Model Airplanes

The Pebble Time is an important product for a few reasons, but the most important is that it is the only serious contender for the space on your wrist besides Android Wear and Apple Watch. For most users, Android Wear and Apple Watch make more sense on their respective platforms. Really, the only reason the Pebble Time exists is because the original Pebble did a lot of what many users wanted in a smartwatch far before Android Wear and Apple Watch were a thing nerds argued about and normal humans looked at briefly as they passed through their mall.

Now that Android Wear and Apple Watch are here, though, can Pebble stay relevant with the Time?

This is our Pebble Time review.

The Good

The User Interface

Designing a fun to use, beautiful user interface is incredible difficult, but I think Pebble did a great job with this. They took a technology that Amazon has managed to make feel exhaustively slow and made it display text and iconography in a magical way. Text and icons fly on and off the screen, watch faces smoothly animate, and while the colors are limited, they feel native to the device. In short, the user interface feels delightful to use.

The new timeline interface is great, particularly if you schedule a lot of your life. With a simply press of the bottom button I can see what’s

Article source: http://www.droid-life.com/2015/06/29/pebble-time-review/

After years of talk, predictive analytics is finding a host of uses. Now the question is whether business has the managers and the data scientists to fully exploit it.

By Beverley Head

When a Telstra call centre operator asks “How are you?”, they pay very careful attention to the response.

Data analytics has revealed that 48 per cent of people who are calling to disconnect will respond “not too bad”. That raises the red flag, and savvy call centre jockeys know they have
a limited window to salvage the relationship.

When Telstra first harnessed predictive analytics it was bent purely on boosting customer satisfaction. But according to Belinda Haden, head of customer analytics for Telstra’s supplier, Verint, it has also helped deliver an 11 per cent improvement in revenues since deployment.

She says that analysing calls – for content and emotion – has allowed Telstra to identify common problems and fix many of them, while also speeding complaint resolution. Haden says customer calls have fallen 28 per cent while complaints to the telecommunications ombudsman [about Telstra] have dropped by 24 per cent. Predictive analytics harnesses technology to identify patterns in large collections of data.

Often these collections are not neatly in a database but sitting in, say, a pile of audio files – “unstructured data”, as data experts call it. Predictive analytics allows likely outcomes to be identified and represented using specially developed visualisation tools, in real time,

Article source: http://intheblack.com/articles/2015/07/01/turn-insight-into-action-with-predictive-analytics

The Tran brothers: Ki How (left) and Ki Chong

“Our vision is based on two big predictions of the future,” says Ki Chong Tran. “Prediction number one: 3D printing will change the way we make almost everything. Number two: the developing world is where most economic and population growth will come from.”

In 2013, Ki Chong and his brother Ki How started up Cambodia’s first 3D printing service – ARC Hub. They produce ready-to-use objects in their Phnom Penh workshop, and they teach others how to use 3D printing technology. Occasionally they bring in experts from outside of Cambodia. Their goal is to make Cambodia “a leader in 3D printing.”

For a country which lags behind others in the region in important measures such as infrastructure development, GDP, and manufacturing, this sounds  far-fetched. But in a sense, Cambodia’s lack of existing industry could make it easier for new forms of production to take hold quickly. “We have seen this before with mobile phones,” Ki Chong says. “Developing nations leapfrogged over landline phones and went straight to mobile.”

See: 3D printing is becoming popular in Pakistan, and this founder is leading the way

A particularly intricate model of a villa that will be built in Kampot, Cambodia, 3D-printed by ARC Hub

Ki Chong and Ki How hope for

Article source: https://www.techinasia.com/brothers-paving-cambodias-3d-printing-revolution/

It is an enormous privilege to have been invited to deliver the fourth 7/7 Tavistock Square Memorial Trust Lecture. This year we mark the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on London.

Now the families of more than 30 British holidaymakers in Sousse are beginning that same long journey of mourning and loss which the families of those London victims have been travelling ever since that dreadful morning.

I know that I speak for all of you in thanking the Tavistock Square Memorial Trust for the continuing and unerring support.

In the aftermath of the disaster I was privileged to be asked by the then Prime Minister to co-ordinate the government’s support and response to those who were bereaved on 7th July and the hundreds of survivors whose lives were changed forever on that day. I had undertaken a similar responsibility on behalf of the bereaved UK families after the 9/11 attack on New York.

To be Minister for Humanitarian Assistance was a quite different ministerial role through which I have built lasting friendships and relationships over a decade.

This evening we have come together to pay tribute to those who died, to their families and the injured and survivors of 7/7.

As we all know only too well, on the morning of Thursday 7 July 2005 three bombs were activated at around 8:50 a.m. on underground trains just outside Liverpool Street and Edgware Road stations, and on another travelling between King’s Cross and Russell Square. An hour later, there was a fourth explosion on a

Article source: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/77-10-years-tessa-jowells-memorial-lecture

On Sunday, June 28, a Spacex rocket blew up in less than three minutes after launch: news reports.

Any study of Elon Musk must begin at the headquarters of SpaceX, in Hawthorne, California – a suburb of Los Angeles located a few miles from Los Angeles International Airport. It’s there that visitors will find two giant posters of Mars hanging side by side on the wall leading up to Musk’s cubicle.

The poster to the left depicts Mars as it is today – a cold, barren red orb. The poster on the right shows a Mars with a humongous green landmass surrounded by oceans. The planet has been heated up and transformed to suit humans. Musk fully intends to try and make this happen. Turning humans into space colonizers is his stated life’s purpose.

“I would like to die thinking that humanity has a bright future,” he said. “If we can solve sustainable energy and be well on our way to becoming a multiplanetary species with a self-sustaining civilisation on another planet – to cope with a worst-case scenario happening and extinguishing human consciousness – then,” and here he paused for a moment, “I think that would be really good.”

If some of the things that Musk says and does sound absurd, that’s because on one level they very much are.

On this occasion, for example, Musk’s assistant had just handed him some cookies-and-cream ice cream with sprinkles on top, and he then talked earnestly about saving humanity while a blotch of the dessert

Article source: http://scroll.in/article/737421/the-man-whos-transforming-cars-energy-and-space-travel-all-at-the-same-time

Growing fleets and the longevity of aircraft pose continual challenges to the manufacturers of business aircraft. Not only do the buyers of new turboprops and jets expect top-level customer support, but buyers of some of the oldest aircraft still sporting a current manufacturer’s nameplate have expectations that they will be able to find parts and get answers to technical questions. These issues put product support at the forefront for manufacturers and, indeed, at some the ranks of upper management are filled with the names of leaders who are known for their skills at taking care of customers’ aircraft.

AIN interviewed the five major business jet OEMs to assess the current state of their product-support efforts and to learn how they are using modern technology and tools to deliver support that their customers need and expect. (AIN’s annual Product Support Survey Report on how readers rate manufacturers’ efforts to take care of their aircraft, avionics and engines will appear in the August, September and October issues.)

One interesting change that has occurred is that all new aircraft come with much more sophisticated data-collection and-distribution systems than did previous-generation aircraft, and they provide reams more information for OEMs and maintainers. OEMs use this information not only to speed delivery of parts and service when maintenance troubles occur during flight, but also to further continual efforts to reduce maintenance costs by lengthening inspection and service intervals. The OEMs are pushing these efforts to their suppliers as well.

A side benefit of all these

Article source: http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2015-06-28/oems-put-technology-work-mro-operations