Puls

By Bayle Emlein

I noticed two qualities about the products at Pepcom’s Holiday Spectacular in San Francisco on October 28. First, almost every single item at every single table was already on the market ready for purchase, including one released just that morning. Second, many–if not most–assume that the purchaser has a smartphone that is in good health, ready to download a control app, even for products that are not purely an app themselves. This puts your smartphone in a position of being as critical as running water and the electric grid. Unfortunately, smartphones are not quite as reliable as other utilities. What to do?

Call Puls. Currently available in 39* cities, pulse will send a certified, screened technician to your home or place of business. Phone issues a Puls technician addresses: screen repair, battery replacement, camera replacement, charging port, power button, side buttons,  headphone jack, home button, wifi/ bluetooth, or water damage.

Puls technicians can also repair tablets, help you hang a wall mounted TV, or help you make your whole home smarter by providing a free in-home demo of Google Home or by setting it up. This being the 21st Century, you make your appointment online. Because of the need to screen all their techs and the limits of travel time, the service is currently available in selected urban areas, though planning to expand. Pricing for a phone repair starts at $69. Given the time you have for packing up, finding parking, and standing in line at a repair shop, you may well find this a value. It’s certainly worth the price for TV installation. The house call is alive and well.

* Asheville, NC, Atlanta, GA, Austin, TX, Baltimore, MD, Baton Rouge, LA, Boston, MA, Charlotte, NC, Chicago, IL, Cleveland, OH, Dallas, TX, Denver, CO, Detroit, MI, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Hartford, CT, Houston, TX, Kansas City, KS, Las Vegas, NV, Los Angeles, CA, Miami, FL, Milwaukee, WI, Naples, FL, Nashville, TN, New Orleans, LA, New York, NY, Newark, NJ, Oklahoma City, OK, Orlando, FL, Philadelphia, PA, Phoenix, AZ, Pittsburg, PA, Portland, OR, Raleigh-Durham, NC, Sacramento, CA, San Antonio, TX, San Diego, CA, San Francisco, CA, Seattle, WA, Tampa, FL, and Washington DC.

UBTECH

By Bayle Emlein

UBTECH robots fit into two categories. One is education/play. The other is service robots. Cruzr is designed to be a service robot, Alpha 1 Pro is a home entertainment humanoid with an impressive stage and movie performance history If you think a Star Wars Storm Trooper is human, then the soon-to-be released Storm Trooper with advanced AI, voice commands, facial recognition, and a first and third person Augmented Reality app is also a humanoid robot.

UBTECH Jimu kits for building robots start at under $100. Designed for kids 8 years old and up, they teach coding and robotics in a game-like setting. One can always hope that users will also learn from organization and ease of access of the kits themselves.  

There are over half a dozen Jimu kits already on the market in use at home, in schools, and in Jimu Clubs. One can always pretend that one is just evaluating a Jimu project to ensure its STEM properties before sharing it with the younger generation. After all, we don’t want them to get too far ahead of us.

Qlik

By Bayle Emlein

Imagine your boss quickly and adroitly sifting through megabytes and gigabytes of information to identify meaningful patterns and focus on the most important details.

Imagine your entire team being able to do the same, even if that whole team is just you. Qlik does more than imagine. It does. Qlik provides individualized onsite training that teaches what each learner needs to know to:

1) read data,

2) work with data,

3) analyze data,

and, this is the whole point

4) argue with data; not dispute data, but use it to construct arguments, proposals, theorems, useful hypotheses, and meaningful courses of action.

Qlik’s online and in-person training uses their Associative engine to empower users explore all their data and instantly go from Too Much Information to meaningful decision points. Open APIs and tools empower developers to create new analytics apps or embed analytics into existing workflows and applications. Both Qlik Sense® Cloud and Qlik Sense® Desktop offer a free trial.

Pinkfong Beam

By Bayle Emlen

Pinkfong is entering the US edutainment market with the portable beam projector. They debuted the Pinkfong Beam (English Edition) at Mobile World Congress Americas on Tuesday, September 12 after showing it off at ShowStoppers the evening before. The Pinkfong Beam acts as a portable projector and contains more than 1,000 Pinkfong videos in its built-in library, including the famous “Baby Shark.” Now available in English, children can sing along to Mother Goose songs and Pinkfong videos, watch and listen to Aesop Fables and learn the alphabet with ABC Phonics.

The Pinkfong Beam comes complete with the Pinkfong Smart Pen, Pinkfong CDs and DVDs as well as songbooks and workbooks. Using the Smart Pen, children can trace over text found in the books and sheets, and the Beam will automatically play a matching song or story. The songs focus on teaching shapes, colors, and letters and letter/sound correspondence. The physical products should be available before Halloween. In the interim, you can access PinkFong activities via YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Winning the Amazon Video Direct Star, YouTube’s Gold Play Button and Google Play’s Best Family App of 2014, 2015 and 2016 should tell you something about the quality of the content as well as indicating that SmartStudy, their parent company, is likely to be around for a while.

Pinkfong is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Shanghai and Seoul. The basic style of the videos is KPop in all the languages available: currently English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

In addition to using it on the go, parents can also connect the device to a TV to keep children entertained.

Verizon Hum

By Bayle Emlein

Verizon operates the biggest US wireless network and has the best Unlimited plan. It makes sense that they would be offering two versions of a device to make your auto-mobility the best possible experience. The device, and accompanying app, are called Hum. Hum+ and HumX offer two levels of support to take the hassle and worry out of driviing.

The basic Hum dongle-plus-app make every car with an OBD (onboard diagnostic) port a connected car. Most cars manufactured since 1996 have an OBD. The port is often well tucked in and nearly invisible unless you don’t already know it’s there. If the manual that comes with your car isn’t as clear as you’d like, ask YouTube to come to your rescue. While the location is inconsistent, the OBD connection is standardized, meaning that one dongle will work for any car.

What can you do with Hum? Why would you want it? As the ads for cars with built-in systems have told us, an onboard telematic system can give a driver instant access to help in an emergency. What else can Hum do? It can give you a report on the current diagnostics of your vehicle. It will explain those mysterious Check Engine lights and also send a warning of imminent problems to your phone. For example, it will report the declining health of your battery before it dies completely. Hum provides reminders for oil changes, tire rotation and other routine maintenance, again encouraging pre-emptive action. The Mechanics Hotline connects users with certified mechanics who give advice on vehicle issues and estimated repair costs: you go into the shop empowered rather than at the mercy of whatever you’re told while you’re standing there.

Pinpoint location helps emergency crews find your vehicle in case of a problem, including a crash. The same feature will help locate your car in case it is stolen.

In the absence of problems, to make driving more enjoyable, Hum includes coupons for discounts at local retailers, auto service providers, and restaurants; and an online booking tool to help save on hotels, flights, and cruises.

The Safety Score feature of Hum uses acceleration, speed, braking and cornering information to report information to the ubiquitous phone. This is the favorite feature of many parents of teen drivers. This and the pinpoint location feature, could also be helpful if there is an elderly driver in your life.

Hum, as noted above, comes in two flavors. Verizon showed Hum+ and HumX at the September 11 Mobile Focus event preceding Mobile World Congress Americas in San Francisco. HumX adds Bluetooth calling, Wi-Fi, and the Roadside Assistance options to the Hum+ features.

Neither smartphone nor vehicle is included with Hum+ or HumX

Kingston Digital

By Bayle Emlein

What do you do when your iDevice runs out of space for photos and videos? Clean house?? Heaven forfend!!!

You add a DataTraveler® Bolt™ and expand the memory on your iPhone and iPad. At 1.6 ounces, the Bolt compares in size with other portable memory. It is Kingston Digital’s entry into the arena of dual interface USB with Lightning® connector. Depending on capacity, a DataTraveler® Bolt™ stores up to 32,000 photos on the 128GB version. 16,000 photos will fit on the 64GB model and 8,000 photos on the 32GB version. Photos and videos can be sent directly to a Bolt via the Bolt app.

Kingston Digital, independent world leader in memory products, also proudly showed many other products at the September 11 Mobile Focus event preceding Mobile World Congress Americas in San Francisco. They thought that, in addition to the DataTraveler® Bolt™, attendees would be particularly interested in their new Class 3 microSD Flash Card which joins their Gold Series. Its form factor and Kingston reliability make the new microSD perfect for 4K recording devices such as GoPro® and drones. Using one of the new new Class 3 microSD flash cards, with 16GB, 32GB or 64GB capacity, you won’t run out of storage space mid-adventure. Shooting 4K video up to 30 frames per second and capturing footage at 120 frames per second in 1080P HD, the card is waterproof, shock and vibration proof and operational from -25°C to 85°C (-13° F to 185° F). The microSD UHS-I U3 is backed by a lifetime warranty and free technical support.

AutoGravity

By Bayle Emlein

The 20th Century created several opportunities to compare modern life to going to the dentist for a root canal. Car shopping was certainly one of them. The 21st Century creates solutions, and AutoGravity is one of them. The AutoGravity app takes the stress out of car shopping and levels the playing field. No more condescending looks from salespeople–if they deign to glance my way at all–because I’m female. The app combines shopping and financing, taking the pain out for consumers, dealers and lenders. Down load the app, enter the make (42 auto brands offered) and accessories you want, and from your phone screen you will see up to 4 offers. Convenience is definitely one of the assets of AutoGravity. You don’t even have to put on your slippers. State-of-the-art security and bank-level encryption protect users’ data.

AutoGravity offers nationwide coverage. Some of the online customer complaints revolve around limited choices in some areas. That’s true in the brick-and-mortar world as well, and you don’t have to waste a whole lot of gas to find that out.

On July 06, 2017 VW Credit, Inc. (VCI) announced that it had committed to make an equity investment in AutoGravity, pending customary regulatory approvals. This investment supports VCI’s goal to create a digital experience that enhances the customer financing process. Additionally, VW Credit, Inc., has worked with AutoGravity to bring Volkswagen and Audi financing directly to car buyers across the United States by launching the Volkswagen Credit smartphone app, powered by proprietary AutoGravity technology and available for both iOS and Android.

“Mobile technology is a game changer for consumers, dealers and lenders. We have pioneered a digital experience that saves time and improves satisfaction for all parties through a device we are intimately familiar with – the smartphone.” said Andy Hinrichs, CEO at AutoGravity press release regarding the new investment in AutoGravity. “AutoGravity has experienced substantial growth since our first app hit the marketplace in the summer of 2016. This investment will help us accelerate in the face of rapidly growing consumer and industry demand.”