AI helps stylists find the right men’s outfit
Spotted: A German company uses a combination of AI and real-life stylists to personalise men’s clothing shopping. Outfittery uses written and visual questionnaires to match customers to individual stylists and styles, and the AI algorithms learn more about each customer’s tastes the more they shop. This, in turn, helps inform the human stylists. Customers can…
Surface treatment uses light to clean buildings
Spotted: American startup PURETi has developed a surface treatment that can eliminate grime and odours from buildings while also reversing air pollution. The company’s product uses a titanium dioxide coated vinyl to purify the surrounding air. When ultra-violet light hits the coating, the titanium dioxide gains energy which accelerates the oxidation (natural chemical breakdown) of…
Startup eases burden of admin work with a single form
Spotted: Australian startup Pencil has created a single form for small businesses to apply for supply credit with vendors. The simple system promises to help SMEs manage supplier credit applications and ease the burden of administration work. Supplier management can be more difficult for SMEs due to their size. To address this, the platform offers…
Tech Explained: Fibre Optics
Fibre optic cables have been used to provide telephone and internet connectivity for decades. The first fibre-optic telephone cable was laid between Long Beach and Artesia, California, in 1977. In 1988, the first transatlantic fibre-optic telephone cable was laid between the United States, France and the UK. Fibre optics provide a very fast, efficient way…
Crosswalk lights use AI to anticipate potential accidents
Spotted: Vienna has installed around 200 pedestrian crossing lights that can recognise when a person wants to cross the road. The system was commissioned by Municipal Department 33 of the City of Vienna and developed by a team at the Institute of Computer Graphics and Vision at TU Graz University. It is intended to replace…
3D-printed benches protect pedestrians from vehicular attacks
Spotted: Inventor, designer and creative director Joe Doucet created 3D-printed benches for public spaces. His goal was to improve pedestrian safety without compromising on the aesthetics of good design. Rely Protective Public Seating could easily be mistaken for nothing more than a nice places to sit. Each bench weighs more than one ton. They are 3D-printed…
Dyelicious turns food waste into luxury wares
Hong Kong startup Dyelicious is turning food waste into high-quality clothing and other products through a process known as natural food dyeing. The company says its workshops use kitchen waste to make dyes that can decompose naturally and do not yield any pollution, unlike a typical garment factory that may emit toxins into rivers and…
Connecting Isn’t REALLY About the Technology
Okay, sure. Technically, you might have to learn a tiny bit about how to make something happen with technology to be able to use tools like video and podcasts or email newsletters to reach people. But my point is that using that kind of tech isn’t (shouldn’t be) your big worry and focus. Connecting Isn’t…
What does Arm's new N1 architecture mean for Windows servers?
Whether it’s Windows Enterprise or a specialised IoT version of Windows Server, Windows on Arm is going to be an option for industrial and edge computing. Windows 10 May 2019 Update: How to delay it Worried that installing the May 2019 Update will break Windows 10? Here’s how to block it, at least for a…
Carbon-neutral football club developing all-wood stadium
Spotted: The UK’s Forest Green Rovers Football Club is the world’s first vegan and carbon-neutral football club. It is now planning to build a new, all-wood stadium that will form the centrepiece of Stroud’s forthcoming Eco Park. Every aspect of the club runs on 100 percent sustainable energy, provided by the green energy company Ecotricity,…