Month: June 2016

Our obsession with tech with tech has made many of our households very noisy. Cars and airplanes meanwhile have also contributed to noise pollution. In a bid to make our lives more peaceful, engineers around the world have been coming up with ways to make silent solutions to usually noisy appliances and machinery. Here are just a few examples of such innovations.

Silent fridge/freezers

The hums and rattles and gurgles of many of our home fridges can be irritating. However, companies such as Caldura have been coming up with a silent solution. These quiet fridges are absorption powered making them different to compressor fridges in that they do not require a motor and instead rely off energy from heating. Many hotels with a mini-bar will consider such fridges as a way of keeping the room more quiet. 

Silent washing machines

Washing machines are among one of the loudest appliances in our homes, with some operating at eighty decibels, which is more than a hoover or ringing telephone. However, quieter washing machine models as produced by the likes of Whirpool can sometimes operate at just over forty decibels, which is the same as a quiet library. These are ideal if you need to put a load of laundry on at night but don’t want to wake the rest of the house up. There are further ways to soundproof your washing machine such as not putting it on an uneven surface and tightening shipping bolts.  

Silent computers

PCs – particularly high-performance models as used for gaming – can also be very loud due to the amount of fans needed to cool them. Fortunately, there are now quiet desktop models out there as sold by companies such as AVADirect. These computers use low-noise components and sound-proofing to prevent the usual whirring of fans and clicking of the hard-drive that regular machines suffer from.

Silent cars

Cars are also progressively becoming quieter. The once 82 decibel legal limit has been reduced to 74 decibels. Some modern cars however such as the BMW 730d Blue Performance reach as low as 58 decibels at 100 km/h – the equivalent of the sound of normal conversation. And of course electric cars are much quieter than their petrol counterparts, cutting out the engine noise at low speeds (although at high speeds they still produce the same tyre and wind noise as petrol cars).

Silent jet planes

No, silent jet planes aren’t a reality… yet. The Silent Aircraft Initiative believes they will be however by 2030. The group of engineers are looking at ways of making airplanes run on lower thrust levels, which could also reduce air pollution as well as noise pollution. Currently a jet plane taking off reaches a staggering 150 decibels, which is the very limit our eardrums can withstand before rupturing. Anything over 85 decibels is thought to damage our ears when exposed to long periods of time, contributing to gradual hearing loss. Could jet planes ever operate at below this level?

You know that Apple advert, the one where one person asks another person for help with a certain task, and they respond with “there’s an app for that”? The concept of this advert is to show that there’s an app for almost everything. A few years on from the release of that advert and there really is an app for everything – well, almost. With apps being so in demand, it makes business sense to take advantage of this and design your own app. If you have the skills, knowledge, and ideas for app design, that is.

The vital thing when it comes to app design is understanding that there is a lot of competition and that it’s fierce. So if you are going to design an app, whether that’s to tie in with your business or as a new venture, it’s crucial that you understand how to create an app that stands out for all the right reasons. To be able to do this you need to be somewhat of a tech geek; you need to be an innovative thinker, someone who loves creating new products and is passionate about cutting edge technology.

To help you get started on app creation, below are some tips for designing an application that has the wow factor and is sure to be a success.

Develop your idea first

There’s no bigger mistake when it comes to app design than rushing the process. What you want to do is take the time to develop your idea before you begin turning it into an app. For your app to have the wow factor, it can’t be rushed. It is important not to rush the process because once you have started creating your app, it becomes more difficult to edit or change the concept, which is why it’s best to take your time developing your idea before you begin the process of turning it into an app.

Make user-focused design a priority

If you have ever built a website, you will know how important a user-friendly design is. The same rules that apply to web design apply to app design – it needs to be user-friendly to be successful. So when it comes to developing your app, it’s important to take the user experience into account. Think about how easy the layout will be to navigate, how quickly the app will load, and how clear the content is. If there are certain tasks you can’t deal with yourself, don’t be afraid to outsource them. Part of focusing on user-experience is ensuring that your app runs smoothly and is free from bugs. An app that has glitches can severely impact the user experience, which is why it’s worth using resources like https://www.globalapptesting.com/product/mobile-app-testing to ensure that your app runs smoothly. By testing your app before releasing it, you can find any bugs or glitches and fix them, ensuring that your app is as user-friendly as possible.

Focus on branding

Whether you are creating an app to link to your brand or as a new venture, it’s vital that you focus on branding. The fact is that it’s branding – a well-designed logo, a certain color scheme, a style of text, a content style, etc. that gives a company its uniqueness. So when it comes to designing an app, it’s vital that you focus on branding, to ensure that your app is not only unique, but also that it has that professional look and feel to it. To get some ideas about effective branding, resources like https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/276520 are useful.

Want to design an app that has the wow factor? Then take note of the tips above.

Unfortunately, not everyone thinks that technology is a good thing. If there’s someone in your life who thinks that the world’s moving a bit too fast for their liking and who won’t stop complaining about it, here are a few things to point out…

Health

There’s very little that’s helping the world more than the huge advances in medicine that technology is enabling scientists to make. Aside from crucial breakthroughs in drugs that treat diseases ranging from cancer to HIV, technology is also helping the daily runnings of the medical services, from the ways that doctors can check for patients’ vital signs to the ways that doctors’ surgeries are being run. Being able to make an appointment and order your prescriptions online can be a serious help for anyone who might find it hard to use phones and who need to access medicine and healthcare. There are also huge strides being made in the way that people can be treated for conditions like brain injuries and strokes – new treatments and therapies are being developed all the time that make huge differences to people’s lives. Finally, surgeries are being done by machines more and moreso these days – keyhole surgeries can help to dramatically cut down the amount of time that people need to recover from having surgery and can also cut down on human errors that are made.

Transport

Pretty much every major city’s transport hub relies on technology, whether that’s passing messages from station to station about track closures on metros and undergrounds, putting out announcements about lost children over loudspeakers, or much more futuristic ideas that are being developed with high speed railways and self-driving cars. Not only does technology used in the world of travel make it a whole lot more convenient for people in their everyday lives with it comes to high speed travel and commuting, but self driving cars are also extremely safe and will mean that car crashes because of driver error will be at an absolute minimum – the future looks bright and a whole lot more safe.

Careers

The future of industry is a lot more exciting because of the progress that’s being made in the world of technology. This generation have jobs that their parents could never have dreamed would exist – and they’re forging excellent and important careers out of them as well. Knowing how to code is one of the best things that any young person can learn, so it’s important that their parents, even if they don’t totally understand the tech industry, supports the young people in their family to learn about and to understand computers and tech. It’s much easier to start a business than it ever has been before, thanks to the internet – you can work remotely easily which means that you can work flexibly. This is great not only for young people but also for those with families – and for people trying to break into their chosen industries who aren’t able to afford to live near a big city. Being able to work with just a laptop and a steady internet connection means that the world of work is starting to open up and become a lot more accessible.

Education

Advances in technology are enabling teachers to deliver lessons that are interesting and fun, which in turn motivates students and encourages them to learn. Devices like interactive whiteboards mean that you can show movies in class, which is extremely helpful in subjects like English and History, and they also mean that students can come up and interact with what a teacher has drawn on the board – although this could also happen with chalk boards and white boards, interactive whiteboards mean that large shapes can be moved around and students are much more interested in what’s happening. Technology can also enable schools to run more smoothly – registration systems that run throughout an entire school mean that teachers can see whether their students should be in their classes or not, meaning that if there’s an emergency it’s easier to account for all the students.

Entertainment

The world of entertainment has been dramatically changed by the advent of technology. Youtubers and vloggers have become some of the most popular and famous people around – they’re the ones who are influencing young people as well as actors and pop stars. One of the best thing about vloggers is that they’re able to create their own platforms, meaning that really great content can get its voice heard when it otherwise might not be able to. It can be very difficult for people to break into the mainstream media these days, but YouTube as a platform is getting bigger and bigger – a lot of people watch less TV and fewer movies, choosing to watch content that has been created by people online instead. This means that brands are starting to think about completely new and exciting ways of advertising. Other forms of entertainment have also been revolutionised with transformative tech – we have better speakers, we have better screens, and it’s also possible to immerse ourselves in the virtual reality systems that everyone will be using to game in the future.

Fundraising

When something terrible happens, the world goes into mourning, and technology can help us connect to people on social media sites who feel the same way that we do – who are mourning for Bowie, who are afraid for loved ones after terrorist attacks, who want to get more and more involved in politics as so many people are doing these days. Not only can technology provide emotional support for us but it can also be a valuable source of information – a lot of the time, traditional news sources are behind Twitter and social media with what they’re saying. Finally, social media makes it easier for us to donate for charity with sites like JustGiving – it’s a lot easier to put money towards a disaster relief fund with your credit card online than it was in the old days when you had to send money off to charity instead.