Thursday, May 19, 2016 6:45:38 PM
The 100 Greatest Innovations Of 2015
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-100-greatest-innovations-of-2015/ss-BBnokDv
1-100 SLIDES
[-chart]img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBnopzP.img?h=373&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f;[/chart]
TESLA MOTORS POWERWALL: NOW YOU CAN SUPERCHARGE YOUR HOME
You’ve invested in solar panels to harvest energy from the sun, but without daisy-chaining an array of car batteries, you've got no way to store it. With the Powerwall, Tesla used its expertise manufacturing lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles to provide a sleek alternative. The 210-pound wall-mounted battery can store surplus energy from solar panels. But it can also automatically bank electricity from the grid during off-peak times, when rates are lowest. That way you can power your home—or charge your Model S—for pennies even when electricity is in highest demand. The company makes a 7 kWh battery for daily use, and a 10 kWh version that can double as a backup generator.
EARGO: THE MOST COMFORTABLE HEARING AID
Typical hard-plastic hearing aids block airflow and natural bass sounds. Eargo’s featherlike silicone fibers suspend the device in the ear canal, making it almost imperceptible. “Comfort is important because you wear it all day long, every single day,” says Raphael Michel, the company’s co-founder and CEO. A processor inside the device sends sound directly to the eardrum so you can better pinpoint the source. Bonus: The rechargeable battery never needs to be replaced.
PERISCOPE: A BROADCAST NETWORK OF YOUR OWN
The cameras in our pockets have granted amateurs all sorts of powers to reinvent themselves—first, as photographers and then as YouTube stars. Now with Periscope, anyone can become a broadcaster as well. The app makes live streaming events like the Black Lives Matter protests, raging wildfires, or even office antics as simple as pressing a button. The stream is accessible to anyone who also has the app installed on their mobile device. In the hands of journalists, Periscope has broadcast videos from the Syrian refugee crisis, putting a human face on a global crisis that for many is happening out of sight. Inevitably, it has also prompted privacy concerns and put more than one business model in jeopardy: Periscope was a popular way to illegally broadcast this year’s expensive pay-per-view boxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.
BE MY EYES: A SMARTPHONE APP THAT GIVES THE GIFT OF SIGHT
Phone cameras aren’t all that useful to someone who’s blind—not, at least, until Be My Eyes. The app, developed by the Danish Blind Society, connects visually impaired users to sighted ones. Through a live video feed, sighted users can decrypt unfamiliar street signs, expiration dates on food packages, or anything else that needs a quick visual assist. Since it launched in January, the app has helped 23,000 users over 100,000 times.
IBM WATSON: TEAM UP WITH A SUPERCOMPUTER
The supercomputer that won Jeopardy! is now available to anyone. IBM expanded its developer ecosystem for Watson by adding advanced language, speech, and vision capabilities, making it easier for partners to tap into Watson’s cognitive-computing abilities to solve problems.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-100-greatest-innovations-of-2015/ss-BBnokDv
1-100 SLIDES
[-chart]img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBnopzP.img?h=373&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f;[/chart]
TESLA MOTORS POWERWALL: NOW YOU CAN SUPERCHARGE YOUR HOME
You’ve invested in solar panels to harvest energy from the sun, but without daisy-chaining an array of car batteries, you've got no way to store it. With the Powerwall, Tesla used its expertise manufacturing lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles to provide a sleek alternative. The 210-pound wall-mounted battery can store surplus energy from solar panels. But it can also automatically bank electricity from the grid during off-peak times, when rates are lowest. That way you can power your home—or charge your Model S—for pennies even when electricity is in highest demand. The company makes a 7 kWh battery for daily use, and a 10 kWh version that can double as a backup generator.
EARGO: THE MOST COMFORTABLE HEARING AID
Typical hard-plastic hearing aids block airflow and natural bass sounds. Eargo’s featherlike silicone fibers suspend the device in the ear canal, making it almost imperceptible. “Comfort is important because you wear it all day long, every single day,” says Raphael Michel, the company’s co-founder and CEO. A processor inside the device sends sound directly to the eardrum so you can better pinpoint the source. Bonus: The rechargeable battery never needs to be replaced.
PERISCOPE: A BROADCAST NETWORK OF YOUR OWN
The cameras in our pockets have granted amateurs all sorts of powers to reinvent themselves—first, as photographers and then as YouTube stars. Now with Periscope, anyone can become a broadcaster as well. The app makes live streaming events like the Black Lives Matter protests, raging wildfires, or even office antics as simple as pressing a button. The stream is accessible to anyone who also has the app installed on their mobile device. In the hands of journalists, Periscope has broadcast videos from the Syrian refugee crisis, putting a human face on a global crisis that for many is happening out of sight. Inevitably, it has also prompted privacy concerns and put more than one business model in jeopardy: Periscope was a popular way to illegally broadcast this year’s expensive pay-per-view boxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.
BE MY EYES: A SMARTPHONE APP THAT GIVES THE GIFT OF SIGHT
Phone cameras aren’t all that useful to someone who’s blind—not, at least, until Be My Eyes. The app, developed by the Danish Blind Society, connects visually impaired users to sighted ones. Through a live video feed, sighted users can decrypt unfamiliar street signs, expiration dates on food packages, or anything else that needs a quick visual assist. Since it launched in January, the app has helped 23,000 users over 100,000 times.
IBM WATSON: TEAM UP WITH A SUPERCOMPUTER
The supercomputer that won Jeopardy! is now available to anyone. IBM expanded its developer ecosystem for Watson by adding advanced language, speech, and vision capabilities, making it easier for partners to tap into Watson’s cognitive-computing abilities to solve problems.
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