In 2016 Snapchat decided to expand from just an app and created their own spectacles. These are glasses with cameras and microphones in them allowing the user to capture point of view videos and picture. They were a huge financial failure. Snapchat lost over 40 million dollars on this. Despite this failed first try, Snapchat is trying again. They just announced that they are bring them back for Summer 2018. The new glasses will still shoot circular videos like the old ones, but will have many improvements. They will now record in HD and will upload to the Snapchat app 4x faster than before. These new glasses will also have a button on them to snap picture, dual microphones for better audio, and will be water resistant to an extent. They are also said to be lighter and more comfortable. Additionally, gone are the wacky and juvenile colors of the first generation. These new ones will come in three clean and sleek colors, including black. Finally, the new ones will allow for people to have the lenses made to their prescription. Snapchat made several changes when it decided to bring back their Spectacles, and hopefully for them it is a lot more successful than the first attempt.

https://www.cnet.com/videos/snap-refreshes-spectacles-adds-water-resistance/

Today the third and fourth largest wireless carriers in the nation announced to merge as part of a 26 billion dollar deal. The goal behind this merger is to great a real true third player in the American wireless industry. These two companies combined should be able to leverage there new size to effectively compete with Verizon and AT&T. As a result of this merger the sprint brand will cease to exist. T-Mobile will be absorbing Sprint, and will remain a wholly owned Deutsche Telekom. Deutsche Telekom is the leading mobile carrier in Germany. The current owners of Sprint will be given seats on the new companies board along with the current CEO Marcelo Claure. The current owner of Sprint is SoftBank. This merger brings to an end years of flirting and hinting at a merger. This merger is said to “Supercharge” the existed network. The combined network would network would have around 128 millions connections. This places the network right in the middle between AT&T and Verizon. But while this deal is in place, it does have to go through approvals and anti-trust rulings so there is a chance this deal could still fall through. If it doesn’t though, it will sure shake up the American wireless industry and potentially actually increase competition for customers.

https://www.cnet.com/news/t-mobile-sprint-will-finally-get-hitched-in-26b-mega-mobile-deal/

AT&T announced that it will be expanding its current 5g evolution service from 24 cities to 141. This would add service to 117 new markets. These markets include large cities like Miami, FL, but also smaller ones like Reno, Nevada. People in these markets can expect to experience a more responsive, and faster network with this improvement in service. They plan to keep expanding this service and add it to 500 markets by the end of the year. This would vastly improve cellular coverage for most Americans. The advantage of 5G is that it allows better use of the Internet of Things and will allow for mass autonomous vehicles. The size and speeds of the network before was one of the limiting factors for those new technologies. The reason I say Kinda though is because while this is could 5G, it is not proper 5G. That is why the marketers at AT&T Called it evolution. This is the technology that will form the base of the proper 5G network, it just can’t be all up right now. This is the first step for AT&T on there mission to improve our connection for the future of our data demands.

https://www.cnet.com/news/at-t-brings-5g-evolution-not-real-5g-to-117-more-markets/

Tech Companies are great at making money, but they are not thought of as benefitting society. There was a survey published that asked people what companies they think benefited society the most. 20% of the thousands of people that filled out the survey voted that Amazon was the company that did the most good for society. In second with 15% of the vote was Google. In third was Apple with 11% of the vote. Interestingly Facebook was  fourth with 10% of votes. Facebook being so high is an interesting outcome because of their recent security issues with personal data. One would have thought that news like this would have hurt their numbers, but it didn’t. Other companies that were high on that list were Netflix, twitter, and snapchat, but those were all behind Uber who received the fifth most votes.  It turns out some tech companies do also benefit society as a whole.

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-has-only-a-slightly-more-positive-impact-on-society-than-facebook/

I often find myself lost and when I do I always turn to google maps or some map app to help me. They work incredibly well for almost all of us. One group it does not help very much are people in wheelchairs. It is great for the to know how to wheel to get there, but it isn’t much use if the directions have steps in the way or a curb. This is why Alanna Raffel and bunch of developers are trying to make map apps better for people with disabilities. This lead to the development of an app Called AXS Map. This map application is designed to show people where there are difficult spots and give the directions around them. This is a huge help to people everyday who have these disabilities. It relies mostly and crowdsourcing for its information. It uses this information sent it to help it know where the accessible route is. This was a huge first step.

The issue is not many people know about these apps and there are other accessibility issues it cannot help with. There is a need for big companies like Yelp and Google to help and they are. Google maps is going to start rolling out some accessibility improvements in 6 cities around the world. That will be great since it is a much wider used platform so more people will use the app, and more information will be received from crowdsourcing so it can make better maps. Yelp is also improving its accessibility information by showing customers how accessible a hotel is for handicap people. It would be hard to get to the hotel but have there be step between you and the elevators. These will help people with disabilities immensely.

https://www.cnet.com/news/building-better-maps-for-the-disability-community/

Around the country there are great liberal art colleges, but with there smaller sizes, it is hard for them to offer the same courses as big state schools. These smaller schools operate on smaller budgets and have less students to take more obscure classes. This makes offering a interesting and complete curriculum hard at a normal price. This is why three colleges are starting a program with google that will fix this problem.

Google is working with Alma, Calvin, and Albion college on a pilot program that will allow for a quality virtual classroom. This will allow students at Alma and Calvin college to take a visual physiology class that is offered at Albion college. The same is for classes at the other schools. This allows students at these colleges the opportunity to take many more interesting classes. The school can offer more compelling majors and minors. This will help them gain more students. The great thing is this cost vastly less than adding the class the old fashion way by hire a new teacher. This can also be expanding to more schools and classes. Finally, thanks to google, these smaller liberal art colleges having a financially realistic way to offer the classes their students are demanding. Google is also paying for the installation of the technologies.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffabernathy/2018/04/06/can-google-help-liberal-arts-colleges-thrive/#16eca0394ae6

Cities all across the world are struggling to meet the demand for transit. More people than ever are turning to public transport as a reliable mode of travel and a true alternative to the car is populated areas. The issue is in older cities, like London, it is complicated, timely, and expensive to add new routes to the transit system. Instead these older route are turning to modernization. London is currently basically rebuilding the whole tube system with new track, new trains and expanded station, but thats not IST related. The IST related improve is arguable the most important also. They are going to complete overhaul the Signaling system for the trains to the new state-of-the-art Communication Based Train Control (CBTC). This will allow for the system to run 40% more trains on the same tracks. They will be able to run a total of 34 trains per hour. Also, unlike the old signaling system, this will allow controllers to know exactly where the train is. This means passengers can get real time location and delay information, and emergency response will have an more exact location for the train. This is because CBTC uses technology like GPS and track side circuits and processors. The old system divided the tracks into blocks, but did not know the exact location of the train in the block. This new signaling system is allowing older cities, like London, expand there transit capacity to meet the rapidly growing demand without breaking the bank for a new line, and help provide a better experience for riders. Modern technology is allowing train companies to get much more out of their systems and provide an better, more enjoyable, and reliable service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications-based_train_control#CBTC_and_moving_block

https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-news/66288/biggest-test-tube-signalling-system-successful/