Daily Archives: August 14, 2017

Earlier this summer, a modest little startup in Barcelona, Spain, unveiled its newest product a biodegradable, internet-connected funeral urn that turns the ashes of departed loved ones into an indoor tree. Just mix the cremains with soil and seedlings, and the digital-age urn will automatically water and care for your memorial sapling, sending constant updates to an app on your smartphone.

At first glance, the concept seems gimmicky evidently, we're running out of ideas for smart appliances. But the Bios Incube system can also be seen as the latest example of a gradual transformation in modern culture.

Technology is fundamentally changing how we deal with death and its attendant issues of funerals, memorials and human remains. Much of this change is for the good. Some developments are a little spooky. But one thing is for sure: You can do a lot of cool things with ashes these days.

The Bios Incube system, which went on sale in June after a successful crowdfunding campaign, is the latest iteration of a much older idea in which ashes are essentially used as compost for a memorial tree or plant. But the Incube system adds some high-tech twists. The biodegradable urn is placed within a 5-gallon planter with an elegant, off-white, minimalist design vibe call it the iUrn.

Actually, that's the Incube. Fill it with water and an internal irrigation system kicks in while separate sensors monitor the progress of your plant, taking constant readings on temperature, humidity and soil conditions. This information is wirelessly beamed to the included smartphone app, allowing the bereaved user to better care for and nurture the seedling as it grows into a tree.

Roger Moline, co-founder of Bios Urn, says the company offers two versions of its system. One provides the basic biodegradable urn and planter at $145. The more expensive version if you want all the high-tech bells, whistles, atmosphere sensors and smartphone apps tops out at $695.

"Interestingly enough, we have found so far that most have opted voluntarily for the high-tech option," Moline says.

He has a theory on that.

"Most of us are connected to the digital world, and we have become used to it," he says. "Perhaps by tying together this process with technology, there can be a sense of comfort that comes from using a familiar process with a new experience. We hope that it will push people in a new direction and perhaps make this process easier for those experiencing loss."

The Bios Urn concept is indeed part of a larger transformation in which technology is changing how we think about death and dying, says Candi Cann, author of the book "Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-first Century."

"Their approach implies a different sort of afterlife than the religious one an afterlife that theoretically we can partake in," says Cann, who teaches religion and world culture at Baylor University.

"Recent theories on mourning reveal that having continued bonds with the deceased allow us to navigate everyday life while renegotiating our relationships with loved ones who are no longer present," she says. "So in this way, the Bios Urn might actually foster a healthy type of mourning that allows us to look after the dead in an active, daily way."

Caring for the dead via a smartphone app may seem strange, Cann says, but it makes perfect sense for those of us living in a perpetually connected world: "The generation today has grown up with online spaces and smartphones, so this is their medium."

Cann has done extensive research on modern mourning rituals around the planet, and the various ways that technology is impacting how we deal with death and dying. The Internet has certainly changed the way we do things. Obituaries are posted online, funeral arrangements are sent by email or text, and social media platforms like Facebook now offer a range of memorial pages and legacy contact options.

In general, this is all good healthy progress, Cann says. "Smartphones and social media spaces have forced a decline in the importance of a controlled obituary narrative, as more people can contribute to the communal memory of a person and the meaning of their life," she says.

A recurring theme in Cann's work concerns an odd and abiding reticence in mainstream Western attitudes toward death: In short, we just don't like to talk about it. Our aversion leads to a lot of unhealthy sublimation in the culture. "I would argue that the reason we see so much death in the media and in video games is precisely because we are not having real conversations about death," Cann says.

Technology is helping in that arena, too. Cann points to online communities like Death Cafe, which use internet forums to arrange local meetups for the recently bereaved.

Then there is the issue of what to do with the remains. We humans have been navigating this dilemma since the dawn of civilization, but recent technological advances have opened up some options. You can have ashes incorporated into jewelry, blended into oil paintings, mixed into tattoo ink, submerged into coral reefs or even pressed into vinyl records. And don't forget about the festive fireworks option.

While developing the Bios Urn system, Moline explored how other cultures are processing cremains, like Tokyo's unique Ruriden columbarium, which utilizes LED Buddha statues and digital smart cards.

"I've seen some interesting things in China and Japan," he says. "Both have run of out burial space in larger cities and have created interesting ways of commemorating those who have passed."

Cann says that these new modern rituals, facilitated by various technologies, can help us get a little friendlier with death.

"In Brazil, I went to a public crematorium that cremates a body every 15 minutes, and is an actively used public park and picnic space," he says. "Families were playing and picnicking among the ashes. If we see deathscapes as friendly places, rather than where the dead are banished, we might be able to utilize them in healthier and more creative ways."

Looking to the future, however, Cann addresses more worrisome technologies.

"One of the areas I'm thinking more about is the use of artificial intelligence and digital avatars," Cann said. "These are people intending to upload themselves, via AI, into digital avatars."

Proponents of this idea contend that uploading the mind into a computer is entirely plausible. But science fiction has some cautionary tales in this area any technology that promises to defy death is usually nothing but trouble. Ask Dr. Frankenstein. Even speculating on this sci-fi scenario can get a bit dodgy, Cann says.

"Whenever people focus more on extending life rather than examining its quality, death loses its importance," Cann says. "If we are spending more time trying to deny death or prolong dying, then I think we are not living well."

In this light, the Bios Urn seems like a fairly gentle step forward. Technology can't yet provide us with digital immortality, but it can help us grow a memorial tree in our living room. What's not to like?

Original post:

Ashes to ashes, dust to ... interactive biodegradable funerary urns? - Minnesota Public Radio News

Zeus Kerravala is the founder and principal analyst with ZK Research, and provides a mix of tactical advice to help his clients in the current business climate.

I know, I know, Ive heard it before. A new technology comes along, and it promises to be the next big thing. Consumers and businesses buy it, and what happens? It fails to live up to the hype. In my opinion, almost every iPhone release over the past five years has been that way. Sure there were some cool new features, but overall its not something Id say was game changing.

One technology that does promise to live up to the hype is 802.11ax, the next standard for wireless LANs. I say that because this next generation of Wi-Fi was engineered for the world we live in where everything is connected and theres an assumption that upload and download traffic will be equivalent. Previous generations of Wi-Fi assumed more casual use and that there would be far more downloading of information than uploading.

I agree that 802.11ac made things somewhat faster, but it was a faster version of something that was designed with old-school assumptions in mind. Im sure everyone reading this has been in a situation where youve been at a conference center, stadium or in another public space, and everything is great. Then the keynote or concert starts or something else happens to get tens of thousands of people SnapChatting, tweeting, Facebooking (or SnapFacing if your New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick), and things come to a crawl.

The problem with Wi-Fi isnt always the speed of the system. 802.11ac wave 2 gets us to or over the Gigabit barrier, which should be plenty of bandwidth for most people. The bigger problem with Wi-Fi is congestion and how current Wi-Fi handles lots of people trying to do wireless things and overcrowding the network. The ax standard solves these problems and others by completely redesigning how Wi-Fi works and taking some best practices from LTE.

Ax will be anywhere from 4x to 10x faster than existing Wi-Fi, but the wider and multiple channels greatly increase throughput. For example, if one assumes the speed is increased by 4x with 160 MHz channels, the speed of a single 802.11ax stream will be 3.5Gbps. The equivalent 802.11ac connection will be 866 Mbps. A 4x4 MIMO environment would result in a total capacity of about 14 Gbps. A client device that supported two or three streams would easily top 1 Gbps or much more.

If one knocked the channel width down to 40 MHz, which could happen in crowded areas like stadiums or college dorms, a single .11ax stream would be about 800 Mbps for a total capacity of 3.2 Gbps. Regardless of the channel size, 802.11ax will provide a huge boost in speed and total capacity.

One of the big advancements in LTE is something called orthogonal frequency division multiple access (ODMFA), which is an alphabet soup way of saying it does frequency division multiplexing. With previous versions of Wi-Fi, channels were held open until the data transmission had finished. Think of a line at a bank with only one teller where people have to queue up. MU-MIMO means there can be four tellers and four lines, but the people still need to wait for the transaction ahead of them is complete.

With OFDMA, each channel is chopped up into hundreds of smaller sub-channels, each with a different frequency. The signals are then turned orthogonally (at right angles) so they can be stacked on top of each other and de-multiplexed. With the bank analogy, imagine a teller being able to handle multiple customers when they are free. So customer one hands the teller a check and while that person is signing the check, the teller deals with the next customer, etc. The use of OFDMA means up to 30 clients can share each channel instead of having to take turns broadcasting and listening on each.

From a user perspective, the network will seem much less congested than with 802.11ac. Another benefit is that the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands can be combined creating even more channels for data. The ax specification also includes something called QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) encoding, which allows for more data to be transmitted per packet.

Any new Wi-Fi standard will improve battery life, since the range is typically further and data is transmitted faster so the client does not need to work as hard. However, ax has a new feature called wake time scheduling. This enables APs to tell clients when to go to sleep and provides a schedule of when to wake. These are very short periods of time, but being able to sleep a bunch of short times will make a big difference on battery life.

Ive talked with chip, AP and client device manufacturers about when to expect 802.11ax products, and we should see the first consumer Wi-Fi routers in the early part of 2018 with an outside shot of late 2017. After that, the business grade APs and clients will follow. We are certainly close enough that network managers should be starting the educational process and planning now.

If youre not sure what this means for your business, talk to your Wi-Fi vendor, as all the major wireless LAN suppliers are planning to support 802.11ax. One final point: If you need to upgrade now, I certainly wouldnt put if off and wait for ax. Wi-Fi is extremely important to businesses of all sizes and will become more important as the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes more widely adopted.

The evolution of client devices has been game changing, as theres almost nothing we do that doesnt involve them. The 802.11ax specification finally brings a Wi-Fi standard to the network that can support all of the things we want to do with our wireless LANs.

See more here:

Why 802.11ax is the next big thing in Wi-Fi - Network World

Nest's streaming cameras offer a great way to keep an eye on things back at the ranch, assuming your home broadband connection is up to the task.

Security cameras with real-time alerts aren't just for catching burglars in the act, they can also offer peace of mind if you've got school-aged children coming home to an empty house or pets who spend the day alone.

Consumer-grade streaming cameras have been around for years, and there are plenty to choose from, but smart home pioneer Nest adds a few clever features to help stand out from the crowd. At the same time Nest has also launched its smart smoke/ carbon monoxide alarm in Australia, but we're still waiting on the Nest Smart Thermostat.

The cameras aren't cheap; the Nest Cam Indoor and Outdoor models cost $319 each, plus there's the optional Nest Aware cloud-based monitoring service which costs $14 per month for the first camera and $7 for each subsequent camera with Nest throwing in 30 days for free.

Perhaps more importantly, Nest's streaming cameras can also take a high toll on your broadband connection which will be an instant deal-breaker in some homes.

Easy to set up

It's simple to link a camera to your home WiFi network and Nest account by downloading the iOS/Android Nest app and scanning the QR code on the back on the camera. As a fallback it's also possible to configure the cameras using a desktop browser.

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Both cameras are easy to install around your home, offering 1080p resolution and a 130-degree field of view thanks to a slight fisheye lens.

The Nest Cam Indoor features a flat magnetic base, along with a screw-in wall plate, so you can stick it pretty much anywhere as long as it's within range of your WiFi network and the 3-metre power cable can reach a wall socket.

You can stand the Indoor camera upright on a flat surface or attach it to the wall and then tilt the camera up and down, as well as twist it from side to side. There's the option to flip the image if you need to install the camera upside-down on the ceiling.

Meanwhile the Nest Cam Outdoor features a curved magnetic back and comes with a concave wall plate that has a 7.5-metre power cable. Once the camera is attached to the base it's easy to tilt it in any direction up to around 50 degrees. While the outdoor camera is weatherproof, Nest recommends not installing it in direct sunshine.

Keep an eye on things

You can access your cameras via the Nest mobile app or a desktop browser, with the option of two-factor authentication to help keep out uninvited guests.

While the cameras are handy for seeing what's happening at home right now, Nest's strength is its intelligent alerts system which can send emails or pop-up alerts to your phone. Unfortunately most of these features rely on you shelling out for a Nest Aware subscription each month.

Even if you don't have a subscription, each camera will notify you when it hears a noise or sees something move. You're not bombarded with messages every time someone walks in front of the camera, instead it notifies you at the first sign of activity after which it uses intelligent alerts to only notify you of "important activity".

You're sent a photo of the scene which isn't always very helpful if the culprit is far from the camera but you can click on the link to see a live feed.

At this point you can see and hear what's happening in the room and use two-way audio to speak to your unexpected guest, although the audio can be a bit unreliable (perhaps a bandwidth issue, although they were tested on 100/2 Mbps cable broadband). The picture is crisp and the cameras do a good job of coping withbrightbacklights.They're infrared cameras, so they can still see clearly at night.

Stay Alert

Unfortunately you need a Nest Aware subscription if you want to see an instant replay or scroll back in time. Without this, the cameras will be of little use to some people.

To cut down on alerts, you can adjust the microphone sensitivity, or else disable sound or motion notifications completely. Nest Aware subscribers can also create custom zones within each camera's field of view, which is handy if you don't want to detect pets walking across the floor or trees moving outside the window. Nest Aware applies extra intelligent scene and audio analysis to reduce false positives, plus subscribers can save clips and create timelapse videos.

Nest Aware subscribers can also opt to only receive alerts when a person walks into the room, with smart image analysis able to recognise human movement (but not recognise specific faces, that requires the Nest Cam IQ which isn't sold in Australia). Subscribers can also take advantage of intelligent sound alerts, recognising people talking or dogs barking.

Private party

To further cut down on alerts and better manage your privacy you can schedule specific cameras to switch off at specific times of day. You can also automatically disable certain cameras when the Nest mobile app detects you're at home, although this chews through your smartphone battery like all GPS-enabled apps which monitor your location while they're running in the background.

Alternatively you can keep the cameras running but stop alerts when you're at home, which might be important depending on the types of events you're watching for.

Thankfully it's possible to add family members to your Nest account and control the cameras and alerts depending on who is home which is important if you don't want alerts on your phone when you go to the shops on the weekend while others stay at home.

Apart from smartphones, you can use Works With Nest-compatible low-powered Bluetooth GPS trackers to tell the cameras when you're home the kind of thing you could easily attach to house keys or a school bag.

If you don't live alone there are obviouslyprivacy and trust issues to be considered. The Nest Cams helped solve the mystery of my missing sunglasses; they were misplaced during a party so we went back to the video replay to find their hiding spot, but you can image how this power could be abused.

Look to the cloud

Unlike some security cameras the Nest Cams don't store any video onboard, instead they upload to the cloud constantly which obviously presents major challenges if your home is starved of bandwidth.

The upside of streaming to the cloud is that you can get an instant replay at any time or scroll back up to 30 days with thumbnails marking events of interest, but of course only if you're paying for the Nest Aware subscription.

The downside is that you're chewing through a hell of a lot of bandwidth, with that data probably counting towards your monthly usage limit. Even if you don't have a Nest Aware account, the cameras must upload constantly for you to receive alerts. With no onboard storage or backup power, the Nest Cams are useless if an intruder cuts the internet and/or power to your house before breaking in the window although you're sent alerts if your cameras are offline for a while.

In the picture

The cameras offer a sharp 1080p resolution with 8x digital zoom but even with a 2 Mbps uplink this wasdialled down to 720p by default, at which point a single Nest Cam is constantly uploading at 400 kbps leaping past 1 Mbps per second when something moves. At this rate a single camera will chew through around 120 GB per month.

These bandwidth demands are simply ludicrous in a country like Australia where many homes face monthly data limits and would be lucky to have access to 1 Mbps upload speeds. Thankfully you can adjust the picture quality to allow for your bandwidth, dialling it up to 1080p uploading at 1.2 Mbps and chewing through 300 GB per month or down to 360p (150 kbps, 30 GB per month).

Even at the lowest settings these bandwidth demands might still be too much if you have several cameras around your home, so you might curb their thirst by using the advanced settings to disable certain cameras at certain times.

Even if you're lucky enough to have access to the NBN you'd want to be on at least the 25/5 Mbps speed tier, as a basic 12/1 plan won't cut it. Heaven forbid everyone in your neighbourhood owns a few Nest Cams or your peak hour broadband traffic jams could get a lot worse.

So what's the verdict?

Like many American products, Nest Cams are designed for a world where data andbandwidth are seemingly infinite resources. In returnthe camerasoffer some impressive tricks but only if your home broadband can cope and you're prepared to shell out for the Nest Aware subscription.

To be fair some rivals also demand a monthly fee for cloud video storage, so it's important to do your research before taking the plunge. If you won't sign up for Nest Aware then your money is probably best spent elsewhere, especially if you'll be forced to dial down the picture quality so you're not making the most of the Nest Cam's 1080p resolution.

In a perfect worldNest Cams could be the perfect home surveillancetool, but for now they'll be impractical in many Australian homes until we sort out our nation's broadband woes.

Read the original post:

Hands on: Nest Cam Indoor and Outdoor home security cameras - The Sydney Morning Herald