Piper adds Smart Sound Detection tech, notifies users of unusual sounds heard at home

Piper, home security and automation device, gets one more new piece of tech before the product starts shipping in November. Blacksumac added Smart Sound Detection technology that detects sounds in your home and performs secure cloud-based analysis on these. It has been created to recognize sounds such as crying babies, barking dogs, phones ringing, door knock or doorbells, and smoke, fire, and carbon monoxide alarms. The system will send you alerts on your mobile device if the sound is anything significant.

Piper is still up for pre-order on Indiegogo until September 20, even after it has exceeded its $100,000 goal (it’s now at over $165,000), and will have the Smart Sound Detection feature as a software update by the end of the year.

Sony introduces 3-in-1 Walkman

Who says you need to carry around a lot of gadgets to enjoy your tunes? Sony has introduced the new Walkman NWZ-WH303, wireless headphones built with music player and speakers in the cans.

This innovative piece of music hardware lets you enjoy your tunes with either the closed, dynamic headphones with 30mm dome type headphone driver unit or the stereo surround sound speakers. You can store up to 1,000 tracks on its 4GB music player and can play up to 20 hours of music on a single charge (or an hour for the quick three minute charge).

Source: Sony Canada

Canadian students win Nokia Capture Hackathon

After 1,000 ideas submitted from around the world and 10 teams selected as finalists (6 soloists and four teams of 2), Canadian college students Rudi Chen and Shida Li beat out both student and seasoned developer teams and were crowned winners of Nokia’s Capture developer contest during a 27-hour hackathon in Sweden.

The University of Waterloo students were first-time hackathon attendees and their winning application was a “content-aware down-sampling” smart resizing app that lets users edit or delete empty space between important parts of a photo while keeping the rest of the image. They each took home Nokia Lumia 1020 and a trip to attend an upcoming event where the app will be showcased.

Happy 50th, cassette!

If you show it to the young ones today, they would not know what it is. But for those old enough to know what a cassette tape is, today’s a day of commemoration as the cassette celebrates its golden anniversary. Philips, the innovators behind the compact cassette technology, wants to remind us what role these tapes played in our lives. You can check www.cassette50.com for more information and tweet #cassette50 while you’re at it as tribute to those much loved and once revolutionary tapes.