May 2020 -

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home, Uncategorized

An app that powers the kitchen sink

Finally an app for your kitchen sink

The Kohler Sensate smart kitchen faucet includes built in voice control — powered by your choice of Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant. And of course, there is an app to configure it, control it, and to view water consumption. Just tell Sensate that you want a two cups of water, and hold out the vessel. Power connection under the sink is required. CNET

dis-rup-shun: Smart home is here to stay and gaining traction fast. If you are worried about data security and privacy, you won’t like the fact that your kitchen sink is listening in on every conversation, but resistance is futile, as soon most every appliance and light switch in new homes and upscale hotels will be smart. For $895 to $1100 it should listen to your every command. Your grandchildren will be fascinated to learn that you once had to actually touch the handles on faucets around your home.

Cisco shells out $1 billion for Thousand Eyes

Thousand Eyes is a network health monitoring company providing diagnostic services to high-growth cloud businesses including Microsoft, PayPal, Slack and Lyft. Cisco, feeling left behind from slowing core network equipment growth has shelled out one billion dollars for the growth company, keeping things interesting. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: The John Chambers-era Cisco seemed adept at going where the action was and remaining highly relevant as it powered the growth of the modern Internet. In past years, the company has been less visible, milking many of its cash cows but seemingly less on the front line of innovation. CEO Chuck Robinson is making a smart play that will keep Cisco enjoying the growth of cloud providers.

GE sells lighting brand to Savant

There are few brands as familiar as GE for lightbulbs, and time will tell if Savant, the smart home systems provider that seeks to address a mid-market, somewhere between Crestron on the high-end and Ring on the low-end, will continue to sell under the venerable brand. GE continues to shed assets in order to restore its former high performance, and the transaction allegedly fetched $250 million. CNET

dis-rup-shun: This acquisition is a product strategy head-scratcher. It is akin to Ruth Chris offering Krystal burgers, or Apple selling burner phones. Perhaps the high ticket Savant business wants a low-priced commodity to keep cash flowing faster, or perhaps it will use GE’s smart lighting line to move people up the food chain from a simple smart light bulb to a complete smart home system.

Time to get serious about home WiFi

Google Nest mesh router is a big step up from Google’s WiFi. If you have an unexpectedly larger number of people working from your home, you may be ready to look at upgrading WiFi. CNET discusses the major differences between the new generation Nest mesh router, and the first generation which can be summed up as easy controls through an app, each “pod” is also a Google Assistant smart speaker, with greater overall range and speed.

dis-rup-shun: WiFi is definitely spottier when three or four people are working from home, each hammering on Zoom on and off throughout the day. Now more than ever, a WiFi makeover is in order. If we had only known, the $300 Google Nest WiFi investment would have been an easy investment on quarantine’s eve.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

HBO Max, yet another streaming service

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HBO’s new streaming service, HBO Max, enters the fray

HBO has entered a new option in the streaming wars, but their offering is more complicated. First, it costs $15 per month as opposed to Disney + for $7 and Netflix’s starting price of $9. Secondly, it doesn’t support 4K, nor is it available on the most common streaming devices — Roku and Amazon FireTV, and thirdly, if you already pay for HBO, you may have to pay for HBO Max separately. CNET

dis-rup-shun: The shape of TV continues to change quickly, and with more choices comes confusion. HBO’s entry into the fray will continue to up the ante for great original content, and consumers are the big winners in that battle. Currently, a great deal of cross-over exists among the streamers, with Amazon Prime offering access to HBO programs and STARZ select content for additional fees. The big question is, can the average household cut the cord, consume all it wishes, and still spend less than a pay TV service? For now the answer is yes, but the complicated future may put us on track to spend like we were still on DirecTV or Comcast.

Drones permitted to deliver protective equipment in North Carolina

Commercial drone flights remain heavily regulated by the FAA, but a special project of Zipline and Novant Health permits delivery of masks and front line health worker supplies during the pandemic. Drones are flying as far as 20 miles round trip to deliver packages of masks to health workers in Charlotte, NC. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Drones continue to face challenges of regulations, as interference with aircraft, with utility lines, and with neighborhood associations whose residents don’t want drones buzzing overhead and recording videos through their windows remains formidable. Drone companies are using Covid-19 to gain footholds in industries, and these opportunities will, no doubt, accelerate adoption into commercial activities, and will also likely lead to designated flight lanes and landing platforms.

Tesla cuts EV prices

In the U.S. and China, Tesla will cut prices for its production vehicles as it attempts to jump start both factories as well as demand for its electric vehicles. Production has resumed in its Fremont factory. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Much talk abounds about how the post COVID-19 world will look, and we can be assured that demand for cars will be reduced for at least three years, if not longer. More people have learned that they can work from home, reducing the wear and tear on autos, which should last quite a bit longer if commuting frequencies are reduced. We are likely already in a recession, and most people will defer auto purchases in these uncertain times. This leaves Tesla, and every other car maker, with no other choice than to start a fire sale that will likely last the rest of this year and into next until inventories can be reduced.

Boeing resumes production of its 737 Max

Despite Coronavirus induced airline slowdowns and layoffs of over 700 workers, Boeing is restarting manufacturing of its beleaguered airliner. The company is yet to receive clearance from the FAA to resume flying the aircraft. The Verge

dis-rup-shun: The company must see light at the end of the FAA testing tunnel, else deploying more capital into the program doesn’t make sense. The aircraft, assuming it becomes safe when revamped, is still an ideal configuration for the expected post-pandemic travel world, providing an efficient vehicle to optimize shorter-haul loads with a larger passenger capacity. If the aircraft is approved to resume flying, airlines may rely on it to play a bigger role in post-pandemic schedule restarts.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

NYC sets guidelines for sex and dating

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NYC sets policies for sex and dating during coronavirus

NYC’s Department of Health has issued guidelines for sex during coranavirus that states “You are your safest sex partner.” Online dating through dating websites has skyrocketed, and Zoom and FaceTime dates have become a common practice. With no messy logistics and complications of finding a place to meet and splitting the bill, some daters are booking up to four dates per evening. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: With the expense of an evening out and the uncertainties of what physical interaction will occur, using online apps to vet a potential partner will likely become a permanent part of the matchmaking process. In-person meetings may occur only after multiple online meetings, potentially changing the revenue model for online dating services.

Privatized U.S. space travel starts tomorrow

If the weather holds tomorrow, NASA will send the first astronaut from U.S. soil in nine years to space, in preparation for a trip to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocket, contracted by NASA. The event will be broadcast live via NASA’s and SpaceX’s websites. SpaceX

dis-rup-shun: NASA 2.0 is completely dependent on contractors who have essentially taken over all of the aspects of launch, mission control, and recovery. The U.S. government is putting its complete trust in private enterprise, demonstrating capitalism and semi-open competition at the very heart of national security and innovation. Let’s hope this experiment goes well.

Now, are you interested in VR to be more social?

Virtual Reality, or VR, has had many fits and starts, but limited consumer enthusiasm beyond gamers. XRSpace, a VR company from a founder of HTC, has announced its VR headset platform, available for $599 in a WiFi version. XRSpace is making the VR experience more social, so that users can meet up with avatars of their friends, and together attend events such as basketball games. CNET

dis-rup-shun: Has our societal structure really changed such that we will spend more time socializing from home? We now have the tools to engage far more with others without leaving home, and this may well have a permanent impact on sports, concerts, bars, and airlines, as we find from home engagement to be far more fulfilling, thanks to network-based technologies.

The new, remote Silicon Valley

Facebook expects that 50% of its employees will work remotely over the next decade. Accordingly, salaries will be adjusted based upon one’s home work location. Companies like Facebook that are creating remote work and chat tools will increasingly build upon distributed work forces. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Those who live and visit Silicon Valley frequently will be relieved that the area could receive relief from overcrowding, shortage of affordable housing, and a very tight workforce supply. Remote working could enable some normalcy as well as relieve the mounting demand for higher wages to area workers — potentially boosting productivity while lowering average wages paid.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

TV for the great outdoors

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Finally, a TV for the great outdoors

Samsung has introduced The Terrace, a high-end TV that is weather proof, and features a wireless connection to the set top box(es) that can be located indoors. This QLED TV starts at 55 inches and is available in 65 and 75 inch models. The TV is water and dust resistant, and priced accordingly — up to $6,500 for the biggest model. CNET

dis-rup-shun: As shelter-in-place continues, enhancing the back yard setup is even more attractive, but will Samsung, at premium prices, convince people to pay 3x the cost of a cheap TV that can be replaced every 18 months? Like its Frame flat mounted models, Samsung is drilling deeply into its most premium buyer segments, displacing high-end competitors such as LG.

Microsoft Build — the king of software thrives

Microsoft held its annual Build developer conference virtually this week. 200 thousand people register for the online event. The agenda focused largely on the Azure cloud platform. Microsoft is enhancing Azure’s AI capabilities, and providing a free package to healthcare companies, further investing in vertical cloud infrastructure to help open up the previously closed and proprietary data structure of healthcare companies. In addition, Microsoft is enhancing its popular Teams app with Lists, a task management application. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Microsoft 3.0 under Nadella is a breath of fresh air, with the company being less of the evil empire it was under Ballmer, but instead making very targeted and strategic enhancements for both consumers and industries, such as healthcare. The company seems more customer driven than in prior decades which is mostly thanks to much tougher competition in today’s marketplace. And to attract 200 thousand people for an online conference — this is a warning shot to the event planning industry. We may not be willing to give up three days to travel to crowded convention centers and overpriced hotels for conferences when virtual works.

Nvidia thrives on coronavirus

This semiconductor company made its name on graphics processors for gamers, which is partially responsible for it outperforming projections for the quarter. Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO, has kept this company nimble, and now it is thriving on a chipset designed for complex computations in data centers — following business to the cloud and powering customers in a more virtual world. The stock is up 50% for the year. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Nvidia has continued to live on the fringes of giants Intel and Qualcomm, by focusing on niche applications and becoming the premium provider for those applications. Specialization and focus pay off again.

How well did you wash your hands?

Now there is a device, particularly for commercial establishments, that scans hands after washing to determine if any bad stuff remains on them. The PathSpot scanner can be mounted on the bathroom wall above the sink, and uses fluorescent light imaging and algorithms to detect bad things like e. coli. TechCrunch

dis-rup-shun: What is the economic cost of not washing your hands well? It could be zero, or it could be a week of work missed, or a week of work missed for ten infected people, or closure of a restaurant for several weeks, or spreading of a pandemic. The cost of a device seems trivial in light of these possibilities.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Apple accelerates the demise of college life

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The death of college as we know it: Apple’s Schoolwork 2.0

Now, like never before, opportunities abound to participate in the radical and sudden transformation of the educational process. Apple had started the process with its Schoolwork app, but has accelerated the release of version 2.0 to make sure the company secures a strong foundation in the educational market. CNET

dis-rup-shun: Classroom apps are not new, nor are virtual classes. Millions of students and tens of thousands of teachers around the world, however, are now expert on the challenges and triumphs of online teaching and it is here to stay. As companies such as Apple redefine the learning experience to be Internet-centric and generally more convenient online, classrooms become unnecessary nice-to-haves. Colleges — meet your competition — it is headquartered in Cupertino, California and doesn’t lose.

Apple glasses — can they succeed?

Apple has been rumored for a handful of years to be producing smart glasses that combine AR into a new form factor. The latest rumor is the Apple Glass will cost $499 before prescription lenses. As CNET rightly points out, for Apple Glass to catch on and not befall the fate of Google Glass, the glasses must be comfortable, everyday accessories that replace our current glasses.

dis-rup-shun: Recall when you learned that Apple was going into the watch business. First reactions may have been doubt that Apple could pack sufficient technology onto a wrist and that the category was dying with younger people using smartphones to track time. Now Apple enjoys the largest share of smartwatches and the category is the highest growth segment of its product line. Let’s hope Apple can make glasses smart, and bring augmented reality to the everyday, not to mention making eyeware more exciting than even Warby Parker has done.

Clubhouse app, highly exclusive and highly valued

How does an app with only 1,500 users and no website get valued at $100 million? The answer is exclusivity. You have to know someone special to get access to this rarefied social network that hosts video discussions between such as MC Hammer, and venture capital titans Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Users can browse and enter virtual rooms where there may one or more celebrities available for chat. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: It’s all about access, and people are willing to pay handsomely to get access to influential people. This raises the question, if this app is successful at drawing a bigger audience, will the audience be getting the access they crave? Unlike essentially every other app, perhaps Clubhouse is not about scale, but is about paying high prices for access to inaccessible people.

Apple acknowledges the facial recognition problem

If you have been fighting your iPhone for facial recognition while you are wearing a mask, Apple understands, and has reduced the time between facial recognition failure and pop up of the keypad for code entry. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: While this is helpful, Apple users still have to struggle to attempt to unlock their phones to make a mobile payment while holding their groceries while masked. Using location tracking and AI, Apple should enable your phone to understand your behavior and remain unlocked as you navigate your regular grocery store or pharmacy — struggling to read your on-phone grocery list and make an electronic payment at checkout.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Fedex and Microsoft unite to conquer Amazon

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Fedex and Microsoft unite against rival Amazon

Today Microsoft and FedEx announced details of their partnership to best Amazon by combining Microsoft’s cloud services with FedEx’s logistics network to create a better shipping experience for customers. Amazon, the kingpin in cloud services, is rapidly growing its own logistics business, adding both trucks and planes to rival FedEx and UPS. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: The smart people at Microsoft continue to amaze, and perhaps they have some impressive strategies to beat Amazon at their game of total world domination. But Amazon has been fueled by the quarantine, with growth well in advance of projections. Stopping Amazon will be difficult without assistance from the Department of Justice, and that looks unlikely at the current time.

A robot that guesses your emotions from your walk

Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed ProxEmo, a robot powered by software that reads people’s gait and body language to determine their emotional state. By observing people’s facial expression and mapping their walking gait onto a model, the technology determines if the person should be given more space, or if they are potentially in need of support. Wired

dis-rup-shun: Technology to improve health and wellness is on the rise, but few applications are designed to monitor and manage mental health and wellness. Public school systems around the country have spent significant dollars for cameras with facial recognition technology that is designed to identify hostile visitors who may intend harm. Mental wellness is an under-served need that will benefit greatly from artificial intelligence.

An app for NYC subway sounds

For the hundreds of thousands of people who used to spend a part of their day on a subway, and are missing the familiar sounds, there’s an app for that. TheVerge

dis-rup-shun: Thanks to the Internet for bringing really long-tail content to the general public.

Best smart locks

Digital Trends reviews the growing smart lock category and chooses August Smart Lock Third Generation as the best, most secure, and easiest to install. The review also categorizes the best lock for your chosen smart home platform (Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, Google Home). The review also includes Level Lock, a unique option that fits all of the electronics inside the door, concealing the fact that you even have a smart lock.

dis-rup-shun: This review implies that consumers are choosing their smart home products based on their preferred control interface (Alexa, Google, iPhone, Android phone). But most smart home products work with all of these interfaces, so this approach does not help a confused consumer. It will take apartment communities and builders to make smart locks a standard offering for this product to reach a mass market, but the Gen Z consumers who are never without their smartphones will prefer buildings and homes that offer smart home technologies.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Vet visits to be virtual after pandemic

May 18, 2020by sbsikesLeave a Comment

Telehealth veterinary clinic thrives during quarantine

A coronavirus win is the increased use of telemedicine. In New York City, pet clinic BondVet is experiencing a 200% increase in appointments over the web. In 50% of the telehealth visits, vets resolve the issue after prescribing medicines and treatments over the video appointment. Each 20 minute visit which costs $50. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: A brilliant use of video teleconferencing, BondVet is helping set a new standard for pet care which won’t go away after the pandemic. After all, a vet visit often relies on the same pet owner’s description of the animal’s maladies that a televisit requires, so in many cases being in-person may not add value.

Chrome bars ads that hijack your CPU and power

Chrome is releasing a new browser extension that blocks CPU hijacking ads. Chrome estimates that these ads are rare — somewhere around 0.3 percent— but account for up to 28 percent of CPU usage and 27 percent of network data overall. These annoying ads that use your computer to mine cryptocurrency use up CPU, battery, electricity and network bandwidth. Wired

dis-rup-shun: If you have wondered why certain web searches, especially after leaving the site up and running while you are doing other things, result in your PC working extremely hard (fan running, CPU activity high), it is likely that your computer has been temporarily hijacked by a crypto currency miner program hidden in an ad. It’s like AirBnB on your computer without permission, or any compensation. Clever, but devious.

The perils of moving from Mac to PC

Scandalous, but true. Some Mac users have gotten fed up with paying a premium for computer hardware that is poorly made. Some of these users have been lured back to Windows by well-made PCs at amazing prices. Wired reports on the perils and pleasures of experience by a Mac user who decides to venture to (or back) the Windows world.

dis-rup-shun: The bottom line seems to be that Mac software is easier to use, more seamless, and less vulnerable to malware. PC hardware, by and large, provides more hardware features for less money. Apple simply needs to pour a great deal of effort into fixing some poor hardware in order to protect the Macintosh premium experience.

Record spending on video games

Americans spent $10.9 billion on video games in the first quarter, up 9% from 2019. Hardware sales totaled $770 million, with Nintendo’s impossible to find Switch in the lead. Top titles purchased were Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Doom Eternal, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto V, Minecraft, MLB The Show 20 and NBA 2K20. The Verge

dis-rup-shun: There are many silver linings in this very dark and sad time, and the games industry is certainly one. Will the renewed interest in gaming last as other activities hopefully come online by the end of Q2? Perhaps increased game engagement will lead to a sustainable new level going well past the end of the pandemic.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

CES in the time of Covid-19

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Is CES 2021 viable in the age of Covid?

Forbes takes a look at the chances of the world’s largest consumer electronics event, CES, produced by the Consumer Electronic Association, taking place as planned. Despite the event being seven months away, assembling 160,000 people in a crowded venue is likely to be seen risky by many of the event’s sponsors and participants. Forbes

dis-rup-shun: It is hard to imagine a year without the bittersweet meeting of the entire tech industry for three brutal days of shuffling across miles of concrete and standing in dozens of cab lines. To be clear, there are few events anywhere that can yield as many meetings, discoveries and news headlines as CES, not to mention pumping billions into the Las Vegas economy. A virtual CES just wouldn’t do much for anyone.

MIT uses appliance data to measure health

MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab is developing a system that uses a single motion sensor in the main room of a home, combined with a sensor that measures electricity used by appliances, to determine one’s household patterns, and anomalies. TechCrunch

dis-rup-shun: Remote monitoring of seniors has become a higher priority with many residential facilities closed to visitors. AI becomes smarter with more data, making better assessments between actual emergency and simple deviation in routine. Commercially available remote senior monitoring systems are currently in market from innovators such as People Power, Alarm.com, GreatCall, and should become commonplace offerings of retailers, telcos and insurance companies in the next few years.

How gamers made Romania and Singapore fastest Internet countries

Today Romania and Singapore enjoy some of the fastest constant broadband internet speeds in the world. Their broadband infrastructure was created to whet the appetites of gamers who were willing to pay for steady, fast services and, in the early days of the Internet, frequently connected physical cables from apartment to apartment to great LANs for gaming. As cable providers entered the market, gamers would share the fastest cable service across their LAN. That grass roots competition led to high speed and low latency services nationwide. Wired

dis-rup-shun: This is a great story of supply and demand, and human innovation. The article also discusses how Google’s Stadia cloud gaming platform, despite having good content, is limited by inconsistent Internet services throughout the world, making the gaming experience inconsistent and less appealing. Apple’s Arcade, on the other hand, focuses on casual games in which latency is less of a factor.

August smart lock gets smarter

A new, smaller, better smart lock is available from August. The new model, called Wi-Fi Smart Lock, uses built in Wi-Fi, no longer requiring a separate hub device. For $249, you can unlock or lock your home from anywhere in the world that you can access the Internet — perfect for AirBnB, assuming that will come back. TechCrunch

dis-rup-shun: August, like Nest was to thermostats, is the lead innovator of the smart lock business, but the real mass market upgrades of locks to smart locks will be driven by the giants in the industry such as Schlage, Kwikset and Yale by Assa Abloy – the company that has recently purchased August Home. As Assa and its big competitors roll the August technology into brands that locksmiths and builders know well, then we will see a proliferation of smart locking homes. I’m guessing this transition will happen in three to five years.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Spotify DJ feature enables group experience

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Spotify enables group therapy

Spotify’s premium subscribers may now enjoy and group listening feature. By offering others a temporary code, the subscriber can quickly create a group listening session in which all members can control the queue and be the DJ. The Verge

dis-rup-shun: For music lovers, the fun of Spotify has long been to sit with friends and ask questions about favorite bands — then play favorite songs. Now a group of people can share control and set new rules for the session, enriching the Spotify experience over its rival music streaming providers.

TiVo Stream 4K cord cutter

If you are familiar with TiVo and want to cut the cord, the company has released a dongle/remote combination device, similar to Chromecast, Roku and Amazon Fire Stick. The $49 device uses Google Assistant for voice search, and provides top notch sound and video quality. The device provides an intelligent user interface that learns based on what you like to watch. Forbes

dis-rup-shun: With live sports on hiatus, there just aren’t many compelling reasons to pay a fat cable TV bill anymore. And those DVRs that we have learned to love? They are playing a smaller and smaller role in our lives as we are more inclined to stream, except of course, for Grey’s Anatomy and non-existent sports.

Quibi is not essential entertainment, say consumers

Despite initial signs that this video-only subscription video service was an early hit, things are not going well. Slow subscriber uptake is being blamed on Corona virus and on the app’s inability (by design) to not share screen shots with other apps or on social media. The Verge

dis-rup-shun: It seemed like this novel concept was off to a great start, serving 1.7 million downloads in its first week. It seemed that Corona virus and a captive audience’s need for entertainment would provide the launch with unprecedented advantages, but alas, it seems that people are not craving another subscription entertainment service. With an all-star cast of executives (Jeffery Katzenberg, Meg Whitman and others) behind the venture, creative ideas may improve uptake. With T-Mobile offering a free year of Quibi, word of mouth may create demand among people who will pay.

Tesla will support in-car video conferencing

Musk recently commented that Tesla models will soon support video conferencing, using the tiny built-in camera and the 15 inch displays on the dashboard. The features are ideal for future, self-driving models, but will be available in limited situations before then. Forbes

dis-rup-shun: Tesla is working hard to show the auto industry a lot of things, but one of those is that a long lag time for new technologies to be built-in to cars should not exist. Technology accessories have long been important product differentiators, and by incorporating important features, like a 15 inch tablet on the dash, Tesla is engaging tech lovers and digital natives.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Work from home is here to stay

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Work from home is a permanent shift

Given the uncertainty of the future of the pandemic growth curve, employers will be very slow to invite workers back to offices. The staggered reopening of offices, combined with the effectiveness of tools provided to workers to work at home, will make working at home a permanent option for many employees. Global Workplace Analytics pegs the per employee savings at $11,000 per year. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Many companies, for a number of years, have been coordinating geographically dispersed workforces using Internet-based tools. Now that the rest of the economy has been forced to test virtual work forces, the results are positive, and the demand for face to face or shoulder to shoulder teams is greatly reduced. The industries impacted, to name a few, are public transit, real estate developers, office furniture makers, and certainly airlines.

Minecraft hosts virtual graduation ceremony

A number of college seniors and Minecraft players, frustrated by cancellation of their graduation ceremonies, developed the concept of Quarantine University. The virtual university will host a ceremony featuring the avatars of graduates of multiple universities — 1,338 from 439 universities. Wired

dis-rup-shun: While it is unlikely that post-Covid graduation ceremonies will be virtual, expect to see more events taking place on multiple digital platforms. In-game experiences already include live concerts, and will increasingly become a platform for live events other than gaming. In-game wedding anyone?

5G critical to telehealth, says Qualcomm

Qualcomm’s CEO explained that the data speeds afforded by 5G are critical to telehealth, particular regarding the use or portable ultrasound machines and stroke detection devices. Today over 200 million telemedicine networks exist in the U.S. alone. CNET

dis-rup-shun: Network providers and their vendors, such as Qualcomm, are working hard to justify the expense, and migration to, 5G networks. Carriers have no choice but upgrade networks, and finding high bandwidth applications that justify premium pricing is a priority. Telehealth is a niche application that has become far more important during this pandemic, and will increasingly be an important component to future healthcare plans.

Withings sleep pad helps diagnose sleep problems

For those that find sleep difficult, and don’t wish to wear a watch to bed, Withings Sleep actually tucks under your mattress and provides a plethora of sleep data to your smartphone. The data is then used to analyze your sleep difficulties, and suggest ways to enhance your rest. CNET

dis-rup-shun: Quantified self — the movement to quantify personal performance for a number of tasks, is the companion to telehealth. Healthcare professionals in the future will increasingly rely on data in order to both diagnose maladies as well as ensure adherence to treatment regimens. Expect healthcare professionals to increasingly recommend or even prescribe the use of data collection devices.