Pay with your laptop: Is it safe and secure?

When it comes to gender equality in the tech industry, the numbers probably won’t surprise you. Only 17% of venture-backed companies are founded by women, and women make up just 7% of partners at 100 of the top venture capitalist firms.

Although many attempts are being made to encourage women into tech, we are still far from gender parity in the industry. What would the world look like if there were equal numbers of men and women in the sector? We asked three women in tech, from CEOs to developers, for their thoughts.

More female-led tech companies would change the way women are treated in society

I’m a strong believer in a connection between a company’s internal values and the final product or service. There are many examples of tech companies where their internal attitudes towards women are reflected in their products.

For example, there have been multiple stories about alleged sexual harassment relating to Uber, as well as the [leaked] “Miami letter” [CEO Travis Kalanick sent staff guidelines about when it was appropriate to have sex with other employees at a company event in Miami]. It became clear why Uber had been never considered the safest service for women – because its workplace wasn’t either.

If there were more tech companies led by women, I truly believe it would change the way women are treated in society – in part as a result of the values shown in their company’s services or products.

Valerie Stark, co-founder and CEO of friendship and dating app Huggle

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How to choose headphone for your music

The Apple Watch and Microsoft Band use optical sensors to measure heart rate. The Jawbone Up3, which instead tracks your resting heart rate,  uses bioimpedance sensors and several electrodes to measure your skin’s resistance to a small amount of electrical current.

The Apple Watch and Microsoft Band use optical sensors to measure heart rate. The Jawbone Up3.

You can focus on things that are barriers or you can focus on scaling the wall or redefining the problem. Steve Jobs

The Apple Watch and Microsoft Band use optical sensors to measure heart rate. The Jawbone Up3, which instead tracks your resting heart rate,  uses bioimpedance sensors and several electrodes to measure your skin’s resistance to a small amount of electrical current.

Figures & Captions

Chasing the blonde dragon is still a genuine plight, because the grass is always. There’s a misguided notion that natural beauty products just don’t do the job as well as conventional creams and cleansers. While that may be the case for some, i’ve found that many natural products are even better than the drugstore brands.

 

The headphone wars have begun

Chasing the blonde dragon is still a genuine plight, because the grass is always. There’s a misguided notion that natural beauty products just don’t do the job as well as conventional creams and cleansers. While that may be the case for some, i’ve found that many natural products are even better than the drugstore brands.

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Computers are used as control systems

The temperature in your bedroom is perfect. Your blackout curtains have been drawn shut. And you’ve just finished a cup of chamomile tea and novel that made you laugh out loud and forget about whatever was bothering you earlier in the day.

You’re just about ready to drift off, and suddenly the air conditioner kicks on. Or a car alarm screeches through the night air. Or your partner sneezes. Suddenly, you’re wide-awake again. Your brain responds to noises when you’re awake and asleep. But if the interruptions wake you up, that can keep you from getting the restful shuteye that you need.

When ambient noise is disrupting your sleep, white (or pink) noise can help to smooth out the rough edges. Imagine sitting next to a person who is loudly chewing gum in a library. Then imagine sitting next to that same person in a crowded bar. It’s the same chomping gum, but underneath the drone of a crowded place, you can’t even hear it anymore. White noise, whether it’s from a sound machine, a simple fan, or crowd noise helps to mask noise-related disruptions by creating a constant ambient sound that makes a “peak” noise, like a door slamming, less of a contrast. And that makes you less likely to be startled awake.

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A glimpse into the future of computing

Now that touchscreens have moved the human-computer interaction beyond the monopoly of the mouse-keyboard union for the first time in 30 years, are we now at a point where we can put some distance between us and our computers? Can we instruct them without direct contact but now move to the new union of voice-gesture?

Leap Motion is the first serious mainstream contender for a high fidelity gesture peripheral. It tracks the movement of hands in two square feet of space above it with unbelievable speed and accuracy.

The first question everybody asks is, ‘So what can it do?’. The short answer is, today, very little. Tomorrow? Well, I for one am a believer. What we have here is a limitation of imagination, not of technology. That is usually a catalyst for innovation.

Device itself

Receiving my Developer Kit a few weeks ago was a cause for a large crowd to gather in the development team at the Guardian. Only a handful of new gadgets really generate this level of excitement and people wanted to see for themselves whether it lived up to the hype.

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Will a Sound Machine Help You Drift Off?

The temperature in your bedroom is perfect. Your blackout curtains have been drawn shut. And you’ve just finished a cup of chamomile tea and novel that made you laugh out loud and forget about whatever was bothering you earlier in the day.

You’re just about ready to drift off, and suddenly the air conditioner kicks on. Or a car alarm screeches through the night air. Or your partner sneezes. Suddenly, you’re wide-awake again. Your brain responds to noises when you’re awake and asleep. But if the interruptions wake you up, that can keep you from getting the restful shuteye that you need.

When ambient noise is disrupting your sleep, white (or pink) noise can help to smooth out the rough edges. Imagine sitting next to a person who is loudly chewing gum in a library. Then imagine sitting next to that same person in a crowded bar. It’s the same chomping gum, but underneath the drone of a crowded place, you can’t even hear it anymore. White noise, whether it’s from a sound machine, a simple fan, or crowd noise helps to mask noise-related disruptions by creating a constant ambient sound that makes a “peak” noise, like a door slamming, less of a contrast. And that makes you less likely to be startled awake.

Read more

Post Format: Video

The temperature in your bedroom is perfect. Your blackout curtains have been drawn shut. And you’ve just finished a cup of chamomile tea and novel that made you laugh out loud and forget about whatever was bothering you earlier in the day.

You’re just about ready to drift off, and suddenly the air conditioner kicks on. Or a car alarm screeches through the night air. Or your partner sneezes. Suddenly, you’re wide-awake again. Your brain responds to noises when you’re awake and asleep. But if the interruptions wake you up, that can keep you from getting the restful shuteye that you need.

When ambient noise is disrupting your sleep, white (or pink) noise can help to smooth out the rough edges. Imagine sitting next to a person who is loudly chewing gum in a library. Then imagine sitting next to that same person in a crowded bar. It’s the same chomping gum, but underneath the drone of a crowded place, you can’t even hear it anymore. White noise, whether it’s from a sound machine, a simple fan, or crowd noise helps to mask noise-related disruptions by creating a constant ambient sound that makes a “peak” noise, like a door slamming, less of a contrast. And that makes you less likely to be startled awake.

Read more

Post Format: Audio

The temperature in your bedroom is perfect. Your blackout curtains have been drawn shut. And you’ve just finished a cup of chamomile tea and novel that made you laugh out loud and forget about whatever was bothering you earlier in the day.

You’re just about ready to drift off, and suddenly the air conditioner kicks on. Or a car alarm screeches through the night air. Or your partner sneezes. Suddenly, you’re wide-awake again. Your brain responds to noises when you’re awake and asleep. But if the interruptions wake you up, that can keep you from getting the restful shuteye that you need.

When ambient noise is disrupting your sleep, white (or pink) noise can help to smooth out the rough edges. Imagine sitting next to a person who is loudly chewing gum in a library. Then imagine sitting next to that same person in a crowded bar. It’s the same chomping gum, but underneath the drone of a crowded place, you can’t even hear it anymore. White noise, whether it’s from a sound machine, a simple fan, or crowd noise helps to mask noise-related disruptions by creating a constant ambient sound that makes a “peak” noise, like a door slamming, less of a contrast. And that makes you less likely to be startled awake.

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Post Format: Gallery

The temperature in your bedroom is perfect. Your blackout curtains have been drawn shut. And you’ve just finished a cup of chamomile tea and novel that made you laugh out loud and forget about whatever was bothering you earlier in the day.

You’re just about ready to drift off, and suddenly the air conditioner kicks on. Or a car alarm screeches through the night air. Or your partner sneezes. Suddenly, you’re wide-awake again. Your brain responds to noises when you’re awake and asleep. But if the interruptions wake you up, that can keep you from getting the restful shuteye that you need.

When ambient noise is disrupting your sleep, white (or pink) noise can help to smooth out the rough edges. Imagine sitting next to a person who is loudly chewing gum in a library. Then imagine sitting next to that same person in a crowded bar. It’s the same chomping gum, but underneath the drone of a crowded place, you can’t even hear it anymore. White noise, whether it’s from a sound machine, a simple fan, or crowd noise helps to mask noise-related disruptions by creating a constant ambient sound that makes a “peak” noise, like a door slamming, less of a contrast. And that makes you less likely to be startled awake.

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Facebook at Work to take on LinkedIn and Google Drive

Facebook may control the social graph of 1.3 billion people, but now it has ambitions to stretch deeper into the workplace, according to the Financial Times’ report on plans for “Facebook at Work”.

This isn’t about getting around corporate firewalls to ensure you can see which Frozen character your friends are, though. It’s a proper move to compete with services from Google Drive and LinkedIn to Slack, and become a serious working tool.

“The Silicon Valley company is developing a new product designed to allow users to chat with colleagues, connect with professional contacts and collaborate over documents,” claimed the FT.

“The new site will look very much like Facebook – with a newsfeed and groups – but will allow users to keep their personal profile with its holiday photos, political rants and silly videos separate from their work identity.”

It might be a sensible move for Facebook, but how will workers (and bosses) feel about their data being shared and stored on the social network? Workplace collaboration in the cloud isn’t an alien concept for many businesses now, but I wonder how Facebook providing this will be received.

What do you think? The comments section is open for your thoughts.

Also on the technology radar today:

Spotify and Uber team up for in-car music

Uber is holding a press call with a “special partner guest” later today, but their identity is out: streaming music service Spotify. You’ll apparently be able to control the music played in your Uber car from your smartphone, with the tunes delivered from Spotify to the driver’s handset.

Facebook to crack down on ‘overly promotional’ page posts

If you’ve liked Facebook pages that tend to pump out contests or “please buy our thing” posts, expect to see them less in your feed from January. “Pages that post promotional creative should expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time,” explains the social network.

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The untold truth of Ina Garten

Real world use

We were able to use the Leap Motions during our last internal Hack Days which generated some interesting results. But one litmus test I have for new technology is whether my five-year old daughter can operate it. Whilst she struggled with the games that require pinpoint accuracy and poise, she adores playing with the fish and flying around the earth.

Using the Leap is a good experience as long as it is stationary and not near any very bright light sources. Once you attach it to a laptop and take it mobile, the varying light sources can make it lose track of your hand and this spoils the game or application you are working in. The ability to strain out extraneous light input is the largest challenging still facing the Leap.

The software running the device has made huge leaps (excuse the pun) forward in its reliability and functionality over the last few weeks. There are a small number of applications ready on their new Airspace app store. I have tested a few of them and the experience varies widely.

Where next?

Long term, this is the beginning of useful gesture control of computers.

In the short term the Leap proves itself to be an entertaining gadget for early adopters, and compared to other cutting edge gadgets entering the market the price is low at under £77, delivered in the UK.

I’d like to see it do well and enter the mainstream peripheral market; that jump could come if a wide number of PC manufacturers build it directly into their laptops and desktops.

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