Two concerned fathers temporarily lost their children – one in a parade crowd and the other in a crowd of shoppers. Both created a wearable tracking device to prevent this from happening again. The products are amazingly similar and are competing for attention at CES 2015 and on Indiegogo.

The companies sit on two sides of the world. Child Angel is out of Staffordshire in the UK. Kiband is out of Utah in the US. The companies base their technology on two different approaches. Child Angel tracks a child’s movements by combining GPS, GSM (Global System for Mobiles) and Wi-Fi hot-spot triangulation technologies. Kiband uses Bluetooth 4.1 and an audible alarm approach.

Kiband, named for the CEO’s four year old child Kimball, argues that coverage, accuracy, and cost of GPS are questionable. Their smartband technology covers 5 to almost 200 feet in any direction and you don’t need to interpret a map on your cell phone to locate a child who wanders too far. Kiband lets out an 85 decibel alarm alerting the parent and those around the child until it and the child are back with the parent. The band displays contact information for do-gooders trying to return the child to his parents.

Kiband smartphone display of child’s proximity.

Child Angel, on the other hand, has no distance limitations. It notifies parents via its cell phone app and displays the child’s location on a GPS map. The battle has begun with Child Angel adding comments on its project site regarding the limitations of Bluetooth … as we’ve noted is used by their competitor, Kiband.

Its exact pinpoint location is sent by Child Angel wrist band to smartphone.

Another differentiation is the ability to remove the band from the child’s arm. Child Angel sends an alarm to the parent if the band is removed and marks its location, whereas the Kiband cannot be removed until unlocked by the parent via their cell phone.

The free downloadable Child Angel app is compatible with Android, Samsung, Apple iPhone, and iPad. The band’s rechargeable battery can last for 48 hours. The band is “splash, sand, and sticky proof” and geared to those 3-13 years. Kiband is fashioned for children from 18 months to 7 years. Child-friendly Child Angel can be customized with a click-on image. It can also be imprinted with a licensed business partner’s logo.

Both provide boundary settings such as Geo Fencing on Child Angel. If your child goes beyond your pre-set safe zone an automatic alert goes to your cell phone. Kiband differentiates itself by claiming to alert you to your child’s location before they disappear, not after. Its goal is to prevent a lost child, rather than trying to find one after they go missing. The band involves the child in their own safety by vibrating when they wander too close to the perimeter set by their parents. It is not only water resistant, but if submerged will put out an alarm.

Child Angel’s wrist band design.

Spencer Behrend, Founder and CEO of KiLife Tech, claims a background in entrepreneurship, technology of an unspecified nature, finance, and corporate leadership. Heather Palmer has the unique title of CMO – Chief Mommy Officer – bringing a mother’s touch to the company. None of the bios of the rest of the team mentions any technology experience, leaning on backgrounds in operations, finance, and social media. However, the company profile claims to be “a diverse collection of tech entrepreneurs.”Andrew Purcell is the father and CEO behind Child Angel. His team consists of persons with financial, organizational, and sales skills. No one mentions having technology expertise, but their project site shows how the device was developed. Child Angel’s Indiegogo project has raised $2,572 USD towards its more aggressive $100,000 goal with 24 days left.

Kiband reveals its electronic composition.

Kiband on Indiegogo has raised $10,754 USD towards its $25,000 goal with 10 days left. Its sale price is pegged at $110.

As a parent, you have choices to make regarding your child’s safety. Child Angel and Kiband offer two slightly differing ways to keep track of a busy and mobile kid. Which would you choose?

The post Two Lost Kids; Two New Wearable Tracking Devices at CES 2015 appeared first on VR World.

The University of Rochester Medical Center Smartphone-PD study is partnering Android smartphones with Parkinson’s disease research professionals. Your voice recorded via the digital microphone in your phone, run through software developed by the Non-Linearity and Complexity Research Group at Aston University coupled with machine learning can quantify where a person lies between health and disease. This news comes from Dr. Max Little of Aston in Birmingham, England.

The recent revelation that Robin Williams was diagnosed with Parkinson`s has again brought attention to the disease. Research has shown a definite connection between Parkinson’s disease (PD) a degenerative motor system disorder and speech impairment. PD causes tremors, typically starting in one hand, painful and rigid muscles, slowed movements, and impaired balance. The problems affect not only your limbs, but your vocal organs. The voice becomes more quiet and breathy. Neither definitive blood tests, nor biomarkers indicate Parkinson’s, but the subtle changes in vocalization easily picked up from a smartphone and analyzed by specific software can help detect and monitor the disease.

This connection between Parkinson’s and speech impairment is the foundation for the Smartphone-PD study. Sound waves are caused by fluctuations in air pressure when the vocal folds/cords of the larynx/voicebox which lay over the trachea/windpipe vibrate. Dysphonia –disorders of the voice – can point to the early onset of PD through the use of speech signal processing algorithms.

Additionally, accelerometers in the smartphone can be used to pick up on movements characteristic of PD such as freezing of gait when the person walks. Add GPS and other smartphone data, such as indications of socialization, and the software analysis of those behaviors can result in a diagnostic algorithm for Parkinson’s.

The app was also tested at the University of Oxford. Dr. Michele Hu, consultant neurologist at the Oxford Parkinson’s Disease Centre said: “It’s a much better way of assessing overall disease – a better measure of progression and response to treatment,” Researchers continue to look for ways to diagnose PD from subtle changes that take place in the brain up to 15 years before the appearance of overt symptoms. Smartphone technology is among the approaches being tested.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter made in the brain. When the cells that make dopamine slowly die, the result is a progressive lack of control over your muscles. The symptoms were first identified by James Parkinson in 1817. Parkinson’s disease usually affects people who are over 50. The early detection hoped for by the Smartphone-PD study is important because there is neither cure nor treatment to prevent or reverse the neuronal cell loss that occurs in Parkinson’s. Medications only provide temporary relief from the debilitating symptoms.

A Patient’s Voice Analysis (PVA) team is comprised of Dr. Little and other scientists from PatientsLikeMe and Sage Bionetworks who employs statistical geneticists and computational biologists. These teams will review voice recordings collected and analyzed by the software along with information supplied by patients using a program from PatientsLikeMe. The Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (PDRS) is a tool that uses patients’ answers to questions that measure treatment effectiveness and disease progression.

Paul Wicks, Ph.D., Vice President of Innovation at PatientsLikeMe says: “We invite anyone who has PD to take part and join PatientsLikeMe, so they can stay informed about their condition and generate new insights about this disease”. Dr. Little’s team also wants healthy individuals to sign up for comparative purposes. Social media has become such a boon to research. Little asks that you consider helping this cause at no charge to you.

A fairly extensive consent form that checks to be sure you understand the purpose and scope of the study and your participation in it can be found here.

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So, you know the whole premise that Snapchat is based upon? The fact that you can set a timer for an image and once that image’s time disappears, so does the image? And that somehow is supposed to prevent people from potentially saving those embarrassing or racy photos? Well, that was all a big fat lie. In a settlement that Snapchat has reached with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) they have agreed to a whole host of regulations and oversight of the company’s privacy and security policies since they had misled consumers about both. In fact, Snapchat’s security and privacy will be monitored closely for the next 20 years in order to ensure they aren’t breaking any laws or agreements if they do, they will be appropriately fined.

Quoting the New York Times article on the matter, “Under the terms of the settlement, Snapchat will be prohibited from misrepresenting how it maintains the privacy and confidentiality of user information. The company will also be required to start a wide-ranging privacy program, a sort of probation, and will be independently monitored for 20 years. Fines could ensue if the company violates the agreement.

In its complaint against Snapchat, the commission said the app’s messages, often called snaps, could be saved in several ways, contrary to what the company has said. Users can save a message by using a third-party app, the agency said, or employ simple workarounds that allow users to take a screen shot of messages without alerting another user.

The complaint also said Snapchat transmitted users’ location information and collected sensitive data like address book contacts, despite its saying that it did not collect such information. The commission said the lax policies did not secure a feature called “Find Friends” that allowed security researchers to compile a database of 4.6 million user names and phone numbers during a recent security breach.”

So, not only has Snapchat misrepresented the privacy and security of users’ images, they’ve also been collecting users address book data and GPS data without their willing or knowing consent. What does this mean for Snapchat? They’re going to have to constantly have to make sure they are in compliance with FTC regulations and will likely have to hire more lawyers than they already have as well as compliance officers in order to stay current. Not to mention all of the bad press about Snapchat basically lying to users and telling them one thing while it really does another. Not to mention collecting vast troves of users’ data without even asking their consent, which may affect user trust of Snapchat. Overall, this is not a good thing for the company but it is a good thing for consumers.

As of right now, no fines have been decided upon, but it is likely that once the FTC receives public comment and they vote once again, they will decide whether or not there will be any fines levied upon Snapchat. However, it was established by the FTC that any violations of these new rules set on Snapchat by the FTC will be charged to the tune of $16,000 per infraction with no limitation on amount of charges or fees.

Lets also not forget that the founder of Snapchat allegedly turned down an offer from Facebook worth $3 billion and now, the valuation of his company is in jeopardy with today’s settlement.

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At NAB 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada, DJI, the maker of the Phantom 2 Vision announced their latest addition to their quadrocopter lineup, the creatively named Phantom 2 Vision Plus. This quadrocopter takes a lot of the features of its predecessor and improves upon them in ways that enables film makers and serious videographers to be able to capture cinema quality footage from the comfort of a quadrocopter. Enabling shots and angles that would normally require a helicopter rental and thousands of dollars to rent one. The current model, the Phantom 2 Vision can be had at Amazon for a discounted $1,179, down from the MSRP of $1,399. However, it doesn’t have nearly the features that this new $1,300 Phantom 2 Vision Plus will have.

The key features of the Phantom 2 Vision+ are the 1080P camera that also does 720P at 30FPS while still being able to do 14 megapixel still shots as well. The camera itself is also supported by a 3-axis gimbal that significantly reduces camera shake while in the air and allows for impressive camera tilt control. It also allows you to film straight down, which allows for a very unique camera angle that most quadrocopters are not capable of doing. It also supports ADOBE DNG RAW recording which allows for some really great post-processing of the video, something professionals will likely love. It also has Adobe lens profile support, which allows for lens correction since the camera itself is fairly wide angle and has some lens distortion.

There are also a whole host of smartphone features that allow you to stream video to your smartphone in realtime and synchronize your phone with the quadrocopter through Wi-Fi, up to 700m away. This allows for some very quick uploads of images and videos to social media through your smartphone. This clearly shows that DJI understands that they don’t need to make a new device to sell you to share your content or to connect to the internet and that many (or most) would prefer to use their smartphones to share content from their new DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ quadrocopter.

The quadrocopter itself can maintain about 25 minutes of flight per battery, however, they do provide additional batteries as optional additions so that you can get back in the air as quickly as possible. And considering that these batteries are 5200 mAh in capacity, I would expect you to want or need about 5+ batteries in a charging cycle to be sure that you always have a full battery in reserve.

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