Important announcements
There will be a new development platform based on Apache Spark, by IBM
IBM calls it Data Science Experience and it is a new development environment in the cloud for real-time, high-performance analytics. Data Science Experience is designed to speed and simplify the process of embedding data and machine learning into cloud applications. Included in the new offering are tools such as RStudio and Jupyter Notebooks. Developers can tap Python, R and Scala, they can also view sample notebooks and watch tutorials while they code.
More details about it here.
An iPhone case that allows you to run Android
Developer Nick Leep spent some 45 hours building a case that got around some of the technical limitations of the iPhone that prevented developers from running third-party code. Specifically, the language in the developer guidelines that rejects snippets forcing apps to install or launch executable code.
Lee’s case is a plug and play solution that allows iPhone owners to run Android, mostly due to its open source nature and relative ease in working with new hardware.
More about how you can run Android Marshmallow on the iPhone here.
Iris scans could validate mobile payments
Smartphone vendors and developers of payment software need to consider the multi-modal approach and a variety of new biometric techniques to be successful in coming years. For online purchases, iris scans could help authenticate buyers.
Newer biometrics security technologies beyond the use of fingerprint scans could boost adoption rates when purchases are made in-store with smartphones. Those technologies include palm vein sensors or even sensors that assess a person’s typing patterns or movements.
More about this can be found here.
Top products
Samsung’s Galaxy S7 Active with Shatter Resistant Display and 4000mAh Battery
The S7 Active will also be offering the IP68 dust and water resistant feature, thus allowing it to be drenched in water for a maximum time frame of 30-minutes.
The active smartphone comes equipped with a 5.1-inch Super AMOLED display and is powered by the Snapdragon 820 alongside a 4GB RAM. On the memory front the phone offers 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card that can support up to 200GB.
More info and specifications here.
The first Project Tango phone, shipping in September for $500
Tango is a suite of technologies that combines computer vision, motion tracking and depth perception to help a device figure out exactly where it is and how it’s moving through space. So far, the Tango foundation has been used, among other things, to give us turn-by-turn directions inside a museum and let us play with virtual puppies. In short, it’s a big deal.
The Tango phone, named The PHAB 2 Pro has a quad-core Snapdragon 652 processor augmented with some special Tango hardware. Also onboard are 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage and a 4,050mAh battery for good measure.
More specs and info here.
Active noise-canceling wireless headphone from Bose
Bose QuietComfort 35 is designed to be used as an advanced wireless headset and it muffles ambient sounds like wind and crowd noise. There’s also a side-tone feature that allows you to hear your own voice in the headphones as you speak so you don’t raise your voice while talking. The product is priced at $350, battery life is rated at 20 hours and has NFC pairing for devices that support it.
More about the headphones here.
Top interesting info
WebGazer, the software that turns webcams into eye-trackers
Web developers might be interested in this new eye-tracking technology, given the fact that WebGazer.js can be added to any site with just a few lines of code.
Websites could be made more user friendly with an optimized content thanks to WebGazer turning the computer’s webcam into an eye-tracker that can infer where on a page the viewer is looking.
More details about this software here.
New compiler, JS++, tackles JavaScript’s weak typing
JS++ focuses on compile-time type-checking but is not open source, and the software vendor Onux is seeking to patent it.
The Onux JS++ compiler unifies types into a single type known as the unified external type. JS++ is positioned as a rival to Microsoft’s TypeScript, and it is compliant with ECMAScript 3, an older version of the specification underlying JavaScript.
More info about the subject here.
The BeeWare project offers tools and libraries for mobile and web development
Libraries provide functionality ranging from iOS and Android application development to CSS support, while tools cover activities ranging from browser support to conversion of Python code to Java and debugging.
You can read all about it here.
