshot.

With a key combination:

1. Open the content you wish to screenshot.
2. At the same time, press and hold both the power button and home button for two seconds.
3. You'll see the screen briefly flash, and a notification appear.
4. Check your notifications, where you'll see the screenshot and an option to share, edit or delete it.

With a palm swipe:

1. Open the content you wish to screenshot.
2. Place your hand vertically along the left or right edge of your Note 5, and swipe in from that edge with your hand touching the screen.
3. You'll see the screen briefly flash, and a notification appear.
4. Check your notifications, where you'll see the screenshot and an option to share, edit or delete it.
5. (Optional) If this method doesn't work, check Settings > Motion and gestures to enable it.

Use Android Device Manager's Guest Mode To Find Your Friend's Phone

Android: If you're not using the Android Device Manager to help find your lost phone, we highly recommend it. What happens when you actually lose your phone, though? Thanks to a guest mode in the Android app, you can use your friend's phone to find your own.

The Android Device Manager app allows you to quickly locate, lock, or wipe your other devices. However, you can also use the guest mode to allow someone else to quickly log in and find their device. This makes it much easier to help a friend find their phone, as the only alternative is to log in to their own account from a laptop, which may not be as easily accessible. In any case, if you're not using ADM to track your phone in case of an emergency, it's highly recommended you set it up .

Google has historically left the responsibility of device protection to third parties. Over the last year, however, the company has introduced and beefed up the Android Device Managerm which allows you to remotely locate, lock, wipe, or ring the device. It's not a perfect security system, but it's the minimum everyone should have.

You don't actually have to install anything on an Android device just to track it. You can enable it in your Google settings here. However, if you have multiple Android devices, you can install the Device Manager app to locate one from the other. For example, if you have your phone on you, but can't find your tablet, you can use ADM to ring your tablet, even if it's on silent.