SOLI: A Google project of touchless interaction

Technology has already  created incredible changes to the world and this may be yet another milestone. Google visualizes Soli to change interaction with the world without touching things. Google has been inventing astonishing technologies, the latest experiment is from Advanced Technology and Project group (ATAP) in San Francisco, they are creating this fascinating technology on the powerful motion control of our gesture with the smart watch, tablet, the radio, medical equipment and other daily used appliances. ATAP led the main stress on the size of a chip. They preferred to design Soli as small as they can because it can be embedded in any device, so the  chip is  small and expedient.

Image credit: atap.google.com

Physical touch to any button or switch is replaced by input devices like mouse, keyboard or screen touch display and this is  further replaced by gesture controlling system. The project Soli works on the especial approximation, i.e. Radar system. The frequency of the emitted radiation plays an important role in gesture analysis. It is in the form of the chip where no other rotatory part is involved, it can be embedded inside devices and eradicate the need for a button. The signal gets emitted from the chip and strikes to a movable object or any part of the body through which we act and gets reflected back. And the distance calculated by the difference of incoming and outgoing of the signal is a compact wave signal, through this, we provide a signal process and machine learning technique to detect the gesture. The Soli chip works at 60 GHz radar spectrum and has a refresh rate 10,000 frames per second.

This chip can detect small motion of our hand like, swiping side of the thumb on the index finger will lead to rising or low of a volume, and swiping up and down will be used in scrolling. The thumb and index finger together tapping will judge the pressing of a button.

Ivan Poupyrev said that companies like Leap Motion or Intel already use this gesture technology in camera’s, but this are cumbersome and require additional hardware. So, Google invented this mini chip that can be just embedded inside any device. "It is improbable how simple is radar emitted chip, it has no camera tracking, you may placed soli wherever you want" he said.

Due to soli's compatible size, it can be embedded in any device you want. Soli's gesture technology is a step forward towards a future of touch-less interactions with devices.

Written by Radhika Soni

She believes and she visualizes. Loves to take risks and grab on opportunities, curious about technology.

How has YouTube helped budding artists encash their talents?

“If you’re young and talented, it’s like you having wings” 

In 2007, a talent manager discovered a Canadian boy through YouTube and made him a star. Today, we know him as Justin Drew Bieber and, currently, he is touring the world and performing in different countries. This Canadian boy released his fourth album last year and his net worth was recorded to be $220 Million in 2015.

All the fame and money followed him but it was only possible because of the chance he got to showcase the world what he had to offer. A chance, which is not so easy to get.

We often come across these talent programmes but they’re all run by TRP hungry people and they demand more than just talent to give you the recognition. There’s a reason why the contestants are supposed to tell their sob story to the world and make them believe that they need the title a lot more than the other contestants. These television shows earn money but what about the participants?

Founded in 2005 by Paypal employees, YouTube was bought by Google on November 13, 2006. Ever since it came into existence, people have used it as space where they can show the glimpse of their talent to the world and, if they’re lucky and talented enough, earn while living their dream. This chance was not available before and that too on a global platform.

With every passing day, this website is becoming an essential part of our lives which directly benefits the YouTubers.

The key feature of YouTube is its flexibility. Be it a cook, dancer or stand-up comedian, everyone is welcomed here as it does not specialise in one particular thing. Under one name, many versatile performers are available at your disposal. Along with that, you don’t have to share your story to pool in more subscribers to like your videos. It is completely based on the uniqueness and authenticity of your talent.

In addition to that, one does not need to travel to the workplace because it can be wherever they want it to be. They can stay home, get the work done and upload it as per their convenience, without any time limit or pressure from the boss.

Getting first-hand criticism from the viewers is simply cherry to the top. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that people are shifting their focus to YouTube in order to achieve recognition and fame.

How one earns money on YouTube has nothing to do with the views or likes one get. It’s a big misconception that a viewer’s like or comment will help the person earn an extra dollar. They earn from the advertisements that are shown before their video. Skipping it means less money.

The famous Indo-Canadian YouTuber, Lilly Singh aka ||superwoman||, spent a whole video in explaining the working on YouTube and how much they earn. Singh’s potential earnings are somewhat close to $3,076,633.

All in all, if you thought that Youtube is simply a means of entertainment without any potential earnings, think again! It goes beyond that. It’s the step towards your dreams.

Written by Priyanka Chauhan
A bibliophile and an aspiring writer who lives with a  dream to travel the world.

Area 120, the In-House incubator of Google may lead to new disruptive Start-Ups

Google, the king of Internet search and other services is planning to start an in-house Start-Up incubator. This  would be aimed at fostering the entrepreneurship dreams of the super-talented googlers. Named as Area 120 , the programme would allow the employees to devote 20% of their work hours for their own creative and disruptive innovative new ideas as reported by  The Information.

Image credit: Bloomberg

Employees will pitch their innovative ideas and plans to Don Harrison, the vice-president of Google’s corporate development and Bradley Horowitz, vice- president of streams, photos, and sharing. If accepted, employees would be able to devote a certain number of hours and needless to say, they would receive the invaluable mentorship and possibly funding from the Internet giant.

This move can be speculated  as a great way to retain the top talent of the organization  who move on to start their own companies or join other start-ups at lucrative positions. Some of the Ex-Googlers have already created remarkable start-ups in the technology sector. Evan Williams founded Twitter and Medium, Kevin Systrom founded Instagram and Justin Rosenstein co-founded Asana. So it also paves the way to encash the potential of new disruptive businesses within the company itself.

All of us are aware that Google is one of the largest organizations which has consistently performed innovation and improved their services every day. If Area 120 is executed successfully, there are high chances of the next big things emerging in the start-up world from the one of the most familiar names in Internet, Google.


Article by Sudhanshu Ghosh

Google Fiber drops free basic service in its first city

According to a report by Recode, new users in Kansas city for Google Fiber would not be able to get the free service which as initially only a one-time construction fee and later on free forever. Google hasn’t specified the reason behind this move but the company says that it is going to honour the current agreements.

Image credit: Recode

Google Fiber was originally aimed at providing free internet for low-income customers and it provides speed up to one gigabit per second both for upload and download. With the revised charges, users would now be able to get 1 Gbps for $70 or 100 Mbps for $50.

It is speculated that Google Fiber might be introduced in India very soon and is already in talks with the Indian government to roll out the broadband service using optical fiber. This has been aimed to digitize India under the Digital India campaign of the government.

Google had recently made the Mumbai Central railway station Wi-Fi enabled and plans to include a  number of other railway stations. It is great to see the efforts from the Internet giant towards connecting India which would help a lot of new users to come online.


Article by Rohit Jha

Now you can also hear an Animal's noise when you Google them

Google has added a really cool and fun feature wherein if you search for animal noises you also have the option to listen to them. These would be a really fascinating activity as Parents would now be able to enthral their kids by making them hear sounds made by their favourite animals.

Currently, the results contain the sounds of a Horse, Raccoon, Humpback Whale, Ape, Moose Elephant, Sheep, Owl, Tiger, Bowhead whale and the Moo sound. Let us hope that the list gets longer and we get to hear the sounds of many more animals . It would definitely add up to the delight of the kids and sometimes even to the curiosity of their parents.

If you enter the search term as animal noise, the first set of results that would come is as below:
Recently during the Cricket World Cup T20, Google used to display the scores in the similar fashion and update them in real-time. It has been also promoting the Google app aggressively through TVC’s.

Being the King of search engines, we welcome these steps of Google entering the foray of accurate information and content as well.


Article by Rohit Jha

Google’s project SkyBender plans to beam 5G with the use of Solar Drones

Google is conducting tests in its secret project called as ‘SkyBender’ which would use millimeter based radio transmissions to beam 5G data up to 40 times faster than LTE as reported in The Guardian.

Image credit: theguardian.com

These tests are being conducted at the New Mexico’s Spaceport authority in America using solar powered drones. Google is temporarily utilizing the 15,000 sq ft in the space terminal designed for the Virgin Galactic spaceflights. Google has also installed its dedicated flight control center in the Spaceflight Operations center apart from the terminal.

University of Washington Professor Jacques Rudell told Guardian that “The huge advantage of millimeter wave is access to new spectrum because the existing cellphone spectrum is overcrowded. It’s packed and there’s nowhere else to go.”

These high frequency millimeter waves which can transfer GBs of data every second have a much a shorter wave-length as compared to the current mobile signals. There has to be a lot more emphasis on Focused Transmissions as the current so-called Phased array is a very complex system as well as power consuming.

“It could underpin next generation 5G wireless internet access.”  told to  The Guardian.

The wait is over as Google Nexus 6P arrives in India

This phone is worth a grab when you don’t mind being a spendthrift then this is surely a visual treat.With a 12.3 Megapixel camera it has outdone many of its earlier product, since google has always collaborated with big names in the technological industry such as the Lenovo, Asus, Motorola and many others.this time it geared up with Huawei to bring in something new.

Image credit: Nexus-Google

The 1.55 mm pixels give the best in quality shots with vivid clarity and excellent lightning which nothing but the best.Nexus 6P also provides the latest android version Android 6.0 marshmallow ,which is the newest addition to the nexus to give the latest up to date software.Latest version of Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 810 v2.1, 2.0 GHz octa-core 64-bit Adreno 430 GPU which is the presumably the best operating system that provides excellent processing speed.With google quality can never be compromised.Google nexus has definitely raised the bars with the unmatched standards ,but still there is a long journey ahead to be a global leader in terms of its products.

With these striking features this one is surely a grab and definitely irresistible.Going by the response it has turned down many other gadgets in its competition and motivating even apple to launch iPhone 7 that has certainly made an impact ,and only time will tell whether it can withstand pressure from the growing competition or not.

Article by Prerna Sharma

A Computer Science Graduate by brain and a writer by heart. 

Prerna gels up technology and creativity to blog about what she loves.

She can be reached at twitter.com/prernas83606199

Google and Lenovo promises for smarter phones with Project Tango

Google and Lenovo in collaboration announced their first consumer-targeted product with Project Tango technology at the ongoing CES 2016 conference. This Smartphone would be launched under the price tag of $500.

Image credits: g.co/ProjectTango and Lenovo.com

One of the coolest and most innovative feature of this phone is the indoor area mapping which is possible with the 3D machine vision technology. Three vertically stacked lenses in the Smartphone camera will deliver color and depth information and a fisheye lens is supposed to give a wide-angle peripheral vision around the device. All the data gathered by the camera are then compiled by the Lenovo Smartphone's processor and then build a 3D map of the area. The technology will enable near real-time mapping along with the measurements showing precision down to the centimeter.

The Lenovo-made Project Tango-based handset will run on Android OS having a display size of lesser than 6.5-inches. Developers get a reason to rejoice as they can submit their Project Tango application ideas to Google until February 15 and selected developers will get funding for their idea and their apps will be preloaded on the Lenovo Smartphone. Google will be shipping the Smartphone to the selected developers based on their app ideas.

It would  help consumers find their way in a large hotel or mall or take precise measurements of a room before shopping for furnishings.Demonstration of the product included measuring of ceiling height, square footage and then testing how certain furniture would look in the room.

Project Tango is an imaging technology solution that uses a combination of various sensors to view the environment around you and generate spatial awareness for your phone. Using a number of different sensors on your phone or tablet, it creates a sophisticated picture of the world around it.

An infrared emitter and infrared camera act as a range-finder to measure the distance between a phone and various objects allowing them to be mapped in three dimensions. A wide angle camera adds details about the location, and other phone sensors including accelerometers, gyroscopes, and barometers combine to help Tango calculate not just objects in vicinity of your phone or tablet, but also the angle at which you are looking at an object, how far away it is, and what it looks like.

Now this is something amazing however no official dates have been given as to when it will be released in the market. But this collaboration is surely has something new to offer being a Lenovo mobile user i often had faced various shortcomings myself ,and to be frank i still feel a kind of reluctance but since Google is a notable brand it will surely take care of the technicalities.


Article by Prerna Sharma
A Computer Science Graduate by brain and a writer by heart. 
Prerna gels up technology and creativity to blog about what she loves.
She can be reached at twitter.com/prernas83606199