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Nike Makes Use of Augmented Reality and AI to Build a New Shoe Measuring Feature

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According to the researches, 60% of the people worldwide wear the wrong shoe size, and even it has been almost a hundred years since the shoe size measuring tool, ‘Brannock Device’, was invented, many of the people have not used it to measure their real shoe size.

nike shoe measuring feature
Image Source: theverge.com

To fight with the struggle people go through while trying out their shoes and finding the right shoe size for them, the biggest sport shoe manufacturers, Nike, has developed a new AI-powered feature to measure the shoe size. The company had been working towards mixing technology with its products and has been exploring the augmented reality for quite some time now. And, finally, it has brought a shoe size measuring feature, ‘Nike Fit’, to its official app, with the help of AI.

The company was secretly testing the feature, at three of its U.S. stores, in Pasadena, Seattle, and Dallas. The company founded out that all the different shoes from the Nike fit the customers differently, as make and the material of those shoes are different.

The company has announced that all its stores will now have this new feature on the Nike app, which will help the customers to scan their foot and choose the right size shoes of every type, whether it is an Air Max, Jordans, Air Force Ones, or even a soccer cleat.

Use of this new feature in the stores will reduce a lot of extra work that the salesperson has to do in order to find the correct shoe size for the customers. In the retails, the customers will have to stand on a mat, and the salesperson will scan the foot size with the help of an iTouch device. After measuring the foot size, the app will provide all the options of shoes for the customer to choose from.

People can also use the feature on the app at their home. The process of measuring the foot is quite simple. After opening the mobile app, along with the select size option under a product, you will see a new option, for measuring the shoe size. As soon as you click on the option, the camera of the phone will open, and you will be asked to stand alongside a wall and scan your foot from the top. You will now have to click the button in between, and the right shoe size will render on your screen.

The new feature will make use of AI and the scientific data, to measure the shoe size of a customer. Using at least 13 data points out of 32 data points, the app is capable of efficiently measuring the correct shoe size for the customers. The launch of such technology has ignited the scope for measuring apps for other things, too. Like, while ordering online, people are often confused over their shoe or clothes’ size. But if this type of technology will be available on every online website, it will be easier for people to buy things without thinking much.

Todd McKinnon : The Founder of Okta, a Company that Specializes in Enterprise Security

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Taking risks, is what most of the people are afraid of, especially, when they are running in their late 30s. At the time when people are earning enough money by working under someone else, it was Todd McKinnon, who wanted to pursue his childhood dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Even he was heading a team of more than a hundred employees in his last company and was earning an adequate amount of money to survive in a place like Silicon Valley, he decided to leave the job and just work for his dream. Having years of experience and a great vision, today, he is the founder of a billion dollars company, Okta.

Early Life

McKinnon was born in Southern California and grew up in its bay area. His father was a VP of HR, who worked for various different companies, and his mother was a homemaker.

He completed his under graduation from Brigham Young University, and later, went to the California Polytechnic State University, where he completed a degree in computer science.

Career

McKinnon finds himself lucky, to be born and brought up in the capital of technology. Being a native of Silicon Valley, since his childhood, he was convinced that he would work for an IT company in Silicon Valley.

ToddMcKinnon
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During his graduation, he got recruited by PeopleSoft, in the campus placement, in 1995. At the time, he was building a database application for the recreation department on campus. Co-incidently, the recruiter from PeopleSoft was also working on a similar project and liked Mckinnon’s work and recruited him.

McKinnon was hired as an engineer in the company and received multiple promotions in the span of eight years.

After working for eight long years in PeopleSoft, in 2003, McKinnon left the job and started working at SalesForce. In 2009, he left SalesForce to start his own company, i.e. Okta.

Founding Okta

Besides the dream of working in a Silicon Valley company, McKinnon was also fascinated with the idea of starting his own business. The reason he gives for not starting a business earlier is that he always had good jobs in hand, and those were helpful in gaining good business experience.

In SalesForce, he was managing over hundreds of employees, and he had got a good reputation. He decided that it was the right time to start a business, as he was financially and mentally capable of doing that at the time.

At the same time, people got introduced to the cloud, and not many were sure how long it is going to last. But McKinnon saw an opportunity in the same. He started off developing with a macro product, and when he went out to talk and sell the product to people, he realized there was much more to the cloud, and finally, started working on identity management on the cloud.

McKinnon pitched the idea in over 75 meetings in a span of four to five months. He also asked a former SalesForce colleague, Freddy Kerrest, to join him for the startup, and finally, after seven months of hard, work was able to raise a million dollars seed funding to start the business and founded Okta in 2009. Okta provides cloud software that helps companies manage their employees’ passwords, by providing a “single sign-on” experience.

The company earned its first paying client, in December 2009. In 2015, the company was valued at $1.2 billion and raised $75 million in venture capital from Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital.

In 2017, the company went public, and in its IPO it raised $187 million. Okta has its offices in Bellevue, Toronto, London, Amsterdam, Sydney, San Jose and Washington D.C., and its headquarter is located in San Fransisco. In January 2019, the company reported a number of 100 million registered users on Okta and the company valued at over $7 billion.

Personal Life

McKinnon is married and has two children. He lives with his family in San Francisco. He is a fitness freak, and in 2017, he was named as the 14th fittest man on earth in the age group of 45-to-49, in the annual CrossFit Games, held in Madison, Wisconsin. Currently, he serves as the CEO of Okta.

India Successfully Launches GSLV-Mk III; Green Signal to Chandrayaan-2 & Manned Mission

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On Wednesday, the launch of India’s heaviest rocket, the GSLV-Mk III, carrying 3,423 kg communication satellite GSAT-29, from the ISRO’s Sriharikota centre (Satish Dhawan Space Centre), in Andhra Pradesh. The launch took place at 5.08 pm, carrying the GSAT-29 satellite, that has been set into the Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO). With the help of the thrusters, the satellite will be placed in Earth’s Geostationary Orbit (GEO). The rocket has proven its ability by putting the satellite into the GTO just within sixteen minutes.

GSAT-29-lifts-off
Image Source: freepressjournal.in

The ISRO chairman K Sivan said, “Today India has achieved a significant milestone. The GSLV Mk III, India’s heaviest launcher, has launched GSAT 29. The launch completed the developmental flights of the rocket.”

The launch of GSLV Mk III is the second developmental flight of the rocket. It carried its first development flight on June 5, 2017, in which it successfully launched a 3,136 kg GSAT-19 satellite (the first heaviest satellite launched from India). ISRO has plans of sending the astronauts to space in the 2022 Gaganyaan mission with the help of the same rocket.

The rocket is 43.4 meters tall and weighs around 640 tonnes, having a capacity of carrying up to four tonnes of weight to space. It is a heavy-lift three-stage rocket. The first stage consists of two solid fuel strap-on engines, at the second stage it has a liquid propellant core, and the third stage is for a cryogenic engine. India is one of the six countries, including the US, Russia, France, Japan and China, to own the cryogenic engine technology.

The GSAT 29 satellite contains the communication transponders to provide communication in remote regions of India, specifically in Jammu Kashmir and the northeast, under the Digital India programme.

A spokesperson from ISRO said. “The GSAT 29 carries Ka/Ku-band high throughput communication transponders intended to meet the communication requirements of users including those in remote areas. In addition, several new technologies such as Q/V-band payload, data transmission through optical communication link will be demonstrated. This will help in realising future advanced satellites.’’

ISRO has been doing amazingly well in its space missions for the past few years, and now it intends to have ten more launches before the new year. And the successful launch of the GSLV Mk III rocket has confirmed the moon mission Chandrayaan 2, that will be carried out in January next year and India’s first human spaceflight programme scheduled for 2022.

Apple’s Next-Generation iOS 12 Available On the Latest iPhones

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Apple, on Monday, launched its iOS 12, two months later the announcement of its launch in June. The much-awaited Apple iOS 12 is out and is available for the iPhones and iPad released in 2013 and later. The new iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and XR model will have this version of iOS inbuilt. Last year the release of iOS 11 was quite a disappointment as those flashy updates could not do any better for the iPhone’s performance, but slowing down the speed. After iOS 11, all the older users have been sceptical about the new updates as it had worsened the performance of their phones instead of making any improvements.

The iOS 12 has been pushed out with the claims of having better performance and new features added to it. It is good to know that this time Apple has put all its efforts in enhancing the performance of the iPhones, i.e. 40 per cent faster speed. Unlike the iOS 11, that just had a few flashy changes and redesigned the look and the appearance of the OS and the Apps.

Apple iOS 12
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In the earlier iOS versions, there used to be 10 different notifications for a single app at the same time. Now, iOS 12 has introduced group notifications for a single app. You can now manually turn off or mute the notification, for any of the apps, to avoid the disturbing notification sounds.

Like the new Android 9, Apple has also become considerate about the screen time of the user. The iOS 12 has provided an option for tracking and limiting the time the user spends on a particular app or on the phone. You can also set the time of sleep, and the app will notify you to stop using the phone and the screen will become grey. Although, you can still continue running the phone by changing the settings.

Also, the iOS has also updated its password management by providing two-factor authentication services. Similar to the iPhone X, now you can also swipe between the apps, notifications, and access the control centre, using the gesture navigation. You can also add your conversations and instructions to Siri with its new shortcuts.

The iOS 12 is also added with the feature for creating the Avatars, by mixing emojis and animoji, i.e., Memoji. You can create custom animated Animoji avatars that you can use in the real time on top of live pictures, messages and videos. The feature is currently available in the latest iPhone XS, XS Max, or XR models.

There have been many other changes as well, including easy photo sharing, easy photo searching, easy browsing eBooks, real-time object measurements, improved ARKit 2, Google Maps embedded to CarPlay, Group Video calls for up to 32 users. The group call feature has not been launched yet and will be available by the end of the year.

It is great that Apple has been thinking of improving its performance instead of the design of the iOS. And, the smaller iPhones and the older iPads will also enjoy these features without worrying about the poor performance.

Japan is All Set to Test World’s First Space Elevator

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space elevator
Image Source: dazeddigital.com

The old fantasy story of the celestial castle has been the base of many famous sci-fi movies. In the past century, many scientists have also given their theories, on how a ladder can be placed between the earth and space. But, until now, nobody has come with a real plan for such an experiment.

Even with a low rate of success, the scientists from the Shizuoka University Japan, have announced that they are going to test a miniature elevator in the space, in the coming week. Japan is all set to send two tiny, 4-inch cubic satellites, to the International Space Station (ISS), with an H-2B rocket. The 2.4 inches elevator, will be contained in one of the satellites, and after, reaching into the orbit, the motors will power the satellites with a 33-foot steel cable. The elevator will then travel from one satellite to another through the cable, having a camera attached to it, that will record the whole experiment.

This experiment is going to be the first of its kind. Many scientists have thought of carrying out such experiments, but it is difficult to achieve the favourable conditions for one. First of all, no material has been found that is as strongest that can be used to build the elevator and the cable to hold the elevator throughout the travelling.

The geo station to launch the elevator must be nearby the equator of the earth, where the possibility of hurricanes and tornadoes is scarce. Also, the gravity and wind in the upper atmosphere can be a hurdle for such an experiment. If such experiment is succeeded, not only the astronauts but also tourists can go up in the space in the time of approximately eight days.

Qualcomm Announces new Flagship Chip featuring 5G connectivity

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Qualcomm Snapdragon
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The world’s largest semiconductor and telecommunications equipment company Qualcomm has announced its new flagship processor, built on the 7-nanometer mode process. Noticeably, the Apple’s A12 processor and Huawei’s Kirin 980 processor are also built on the same technology. And now Qualcomm is also about to produce its own high-performance processor.

The processor is considered to be the Snapdragon 855, and Qualcomm has claimed that the processor will provide better speed, improved battery backup, and performance. The flagship chip is likely to be the first mobile platform that will be 5G-capable and will be implemented in the premium flagship smartphones when used with the Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X50. Although Snapdragon X50 5G modem is not new to the technical world, it will be used in a smartphone for the very first time. And, according to Qualcomm, it has already begun coupling the processor with OEMs developing next-generation consumer devices.

The President of Qualcomm Incorporated stated, “We are very pleased to be working with OEMs, operators, infrastructure vendors, and standards bodies across the world, and are on track to help launch the first 5G mobile hotspots by the end of 2018, and smartphones using our next-generation mobile platform in the first half of 2019.”

Qualcomm is already considered as a leader in 3G and 4G mobile technologies. Now this time it is coming with the 5G technology with its faster, smaller and power efficient Snapdragon 855 to be used with high-end smartphones.