Archives: Apps

Stay Safe in the Sun with the Netatmo June

When the sun finally starts shining here in the UK, we’re all out in force, soaking up the rays in our gardens and parks. When it comes down to sun protection though, we can sometimes forget to top up, and nothing can spoil good weather like a bad case of sunburn.

For ladies though, there’s a new way to keep tabs on your sun exposure, it’s called the June, and it looks just like a bracelet.

The June, made by Netatmo and first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, is marketed specifically for women and is meant to look fashionable whilst protecting you from the sun. They’ve even bought in Camille Toupet, who’s worked with big brands such as Louis Vuitton, to design the ‘jewel’ which contains the UV sensors.

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The bracelet itself doesn’t give you the information, it instead relays it to the mobile phone app, which is available for iPhone. The app is well designed and easy to use, and it gives you multiple readings. First, it tells you how much time you’ve spent in the sun that day and provides a UV index, which tells you the strength of the UV rays that you’re currently out it.

The app also has a personalised touch, taking into account your skin type and outdoor habits,  it gives you notifications to reapply sun screen and also suggests times to maybe put on a hat and sunglasses too.

It’s a smart and innovative way to make people more aware of how much time they spend in the sun, and linking it to a smartphone ensures that the user will be able to easily see their exposure levels like they would their emails and messages.

There’s no news about whether Netatmo plan to make a version of the June that’s made for men, but if you’re a health conscious man who wants to take care of his skin, there are other wearable UV sensors out on the market including the UVeBand (which vibrates on your wrist when you need to reapply sunscreen) and the Sunfriend.

 

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Save On Your Heating Bills with “Cosy” App

You’ve just finished work, you check your phone for texts and Facebook and then you turn you heating on in your house ready for when you get home. With the “Cosy” heating app you get to save money and control the heating whenever you want.

A Kickstarter appeal is requesting backing to be able to change the way we heat our homes. By using an app that will allow you to control how warm your house when you are in any part of the world, you may never need to worry about frozen pipes again. The idea of getting home to a freezing house and staying in your gloves, scarfs and coats just waiting to warm up so that you can save a few, very crucial, pennies will be a thing of the past.

Green Energy Options, GEO, hope to help people not only find heating their home when they need it much easier, but also to lower emissions to the environment and to help to lower your bills at the same time.

Chief Strategy Officer, Simon Anderson said: “Boiler controls are notoriously unfriendly so many people set a programme and leave it regardless if they are at home or not.  Few, if any of us, know how much it costs to have your heating on for an hour. Assuming that an average gas bill is about £800, and probably about £500 of this is for central heating, every 10% that you could reduce the number of hours you are heating your house unnecessarily, could save you approximately £50.”

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The idea is that rather than having the heating on a timer over the day, estimating when you will get home, you can just turn it on by the mobile app that links to your home when you know that you are leaving. This would mean that if you finish work and fancy going to the pub for a couple of drinks, then you don’t need to worry that the heating is going to waste.

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At this point in time they are still applying on Kickstarter for £20,000 so that they can include into the function the ability to turn lights on and off too. “We are a small business and the amount that we can develop at each step is constrained by the revenues we generate.” Simon said. “If we are able to raise additional funding through kickstarter then we can add more features and get a better product to market faster to compete with the big guys like British Gas’s Hive.”

The first stage of the product will be release toward the end of April as a tester and Release Two of the product should be available in Autumn this year at a cost of around £250.

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Let’s Play Star Trek with Medical Tricorders

Have you ever seen Star Trek? The doctor on board has a cure for just about everything!

One of the key pieces of tech that the ships doctor needs is the medical tricorder, a handheld device that scans the patient to find out what was wrong with them. Ever since these nifty little devices have been on our screens, people have been trying make ones of their own.

With the creation of smartphones and apps, the idea of a medical tricorder is becoming something of a reality.

One particular app that is available for iPhone, iPad and iPod users is VitaDock, an app that allows you to keep track of your blood sugar levels, body temperature, blood pressure and body weight. The company behind the app is MEDISANA, a German company that specialises in home healthcare technology, selling a variety of products ranging from blood glucose monitors and wrist heart monitors (for keen runners) to cellulite massagers.

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The idea behind this bundle of technologies is that you can measure the statistics that you need and save the data on your app, creating a medical history for yourself and potentially setting goals for an improved health.

For the full package, you need to purchase the GlucoDock, ThermoDock, CardioDock and TargetScale equipment.

GlucoDock – if you have diabetes, or just want to keep an eye on your blood sugar levels, then GlucoDock is a way for you to keep track of your sugar. It works in a similar way to traditional blood sugar monitors, you prick your finger and let the test strip absorb the drop of blood, after a few seconds, you get a blood sugar reading. Et voila! Your data is now stored on the phone app, and you can see how your sugar levels change throughout the day.

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ThermoDock – this add on will measure your body temperature simply by pointing it towards your forehead. Just like the GlucoDock add on, you plug the ThermoDock into your phone, and the infrared technology will take and record your temperature on the phone.

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CardioDock – instead of inserting the add on and holding your phone to measure your stats, you plug your phone into the CardioDock, which is similar to an iPhone/iPod base station. Once the phone is plugged in, you place the cuff, which is similar to the ones used by doctors and nurses, around your arm before pressing start. The cuff will then inflate and take your blood pressure, before sending the data to your phone.

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TargetScale – unlike the previous three add ons, the TargetScale works without being physically connected to the phone. Working via bluetooth, the scale is used in the traditional way, but instead of just taking body weight, it also measures body fat, body mass index (BMI), body composition and bone mass. Another feature is the balance test, to see if weight is evenly distributed on both legs. Körperanalysewaage_TargetScale

While this bundle of technologies isn’t exactly on the level of Star Trek, they’re certainly an impressive example of personal health technologies. The look that MEDISANA has designed for them fits seamlessly with Apple’s designs, making the new technologies blend seamlessly with the ones you already have.

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Fridges – More Than Just Fresh Food

There’s no more milk in the fridge. It’s the problem that we’ve all had to face and there’s only two options: either you go out and buy more or you go without. Wouldn’t it just be easier if the fridge could fill itself?

Well, two years ago LG unveiled their new ‘smart fridge‘ at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it retails here for around £2000 and includes a LCD touchscreen and internet connection to download new recipes based on the contents inside it.

The idea is that when you’ve bought some food, you scan in the barcodes using the scanner on the front door or describe the product to the fridge using the voice recognition technology. The fridge then keeps track of the freshness and amount of food remaining in the fridge. So, if you’re running low on milk, the fridge can use the internet to order more milk for you from websites such as Ocado. If you select a recipe that it suggests, it once again uses the internet to turn on your oven to the correct temperature and time.

For £2000, there’s definitely a lot of technology for the money, but there could be problems. The first is that you will have to buy more of LG’s smart technology to work with the fridge, which ups the cost. The second is that some people may not appreciate a fridge that gives you so much information, they may just want a box that keeps the food cool and fresh.

This fridge does look like recognisable as the a future part of our kitchens. But Electrolux, another big firm, has ideas that are slightly more out of the box.

Every year, Electrolux runs the Electrolux Design Lab competition, where people can send in their ideas for the technology of tomorrow. In 2010, one of their finalists was the Bio Robot Refrigerator, designed by Yuriy Dmitriev. Instead of a cool box to store your food, the fridge is filled with a gel containing bio nano robots. You insert the food into the gel which creates an airtight pocket around it, the bio nano robots then absorb the heat from the food and emit it in a form of bioluminescence.

This last idea is still a prototype at the moment, but one day in the far future, fridges like these could be a reality. As for now, internet fridges may be making their way towards your kitchen.

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