Wash Clothes Like UBER?!

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Electrolux, the BIG washing machine company are testing a crazy new way of getting your clothes washed — by someone else.

CEO Jonas Samuelson has told the Financial Times that they are testing an Uber like service where you would pay to get your clothes washed at someone’s house. While you would need to change up your washing machine for it to have wi-fi and it to be connected to the app itself, it would help save money in the long term from washing equipment (Washer/Dryer) that for most of the week is idle.

While this sounds quite weird (people stealing your underwear!) there are other hurdles that need to be addressed too. For example, what if your clothes shrink or clothes colour runs? Who pays for that? There is also the potential for people to buy houses and turn them into laundromats? or If someone forgets to wash your clothes? Gives you somebody else’s clothes?

Jonas Samuelson doesn’t say when this will go live to the public if at all. But if this goes ahead it will be interesting to see what problems they face from it being used day in day out.

Listen to the guys chatting about this here!

 

Amazon Supermarkets!

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Amazon are testing a radical new concept for the supermarket.

Amazon’s crazy idea eliminates any requirement for any cashiers (say goodbye to those annoying self service checkouts!) simply tap in (similar to how you would tap in to the train station in London via an Oyster card) grab whatever food you need and then walk out. You are then billed to your Amazon account on your departure.

Available only in Seattle at the moment and you can only try it if you’re an Amazon employee or beta tester, public trials are scheduled to start sometime in 2017.

Amazon said in a press release:

“Our Just Walk Out technology automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves and keeps track of them in a virtual cart.”

View the video below to see what Amazon Go is all about!

Click here to hear the guys chatting about this radical new scheme!

Power Up 3.0!

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Ever wanted to fly your paper airplane that much better?

Bored of flying it once and then having to get up out of your chair to go and get it and throw it back?

Well that is a thing of the past thank to the PowerUp 3.0!

To buy your own PowerUp 3.0 please click here! 

To listen to Marcus’ experience with the PowerUp 3.0 please click here!

To see what the PowerUp 3.0 is please view the video below!

Smartphone Car Problems

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US regulators want to limit what people can do with their phones whilst driving. Sounds good to us! The US’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have published their first safety guidleines regarding driver distraction which specifically target things that you connect to your car such as music players or better yet, smartphones.

The guidelines, which are part of a second phase of NHTSA proposals are for the cars console. These were back in 2013 and they suggested that you got to touch a button to call someone rather than dialling a number. Which sounds really safe to us!

At the heart of it it is all about making things ‘dumber’ and ‘easier’ to use while behind the wheel to reduce the amount of distractions that we have while driving. The NHTSA suggest a thing called “Driver Mode” which are like Apple’s CarPlay and the Android Auto. Where a selection of apps or tasks are easily attainable through easy to use big button interface. For example Drivers could see maps that are on their smartphone in short chunks of texts that can be easily read from a quick single eye glance from the road, but with more reliance on voice activated commands than physical touch.

Sounds good right. But the NHTSA’s “Drive Mode” system, wants to go one step futher and prevent certain features being used whilst driving. Which makes sense as you shouldn’t be manually entering text whilst driving or adjusting maps to see where you are. The NHTSA suggests that it would be better with their “Driver Mode” to do things through “Driver Mode” where the user wouldn’t have to turn it on and it is automatically switched on once you enter the car and it the car is in motion.

 

However all this sounds really cool and safe and would go a long way to prevent accidents, these guidelines are exactly that guidelines. Car makers don’t have to implement the technology into their cars. Not only that some tech doesn’t play well with others like Google Maps doesn’t work with CarPlay so a driver has to mount thier phone on the dash.

While it is important to  make our drives safer, it still requires users to use self will not to get distracted and it does seem quite nanny state like to control what we can and can’t do with the stuff we own when in certain situations.

Will there be ways to prevent us from having more and more accidents, only time will tell, but this seems like a cool way to do it.

 

To hear the guys chatting about this please click here!

Electric Car Charing Ports for all!

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Electric cars are becoming more and more popular the past several years especially with the introduction of the Tesla. Now there are several huge car firms that are prepping for the future of car travel and are creating high powered charging networks across Europe. 400 Charging Sites to be exact.

The firms are BMW, Daimler, Ford and Volkswagen Group, including Audi and Porsche.

The charging stations (sounds like a massive dock for your car!) provides really quick charging for your electronic cars, along many major roads across Europe. (However we think 400 is a little small for such a large area of land) Tesla’s can’t use these charge points as their cars use different electronic systems, so if you have a Tesla, you’re out of luck. Sorry!

Reason being as the network will use combined charging system standard technology, while Drivers of electric cars can plug in and charge at speeds of 350kw which is a lot lot faster than you can get today!

To hear the guys chatting about this please click here!

WORKING Apple Mirror (Concept)

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Someone has created an Apple Mirror that actually WORKS! It’s just a concept from YouTube user “dymekraf” but it gives a cool insight into what Apple could actually do with an iOS intergrated Mirror. It can do a whole heap of stuff such as:

  • Show the Time/Date and weather
  • Touch activated (to bring up the apps and information)
  • Can move apps easily
  • Can send a message directly from the mirror
  • Play music from connected speakers

Check below to check out this guys cool invention!

To listen to the guys chatting about the Apple Mirror please click here!

There is a Parallel Universe!

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Well it looks like there are an evil Team How To Kill An Hour out there! Parallel Universes exist! (Apparently)

A wise-man called Howard Wiseman of Griffith University in Australia has spearheaded a team that suggests a cool new theory that there are in fact multiple universes which exist in the same space and time as our own but react on a quantum level. (basically space and time do not behave in the same way that ours do) Wiseman’s team has a theory which slightly differs to a well known theory called ‘Many Worlds’ which originated in the 1950’s. Wiseman and his team have a “Many Interacting Worlds” theory.

The most popular and well known theory “Many Worlds” suggests that after a huge event occurring like our very own big band that numerous universes are created with all possible outcomes of that event Eg: Dinosaurs getting bigger/better or Dinosaurs getting destroyed. With all of those universes that were created occur at the same time (running parallel) but never interacting – unlike Wiseman’s theory.

The theory is like much like the one we just described but instead of them all running parallel and never impacting one another, this new theory suggests that one affects the other. For example, if you roll a dice any outcome could occur, until you roll again and something else occurs thus affecting the universe.

 

So in effect this theory suggests that parallel universes overlap one another and take up some space and time and simultaneously exist all at the same time and all possible outcomes live out their lives until something happens and forces one universe or state to exist over the other.

Interesting huh?

To hear the guys chatting about this please click here!

 

 

Sonos: Play 1’s

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We love our music here at How To Kill An Hour and we love our wireless speaker technology even better! Ever since Apple took the 3.5mm adapter away from us all we have been looking at ways at getting your music out there and in the room wirelessly. We love the Bragi Dash’s but what about if you want to share the music?! Well the SONOS:Play 1’s are here to save the day!

These little speakers pack an incredible punch and they sound absolutely magnificent! Pack some great base and some decent high ends these guys really sound good! But what’s even better is that if you have more than one or a selection of SONOS speakers you can control them all from the SONOS Controller app. Adjust the sound levels independently of one another. So the one in the bedroom can be quiet and the one in the office can be incredibly loud or control the sound levels at exactly the same time. But what’s cool about them is that they will be playing the same piece of music at the same time from the exact same source! They can also:

  • Two PLAY:1s work as Sonos home cinema rear speakers.
  • Or as Stereo Speakers
  • Wall or stand-mountable.
  • Be updated over Wi-Fi
  • Uses Trueplay Tuning

 

To download the SONOS Controller app please click here!

To buy your own SONOS Play 1 please click here! 

To listen to the guys chatting about the SONOS: Play 1’s please click here!

Bragi Update

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Bragi have released update “Bragi Dash OS2.2” and it makes the cool Bragi Dash’s even cooler! We love the Bragi Dash here at How To Kill An Hour and this update makes it even more ‘must have’ this Christmas time.

Amongst the plethora of features that it already has  this update adds a lot more:

  • Windshield (Advanced audio transparency. Hear your surroundings, but
    block out the wind)
  • Bragi KUI and MyTap (Bragi’s KUI (Kinetic User Interface) means your body
    now controls the device in new ways. Activate Siri and Google Now with MyTap by double tapping on your cheek.)
  • MyControls (A more detailed access to more gesture controls via the Bragi App)
  • Apple Watch Connectivity
  • More accurate heart rate monitor
  • Improved Bluetooth
  • Versant 1.1 – More improvements in speech recognition in noisy environments

 

To buy your own Bragi Dash’s please click here!

To download the latest Bragi Dash update please click here!

To listen to the guys chatting about the Bragi Dash Update please click here! 

Amazon Echo

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We have recently been sent the Amazon Echo and we love it! If you don’t know Amazon Echo is a home automation device that sits in your room and is controlled via your voice only. There is no screen and it includes only a 360 degree omni directional speaker with  far-field voice recognition technology built in.  Far field Voice Recognition technology is basically a really cool piece of tech that allows Alexa (the internal voice in the echo) to hear you from a far and in noisy environments or when you are playing music. The Echo is controlled entirely with your voice and is activated by simply saying “Alexa”

Alexa can do a range of things including:

  • Plays all your music from Amazon Music, Spotify and TuneIn Radio.
  • Echo has Bluetooth built in so you can stream music from iTunes/Apple Music or off of a bluetooth enabled device.
  • Can answer questions, reads you audiobooks, reports news, traffic and weather & more using Alexa Voice Service
  • Controls lights, switches, thermostats and more with compatible devices such as Philips Hue, Hive and Nest products.
  • Alexa updates through the cloud automatically and is continually learning, adding new features and skills. 
  • Skills such as ordering take away from Just Eat or requesting a ride from Uber—simply discover and enable the skills you want to use in the Alexa App.
  • The more you use Echo, the more it adapts to your speech patterns, vocabulary and personal preferences.
  • If you are an Amazon Prime member you can also ask Alexa to purchase and order things for you, that includes things you have already bought before and many Prime products that are available on Amazon. (this can be password protected to avoid any buying mistakes)

To listen to the guys chatting about the Amazon Echo please click here!