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Chinese search giant Baidu has unveiled an AI digital assistant.

Xiaoyu Zaijia - or Little Fish - responds to voice commands using a combination of pictures, text and speech. Unlike many rival AIs it is dependant on a touchscreen

It can answer questions, find local services, play music, make video calls and control smart home devices.

Baidu Chief Scientist Andrew Ng said that artificial intelligence is "the new electricity".

"AI has been growing steadily - every year our AI has been 50% better," he told the BBC at the CES tech show in Las Vegas.

"Those of us on the inside feel the acceleration now but we have been feeling it for the last decade.

"Just as 100 years ago the electrification of our society transformed industry after industry, I think AI tech has now reached that stage."

Little Fish's hardware has been developed by Chinese robotics firm Ainemo Inc but uses Baidu's AI operating system DuerOS. Existing digital assistants such as the Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant are not screen-dependant but can be used by voice alone. Apple's Siri, however, continues to rely on a display to provide some of its information.

Little Fish will launch initially in China in March 2017 and currently only recognises Chinese languages. Baidu has not yet set a price.

"What we have seen so far in terms of digital assistants and smart speakers is very much first generation and it has all been about voice," said Geoff Blaber, tech analyst at CCS Insight.

"I would certainly expect that over the next 12 months we will see the next iteration of assistants that do integrate a number of different ways of interacting with the device - not just video but also gesture control.

"A richer variety of interaction methods helps bridge the gap in terms of the user experience. When they first start using one, a lot of users find it a steep learning curve."

 

Beauty giant L'Oreal has unveiled a smart hairbrush packed with sensors to help consumers improve their brushing technique.

In what holds the potential to revolutionize rescue operations, the Israeli company working on the project has announced that a passenger drone, which completed its first flight over low terrain last November, is expected to be in use by 2020.

An electricity grid for the whole village

Problem: A total of 1.3 billion people worldwide currently don't have electricity, according to Yale Environment 360. Getting people in rural areas on to the national grid is proving too difficult and traditional solar panels generate meagre amounts of energy.
Solution: Steamaco makes solar and battery micro-grids which can work for a whole village. They are small electricity generation and distribution systems that operate independently of larger grids.
How it works: Micro-grids are nothing new. The new part is that Steamaco's technology automates the regulation of electricity.
So, if the system detects there will be a surge in demand for electricity, for example on a Saturday night when people want to start playing music for a party, or they see a dip in supply, like when the sun has gone down and so the grid is not collecting solar energy, then the grid automatically stops electricity for people it won't affect too badly.
The system sends an automatic text to all customers on the grid saying that the electricity in houses is about to be cut off so that the hospital can keep on going.
Who is talking about this? In October they featured in the Global Cleantech 100 Ones to Watch list.

 

A jacket that detects pneumonia

Problem: Pneumonia kills 27,000 Ugandan children under the age of five every year. Most of these cases are due to pneumonia being misdiagnosed as malaria.
Solution: Ugandan engineer Brian Turyabagye has designed a biomedical "smart jacket" to quickly and accurately diagnose pneumonia. The Mamaope jacket measures a sick child's temperature and breathing rate. It can diagnose pneumonia three to four times faster than a doctor and eliminates most possibility for human error.
How it works: A modified stethoscope is put in a vest. It is linked to a mobile phone app that records the audio of the patient's chest. Analysis of that audio can detect lung crackles and can lead to preliminary diagnoses.
Who is talking about this: It is shortlisted for the 2017 Royal Academy of Engineering Africa Prize.

 

A tablet that monitors your heart

Problem: It is difficult for people in rural areas to travel to the cities to see heart specialists. There are just 50 cardiologists in Cameroon, which has a population of 20 million people.
Solution: Arthur Zang invented the Cardio Pad - a handheld medical computer tablet which healthcare workers in rural areas use to send the results of cardiac tests to specialists via a mobile phone connection.
How it works: Cardiopads are distributed to hospitals and clinics in Cameroon free of charge, and patients pay $29 (£20) yearly subscriptions. It takes a digitised reading of the patient's heart function. In a few seconds the results of a heart test are sent to a specialist clinic in the capital.
Who is talking about this: It won the Royal Academy of Engineering award for African engineering in 2016 and the Rolex award for Entreprise in 2014. But Mr Zang told BBC Africa that these things take time to develop and it only got approval from the Cameroon authorities in October 2016.
So, it is more likely that people will actually see it in their clinics in 2017.

 

An app for hair inspiration

Problem: A lack of accurate information about how to achieve certain hairstyles and where to find a high-quality stylist.
Solution: Three software engineers - Priscilla Hazel, Esther Olatunde and Cassandra Sarfo - invented Tress, an app to share ideas about hairstyles.
How it works: It is described by Okay Africa as a kind of Pinterest or Instagram for hair. Once you have downloaded the app, you can follow other people who are sharing their hairstyle. You can search specifically by place, price range and the type of hairstyle your want, from relaxed hair to cornrow.

You can then scroll until your heart's content through people who have uploaded pictures of themselves with that style, tell them how much you like their style, ask how long it took, and even arrange to meet up with someone to style your hair.
Who is talking about this: The three software engineers behind this are graduates of the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology in Accra, Ghana.
They were then selected for the Y Combinator eight-week fellowship programme for start-up companies.
Y Combinator is prestigious - business news website Fast company called it "the world's most powerful start-up incubator". In other words, the school is thought of as really good at finding the next Mark Zuckerberg.

A currency for paying online workers

Problem: There are online workers, specifically web developers, in Africa who people outside the continent would like to employ but it is difficult or prohibitively expensive to get their wages to them. Some don't have passports, and so don't have bank accounts either.
Solution: Bitpesa uses Bitcoin to significantly lower the time and cost of remittances and business payments to and from sub-Saharan Africa.
How it works: Bitpesa uses the crypto-currency bitcoin as a medium to transfer cash across borders. Bitcoin is a system of digitally created and traded tokens and people keep their tokens in online wallets.
It then takes the Bitcoin tokens and exchanges them into money in mobile money wallets - a popular way of paying for things in places like Kenya and Tanzania.
BitPesa is already used to pay online workers - a company called Tunga is using it as a way of getting wages from clients abroad to web developers in Uganda.
Who is talking about it: It won an award for the best apps across Africa in November.

Credit: BBC

Samsung announced on Monday a batch of cheaper, water-resistant smartphones. The move marks the company's first product unveiling since the launch of the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7.

The maker of iconic collectable trading cards has said hackers could have stolen customers' credit and debit card numbers along with their associated security codes in a recent breach.

Topps' products include Star Wars, Disney's Frozen, Top Gear and the UEFA champion league.

The New York firm told the BBC that the vulnerability had since been fixed.

But a security researcher said he had previously warned the firm about security weaknesses.

Topps declined to say how many people were affected or why the payment card numbers were at risk. In most hack attacks, companies assure users that they do not store such financial data in a form that can be exposed.

In an email to customers Topps wrote that on 12 October "one or more intruders gained unauthorised access" to its systems.

"[They] may have gained access to names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, credit or debit card numbers, card expiration dates and card verification numbers for customers [who made purchases] between approximately 30 July 2016 and 12 October 2016," it added.

It is offering one year's worth of free identify theft protection to those affected.

Various customers have posted the email on social media and it is also available on the Sports Collectors Daily website.

Topps is part-owned by a fund belonging to Michael Eisner, the former chief executive of Disney.

Image copyright Torante

"The really unforgivable aspect here is the loss of credit card details," said cyber-security expert Prof Alan Woodward from Surrey University.

"If this was an external attack, these details just should not be accessible or readable. An obvious question is, was the customers financial data encrypted?

"If not that should attract some heavy attention from the appropriate regulators."

Chris Vickery, a security researcher from Chromatech blogged in June about exposed databases of customer accounts with three of Topps' mobile apps: Bunt, Huddle, and Kick.

He wrote that it was fixed. However, he later found another database containing information about the users of all three apps, and on this occasion was unable to get a response from the firm.

"I can't in good conscience watch this data continue to leak without at least trying to get a warning out," he said at the time.

Source: BBC News

Iran has put limits on who can play the popular Clash of Clans mobile game.

A government committee called for restrictions citing a report from psychologists, who said it encouraged violence and tribal conflict.

The app could also negatively affect family life if teenagers got addicted to the game, warned the committee that polices cyberspace.

Statistics gathered earlier this year suggested that about 64% of mobile gamers in Iran played the game.

The decision to limit access to Clash of Clans across Iran was taken on 27 December.

Fan sites in Iran reported that many players began having problems accessing the title - which requires an online connection - afterwards. Some Iran-based players said local reports had suggested that an age limit would be imposed, but for now all gamers were affected.

They did, however, suggest there were ways to get round the restrictions.

In a statement, Iran's deputy attorney general Dr Abdolsamad Khoramabadi said the "vast majority" of the committee backed the call to limit who could play the app.

Iran has a history of taking action against popular video games. In August, it cut off the Pokemon Go game because of fears about the game's location-based system.

Created by Finnish firm Supercell, Clash of Clans has become a massive hit all over the world. It involves players creating villages and then using troops to protect them or to attack other players' settlements.

Earlier this year, Supercell announced that 100 million people were playing its games every day.

In July, the Chinese firm Tencent bought 84.3% of Supercell in a deal that valued the company at $10.2bn (£8.33bn).

Source: BBC

In what can be regarded as a diversification of its prey-base, hackers are "continuously" targeting medical devices and hospitals, the US Federal Drug Administration has warned.

The value of the Bitcoin virtual currency hits a three-year high with a bitcoin now valued at about $900 (£730).

Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman has provided the voice for an AI assistant created by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

Mr Zuckerberg said he asked the actor, who was selected by the public, after an awards ceremony earlier this month.

The Facebook co-founder coded the AI assistant - called Jarvis, after the butler in Iron Man - for his home.

If he decides to release it to the public, people would relate differently to a famous voice than more robotic sounding assistants, tech experts said.

Mr Zuckerberg asked his Facebook followers to pick the voice after building artificial intelligence to help him around the house. He told tech news site Fast Company that he called Mr Freeman after the actor presented the Breakthrough Awards, a science prize co-founded by Mr Zuckerberg.

"I said, 'Hey, I posted this thing, and... thousands of people want you to be the voice. Will you do it?'"

Mr Freeman's answer was "yeah, sure", he added.

Robert Downey Jr, who plays Iron Man, had offered to voice Jarvis, while Arnold Schwarzenegger features as an alternative, disciplinarian voice in jokey videos released by Mr Zuckerberg this week.

Experts in human-computer interaction said Morgan Freeman, whose roles have included God in Evan Almighty and the narrator in March of the Penguins, would distinguish Jarvis from existing AI assistants.

Celebrity voices add to the "novelty effect" and might make it more enjoyable to interact with an AI assistant, said Dr Simone Stumpf, a senior lecturer at City University in London.

"If a user is more engaged, then they might also be forgiving of mistakes, interact more - and thus provide more training data for the AI to get it right - and are less likely to abandon it," she told the BBC.

Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa and Google Home are bringing smart assistants into the mainstream.

Morgan Freeman would be a different offering because he is more of a "grandfather figure" than a friend, said Dr Bernie Hogan of the Oxford Internet Institute.

"We do know people project emotions on to their computers," he said. "We've been anthropomorphizing these things for years."

Research indicates it is often the attitude of AI, rather than the voice, which annoys people, said Yorick Wilks, professor of Artificial Intelligence at Sheffield University.

"It may just be the user needs to choose voice, as they can now with Sat-nav, and also the personality of assistant or change it at different times," he said.

AI companies have also faced criticism for favouring female voices for the assistants.

"The 'gender' of AI assistants has had its recent controversies, with some accusations of sexism aimed at companies who have chosen female voices, particularly where perceptions of their subservience or even sexual undertones may exist," said Dr Rich Picking of Glyndwr University.

Still, it could be a while before users are interacting with the dulcet tones of Mr Freeman in their homes.

Mr Zuckerberg said he thought about opening up the Jarvis code, but decided "it's currently too tightly tied to [his] own home".

 

Source: BBC News

Anyone who buys a drone in future in the UK may have to register it and take a safety test.

Vanity Fair and Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald has claimed he suffered an epileptic seizure after receiving a malicious tweet containing flashing images.

Retail giant Amazon has made its first commercial delivery using a drone, in the UK. The package arrived safely at its destination in Cambridge, 13 minutes after being ordered. A video showing the process details how the order was completed using an electrically powered drone flying at up to 400ft (122m).

Yahoo has said more than one billion user accounts may have been affected in a hacking attack dating back to 2013.

First, it was the FBI and the CIA accused of wiretapping as part of a robust national security measure now the lines have stretched beyond the boundaries of government or its institutions to private enterprise. Mails in sync with about every related detail about individuals anywhere on the internet: one could easily pass the word 'privacy' for fantasy. As if these were mere illusions, following a BuzzFeed news story in 2014 that alleged one of its reporter's rides had been tracked via "God View" without her permission, Uber has defended itself following accusations that a lack of internal security allowed employees to spy on rides in real-time.

Source: BBC News

Apple is tackling an outbreak of spam on iPhone calendars by introducing a button that lets users report the junk appointments.

The messages appear as invitations to events but are sent by spammers not the brands they feature.

The "report junk" button has been added to Apple's iCloud.com site and is expected to be included in an iOS update soon.

The calendar bug was heavily exploited this year around Black Friday.

Clearing out the bogus messages was frustrating because deleting the invitation sent an acknowledgement to the spammer it came from, revealing that an account was live.

Some people reported that declining an invitation led to them receiving more spam from the same source.

The spam invitations appear to come mainly from Chinese email addresses.

The reporting button removes the junk invitations from a person's calendar and lets Apple know about the message.

The button automatically appears on invitations sent by people not in someone's contacts list.

Until iOS is updated, anyone wishing to tackle the spam on their calendar must visit iCloud.com and click to report the faked messages.

The invitation will then disappear from all synched calendars.

Late last month, Apple apologized for the sudden influx of calendar spam and said it was working on ways to fix it.

Before the introduction of the reporting system, many people fixed the problem by creating a second calendar only for spam.

They moved all the junk invitations into that calendar and then deleted it.

A YouTuber has recreated the Atari 2600 games console - by building a virtual version of the device's hardware out of Minecraft blocks.

In a series of developments in recent months arising primarily from the Note 7 fiasco, there have been increasing pressure from some investors for Samsung Electronics to break itself into a holding unit and an operating company to boost shareholder value.

To what extent can a business go in an effort to sell its product or render its service?  At what point should it draw the line as regards adopting its market penetration strategies? Should it be morality, the constitution or the universally acclaimed bill of rights?

Amid a tense stand-off and attempt at negotiations, Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor has started to enforce a proposed block of LinkedIn in the country, after the social network failed to transfer Russian user data to servers located in the country, violating a law instituted in Russia requiring all online sites to store personal data on national servers.

More than one billion WhatsApp users will be able to make video calls on iPhone, Android and Windows Phone devices “in the coming days”, the company has announced.

Facing criticism that fake news on Facebook aided the rise of Donald Trump, founder Mark Zuckerberg has strongly defended his network.

Human’s increasing dependency on technology is now well past an imminent threat to our natural social behavior: social media chats on Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. have replaced in an unimaginable measure physical conversations, family and friends visit times ….I mean one could just keep enumerating! It is common place now to visit 86 years old grandma and expect the meeting to be anything but a great learning experience from an old walking library: credits to granny’s friends on WhatsApp chatting away the valuable time she would have had for you!

A surge in income from mobile advertising is responsible for a dramatic rise in earnings, the social media giant says.
Quarterly profits at Facebook have surged by 166% to $2.4bn (£1.95bn), the tech giant has announced.

For high-rolling drivers in the United Arab Emirates, no car is complete without a single-digit license plate.

Ghana's Bright Simmons, a social innovator and founder of mPedigree has been appointed onto Microsoft’s 4Afrika Advisory Council.

       It is perhaps one of the most important subjects for discussion today among policy makers around the world, at least those serious about their national security in the 21^st Century. Its operation unconventional and impact, anything but to be underestimated. It requires no large sites for development plants like the missile launchers or nuclear bomb does nor its goal to destroy the physical human life. It runs covertly from behind personal computers or mobile devices from various locations on our planet and its aim, to distort the flow of the generation’s currency – information,  mislead the public and create a kind of war that might not be resolved by mediation efforts from some of the most skilled diplomats nor the damages mitigated by the most effective reconciliation commission ever organized. Whether one accepts it or not, the threat  or even reality of cyberattack is not just imminent ; it lives with us.

   It has been a century and decade now since those genius siblings popularly referred to as the Wright Brothers launched the first manned flight when they made those four brief flights at Kitty Hawk with their first powered aircraft. It was an astonishing sight for all in America and around the world: mankind had once again achieved a milestone.

Founded in 2003 by a group of engineers in Silicon Valley who wanted to prove that electric cars could be better than gasoline-powered cars and characterized by instant torque, incredible power, and zero emissions,

Every year since 1895, when through Swedish inventor, Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Prize got established to celebrate outstanding achievements or strides in various spheres of society; leadership, economy, science, etc., we have continually witnessed growing credence to the works of this highly reputable foundation and to those who earn its converted awards.