Today’s Friday Thought, is from a friend of mine. She’s shared this with me, and I think it’s great to think about what it really means… especially on a cloudy day.
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Bal’s Friday Thought…
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Week 10… 2021!
And we carry straight on.. straight through March with lots still happening!! With lockdown rules easing, Covid cases coming down.. it’s important to ensure we stay safe – but also, for our mental health, we get some fresh air, and go on nice walks (where possible!).
Ok… my top 2 from this week!!
- Cost of Electric Car Charing! Now whilst we’re all being told, electric is the future (even though I think Hydrogen will play a big part)… the cost of ‘charging our cars’ can be expensive!
So… when we’re all driving electric cars, we won’t need petrol stations, we’ll need charge stations. And like petrol stations, they all charge differently.
There’s some cheaper ones and you guessed it, there’s some expensive ones. Below is a table showing the cost of charging a new iX3 at various charge stations. One thing to point out, it’s cheapest to charge at home…. but you will need, to charge at a charge station if you’re out and about!
2. Delivery Robots – they’ve have gained major traction over the last year with more and more people looking for contactless deliveries due to Covid-19. Postmates X is the robotics spinoff of the popular delivery startup acquired by Uber in 2020 and recently became its own company known as Serve Robotics. With nearly 50% of restaurant deliveries in the U.S. being located within walking distance, their technology negates the need for a car, making deliveries more accessible.
It will be interesting to see how many restaurants and local retailers turn to robots to deliver their products. So many have pivoted because of the pandemic. Many restaurants have complained about delivery services, so maybe robots could be a solution…
So there you go… my top 2 stories from this week. I will continue to share more new tech (though the robot delivery has been happening for a while… and is now taking off!), but ones that impact you, and could be coming to you soon.
If you need more information, or are a business that needs some innovative solutions – reach out to me! Happy to talk, understand and collaborate.
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Bal’s Friday Thought…
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Week 9… 2021!
What a rocketing start into March! – It’ll be good to reflect on these stories at the end of the year and think – wow… what a year!
And so it continues, a lot happening in the news, especially about the Royals and not the Royals (as they are now)… but for me, I’m going to focus on the Top 2 stories in my opinion that matter.
- SpaceX Lands! – Now, if you’re not up to speed, Elon Mush (yes, the Tesla guy) is working on a number of other projects. One is SpaceX. This is where, him and his team are building rockets that can go into space (the Moon…Mars, etc..) and then come back and land safely! A bit like an aeroplane does – but Elon wants this same principle for Space Travel.
Now, as you can imagine, it’s not an easy task. To design, build and launch a rocket that can go into space… then come back and land safely! However, Serial Number 10 (SN10) touched down in Boca Chica, Texas – in contrast to its predecessors SN8 and SN9, which crashed into the ground. Unfortunately, it then blew up.
I know. Sad. However – the good thing is a) it landed!!! (unlike SN8 and SN9) and b) it’s progress!!! – Which means, SpaceX can learn, and go again and you know… it’s only a matter of time they get it right… (and we’ll be on the moon before you know it).
2. Amazon Fresh finally landed in the UK… in Ealing!
That’s right – Amazon now have a physical store in the UK!! And yes, people were queuing up to use it. You’re probably wondering how it works? – well… all you do is… walk up to the barrier, flash your phone so the store knows its you and you’re coming in… then you go in… get what you want, and then simply walk out and you get billed for what you took! – they know what you took because they have hundred’s of camera’s everywhere!!!
Now… Amazon say they don’t record any faces or personal info as such… (so no face recognition). They’ll track you and your phone as you walk around, tracking what you’re picking up and also what you’re putting down, so you get billed for the bits you walk out with.
Will this be the new norm?
Who knows… some folk like the interaction with shopkeepers etc… some just want to walk in, get what they want and walk out. Let’s be honest – we’re all busy these days.
So there you go… my top two from the week. Personally, I don’t think it’ll be long before we pop into an Amazon store, pick up a few last minute essentials before we go to the Moon for a short break.
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Bal’s Friday Thought…
Had a great conversation with a young person today… we spoke about Growth.
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Tech Tuesday
Recently, on social media – you may have seen some old photo’s being bought to life. All looks a bit creepy, right? – If you’ve not seen it and thinking, Bal… what’s all this about?! – Then, let me share with you… a company called MyHeritage who provides automatic AI-powered photo enhancements is now offering a new service that can animate people in old photos creating a short video!
The conversion process is completely automated. Users simply need to upload a photograph through the website where it’s first sharpened and enhanced to not only improve the quality of the final animation but to also make it easier for the deep learning algorithm to do its thing.
The results are eerily lifelike, and manage to preserve the aesthetics of the original shot to help sell the effect of this video being recorded when the actual photo was captured.
So the question is – who would you like to see, moving their face again?
As mentioned – it is eerily lifelike – and this technology will only advance, maybe there could be certain body movements – or more than facial expression – wouldn’t it be amazing if there were more movements and maybe voice! (Appreciate that’s going to be difficult, but if many voices were recorded of descendants then I’m sure AI could work some magic).
So head over to the Heritage Website, and let’s see the videos!
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Week 8… 2021!
Is Spring finally here? Weather has been wonderful this weekend… and with more and more people being vaccinated, the warmer weather slowly arriving… are things looking up?
Here’s my top two stories from the week gone!
- Fresh and hot of the press – There’ll be a £5bn fund to help the High Street recover form Covid. That’s right – £18,000 per firm, to help shops and pubs reopen. Whilst I think this is good for pubs… and the hospitality sector in general, I was hoping that most shops would have adapted for the ‘digital age’ – and have an online presence. With their ‘shops’, use them as ‘experience centres’, information and knowledge is power – use their High Street presence to educate. Let’s be honest, how many of us go to Curry’s, look around – then order online! I believe there is a space for both – the High Street and Internet Shopping.
2. If you’re on Twitter… I hope you’re following me (@balbansal) – but the story here is about paid content and becoming a ‘Super Follower’! We have various subscriptions, we pay for more things monthly than we ever have before. So why not pay on Twitter for exclusive content and information from particular folk we follow! There’s other platforms that do something similar (though the intentions were ‘decent’ the other platform has somewhat ventured into 18+ type of content). The method is similar. You get some ‘free’ stuff. But want more… subscribe/pay and you get exclusives.
So here’s a question – a) would you pay to have exclusive content from me? (I won’t be offended if you said no – would like to know why)… and b) If you are a small business, with a high street presence, think how you can increase the customer experience… don’t look for the sale (that’ll come)… look at the experience.
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Week 7… 2021!
And so the year continues to go at some pace – it’s week 7, so much has happened so far, and I can only see more happening over the coming weeks and months! Sharing my top 2 from the week gone…
- Perseverance – That’s right… NASA’s Perseverance landed on Mars!!! So what’s so significant about this, well firstly… Perseverance has a large amount of data in its memory banks which it is gradually offloading to Earth and… the pictures it’s been sharing initially have been brilliant!!
Its initial mission will last one Martian year (roughly two Earth years), although it’s hard to see the agency not extending this if all the hardware remains healthy.
As well as searching for signs of life (Imagine… it finds clear signs of life… how awesome would that be!!), Perseverance’s other key objective is to select and package rock samples that can be brought back to Earth laboratories by later missions.
2. The New Service Stations! – Usually, when on a journey, and you need to fill up… you’d stop at your nearest service stations and fill up. However, times are changing.. on the outskirts of Braintree in Essex (UK), there’s a service station that is the first of it’s kind in the UK… that has space for 36 cars to charge at once!!
The super-fast electric forecourt will deliver 350kW of charging power – enough to add 200 miles of driving range in 20 minutes – to up to 36 cars at a time. And… it will use clean energy sourced from one of the UK’s first subsidy-free solar farms at Clayhill in Bedfordshire, overhead solar canopies, and a battery capable of storing enough energy to drive 24,000 miles.
It is the first of more than 100 electric forecourts that Gridserve, a clean energy company, plans to roll out across the country over the next five years as part of a billion-pound “sun-to-wheel” infrastructure.
So… looks like infrastructure is finally catching up! Yes, there’s a long way to go, but great to see this happening…
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Bal’s Friday Thought…
My Friday Thought… is about why make things so complicated?
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Tech Tuesday!
We are all aware of the main social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram…. the younger ones amongst us… Tik Tok, Snapchat, etc… Let’s be honest, there’s a fair few. But there’s one that’s taking the world by storm!
Clubhouse.
So imagine, in the real world, you’re at a conference. It’s a conference that has several rooms, several speakers. You look at the agenda, and highlight what interests you. You then go to the room, sit in the room and listen to the speaker(s). When you want to leave, you leave quietly, and you can join another room – where they may be talking about another interest of yours – and you sit there and listen to the speakers.
Now… Clubhouse, has all this… on an app. You can connect and follow people who you think are interesting, and when they start a room – you’ll be notified. And off course, people can follow you!
You can even create your own room! Have people join. Talk about what you want! You can make it private or keep it open for others to join.
I’ve been using it for a while. And I have to admit. I love it. I think it’s great. I’ve had my own room (where a few of us talked about football – in particular Nottingham Forest). I’ve joined lots of rooms, and listened – and like most things, some were good, some… not so.
On iOS only for the moment – but i’m sure they’ll be bringing it out on Android soon. Oh.. and you need to be invited. That’s right – it’s invite only… But when you sign up and wait – if people on the platform know you, then they can ‘let you in’. In addition, you get two invites to invite your friends!
Why is clubhouse so important?
- It’s all audio! – so you can carry on with your normal tasks, plug in your headphones – and off you go. The rise of podcasts has shown that more and more people are wanting to listen.
- Clubhouse says they do not record and store. So the room you create, the room you talk in… none of that conversation is stored so you can listen to it later. It’s all ‘real-time’. Like a real conference, where you’d listen to a person live… it’s exactly like that.
There are some watch outs though… whilst Clubhouse say they don’t record anything, some security folk found that they they will capture some of your personal data and information. So like all social media platforms, enjoy… (but be conscious of who’s watching.. or in this case, listening!)