Innovative Apps You Should Have on Your Phone

Developing smartphone technology leads to changes in quality of life, as these are innovations we carry with us every day, literally at our fingertips. Here are some of these helpful apps that surely transcend sheer novelty.

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Word Lens
This awesome application translates any sign or text into a person’s preferred language via the phone’s camera. It’s now even integrated into Google Translate. More importantly, one doesn’t even need internet connection for it to work.
Assistant
This app is actually the most-acclaimed, speaking personal assistant for smartphones, and is included in the New York Times’ top android apps of the year. It utilizes language tech to launch apps, answer queries, get information, and access many web services.
Be My Eyes
An app that truly impacts people’s lives is this micro-volunteering app that links blind people with volunteer helpers from around the world via live video chat. Anyone with the app installed can either ask for help or offer it and become someone else’s vision.
Cardiograph
Cardiograph is your personal health assistant, using the phone camera and a sensor for measuring heart rate. It works just like actual in-hospital medical equipment. Record and track results, then save them for reference.
SoundHound
You hear a great song in the background but don’t know who the artist is? This app identifies the band or artist, the album, and the lyrics. Just turn it on and it should be able to “sniff” the info you need for more personal listening sessions later. You can even hum that song you’ve forgotten but keeps running in your head the whole day and the app will detect it.

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Hey there. I’m Taihwa Terry Ho, capital investor and technophile. I see promise in developing things people will use every day. Read more apps and new tech innovations here.

Three Apps For First-Time Investors

Investing, whether in the stock market, real estate, or tech, can be intimidating if you’re not intimately familiar with the inner goings of such activity. Fortunately, with the advancements in technology come a plethora of apps that can help us in this endeavor. Here are three of them.

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Robinhood

One of the biggest draws of Robinhood among new investors is its $0-commission brokerage firm that makes it easy for anyone to invest without having to pay the typical fee of $10 for every trade you make. Investors make money through their Robinhood Gold membership and earning revenue from interest gained from cash in their accounts much like a bank.

Hello Money

Hello Money’s idea is centered on letting you choose different funds and stocks to create your ultimate portfolio one piece at a time. It allows you to pick from over 24,000 different funds and stocks.

Wealthfront

Perfect for those who can’t watch over their investments by the minute, this automated management service maximizes the “net-of-fee, after-tax, real investment return for each client’s particular tolerance for risk.”

Hi, I’m Taihwa Terry Ho. I’m a capital investor by trade. I’m a technophile so I focus my investments in apps that I see a lot of promise. Visit my blog for more investing tips.

Gadget Tech Explained: How Gorilla Glass Works

If you own a smartphone, then you’ve probably heard of the material, Gorilla Glass. It’s the screen tech used by most smartphone companies. Gorilla Glass is produced by the company Corning. The glass is the made to be smooth, crystal-clear, resilient, and scratch-proof. So how is this glass fabricated, and what makes it so strong?

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A little history, the Corning glass’s discovery is actually a superhero origin story. In 1952, a scientist at Corning placed a piece of photosensitive glass in a furnace for testing. At some point, the furnace’s temperature suddenly increased from 600 degrees Celsius to 900 degrees. Expecting a failure, the scientist removed the sample and was shocked to find an opaque sheet of material rather than a melted blob of molten mess. He accidentally dropped the sample and instead of shattering, it bounced.
Scientist Don Stookey, accidentally created a glass-ceramic Hybrid.
Here’s Corning’s explanation from its Gorilla Glass website:

Ion exchange is a chemical strengthening process where large ions are “stuffed” into the glass surface, creating a state of compression. Gorilla Glass is specially designed to maximize this behavior. The glass is placed in a hot bath of molten salt at a temperature of approximately 400°C. Smaller sodium ions leave the glass, and larger potassium ions from the salt bath replace them. These larger ions take up more room and are pressed together when the glass cools, producing a layer of compressive stress on the surface of the glass. Gorilla Glass’s special composition enables the potassium ions to diffuse far into the surface, creating high compressive stress deep into the glass. This layer of compression creates a surface that is more resistant to damage from everyday use.

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Joshua Hunt here. I’m a gadget technician from Texas. I enter rodeos during my free time. Follow me on Twitter to get more updates.

Essential Android Apps To Get In 2017

Choosing from tons of apps for your Android phone depends mainly on their suitability for your lifestyle. A lot of sites offer a master list of sorts, but it might be better to base your downloading decisions on your specific interests or hobbies. Hereunder are several must-have apps (meaning those you would most likely use) for your smartphone.

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Gmail

Everybody should have a Google email account, if only as backup email. It makes everything more centralized and synchronized with other Google apps, and the interface is a lot more user-friendly than, say, Yahoo or most company-specific accounts.

Amazon

For an important alternative to the Google Appstore (which often comes pre-installed in Android phones), get Amazon and its premium version Amazon Prime, which offers cool features like grocery shopping online and fast delivery. It can in the long run save you more money to have both app stores installed.

Twitter and Facebook

Social media users will most likely have accounts in these, and having them will allow you to keep in touch with family and friends. News often break and spread faster in social media, too, so for 24/7 awareness of what’s happening, FB and Twitter are a must.

Trip Advisor

If you’re planning on traveling, this app offers heaps of ease and convenience including booking options, lowest airfare, hotel rates, and offers a huge database of must-visit landmarks and suggested itinerary in your destination.

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My name is Taihwa Terry Ho, a capital investor and technophile.  I frequently invest in app development and other tech innovations.  Read more about my adventures in the app industry via my Facebook page.

Should We Fear Self-Driving Cars?

You can almost hear the hackles raised and the impending write-offs of self-driving cars. It’s still too sci-fi for the public. It also raises valid questions, such as 1) Are they safe? and 2) Are machines better drivers than humans? Lastly, the concept triggers social anxieties, such as possibilities of large-scale unemployment for truckers and cab drivers who will ineluctably be replaced by such vehicles.

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Currently, self-driving cars aren’t too far from being mainstreamed. We are looking at around 4.7 million self-driving vehicles plying the roads by 2030, according to a study by Boston Consulting Group. As a matter of consequence, another think tank, International Transport Forum, also predicts a loss of 50 to 70 percent of demand for drivers in the U.S. and Europe by 2030.

This is the sort of panic truly disruptive technology sows. However, experience tells us not to fear machines as we did on the eve of the Industrial Revolution and the many encounters mankind has had with artificial intelligence after that. Some technology analysts actually argue the opposite: The dawn of new technology will generate exponentially more jobs, but different kinds.

Driving jobs will take a hit, but the normalization of self-driving vehicles will also spur complementary industries. Manufacturing these vehicles will demand more warm bodies. As will industries directly expedited by the service of such technology. Retail, energy, construction, and other sectors will be faster and bigger, and their expansion will necessitate a more sizable workforce.

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To be sure, there is still a lot to fear, foremost of which is getting the technology safe and on point. In fact, one of the primary goals of this technology is to reduce road accidents, which are largely attributed to human error.

We must not suppress self-driving cars if they’re the direction toward which innovation wants to go.

I am Taihwa Terry Ho and I believe in disruptive, serviceable innovations. For more similar reads, visit my blog.