Last year Amazon raised more than a few eyebrows in beating Google to purchase Twitch for a cool $1 billion. As the gaming community continues its phenomenal growth, we shouldn’t be too surprised at the recent announcement of the unimaginatively titled ‘YouTube Gaming.’
A post on YouTube’s blog yesterday revealed that YouTube Gaming is built to be all about your favorite games and gamers, with more videos than anywhere else. From “Asteroids” to “Zelda,” more than 25,000 games will each have their page, a single place for all the best videos and live streams about that title. You’ll also find channels from a wide array of game publishers and YouTube creators.
And when you want something specific, you can search with confidence, knowing that typing “call” will show you “Call of Duty” and not “Call Me Maybe.”
More details will be revealed at E3 next week in Los Angeles where the world’s press will be soaking up a plethora of announcements. We can be sure that there will be a wealth of information that will dominate our newsfeeds along with tales of million dollar game releases and virtual reality with Oculus Rift. (more…)
Have you ever noticed how some people you encounter on this journey called life seem to effortlessly inspire us after spending only a short amount of time in their company, whereas others somehow have the knack sucking the life out of you before leaving a trail negativity and despair in their wake.
The secret to success and happiness is said to consist of surrounded yourself with like-minded individuals who are also on a similar journey to make positive changes in their lives that in turn helps us all grow as people when we subconsciously influence each other with our everyday choices.
Role models do not need to consist of some misguided hero worship of celebrities and very often those who we aspire to become are people very close to you or who you communicate with on a regular basis, for example it was the great John Whiteand Paul Drury who are the reason I have written over 50 articles on LinkedIn.
It’s not rocket science to understand that surrounding yourself with those that want to embrace change or make a difference in this world will help you much more than allowing toxic individuals who drain your enthusiasm with negativity and re-enforce your greatest fears by constantly repeating phrases such as it won’t work, what’s the point or it’s a waste of time. (more…)
Back in 2014, Google invested $542 million in a secretive and mysterious augmented reality glasses start-up known as Magic Leap, but it wasn’t until last week that we got our first glimpse of what we can expect from the project when a video called ‘Just another day in the office of Magic Leap‘, appeared on their YouTube channel.
It would appear that the race to bring a touch of virtual reality to our world is picking up pace as Facebook, Samsung and Sony also make advances in this area. As a user you will probably fall into one of two camps that consist of “wow this is the future” or “Not another pointless gimmick, didn’t we learn anything from 3D TV’s?”
If resistance really is futile and we are all heading for a future where we plug ourselves into the matrix, let’s take a look at what the Oculus Rift rival brings to the table.
Although you cannot deny how visually impressive this fusion of a digital and physical world are, it doesn’t take long until you are left thinking that this is yet another case of style over substance that when stripped back doesn’t actually offer us anything new, other than leaving you stood in your living room with giant ski goggles waving your arms around blissfully unaware that the joke could be on you. (more…)
Over 100,000 attendees are expected at South by Southwest (SXSW) where the annual event offers a smorgasbord of music, film and interactive technology in Austin, Texas from March 13-22.
However, the big news is how once again technology is rapidly invading event space as the organisers of SXSW have teamed up with Eventbase to place over 1,000 Gimbal’s series 21 iBeacons in 265 of the events official venues to offer tracking and communication via the official mobile app, which is also the largest deployment of iBeacons for an event.
Typically this form of technology interacts with your mobile phone when you enter or leave an area and send messages depending on your interests along with any promotions that can be pushed to visitors, but this latest event partnership is concentrating on using beacons to offer a human element that will allow visitors to network effectively.
Finally it seems that there is a realisation that there is more to iBeacon technology than retail marketing or advertising which is refreshing as nothing frustrates people more than receiving unsubtle and intrusive messages telling us to buy more stuff that only annoy the recipient.
We have a low tolerance of being used as a walking billboard, but location-based interactions with other visitors are something that could revolutionise the event space. For example, imagine checking into a conference and instantly be able to see exactly who else is in the room and filter through the results based on profile tags that allow you to network effortlessly with other visitors. (more…)
It seems that every news feed I look at has a story advising how we all spend far too much time sitting down, whilst a combination of our lack of motivation and sedentary lifestyle will quite literally be the death of us all.
However, we don’t need to worry because there is an antidote to this lazy behaviour and technology has the power to get everyone back on their feet again, if we all invest in the latest tech wearable that promises to kick start everyone with a healthy dose of motivation, at a cost of course.
Many combine the use of tech wearable’s with another set of buzzwords known as lifelogging, self-hacking, body hacking or the quantified self where people are increasingly using technology to track measure and analyse data from your daily life.
Quantified-self facilitates the tracking of diet, sleep, heart rate, activity, exercise, and moods and allows individuals to gain better insights on physiological parameters that were never examined earlier, advised Sumit Kumar Pa
Although I am usually quite cynical about this sort of thing and confess that I am happiest when sat down looking at a myriad of tech devices or playing on a games console, but equally aware that if you need a website to be successful you need to closely monitor google analytics to examine data and improve performance, so pondered if this same school of thinking could be applied our own life?
After reading that the smartphone you already own can perform that exact same tasks only more accurately, I decided to embark on an experiment for once week where I track every aspect of my life to see if it reveals anything different about me using only my smartphone to see if there really is a need for slight changes to my lifestyle.
For my experiment, I began by downloading the app called “Moves” that claims to be the activity diary of your life by simply counting how many steps you take each day. (more…)
Brands are starting to realise that the key to success is to think like their customers and create seamless omni-channel shopping experiences that keeps customers engaged at all stages as they drift from phone, tablet, laptop and desktop PC without even giving it a second thought.
Every year there is a new industry buzzword which has previously consisted of offerings such as the Internet of Things, Big Data or Dark Social for example, but the majority of consumers are unaware that the hottest trend in retail at the moment is a strategy known as “omnichannel” and in simple terms just means giving customers the ability to shop anywhere and receive goods in the quickest most convenient way possible.
A few years ago, there was a concern that frugal shoppers and the art of “showrooming” would spell the end of the high street where consumers would test an item in a physical store, obtain advice and then leave to buy cheaper online.
However, the current trend of “webrooming” is the complete opposite, as customers are researching items online and then purchasing them in-store, thus the best method of retailers taking advantage of this is via omni-channel marketing.
This strategy is affecting all savvy businesses that not only see’s bricks and mortar stores increasing their online and social presence but much more interesting to see behemoths such as Amazon opening their first physical store which has coined the cringe-worthy phrase ‘digical’ (digital first and physical second)
Amazon is also reportedly in discussions to buy hundreds of retail stores across the US to showcase its products, such as the Kindle tablet and Fire smartphone, and act as delivery points for online orders.
Walmart President and CEO Michael T. Duke was clearly ahead of the curve when he advised shareholders in their annual report back in 2013 that “By bringing together best-in-class online, mobile and social capabilities and our over 10,700 stores, we are building what no other retailer – online or otherwise – can,”(more…)
February is proving to be an interesting month as far as technology announcements go, first of all there was the news of a Japanese bank intending on using robot workers to deal with customers in banks, which could give a whole new meaning to the phrase “the computer says no” when applying for a loan.
Meanwhile, there was an interesting story of how California will allow the testing ofautonomous vehicles on public roads this year which suggests the world of automation is upon us much sooner than many realise.
However, in other news there is a 72-room hotel in Nagasaki, Japan that will open in July and will be staffed by robots who will not only greet guests, but also clean rooms and carry luggage, whilst the Japan Times reported that Hideo Sawada proudly stated “We will make the most efficient hotel in the world”
Suddenly the worlds that we saw in movies such as Westworld and Total Recall, could now become a part of our reality here in 2015 as humanoid robots known as Actroid’s step into the world of hospitality, but thankfully there is no mention of the T-1000 or Ed 209 making an appearance just yet.
The hotel is named Henn-na Hotel which depending on your Japenese translation or sense of irony, could mean Strange or Change Hotel. This where things begin to get a little creepy, as the robots will look almost human be able to greet guests in Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English.
In the future, we’d like to have more than 90 percent of hotel services operated by robots
Randomly you will be able to find the hotel inside a Nagasaki theme park called Huis Ten Bosch that just happens to be modelled to look like Holland and rooms will cost as little as $60 a night, but they also have strong ambitions for this new phenomenon to spread around the world with plans to build an additional 1,000 similar hotels worldwide
Actroids have been developed by Osaka University and manufactured by Kokoro, but are incredibly lifelike and understand hand gestures, eye movements and also use facial-recognition technology, but they are not quite ready to understand your poor jokes just yet.
These recent announcements will no doubt fuel various conspiracy theories about how our future world will be run by androids which will leave most of the human population out of work, not to mention the inevitable moment where they become self-aware.
The reality is that there is already a hotel called Yotel in New York that not only has a self-check-in kiosk’s but also features world’s first hotel robotic luggage handler, so we shouldn’t be too surprised at how technology is evolving at a breath-taking speed.
Even if you think a world of robots with jerky movements that look a little sinister are nothing but a gimmick, you can guarantee you will be hearing much more about this new form of hospitality as the summer approaches.
Are life like robots a step to far or is it something you find quite exciting? Is this the moment all those science fiction movies have prepared us for?
Continual Service Improvement (CSI) is arguably the most important phase within ITIL, however IT departments seldom put anything in place to reap the benefits that the discipline can offer, opting to continue on the reactive hamster wheel of fire-fighting regardless.
The cornerstone of any IT department will involve a strong focus on their Service Desk with an emphasis on project, incident and change management whilst your existing processes and technology quickly stagnate leaving the familiar world of re-active chaos that most have had some experience with.
CSI is very much a journey rather than a destination but relatively easy and inexpensive to implement by immediately monitoring and improving every aspect of what your traditional IT department offers its customers.
Whether it be improving existing processes, services or overall efficiency of the IT department, it shouldn’t take too long until you see visible and measurable results that can be felt both in and outside of IT that will ultimately allow your business the ability to react to change rapidly.
My personal CSI journey began with an identification process that reached out to people across the whole IT team to voice their biggest frustrations by adding ideas for improvement to a ‘CSI Register’ that allowed users to focus on where we are now and the future state that their improvement idea could offer by also advising what critical success factors and KPI’s they would benefit.
I am old old enough to remember a time without the ubiquitous mobile phone and laughing at 80’s yuppies who thought they were Gordon Gekko strutting around with a huge phone that resembled something you would expect the military to use in an old war movie.
By the time they reached the masses, it wasn’t long before the palm sized mobile phones such as the Motorola’s RAZR had taken hold of our lives and anything bigger than a Nokia 3210 was officially labelled a brick.
Back in more innocent times, everyone wanted the smallest phone possible and the biggest social faux pax would be to bring out a bulky mobile phone in public which is somewhat ironic considering that 8 years later the world is about to get very excited about smart phones with larger screens than ever before.
Apple fanboys have remained loyal to their favourite brand but have been guilty of looking at other phones with a certain amount of hidden envy at the much larger screens which is just of the reasons we are expecting Apple to reveal their latest phone will come with a whopping 4.7 and 5.5-inch screen.
As phones get bigger, we should see longer lasting batteries which is a problem that has plagued Apple for a few years now, so much so that Samsung recently posted a cheeky video calling Apple users ‘Wall Huggers’ for their constant search power to charge their device.
Again there is a certain amount of irony that you could take an old Nokia phone to a music festival and enjoy 3 days of texts and calls without worrying about charging where as smart phone users are busy at the queue and charge tents, but it’s important to remember that our favourite devices have been so much more than a phone for over 5 years now.
September 2014 will be the moment that the mobile landscape dramatically changes forever and the word Phablet is no longer scoffed at and ridiculed as the iPhone 6, Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and a predicted new selection from Motorola that will be fighting their way onto everybody’s Christmas list to satisfy our thirst for bigger screens. (more…)
Over the next few weeks, we will be bombarded with news about the latest smart watches with the Moto 360 and highly anticipated iWatch about to be unleashed on our world that is quickly filled with wearable tech.
I have already talked about the Internet of Things (IoT) but the introduction of more smart watches will also see an increase in the use of more buzzwords such as the ‘quantified self’ which may leave you scratching your heads feeling a little confused and not wanting to speak up through fear of sounding like a technophobe, but equally becoming increasingly curious on what everyone is talking about it.
The Quantified Self (QS) in simple terms is using technology to track measure and analyse data from your daily life. We are already seeing an increase of this activity through apps that manage how many calories we intake, exercises we perform and even how many hours sleep we get each night using wearable sensors.
QS Is also known as self-tracking, auto-analytics, body hacking and life logging as more and more realise they are victims of their self-imposed bad habits or routines and can use their own daily data to motivate themselves to hit the road to self-improvement.
99 Percent of the thoughts, actions and emotions you have everyday are the same as the ones you had yesterday – Eben Page
The range of apps now at our disposal sometimes drifts in the realms of what we would have called sci-fi a few years ago as sites such as 23 and me can now provide a full DNA report that could reveal your ancestry or what diseases you could be predisposed of which is a fantastic concept, but the movie buff inside me is paranoid about the questions surrounding genetic discrimination that were raised in the 1997 film Gattaca. (more…)
I am old old enough to remember a time without the ubiquitous mobile phone and laughing at 80’s yuppies who thought they were Gordon Gekko strutting around with a huge phone that resembled something you would expect the military to use in an old war movie.
Neil Hughes 